Posted on 05/26/2006 3:05:10 PM PDT by indthkr
WASHINGTON — The nation's leading engineering group expressed disappointment with immigration legislation approved this week by the Senate. The controversial Senate immigration bill includes a provision raising the cap on H-1B visas for highly educated temporary workers by 50,000 to 115,000 per fiscal year. It also provides exemptions from both H-1B and employment-based, or "green card," visa caps for foreign workers with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering or mathematics.
High-tech and business groups lauded the bill as a boost for U.S. competitiveness.
But the IEEE-USA criticized the measure. "We don’t understand why the Senate wants to expand a program that numerous government reports have found leaves U.S and foreign workers open to exploitation," IEEE-USA President Ralph Wyndrum, Jr. said in a statement released on Friday (May 26). "Fraud, abuse and misuse of the visas is rampant. The program should be fixed before it is expanded."
Moreover, Wyndrum said "the bill opens the spigot on numerous skilled visa categories. The question is how many high-tech workers can the United States absorb annually without driving up unemployment and driving down wages?"
The House has approved a much tougher version of the comprehensive immigration bill. Observers said it remains unclear whether a House-Senate conference can resolve political differences over immigration reform.
Assuming the House rejects the Senate bill as I expect, we need to enlist the engineers and programmers in our 2006 election fight.
They're just taking the jobs Americans won't do. That's what they said when it was someone else's jobs. Suck it up.
Foreign workers with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering or mathematics are not the problem.
IEEE seems worried about domestic engineers not having jobs, but I read somewhere that as a lot of engineers reitre, there is a huge gap between the number of engineers and scientists needed and available.
So allowing highly educated people to come in is healthy for the country and the economy.
If the H1-B quotas should be raised, that raise should probably be more modest to start with and future increases should be determined with consideration to unemployment in the affected industries.
Also, I believe, the HI-B visa holder should not be made to arrive here as an indentured servant of their sponsor.
They should be able to apply themselves for an H1-B, given 90 days upon arrival here to find a job and be free afterwards to find an alternate employer any time during their H1B term that they feel impelled to do so.
That would prevent employers of H1-B visa holders from using them as captives, holding down their wages at the cost of not employing others who are already here.
The competition between H1-B visa holders and those already here would be more equalized.
"The nation's leading engineering group..."
A biased statement to be sure, and then I noticed the article was published by the EE Times.
The more likely scenario is the House winning the battle in conference and that bill being filibustered in the Senate.
Right...I intereviewed THREE Indians today for jobs (at my bosses direction). They are dirt cheap, and will be replacing my American co-workers in the next year or so. THe first one lied on his resume (Said he had been working with JDBC and EJBs for 13 years -- unfortunately, EJB's weren't even dreamed up at the time he had supposedly been working with them for over 4 years already).
It is pitiful how this government is selling us out.
U.S. faces decline in engineers as student programs grow overseas
February 2004
http://www2.jsonline.com/bym/news/feb04/207825.asp
Stan Jaskolski, dean of the College of Engineering at Marquette University, says there have been 100,000 fewer engineering students in the past decade, according to the 2002 National Science Foundation's Science Engineering Indicators report.
"It's a growing national problem. Virtually every college of engineering has experienced declines," Jaskolski said.
As enrollment in U.S. undergraduate programs falls, China produces over half a million engineers a year, with India close behind, Gray said.
Shortage anticipated
Lynn Arts, recruiting manager for Johnson Controls, said the engineering industry anticipates a 27% shortage in engineers by 2005.
After about 30 minutes the kid realized he was being interviewed for a non-technical position and I spoke up. 'Your resume was all lies, the code you submitted was all cut and pasted from MSDN without so much as search and replace variable renaming. Further you asked for twice what you would have been worth if it was all true. Marketing saw this and realized you had a future. How do you feel about slave wages?'
It was worth wasting the marketers time just to hear the sound of his voice cracking with stress.
Therein lies the issue. We need to outsource our politicians and their flunkies (oops, probably meant advisers) before we outsource our science.
That said most H1Bs I've worked with are just barely competent. But they put in the hours like they would get sent back to hell if they did'nt please the PHBs.
tech ping
LOL I like it!
99% of them want to live here permanently. They are willing work as an H1B indentured servant for 5 years to get their green card. Is this true?
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