[CanadianFella]

I think it's wise to maintain selfsufficiency in certain core industries and their skills unless we can successfully encourage every nation in the world to love us and wish us only good fortune forever.

How do you decide on what's a core industry. Is manufacturing shoes a core industry? After all, we wouldn't survive long in the winter without shoes, and we can't remain dependant on foreigners to manufacture them, can we?

The real reason for the opposition to H1B is that people seem to think they have a right to a job because of the color of their passport. They forget that jobs go to the best skilled at the best wage price the employer can find, American or not. Hiring H1Bs is good business, not "betrayal". If you can't compete with them for any reason, at least don't lie about why y'all go crying to Congress to get it to keep them out.

[posterkid]

The real reason for the opposition to H1B is that people seem to think they have a right to a job because of the color of their passport. They forget that jobs go to the best skilled at the best wage price the employer can find, American or not. Hiring H1Bs is good business, not "betrayal". If you can't compete with them for any reason, at least don't lie about why y'all go crying to Congress to get it to keep them out.

No, that is not the real reason at all. I've been employed in tech (as a Unix sysadmin, an DBA, a programmer, many things) since mid-1996. I've never lost a job due to an H1-B. The problem I have with it is that once these people are brought over here, they are slave labor. A company will hire them at low starting wages, and after that, they OWN that H1-B until they get their green card or get fired. I've seen many of them exploited by being made to work workweeks much longer than 60 hours. The company doesn't care if he burns out, he can just go back to India and they'll get another one.

Owning slaves IS good business.

The H1-B law is not meant to give jobs to the best skilled at the best wage price. The H1-B law is written to FILL A SHORTAGE THAT DOES NOT EXIST. There are tons of perfectly skilled out of work people in this industry. Of course, Canada and Mexico continue to benefit through our clueless adoption of NAFTA/GATT/WTO, so I'm not surprised you think we should keep bringing people in to undercut US citizens.

[William Terrell]

How do you decide on what's a core industry. Is manufacturing shoes a core industry? After all, we wouldn't survive long in the winter without shoes, and we can't remain dependant on foreigners to manufacture them, can we?

Shoes is a very good example. Also steel and a dozen others.

The real reason for the opposition to H1B is that people seem to think they have a right to a job because of the color of their passport. They forget that jobs go to the best skilled at the best wage price the employer can find, American or not. Hiring H1Bs is good business, not "betrayal". If you can't compete with them for any reason, at least don't lie about why y'all go crying to Congress to get it to keep them out.

Americans have every right to first consideration for a job in their own country whether they have a passport or not. And we'll go demanding, not "crying", to Congress to keep it that way. Because it's our Congress, get it?

Are you an American?