by H. Nester Porter

"State officials admitted recently that they chose to hire programmers from outside the U.S. because they could not find any American programmers willing to work for Latvian wages.

"They cited the recent example of New Jersey. In April of this year, New Jersey governor Phil Murphy said during a press conference that the state 'urgently' needed programmers with 'Cobalt' experience. Left out of many reports at the time was that the state was looking specifically for 'volunteers'.

"The United States' shortage of volunteer Cobol programmers is now a national crisis, according to some sources. Without a volunteer labor pool to draw from, state agencies are now being forced to pay small sums of money to developers from countries with significantly lower costs of living.

"One source, speaking off the record, said that state officials believe that domestic politics are contributing significantly to the shortage of free labor. Silicon Valley's abuse of H-1B labor was recently met with regulatory scrutiny, forcing some companies to treat foreign nationals like real people. Meanwhile, other American workers are increasingly making demands that companies and agencies would prefer not to offer, including a living wage. Some socialists have gone so far as to wonder aloud if it would be okay to ask for affordable health care.

"North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, speaking from his recently-renovated governor's residence, said, "There's just no need to pay Americans for work like this, not when we can save taxpayer money with international contractors."

"The governor's residence was newly constructed in 2015 for $4 million, and an additional $250,000 of oil and gas royalties were earmarked for further improvements this year."