H-1B is her No. 1 battle, Sona Shah has leaped head-first into fight over controversial visa

Star Ledger ^

[Fee]

H-1B Visa is suppose to be used to help US companies get tech skills that are not available or in short supply within the US. It is not suppose to be a tool to displace US workers and depress wages. Otherwise why should US taxpayers fund a program that will destroy the middle class??????

[vrwc1]

If anything, American programmers are less productive than the overseas programmers and their attitudes have not been good. It's that simple.

You cavalierly insult hundreds of thousands of Americans based on a sample size of 3? Amazing.

[MonroeDNA]

She's lying.

Where's the proof of this conversation, besides her testimony?

Any recording?

[WatchingInAmazement]

Lou Dobbs, aired 9/4/06

There is shocking new evidence tonight that our nation's temporary worker visa program is woefully mismanaged. In fact, this new information shows that the government has little, if any, idea how many H1-B visas are being issued each year.

BILL TUCKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT : Attorney John Miano had a simple request. He wanted to know how many H1-B visas were issued in the years 2004,2005. The government would not tell him.

So...

JOHN MIANO, CO-FOUNDER, PROGRAMMERS GUILD: I filed a Freedom of Information Act request to get copies -- electronic copies of the records and applications for H1-B guest worker visas.

TUCKER: H1-B visas are temporary guest worker visas which allow foreign workers with specialized skills to work in the United States. Miano's reasons for wanting to know the information are basic.

MIANO: We do not know how many of H1-B visas are being issued each year. The second big question we would know is who is getting these visas?

TUCKER: So, what was the government's response to Miano's request?

"We have completed our search for records responsive to your request but did not locate any."

In other words, they've lost the records.

The response came from the person in charge of handling Freedom of Information Act requests. We asked the USCIS for a clarification, and a spokesman told us, "The response was a mistake, the letter was sent in error."

The mistake came to their attention after LOU DOBBS TONIGHT brought it to their attention. The agency tells us that the information Miano is looking for would be available for an additional fee of roughly $4,500 to $5,000.

The former director of the Office of Internal Affairs at USCIS is stunned.

MICHAEL MAXWELL, FORMER DIRECTOR OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS, USCIS: I have never heard of a taxpayer being asked to flip the bill for publicly available information. In fact, USCIS is required to provide these H1-B statistics annually to both the Senate and the House Judiciary Committees and they have not done that.

TUCKER: That the USCIS does not have an immediate database as to who holds these visas or where these people are raises national security implications.
Problems with the program are well known. there have been a number of government reviews critical of its management. Yet the Senate, instead of fixing the problem, stands ready to double the size of the H1-B program and it its so-called immigration reform bill, it will add additional guest worker programs for USCIS to administer.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0609/0http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif4/ldt.01.html

[ichabod1]

American programmers who are available to small companies aren't very good and cost A LOT

That's such a blatant lie. It is the Indian programmers that aren't very good, not because they're stupid, but because it's almost impossible to explain to them what is wanted, and they nod their heads, smile, and agree with you no matter what you ask them.

Bulgarians???? Give me a break. What, did they learn to program in their hovels after they finished shoveling the pig poop out of the living room?

I'm really surprised you had the audacity to post that claptrap.

[ichabod1]

We live in bizarro world.

No, we live in Socializt World.

[Neidermeyer]

I've got to agree 100% with Ichabod1 ,, I have worked in IT since the late 70's and can tell everyone here that the Dilbert cartoons depicting outsourcing to the "elbonians" exists and that Ichabod is correct in his assessment of why their code is substandard .. part of the problem is that where a rock solid cobol type app could be written for a CICS or IMS application in a month everyone wants the sexy (and supposedly cheaper) solution of re-inventing the wheel with open source servers and c++ ... it doesn't work in real life because the management and diagnostic tools SUX and they always rush things into production before they're ready for prime time (despite being quarters or years behind original estimates) ... I left the IT world 5 years ago after my department (IP/SNA related) was outsourced to India at 10% of our salaries (and our salaries weren't excessive) ... too bad it cost our company hundreds of millions in contracts because of bungled communications and repetitive errors...

[vrwc1]

Well said. Many US companies use the H-1B Visa program to keep their costs down - they simply don't want to pay the going rate for skilled professionals. As you point out, that is not the intent of the program.