thank you... i seen it done by the Ch'ins.
Posted on 03/31/2007 12:18:16 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Tech companies have been scrambling for months to finish government forms and beat what may be their most intense postmark pressure of the year. It's not the April 17 tax deadline, but the April 2 start of the window to apply for coveted - and contentious - H-1B worker visas.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency will process petitions for specially-skilled foreign workers on a first-come, first-served basis starting Monday. There are 85,000 visas available for the 2008 fiscal year, of which 20,000 are set aside for workers who hold a U.S. master's or doctorate degree. There are additional visas available for workers in higher education, nonprofits and government research. Last year the cap was reached in June.
Hewlett-Packard mailed its applications Friday.
"Having worked for several months to identify workers for whom we'll need to secure H-1B status, we are as prepared as we can be," said Leslie Nicolett, HP's immigration policy manager, in a statement.
Silicon Valley companies have lobbied Congress to increase the number of H-1B visas doled out each year, arguing their innovative edge is at risk when they're unable to fill job openings.
However, unemployed tech workers and grassroots organizations assert there are enough talented American workers ready to fill those slots - but they're not willing to accept the lower wages that companies can pay immigrants.
"The PR people are preying on Americans'
fear," said Norman Matloff, a professor of computer science at the University of California at Davis who's critical of H-1B visas, speaking of the tech industry's purported concern about the loss of innovation. "Just like we lost the electronics and manufacturing industries, the fear is we'll lose the tech industry as well." The Immigration Act of 1990 set the H-1B visa cap at 65,000 to help U.S. employers hire skilled foreign workers while protecting employment prospects for Americans. Applications first bumped against that limit in 1997 due to "the buregoning technology sector," according to agency spokeswoman Sharon Rummery. The cap was raised during the tech boom and bust years, but fell back to 65,000 in 2004.
The government does not release data on how many H-1B visas individual companies receive, and Silicon Valley's major tech companies declined to disclose how many they want or obtained. But several Web sites have posted lists showing Intel, Oracle and Cisco Systems among the top 20 sponsors of H-1B visas in recent years.
Intel and Oracle couldn't find spokespeople to comment Friday. Cisco spokeswoman Robyn Jenkins-Blum said in an email that the company's position "is to recruit and hire the best and most qualified individual for the position."
But Gene Nelson, an unemployed 55-year-old veteran of the information technology industry, said because of H-1B visas, "We're just not getting a crack at the these jobs."
Nelson holds a doctorate degree in biophysics. His most recent stint of employment, which ended in December, was as a seasonal worker at a winery, where he earned $12 an hour.
"The bottom line is these are good American jobs that aren't going to Americans," he said.
But tech companies say some of their specialized positions can't be filled by any American worker with the right degree and technical skills.
And the "insufficient number of visas" creates problems when a company can't hire even a handful of workers, said Lowell Sachs, Sun Microsystems' senior manager for federal government affairs. "You're going to start losing your edge compared to competition."
As a result, Sun pushes managers to anticipate more than a year in advance who they'll want to hire.
"That's not great for a company to do," Sachs said. "There are always new developments coming up that you need to be able to jump on top of quickly."
thank you... i seen it done by the Ch'ins.
Man, I don't know who is worse, the Democrats or Republicans, however, these guys are going to kill us all, the Democrats with the politically correct views and lax immigration, or the Republicans in their thirst for cheap labor and lax immigration.
"However, it is inevitable that disgruntled engineers and techies will complain about their plight, because someone will undercut their wages, and they want the government to "protect" their jobs here."
Actually, it's the government who's meddling in the job market on behalf of corporations by allowing that sector to be saturated with H1B visa workers.
I prefer the free market/capitalist approach without government intervention where corporations would be forced to hire from the pool of American workers, and forced to offer Americans a decent wage and jobs would be plentiful.
Instead, we have the government saturating the IT job market with an excessive amount of H1B visa workers, the type of government meddling that really amounts to government/corporate facism.
Actually, they won't.
Why do you think so?
The more work authorizations and SSNs issued, the more income tax and FICA tax is paid into the system.
That's the US Government perspective.
FICA is capped at about 1st $80,000 of pay. Take one PhD who may earn $120,000 in salary and grant supplements. $40,000 of that pay is exempt from FICA. Replace that PhD with 2 H1B PhDs at $60,000 each and the full $120,000 is subject to FICA.
Here's the employer perspective:
Empoyer gets two for one but on the downside must match FICA on the full $120,000 rather than the $80,000. Other positives to employers are H1Bs will work extra hours, will not be inclined to invoke civil rights benefits (e.g. FMLA), do not incur pension liability, and will not generally enter union membership.
As far as other immigration policies of other countries, EU is much more protectionist.
Sort of like unions "protecting" teacher's jobs?
Employers assume if you'll work cheap, you're not any good.
If you ask for what you're actually worth, they "can't afford" you.
It took THREE H1-B's to replace me on my last job...
Of course you are. It doesn't affect you. ~ Glenn
Yaaaaaaaaa know? I keep hearing that we have a teacher shortage...
>>However, it is inevitable that disgruntled engineers and techies will complain about their plight, because someone will undercut their wages, and they want the government to "protect" their jobs here. (Of course, such protectionism would not work, since employers will respond by simply hiring foreigners over there rather than here.)<<
Even if US citizen engineers are willing to work at about the same wage as aliens, in many cases the employer will not even ask the US citizen about the salary, because:
1) Many employers won't admit it, but they do not want to hire older workers.
2) Some employers assume that US citizens are too expensive, so they don't bother to ask.
I do not advocate protectionism, and I know that some companies do hire older workers, and are willing to train them a little when necessary (for example, a programmer with 20 years experience in operating system internals would be able to learn Java pretty quickly, and would have an excellent overall feel for how everything works). I am not sure what the government should do, but I wish some companies would think about this, both for their own sakes and the stake of their country.
You've spoken truth there. My new boss, who just turned 40, has said openly (5 times and counting) that he wants "young smart guys" to fill our 30 openings. I turned 54 this year and have been put so far out to pasture I can't see the barn. A couple of the more irritated guys in the department are talking to lawyers. I won't do that because the pay is good even if I'm not invited to work on prime projects these days.
LOL
More like you've been repeating your strawman arguments so often you've begun to believe them yourself.
Every H1B is an indentured servant. They can't change jobs, they can't quit, and they can't say 'no' to anything their boss says, or they're shipped home.
Over and above the many other reasons this program needs to end, this tops everything. End slavery (again) now.
>>but they do not want to hire older workers
You've spoken truth there. My new boss, who just turned 40, has said openly (5 times and counting) that he wants "young smart guys" to fill our 30 openings. I turned 54 this year and have been put so far out to pasture I can't see the barn. A couple of the more irritated guys in the department are talking to lawyers. I won't do that because the pay is good even if I'm not invited to work on prime projects these days.<<
I am retired now, but I, my wife, and kids had a rough time for a while. I had 18 years experience in kernel drivers, file systems, networks protocols, debugging, etc. I remember some very bizarre phone interviews. In one, the interviewer asked for an example of my work, and I told him how I had converted a network protocol driver, which was directly related to the position in question, from Intel assembler to C. I found out after the interview that he said something like he didn't believe I was a programmer.
Strangely, I finally got a job at Apple Computer in California. Needless to say, I was one of the few "right-wingers" there, but they treated me OK. Apple does hire some foreign workers, but the great majority are from here, and I did not see any age discrimination there.
I wish you good luck, and pray that Bill Gates and his kind will learn that older US citizens can do good work, and are not necessarily so expensive.
Actually, I have been very active in helping get H1B visas for foreigners in my field of work. (I'm not a classroom teacher anymore.)
I rarely allow rational self-interest to get in the way of my philosophy. (I know, I'm a freak.)
That's neither free market nor capitalist, and it requires quite a bit of government intervention to achieve the ends you desire.
I'm the first in line to beg the legislature to end their iron grip on the education system. Allow schools to get rid of bad teachers (and how on earth anyone could be against that is beyond me), and you automatically fix 2-3 of the biggest problems in our education system (increase avg teacher performance, increase public trust in the system, and increase employee motivation).
There are a lot of Americans who are qualified and out of work and looking. This is wrong. It's the goverment's gift to big business. How about giving a gift to ordinary people?
The "real solution" is one that is not iron-clad and "guaranteed to work". It's cultural. When we, at our own behest, stop buying products from companies who get a reputation for laying off "too many" citizens in favor of foreign labor, then the system sorts itself out, and we get the ends we desire... no government intrusion is needed.
Sadly, few Americans are even able to grasp such concepts as Adam Smith's invisible hand, and fewer still have the ability of implement it in their own lives.
I'm not saying I'm one of 'em, either, but I try. It's been 3 years since my last stop at the local CITGO, and really sweated out running out of gas on a cross-country trip earlier this year because of it. No French products, either... but as for domestic products... well... =^/
May I ask exactly what your job functions were?
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