High-tech titans strike out on immigration bill

Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, along with other high-tech executives, are lobbying for more visas for temporary foreign workers and permanent immigrants.
The New York Times

The story "High-tech titans strike out on immigration bill" published June 24, 2007 at 10:50 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

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[GrandpaN1947]

Read this

Then you'll know who is behind the traitorism running rampant in our country.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Edvorak%2Eorg%2Fblog%2F

[Jake Leone]

U.S. companies openly discriminate against U.S. workers

Microsoft, Google, Oracle, IBM, all discriminate against U.S. citizens. They represent an organized mob, that works to prevent U.S. citizens from being able to apply for a job in the United States.

Just look at the evidence presented here:

Everyone should watch this video. It shows a conference where companies are educated on how to go about NOT hiring an american citizen. It's brazen, and sick, bigotry at its worst, and is direct evidence of discrimination against U.S. citizens in the hiring for U.S. jobs:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Cohen+%26+Grigsby+&search=Search

Patni associates underpays its h-1b Visa workers, so much that the U.S. government has fined them million of dollars:

http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9727975-7.html

That the Indian government calls the h-1b Visa the "Outsourcing Visa":

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/27/H1B.TMP

That h-1b Visas are used heavily by Indian IT Outsourcing companies to remove whole departments:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17048048/

Let's also not forget that when 2 congressman asked these outsourcing companies a question about their hiring practices, India started threatening the United States with Trade sanctions.

The reason, Karmal Nath and Nasscom want to continue to discriminate against U.S. citizens. They don't even look for U.S. citizens to fill jobs. Only hiring one class of people (h-1b holder from India) is discrimination, and has to be stopped.

Currently there is open-discrimination against the U.S. workers for U.S. jobs. There are jobs ads in the United States that are h-1b only, american citizens need not apply. The reasons are clear. H-1b workers earn 20% less than their U.S. citizen counterparts:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1967955.cms

Employers like to hold the Green Card over their h-1b employees. You see the Green Card must be sponsored by the employer, and if the employee leaves before the process is complete, the Green card process must start over again with the new employer. This amounts to indentured servitude. And when employers learned that the new immigration bill took away their Green whip, the started actively working against the immigration Bill:

http://news.com.com/Tech+seeing+red+over+green-card+proposal/2100-1028_3-6188899.html

Look people, we've all got write our congress people and get some meaningful immigration reform. Don't let industry buy your congress.

Americans face a hostile employment environment from employers who will not hire them. This open discrimination against U.S. citizens has to be stopped.

[batman823]

enlightening

While you are obviously knowledgable on the subject, there are two sides to every story. Large industries need a lot of workers. When every worker demands a high wage, regardless of their personal level of expertise and education, the corporation responds. In this case they are responding by asking for foriegn employees.

I am enlisted in the Navy at the moment. My medical discharge is pending. But I'm trained as a nuclear reactor operator. Guess what, I've gotten many job offers nearing the level of harrassment just from making a few phone calls. I don't ask for a rediculous payrate. I just ask to be started at the company's standard. I have never heard of an American citizen turning down an hourly paid job over $30/hr because it wasn't enough money. The energy market is one of the biggest. So the operators of power plants are in short supply as well.

Many of the companies looking for H-1B workers are software and telemarketing companies. I disagree with the statement "American citizens need not apply" because that's obvious discrimination. But these companies need workers for a very good reason, Demand. They absolutely cannot supply the volume of products at the prices we want to pay unless they have the proper number of workers at the right wages. Anybody making more than $10/hr can make ends meet, in most areas. If you're lucky enough to make over $20/hr, you can even plan on retirement. Now when you get into hugh cities and places like CT(where I live now) cost of living is quite a bit higher. So the required wage is relative to location.

But that's not the way we think. Look at the number of forums with people asking for help with their brand new entertainment center or looking for advice on what HDTV to buy. I'd be willing to go out on a limb and say most of those people have never bought a stock or even put money into a savings account or mutual fund. A lot of them are college students and people with my low level of income. I only claimed $24k on my last years tax return. But I'm not even 23 yet and I've got nearly $10k in mutual funds. I owe $5k on a car I bought last year and have excellent credit. But I'm not in the same situation that most americans are in. I have a relatively low debt/income ratio even though I got a $600/mo paycut for getting injured in the 'War on Terror'.

The main point is that americans want more money for less work than every other country in the world. So I don't necessarily push the blame completely on the corporations. China and India have very good education systems and their instructors get paid as much as the engineers they're creating. But on the other hand, their engineers get paid around %50 the wages ours do. That's a good reason for the big companies to outsource. The don't have to raise their prices as much when their engineers demand less money. I gaurantee an american citizen can undercut an equally qualified foriegner if they were willing to.

Lastly, I agree with you on the discrimination issue. We've nearly eliminated all other forms of discrimination. There's no need to start the same old battle again. But it's not just the corporations' fault. The workers and consumers are to blame as well.

The main part of the immigration bill was to get unskilled laborers into the country. The vast majority of workers required are low-income workers. Farm labor and garbage services are just a couple of examples. These are jobs that americans just don't want. That's a very good reason to give foriegners working visas. The amnesty portion of the bill would provide information on nearly every employer who is hiring illegal aliens. The foriegn workers would be lining up in masses to get the opportunity for a wage increase. They would register in order to get minimum wage and supply employer information, thus supplying the state and federal gov'ts with information on who's hiring who. I don't think they should go unpunished, but the amnesty is a good way of avoiding the waste of billions of dollars trying to root out all the illegal aliens. It would remove the fear from coming clean and getting registered.

I'm sure you disagree with my opinion, but that's just my $.02

[fileptr]

Time for Change

There is no need for this much hue and cry. This has happened and will happen always in the history of the world.
Remember when East India Company used to purchase cotton from India and make clothe in a cheaper place (that is UK) and again go back to India to sell them. What will you call that?
If you get a choice of two stores to buy something, which one will you choose? Obviously, the cheaper one. If you make such decisions, what do you expect from a corporate who has to answer millions of shareholders. The logic that you discriminate costly store to cheaper one applies to workers also. What makes the corporate to hire costly employee if a cheaper one is available.
Moreover, think of the profit that these companies bring into US.
It will ultimately benefit the American people just like Wal-Mart bringing cheap products from China. In fact, China's environment is being exploited for the joy of Americans. What shall we call this? And, there is major debate about whether China should reduce Carbon emission.. Funny and silly. If china stops, American consumers will become still more debted (already 24K$/ American is the debt).
And, the worst part is America is refusing to recognise this and making a scene out of this , as though whole of Asia is looting America. Wake up America, the land of opportunities and immigrants where the economy was built and is sustained by immigrants.

[Jake Leone]

The issue is (how to end) discrimination, end-slavery, not trade

U.S. workers want a fair and equal chance at jobs in the United States. That is all.

The current system does not allow this for several reasons:

1. An h-1b worker does not complain (for fear of losing their job) when they are not fairly compensated. It takes action by the U.S. government to correct this.

2. H-1b workers, about half the time, are trying for a green card. The employer must sponsor and complete the Green Card process. If the employee leave (like for a better job), the green card process has to start all over again. This, INDENTURED-SERVITUDE, would have been removed by the immigration law as it stood 2-week ago. That is why industry (Compete America, Google, Microsoft, Oracle...) all started complaining about the new immigration law. And that is one of the reasons why the immigration bill died in the Senate.

Namely, Republicans what to make sure that the IT Industry can keep its GREEN-WHIP.

3. Indian IT companies, use about half to the h-1b visas. These companies don't hire U.S. citizens, they don't even look for U.S. citizens, they hire almost exclusively Indian citizens into U.S. jobs. I know that Google uses such h-1b body shop, that hire only h-1b candidates, because I have seen resumes of people from GOOGLE who co-list the body-shops as part of their GOOGLE reference. Some of these "candidates from Google", professed themselves to be "Unix" experts, but couldn't answer simple questions such as "how do you kill a running process", "How do you start a process in the background". Google says it is out to hire major talent, but when more than half the employees I have seen can't answer basic Unix questions, you have to wonder how people really get hired over there.

Given a fair chance to compete for such jobs, most american IT workers would easily out-class these Google candidates. But fair competition is not want industry wants, they want an un-fair competition whereby the law gives them an un-equal capability in the market place.

It reminds me of the Drug dealer, who doesn't want to legalize drugs because it will kill the market in illegal drugs. Well it is the employee who got themselves through college, why can't that person sponsor themselves for Green Card. Why do the industry overseerers cry so hard when the government wants to free a class of people (thereby destroying their Indentured Slave market), by taking away the Green-Whip form Google, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, and "Compete-America"?

[qwerty75]

yup

The same idiots that against immigration of any kind,usually for racist reasons hidden deep in smelly pseudo-patriotism, and decry outsourcing and factories moving outside of the US are the same idiots that shop at WalMart.

[WebGlue]

Information Technology Workers to March on Washington

There is a movement forming to counter this brazen act of cutting out American Technology workers from opportunity in our own country.

Why do Companies like Microsoft need so many foreign workers when there are literally over 20K Software Engineers and others, laid of or out of work, within the United States?

I have no problem with competition if they will pay the foreign workers the same salary as they would pay American workers. That is fair market value and I am sure even we, the American workers can come down in salary some to accommodate.

The American Information Technology worker has no representation to Washington and Congress but big technology companies have immense power.

There is blatant greed driving these issues in an attempt to lower OPEX costs within the company to drive up Stock price.

The time is drawing near that IT Employee Unions will begin springing up just as the did in the first part of the 20th century with the industrial revolution.

Corporate Executives in the US no longer have a sense of fair play for their employees. Greed is not Capitalism, and the demise of the American middle class is bad for these same corporations. But they don?t care? they just want larger bonues, high priced stocks, and keep those stock options coming.

What a crock of ****. Bill Gates you and Steve Ballmer and all you other Greedy bastards at the top will one day rue the day you turned your back on fair play for employees.

IT Unions are coming.

[pokiri]

H1B getting paid 20% less than US citizen ?

Unbelievable. The govt. has a rule ( as part of H1B approval ) that the H1B should be paid the 'prevailing wage' . If that wage is now found to be 20% less than the reality, then the prevailing wage should be bumped up 20%. Why is the govt. not doing that ? Amazing. US govt. violating its own rules/regulations !

Another point is that companies should train the US citizens ( say, 6 months on the job trainig ) if they lack the required skill sets and performance for a job . If still didn't find anybody, then look somewhere else.

[dmm]

Depressed wages

If companies are getting away with paying H1B holders 20% less than "the going rate," then clearly the H1B program must be having a negative effect on "the going rate." So companies should have to pay a premium for H1B holders, not just "the going rate."

[joelam888]

Unqualified GRE grads complaining again?

Listen up, I'm a H-1b but I'm paid 50% more than the so-called prevailing wage. Take that and thank me for raising the average.

Even if you're getting a below average wage in the IT field, you're still making much more than an average American down the street, so please stop crying!

[perlstar]

GRE grad. ha, ha.

Let me guess, you are in your mid-twenties. Enjoy it while you can, in about ten years, a younger H-1B will be replacing you. Even if you have a Green Card or Citizenship by then, you won't be working in the IT field, you'll be doing something else.