In the race-based immigration debate, there is a disconnect between what is “merit-based” and what is “essential”

The initial beginnings of “civilization” is said to have begun with the first agricultural revolution that occurred following the last major Ice Age around 10,000 BC, and lasted until  2,000 BC. The first “civilizations” are asserted to have been situated in the Middle East, in the so-called “fertile crescent” between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern Iraq, and extending to the Nile Valley. What did “civilization” entail back then? The “low-skill” endeavor of farming, which permitted the raising and storage of food product, especially grains, which could be consumed year-round in one place, which led to the establishment of the first “urban” communities. Eventually, agricultural development grew sufficiently efficient where farmers could accumulate sufficient overstock to use as barter, usually in exchange for goods that the first merchants could provide without having to farm for their own sustenance themselves. These first “products” were of course mostly simple household effects whose manufacture today would be called “low-skill” labor. There were no computers or smart phones or “IT.” Civilization survived for many thousands of millennia before the advent of such toys. They are, in effect, “non-essential.”

Yet you have a couple of “merit-based only” immigration supporters like Stephen Yale-Loeher and MacKenzie Eason in The Hill telling us that “Skilled immigration is just what we need to recover our economy.” But they pad their stats rather preposterously to include European immigrant scientists from over a century past (who were a very tiny percentage of the total immigrant population), not with the more recent “high-skilled” immigrants, mainly from India, and mostly in “information technology” jobs, of which the majority are simple phone operators reading off the things that you can read yourself. Take for example Amazon “customer service,” which employs an almost entirely Indian phone bank. I had a package that was allegedly shipped by the Amazon Logistics “service” on Sunday, to be delivered Today. On Monday I had a “chat” with one of these “customer service” operators,  asking them why there was no tracking information since it was allegedly “shipped.” I was told that the package had “arrived” at a fulfillment center and would be delivered on schedule. I have too much experience with this sort of thing to be satisfied with that; I wrote back “OK, so what fulfillment center is it at?” She mumbled and fumbled a few moments, and so I put her out of her misery by stating the obvious, that she didn’t have a clue.

And don’t get me started on Windows 10; while I was writing this and downloading a file, there was yet again another one of those inexplicable blue screen “stopcodes,” which these continuous Windows 10 “updates” have failed to fix, despite the fact that these “updates” seem design mainly to fix the latest bugs from the previous update, and adding new ones to be fixed by the next buggy update. Windows 10 has its “defenders,” but the creation of Windows 10 seems to have coincided with Microsoft’s massive push to import cheap “talent” from abroad; as they say, you get what you “pay” for. Smart? “High-skilled”? What does that got to do with anything if it isn’t used intelligently? Dr. Sapan Desai is supposed to be “smart,” but as The New York Times has reported before his latest bout with fraudulent research on the COVID-19 that has only helped delay finding a cure,  he is “a former whiz kid willing to cut corners, misrepresent information or embellish his credentials as he pursued his ambitions." People who worked with him state that they could not believe anything he told threm through word or print.

And since were on the subject of health, we are told that doctors imported from abroad are not being required to do what “merit-based immigration” supporters are claiming they are needed for: treating COVID-19 patients. This is probably because the substandard medical training they received in their home countries—for example, the lack of knowledge in allopathic medicine—does not qualify them to treat such patients; they are just being used as political props by race-based anti-immigrant groups.

Let’s get back to reality. I work in a 40-story building in downtown Seattle at night, and it is as empty as during the day. Most of the people who do work in the building are “essential” workers, meaning those who have to be there to keep it from falling down, like in one of those History Channel “Life After People” episodes. Only a few tenants are around during the day to just to keep an eye on things. Most of these people like to style themselves as “high skill,” but they are not “essential” workers providing “essential” needs; the merely provide diversions for people with too much time on their hands, and assist in the processes that allow people to have others conduct the business of living for them,  without leaving the house.

People did not live this way in the “old days.” I am old enough to remember that the United States Postal Service was the closest thing to a consumer “delivery service.” Sure, there was the radio, television and the local movie theater, but back in the day, people did a lot more reading than they do today. I didn’t watch much television or go to the movies when I was growing up; it was mostly reading, listening to the radio or wandering off as far away from home life as I could. I don’t think my life would have changed much if my formative years were in the 90s and afterward, except wasted more time doing useless things. What those “high-skill” and “merit-based” people did, would not have any positive or negative effect on my day-to-day doings.

Who are the people whose labor is truly “essential” to maintaining existence as we know it? Who are the people who during the COVID-19 pandemic are considered “essential” enough to require their physical presence to do actual work? We can start with janitors and security guards, and work our way up to farm and food production workers, building maintenance and garbage collectors. After that, police and firemen; then we advance to postal and package delivery, and retail and grocery (online or physical) workers. These are all what would be classified as “low-skill” occupations; I mean, do you need “high skill” to act tough, fire a gun or use a fire hose? It isn’t until you reach the health care business that “high skill” even enters into the equation.

And what are all those “high skill” and “merit-based” people doing during the pandemic that anyone misses? Not much, to be honest. As we have seen with Windows 10, you only need enough of “skill” to make it more crappy than it already is. Some “high skill” people justify their existence by creating new “apps” that people don’t really need but is just an excuse to make money on the alleged “latest” and “greatest,” or at least that is what they are being sold as. Who really needs them? Just people with too much time on their hands; they are not “essential.” Since I work at night, what do I see most of them doing during the day? Riding bikes, jogging or walking the dog. “Essential” stuff.

Is Donald Trump more “essential” than a lowly Mexican farmworker? If Trump didn’t exist, no one except racial bigots would miss people like him; he didn’t provide any goods or services that average working class people wanted or needed, only playpens for his wealthy “class.” The “average” person does not know or care about the name of that farmworker, and may even have racist attitudes toward him or her; but that farmworker is more essential to their daily existence than all the Trumps and Stephen Millers of the world will ever be.