Posted on 05/13/2014 7:09:15 PM PDT by Whenifhow
A major business group said Monday that U.S. manufacturers are hoping an immigration bill will let them give hundreds of thousands of jobs to foreign workers.
Jay Timmons, the president and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers, said he believes an immigration bill will pass near the end of this year. He said creating some pathway to citizenship for non-legal residents is “absolutely essential” for manufacturers to help bring skilled workers to the United States.
“There are 600,000 jobs in manufacturing that are going unfilled today. This immigration bill can go a long way toward helping us fill those positions,” Timmons said. (See video here.)
Timmons’ comments put the National Association of Manufacturers at odds with many Republicans in the House and Senate who are worried that a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants would only reward their illegal residency, and make it harder for U.S. citizens to find jobs.
But the organization seems to hold a position that’s consistent with that of the Obama administration. Just last week, the administration announced it would grant work authorization to 100,000 spouses of skilled non-U.S. workers, which Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said would only take jobs away from the millions of U.S. workers who need a job.
Timmons spoke on the same panel with U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Thomas Donohue, who said he is “optimistic” that an immigration bill could be done this year. He suggested that the House should take up the Senate-passed bill.
“I do believe that we’re absolutely crazy if we don’t take advantage of having passed an immigration bill out of the Senate… and do something rational in the House, and put it together and let’s get the three or four things we really need there,” he said.
Donohue said the Chamber would be pressuring members to pass a bill later this year, and warned that Republicans would stumble in the 2016 presidential election in 2016 if they don’t pass something.
“If Republicans don’t do it they shouldn’t bother to run candidate in 2016,” he said.
As to those business owners who claim they can't find any competent and qualified citizen welders even though “offering high pay for the area yadayadayada” lies excuse, I say LIARS ALL!
What “they” all can't get in this country, are skilled and unskilled laborers, willing to work for next to nothing, for jerks who think owning and growing a business is the same as making a few quick lucky bucks at a casino, and then selling it off for a few more quick bucks.
I am 100% against the outdated and currently useless to society concept of pretending Chamber of Commerce membership is worth the annual dues.
These immigrants, a lot of them illegal, will probably average a 7th grade education. Is that really what U.S. manufacturers want? A workforce made up of functional illiterates?
You're right that Steve Jobs said those tech jobs would never return to the U.S. What you left out of this was his explanation for this: Companies like Apple are selling more of their products in Asia than they are in the U.S.
What he was saying was that these jobs wouldn't be coming back to the U.S. even if labor costs were lower in the U.S. than they were in Asia. That's because it makes no sense for any industry to manufacture products in the U.S. if 75% of them are being sold in Asia. Saving a dime per unit on manufacturing labor costs doesn't really save you any money if you have to make up for it with two dimes of additional transportation and warehousing costs to ship your products somewhere else.
” Applicants have to pass a spelling test, correct the grammar and sentence structure in a simple paragraph, do simple math equations involving percentages without a calculator and be able to look at a listing of numbers and determine if the answer is reasonable or not.”
You need to go talk to your local school system administrators. Algebra is no longer taught in public schools in Ga . Calculators are given to 2nd graders to “learn math”. Spell check and texting have replaced sentence structure and spelling.
This all happened because our business schools told industry to create nothing but pushbutton jobs that require no skill or training. I heard nothing but this push from several professors at one of the largest business schools in the country 25 years ago.
Guess what, it worked! What these profs will tell you is to develop your business model around totally unskilled labor, if not, you are chasing an out dated model.
If a business wants a particular skill set, they now have to pay to develop that in their own labor force. OJT is what it was called back in the day.
How many American citizens have YOU hired in the last five years?
The U.S. isn't losing its competitive edge to Asia because labor is cheaper there. It's losing to Asia because there are more CUSTOMERS there.
Think about that figure for a second. There are more people living inside that circle than in Europe, Africa, North and South America, and almost all of Russia and the Middle East -- COMBINED!
To speak to Tom Donohue or Jay Timmons, please press 2 for English . . .
PING!
OJT is what it was called back in the day.”
I understand about OJT and a certain part of it is necessary in every industry and office situation. But I will not teach spelling, grammar and basic math to new employees nor was it taught in any company where I was ever employed.
Fortunately for my grandsons they attended private schools which insisted on math with no calculators and they learned to spell without spell check. I am fondly called the “queen of grammar”. Development of basic skills in all areas was also incorporated into their homework which has always been overseen and checked by their parents.
What I have found most interesting is that the best candidates for employment generally are Asian and all applicants from this source thus far have attended public schools. Perhaps having parents involved in the educational process and the push for excellence is one of the big differences.
The Chamber of Commerce amnesty agenda is for the shortest of short terms and they or their rank and file members don’t seem to see that ...
HOW LONG DO YOU THINK IMMIGRANT (cough, cough) WORKERS WILL CONTINUE TO WORK CHEAP ONCE THEY GET AMNESTY?
Except how many unemployed Americans go to the trouble of learning how to program in order to get a job in IT? If we really had latent, motivatedvtalent just waiting for employment there, they could teach themselves some skills and get a six-figure job in technology.
That’s actually not true—here’s some data on iPhone shipments worldwide—and it doesn’t make sense. Even if there were more iPhones sold in Asia, if it were cheaper to make them here, it’d be cheaper to make those destined for the US market here as well.
Here’s the answer on welding jobs: US manufacturers need to develop apprenticeship and training programs like they have in Germany, where skilled labor isn’t an issue:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303665904577452521454725242
Algebra isn’t taught in public schools in GA?
These people are coming to me with DNS questions (that's largely my baliwick at the moment) that are just insanely stupid. Stuff like "I can't ping foosystema, is DNS for this system broken?". Yet the screenshot (it's always an actual image, rather than just a cut/paste of the text - which is another issue), clearly shows the ping command resolves, because it prints the IP that it's attempting to ping. They have no idea about ports, firewalls, or anything, yet I'm sure they are being paid decent money for their alleged 'skills' whatever they are. It's like they are getting dumber and dumber.
This post probably belongs in a tech thread, but it's just been really annoying me the past few weeks.
Bump for later.
Cause we’ve only got what, 80 million out of work here already?
This is simply a ploy to keep wages at pathetic levels..
Our young can’t apprentice at a craft. They are occupied for four to eight years running after University paper spending their credit to provide a welfare system for acedemics.
Actually, it's not. The focus in this article has been on reforming immigration as a way to increase the supply of labor, but the real issue for U.S. companies is that they want these new immigrants because they need them as customers.
What's interesting about the European model is that those apprenticeship programs tend to begin at a very early age. I suspect U.S. employers will face a lot of resistance from the higher education industry/cartel here, which insists that every American child should be destined for a college education and multiple master's degrees.
Ok they aren’t liars. They are incompetent.
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