Posted on 03/02/2015 6:17:09 AM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
(FULL TITLE) EXPOSED: American Companies, States Firing American Workers And Importing Foreign Guest Workers To Replace Them
Excerpted from News 10: Its nearly 8 p.m., and inside a state office building two dozen computer experts design and troubleshoot a system that will take and process millions of unemployment claims each year.
Its a $200 million Employment Development Department project, but with the exception of two managers, everyone inside the office is from outside of the U.S. They are employed by Deloitte, a major U.S. IT company hired by the state to create and manage its Unemployment Insurance Modernization project. The mostly Indian nationals are allowed to work here under a visa program called H-1B.
Tech companies like Microsoft, Intel, Google and Facebook say they need hundreds of thousands of foreign workers to fill jobs here because American colleges cant crank out computer science grads fast enough. In 2013, the industry lobbied Congress on the issue to the tune of almost $14 million.
Those companies, who need workers with highly specialized knowledge like computer expertise, are awarded the visas through a lottery process. Its allowed under the Immigration and Nationality Act and administered by the U.S. Department of Labor. The visas can be valid as long as six years.
News10 reached out to several H-1B workers over the past three months, and they all declined to comment for this story.
The program is going unfettered, unchecked, without bounds, and its all in the interest of profit, Computer Database Administrator Chris Brown said. He said was displaced by one of the special visa workers in 1996, and he has been following the issue for the past 18 years.
Hewlett Packard laid off Brown from its Roseville plant during the height of the H-1B program, when as many as 300,000 of the workers were allowed to take jobs in the U.S. The cap for H-1B visas today is 85,000 after federal audits showed there were abuses in the program. Theres an effort on Capitol Hill to raise the ceiling again to levels last seen in the mid 1990s. And, during a recent presidential trip to India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked President Obama to help loosen the restrictions on the H-1B program. Indias tech outsourcing industry makes billions of dollars every year sending programmers and engineers overseas to work for U.S. companies.
Brown is watching those new developments with interest. When he lost his job in 1996, it was just two weeks before Christmas. He says hes afraid more Americans will be replaced by foreign-born workers.
Im a single income, so on that particular day, as a direct result of this program, we were unable to provide Christmas presents and I kept telling my kids that day that Santa might not show up, Brown said.
A spokesperson for Hewlett Packard said he would not comment on layoffs that happened 18 years and three CEOs ago, but he defended the visas as a needed resource for HP and the industry as a whole.
U.S. Department of Labor data shows more than 1,100 H-1B visas were certified for workers in the Sacramento area in 2014. The largest number was for Accenture, an IT company that is currently holding state contracts totaling more than $1 billion. It has 125 H-1B visa holders in Sacramento. Deloitte has another 28, and there are four dozen of them filling positions in state offices in the Capital City. Keep reading
Horse manure....
You’re telling me that in all the decades of the ‘skilled labor shortage’ high tech IT companies did not have the ability to hook up with colleges around the country and create pipelines for students tailored to do that kind of work??
Wrong...they don’t want to. They want to import cheap labor. How can you possibly explain away firing American workers who were doing those jobs, and replacing them with cheap imports?
Those global companies that are successful tend to have, say, manufacturing in Brazil, customer service in India, etc.
And, yes, commodities work in global markets as well, except they tend to have higher shipment costs than the more intellectual product of highly skilled employees. We can not allow in more highly-skilled competition, but that means that companies based in less expensive markets will accelerate their gains on competitors in the US. (E.g., Indian and other Asian tech companies.)
Do you think the Apples of the US manufacture their products in the US? Not bringing in more high-skill labor simply means that type of company will offshore more of their engineering and other high-skill labor.
Go to China and promote your BS.
So you’re acknowledging that the whole ‘skilled labor shortage’ need for H1B visas is a lie?
The H1B visa is a about importing CHEAP labor to drive down labor costs. At least be honest.
Or, to keep down labor costs—I agree.
The alternative in a lot of cases, however, is exporting those jobs abroad, where costs are lower.
That’s the tradeoff.
So it’s okay to fire an American worker and replace him with a cheap import?
Old story, with even older solution. Solution is variant of W. Edwards Deming’s program that elevated Japan after WWII.
Impose an income sur-tax of 20%, 35%, 50% on wages that exceed 20x, 50x, 200x the lowest paid employee or sub-contractor involved in a business protected by U.S. patents, copyrights, or legal jurisdiction, regardless of location of employee.
There. Fixed it.
I’m stating the current dynamics.
As to whether it is morally okay or not? Well, I don’t think I’d want to limit the right of a business owner to set up an operation overseas or to hire overseas-based contractors.
Once that’s established, I think it’s kind of difficult to keep some business owners from wanting to move aspects of their operations to where it’s more cost effective.
Likewise, if I were an employer with a high-cost employee, but I realized I could hire someone to do the work for significantly less than that employee would accept, I wouldn’t want to be forced to keep the higher-cost employee.
The trouble with most job protectionism is that it can only be done at the violation of rights of others. And, those others tend to be employers, who are pretty useful when it comes to sustaining jobs.
NY, IL or CA can enforce ever greater costs and constraints on their employers—but they can’t stop them from up and moving to TX or FL, where the costs and regulations are lower.
How is that like what Deming did in Japan?
Not bringing in more high-skill labor simply means that type of company will offshore more of their engineering and other high-skill labor.
The point is that we are bringing in more high skilled labor than we need. We have a surplus. This depresses wages and costs Americans jobs. Our college graduates are saddled with huge loans and then must compete with imported foreign labor. We have just had the two largest decades of legal immigration in American history with over 27 million entering this country during the period 1990-2010. What impact has this had on our economy, social safety net, and the national debt? We see a widening wealth gap, stagnant wages, and the lowest labor participation rate in 37 years. Does anyone really think that you can import tens of millions of foreign workers and not have the impact it is having on the middle class? Or the erosion of the values of our Founders?
And in doing so you most likely throw away years of experience and have an employee with no knowledge of your business, your customers both internal and external, your applications and your environment. So that lower cost employee will spend years taking twice as long as the experienced employee to do the same amount of work. And by the time he/she has the experience then they're a high cost employee so you can fire them and start all over again.
What RINO - give names.
I appreciate clarity and truth above all else....
It’s good enough for me that you acknowledge that the ‘high tech labor shortage’ excuse for the drive for more H-1B imports is a lie.
Too bad so much of the corporatist elite are incapable of the same honesty.
In pursuit of "looking busy", they spend a lot of time invoking vendors for everything that they see when monitoring and don't understand (which is a lot). I've also seen nepotism in the ranks too (All in the family), regardless of ability...
Yup, a dream come true for Obama & company. Destroy the most amazing country in the world with a pen and a phone...
Or was it Clinton: "Stroke of the pen, law of the land!"
There is not right to Free Trade. Your rights and end at the waters edge.
I don’t remember reading that in the Constitution.
True, but the cost of labor cannot be the only factor. I suppose I could hire savages from the rainforest of Brazil cheaper than even Indians, but would they KNOW how to even do the job, let along bring value—and therefore, profitability—to my company?
So much hinges on that. I would contend that not everyone outsources or uses HB-1, because they simply do not see the value of it compared to the skill of their more highly paid employees.
All business is Darwinian—the survival of the fittest. That Congress is playing crony capitalism by either subsidizing or penalizing certain industries should be very troubling to a true Libertarian. Every country in the world, even the libertarian ones, have immigration laws, defend their borders, etc. To throw that all to the wind and let unbridled immigration would be a total disaster for that country, and frankly, this is what worries so much of us. Libertarians need to come up with a comprehensive immigration policy that does the least harm to their own citizens.
I would contend that Orrin Hatch, et al, know what they’re doing when it comes to promoting HB-1, which is raking in the contributions/lobbyist dollars, etc. It has very little to do with their sense of duty or wisdom on economic theory.
You have no right to Free trade with foreign nations. You have unassailable rights to free trade with other US States and territories of the United States.
Section. 8.The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States
To borrow Money on the credit of the United States
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes
To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures
Of all the universities in the US offering computer science programs there are not enough?
I’m more suspicious of something foul afoot.
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