Republicans ramp up pressure for H-1B increase
This year, Congress must raise the cap on H-1B temporary work visas beloved by technology companies, a coalition of conservative Republican politicians urged Democratic leaders late last week.
In a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) on Friday, 30 members of the U.S. House of Representatives Republican Study Committee called for a vote within the next few months to raise the quota. By law, that limit currently stands at 65,000, with an additional 20,000 allocated for foreigners with advanced degrees from U.S. institutions.
Here's a snippet:
Every year, American businesses tell us how they are unable to retain the qualified people that they want to retain because of the artificially low H-1B visa caps and related regulations that do not reflect market realities. This situation is ironic, since most of those unemployable people were educated in the United States. As a country, we are effectively handing these highly educated, extremely desirable individuals a diploma and a plane ticket. The message we are sending is: "You can learn here, but you have to work in another country."
TechCrunch, which first reported the letter, has posted a copy here.
The letter came about a week after U.S. immigration officials announced they received more than enough petitions to fill next year's cap and would be selecting recipients through a "lottery" of sorts.
A spokesman for Pelosi said his office had received the document, but he did not offer up any timeline for action.
"Democrats remain committed to working in a bipartisan way to build support for a realistic and balanced approach to immigration reform, including increasing the cap on H-1B visas," spokesman Brendan Daly told CNET News.com.
A number of bills in Congress would raise the H-1B cap, at least for a few years, by double or triple the existing amount. The Republican Study Committee named yet another bill, known as the Skil Act, that would elevate the number of visas to 115,000 and raise the cap by 20 percent after each year in which that bar was met.
In their letter, the Republicans lamented that the debate over skilled, legal immigrants got mixed up in a more stormy debate over illegal immigration, resulting in the unceremonious death of an immigration system overhaul last year. They urged the Democrats to "decouple" the two issues and move H-1B-related legislation "in short order."
The H-1B system, of course, is . Some American computer programmers, allied under a group called Programmer's Guild, argue that allowing more H-1B temporary workers to work in the United States displaces American workers and depresses their wages. There is another contingent in Congress that argues the H-1B system needs changes to prevent abuse.
L-1 visas are the one's Indians are using to colonize America.
As part of applying for an H1B visa, the employer petitioning for the foreign individual must prove several things:
1) the individual being hired meets the minimum requirements of the job;
2) the job has been publicly advertised and no U.S. individuals (citizens and permanent residents) applied and met the minimum qualifications;
3) minimum qualifications are, in fact, essential and are not meant to discrimanate against U.S. individuals;
4) the salary offered to the foreign individual is no less than 5% below the industry average for the type of work performed.
Plus, the employer must shell out over $1K for the application and be responsible for transportation costs if the individual is terminated before the end of H1B status, which can be another $1-2K. This is not including legal fees, which, for H1B petitions, normally amount to $2-3K. So, that's a total of $4K just to petition for a foreign individual to work for 3 years.
In view of this, I'm not sure how one can argue that H1B promotes cheap labor. What it does suggest is that employers are willing to pay more to get qualified people -- even with the additional costs of hiring foreign individuals.
Please remember that I am likely to be biased as a former H1B but I do want everyone to consider the facts of the H1B process. For details and the actual requirements of H1B, please visit http://www.uscis.gov.
Are our colleges so empty that we have to import students from other countries? I doubt it. Competition for entry into higher education has never been greater.
Look at the list of the current graduate student. Not that many are American citizens.
These schools would either have to:
a) lower standards
b) close shop
Option a would result in option b sooner or later.
The grant, because it was funded by the companies who hire H1-B workers, costs tax payers nothing and it put me in a much better career situation than I would have been in otherwise.
Who by the way are hiring these H1's, us americans, right ? Who is demanding more visa, our companies and congress, who are americans too ! So if all of these who understand the need and therefore support the increase, then everyone who just cries based on a few cases of layoff (don't throw unofficial numbers back) are just blindly being so called 'patriotic'.
The only real solution here is too refactor our education system to support science and math so encourage students to go to college.
Am I supposed to believe we don't have any americans going to these universities any more?
Is there any incentive to choose the IT field (since most corperations are looking to get rid of expensive americans, for cheap foreigners, or already have, wages in the IT sector have not increased in well over a decade, and every corperation is cutting benefits)
It is greed, greed and more greed.
IT workers unite, unionize, and march! it is the only way your voice will be heard, over the millions the corperations are pocketing off what they don't have to pay for H1-B's and L1's.
(its not just wages, but benefits too, lack of committment, they can lay H1-B's off for any reason, at a moments notice, and send them home before they can object, thats better than a temp...)
Now i rarely see anyone come in on L1 unless they really need that.
"A spokesman for Pelosi said his office had received the document, but he did not offer up any timeline for action."
BUT HIDDEN BEHIND THE H1B VISAS ARE L-1 VISAS, WHICH HAVE NO CAP, AND ARE BEING GIVEN OUT WITHOUT ANY REGULATION AT ALL.
THUS, AMERICANS ARE LULLED INTO THINKING THERE IS NO PROBLEM WITH FOREIGN WORKERS FLOODING THE U.S. MARKET, BUT IN FACT THE REAL PROBLEM (L-1 VISAS) HAS JUST BEEN HIDDEN FROM THEM BY SOME EXTREMELY CORRUPT AND SNEAKY TRAITORS IN THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT.
As far as the "free trade" argument goes, we're going to "free trade" ourselves into a third world country if we follow that line of reasoning. The only way Americans can compete with third world wages is to accept third world wages. Additionally, you can't have free trade with any country that doesn't have the same rules/regulations as the US. There is an uneven playing field and, unless you're willing lower our standards to third world standards, we will always be at a competitive disadvantage.
If you want to sit in school and then never have to learn anything again, get a business degree, just like many of the people you feel sorry for.
Not only that, they require constant education. Most people don't have the background or drive to go into fields that demand you
These are not jobs at Mcdonalds or Walmart that can be learned in an hour. Or other jobs that can be trained on the job.
People are losing their homes because they foolishly got in over their heads while the greedy banks looked the other way. Live within your means and keep your skills up to date so you are in demand is the solution.
1) End Student Visa program: Do it, and tell me how far the US education system goes few years down the line.
2) Increase Fee: The international students already pay more than out-state tutions. Wonder you ever attended college!
3) Cheap labour: I don't recall a successful company built on cheap labour rather than on hard working, smart individuals, be it any nationality
4) H1B Program abused: Fully agree. But it needs reforms than just scrapping the full thing.
5) Do you really think 65000 people can make the whole american population of smart individuals unemployed?
I don't understand this line of reasoning. Why would removing non-US residents from our education system hurt our education system? Do you really think there aren't enough US residents to keep our schools open? That's completely bogus.
It is not a mere 65,000 people making the whole population unemployed.....I hope no one is making that assertion. However, it is adversely effecting the job maket in the tech field here in the U.S. "...limit currently stands at 65,000, with an additional 20,000 allocated for ..." is 85,000 (not 65,000) and not just once, but year after year. That is just the H1Bs, there are, of course, many other types of visas that allow entry to the tech job market here in the U.S. As a result, we, as a nation, have literally imported over 1,000,000 workers in the tech industry over the past several years. There is no job market in the U.S., or any other nation for that matter, that can absorb that many arbitrarily injected workers without causing unemployment/underemployment and lower wages.
If 1 in 10 can, that would be amazing, yet this is the level of work required in freshman level tech and science courses.
I see it every day, American kids are woefully uneducated.
Frankly, I suspect a lot of bright kids aren't getting into school that belong in school. Don't blame kids because of our lousy education system.
I still don't buy your assertion that lowering of standards to allow our supposedly poorly educated US residents will be the death of US colleges. If there are people willing and able to attend college, they will.
Maybe if schools have a drop off in applications, they'll be forced to look at not only their acceptance standards, but they may have to look at their outrageous tuition fees as well.
Okay, the student can pass the test - like a kidney stone. Can they think and make connections?
http://immigration-weaver.blogspot.com/2008/04/k-12-educational-system-bashing-another.html
social feel good efforts, and indoctrination not to mention the
fine work of the ACLU to make sure we do not have discipline in
the schools so what do we expect from our schools. We have
many fine teachers but many poor ones who are just protected by
their unions.
We can rant all we want but nothing will change.
I am a development manager, in the Silicon Valley.
In the last 6 months I ran 2 java/C++ developer job adds, each recieved in excess of 20 resumes, many candidates were qualified. I had my pick, and in the end the only factor was would they come in at the right (AKA lowest) price.
There is always tremendous pressure, when your a manager, to keep salaries as low as possible, especially.
Further, companies like Microsoft, Google reject 99% of resumes that come in. I have been very successful in development (been at my current job for 8+ years), and I have applied to both companies, (for non-Senior programming jobs), and I haven't heard from either company. At the same time, several people who knew someone on the inside of these companies were interviewed and hired.
Don't believe corporate hype, period. There is no tech-worker shortage, there is in fact a glut of tech workers out there.
If you believe that there is a tech worker shortage, then you probably also believe that oil companies aren't making a killing off the U.S. economy right now.
Why am I writing this?
* Although I manage a development group, I am also a technology worker.
* U.S. Tech workers are skilled, experienced, and efficient. I want business to be efficient, so let's not fool ourselves into thinking that cheap labor equals efficiency.
http://mcpmag.com/columns/article.asp?EditorialsID=1974
http://blogs.computerworld.com/node/6482
Most h-1b visas are wasted on starting-level IT jobs:
http://www.cis.org/articles/2007/back407.html
Green cards are being issued to people without even trying to find a U.S. citizen. I have seen this first hand, where Green cards were issued to people in Software Quality assurance (jobs a game tester could do). But if you don't believe me, see the video by the immigration attorneys used by the client of "Compete America":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU
A report from the National Accounting Office of the United Stated has found that people on h-1b Visas are regularly being paid 20% less than their U.S. Citizen counterparts.
The h-1b program is being used to out-source U.S. jobs:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/12/business/visa.php?page=2
There is no shortage of qualified technology worker, just a shortage of technology workers are the low-low prices.
With rent in Silicon Valley at typically at 2000$/mth how can a Technology worker live on less than 40k a year, yet many h-1b visas are issued for far less than this.
http://www.bendweekly.com/Opinion/4670.html
Check out the following:
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/feb2007/db20070208_553356.htm
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17048048/
The typical U.S. citizen is being saddled with 9 trillion dollars in National debt, by the Bush Administration.
Typical U.S. citizen is born with more cost in debt service per year than the wages of your typical Indian programmer.
Gasoline is prices are going the roof. Because of Corporate lobbying groups. Hey I am spending more driving to work, now, than the average Indian worker.
And the lobbying group "Compete America" is crass euphemism (double-speak) for the continuing fire sale that is destroying the U.S. economy.
http://mcpmag.com/columns/article.asp?EditorialsID=1974
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_8975501?nclick_check=1
I'll summarize the article for you.
In California, Ninety percent of Santa Clara County's 241 TB cases in 2007 were in students, immigrants, temporary workers with H1B visas, tourists and others born in other countries. At the same time, the number of multi-drug-resistant cases in the county - bacteria resistant to isoniazid and rifampin, the first-line TB antibiotics - jumped from two to seven. "During the dot-com boom, we in Alameda County and I know other Bay Area counties saw a dramatic increase in tuberculosis among the (H-1B) visa immigrants," said Benjamin, the Alameda County TB control officer.
The cost of every TB case to local taxpayers is significant. Santa Clara County spent an average of $18,000 a case in 2007 - about $4.3 million total - for drugs, testing and for the labor-intensive contact investigation required for families, co-workers or schoolmates who have contact with an infectious person.
Considering that many of the cases were students or people here on H-1B visas. The same visas that Bill Gates went in front of a Senate hearing to beg the Senate to increase the "cap" which is currently set at 65,000 per year because as Gates puts it "there's no Americans qualified for the IT jobs he wants to fill!" Imagine that, the worlds richest man wants to hire foreigners and bring them here because they'll work cheaper than we will!!!
We can NOT allow our demise to continue on the path which President Bush has chosen for us. We must contact our Representatives and Senators telling them to vote NO on H1B visas.
- other visas need more attention
- by chonnom April 23, 2008 5:12 PM PDT
- It takes 1-3 months to process an H1-B visa but USCIS can't seem to make time to process my wife's visa to get her here legally. I work for my state's department of human services and I'm forced to provide services to illegal aliens on a daily basis yet it takes a year or longer to get a visa for my wife. Why? The government hands out benefits to illegals but try and do things the legal way and you are penalized by enforced separation from your loved ones. There is something extremely rotten with the system.
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