Obama's State of the Union Address Makes No Sense and Produces No New Jobs
02/02/2011
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All quotes for this blog are from the Text of Obama's State of Union address, Daily Herald, January 25, 2011.

President Obama's state of the union speech was primarily about the economy and his agenda to create jobs, but early into the speech he used the word "innovation". Washington DC insiders use the "innovation" codeword when they want to pitch further increases of H-1B and green cards, or to push the DREAM Act so that college students who are illegal aliens can get citizenship. "Innovation" means "more H-1Bs" in much the same way as "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" means "amnesty".

Obama's "innovation" pitch is used to set up almost the rest of his speech but don't let yourself be fooled by its false appeal to business, education, and nationalism:

The first step in winning the future is encouraging American innovation.
Obama's "one last point" is a doozy!
One last point about education. Today, there are hundreds of thousands of students excelling in our schools who are not American citizens. Some are the children of undocumented workers, who had nothing to do with the actions of their parents. They grew up as Americans and pledge allegiance to our flag, and yet live every day with the threat of deportation.
Obama believes that the key to our economic future is to give quality educations to the "hundreds of thousands" of foreign students that attend our schools—and it seems that Obama wants to assure them that they never have to fear deportation even if they cheat our education system under false pretenses.

Obama mistakenly lumps two different groups of students together who are very dissimilar: foreign students who are in the U.S. legally and the students who attend our schools even though they are not legal residents. Obama's thinly veiled attempt at blurring the distinction between legal and illegal aliens is a common tactic among globalists and other types of open border advocates that want to promote a "we are the world" image.

Obama seemed oblivious to the many negative affects that mass immigration imposes on our education system but at least he acknowledged that there are huge numbers of foreign students that attend (and burden) our school system. Astonishingly he seemed to think that all foreigners who come to the U.S. are stellar academic performers. Obama's deifying of alien students is misguided because on the average these students are dismal performers that drag down the entire school system.

Common sense would dictate that students that can't speak English or those that come from impoverished third world countries would be less competitive in our schools. It's out of the scope of this blog to discuss this in depth so for more information read Steve Sailer's voluminous articles on school performance versus demographics.

Obama is correct that there are high performing students who are foreign nationals but let's be very clear that there are not hundreds of thousands of them. The evidence suggests that there is a small percentage of them who are great students because of the random probability that their large population will produce a few bright stars. Foreign students who are likely to be stellar performers are most likely in the U.S. legally on student visa programs and that's because their countries sent them here after they proved that they are the cr?¨me of the crop of their nation. If foreign students were lumped together as Obama seems inclined to do it would be far more accurate to say that they are second-rate performers that drag down our entire school system.

Of all the nonsense Obama spewed this one was the most blatantly false of them all:

Others come here from abroad to study in our colleges and universities. But as soon as they obtain advanced degrees, we send them back home to compete against us. It makes no sense.
Now, I strongly believe that we should take on, once and for all, the issue of illegal immigration. I am prepared to work with Republicans and Democrats to protect our borders, enforce our laws and address the millions of undocumented workers who are now living in the shadows. I know that debate will be difficult and take time.
But tonight, let's agree to make that effort. And let's stop expelling talented, responsible young people who can staff our research labs, start new businesses and further enrich this nation.ate of the union address.
Obama's basic premise is utterly erroneous because the United States does not expel talented students. We have the most generous programs in the world to keep foreign graduates from leaving even though we are effectively stealing minds from other nations and giving away our own jobs.

There are a multitude of ways that foreign students can graduate and stay in the U.S. Of course getting married to a citizen is the most obvious, and many choose that option. Others, upon graduation take advantage of the many programs that they can use to stay here including Optional Practical Training (OPT), H-1B, EB Green Cards, Trade NAFTA (TN), and Conrad 30. If a foreign graduate is unable to stay in the United States it's probably because he is unemployable or has a criminal record.

Obama's speech never got better. Like for instance he pulled the old Sputnik scare on us and then used it as a the classic rationale to increase the number of highly educated kids:

Maintaining our leadership in research and technology is crucial to America's success. But if we want to win the future – if we want innovation to produce jobs in America and not overseas – then we also have to win the race to educate our kids.
Obama has got it all backwards because we need to produce jobs that allow kids to get jobs that require advanced educations. Currently the United States is on a suicidal track of graduating more kids than there are jobs — in fact we are actually giving more visas to foreigners who graduate from our schools than jobs produced. If we want to be innovative about producing jobs the first thing we should do is to put a moratorium on ALL immigration (legal and illegal).

We can only guess what Obama thinks about unemployment or offshoring because he avoided saying either word, although he referred to them obliquely. He was much more candid about how workers and corporations will fair during the rest of his administration. Pay close attention to these two quotes that are in different parts of his speech:

So yes, the world has changed. The competition for jobs is real. But this shouldn't discourage us. It should challenge us.
All these investments – in innovation, education and infrastructure – will make America a better place to do business and create jobs. But to help our companies compete, we also have to knock down barriers that stand in the way of their success.
So, when it comes to global competition American workers are just going to have to suck it up and compete with the global masses. It sounds like something a Ronald Reagan would say. Corporations, however, will have a full array of government attention to boost their profits, like for instance subsidies and the reductions of "barriers", whatever that means. In other words the U.S. will continue its polices of forced global labor arbitrage, free trade idolatry, and socialized corporatism.

Obama proved with his fatuous speech that he has no understanding of the complex inter-relationships involved in issues such as the economy, jobs, and global trade. He has as much chance of solving our problems as a blind man has of finding his way out of a maze.

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