00:00:30.000Americans are being told that restricting legal immigration would rig the competition for jobs and college seats.
00:00:36.780Apparently allowing citizens to compete with the entire planet is meritocracy, while giving them preference in their own country is discrimination.
00:00:45.840The argument has gained force as scrutiny moves from illegal crossings to work visas and foreign student admissions.
00:00:53.400Employers are using H-1B visas to recruit skilled workers,
00:00:56.940and public universities often collect higher tuition from students who live outside their states.
00:01:02.720Critics of tighter visa rules portray any preference for Americans as some kind of affirmative action for the native-born.0.99
00:04:52.100Universities and employers spend their years
00:04:54.180evaluating diversity goals alongside a measure of achievement.
00:04:57.760Courts and lawmakers have pushed back against some of these practices.
00:05:02.300On paper, federal law prohibits hiring discrimination on race, sex, and national origin.
00:05:07.740Still, anyone who's watched these institutions defend racial preferences should be skeptical when the same institution suddenly turns around and invokes merit as an unquestionable principle.
00:05:17.700The H-1B debate raises a separate problem. Technically, federal rules require employers
00:05:23.520to pay visa workers at least the applicable prevailing wage or the wage paid to comparable
00:05:29.580employees, whichever is higher. The program wasn't written as permission to hire foreign
00:05:35.200workers at half price, but the wage safeguards are only as good as enforcement. And we have
00:05:41.320endless stories of H-1B workers making less, often taking part of the money that they're making and
00:05:47.280sending it back to whatever agency got them the job in the first place this creates a high degree0.60
00:05:52.540of ethnic nepotism this is why we see 70 of h1b visas go to indian workers and it also gives0.63
00:06:00.200employers great leverage over the employee's status ultimately these people are entirely
00:06:05.240dependent on the employer to stay in the country so the employer can pressure them to do all kinds
00:06:10.600of things like work weird hours work overtime work on weekends in ways that don't necessarily
00:06:15.620always show up on the balance sheet, but give these employers a definite advantage over hiring
00:06:21.880native workers. That dependency can hurt both the foreign employee and the American applicant.
00:06:28.220An employer may prefer the worker who has fewer options. Calling the resulting arrangement a free
00:06:34.720and fair contest doesn't make it one. Even a perfect ranking of talent wouldn't answer who
00:06:40.600America's schools and employers ought to serve. An American need not prove superior intelligence0.78
00:06:46.560or virtue to claim a privileged place in his own country. The case against the feasibility of0.70
00:06:53.520global meritocracy is sound, but the most important argument against the practice is one of ownership.
00:07:00.160A nation is its people, not an economic zone meant for optimization. Even if a global meritocracy
00:07:05.980were possible, it would be immoral to subject your nation to it. The opportunities inside a country
00:07:11.940don't emerge out of the ether. Americans inherit institutions built through generations of work,
00:07:18.220investment, and sacrifice. They finance schools, build infrastructure, defend borders, and bear0.89
00:07:24.540the cost of political failure. The inheritance carries a moral claim, a property claim, just as
00:07:30.400children have a claim to their parents' estate. If your ancestors built this country, if they bled0.83
00:07:35.720for this country, if they died for this country, if the sweat of their brow is soaked into the
00:07:40.960very ground on which you now stand, then you have a moral right to the fruits of that country.
00:07:47.720Americans may choose to welcome foreign talent when it serves their interests if they'd like to.
00:07:52.800They can debate which visas advance national purposes and how many to grant. They're not
00:07:58.180obligated to treat every qualified applicant on earth as equally entitled to the opportunities
00:08:04.360their country provides citizenship must carry a claim that a temporary visa can't erase
00:08:11.180calling visa restrictions dei for americans turns national obligation into an accusation of
00:08:18.440unfairness advocates for limitless competition insist that any preference for americans violates
00:08:25.260meritocracy even while relying on institutions that can't agree on what merit means or enforce
00:08:31.060their own rules in the first place. Their supposedly neutral standard disguises a political
00:08:36.540demand. A nation that treats its own people as interchangeable bidders in a global labor auction
00:08:42.520has sundered its purpose. America wasn't built to supply corporations with cheap labor or
00:08:48.660universities with tuition-paying students. Americans have every right to prefer their own
00:08:53.880people, especially in employment and college admissions. Their future should not be sacrificed