Posted on 05/16/2012 9:28:58 AM PDT by DFG
A leading Republican in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday unveiled legislation to raise the number of permanent visas for skilled technical workers from foreign countries, but prospects of passage this year could be clouded by election-year politics.
Senator John Cornyn, the senior Republican on a panel that oversees immigration, introduced a bill that would make an additional 55,000 visas available each year for graduates with master's and doctoral degrees who have studied at U.S. research institutions.
This is one of several immigration-related bills that could be kicked around this year in Congress and in the presidential campaign. But there is scant evidence so far of enough consensus to get anything enacted into law.
Other measures could focus on trying to help children of illegal immigrants who want to attend U.S. colleges or serve in the U.S. military.
(Excerpt) Read more at health.yahoo.net ...
We are bringing in English teachers under these H-1B visas. They are a scam. We have 22 million Americans looking for fulltime employment at the same time as bringing in 125,000 LEGAL FOREIGN WORKERS A MONTH thru temporary work visas and permanent immigrants. This is insane.
I recruit extensively for Engineers, the overwhelming majority of respondents are foreigners here on student visas. We hire 2 or 3 of them a year, simply due to the lack of response from ‘home-grown’ local talent.
It’s a sad commentary of our country when the majority of graduating engineers aren’t US citizens.
Well, Cornyn is a member of our greatest asylum...
No limit on the number of foreign workers you can import with certain needed skills. Just a requirement to pay them at least 10% more than the going wage for the position in the industry.
Companies tend to quickly limit their need for foreign workers when they are required to pay them a premium rather than a pittance.
The foreign workers lucky enough to be selected actually raise the overall quality of the workforce and its pay scale by encouraging more locals to go into the field.
As long as companies can pay a pittance to import foreign workers, there is a never ending need for more visas. Once they have to pay a premium, they decide some of the local workers aren't such an unqualified fit after all. Funny how that works. Can anyone explain it?
I wonder if the masters grads who are out of work or so underemployed could gill these slots
or if they are so highly math/tech orineted that hisotry majors can’t fill them
Surely with so many out of work we can find some citizens and retrain them quickly..
of course the othe point is how much less these foreign students will work for
It’s a sad commentary of our country when the majority of graduating engineers aren’t US citizens.
I'm not surprised. Back in my engineering days I could see that this was a clear trend. The good news is that many if not most of these foreign students who come here to fill the empty spots in our engineering schools elect to stay, get a job and eventually become U.S. citizens. They're not stealing anybody's job and they are earning top dollar.
• Each year, some 200,000 additional skilled foreign workers are admitted through a variety of existing visa programs.
• At least one million skilled nonimmigrant workers are in the United States at any one time.
• The large majority of foreign PhD recipients already remain in the United States under current law
Why 55,000 additional visas?
Why not exchange them for 55,000 fewer indigent, non-english speaking Mexicans who will go immediately on welfare and food stamps?
Or 55,000 fewer beligerent muslim taxi cab drivers?
Or 55,000 fewer Hispanic drug dealers?
Or 55,000 fewer uneducated Somalis?
Do you have any proof of that assertion? Please post it if you do.
The simple and sad fact is that not enough US citizens are willing to do the very tough work to learn high-tech skills. It takes math and science and sweat and tears to qualify for the high-paying jobs, and American students drop out of math and science and engineering into easier majors.
One reason is that elementary math isn’t tough enough to lay the foundation for geometry and trig and calc in high school, so by the time they get to college, few can handle the difficulty.
So our tech employers need to look outside our borders. Unpopular truth.
I personally know several engineers who have been laid off recently due to the awful economy and have landed squarely on their feet in a matter of weeks, with better pay.
I also know qualified teachers who are unemployed because there is a glut of people who can teach English and social studies and elementary ed. That’s why I doubt that what you say is true. If it is true, that’s shameful and needs to be fixed.
Sad truth is that a generic education won’t land a job today.
Senator John Cornyn sounds like he is mentally ill. Half our college graduates for the last 5 years are UNEMPLOYED. We don’t need more H1Bs.
In Prince George's county, Maryland, one of every 10 teachers came from the Philippines on H-1B visas. The idea that American teachers won't take these jobs is nonsense. Foreign teachers are cheaper period.
The result could mean as many as 957 foreign teachers — more than 10 percent of the county’s teaching corps — would lose their visas by 2014. Such an exodus would mark a significant reversal after years in which many U.S. schools filled hard-to-staff positions with overseas instructors.
And paying taxes.
My husband worked for a year to find an experienced material science engineer from the US, finally had to hire a guy from Germany.
He is frustrated by the lack of high tech workers in the US now.
Maybe you can't get all the top 1% folks you want, but you can get the top 1.1% and move out smartly.
What the schools are waiting for is the OUT OF STATE TUITION the foreign students will need to pay.
Figures.
Those newly graduated Unemployed don’t have the skills that the H1Bs have.
Rather, they majored in psychology, or general studies, or anthropology, or Latin, or general something-or-other, and there is no need right now for generalists.
In a good economy, all these kids would have jobs. We have a sick economy. If you don’t know how to do something specific and critical to the company’s success, they can’t afford you.
I speak as the parent of several who have finished college in the past few years, as well as their friends, so my knowledge is purely anecdotal but real.
Example
In my daughter’s entering chemistry graduate class of 22, there were 6 domestic students. When I was in grad school it was roughly 50-50 (foreign to domestic students). I had plenty of grad classes where I was the only domestic.
There is some of that I'm sure but I still think our engineering school applications are way down from previous years. But I admit that is just a guess, I don't have the data to back it up.
In any case the Out of State Tuition "problem" is real. Universities do favor out of state/country students because of the higher tuition they have to pay.
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