Posted on 03/14/2006 8:24:36 PM PST by nickcarraway
US Congress is likely to take up a giant immigration bill this month, which recommends nearly doubling the number of H-1B skilled-worker temporary visas to 115,000.
The measures include not just increasing the number of visas but also add an option of raising the cap 20 per cent more each year.
If passed, the provisions buried in the Senate's giant immigration bill, would open the country's doors to highly skilled immigrants for science, math, technology and engineering jobs.
The provisions were sought by Silicon Valley tech companies and enjoy significant bipartisan support amid concern that the United States might lose its lead in technology.
They would broaden avenues to legal immigration for foreign tech workers and would put those with advanced degrees on an automatic path to permanent residence should they want it, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
H-1B visas were highly controversial in the Bay Area when their numbers reached a peak of 195,000 in 2003.
The new skilled immigration measures are part of a controversial 300-page bill by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa, now being rewritten by the committee with the goal of reaching the Senate floor by the end of the month.
Other provisions include a new F-4 visa category for students pursuing advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering or mathematics.
These students would be granted permanent residence if they find a job in their field and pay a $1,000 fee toward scholarships and training of US workers.
Congress had increased the visas during the late 1990s dot-com boom, when Silicon Valley complained of tech-worker shortages, although native-born engineers complained that their wages were undermined by cheap labour from India and China.
With the tech crash and the revelation that some of the September 11, 2001, hijackers had entered the country on student visas, the political climate for foreign workers darkened, and Congress quietly allowed the number of H-1B visas to plummet back to 65,000 a year.
The cap was reached in August -- in effect turning off the tap of the visas for 14 months. A special exemption of 20,000 visas for workers with advanced degrees was reached in January.
"We're in a bad crunch right now," said Laura Reiff, head of the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, a business umbrella group backing more immigration. "We are totally jammed on immigrant visas, the green card category, and totally jammed on H-1B visas. You can't bring in tech workers right now."
The provisions for highly skilled workers enjoy support in both parties in the Senate and in the Bush administration after a raft of high-profile studies have warned that the United States is not producing enough math and science students and is in danger of losing its global edge in innovation to India and China.
However, opponents of broadening immigration for skilled workers said doing so would defeat efforts to get more Americans interested in science, math, engineering and other technological fields.
No, more like pre Nazi Germany, when the middle class started to become afraid of losing their future. High paying non college jobs have been a social safety valve for those who could not afford or did not have the academic skills to go to college. When manufacturing moved overseas, many middle class noncollege types went into service industries. They told their children to go to college and get a tech job. Now those jobs are being outsourced to India and domestic slots are replaced of H-1B workers who are willing to work for half the American salary. Add our open border policy that floods society with more nontech laborers to the mix. The lawyers, elites and globalists are creating social dislocation by first trying to stangle national identity and feelings, and strangling ability for most people to live better than their parents. They are creating the turmoil for revolution within three generations.
...They are creating the turmoil for revolution within three generations....
The question is are they just greedy, or have to the bought into the liberal concept that this is a evil nation?
Leads to think Satan hasn't forgot we destroyed his pet and his whole Third Reich.
Ain't that the truth. I am an IT manager and I keep telling the youngsters that there is NO future in programming/coding. I work with a LOT of H1Bs and you are right, they will work 20 hours at a stint, get 2 hours sleep and then another 20 hours. However, they usually are spending that second 20 hours unscrewing up what they did in the last 10 hours of the previous stint.
But the biggest problem with H1Bs (and offshored reosurces) are
1) They can't communicate well so they can't clearly plan since they don't understand the problem statement(s) and the variables that go into the solution and;
2) They tend to look at the immediate problem instead of the broader picture. If you say "select all Asset accounts" they will ask "How do I know if it is an asset?" If the user says "it has a 1 as the 1st digit of the account" then that is what you get, instead of stepping back and saying "there hs to be a way to make this identification forever not just based on current convention." Chinese and Indian programmers hard code A LOT and the maintenance cost of that is hidden, yet astronomical. (I don't allow hard-coding except for under certain conditions where we externally define the values being used).
But I get H1-Bs and offshore resources for 1/10th to 1/3rd the price of domestic employees, so the economies are still there.
"You counter this with a confirmation that I am in a minority: we no longer value education properly, and nobody but foreigners are willing to study "tough" areas. How is abandoning H1-B program going to remedy THAT?"
Because, simply, if you devalue the reward for a certain type of education, you have decreased its worth; if you return its reward by removing excess external supply, the worth returns and people will choose that education again.
If a bright person is deciding between IT and, say, law school, they're going to look around and ask around and see what post-collegiate life will be like for those two paths.
In the case of the IT path, they'll learn that they will be treated like a disposable commodity, compared unfavorably with foreigners making 60% or less of what he would otherwise earn, and generally live a life of such contempt that it's parodied in national daily comics (Dilbert) and movies (Office Space).
In the alternate course he'll command a high salary, a lavish lifestyle, and a choice of fulfilling career paths.
Doesn't take too long for our bright kid to figure out that 'engineer' is a lousy career choice, so lo and behold you find that all the American bright kids are opting right out of engineering.
This is absolutely no different than any other supply and demand situation. All that's happening with H1-Bs is identical to a hostile 'dumping' of goods; in this case the good is labor.
The second problem with tour model that labor is a bit different from other "commodities" in that adjustments take a long time. So what the young lad of 20 sees is far from the whole picture. It is dumbing down of our education, accelerated since 1970s, that rendered our students unable to compete as vigorously as before. By the time the average lad is 20, it does not matter whether engineering is a well-paying job: he does not know enough math to enter.
You reflect what you see at the present. This has not always been the case. One was proud, for instance, to work for defense in 1950s-1960s and stand up against the Russkis --- particularly after Sputnik. And people who did that were treated with respect.
One is more likely to join the army having heard respectful stories from parents about fallen heroes. One is much less likely to do that seeing Vietnam vets spat upon when they return home.
One is more likely to want to become a professor --- a class in itself in largely classless America --- when professors are learned intellectuals. And, conversely, one is less likely to do so when they have become working bees that know nothing outside of their narrow field and churn out uninspired papers.
All of the above have been observed in this country until very recently. I consequently think that you are shortchanging a bit American culture in general. It is very true that, today, what you said is correct: the culture is very materialistic and even base. The problem is therefore not the visas but the state of the culture.
I don't think I quire confirmed your position in the previous post. If your parents beat you up, it does not help if one exiles your neighbors who do not. To be sure, you will not know that your situation is abnormal, but it will not become better. Similarly, if our students are ignorant and unwilling to work hard, it will not help to prevent good students and faculty from other countries from coming here. All we will achieve is ignorance: we will not know how bad we will have become.
Finally, I never said that completing a degree in law is easy. But is is an incontrovertible fact that a mathematician visiting a seminar at Harvard Law will understand the topic and the points made bt the speaker; he will be able to read a juridical paper; but the converse is false: even with an undergraduate degree in mathematics a jurist will not understand even a word at a mathematics seminar. It is incontrovertible that intellectual barriers to entry are much higher in mathematics and theoretical physics than in, say chemistry; and in chemistry higher than in law. There are no barriers to entry for understanding anything at all one may hear at a seminar on Dickens. I am not splitting hairs: this is relevant to why "hard" disciplines suffer first in a culture that has dumbed down education.
You talk about theory, I talk about what real people are actually deciding and what they say motivates their decision.
You talk about an average American student, and I tell you they look good against what I see coming from "skilled" H1-Bs. The only advantage the foreigner has is price; and that's enough for short-thinking managers.
However, I've read your opinions about the subject on many threads; you won't convince me your theories are right, and I won't convince you my experiences are generalizable. No point in quibbling forever, and I'd rather remain civil. :)
I won't convince you my experiences are generalizable.
None of our experiences is fully generalizable, and I am sure that to some extent your experience ARE generalizable. That is not what you do, however: 1. You argue about causality, which is an issue different from the scope of validity.
2. WHen you do generalize, you omit must of the sample that YOU yourself have. The number of foreign faculty, entertainers, etc. that are here on H1-B visa proves that the above-quoted statement is false: price is NOT the only advantage of foreigners. You know that this is true but simply omit this contradictory fact in order to arrive at the conclusion that you decided on beforehand. My position is therefore entirely irrelevant: if you think that such mode of thinking does justice to your intellectual purity and rigor, so be it.
No point in quibbling forever, and I'd rather remain civil. :)
I was not quibbling, but I agree with your proposal to stop: if search for truth is not a shared objective, I too have no interest in discussion. The possible future loss of civility, entirely unprovoked, makes it even less desirable for me.
Have a good day.
First let me thank you guys for taking the time to respond to my questions.
I wish I had sufficient time (and energy) to respond and address this topic...perhaps over time...
Let me say however, that Im dubious of economic policy when we lack sufficient insight and consistency at the fundamental principle level...when we lack sufficient fidelity in our models to run forward and backwards estimation predictors, and when we dont allow for sufficent complexity, chaos, positve and negative feedback, and nonlinearity effects to anticipate leveling off, inflection points, and other characteristics of non-monotonic curves.
In science and engineering...we know about all these things...we deal with them all the time when constructing models of the 'real world'. Many of these approximate systems cannot be solved in closed form...we rely on Monte Carlo or computer iterative techniques.
All of which is saying that in the early 20th century...Einstein and Heisenberg took up where Newton left off. Who out there in economics world is likelwise ready to examine Smith and Ricardo's theories, when scaled upwards to the global economy we have developing today?
Natures 'mathematical models', as we interpret them, dont seem to scale well.
I only closed the discussion because you've been steadfast in your position for a long time; I remain steadfast in mine, so I don't think we're going to reach truth with a capital T in these threads.
My experience in FR (and elsewhere) is that when two participants have mutually exclusive positions, nobody gets convinced of anything and all that happens is an exchange of selected facts which support each person's opinion. That isn't truth-seeking, just bickering. In addition, often the discussion degrades.
You should be. This is precisely why the governments have proven time and time again to be detrimental to development and distribution of private goods. Socialists compare real-world markets, with whatever inequities they may produce, to an idealized government that knows it all, that has all the data, all the models, and comprised of angels that have no self-interest except serving the public. Unsurprisingly, the angels win. The truth is, even to process market-relevant information one needs enormous computing power. There are no computers but the market itself that even compares to it in power.
when we lack sufficient fidelity in our models to run forward and backwards estimation predictors, and when we dont allow for sufficent complexity, chaos, positve and negative feedback, and nonlinearity effects to anticipate leveling off, inflection points, and other characteristics of non-monotonic curves.
None of this is as important as the following. Suppose you do have a model as you describe --- a COMPLETELY perfect model. As soon as it becomes known, it is no longer accurate: if it predicts that I lose money on the next stock trade, and I learn about that --- I will NOT trade! The model no longer predicts.
This is the principal reason between models of society and the rest of nature. A learned scientist or engineer such as you may be temped to expect the same from economics as from physics. You cannot.
Who out there in economics world is likelwise ready to examine Smith and Ricardo's theories, when scaled upwards to the global economy we have developing today?
The problem with those theories is not so much scaling (there is no evidence, to the best of my knowledge, they they do not) but that they do not account for asymmetry of information among the agents. This has been an active area of research for the last 40 years, but not much progress.
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