No I’m not talking about high school drop outs, college students majoring in beer instead of subjects, getting poetry degrees rather than something deemed useful. I’m not even talking about college drop outs, those who passed on scholarships or got bored at tech schools. No this problem lies elsewhere. With an economy struggling, 14 million people unemployed one would think the US government, state governments would do everything they could to ensure Americans get back to work, but the answer is apparently not. Experts and business people have been saying it both before and during the recession, speaking out even now, that the government along with the Obama administration is dually against business, particularly small businesses. Now we have proof; denying one immigrant wanting to start a business here a visa that would have led to American jobs is just one example. Another instance, tourism, American tourism halted for what seems to be lack of interest in bringing foreigners, their spending money, here. And the latest, a report compiled by Tom Coburn uncovering celebrities getting tax loopholes when they clearly have the means to pay their taxes, pay the property taxes on the land they own, as the gobble up huge plots of land for mere fractions of their value. Just one more blight on the federal government as the country continues to suffer, leaving anyone watching the news saying come on.

Yes you heard right a young entrepreneur wanting to create US jobs, wanting to start a business right here in America forced to go elsewhere; why, because he is an immigrant caught up in state department red tape. Moved Canada and running his online cruise booking business, similar to Orbitz and Expedia for plane flights, hotels only for cruises, out of a friend’s living room, despite being US educated, having hired 9 American employees, gotten 1 million dollars from investors already and his company being featured on a Silicon valley top 20 to watch list, future plans to hire 100’s of American employees. The reason for his visa denial may be found even more infuriating to onlookers not to mention the Israeli young man himself. That reason, his advanced degree is not necessary for what he is doings regardless of being a Stanford business school graduate; still, the agency in charge of approving such visas said to get one he would have to get a job using his degree. How they could say a business student opening a business is not using his degree defies common sense; further what fits their criteria of using his advanced degree remains a mystery. Because instead of becoming an intern getting some executives coffee at a fortune 500 company, he sought to create his own company that could very well end up a fortune 500 given time; punishment for progress, initiative anyone? Being Israeli, odds are he is neither Muslim nor Arabic, which shouldn’t matter in the least, but nevertheless removes the perceived threat, fear of terrorism. Worse yet this young man is just the latest in a long line of foreign individuals who’ve fought for visas and created successful businesses that became household names, including the CEO’s of Google, Yahoo, Pfizer, e-bay, companies and jobs that came to the US because of a visa. Compounding the problem, the US government’s definition, classification of a small business; 500 employees is deemed small in their eyes. So, those who have a hand full of employees, a dozen, they are off the radar and virtually do not qualify for any help, feeding the fires of economic stagnation.                      

American tourism could lead to millions of US jobs, including W Hotels catering to Chinese visitors, complete with tea kettles and slippers present in rooms according to custom, entire menus in mandarin.  So why isn’t tourism bringing jobs here; because tourist can’t get into the country. In China, a place with the largest growing middle class, there are only 5 visa offices for a country of an estimated 1 billion people, often forcing people to take a plane or train to get to said office. Average wait for a basic US tourist visa interview appointment there, 120 days, never mind the full processing of visa requests; adding to the  confusion and frustration, one man hoping for a visa to bring his family here during Christmas vacation, he was approved his wife and son were not. Other top countries hoping for US visas, Brazil and India; the former area it’s a 109-145 day wait for the same interview. The US state department saying security and safety come first, pointing to a lack of people to process tourist visas and a lack of facilities to interview individuals, families. Chinese, Indian visitors spending about $6,000, Brazilians 4,900; ABC news making a startling discovery, that while tourism has gone up significantly worldwide during the last decade the number of tourists coming to the US has stagnated, some estimates projecting we’ve lost out on 78 million tourists over the last 10 years.  To be clear these are not people who want to come live in the United States, want to go to school here, want to experience any kind of extended stay, rather people who want to visit, see exciting places New York, Las Vegas, Disneyland, spend money and go home happy to buy things made in America, as a souvenir of their travels. Continuing, said tourists are again, not that it should matter, from Arabic, North African countries likely to be hot beds for terrorism, or individuals suspected of trying to use a tourist visa to carry out harm to the US, only people from similarly Westernized nations who want to see the greatness that is America, the standard so many look up to model themselves after.  

Similarly many migrant and immigrant farm workers, formerly here on guest worker visas have now been frightened away by laws in states like Alabama would come here pick a fruit or vegetable take their money and go home, not to be seen until the next harvest season of whatever crop. Even those who immigrate here illegally, create families, they are providing a valuable service, as Alabama farmers already knew, the rest of the state is soon to find out. Currently those same farmers there, and in other places, have crops rotting on the vine, stalk and stem because they can’t find workers that can stand the hours, intensity and conditions. Not only that but experienced pickers of our fruits and vegetables say it takes years to learn how to do it correctly and efficiently that people who don’t know what they are doing can cause damage to a crop, cost famers money, create shortages of supply; farmers bluntly stating that by the time they can both find and train an new, American workforce they will be out of business and billions of dollars of the agriculture industry, if not the industry as a whole, will end up in Mexico and central America. Going beyond the effect to food production, the human cost is greater when even legal immigrants are afraid to work, afraid to go outdoors; legal and illegal workers afraid to drive, terrified of being separated from their children, farmers desperate to harvest their crop incurring the added expense of transporting workers to and from fields. Here we have a simple solution to a larger problem; allow guest workers to come pick a crop take their money and return home, leave immigration as it is, minus crackdowns like Alabama, knowing it puts healthy food in our supermarkets, on our plates. But we won’t do that because of a xenophobic fear immigrants are taking our jobs.    

And now we find out celebrities are finding ways to gain appalling tax loop holes; Bon Jovi paying $100 for a huge plot of land due to the fact he agreed to raise bees on the property; Bruce Springsteen did something similar agreeing lease the area to an organic farmer. Other well-known names benefiting from so called welfare for the well-off include Scottie Pippin and Ted Turner. In addition to a whopping 78 % filing for said subsides listing city addresses, there were the cases of a former insurance executive and a part owner of a sports franchise who improperly received said payment four years running leaving one Fox News commentator exclaiming can we at least be sure the people getting the benefit of these monies, are on a farm. Don’t think it’s just farm allocations going out to the rich and famous who found something creative to do with the land; Coburn’s report highlights Quincy Jones getting thousands of dollars from the federally funded National Endowment for the Arts, points to 21billion in gambling losses used as deductions 2003-2009. Millionaires taking advantage of low interest loan programs for education; millions given to rich students.  Monies given to those whose adjusted gross income is over 1 million thus benefiting from millions in childcare tax credits; how bout millionaire collecting home heating assistance, living in a million dollar mansion and driving a Mercedes and collecting heating assistance meant for the poorest of the poor. Outside of creative ways to get tax deductions, our republican senator wants to limit the home mortgage deduction to one home and 500,000; further Coburn suggesting we curtail social security payments to individuals whose income is over 1 million dollars plus require them to pay full cost of Medicare parts B and D doctor visits and prescription drugs, also ending unemployment benefits, yes your eyes are not deceiving you, unemployment benefits for those whose income is over 1 million. The true question is why isn’t this policy already? Coburn pointed out people haven’t done anything wrong, the system is the system. Obviously the system needs to change.      

Maybe some still require convincing; well for that there are more facts and numbers to be put into play. Time to bust myths on immigration and public policy; fact is immigrants can create jobs, as with our young business man above who, by the way, likely wasn’t, isn’t going to, book cruises to destinations like Somalia Yemen, both dangerous for travelers and making homeland security nervous. Fortunately for our economy, upon the airing of the young man’s story, the department overseeing these type of visas saw fit to grant him his apologizing for not getting it right the first time. Yet it took ABC news reporting to shame them into doing what should have been common sense, what should have been a no brainer. Another inconvenient truth, people who have fought for visas in order to begin companies in the US have created 450,000 jobs in the last decade alone, just in the tech sector. Who knows who else was turned away or who went elsewhere for ease in starting their business in other regional overseas markets; perhaps China or Chile, both countries willing to roll out the red carpet to potential business makers. Providing visas, start up cash, incentives to bring jobs, commerce to their respective corners of the globe. Bringing in immigrant talent isn’t just about bringing in the next big thing but meeting demand and expanding existing business; just ask Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg who hired an immigrant programmer, thanks to a visa, because that’s who had the skills he needed, a person who now handles their entire foreign market department exporting the Facebook brand from America to the rest of the world.  New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg had a two sentence solution regarding this whole outrageous thing; you want to start a business we’ll give you a visa. You create the jobs you stay, you don’t, you go home. Government likewise needs to come up with a solution for uber small businesses those with 1-5 employees 10-12 up to the 500 employees currently classified as a small business  Once more it’s a case of why isn’t this existing policy?

Whether they are starting a business or are picking vegetables and fruits we will buy to feed ourselves and our kids, immigrants all have a vital role to play, and just because they are manual laborers doesn’t mean they should be seen as less than, when they are perhaps more valuable. They too should be granted work visas, legal immigration status if they have resided here for years picking vegetables, fruits, doing work no one else seems to be able to do, allowing famers to scrape by, keeping more agriculture in the United States than there would be otherwise. Neither should they be demonized for starting families here, like they knowingly did so in the hopes a child, born a US citizen would keep them here; a myth that is predominately not true. The reason they began families is because of cultural importance, means and a since of security present years ago that no longer remains. Staunch anti-immigrant, immigration reform advocates point to crime as a reason to crack down on illegal immigration; here too is a simple solution, commit a major, violent or sexual crime get deported, end of story. How hard is it to make that current policy and leave all the other immigrants, legal or not, alone? On the other hand Alabama’s immigration law is a case of politicians shooting themselves and their constituents in the foot, not to mention being hypocritical; looking at what happened to our young entrepreneur, is it really any wonder we have people willing to come into the country illegally, willing to risk everything for the hope of a better life, when all the have to offer is crop picking expertise?              

Tourism is a potential 606 billion dollar industry the majority of which is lost to us for a lack of priorities and organization. Simpler translation, a half a million jobs per year not being added to the economy; this is a perfect opportunity to go into junior highs, high schools, freshman classes at colleges and tell them the benefit of studying languages such as Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese (the dominate language in Brazil), the common languages and dialects in India. All letting students know you can satisfy your want to travel, see the world help our economy and help insure the wrong people don’t get into the country. Alerting young people to in demand jobs, not likely to go anywhere taking into account the 100 million Chinese set to travel in the next two years, the only thing up in the air, their destination; will it be here or to Europe where they could obtain, more easily obtain, a visa to travel. Skills that once learned could be transferred to another area with global market changes, with demand changes needing minimal effort, as the worker already understands procedures and paper work, language tutorials like Rosetta Stone can teach languages to almost anyone in record time. Smart phones come with apps translating various languages, surely programed for those used in the countries they are sold, removing the absolute need for a worker to know the language before being moved to a new post, something that could be a growing business for Americans providing evolving apps with major dialects from India and other previously developing nations, producing middle classes, possible tourists. But as with our own country’s million job skills gap, we routinely do an astoundingly poor job of letting people, educational institutions know what is needed.              

This is the subtext of what occupy Wall Street is talking about; we can promote ways to create jobs and we’re not doing it; we’re catering to corporations not smaller businesses, AKA the engine of our economy. At the very least we should be giving equal opportunities to both small business and the corporation, but no such luck. Instead people are either making fun of the movement or decrying the impact to everyday activities. We’re throwing away talent, not only letting it walk out of the country but forcing it out, at a time when people don’t care where the founder of their workplace came from just grateful to have a job, or would be. Rather than doing any one of the things in this piece, pushing for changes to regulations, government officials are haggling over which and how much of social programs to cut, what we can eliminate in military, defense spending, what they can gouge out of either what people need or the basics needed for government to operate, as opposed to stopping at least 30 billion dollars a year given to people who either know how to work the system or given out because someone isn’t paying attention to the paperwork on the other end, someone who can’t, won’t check Google maps to make sure the land listed is an actual farm, double checking to make sure the person qualifies for what they are getting. All while preaching austerity and sacrifice to the public, blaming them for over spending, credit card debt, stating occupy Wall Street protestors should be occupied getting a job. Well there are those who would say they already have it, making sure the people presently making decisions are soon out of their jobs.