Posted on 02/02/2013 5:05:18 PM PST by Javeth
WASHINGTON — A bipartisan Senate plan to dramatically expand a visa program for highly skilled foreign workers resembles a proposal unveiled by Microsoft last fall, but well exceeds the company’s own goals.
Led by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, five Republicans and five Democrats rolled out the Immigration Innovation Act on Tuesday to lift the annual quota of H-1B visas for those workers from 65,000 to 115,000. That new cap would grow each year if demand outstrips supply, potentially up to 300,000 visas annually.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.com ...
I swear there are times when I’m seriously suspecting that the day of revolution really is only months away, when our elected “leaders” could be so mind-numbingly idiotic and clueless to even consider something like this. This is why I’ve never trusted the neocons or big business whiners like Bill Gates (let alone George Soros) as conservative allies- they have only their immediate gratification in mind, and are willing to screw over the vast majority of heartland Americans and our communities in the process. They want to cry us a river that it’s so “unfair” that they can’t hire slave labor from India to push US wages down to Calcutta levels and send USA engineers out of work. But no, they’d never want to move to Calcutta themselves, they want to take advantage of all the legal and other First-World protections of the United States while pretending they can pay Calcutta wages for the privilege, and have PhD engineers cramming into a filthy mud hut for the privilege of slaving away for them.
The thing is, revolutions (the ones full of blood and fire, not the pacifistic, nonviolent kind) historically have come about when people have nothing left to lose, and sense the government is in cahoots with privileged cronies and elites, squarely against the interests of the common man and woman. If the sentiments of my conservative friends and neighbors are any indication- generally the types of unflappable people who otherwise don’t pay much attention to our country’s three-ring circus of political stupidity- then the day of angry revolution really may be drawing very near. Maybe that’s why Congress is so desperate to pass a bill to seize our guns as soon as possible, since they know what’s waiting.
That’s also why we have to mobilize and get mean, to launch an even more powerful Tea Party movement than the one in 2010- maybe the RINO’s and sellouts can ignore us if we stay docile, but when we make their traitorous little lives rough, they start to listen. So light up those switchboards in Congress like in 2006 and 2007 against the H1-B stupidity, call your representatives’ offices and get forceful, send them mail and email, flood the newspapers with op-eds and letters, get your voice heard on talk radio and in public at council meetings and townhalls. When we play rough and show we mean business, they’ll listen.
In the process, perhaps the GOP could finally buy a clue and stop this moronic H1-B visa bill, as well as any other immigration bill from ever reaching Obama’s desk. If they manage to stop these bills and finally manage to act, oh, like a true conservative party, then they’ll be rewarded with massive gains in the House, Senate, statehouses and legislatures and city councils in 2014. Gains that would dwarf even 2010. But that would require the Republican Party to actually be smart and listen to the conservative base for once. We’ll see.
Clinton did something similar. Right when the Clinton Defense Cuts were causing massive layoffs in Southern California and Seattle and other places, suddenly there were boatloads of Russians and Eastern Europeans looking for engineering work at $60,000/year, depressng the engineering job market and making jobs scarce.
Yeah, we have such a labor shortage in this booming economy that we need more H-1B visas.
Plenty of home grown talent tho’ many might be older. I was let go at the same time as they were renewing H1-B visas for two people in our group. P!ssed me off !
It saddens me to see this fight going on. I would definitely question Bill Gates’ motives when he asks for more H1-B types to be let in. What about the guy who invented the A-Bomb? The key to solar energy improvement will be found in some young man’s garage-just like the mac. Can we manage this fine line? Politics will get in the way. 30% of AL immigrants must return to the old country like they did 100 years ago-they couldn’t hack it. That means cutting off welfare benefits for EVERYONE.
The ends times must be upon us, I don't care what happens to this place anymore.
And I'm half serious.
Maybe I’m just a wanna-be RINO. I do know this: there was no immigration problem with Mexico in the 1st half of the last century and the borders were open. No welfare
For those that support these faulty programs, they see it as a shortage of people in captive employment. In addition, people dont end up becoming productive citizens - as it would remove their captive status. That and it doesnt help that the guest workers are held to a much lower standard of competence(where they just give quick-and-dirty OJT) than the people being replaced(who are seen as “too free”).
A good way to deal with it is to end every single guest worker program. Then follow up with strict enforcement of what we have on the books. This is a problem that must be taken care of at both ends whether skilled(guest worker fraud) or not(illegals).
Back in ‘11 I saw an ad for what looked to be a person to test the software that lives in GPS receivers, a non-trivial task.
The position was in the Los Angeles area, probably near Anaheim.
The listed rate (contract, no benefits) was $33 per hour.
That’s not even new-grad pay, and new grads couldn’t do that job.
The proper rate for that job should have been at least twice what was quoted.
They clearly had some Indian lined-up, and were just going through the ritual of proving “there are no Americans available for the job”, so they could get him an H1B visa and stick three or four more like him in a one-bedroom apartment.
What is wrong with this bill? I have seen worse. Any shift away from family centered immigration toward skill centered immigration seems good.
Many people want protectionism for their relatively low-valued tech skills. This will help to ensure that those protection-seeking Americans aren’t getting paid more than they should be getting paid.
“What is wrong with this bill?”
Even if the H1B1 visa workers were paid the same amount, they aren’t subject to Social Security Taxes like Americans, which means that the companies are saving on SS matching contributions of about 7.65% per worker right off the bat, in addition to depressing wages by artificially increasing the supply of labor.
Wrong - they pay SS taxes. And they only receive the benefits if they get a green card.
“Artificially increasing the supply of labor” - what a joke.
“Many people want protectionism for their relatively low-valued tech skills.”
They only become low value when the government acts as an employment agency for corporate whiners, instead of letting the marketplace determine value.
H1B bump for later....
Yeah that happened to one of my best pals from college too, 25 years in the industry sweating 60-hour weeks, then he was laid off just as the H-1B’s were brought on-board and the rest of their positions were outsourced to Bangalore. Then in the ultimate insult, he had to train his own rude, arrogant replacements shipped straight in from Mumbai and a couple other cities. The one bit of satisfaction about it is that he got his revenge, striking at the backstabber firm wherever possible as word spread to boycott whatever they put out- a good thing anyway since the H-1B hires from India and Pakistan couldn’t code their way out of a soggy paper bag. This ruined whatever they put out, which practically any stupid outsourcing company is finding out these days. In this case, the price for this short-sightedness was especially harsh: the company wound up declaring bankruptcy.
That’s what it takes when up against this corruption, especially when you’ve gotta keep the roof over the kids’ heads back home- hardball and getting nasty. The most successful anti-H1B efforts thus far have somehow found a way to boycott anyone doing business with Wipro and Infosys and the other bodyshops out of India, including at one point smothering Microsoft itself when a whole town went to Linux and sent the business in that direction for its neighbors. I guess the supporting expertise for Linux and the software ports are good enough that for once, that’s a realistic option on a mass scale.
Yep, exactly.
ASME (Mechanical Engineer) magazine has an article in this month’s edition about the need to fill the engineering / science / technology / math pipeline. It pushes for further recruitment of women and minorities, outreach, etc.
No where does it address the issue that kids don’t want to go to college for a hard degree that is likely to be outsourced to an HB-1 visa holder here OR the work shipped to India after Americans invent it.
We have the best government money can buy.
It’s not just high-skill professionals. H1-Bs filter all the way down to meat-packers in small towns in Iowa.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.