AFL-CIO, CWA propose H-1B reforms

TechsUnite ^

[AppyPappy]

Current Problem: The H-1B program is completely disconnected from the realities of the U.S. labor market. While spot shortages in certain professional occupations may exist from time to time, H-1B fails to address these specific needs. Instead the program floods the marketplace with the potential of 200,000 or more professional guest workers each year. It is estimated that there may be as many as a half million H-1Bs in the U.S. today.

Government Studies: "The program does not currently protect U.S. workers' jobs; instead, it allows aliens to immigrate based on their attachment to a specific job and then shop their services in competition with equally or more qualified U.S. workers without regard to prevailing wage." [1]

"DOL's Permanent Labor Certification Program does not meet its intent of excluding foreign workers when qualified, willing U.S. workers are available…Despite a costly, time-consuming recruitment process, the required labor market test did not result in the hiring of U.S. workers over foreign labor." [1]

"..the current size of the H-1B workforce relative to the overall number of IT professionals is large enough to keep wages from rising as fast as might be expected in a tight labor market…(there is) no analytical basis on which to set the proper level of H-1B visas, and that decisions to reduce or increase the cap on such visas are fundamentally political." [5]

Possible Reforms:

[Slipjack]

There should not be any H1B Visa's issued to any one and all that are here in this country on H1B Visa’s should be rounded up and deported back to there country ASAP and Americans HIRED in their PLACE that are qualified, even if they are in NY and are needed in CA.

No excuse is accepted.

[Shermy]

When did the AFL-CIO become concerned about immigration and American workers? They partner with big business pro-mass immigration front groups trading the welfare of their members for a fantasy that they may get some more union dues from the influx.

[banjo joe]

DOL's Permanent Labor Certification Program does not meet its intent of ...

Well, here we have it: The Law of Unintended Consequences. Anyone else notice how con-gress issues an edict, and the law school minions employed by the regulating agencies write the stuff that exemplifies TLUC?

[Slipjack]

It's one of the Lefto-Pinky-Socialist DemocRAT's Manifesto's Priorities is to screw-up everything in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and replace it with their own (SOCIALISM/COMMI) JACK BOOTED SLAVERY OF THE PEOPLE!

[eno_]

Why?

I started a company a number of years ago that would have been impossible to start without the Russian and Ukrainian engineers that worked for me. These people were, literally, rocket scientists with postgraduate degrees, some with Ph.D.s. They would have been unobtainable at any price in the U.S., and certainly unobtainable to a startup.

They are all U.S. citizens or PRs now and two of them are millionaires. Their productivity will be paying for your retirement.

Sorry, but, as an employer, you can't hold my money hostage. If the right person is in India, Romania, Brasil, or Viet Nam, then either that person comes here, or if you stop me doing that, the project goes to where the right people are. With laptops, I can fit all the capital equipment for a 10 person development and Q/A lab in my luggage - network, servers, everything.

I just did a consulting gig with a company that does their engineering in Turkey, at about 10% of the U.S. cost. Smart people are everywhere. And smart work will find them.

But believe me, the U.S. is better off if we continue to allow the elite of India, Russia, and China to come, and stay, here. Commercial software development is an elite pursuit, just like elite sports. Should we send the Russians and Latvians in the NHL home because some guy from Maine is scraping along as a minor league enforcer?

[optimistically_conservative]

Sorry, but, as an employer, you can't hold my money hostage. If the right person is in India, Romania, Brasil, or Viet Nam, then either that person comes here, or if you stop me doing that, the project goes to where the right people are.

OK, but why 195,000 instead of 65,000?

Why not allow entire software companies to "immigrate" from overseas to the US?

Why not move yourself and your company to where the "right" people are and become a citizen in India, Romania, Brasil, or Viet Nam?

Would you support a visa program to allow mass immigration for foreign business administrators to alleviate the tight talent pool of "Chief" anything?

Class	Initial Stay	Extension of Stay
E-1	Two (2) years	Up to 2 years per extension. No maximum number of extensions, with some exceptions.
E-2	Two (2) years	Up to 2 years per extension. No maximum number of extensions, with some exceptions.
H-1B1	Up to 3 years	Increment of up to 3 years. Total stay limited to 6 years.
H-1B2	Up to 3 years	Increment of up to 3 years. Total stay limited to 6 years, with some exceptions.
H-1C	Up to 3 years	Total stay limited to 3 years.
H-2A and H-2B	Same as validity of labor certification, with maximum of 1 year.	Same as validity of labor certification (increments of up to 1 year). Total stay limited to 3 years.
H-3	Special Education Training-up to 18 months. Other Trainee-up to 2 years	Special Education Trainee-total stay limited to 18 months. Other Trainee-total stay limited to 2 years.
L-1A	Coming to existing office-up to 3 years. Coming to new office-up to 1 year.	Increments of up to 2 years. Total stay limited to 7 years.
L-1B	Coming to existing office-up to 3 years. Coming to new office-up to 1 year	One increment of up to 2 years. Total stay limited to 5 years.
O-1 and O-2	Up to 3 years	Increments of up to 1 year
P-1, P-2, P-3 and their support personnel	Individual athlete-up to 5 years. Athletic groups and Entertainment groups-up to 1 year.	Individual athlete-Increments of up to 5 years. Total stay limited to 10 years. Athletic groups and entertainment groups-Increments of 1 year.
Q-1	Up to 15 months.	Total stay limited to 15 months
		(Note: definition of each class of visa should display once only per chart)
R-1 and R-2	Up to 3 years	Increments of up to 2 years. Total stay limited to 5 years.
All other	Up to 1 year	Increments of up to 1 year

 

 

[eno_]

Why not allow entire software companies to "immigrate" from overseas to the US?Their products already do.

Why not move yourself and your company to where the "right" people are and become a citizen in India, Romania, Brasil, or Viet Nam? Romania is beatiful, and I could live like a feudal barron. Something tells me you would not want me and my money leaving the U.S., or do you think I should not be allowed to take my money?

Would you support a visa program to allow mass immigration for foreign business administrators to alleviate the tight talent pool of "Chief" anything? My last boss was Swedish, here on an H1-B visa. I have competed globally for 15 years. What do you think is going to happen in the future? If you are not the best, you are toast. Doesn't matter what color you are, or what you worship. It is our choice to remain competitive, or we could devolve into a whining, impoverished bomb-throwing rabble, like the Arabs.

[optimistically_conservative]

If you are not the best, you are toast. Doesn't matter what color you are, or what you worship.

In my line of business, this is the difference between life and death, not just economics.

Romania is beatiful, and I could live like a feudal barron. Something tells me you would not want me and my money leaving the U.S., or do you think I should not be allowed to take my money?

Keep your money, I'm assuming you earned it. My point is not that you should leave, but that you chose to work here, to pursue your entreprenuerial interests here, and you have stayed here. I'm guessing that you found a social, political and economic advantage here. And having lived in Europe, Asia and deployed to the Carribean, Latin America and South America, I'm guessing I'm right.

Their products already do.

Yes, their products do, but not the organization and people. The problem I have with the immigration laws, and H-1B in particular, is not that we allow the brightest to come here, or the industrious, but the numbers. We don't export our natively born unproductive or uneducated. And they vote. So what do they vote for? Greater economic support and governmental cradle to grave protection. Now we take the middle and upper middle class and push them into unemployment with foreign replacements. Hmmm. This will not lead to greater cry for socialism among the bourgeois?

IMO, the greatest reason for civil unrest, and getting my butt deployed all over the world is when the economic classes in a society diverge. When too much of the wealth is held by too few, and too many are disenfranchised and poor, it breeds socialism and communism by the rebellious masses and totalitarianism by the rich.

This usually gets me a label of Marxist, which I'm not, by those who fail to recognize that economics (communism, socialism, capitalism) exists within a political context. Capitalism is the strongest because it asks the least from politics to endure.

Again, why 195,000 instead of 65,000?

How do you balance the value in the long run to importing masses of foreign talent against the natively born unemployed?

[optimistically_conservative]

When did the AFL-CIO become concerned about immigration and American workers?

Here's why:

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"The unemployment rate for all engineers increased from 3.6 percent in the first quarter of 2002 to 4.0 percent in the second quarter, data from the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics reveals. The rate for electrical and electronics engineers (EEs) rose from 4.1 percent to 4.8. The rate for computer scientists, which includes systems analysts, jumped from 4.8 to 5.3 percent. Overall unemployment fell from 5.9 to 5.4 percent."(1)

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"Last year, the high technology industry announced layoffs of over 520,000 people. During this same period, the INS reported receiving applications for more than 324,000 temporary H1-B visas." - ICAA

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INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF PROFESSIONAL AND TECHNICAL ENGINEERS (IFPTE), AFL-CIO & CLC Opposes Reauthorization of Foreign Guest-Worker Visa (H-1B) Program

An H-1B, or a "professional worker's" visa is reserved for people within "specialty occupations," who are considered for admission to the United States on the basis of their professional education. It permits U.S. companies allegedly having difficulty in meeting highly technical staffing requirements, to recruit and employ foreign workers under the provisions set forth in the H-1B program. It is the most common, and usually, the easiest nonimmigrant visa to obtain.

While Congress has regularly approved huge increases in authorized levels of H-1B visas, American technical workers as well as labor unions, including the International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers (IFPTE), have pointed to the crippling effects that the program is having on current and future American high-tech workers. However, despite strong opposition to the H-1B program among U.S. labor unions like IFPTE, as well as appeals from workers who have suffered job losses and stagnant wages as a result of the H-1B program, Congress has consistently approved huge increases of H-1B foreign workers.

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Now, where is the specific pocket filled by H1-Bs that is not available in the American marketplace?

I would like to see the numbers weeded out to identify where the shortfalls really are, and where employers are taking advantage of the system. Then a better law to help employers who truly can't find needed skills in the American marketplace and jail for the employers scamming the system.

Representative Thomas Tancredo (R-CO) authored the H1-B visa reduction legislation HR 3222 to rollback the temporary H1-B visa quota from 195,000 down to its former level of 65,000. I support this.

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An Analysis of the LCA Database

Labor Condition Application Database
H-1B LCA Requests 10/1/1998 to 10/16/2001
H-1B LCA Requests Submitted 1,101,159
H-1B LCA Requests Certified 986,972

A single certified request may contain many Visa Requests.

Total H-1B Certified Visa Requests 4,075,021

Visa Start Date	Certified LCA Requests	H-1B Visa Requests
1998	58,134	298,246
1999	262,737	962,915
2000	396,181	1,489,591
2001	265,260	1,314,520
2002	4,399	9,416
Other	261	333

[doosee]

The H1B workers I work with can apply for a green card after 5 years of continuous work in the US. Then they can stay indefinitely. Most never plan or want to go back to their home country. Several have converted to green that I know.

[eno_]

I have some sympathy for your point of view. You see a lot of mediocrities from India putting in billable hours for outfits like EDS and Acseenture (or however your spell that stupid name). I suppose jobs as stupid and pointless as that could be "protected" since they are not producing anything one way or the other. The greater damage is to the moronic clients of these firms that fail to demand quality work. So maybe fewer H1-B visas would help that problem. But a lot of it was "solved" when the clients of these firms ran out of money to (mis)spend on IT. My point here is, that if a pursuit is truly metitocratic and elite, it should be open to anyone from anywhere, and that benefits us. How would you define a job that should not draw from the best talent globally? As I pointed out, the only jobs that could be protected without causing economic harm are so pointless that the jobs themselves already cause a lot of economic harm.

[eno_]

By the way, Tata appears to have immigrated as a company. Tata is a giant Indian conglomerate/family-empire.

It also appears the biggest H1-B requester is a home health aid and/or nurse agency. I expect the engineer H1-Bs have slowed down a lot, and many have gone back to India.

[optimistically_conservative]

I think we agree more than disagree.

I haven't seen the evidence that many H-1B recipients have left, or how many now hold permanent resident status and are working, unemployed, etc.

I am not advocating an end to immigration, and I support competing for the best globally. I just don't believe that's 195,000/year in H-1B visas alone.

Maybe it will correct itself - but I would like to see citizens of the US winning in a merit based economy, rather than importing them.

[Slipjack]

You would be in the correct Zone if all of Americans were WORKING and plenty of work for others were available, but NOT NOW and NOT in the FORSEEABLE FUTURE…

Time to KICK/KEEP THEM OUT TILL THEN!!!

TAKE CARE OF OUR OWN FIRST BEFORE WE DO OTHERS!!!

[eno_]

What if "our own" are not the best? We should settle for mediocrity? According to the figures posted on this thread, the biggest H1-B requester is a nurse/home-health-aide agency. We have a well-documented labor shortage in these categories. Frankly, I'm sick of middle-aged geek-mediocrities who think they have a right to work forever on whatever obsolete 4GL they learned 7 years ago. These guys were not the best then and time has passed them by. They should form an engineers union like they have in Canada and Sweden. Yeah, that'll be better. As I pointed out, there are abuses where consultancies bring in warm bodies to bill more hours to their clients, but if the clients are too stupid to notice, what will change that situation? Should the Microsofts and Oracles be punished by not allowing them to bring in the elite from India, China, and Russia? Do you think Microsoft will hire those obsolete geeks? Ever been through a Microsoft interview? Those pseudo-nerds would last 5 minutes.

[eno_]

Maybe it will correct itself - but I would like to see citizens of the US winning in a merit based economy, rather than importing them.

School competition, home-schooling, and a return to high standards in education is the best thing we can do. If we instituted these reforms, we have the capacity in our education system to produce the best educated workforce in the world, by a wide margin. And we have the workforce, social, and geographic mobility to retrain and relocate as needs change. Right now, we are producing a generation of slackjawed self-esteem cases.

[Slipjack]

NO BUT HELL NO, we teach our OWN FIRST and worry about the REST Last!

That’s why this country is so screwed up now because of there is so many Bleeding Heart Lefto-Pinky-Liberal Socialist in this country now that would rather throw our own to the Wolfs than take the responsibility to Teach/Train/Guide and push a Born Citizen of this Country other Lining there POCKETS WITH CASH...

SIMPER FI