Editorial | Taking away our jobs

As a result of a last-minute amendment to the stimulus bill, some Penn students may find themselves out of a job come this summer.

The amendment, which will affect any bank or company receiving money from the Troubled Assets Relief Program, places stricter limits on employers' ability to hire foreign workers with H-1B visas. This visa classification requires the holder to have an advanced degree in a specialty field, and could affect many foreign-born Penn seniors who had offers or planned to work on Wall Street. According to Career Services, some students have been affected by it already, though it's impossible yet to know how many will be.

This amendment and its consequences are severely disappointing. While the immediate reaction, of course, is sympathy for the affected students, who must now start the job search over, the greater issue is the knee-jerk "America First" reaction that the authoring legislators had in the face of a recession. The sentiment behind the amendment - that foreign workers will take the place of American workers, whose well-being must come first - is misguided in our global economy and offensive in our global community. Keeping bright minds off Wall Street simply because their passport does not have an eagle embossed on the cover seems counterintuitive to fixing a financial crisis that now spans the globe.

There's little to be done in hindsight, of course. Hopefully, the affected students will be able to find equivalent employment at other firms. It's unfortunate that they have to suffer from our representatives' short-sightedness.

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