CA: Red tape forces out top Caltrans workers (unable to sponsor foreign engineers for green cards)

Contra Costa Times (from Sac Bee( ^ | Sep. 10, 2006 | Susan Ferriss and Mehul Srivastava

[calcowgirl]

Foreign engineers have been vital to the construction of California's complex and mammoth highway system, but they are being pushed out of jobs with the state Department of Transportation because of a conflict between state hiring rules and federal immigration laws.

Dozens of foreign engineers in the past decade have left Caltrans because their temporary work visas were going to expire . . . Ninety-eight Caltrans employees -- 75 of them engineers -- are currently on H-1B work visas that last a maximum of six years.

These engineers also will be forced to leave Caltrans unless the agency can sponsor them for green cards, the permit that grants them legal permanent residency.

--snip

Caltrans is the United States' largest state transportation department, with about 8,500 engineers, but it is short 500 engineers even before a predicted expansion of projects in the future.

If a $19.9 billion transportation bond in November's election passes, demand for skilled engineers will dramatically increase.

In the past decade, Caltrans, like many private companies, has coped with the shortage of U.S. engineers by recruiting Canadians, Indians, Mexicans and other foreigners who have studied at U.S. universities or at respected institutions abroad.

--snip

To hire a foreigner on a temporary H-1B professional visa, employers, private or public, must pay a prevailing wage, but they do not have to prove they could not find a U.S. citizen or legal resident to hire instead.

To sponsor someone for an employment-based green card, however, employers must advertise a job first and prove to the U.S. Labor Department they could not find a qualified U.S. worker.

Caltrans concluded that ... it would be forced to hire any minimally qualified U.S. applicant who had passed a California state exam and was listed on a state civil service list.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1698775/posts

[Joann37]

Can't they just go to Mexico and come back over the border illegally?

[television is just wrong]

OMG, they will be forced to hire American Engineers???

THE SHAME OF IT ALL....

[NonValueAdded]

In the past decade, Caltrans, like many private companies, has coped with the shortage of U.S. engineers by recruiting Canadians, Indians, Mexicans and other foreigners who have studied at U.S. universities or at respected institutions abroad.

Of course, there is another side to that story. I've watched some of the large consulting companies use H1-B visas to pull Indian students right out of school and flood them onto IT projects billed at outrageous fees while paying them pennies. They can't complain; they are not free to look for other work as their visa is single-employer. Their only choice is to get back on the boat. These folks are paid peanuts compared to the equivalent US new grad.

When American students are choosing careers and see that they either have to accept 3rd world wages - if they can get a job at all - they say the heck with that and go to law school and try to win the tort lottery. It is a chicken and egg problem and by messing with the supply side via the H1-B program, we influence US career choices.

[starfish923]

American companies don't hire American-born engineers because:
1. the pool doesn't have enough minorities and women and
2. those American-born engineers just won't work for peanuts and
3. the tiny group of American-born minority and women engineers don't seem to be in the HARD engineering areas, like mechanical engineering. They seem to be in crap areas like "urban engineering," "ecological engineering" and other such USELESS pseudo-engineering majors.
So foreigner engineers are hired to do the nuts and bolts engineering like running, repairing and maintains factories, refineries, gas/electric companies and other such USEFUL enterprises.

That gives the cheapskate, apple-polishing (to the altar of racial/gender affirmative action) companies brownie points to the gods (See political groups made up of EVERYONE BUT straight Euro-males.) of affirmative action and gives them cheaper labor...always welcome.

They also get to flaunt their American-born women and minority engineers in their mostly-USELESS positions like "human resources engineering." Hah, it's such a joke.
When engineers stopped running the utilities and accountants took over....the damage was irrevocably done.

Meanwhile, those pesky American engineers get the shaft or go abroad themselves to work in, say the middle east, where they make a TON of money.

The immigration issue of this is a side-show compared to the real damage done by affirmative racism/sexism.

[calcowgirl]

Oops.

[pierrem15]

LOL. Unbelievable. And the state was basically admitting that they were not even looking for qualified Americans, but just went down and got a new engineer from the 'serf shop'.

[Tax Government]

"Foreign engineers have been vital to the construction of California's complex and mammoth highway system."

Nonsense. Domestic engineers have been unemployed or underemployed because of foreign engineers.