By Vincent F. Safuto staff writer
May 25, 2003
The government raised the terror threat level to orange the other day, concerned about a possible terrorist attack.
But for many Americans, there's another threat level, not measured by the Department of Homeland Security but potentially just as devastating to our nation.
It's the economic threat posed by corporations eager to export jobs overseas. In the realm of economics, the terror threat level is at red-plus.
My work e-mail has been filled of late not only with ads for herbal Viagra, but also tales told by working Americans of jobs lost and indignities piled upon indignities.
These are knowledge workers, information systems workers and other white-collar Americans. Well-educated people from Florida, from North Carolina, from New Jersey, from other places, too, some retrained from previous lost jobs into the "hot" field of computers and the Internet, who now find themselves retraining Indian replacements brought to this country on L-1 visas.
These Americans tell me corporations are using the L-1 visa to hire Indians in India, bring them to the United States, train them for the jobs Americans are soon to lose, and then send them back to India with both the work and the Americans' jobs.
One correspondent is about to lose his third job, and the coda of his employment this time is the same as the previous two: Train your Indian replacement, or else.
These are people, Americans, who have been ordered to train their replacements for a final few months of employment and train them correctly on threat of immediate termination and loss of severance.
These are Americans who were filled with rage and anger when the twin towers fell and the Pentagon was partially damaged, wept at the horrible loss of life and counted themselves fortunate to have avoided the wrath of evil terrorists, and supported our troops in the war with Iraq.
Now they're frightened again.
Not just of al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden and the possibility of another terrorist attack, but for their future, the future of their children and the future of their nation, which they love dearly.
These are the people politicians don't want to hear from or talk to, the ones who wonder how their wife will get her cancer treatment after the insurance ends, or whether their child's diabetes will be treated after they lose their health coverage.
These are articulate folks. They make Web sites about their plight. They write to the news media, and their sometimes uninterested congressional representatives, who reply with letters touting the wonders and benefits of international trade for Americans.
They ask not for a handout, but for a fair shot at making a living. They ask their employers to not just wave the American flag and then wave goodbye to the American jobs they send overseas, but for a little corporate loyalty to the red, white and blue.
Sadly, it seems, the only color that matters to American corporations today is green, so even if it destroys the nation, and the lives of many of its people, nothing matters but those little green pieces of paper.
Wall Street doesn't believe in tears, and the weeping over lost jobs never makes it to the executive suite or the Beltway.
But we ignore the economic threats to our nation at our peril. What does it profit us to gain hegemony over the world if we lose our economic souls?
Vincent F. Safuto is a copy editor for the Press Journal. Reach him at (Vincent.Safuto@scripps.com).
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