Posted on 01/03/2003 10:36:55 AM PST by AppyPappy
Current Problem: The H-1B program is completely disconnected from the realities of the U.S. labor market. While spot shortages in certain professional occupations may exist from time to time, H-1B fails to address these specific needs. Instead the program floods the marketplace with the potential of 200,000 or more professional guest workers each year. It is estimated that there may be as many as a half million H-1Bs in the U.S. today.
Government Studies: "The program does not currently protect U.S. workers' jobs; instead, it allows aliens to immigrate based on their attachment to a specific job and then shop their services in competition with equally or more qualified U.S. workers without regard to prevailing wage." [1]
"DOL's Permanent Labor Certification Program does not meet its intent of excluding foreign workers when qualified, willing U.S. workers are available Despite a costly, time-consuming recruitment process, the required labor market test did not result in the hiring of U.S. workers over foreign labor." [1]
"..the current size of the H-1B workforce relative to the overall number of IT professionals is large enough to keep wages from rising as fast as might be expected in a tight labor market (there is) no analytical basis on which to set the proper level of H-1B visas, and that decisions to reduce or increase the cap on such visas are fundamentally political." [5]
Possible Reforms:
(Excerpt) Read more at techsunite.org ...
Well, here we have it: The Law of Unintended Consequences. Anyone else notice how con-gress issues an edict, and the law school minions employed by the regulating agencies write the stuff that exemplifies TLUC?
OK, but why 195,000 instead of 65,000?
Why not allow entire software companies to "immigrate" from overseas to the US?
Why not move yourself and your company to where the "right" people are and become a citizen in India, Romania, Brasil, or Viet Nam?
Would you support a visa program to allow mass immigration for foreign business administrators to alleviate the tight talent pool of "Chief" anything?
Class | Initial Stay | Extension of Stay |
---|---|---|
E-1 | Two (2) years | Up to 2 years per extension. No maximum number of extensions, with some exceptions. |
E-2 | Two (2) years | Up to 2 years per extension. No maximum number of extensions, with some exceptions. |
H-1B1 | Up to 3 years | Increment of up to 3 years. Total stay limited to 6 years. |
H-1B2 | Up to 3 years | Increment of up to 3 years. Total stay limited to 6 years, with some exceptions. |
H-1C | Up to 3 years | Total stay limited to 3 years. |
H-2A and H-2B | Same as validity of labor certification, with maximum of 1 year. | Same as validity of labor certification (increments of up to 1 year). Total stay limited to 3 years. |
H-3 | Special Education Training-up to 18 months. Other Trainee-up to 2 years |
Special Education Trainee-total stay limited to 18 months. Other Trainee-total stay limited to 2 years. |
L-1A | Coming to existing office-up to 3 years. Coming to new office-up to 1 year. |
Increments of up to 2 years. Total stay limited to 7 years. |
L-1B | Coming to existing office-up to 3 years. Coming to new office-up to 1 year |
One increment of up to 2 years. Total stay limited to 5 years. |
O-1 and O-2 | Up to 3 years | Increments of up to 1 year |
P-1, P-2, P-3 and their support personnel | Individual athlete-up to 5 years. Athletic groups and Entertainment groups-up to 1 year. |
Individual athlete-Increments of up to 5 years. Total stay limited to 10 years. Athletic groups and entertainment groups-Increments of 1 year. |
Q-1 | Up to 15 months. | Total stay limited to 15 months |
(Note: definition of each class of visa should display once only per chart) | ||
R-1 and R-2 | Up to 3 years | Increments of up to 2 years. Total stay limited to 5 years. |
All other | Up to 1 year | Increments of up to 1 year |
Why not move yourself and your company to where the "right" people are and become a citizen in India, Romania, Brasil, or Viet Nam? Romania is beatiful, and I could live like a feudal barron. Something tells me you would not want me and my money leaving the U.S., or do you think I should not be allowed to take my money?
Would you support a visa program to allow mass immigration for foreign business administrators to alleviate the tight talent pool of "Chief" anything? My last boss was Swedish, here on an H1-B visa. I have competed globally for 15 years. What do you think is going to happen in the future? If you are not the best, you are toast. Doesn't matter what color you are, or what you worship. It is our choice to remain competitive, or we could devolve into a whining, impoverished bomb-throwing rabble, like the Arabs.
In my line of business, this is the difference between life and death, not just economics.
Romania is beatiful, and I could live like a feudal barron. Something tells me you would not want me and my money leaving the U.S., or do you think I should not be allowed to take my money?
Keep your money, I'm assuming you earned it. My point is not that you should leave, but that you chose to work here, to pursue your entreprenuerial interests here, and you have stayed here. I'm guessing that you found a social, political and economic advantage here. And having lived in Europe, Asia and deployed to the Carribean, Latin America and South America, I'm guessing I'm right.
Their products already do.
Yes, their products do, but not the organization and people. The problem I have with the immigration laws, and H-1B in particular, is not that we allow the brightest to come here, or the industrious, but the numbers. We don't export our natively born unproductive or uneducated. And they vote. So what do they vote for? Greater economic support and governmental cradle to grave protection. Now we take the middle and upper middle class and push them into unemployment with foreign replacements. Hmmm. This will not lead to greater cry for socialism among the bourgeois?
IMO, the greatest reason for civil unrest, and getting my butt deployed all over the world is when the economic classes in a society diverge. When too much of the wealth is held by too few, and too many are disenfranchised and poor, it breeds socialism and communism by the rebellious masses and totalitarianism by the rich.
This usually gets me a label of Marxist, which I'm not, by those who fail to recognize that economics (communism, socialism, capitalism) exists within a political context. Capitalism is the strongest because it asks the least from politics to endure.
Again, why 195,000 instead of 65,000?
How do you balance the value in the long run to importing masses of foreign talent against the natively born unemployed?
Here's why:
An H-1B, or a "professional worker's" visa is reserved for people within "specialty occupations," who are considered for admission to the United States on the basis of their professional education. It permits U.S. companies allegedly having difficulty in meeting highly technical staffing requirements, to recruit and employ foreign workers under the provisions set forth in the H-1B program. It is the most common, and usually, the easiest nonimmigrant visa to obtain.
While Congress has regularly approved huge increases in authorized levels of H-1B visas, American technical workers as well as labor unions, including the International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers (IFPTE), have pointed to the crippling effects that the program is having on current and future American high-tech workers. However, despite strong opposition to the H-1B program among U.S. labor unions like IFPTE, as well as appeals from workers who have suffered job losses and stagnant wages as a result of the H-1B program, Congress has consistently approved huge increases of H-1B foreign workers.
Now, where is the specific pocket filled by H1-Bs that is not available in the American marketplace?I would like to see the numbers weeded out to identify where the shortfalls really are, and where employers are taking advantage of the system. Then a better law to help employers who truly can't find needed skills in the American marketplace and jail for the employers scamming the system.
Representative Thomas Tancredo (R-CO) authored the H1-B visa reduction legislation HR 3222 to rollback the temporary H1-B visa quota from 195,000 down to its former level of 65,000. I support this.
Labor Condition Application Database
H-1B LCA Requests 10/1/1998 to 10/16/2001
H-1B LCA Requests Submitted 1,101,159
H-1B LCA Requests Certified 986,972
A single certified request may contain many Visa Requests.
Total H-1B Certified Visa Requests 4,075,021
Visa Start Date | Certified LCA Requests | H-1B Visa Requests | |
1998 | 58,134 | 298,246 | |
1999 | 262,737 | 962,915 | |
2000 | 396,181 | 1,489,591 | |
2001 | 265,260 | 1,314,520 | |
2002 | 4,399 | 9,416 | |
Other | 261 | 333 |
School competition, home-schooling, and a return to high standards in education is the best thing we can do. If we instituted these reforms, we have the capacity in our education system to produce the best educated workforce in the world, by a wide margin. And we have the workforce, social, and geographic mobility to retrain and relocate as needs change. Right now, we are producing a generation of slackjawed self-esteem cases.
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