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.
That might be an answer but it's not THE answer.
Bodies are needed right now. If you put everyone of those
4.8 percent to work right now (you can't. some of the enemployed are unemployable, we'll never have 0% unemploymnet), you still will need more bodies.
Even more bodies, in all sectors, will be needed when the boomers retire.
Our kids ain't having the number of kids like we had kids, and we didn't have the number of kids like out folks had.
300 million crowded ? The entire population of the world can fit in Texas, comfortably.
My construction buddies are shot to doll rags. They've been barrelling for the last 8-10 years. They are worn out.
But it's not stopping. The O'Hare airport expansion is firing up. There aint going to be enough bodies.
They don't have enough bodies in the gulf for hurricane clean-up.
I wish your answer was THE answer, but it aint.
Ahh, yes, the constant refrain of "lower prices to consumers". It is generally simpered while the advocate grabs himself Michael Jackson style.
But the other side of that miserable coin is "lower wages to producers."
More H1-B visas is a dagger in the back of Americans. So of course the advocates of "lower prices to consumers" embrace the idea.
"My point, somewhat obliquely stated, was that this is America. The smartest and most aggressive wins. You shouldn't count on a legacy, which is just another word for the arrogance of sense of entitlement."
So, for example, if a guy who grew up easy, and had everything in life handed to him, including a LEGACY, grew up to be President, would that count as the arrogance of sense of entitlement?
How do you feel about foreign athletes in the US. My guess is there are at least 300 foreign born athletes making at least 1 million a year with the average at about 8 million a year. That would be 2.4 billion for 300 jobs at very good wages.
Notables would Yao Ming, Mano Ginobili, Vlade Divac, Ichiro Suzuki, Idecki Matsui, Livan and Orlando Hernandez, Danny Baez, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, Omar Visquel, Sergei Federov along with probably half the entire NHL, golfers VJ Singh, Michael Cambell ,Ernie Els, Adam Scott, Muaryama, KJ Choi, Colin Montgomery, probably 1/2 of the US pro soccer players.
If GW Bush expected the presidency to be handed to him, yes that would be the arrogance of entitlement.
As far as I can tell, he did not expect it to be given to him.
Now John Kerry and Al Gore did expect it to be given to them.
Just about every American male teenager/20-something can fix computers, network anything, knows all software, can get rid of spyware-malware, some even hack if necessary (hackers helping FBI fight hackers)....all without a college degree.
There are plenty of 'em that can work in IT departments--if hired for their capabilities and not a paper certificate.
No need to let more foreigners come in.
My only point is that 99% of our "leaders" have this arrogant sense of entitlement.
Ah yes, like the guy complaining about engineers not being able to make much more than $100,000 a year.
Can't hardly live off that.
Democracy...that must be where 'we the people' tell our leaders what to do....and then they do the exact opposite...
Depends. Golf seems to be an international individual event, so if VJ Singh plays in the US, no different then Tiger Woods playing in Scotland. BUT, if it's billed as an American team, then players should all be US citizens, and/or be in the process of obtaining said citizenship.
If they want the payout, take on the responsibilities.
Correction High Paying good jobs Americans cannot do because they are too busy majoring in art history and whining about how hard they got. How about more intellectual competence and a WHOLE lot less whining?
But typical, even the "Real Conservatives" in this country are turning into Big Govt Socialists. The only difference between the Freeper Whine All The Time Choir and the Democrat Deaniacs is WHAT they would use the Govt to do for them. Just another bunch of losers looking for their Fed Govt handout.
And then there's the political lickspittles who always make excuses for bad policy, as long as their side is pushing it.
Are you offering to take a 30% cut in your income and benefits to keep us competitive or are you just suggesting other American workers should do that?
I keep thinking that some day people in this country will wake up and see what is happening then I keep seeing things like this and know it is about hopeless.
People in this country have been brainwashed by Big Business and their bought and paid politicians to the point that they are brain dead.
Do you ever think about what you say?
Your answer to keeping high paying good jobs in the U.S is to make them low paying not so good jobs by flooding the market with people who will do the for a lot less.
The best way for Americans to not be at a competitive disadvantage against people who live in third world countries who live in third world living conditions is to lower our wages and our living conditions to match their's.
That's brilliant.
Well don't worry that's exactly what big Business and their bought and paid for political bootlickers have been doing to this once great country since the early 1970's.
Turning it into a third world economic has been .
They have already got skilled craftsmen, carpenters, welders, pipe fitters, electricians etc. working for 1980 wages by flooding the building trades with Mexican labor and now they are about to lower the wages and benefits of collage level high tech workers by the same old two prong planned attack on American workers and their wages.
Outsourcing jobs and in-sourcing cheap labor. Business will continue outsourcing American jobs and our New Federal Chamber of Commerce ,The White House, Congress and the Supreme Court[?} will continue to in-source more cheap foreign labor.
What about the American worker who is working two jobs and his wife one trying to stay off the welfare rolls. Well he will continue to hear how it is all his fault for being a lazy, spend crazy, greedy American worker and if we have any sense we will vote for [insert either party].
The only satisfaction is history tells us that those leaders who sell out their people and their country for profit, wind up selling out their own future as well.
Craig Roberts maintains that what we are witnessing is international labor arbitrage, not comparative advantage. Comparative advantage could be beneficial, but labor arbitrage that simply pursues the lowest wage structure possible isn't.
Wait until that 'temporary guest worker' program kicks in. It will be downsizing on steroids.
The Globalist "One Worlders" are encouraging "outsourcing" all the jobs they can and those that can't be outsourced overseas they bring in cheaper labor and they take the domestic jobs.
The HB1 visa types for the high paying upscale jobs and for the rest its the illegals.
It's called destroying our middle class and lowering our standard of living so that we may be merged more easily into what they hope will be a world government.
"three times as hard as the native american" Sounds like you have a pretty low regard for those who created the society that is giving you such a chance to enrich yourself. Some of our families were busy making the world safe for you. Maybe you ought to go to a VA hospital and give them your little speech about what a hard worker you are compared to the lazy American natives.
http://news.com.com/Aging+computers+hobble+Homeland+Security/2100-7348_3-5995856.html
This news article reports on the computer systems and procedures inherited and used by Homeland Security after various immigration enforcement offices were combined.
It apparently is impossible.
It's a wonder that HS doesn't give Taleban radicals H1B visas and H1B visa applicant are cleared to enroll in undergraduate studies at Yale.
So a limit of 65,000 or no limit -- no one can tell. I think that's the preferred option.
(And these same agencies are going to manage the "guest worker" programs?!)
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