Comments on: Labor group: Techs tops at courting foreign workers

Labor group claims tech firms pursued the most green cards for foreign-born workers last year.

[russ960]

What's the root cause?

I was reading an article on CNET News.com that WashTech, a tech labor group, found that tech companies were one of the largest seekers of foreign workers imported into the US. What I didn't get from the article and it doesn't seem clear is are these workers receiving significantly lower wages than American workers? It seems they aren't or else that would be a major talking point. Rather they contend that this lowers the wage by creating a surplus of workers. Yet some of these companies like Intel contend that the people being sought are not available in the US and are not easily re-trained. These seem reasonable and I just can't see a company spending thousands extra required to bring these people here only to discriminate against American workers. I'm not going to say every company is completely innocent but we need to look at the root cause. We need to focus on increased education which seems obvious from this article as it talks about how many of these workers are getting PhDs while in the US. If we focus on the cause of the problem we can resolve it. However if we don't anything to change we will continue get the same results every time.

In the words of Stephen R Covey:

If we keep doing what we're doing, we're going to keep getting what we're getting.

One additional point I would like to make here is that these workers come here and contribute much of what they make to our economy. They come here and spend money on food, shelter, electronics, and more. All of these drive our economy and help to increase levels of employment in the US. It is important that we work to drive a balance here and I think that is what the controls setup on importation of workers does. We need alot of changes in the country but a more controlling and powerful government is not one of them.

http://russ.johnsonville.net

[Jeff Lebowski 63]

Rather poor argument

Your conclusion that the foreign workers are not being paid less
than their qualified American counterparts is based on a
very weak argument. You assert that wage imbalances
must not be an issue simply because they were not mentioned in
the article. That's really thin proof, to say the least. The mere
absence of data proves nothing.

The reason corporations seek out foreign labor (whether via
outsourcing or insourcing) is simple: foreign labor is cheaper
and, therefore, it reduces their costs. Nothing magical here.
Nothing difficult to understand. No need for deep investigations.

I have first hand experience. When a company I worked for laid
off 14 out of group of 30 engineers, 12 were American citizens.
Of the 16 that remained, 13 were foreign workers on H-1B visas.
The salaries for the laid off workers ranged from $85,000 to
$105,000. The average salary of the workers they kept was
$60,000. All but two of the remaining workers were under thirty
years old. All of the laid off workers were over thirty-five.

I find it strange that you think that having the federal
government determine who and how many people are
allowed to emigrate to the US amounts to "a more controlling
and powerful government". Who should determine the rate
immigration if not the federal government? Are you suggesting
we "privatize" the department of immigration, i.e. let the
corporations determine the rate of immigration? Should there be
no constraints on immigration?

I'm aware these immigrants contribute to the economy, but they
also get to take advantage of all the infrastructure that I paid
for...all the things that make the US a great place to live.

So, to a certain extent they are getting a free ride. I've been
busting my butt for 27 years (since age 15) and have paid a
king's ransom in taxes. That means I paid for the roads they
drive on, they schools their kids attend, the firehouse that
protects their home and so forth. As such, I don't believe it is
too much to ask that immigration law be constructed such that it
doesn't place folks like me at an unfair disadvantage.

If US citizenship offers no advantages, what's the point of living
here? Why should I continue to pay taxes if my government is
bent on undermining my best interest and disregarding the fact
that I have contributed far more to the nation and it's economy
than some guy here on a work visa?