Recent Columns

Columns appear here a week after they're published in print.  

© 2024 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES 12/30/24

Tech honchos may break immigration logjam to get workers

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

     She’s studying computer engineering at UNM on a student visa. Her husband, who has graduated, is working in IT until his student visa runs out, and then he’ll return to school and try to juggle work and studies to stay in the United States. Going home is not an option because there is nothing for them in their small, impoverished country. 

     “All my friends are here or in Canada or Australia,” he says.

     Both would be hired in a heartbeat if our immigration system met today’s needs. This young couple and thousands like them are at the center of the recent, much publicized kerfuffle between the president-elect’s new friends in Silicon Valley and his MAGA followers. Companies, especially tech companies, need these highly trained employees, and they’re up against a smaller American workforce and an immigration system that’s frozen in time.

     Specifically, Elon Musk and the tech giants want more H-1B visas. This is a short-term visa typically extended to foreigners in science and engineering.      Why do we need them? If you look inside our engineering schools in New Mexico and nationwide you will find a great many people from Asia, India and the Middle East. Americans, not so much. 

     Trump appointee Vivek Ramaswamy blames this on a culture that “has venerated mediocrity over excellence” and celebrates “the jock over the valedictorian.”

     That’s not the case. In the 1990s, when my job at UNM was to publicize the engineering school, American students with a head for numbers were drifting away from engineering in favor of business school, which they found more exciting. Foreign students still consider engineering a good profession, and the universities are happy to have them. But once they graduate, they want to stay here, and we need them.

     The president-elect, who temporarily suspended the H-1B program during his first term, may have a change of heart since tech honchos befriended him during his recent campaign. Lately he appointed venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan, a friend of Elon Musk, as a senior policy adviser, and Krishnan recommended ending certain country caps for green cards, H-1Bs and other skilled immigration programs. Trump’s far right base opposes any new immigrants, educated or not.

     Long before Musk and Ramaswamy joined the Trump inner circle, companies of all kinds were complaining that they couldn’t get the specialized workers they need because of limits on the H-1B program. One of their public voices has been the conservative-leaning U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which wrote in 2022 that a major obstacle was “the antiquated, arbitrary quotas on the employment-based visa options.” Quotas for green cards and temporary worker visas were set in 1990. Since then the size of the U.S. economy has more than quadrupled while visa numbers approved by Congress have hardly budged.

     “These 30-year-old visa caps are woefully insufficient to meet the needs of the American economy today,” the organization wrote. In fiscal 2023, just one in six applicants for an H-1B visa was approved. The program reaches its quotas in weeks, and backlogs exceeded 1.8 million.

     The U.S. Chamber concluded that because companies can’t hire the talent they need, they can’t grow. That hurts existing employees. And the situation is only growing worse.

     “When the federal government will only allow American businesses to meet approximately 11% of their high-skilled workforce needs, it is long past time for Congress to update our immigration laws to reflect the needs of today’s economy,” the chamber said.

     After covering business for many years, I can tell you that business people are practical, focused and not usually given to ideological rhetoric. In the current row, my money is on them. Their donations to the inauguration fund, their pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago all mean access, and it’s aroused some suspicion. But it may be that these business execs finally get the ball rolling on immigration reform when many others have failed.   

© 2024 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES  12/30/24

Historians in 1980 provide election perspective that’s still valid today

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

     Some of us remember the turbulent economy of the 1970s, which made the last few years look like a walk in the park. We didn’t just have inflation, we had something called “stagflation.” It was a combination of high inflation, high unemployment and high interest rates, along with lines at the gas pump because of the energy crisis. (Remember the 55 m.p.h. speed limit to save gas?) President Jimmy Carter inherited this economic disaster, brewing since the Johnson administration.

     In October 1980 a heated presidential campaign was wrapping up between Carter and Republican challenger Ronald Reagan, and the mood was one of exhaustion and frustration, not unlike the present. Before voters sent Carter back to Georgia, UNM’s History Department held a series of election-issue debates, which I covered. The scholars hoped that a historical perspective would help their dispirited listeners “discover how to regain our sense of optimism and confidence,” as one speaker put it.

     Their words 44 years later offer perspective, hope and a few warnings for today.

     The professors reminded us that the American economic and political system had survived hard times, weak leadership, wars, and trouble abroad. Many times. Although Americans like to think of themselves as a nation of Lincoln, FDR and Truman, the White House has mostly been occupied by such forgettable presidents as Zachary Taylor and John Tyler and truly terrible presidents like Herbert Hoover. 

     How could the country withstand four years under Herbert Hoover? The same way it withstood four years under Lyndon Johnson, they said. History professor Steven Kramer argued that even though the 1970s were more perilous than previous times, the structure of our government into separate branches of power conspired against the emergence of a tyrant.

     Russia was then, as it is now, a force to be reckoned with. Historians Noel Pugach and Richard Robbins reviewed the Soviet Union’s turbulent past and its ham-fisted foreign policy.

     The Soviets had been trounced badly in more than one war and still survived, said Robbins. They were aware of their own limitations – their economic problems, their technological backwardness. “Add to that their historical insecurities about their borders – the near encirclement by the U.S. or its allies and millions of hostile Chinese at their backs – and you find fearful, aging, blustering Soviet leaders focused close to home,” Robbins said. Russian military parades were held as much to reassure themselves as to threaten others. 

     The U.S. had admitted that it couldn’t control everything that goes on in the world, but neither, said Pugach, could the Soviet Union, so there was an uneasy balance. And the Soviets’ investment in military strength mandated U.S. spending on military muscle.

     Who would have predicted then that the Soviet Union would cease to exist or that China would be a Russian ally? What’s unchanged is that Russia is still insecure about its borders, and it’s determined to rebuild its old empire with a brutal invasion of Ukraine.

     Nobody then, especially incoming President Ronald Reagan, had any doubt that Russians were the enemy.

     Historian Charles McClelland offered a bit of comfort on the subject of inflation. Germany in the early 1930s staggered under spiraling inflation and unemployment. The government tried to fix it by printing money and failed spectacularly. The sinking economy destroyed personal savings, and people grew desperate. That wouldn’t happen here, McClelland said, because the United States has a resilient system, greater accumulated wealth and internal resources.

     Economist Lee Zink could have been speaking now when he said at least part of the problem was the consumer. He described an inflation psychology that leads people to expect higher prices coupled with ignorance about the economy. Politicians took advantage of that. Had he been a candidate, he said, “I don’t have to know what I’m saying if you don’t know what I’m saying.”  

© 2024 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES 12/23/24

Radio sets broke rural isolation 100 years ago

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

     A century ago, shoppers bought their Christmas cards from the local printer. A little bottled cheer required a visit to the local bootlegger because Prohibition was still in force. And a thoughtful gift was radio batteries.

     “You would be surprised if you knew how many people are giving radio batteries this Christmas,” said an ad in the Albuquerque Journal. “Some are people whose friends have entertained them with their radio sets.”

     By 1924 radio set had been around for a few years, but they were still a novelty. Basically a wooden box with dials and headphones, they were so pricey that few people could afford one. Deming Ice & Electric Co. offered radio sets for $85 to $200, comparable to a major appliance. Then there were the added costs of tubes and batteries. 

     So those who had a radio set invited friends and neighbors to gather around the device for an evening’s entertainment.

     What could they hear? KOB, “the voice of the great Southwest,” was broadcasting from the New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, now NMSU. 

     In 1922 Ralph Goddard, dean of engineering, got a license for the radio station he and his students built. It was New Mexico’s first radio station and one of few in the West. With 10,000 watts of power, KOB could be heard statewide. Goddard broadcast dramas, farm shows, news and live music. He personally provided play-by-play coverage of an Aggie football game in 1922, the first such broadcast west of the Mississippi. 

     Radio sets became more affordable after the federal government published instructions on how to build one. And Goddard, in early 1924, circulated “instructions on how to build a receiving set which is suitable to the needs of ranchmen and others living in isolated places,” wrote the Alamagordo Daily News. Cost: $20.

     Newspaper columns offered tips to improve operations, abetting the endless tinkering needed to reduce static and achieve better reception.

     In 1924 a dance at the Golf Club in Alamogordo featured two radio sets so that attendees could hear election returns, wrote the Alamogordo Daily News. And some Carlsbad residents heard a speech by President Calvin Coolidge. The Carlsbad Current Argus opined that December: “It may be that the radio set is going to take the place of the old-time fireside as a local center of family life.”

     While the radio set was just another amenity to city folks, it was life changing in the rural areas. Think about just how isolated most New Mexicans were. Roads were mostly wagon tracks with no bridges or road signs. Distances were daunting. The state wouldn’t be electrified for years (and some places still don’t have electricity). For people with addresses in the mountains, plains and desert, being cut off from the world was reality. 

     A battery-operated radio set changed everything. Suddenly, New Mexico’s farmers, ranchers, miners, loggers and reservation dwellers could hear breaking news and weather reports. They could hear the voice of the president. They were humming the latest tunes.

     In 1923 the Gallup Independent reported that Charles Berger bought “a radio outfit” for his farm near McGaffey. “Now the wilds of the Zuni Mountains are about to be filled with the operatic and scientific wonders of the world,” the newspaper observed.

     Still, in the 1920s not many radio sets were in use – just one in ten homes had a radio set, and rural use was half that amount – but the curve was bending ever upward. In December 1924 manufacturers promised radio sets with increased range and less static. And in what’s become a familiar pattern, performance improved as costs came down, until nearly everyone had one.

     Radio sets broke the barriers of isolation and introduced the concept of interconnection that we’ve been chasing ever since. Today, every broadband project tells rural people, you don’t have to be isolated any more. It echoes the revolution that gave us radio.   

© 2024 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES 12-23-24

Consumer protection on the line

By Merilee Dannemann 

Triple Spaced Again

     The patient was all set for surgery. The insurance company had approved the surgery and the patient was in the hospital’s administrative office to settle last-minute details. Two days before the surgery was scheduled, the hospital received a notice from the insurance company that the claim was denied. The patient, panicked, contacted the insurance company and was told, “Well, you can always pay cash.”

     This story was told in several reports I heard on NPR. At least one version was recounted by the patient herself, which reassures me that it is authentic.

     The implication was that this could be a deliberate technique by an insurance company to confuse patients at the time of the greatest possible tension so they would drop their demand to have coverage for surgery.

     Stories of frustration with the health insurance industry are pouring out, following the murder of the CEO of United Healthcare, allegedly by a young man frustrated with that industry. This incident has clearly hit a nerve in the public consciousness.

     From the story on NPR, two questions came to mind.

     First, if this happened to you, what could you do? 

     Second, if an insurance company was making a practice of denying claims, as the NPR report implies, is there a government agency that would detect the pattern and be in a position to intervene on behalf of all the affected patients?

     On the first question, your resource should be your doctor and the institution your doctor is part of. If the denial is based on lack of complete information, the doctor can answer questions to justify the claim. This is what several doctors told me.

     But if that doesn’t work and you don’t get your denial reversed, the concern is different. It’s not just about you. It’s about whether insurance companies are meeting their responsibilities to consumers. 

     New Mexico has a state agency equipped to address that issue. The agency is OSI, the Office of the Superintendent of Insurance, which licenses and regulates insurance companies. OSI is set up to receive insurance-related consumer complaints and might be able to help resolve your problem. And because OSI might receive multiple complaints on a single issue or from clients of a particular insurance company, OSI can observe if a company has a pattern of denying claims unreasonably or otherwise taking advantage of its clients, and do something about it.

     Depending on the specifics, OSI can act on its own, or it might refer an issue to the Attorney General. As just one example, last summer OSI issued emergency orders to help victims of the fires in the Ruidoso area.

     Our state government recognizes that a dispute between an individual consumer and an insurance company is not a fair fight, and that’s why government has the power to step in and even the odds.

     But most vital consumer protections are housed in federal agencies, so I am watching the incoming administration with some wariness. 

     Under the outgoing Biden administration, the Federal Trade Commission has just announced a new rule to require disclosure of so-called “junk fees” in certain ticket prices. The Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued a recall of a brand of Christmas light controllers due to fire hazard.

     The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has the power to accept complaints regarding banks and other financial institutions. A few months ago it filed a proposed order against a company that has a years-long record of violating several federal laws by tricking student loan borrowers into paying much more than they owed. 

     Consumer protection is one of the essential services of government. I hope the incoming administration, which is talking about saving money by cutting agencies like these, recognizes that.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.