Senator seeks expanded visas for foreign high-tech workers

Yahoo ^ | 05/16/12 | Richard Cowan

[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.

[Jedidah]

I like your approach, but “retrain them quickly” isn’t really an option when it comes to today’s engineering needs.

It takes years of training in math and science and hi-tech thinking to develop the skills necessary for many of these jobs. It’s hard to catch up — although it could be done — if you didn’t start this path by junior high school or, better yet, elementary school.

But “quickly” simply isn’t possible.

[muawiyah]

I was a math major, as was my brother. About half way through college I developed an abiding interest in what is called government and history (preparatory to maybe getting a law degree or something as a professional writer).

My brother wrapped up his math degree.

Do you realize what the openings are for math majors? They are, for all practical purposes, advanced degrees in other fields! That is, you gotta' keep going to school ~ and not just to school, but in an inferior field of study. There's really little room at the top in math ~ maybe more in physics, some in engineering, maybe structural engineering for architecture or something like it.

That little problem has been bing bonging math majors in this and other countries for decades.

One of my sons' friends was majoring in math ~ the kind of guy who takes yet one more advanced calculus or topology class to boost his GPA ~ and he had to drop out for a semester to work to get money to continue school.

His problem was he was the first college student in his family in centuries. He was born here but his dad and mom grew up in rice paddies in Korea. He should have asked me about it, but he'd registered for the classes before he discovered the money shortage.

He didn't pay.

The school didn't notify him he still owed, and that if he was dropping classes he should come in and drop them!

He did do that and appealed to the Dean to fix his record ~ which the Dean refused to do.

KId had to end up taking an extra year of math classes to get his GPA up to what he'd need to go on to a grad school somewhere else, but he missed one stinking little course that's taught only every 2 or 3 years and he had to take his degree in philosophy.

He's currently in the Army. Gets out this year I think.

That's how American universities treat American born student geniuses who try to major in Math while paying in-state tuition.

SO somebody here knows of universities crying HURT due to a lack of math majors?

[muawiyah]

Without out of state tuition TRIPLE instate in so many state universities they come out ahead by leaving two vacancies!

[kabar]

Do you have any proof of that assertion? Please post it if you do.

See my post #13 on teachers and #9 on STEM graduates.

125,000 brand new foreign workers with work permits each month -- HERE'S THE PROOF

The sad fact is that our immigration system is not linked to our need for jobs. It brings in too many people (1.2 million legal permanent immigrants) and it doesn't bring in the skills we need to be competitive in the global ecomony. Despite a net loss of jobs during the decade ending in 2010, we brought in 13.9 million legal permanent immigrants, the highest in our history. And 57% of all immigrants, legal and illegal, are on at least one major welfare program.

Sad truth is that a generic education won’t land a job today.

The sad truth is that so many Americans are buying the propaganda that we need all these immigrants to do jobs Americans won't. Despite our failing K-12 education system, the most advanced country on earth should be able to produce the people we need to run our economy. I have no problem with "Einsteins" that can make major contributions to our nation, but the idea that we can't produce teachers to teach even English in our schools is just plain false.

[Jedidah]

Yep.

When my middle child decided to apply to a graduate engineering program, he was told by the head of the program not to worry about getting admitted. He is a caucasian American, and, as such, could be admitted under affirmative action guidelines as a minority.

True story.

Both here and abroad, foreigners are driving high-tech and getting the jobs because they aren’t afraid of hard work.

[muawiyah]

They have degrees in math. They have degrees in structural engineering (ever take a good look at the construction industry? ) They have degrees in mechanical engineering and design engineering.

They have degrees in Chemistry, Physics, Geology, Hydrocarbon Engineering, ~ there are millions of them unemployed at the moment.

Folks with degrees in psychology, general studies (aka business ~ Bwahahahaha), anthropoligy or Latin have jobs because they also went to graduate school to get the ENTRY LEVEL degree to those fields.

India and Pakistan combined have well over 100,000 unemployed graduate level engineers in a wide variety of fields. It's a world glut!

[muawiyah]

They also pay out of state tuition.

[Jedidah]

When it comes to H1Bs (not illegal hispanics), it’s not about jobs Americans WON’T do, it’s about jobs Americans CAN’T do, because they won’t get the education and skills necessary.

Hard truth.

[kabar]

How Record Immigration Levels Robbed American High-Tech Workers of $10 Trillion

[Jedidah]

Which is good.

[khelus]

I like the way Japan thinks.

Funny how supply and demand works in salaries.

CHANGE IN REAL STARTING SALARIES, 2001-2005

• Computer Engineering -12.0%
• Electrical Engineering -10.2%
• Psychology -9.3%
• Sociology -4.1%
• Computer Science -12.7%
• Marketing -6.5%
• Business Administration -5.7%
• Accounting -2.3%

According to a Georgetown University Study based upon data from the American Community Survey for the years 2009 and 2010, unemployment rates for new grads:

• Information systems 11.7%
• Mechanical engineering 8.6%
• General science 8.2%
• Biology 7.7%
• Computer science 7.4%
• Business 7.4%
• Chemistry 6.6%
• Healthcare 5.4%
• Education 5.4%

H-1B Visas Take American Jobs by Phyllis Schlafly

[muawiyah]

We shouldn’t think so.

[indthkr]

"And paying taxes."

So we should bring in more tech immigrants in a down economy so that we can generate more tax revenue?

Sure sounds like a crony capitalism argument to me. You must be one of Cornyn's bundlers.

[khelus]

... of course the other point is how much less these foreign students will work for

The major point is CHEAP LABOR.

[khelus]

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.

Yup. It's amazing the lies people will buy when accompanied with a hefty campaign contribution.

[kabar]

You don't know the truth. You are spouting the propaganda of the Left and the corporate elites. If there is truly a shortage of labor, then why are wages declining since 1969?

Trends: Reduced Earnings for Men in America

For the past century, a good job was a ticket to the middle class. Hitched to the locomotive of rapid economic growth, the wages of the typical worker seemed to go in only one direction: up. From 1950 to 1970, the average earnings of male workers increased by about 25 percent each decade. And these gains were not concentrated among some lucky few. Rather, earnings rose for most workers, and almost every prime-aged male (ages 25-64) worked.

Over the past 40 years, a period in which U.S. GDP per capita more than doubled after adjusting for inflation, the annual earnings of the median prime-aged male has actually fallen by 28 percent. Indeed, males at the middle of the wage distribution now earn about the same as their counterparts in the 1950s! This decline reflects both stagnant wages for men on the job, and the fact that, compared with 1969, three times as many men of working age don’t work at all.

Starting in the early 1970s, however, the median wage diverged from the average, and the median (adjusted for inflation) has been stagnant ever since. Even when men who work less than full time are excluded, the median wage has been going nowhere.

For some groups, the story is much worse. The earnings of the median male high-school dropout who works full time have declined by 38 percent, while the earnings of the median male with only a high-school degree have fallen by 26 percent.

Actually, even these numbers hide the depth of the decline, since they are based only on men who are working. But between 1960 and 2009, the share of men without any formal labor-market earnings rose from 6 percent to 18 percent. What’s more, the percentage of men working full time has decreased from 83 percent to 66 percent over the same period. According to the Census’ Current Population Survey, the largest contributors to rising nonemployment can be categorized, in order of importance, as “ill or disabled,” “unable to find work,” “retired,” “homemaker,” “in school” and “institutionalized” (mostly in prisons).

Surely, the most astonishing statistic to be gleaned from the trend data is the deterioration in the market outcomes for men with less than a high school education. The median earnings of all men in this category have declined by 66 percent [not a misprint]. At the same time, this group has experienced a 23 percentage point decline in the probability of having any labor-market earnings. Roughly 10 percentage points of the 23 percentage points is attributable to the fact that more men are reporting disabilities, even though work in physically demanding jobs has been declining for many decades. Men with just a high school diploma did only marginally better. Their wages declined by 47 percent and their participation in the labor force fell by 18 percentage points.

[Buckeye McFrog]

A couple of dirty little secrets though:

-The foreign H1B candidate often has his education fully or mostly paid for by his government back home. This gives him a leg-up on his domestic competition. There is a legendary story about a high-tech company here in town where a fistfight broke out when the American engineers learned that their H1B counterpart had gotten his Bachelors and Masters Degrees fully paid for in his home country. Meanwhile each of them was carrying $30-40K in student debt.

So this argument about H1B’s may well take us down the path of “college should be FREE”.

-Employers by and large have fallen hook, line and sinker for higher education industry propaganda that their people pop-out ready to go to work, with no training required. This has led American employers to be extremely reluctant to train employees on anything. In their view this is a cost that can be 100% shifted onto the higher education system. Ergo, lots of Americans who COULD do the job with proper training never get the chance.

Then there are the jobs which suck so bad only an H1B would take them (like teaching in combat zone schools)

[khelus]

And paying taxes.

The 'guest workers' frequently pay no or minimal taxes.

[khelus]

When it comes to H1Bs (not illegal hispanics), it’s not about jobs Americans WON’T do, it’s about jobs Americans CAN’T do, because they won’t get the education and skills necessary.

Hard truth.

Big Lie. Often as a condition of severance, trained proven Americans are forced to TRAIN their replacements. See post #31 link to 'H-1B Visas Take American Jobs by Phyllis Schlafly ' and read how it works.

Hospitals fire proven, experienced Nurses to hire foreign nurses at lower salaries, all the while shortage shouting. Then some poor souls go into debt to get degrees in nursing because there is a 'shortage' only to find hospitals won't hire them because they are 'inexperienced'. What a scam!

[kabar]

Give me a break with this anecdotal nonsense. Foreign workers are cheaper hence the decline in US wages. It is all about supply and demand. If we truly had a shortage of workers, wages would be increasing not decreasing.