Posted on 02/04/2006 4:38:34 AM PST by Tyche
Making a strong pitch for America to stay competitive in the face of emerging economies such as India and China, President George W Bush has urged the Congress to raise the number of H-1B visas that allow companies to hire foreign workers for scientific and high tech jobs.
"Congress needs to understand that nations like India, China, Japan, Korea and Canada all offer tax incentives that are permanent. In other words, we live in a competitive world. We want to be the leader in this world," Bush said in a speech in Minnesota on Thursday.
To fill vacant jobs in the US, Bush urged the Congress to lift current limit on H-1B visas that allow foreign workers to get jobs in the United States. The Congress in 2005 capped at 65,000 the number of H-1B visas, a third of the 195,000 allowed during the technology boom.
"I think it's a mistake not to encourage more really bright folks who can fill the jobs that are having trouble being filled here in America, to limit their number. So I call upon Congress to be realistic and reasonable and raise that cap," Bush said, but did not say by how much he wanted the limit lifted.
He said that one part of the agenda to stay competitive was to study math and science, a theme he touched on in his State of the Union Address on Tuesday.
"It's one thing to research, but if you don't have somebody in that lab, well… And so I got some ideas for the Congress to consider. The first is to emphasize math and science early, and to make sure that the courses are rigorous enough that our children can compete globally," Bush said in a speech at the 3M Corporation.
He said there are more high-tech jobs in America today than people available to fill them. "So what do we do about that? And the reason it's important -- and the American citizen has got to understand it's important -- is if we don't do something about how to fill those high-tech jobs here, they'll go somewhere else where somebody can do the job."
"There are some who say, we can't worry about competition. It doesn't matter, it's here. It's a real aspect of the world in which we live," he said.
"And so one way to deal with this problem, and probably the most effective way, is to recognize that there's a lot of bright engineers and chemists and physicists from other lands that are either educated here, or received an education elsewhere but want to work here. And they come here under a programme called H1B visas," Bush said.
He said America should not fear competition. "It's important for us not to lose our confidence in changing times. It's important for us not to fear competition but welcome it."
Senior administration officials noted that the number of H-1B visas has fallen to 65,000 which in their estimation was 'too low' and that it was imperative 'to bump that up.'
". . . some of reports have called for increases of 10,000; others between 20,000 and 40,000. So there is a number of options on the table to be considered. But we'll work with Congress on that," said Claude Allen, assistant to the President for domestic policy.
I love it when the protectionist, self-proclaimed uber-right wingers echo Marx. Don't you?
Make up your mind. Is it the evil manager class? Or.....
they are being screwed by the owner class, as the owner's take advantage of the their usually inherited positions to plunder the worker class of their activity, ingenuity, and productivity.
....Is it the evil owner class that needs to be eliminated? So that the working class can get its fair share.
2) Was Ted Kennedy's "Immigration Reform Act of 1986" the answer? (IRCA)
3) Now that we have Kennedy's disgraceful Act—which discouraged English-speakers—is our national IQ soaring?
Hardly. While we need to instill a proper educational psyche in our children, we also need to encourage a "brainy" immigration policy to keep up with our "Darwin-deficit". (Drugs, sex, rock&roll, and who-knows-what about Illegals).
3) Illegal immigration isn't just "running across the border"—it's also overstaying visas. No fence will cure that.
Look, we're not going to reclaim our lost manufacturing base anytime soon. This country remains the best marketing environment for goods and services in the world. To maintain or exceed our present excellent—and very low—jobless environment, we need to "seed" our high-tech with brains.
Who knows, some may marry Americans, and give Darwin a boost: And the US a new citizen—and a smart one at that!
All these complaints to JasonC are sounding like neo-isolationism.
What happens if this country "unionizes" its entire job market?
There are many reasons for this. Some are cultural; we don't value technical knowledge as a culture the way other countries do. Its not a glamor profession.
The public education system is a joke.
But worst of all, there is no FREE MARKET INCENTIVE to reform the system, because the salary / earnings rewards received per work expended isn't there, like it is for the legal and financial professions.
Here is an example of the earnings for the legal profession.
"The median salary for first-year associates ranged from $67,500 in firms of 2-25 attorneys to $125,000 in firms of more than 500 lawyers, with a first-year median for all participating firms of $100,000. A comparison with figures reported for the prior five years reveals that first-year salaries have remained stable in firms of 251 or more lawyers during this period, with a median of about $110,000. This is in sharp contrast to a 30% increase in the median from April 1999 to April 2000."
This was gotten from this site. STARTING SALARIES IN THE LEGAL PROFESSION
If there was a REAL SHORTAGE of engineers, in accordance with the FREE MARKET supply of LABOR, then the salaries of good engineers would equal the salaries of good lawyers.
They don't, and there isn't. Yes there is a shortage of some specialty engineering skill sets, but thats always been the case.
NO
Stop echoing him.
Why so a company can hire an H1B for less money and work them like a mule..
Outsource the legal profession like they have outsourced engineering and IT and see what that does to those salaries.
yeah and he will keep it up til the fast food worker at McDonmalds or Burger King salaries are equal with the top engineers in this country.
I know you are but what am I?
BI Vendor CEO Blasts Gates' Position on H-1B No need to eliminate cap on visas, claims Information Builders' Cohen
Q&A by Don Tennant
MAY 09, 2005 (COMPUTERWORLD) - Gerald Cohen, the outspoken founder and CEO of New York-based business intelligence software vendor Information Builders Inc., spoke with Computerworld late last month about the controversy surrounding offshore outsourcing and the H-1B visa program. Excerpts follow:
Bill Gates told an audience in Washington recently that the U.S. needs to get rid of the cap on H-1B visas. What's your position on that?
He's full of it. He says, "I'd hire a lot more American engineers if I could find them -- they're not available, and that's why we're going to China and India." He's going there because it's just cheaper. He can find all the engineers he wants in this country. A lot of CEOs at companies like yours are saying that they just can't find the people.
That's bull. You know who wants [to get rid of the cap]? The Indian companies. The way the Indian companies work is they have to have a certain number of people here, and a lot more people back there - so they're the ones who want to get all these people in. And they don't even pay them American wages -- they just pay them as cheaply as they can.
But surely you use overseas labor to lower your own costs.
I'm going to put two hats on. With one hat, I say we want to keep jobs in New York City. The other hat says that we want the company to be prosperous, and if I can lower my costs by doing work overseas, the company's more prosperous. But I'm not so sure that's better for the country.
How much of your development work is done outside of the U.S.?
We do a little quality-assurance work outside of the U.S. We find it's economical to do the routine kind of QA work [overseas].
What's your response to the unemployed U.S. IT worker who says you should be keeping those jobs in the U.S.?
We have to [do business] economically. It's a real problem. The government is providing us with no help, so we're doing [what we have to do] ourselves.
If you look further down the road, there's going to be a huge drain of IT jobs. A lot of these jobs that go overseas are the spawning grounds for future jobs. So the whole industry's going to move offshore.
What do you want the government to do to help?
[Indian vendors] will bring people into the U.S. cheaply. No! When you [bring people into] the U.S., you have to pay American wages. That would be a minimum standard, for example.
There are a lot of small things that could be done, but I have no solution for how we're going to throttle this in some way.
A lot of people say the education system in the U.S. is failing to provide qualified IT workers. Do you disagree? That's bunk. Why do you have declining computer science majors? Because every parent is saying, "Why major in computer science when all the jobs are going offshore?" It feeds itself.
And I guarantee you, if it doesn't stop, in a couple years, you're not going to have much of an IT industry here.
Gerald Cohen, founder and CEO of Information Builders Inc.
Liar.
See. You prove my point. You are just a troll.
You prefer more government and higher prices for Americans. I prefer less government and lower prices for Americans. If that makes me a troll......
Guess what, Indians have roughly the same bell curves on intelligence as do Caucasians.
If only the mean IQ of the population was 170....wait... then it would be normalized back to 100...hmmmm.
Swiss confederations lasted very long with strict rules protecting the interests of her citizens and restricting the immigration.
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