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Tight US immigration forces outsourcing: Bill Gates
AFP via Breitbart ^ | 3/12/2008 | No attribution

Posted on 03/12/2008 8:59:01 AM PDT by PreciousLiberty

US high-tech companies are being forced to outsource more jobs overseas because of outdated restrictions on immigration, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates told Congress Wednesday.

Gates, echoing a longstanding complaint from the technology sector, told a congressional panel that the US immigration system "makes attracting and retaining high-skilled immigrants exceptionally challenging for US firms."

"Congress's failure to pass high-skilled immigration reform has exacerbated an already grave situation," Gates said in remarks prepared for delivery to a hearing of the House of Representatives Science and Technology Committee.

"As a result, many US firms, including Microsoft, have been forced to locate staff in countries that welcome skilled foreign workers to do work that could otherwise have been done in the United States, if it were not for our counterproductive immigration policies."

Gates said the limits on so-called H-1B visas aimed at highly skilled professionals are far too low for the rapidly growing tech sector.

He said the current cap of 65,000 H-1B visas "is arbitrarily set and bears no relation to the US economy's demand for skilled professionals."

(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: h1b; immigration; india; lies; outsourcing; software; tech
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To: PreciousLiberty

All the money the Gates Foundation is spending in other countries could be used to train people right here in the US.


41 posted on 03/12/2008 10:22:17 AM PDT by quadrant
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To: californianmom
Use the Gates Foundation’s billions to train workers who have lost their jobs in manufacturing to learn tech jobs

It's not the same. Not everyone can be an engineer, the thought processes are completely different. If you want to be a "web designer" or something like that, yeah, maybe a non-engineer can do that, but not otherwise. Engineering is a niche skill, especially software engineering
42 posted on 03/12/2008 10:25:25 AM PDT by Cronos ("Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant" - Omar Ahmed, CAIR)
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To: Sig Sauer P220

Some of the best engineering and software engineering minds I’ve known have been Russian or Romanian who could barely speak English. Indians have better English skills and there are many who are as good as the Ruskies (needless to say, there are many good native-born Americans as well)


43 posted on 03/12/2008 10:28:08 AM PDT by Cronos ("Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant" - Omar Ahmed, CAIR)
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To: PreciousLiberty

He wants to feed the starving babies in Africa but chokes on his canoli when asked to pony up a little more for you. That’s a liberal human for you. Makes me kind of want to tell em to go to hell when they ask me to fight for them. Maybe they can get the Indian call center guy or starving baby to fight for them.


44 posted on 03/12/2008 10:30:53 AM PDT by kinghorse (Antichrist or Cloverhill? Either way we end up face down under a collapsed bridge.)
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I mean think about it. We were told how a rising tide lifts all boats and it’s good to foster a middle class in places like India. Oh yeah? So we can pay 110 buck a bbl of oil and rising? A rising tide of oil demand. I guess since the S&P has been logging terrific returns it’s all okay.
/sarcasm


45 posted on 03/12/2008 10:35:55 AM PDT by kinghorse (Antichrist or Cloverhill? Either way we end up face down under a collapsed bridge.)
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To: PreciousLiberty
American Immigration controls (and the absence of enforcement) result in an active preference for uneducated, nearly illiterate field-hands from Latin America.

At the same time those same controls serve to make it difficult for intelligent and highly educated people to get into the country.

Those are the two problems that have to be fixed first.

46 posted on 03/12/2008 10:38:50 AM PDT by muawiyah
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To: Chameleon
Not only that, they are ignoring immigration, per se, and arguing H1B.

They came up with that device because we'd long ago abandoned any sort of rational basis for immigration and moved to what's known as "family reunification".

Look, if we need Ph.Ds we need them. Someone else's "need" to bring in his mother, sister and niece should not be prefered above "our need" for quality folks who can provide positive input to this country.

47 posted on 03/12/2008 10:44:24 AM PDT by muawiyah
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To: PreciousLiberty

The H-1B visa is the biggest scam. Indian companies have rigged the system by placing offices in the USA and staffing them with their own “H1-B” recruiters. These Indian recruiters then discard any American-name sounding resumes in favor of their Indian counterparts...thereby bringing in even more of them. These are the companies that blew the quota up on the first day. Wake up, America! I bet if the H-1B program was disbanded completely that suddenly these companies like Microsoft would “find” American workers to do the job.


48 posted on 03/12/2008 10:57:44 AM PDT by Azzurri
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To: PreciousLiberty
I agree with Bill on this one. The number of H1-B visas is too low. It should really be at least 500,000. Last time I looked, most people with any kind of engineering degree were making six figures. The only people with an engineering degree who have a problem finding jobs seem to be those who have poor interpersonal skills.

The reality is that if we don't get the best minds here in America, they will go to work for overseas firms or start their own in other countries. Just considering India, most American based software companies already have a large presence there.

Bill is wrong, though, when he says, "the United States needs to improve science and math education to train a new generation of tech leaders, reversing a move away from these fields." Stop by any American college and one will find a large proportion of the students are from foreign countries, especially at colleges that focus on the engineering sciences. If our education system is so "broken" why do so many foreigners send their sons & daughters to American schools at considerable expense when they could more cheaply have them educated in their own country?

49 posted on 03/12/2008 11:03:46 AM PDT by Left2Right ("Democracy isn't perfect, but other governments are so much worse (especially Iran's)")
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To: PreciousLiberty

“’Gates also said the United States needs to improve science and math education to train a new generation of tech leaders, reversing a move away from these fields. “

That much can’t be disputed.


50 posted on 03/12/2008 11:04:54 AM PDT by Niuhuru (Don't burn a bra, burn a feminist!)
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To: PreciousLiberty

BS...

There are pleanty of skilled High Tech workers in the US... Companies just don’t want to pay for them.

Why pay 100K+ for an employee with all benefits in the US when you can shell out 30k or less per employee in pakistan or india....

Gates is as bald face a liar as I’ve ever seen, he should have been a politician.


51 posted on 03/12/2008 11:06:47 AM PDT by HamiltonJay
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To: Left2Right
Bill is wrong, though, when he says, "the United States needs to improve science and math education to train a new generation of tech leaders, reversing a move away from these fields."

He probably meant this at the school level.

52 posted on 03/12/2008 11:08:17 AM PDT by CarrotAndStick (The articles posted by me needn't necessarily reflect my opinion.)
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To: Leftism is Mentally Deranged

“However, there are millions of Americans who are qualified in spite of all this nonsense. Like those who finished school a few decades ago.”

When I was still at IBM I saw them lay off many Americans while hiring H1b’s because they couldn’t find Americans to do the work. It’s against the law and IBM is lying but nothing can be done because they’re just too powerful and our government does not care.


53 posted on 03/12/2008 11:27:43 AM PDT by dljordan
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To: Chameleon; All
Stunning to see so much populist, anti-free trade, pro-protectionism sentiment here on Free Republic.

Hmmm. Believing in free-trade doesn't mean believing in unfair trade, or turning a blind-eye to those that cheat. For trade to be truly free, it needs to be based on an equal footing.

Besides, it's not like Gates and Microsoft have any major competition to deal with since he has a virtual monopoly in PC software market. What competitors, domestic or foreign, is he going to lose business to if he had to raise prices a bit in order to raise wages and satisfy his stock holders?

It's also Ironic that the most rapacious, predatory capitalists are always liberal. Gates, Soros, et al.

"When in any country the demand for those who live by wages, labourers, journeymen, servants of every kind, is continually increasing; when every year furnishes employment for a greater number than had been employed the year before, the workmen have no occasion to combine in order to raise their wages. The scarcity of hands occasions a competition among masters, who bid one against another, in order to get workmen, and thus voluntarily break through the natural combination of masters not to raise wages." - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.

Gates seeks to artificially increase the labor supply through outside sources to depress wages. Even the great Adam Smith would have a problem with what Gates is doing.

"The liberal reward of labor, therefore, as it is a necessary effect, so it is the natural symptom of increasing national wealth. The scanty maintenance of the laboring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving condition that they are going fast backwards." - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.

"The liberal reward of labor, as it encourages the propagation, so it increases the industry of the common people. The wages of labor are the encouragement of industry, which, like every other human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives. A plentiful subsistence increases the bodily strength of the laborer, and the comfortable hope of bettering his condition, and of ending his days perhaps in ease and plenty, animates him to exert that strength to the utmost. Where wages are high, accordingly, we shall always find the workmen more active, diligent, and expeditions than where they are low." - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.

Adam Smith - The Invisible Hand Speaks.

54 posted on 03/12/2008 11:45:24 AM PDT by PsyOp (Truth in itself is rarely sufficient to make men act. - Clauswitz, On War, 1832.)
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To: avacado
Yep, Bill Gates is driving down tech salaries to embarrassing levels and then wants American kids to study science and math for peanut wages.

What are tech salaries?

55 posted on 03/12/2008 12:15:49 PM PDT by lasereye
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To: Chameleon
WOW.... Stunning to see so much populist, anti-free trade, pro-protectionism sentiment here on Free Republic.

Is it?
56 posted on 03/12/2008 12:17:38 PM PDT by militem (Jim Forsythe for Congress 2008 (www.jimforsythe.com))
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To: PreciousLiberty

Bill Gates is a turd who doesn’t want to pay Americans a fair market wage.


57 posted on 03/12/2008 12:17:44 PM PDT by Moonman62 (The issue of whether cheap labor makes America great should have been settled by the Civil War.)
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To: PreciousLiberty

He’s talking about the shortage of high skill workers. They don’t get low pay.


58 posted on 03/12/2008 12:18:27 PM PDT by lasereye
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To: PsyOp
Sure, he was a free trader who wanted too open up trade, but he always sought first to protect the sovereignty of the United States and its manufacturing base. He did not confuse free trade with giving the store away.

The effects of our current trade policies and the horrendous trade deficit they have produced are a gun pointed at the heart of our economy, and the Republican who can stand up and tell the truth about this problem and its solutions will be the one who emerges from the pack.


Michael Reagan on Ronald Reagan and free trade
59 posted on 03/12/2008 12:20:18 PM PDT by cripplecreek (Voting CONSERVATIVE in memory of 5 children killed by illegals 2/17/08 and 2/19/ 08)
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To: Left2Right
Last time I looked, most people with any kind of engineering degree were making six figures. The only people with an engineering degree who have a problem finding jobs seem to be those who have poor interpersonal skills.

Don't try injecting actual facts into the discussion!! Go along with all the idiots who tell each other people with advanced technical skills make $12 an hour! There's just thousands of people out there with advanced technical skills who companies won't pay more than that - that's why they outsourced it instead. The engineers all went into selling insurance or working at Walmart or they accepted the $12 pay or something. They'll tell you.

60 posted on 03/12/2008 12:26:30 PM PDT by lasereye
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