The pattern of life itself has changed for a chunk of the world’s population

One state has banned companies which engage in outsourcing from getting any state business. Seven other states now limit the activities of outsourcing companies.

The great thing about promising change is that life often fulfils the promise even if you don’t. Back when Barack Obama first started to talk about change, nobody anticipated the negatively transformative disasters of the last few months. It’s not just that the banks — here and overseas — are now kept alive on state infusions. It’s not just that construction has ground to a halt in this country and that house values have tanked. Or that pension funds, according to a leaked departmental document, are due to collapse in the next few months.

It’s bigger than that.

The pattern of life itself has changed utterly, for a substantial chunk of the world’s population, within half a year. Millions of Americans, for example, are now seeking jobs. Not because they were fired in the downturn. But because their pensions now won’t cover their expenses. Older Americans who looked forward to work-free years are now trying to return to the workforce, resigned to much lower pay than they used to earn, and probably to working in jobs less prestigious and interesting than the ones they once occupied.

They blame George W Bush, of course, but they don’t look to the current president for any worthwhile ideas to ameliorate their misery. They know he’s too busy, right now, giving himself writer’s cramp signing what are called “Midnight Regulations:” the directives by which a departed president seeks to rule from the grave.

In the last couple of weeks, the “Midnight Regulations” being rushed through by the dying administration include rules that will hamper the US government’s ability to control the exposure of workers to toxins and a softening of the rules affecting mining companies which want to blow the sides out of mountains in order to get at seams of coal inside. He’s cutting back on the effectiveness of the Endangered Species Act and of the Clean Water Act. True to his grim form, his last days in office are devoted to putting the interests of a limited number of big businesses above the interests of the ordinary citizen, whether of America or of the world.

One of the first major changes Obama should make is to place a moratorium on “Midnight Regulations.” Every incoming president bitches about the regulations rushed in by his predecessor and some incoming administrations spend a great deal of time and effort trying to unravel the weave of control put in place by the previous holder of the job.

Obama could and should create a situation where, once any future president-elect has been elected, the current incumbent cannot and may not introduce any new directives or rules. Let’s face it. If you haven’t managed to do what you wanted to do in seven and three quarter years, then why should you be allowed to slide constraints on your successor into position when you could more usefully be packing your suitcases and leaving the White House in good condition for the new residents? That change may be low on Obama’s agenda, but it’s arguable it’s on a higher rung than the possibility of regularising the position of Irish people working and living illegally in the United States.

Indeed, any move to soften the environment for illegals of any nationality would not make immediate sense for the new administration.

A new defensiveness about employment is changing the way America looks at jobs, illegals, and outsourcing overseas. One state — Vermont — has banned companies which engage in outsourcing from getting any state business. Seven other states now limit the activities of outsourcing companies. And, while restaurants and other retailers with tight margins and diminishing markets may use illegals in poorly paid jobs as a way of keeping afloat, larger companies and prominent families are much more cautious about taking a nudge-nudge approach to their employment.

In addition to the “don’t let them take our jobs” rationale, other factors are coming into play, including the cost of healthcare. The VHI announcement this week of a massive increase in charges puts Ireland closer to the American situation, where the capacity to afford health insurance is the defining line between self-respect and fear, between a good job and a bad job.

Not only are millions of Americans falling through the health-insurance cracks, but the systems on which they depend are being stretched to the limits by illegal aliens. One hospital in Florida — Jackson Memorial — pays out $1 million (€785,000) every year to translators, in order that the medical staff can elicit information from patients about their condition. That million is spent exclusively on illegals, who make up 90% of the hospital’s throughput. Which, in turn, plays hell with its budget.

“We have a burden that we clearly didn’t ask for, but we’re taking it on,” their top guy shrugs. “We’re treating everybody that comes through our door and we treat everybody the same.”

Jackson Memorial cannot balance its books, but it is driven by a commitment to deliver care to those who need it, whether or not they are illegal immigrants into the United States. However, the problems faced by healthcare providers who deal with illegals are not merely financial. The diseases the illegal immigrants introduce into the hospitals — bearing in mind that hospital-generated illness is the eighth largest cause of death in that country — present another serious challenge.

Once-eradicated diseases are returning. One of them, as the Centres for Disease Control has noted, is tuberculosis. Many illegal immigrants are at risk of TB, but, even if they suspect they may be infected and infectious, cannot afford to seek medical care for the disease, lest they be deported — or have costs levied on them that they simply cannot meet. In addition to TB, the “new old” illnesses on the march in 21st century America are Chagas disease, leprosy (or Hansen’s disease) and malaria.

“Over the last 40 years, there have been just under 1,000 cases of leprosy in the United States — a disease that most people felt had disappeared in this country,” writes Lou Dobbs, a CNN business broadcaster. “Yet there have been 7,000 cases reported in just the past three years. Obviously, leprosy, which still affects third world countries, did not just spring back to life in America of its own accord. It’s obvious we’re not checking people for disease at our borders, because we’re not checking these people at all. Hospitals don’t need the additional burden of combating rare diseases. They have enough trouble keeping their patients from contracting new ones, let alone infections developed while those patients are in their care.”

Irish parents and grandparents of illegals in the US will immediately point out that none of these diseases are issues in this country, therefore are unlikely to be brought into America by our workers, legal or illegal. It doesn’t matter. The new president cannot single out one set of illegals and find them somehow more meritorious than the others.

Barack Obama may be heavily lobbied on behalf of the Irish who got into America “under the wire” and are now building their lives there.

It’s extremely unlikely that he’ll do anything for them in the short to medium term.