Transcript of the above video: 

As we are finishing off the holidays here in Thailand and for those who are watching this video yeah apologies, the sort of New Year came in kind of weird, it came in at the end of this week. We are sort of semi up-and-operational here at the firm right now as of the time I'm making this video. But that being said, we're going to keep the vacation timer, the sort of vacation reminder if you will, notification on until January 6th. We are answering correspondence, we are dealing with some of our more urgent case load but quite honestly, it's kind of a weird transition as we get in here to the beginning of January. I really appreciate people's patience during this time period. This is always kind of the way it works. The one sort of week of the year that I fully take off, my staff takes off, we don't deal with any correspondence. We really just try to get away from the office just to, for no other reason, to decompress from the full year especially going into a New Year as the first quarter of the year always tends to be very intense around here. So long story short, we appreciate your patience; we are going to get back to you the first of the week of the 6th, but we are doing some things here in the office including me doing this video. 

That said I was a little, look the explosion, the hurricane if you will that has blown up in the aftermath of the discussion between Elon Musk and seemingly a large segment of the American population has somewhat blown over and I'm glad for that. I didn't really want to inject myself in this H-1B sort of news narrative, whatever you want to call it too early, and I really don't have a lot to say on this specific to H-1Bs other than to say the issue here is bigger. So, diving into the H-1Bs for a quick moment. I've been this for 17 years, longer than that now, and in all my time dealing with US Immigration, I have had very little if not no interaction, I can remember a couple of times I assisted some people that already had H-1Bs to the United States and we had to deal with maybe getting them some document or something that they needed for some reason, but for the most part, I personally have not dealt with much of anything having to do with the H-1B visa category. So first of all, understand that. Out here in Thailand primarily we deal with family Immigration; the occasional E-2 Investor for example, the occasional EB-5, sometimes we might see somebody who wants to go to the United States, get themselves a Green Card through investment. I've occasionally dealt with an L-1 from time to time. But that said, employment-based Immigration out here in Thailand or at least from my experience, is just not something that's overly common, so the H-1B it is not like India where there are tons of H-1Bs issued out of there - I have assisted folks with O-Visas before to the United States, specific to like specialty entertainers and things of that nature. 

That being said, this H-1B debate right now that seems to have caused something of, a lot of people are saying “oh there's a big rift in the coalition that's coming into govern the United States”. I don't think that that's fair to say that there's a rift. Meanwhile, Elon Musk and Donald Trump are getting some sort of anti-populous back, or they are getting some populace backlash because their stance on this sort of seems to be viewed as anti-populous. Well let's be clear first. Both these guys are billionaires so the notion that they're walking into the local lunch counter like anybody else, it's not really the way that it's going to work. Secondly, look large organizations do utilize H-IBs. Now I'll be the first one to tell you just from my again outside observation of the H-1B protocols, the H-1B process, I don't like it. I think in many ways it's highly hypocritical, especially where it comes to the issue of proving up that "oh we looked for somebody with this technical acumen, but we couldn't find it so that's why we have to import it in." That's a whole sort of exercise in my opinion in frankly hypocrisy, sort of pretending like there's nobody that can fill a job in order to get an immigrant to be able to fill the job. That being said, I have no particular problem with H-1B Visa holders or Indians or anybody else; it seems to have become this sort of debate about Indians specifically. Again, if you are qualified to do certain high skilled jobs, I think you should be in the United States, if there is demand for that job. Now that said, it shouldn't be at the expense of the native population of the United States but if there really is somebody that can do a job that cannot be performed by an American, then absolutely yes, I think we need to be able to get those folks visas and look legal immigration - and let's be very clear here - legal immigration is what the United States was founded on in many ways, and maybe I shouldn't say founded on but it is part of the lifeblood of America, okay, it really is. Immigrants are what helped build the country. They are not the only thing that helped build the country, but they are a big contributor but again, legal immigrants. I constantly go back to this line from Dennis Miller, "sign the guest book on the way in the door!" Under current circumstances where the Southern Border is wide open and nobody seems to want to enforce that, although I expect that's changing with Mr. Homan coming in come one tick past noon on January 20th, I expect that enforcement protocols are going to change substantially along the Southern Border and that's a very good thing. And my friend Michael Yon is all the way down in the Darien Gap and he's been yelling from the rooftops that the real problem is frankly down there, and it's my understanding he has been talking to Mr. Homan so hopefully positive developments come from that. But coming back to this issue of H-1Bs, I think fundamentally, and I understand the passion and the ire that gets raised by folks in the United States, discussing importing highly skilled or labour in any event. Americans are very upset about this. I'm very upset about the current state of the immigration system in the United States for a variety of different reasons.

The point I'm trying to make with this video, stop focusing on the H-1B. It's One Visa out of many different categories of the Immigration system and strictly speaking, it in and of itself, is not the problem. What is the problem? The problem is the US Immigration System. It is broken; it is antiquated, that's the problem. We need comprehensive Immigration reform and we need it now. What am I talking about? I'm not talking about passing another IRAIRA Act like they passed in the late '90s which is sort of like a bandage or an addendum to an already existing Immigration System. We need to go in and wipe out the INA and we need to pass a new set of legislation in its place. The Immigration and Nationality Act I believe was promulgated in the Eisenhower Administration. I mean it's been multiple decades, it's been the least 50 years because it's definitely, if you go back to '71 when Bretton Woods, they temporarily closed the gold window, I mean it's been that long because the INA in its form basically as it exists now was in existence then for I think a couple of decades at that point. Long story short, the underlying, the foundation of current Immigration Law is just completely out of sync with the present exigencies, with the present circumstances. It's not fit to purpose now. We need a new Immigration law and if anything, I could criticize of Mr. Trump in his first term is that he had two years, the first two years of his first term to get this done then. We could have had comprehensive Immigration reform then. Now I'm going to be sympathetic to Mr. Trump especially as we now know the information we now know about what he was putting up with both politically and in terms of quite honestly a lot of illegal machinations by it seems like a lot of nefarious for lack of a better term "deep-state" actors, but set that aside for a moment. Purely from the political standpoint, he had two years under a Congress at least ostensibly within his own party and I do understand Trump and the Republicans, the Venn diagram is not quite one to one, it doesn't fully fit, overlap each other, I get that they are two different things. But he had the chance the first time in his first term of office in that first two years to do some kind of Immigration reform. They talked a lot about it but nothing got done. My hope is and I know there has been a recent off the cuff interview if you will with Trump where he said a few things about, “hey we do need legal immigrants," - he's right, we do need high skilled legal immigrants. If they bring something to the table in the United States, great have them come on in. That should be the point of Immigration policy is if we can bring in people that will add value to our economy, that will add something intellectual that we don't have, they have some sort of skill we don't have, great, yeah bring them in.

But more to the point and again I get the passion, and I'm very glad that this issue has come to a head in roughly, what do we have now, about 20 days left before the new Administration comes in. I'm glad this is out of the way now so it did not become part of sort of the new cycle in the new administration because look at the end of the day, comprehensive immigration reform needs to happen and there was always going to be this internal fight between the business interests if you will of the incoming coalition if you want to call that, whatever you want to call that the admin. coming in, and the sort of more populist elements of it. But I think that the ire on the side of the populace is misdirected. You are looking at this H-1B, one) it's a fairly small subset of overall numbers of immigrants coming in in any given year, so that's one thing to keep in mind. But the other thing to remember is the whole system is broken. We need a new system, that's the issue; we need comprehensive Immigration reform in America and boy howdy, do we need it now; we need it yesterday, okay? And I am not talking about the enforcement side. Frankly I think Homan has the right attitude with regard to enforcement, but with regard to legislation, please Mr. Trump, I am hoping and I think from what I have been watching, I think in your mind it's probably pretty crystallized at this point what needs to happen and that is comprehensive Immigration reform, but other folks that are getting passionate about this that have been supporters of the incoming Administration and those who are concerned about the issue of immigration generally, talk to your Legislature, talk to your Congressman, talk to your Senators. We need comprehensive reform; we don't need a bunch of partisan bickering. We dealt with that once, we saw that. Quite frankly, on the other side of the aisle, the Democrats were no help. We need bipartisan support for a new Bill to reform our Immigration system, to enforce our Immigration laws at the border so we stop being inundated and then we need to have a commonsensical Immigration Policy or set of policies depending on different things. I've been talking to folks on Twitter, and they're going on and on about “oh so you're saying because the guy is a major league baseball player, he should get preferential treatment over a copy editor?” I'm like yeah, he's a major league baseball player. If you can throw a 98 mile an hour fastball consistently, that is a specialized skill that other people do not have. That person should be treated differently by the Immigration apparatus if only the reason they have a specialized skill that should receive special consideration. Again, a copy editor - nothing wrong with being a copy editor - but let's face it, that is a skill set that is acquired probably more easily than throwing a 98 mile an hour fastball and it pertains to a broader segment of the population. There's just more people with that skill set and therefore there is less scarcity so therefore in economic terms, and I hesitate to make this sound pejorative, but there's less overall value to that in the market for labour; it's just the way that it works.

The point I'm trying to make is at the end of the day the ire and the passion that we are seeing from many in the populace sphere on this issue of H-1B visas, it's misdirected folks. You need to aim that ire and passion at the issue of changing our overall Immigration System to be more beneficial to the American people and also to enforce the laws so we don't see all of these trafficking problems along the border - that includes women and children which is absolutely awful - I have listened to some of the things that Tom Homan has talked about with regard to that, let alone Michael Yon who sits around in the Darien Gap all the time and sees this horror up close, this stuff is terrible. We need a new legal framework in the 21st century to deal with 21st century problems pertaining to US Immigration.