The Obama administration recently announced that they'll be increasing skilled immigration, no Congressional approval required. Only after doing that did they solicit input from citizens by asking for comments on Twitter and Facebook [1].

Their brief summary of the input they received shows yet again that the Obama administration - as with almost all of the establishment - has an attitude problem. Namely, they have a core conceptual difficulty that causes them to consider native-born U.S. citizens to be second rate and inferior to skilled foreign citizens. To them (and to 99% of the establishment), the grass is always greener. To put it another way, a person could become top in their field in New York City, but that won't be enough for some: they'll think that the leader in the same field in Paris has to be better. And, they'll hope that that leader will come to NYC to show the native bumpkins how to do things.

Obviously, the Obama administration denies doing that [2], but their negative attitude comes through loud and clear. Their mindset isn't to put Americans first, but to give Americans some programs while promoting their favorites: citizens of other countries who'll come here to save us. Their mindset isn't Greatest Generation, "we can do it". It's post-industrial, globalist, Thomas Friedman-ism. To head off a strawman argument massive immigration supporters love to use, that doesn't mean we should completely close the borders to skilled immigration. Just that when millions of Americans are unemployed - including large numbers of tech workers - the Obama administration's first, second, and third priorities should be getting them working. It shouldn't be a libertarian, Koch family-friendly policy of thinking that massive immigration is going to save us [3].

And, not content to think of native-born Americans as somehow second-rate, the Obama administration also misleads [4].

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[1] whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/08/15/white-house-asks-immigrant-entrepreneurship
Written by Cecilia Munoz, formerly of the National Council of La Raza. U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra promotes it as "WH responds to thoughtful tweets in response to high skill immigration reforms announced last month" (twitter dot com/aneeshchopra/status/103170072884936704).

[2] Responding to a tweet that said "Fails to address the real problem: lack of American entrepreneurship. Dangerous to rely on continued immigration patterns", the Whitehouse says:

We can embrace job-creating entrepreneurs from other countries while at the same time fueling the success of entrepreneurs who are home-grown. President Obama has called on both the federal government and the private sector to dramatically increase the success of entrepreneurs all across the country -- that"s why the White House launched the Startup America initiative six months ago. We have posted stories of U.S. entrepreneurs who have already benefitted from the first 180 days of entrepreneur-focused Startup America policy initiatives, including tax incentives for early-stage investors and mentorship programs for veterans.

Another tweet says: "OK, read the blog. Can't say I'm a fan. Why special treatment for newcomers but not help laid-off natural born citizens?"

To which they respond:

Fortunately, we can do both. President Obama signed the Small Business Jobs Act and extended unemployment insurance as part of a continuing commitment to ease the burdens on U.S. citizens who are looking for work and running small businesses. And by streamlining existing visa categories for foreign-born entrepreneurs, we"ll see more high-growth companies started here and more Americans put back to work.

[3] Apparently my tweets weren't "thoughtful" enough to be included (hashtags omitted):

* Difference btw @Whitehouse & #Koch on #immigration is only of degree; they fundamentally agree.

* @whitehouse channels #Koch hacks on #immigration, *increases* labor supply despite mass unemployment.

* @whitehouse *and* GWB both bought/retailed false, anti-American #libertarian POV on #immigration.

@whitehouse magical jobs pgm: *increase* the labor supply w/ millions unemployed: https://24ahead.com/n/10790 #brilliance

@whitehouse: write down on a card who you're supposed to be working for so you don't forget.

@whitehouse goes around Congress to allow even more #immigration w/ millions of *Americans* unemployed.

[4] Munoz says:

Immigrants started 25% of the highest-growth U.S. public companies--including Google, eBay, Yahoo!, Sun Microsystems, and Intel.

Gary Locke and Carlos Gutierrez recently misled using that exact same statistic, see the link.