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 ...
I spoke to some engineering manager for Intel I met over the weekend. He said that hiring someone on an H1B1 visa actually costs the company $100,000 per hire because of all the legal expenses and that they would prefer to hire domestically, but there aren’t enough domestic applicants. I don’t know if it’s true, but that’s what he said, and he is involved in hiring engineers.
Over the previous year, the United States lost 19,740 computer jobs, 107,200 engineering jobs, and 243,870 science jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In spite of massive job losses, industry has managed to use up the entire quota of H-1B visas, most of which went to foreign workers in these fields. It is likely over 100,000 H-1B visas were given out this year.
In most of America, these grim figures would end any debate on the need to import more cheap foreign labor. In a Washington that is completely beholden to lobbyists and industry campaign cash, they find ways to look the other way. As GOP Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia says, “This [H-1B] is a very important issue for the high-tech executives who give the money.”
D.C. is filled with mills that produce bogus studies to provide Congress with rose-colored glasses that deprive reality. Some studies spin H-1B workers as “entrepreneurs.” Others make absurd job claims, such as that each H-1B worker creates six additional jobs (Do the math here: With around 100,000 H-1B visas a year, that would make H-1B the single largest job creation factor in the economy.)
In fact, the opposite is true. The largest users of H-1B visas are foreign offshoring companies. They use H-1B visas to provide on-site support for projected moved to other countries. In that model, each H-1B worker here is a proxy for even more jobs lost.
In spite of a long parade of damning audits on the H-1B program, Congress has done nothing to clean up the mess. Deliberate loopholes in the law allow employers to replace Americans with lower-paid H-1B workers. Working in the computer industry, I have witnessed employers openly replacing hundreds of Americans with cheaper worker on H-1B visas.
H-1B supporters rarely forget to remind the public that the statute requires H-1B workers to be paid “the prevailing wage.” They invariably forget that, 20,000 words later, the statute redefines the term “prevailing wage” in such a manner that an employer can legally pay a software engineer in Edison, N.J., $34,133 a year less than the median wage.
How is it possible that Americans can be fired in their own country, be replaced with foreign workers, and Congress does nothing for decades? H-1Bs, bailouts to Wall Street, and subsidies to politically connected business are all symptoms of the same problem: a government that is controlled by special interests that are antithetical to those of the American people.
kabar, I agree with you. So should I have my kids study math and science and major in engineering anyway?
Your conclusions come from news and internet reports which may be perfectly valid.
My conclusions come from first-hand observations of my recently-graduated children and their large pool of friends. Purely anecdotal, but valid.
Two have recently been in the job market. No problems whatsoever finding high-paying jobs. Their friends? Depends entirely on what they studied and what their hard skills are. Many are living at home.
As for teachers, this is a big country, and I am not at all familiar with the public school system in Maryland, although the Philippine option seems boneheaded. However, our schools are in a much different situation than a decade ago when that program started. Obviously time for it to end.
Bottom line is that our home-grown labor force is falling behind. When you have half the country supporting socialism, is anyone surprised?
It is a national disgrace; any jobs that can’t be sent overseas will have the overseas workers brought here instead.
The United States no longer exists as a geopolitical entity; it exists as a business.
Americans always did those jobs, and they received combat pay to sweeten the deal in the worst areas.
“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.”
They are stealing jobs by doing them for less; the lack of response from home-grown talent is because the wages have been suppressed while job demands ratcheted up.
“The simple and sad fact is that not enough US citizens are willing to do the very tough work to learn high-tech skills.”
They did it already years ago, and were rewarded with threats by tech firms that if they couldn’t replace them with Asian imports then the tech firms would simply move operations overseas. Any time a skill is in such demand that the American workers can actually bargain from strength for salaries, wheels are turning to eliminate them from the equation. It has now spread into Accounting and other white-collar areas.
YES, it’s true.
YES, encourage your kids to study science and engineering if they’re good students.
Contrary to some of what you’re reading on this thread, there is a great demand for highly skilled tech workers on American soil. Not every job can be or is being exported.
One of my kids was recently caught in a company layoff, the company involved in an industry that Washington is crippling. He had multiple job offers, no trouble at all finding good work. He’s an engineer. Tell your kids to go for it. That engineering education will serve them well, even if they go into other fields. The critical and analytical thinking is attractive across industries.
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Younger Americans shy away from tech because they watched what happend to those 40 and 50 year-olds that went into it. Many of the Americans that built the information superhighway were its first victims; they built the road on which their work could be sent to Asia.
My conclusions come from real data collected and analyzed by qualified people. Much of it comes from USG census data and the BLS.
My conclusions come from first-hand observations of my recently-graduated children and their large pool of friends. Purely anecdotal, but valid.
Purely anecdotal but valid? LOL. Are you serious? What kind of sophistry is that? Have you ever taken a course in statistics? I provided you with the links if you really want to become informed about the subject. I work on these issues fulltime including lobbying on the Hill and in Richmond.
“Both here and abroad, foreigners are driving high-tech and getting the jobs because they aren’t afraid of hard work.”
Americans built in 200 years what these cultures haven’t accomplished in 4000; Americans will do the hardest work, but expect compensation beyond a straw hut and using a pee-filled river as a bathtub.
Your “propaganda of the left” jab is not worthy of a good FReeper. There is no reason to hurl insults just because I have experience different from yours, and because I speak from personal experience instead of theory and internet links like you do.
I tell the truth as I see it. I would hope you do, too. The main difference between us is that I am polite about it.
You sound sadly bitter.
“He said that hiring someone on an H1B1 visa actually costs the company $100,000 per hire because of all the legal expenses and that they would prefer to hire domestically, but there aren’t enough domestic applicants.”
I’ve heard the same nonsense from one of the largest accounting firms; they were importing foreigners when there is absolutely no shortage of accounting majors here in the US. They got to pay them less, and work them 7 days a week while they were sponsored - that is why they preferred them to Americans.
Complete utter garbage!
I work in an industry where we had to stop doing telephone interviews because we found out the H1Ber’s from India where paying other people (who actually knew engineering) to do the telephone interview for them. Then we paid to bring them over and guess what? They guy we hired wasn’t even the same guy as the one we interviewed.
H1Ber’s have ZERO ethics and will LIE, CHEAT and STEAL to get these jobs.
As an American I’m tired of:
1. Having my salary frozen because an H1Ber will claim to be capable of doing my same job at half the salary.
2. Seeing companies claim they can’t find an American when their job postings are put on exclusively H1B job search sites. They won’t even interview an American.
3. Spending my day doing my job, then spending my evenings correcting the mistakes the completely clueless H1Bers make.
4. I’m sick of it!!! I was once put in charge of 3 H1Bers because a project that should have taken 6 weeks was dragging on into it’s 18th MONTH. These guys couldn’t even speak English clearly. I had to spell out what they needed to do A-Z, and if I was vague during any step they would just skip that step.
5. Then when there are layoff’s the Americans are the first to get let go.
END THE H1B PROGRAM TODAY!!!!
Good idea. End the H1B program.
But you but you better find some Americans qualified to do those jobs before you do. And good luck.
Accountants in my family and several friends. All Americans.
Great job security. Accountants are always in demand.
What you don’t seem to understand is that most of them work 7 days a week, at least in their busy periods. No rest for the weary in that profession, especially in the big accounting firms. Few 40-hr. work weeks.
So your H1B accountants were just being treated like Americans.
At least, in these days of remote computing, some of the work can be done from home evenings and weekends.
No Jedidah, I don’t have to find someone qualified to do those jobs, because the H1Ber’s aren’t qualified and they have the jobs now.
You give me any American who passed High School Algebra, Advanced High School Geometry etc. and is willing to learn. I will train that person on the job my damn self and in 6-18months they will be a better engineer than 99% of the H1B “engineering” imposters out there.
The difference between Americans and these Asians are that we don’t have any problem thinking for our self. We don’t have any problem being given a starting point and the desired end state and having the creativity to fill in all the intermediate steps. Maybe it is a cultural difference, maybe it is just that the H1Bers are all Liars and Cheats. I don’t know.
But I will say this; the Republican party better pull it’s head out of its ass and end this H1B scam.
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