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Harris
Miller is an immigration
lobbyist who made his name
in labor arbitrage when his firm, Immigration
Services Associates was hired in the 1980’s as a
consultant/lobbyist for the National
Council of Agricultural Employers.
In 1982, the Council raised a million
dollars for the campaign of George Deukmejian.
“Between 1983 and 1990, Deukmejian began shutting down enforcement of the state's historic farm
labor law. According to the UFW: “Thousands of
farm workers lose their UFW contracts. Many are
fired and blacklisted”.[1]
During that period, Miller used a strategy of propaganda to
create the image of ‘shortages’, which he then
used as evidence to lobby for the increased supply
of imported migrant farm workers.
He supplied the media with stories "fields full of crops, just lying there,
rotting in the sun because of the 'crisis' of a
'shortage' of farm workers."[2]
He then used that as evidence to lobby
lawmakers to allow massive importation of
temporary farm workers from Mexico to ‘save the
crops’ thereby breaking the United Farm Workers
Union.
In 1995,
Harris Miller became president of the Information
Technology Association of America (ITAA).
Since that time, he has honed his strategy
of ‘shortage’ and lobbying for remedies. With the big money backing of the Information Technology
corporations - (400, 11,000 or 26,000 members
depending on who he is talking to), he not only
helped flood our labor markets with foreign
workers, he used a massive media propaganda
campaign to create the image of a shortage while
at the same time, he was working proactively to export our high tech sector to India.
In the
1970’s our economy transitioned from a
manufacturing economy to an information economy.
As manufacturing was exported, people were
trained to work in the information industries -
everything from call centers to software
development to research and development of new
technologies.
Information and high technology were the
industries that sustained the economy of our
country as manufacturing was exported.
Now those industries are being exported but
there is no ‘new economy’ on the horizon.
The economic crisis that our country faces
is a direct result of the export of these
industries. It
took nearly 40 years to lay waste to our
manufacturing base.
It will take only 10-15 years to lay waste
to the information and high technology base.
What will remain is a creatively destroyed
third world country in economic ruins.
Harris Miller has orchestrated the destruction of
our economy by working both sides of the ocean.
Initially, the export of our high
technology jobs was done in secret as explained by
WIPRO Chairman Azim Premji while “speaking at a
seminar organised by the All India Management
Association (AIMA) and Bombay Management
Association (BMA)”.[3]
“Addressing
management students here, Mr Premji explained that
when software services were being outsourced, it
was done surreptitiously. This was done because it
was the requirement of that time. The industry
then stood witness to a vast number of layoffs.”
That would
put the timing for the start of the Indian
takeover of our high technology sector at about
1996 shortly after Miller went to work for ITAA.
Not coincidently, this was about the same
time that the media frenzy was starting over the
dot.com boom and the Y2k date rollover problem.
The dot.com boom - later called tech bubble[7]),
with a few notable exceptions, was a fraud[8].
The boom turned to bust virtually overnight
in the spring of 2000.
In hindsight, the boom served a number of
purposes that served the financial interests to
the tune of billions of dollars for the tech
corporations that Miller represents.
The money spent engineering the dot.com
boom was petty cash compared to that.[9]
The dot.com
fraud[10],
the bankruptcies of WorldCom, Global Crossing,
Tyco and others took over a trillion dollars out
of our economy - stolen right out of the pockets
of American investors and employees.
All three companies were engaged in the
tech industry and were involved in establishing
global networks for cheap communications to India
and other places around the world.
It wasn’t widely known at the time, but
this communications system would come to be the
rope that would be used to hang us economically.
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