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October 1, 2004
Like other competing proposals in Congress right now, the "Skilled Worker Immigration and Fairness Act," introduced on Tuesday by Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), also proposes raising the existing annual cap on the controversial H-1B visas from 65,000 to 115,000 for fiscal year 2007. That number could climb by 20 percent in each subsequent year, to as high as 180,000, if the previous year's quota was exhausted.
Right now, there's also a 20,000 visa cushion beyond the existing H-1B quota for foreigners who have received advanced degrees in the United States. The new Senate bill would remove that 20,000 visa limit. It would also broaden the exemption from the H-1B limit beyond just those with advanced degrees to include foreigners with "medical specialty certification based on post-doctoral training and experience in the United States." A broad House of Representatives immigration bill known as the Strive Act contains a similar approach.
"To remain competitive, American companies need access to highly educated individuals," Lieberman said in a statement. "But today's system makes it difficult for innovative employers to recruit and retain highly educated talent, which puts the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage globally."
This year, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said it had received enough applications to fill all those slots just one day after the application window opened, prompting new calls for an increased quantity of the visas from technology firms that depend on them.
At the same time, the 15-page bill attempts to incorporate new safeguards on H-1B abuse, while giving the Department of Labor an extra 200 employees and additional authority to investigate suspect visa petitions.
The measure would prohibit companies from advertising jobs solely to H-1B immigrants or indicating preference for such workers. It would limit the number of employees on such visas to no more than half a company's work force, if it has 50 or more total employees on its payroll. It would also double the fines for employers that violate H-1B program requirements--to between $2,000 and $10,000--and require the Department of Labor to do annual audits of companies of more than 100 employees that derive more than 15 percent of their work force from H-1Bs.
The bill drew immediate applause from Microsoft, whose high-powered chairman, Bill Gates, recently urged Congress again to allow for infinite quantities of the work permits.
"The nation continues to witness a dramatic decline in the number of native-born computer science graduates," the company said in a statement. "As a result, technology companies like Microsoft rely on the H-1B visa and employment-based green card programs to deliver an adequate supply of highly qualified employees to help maintain our competitive position. That can only be achieved through immediate reform of these programs to ensure they are meeting the needs of our economy."
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), who counts Microsoft in her constituency, also co-sponsored the bill.
But critics said the effort falls short in many ways. John Miano, founder of the Programmers Guild, a group that is concerned about foreigners displacing American computer programmers, said the proposal's exemptions would essentially amount to unlimited visas, rendering the cap all but useless.
"Get a master's degree in basket weaving, and you're eligible to stay," he said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "It's bad policy."
The bill would also fail to curb abuses of the system, Miano said. For instance, critics of the H-1B system have long balked at a provision in the law that says the Labor Department can only screen visa petitions for completeness and "obvious inaccuracies." The new bill would allow the department to investigate "clear indicators of fraud or misrepresentation of material fact."
That's not a huge change, because one of the more frequently fabricated claims on such forms is the wage level that an H-1B recipient will be paid, Miano said. "The only way I know that is because I went back and looked up the data," he said. "If you just look at the numbers, is it really a clear indication?"
Groups like Miano's have said the H-1B system suffers from fraud and abuse and is in need of serious repair. They have looked more favorably upon a bill introduced earlier this year by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) that attempts to prevent H-1B abuse by imposing a number of new obligations on employers.
High-tech companies, however, have voiced concern that those obligations are too overbearing. Among other things, employers would have to certify that they had made a "good faith" effort to hire an American before taking on an H-1B worker and that the foreigner was not displacing a prospective U.S. worker. That bill's sponsors on Monday
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H-1B, foreigner, degree, proposal, senator
They just bring in people they can exploit better...
Fund U. S. Citizens -- attending U. S. Universities -- not just at the graduate level -- what is needed is achievement recognized ? both undergraduate and graduate education in all areas ? fund those with proven ability and desire to obtain a degree in whatever field they may specialize. And get rid of the disgraceful student loan programs. Greed is not the answer ? either by industries or lenders ? and even in some cases, so-called institutions of higher learning!
Seems like the only people being taken care of by Washington are those that sneak across the border or are imported by corporations unwilling to hire American citizens.
I know of a large corporation that recently disbanded their central I.T. department and have been trying to get other parts of the corporation to take the herd of H1B's they brought in over the past few years. So far they haven't found many takers.
The best suggestion I've heard is for them to charter a jet and point it east.
As my friend Srinivas told me, "When I can't find work here, I'll go home. When I left India, there weren't too many jobs, but there are many more now."
Oh yeah, thats the ticket.
This bill is a good way to assure that trend continues or accelerates, and that will--of course--make the need for more foreigners even greater.
I think this is called the "spiral of death."
tell you that this would not be good for Americans. The thing
that most people don't understand is that foreign-born people
aren't able to be put on governmental grants for pay (that's how
post-docs are paid...with money from grants). Therefore, they
aren't under the regulation that mandates that Ph.D. post-docs/
grad student, etc. must earn a a salary that falls with in a set
amount. This has led to researchers hiring foreign Ph.D.s as
post-docs because they can pay them far less than what an
American post-doc would make. In the end, the American
students are the ones being screwed for cheap biotech labor.
Then again what else is new? Politicians aren't even American
citizens....they're too good to be one of us.
Serg
regard, I often sarcastically ask, ``how do you want to be treated?''
It seems to me that we need to get rid of this overgrown
government, and return America to a free entrepreneurial economy
where local reigns supreme.
of PHD in IT. I wonder what else our FEDERAL EMPLOYEES can do to ruin our country.
I plan to and certainly will take a position in this fight "enough is enough"!
I am one of many Americans who knows the rigors of having to retrain himself numerous times to stay employed.
Sorry..Mr.Gates & the senators but this is not in
our national interest.
UNLIMITED.. there's not even a econ theory that allows for that possibility. So let me get this straight.. we're supposed to spend 40 -60 grand AT LEAST for a CS degree and then work for 17.50 / hr for the next 35 years to pay that off? Are they kidding?
This is all about your Senator making sure no CEO has unmet cocaine and prostitute needs. This is all about destroying the middle class in America so the Ruling 2% class can go on owning 90% of all assets. This is the politics of your personal and absolute destruction. If you think you're going to get out of poverty by going to college, think again. Your dirtbag Senator and the CEOs have a surprise for you- it's a little thing called UNLIMITED immigration, and you can work like the beast of burden they need you to be for the rest of your life just to pay back your college bills. Forget about sending your kids to college.. they'll share your fate in their time.
This is about the control and destruction and oppression of populations by the elite. The reality is, if you are forced to spend 75 hours a week just to service your home-loan and student loan debt, then you're under control since you don't have time to think about how things got this way or organize to do anything about it. They know that having the time to think and get involved will lead to their destruction and that's what this bill is about.
That's what they want.
That's what they crave.
They want to see beneath them a nation of wage slaves who do what they're told when they're told for the privilege of being permitted to not starve one more day. Seen any 70 year olds at the check-out counters in your grocery store lately? That's what they like to see...That's the plan.. every job a low-wage job ... work until you're dead.
They never let go of the idea of slavery.. that's the Natural Order to them... that's how things Should Be... the way Nature intended.... I am telling you that this is how the elite think.. this is their actual world view and your place in it. This is what this legislation is all about.
Let's see... according to your Senators, Americans don't want to be farm workers, waiters, janitors, don't have the math and education they need to be scientists and golly! there aren't enough programmers!!! Or accountants ...oh and there's a teacher shortage !! Oh and a nursing shortage! Have you heard about the terrible nursing shortage!!!???
See folks, there's not really a free market in America.. because that implies that wages rise as a result of demand then more people go into those fields because of rising wages, the wages level off, as happened in the 90s when there was something like economic equity for the middle class. But we're not going to let that happen.. because it's NOT a free market and we don't let the free market work in this country. It's an oligarchy run by a tiny group of good buddies (www.theyrule.com) whose only concern is staying in power so they can go on with their lives of prostitutes, coke, private jets, private islands, parties, mansions...you know amoral, valueless "good life" that they've come to think of as their birth right.
Do you REALLY think that American companies are going hire Americans when they can get indentured servants in the form of H1Bs? Even IF the wages were the same for both parties, the fact that the H1B can't change jobs without restarting the green card process, the fact that H1Bs are contracted with the company for a set length of time.. all this is anti-free market.
Ladies and gentlemen, we need anther American revolution- at the ballot box. If you vote for ANY senator that voted for this trash then you're the one putting a gun to your own head. These Senators aren't even human beings... they're just creations of corporate America...spineless valueless predators whose only purpose in life is to stay in power by sucking up to corporations and destroying your life....
You have to take action. You HAVE to do something.. stop buying MS products.. switch to Linux... just DO it .. just TRY it.. put a version on your disk.. it's easy.. Tell your Senator to go to h*ll... Stop giving these companies money. Vote your Senator and CongressPig OUT of office...
India has a very good business school, the Indian Institute for Management (IIM). Yet I don't see a flood of Indian's coming in to replace high-paid executives or executive jobs being outsourced to India. Even when the executives have done a miserable job based on financial returns -- even when they're accused of crimes -- they're not replaced with Indian H1B's.
It essentially stated that wages would always remain at subsistence level because if a time occurred where wages DID rise, then the workers would live the good life and make lots of babies, and the following labor glut would reduce wages to subsistence again.
Thanks to education and scientific progress, this cycle was clearly broken in the West.
Obviously, the 'elites' (in their own minds, at least), aim to see that the Iron Law is obeyed.
When it's about raising the prices on products to be sold, it's all "free market" and "supply and demand."
When employers don't want to pay the market clearing price in the wage market, it's Americans are "too spoiled" or "won't do that job" and then the silver crosses the palms of the politicians, who--like lawyers--profit with both the prosperity and misery of others.
all you really need now in america
is a 4th grade education and you
can be all that you can be.
being that the average american
reaches an intellectual level not
much higher, we really are all
that we can be.
a word of advice.
stop talking reality.
people will thing you're crazy.
Seems to me we could, ahem, outsource college education for pennies on the dollar, even accounting for travel costs.
Because of these questions, India is threatening the U.S. with Trade Sanctions in the World Trade Organization.
India, apparently, believes that immigration issues such as the h-1b program should be linked to free-trade.
Well wake up, Visas cannot be linked trade, EVER. And doing so is stepping all over the rights of the U.S. and most other countries.
India is attempting to kick the U.S. around. The U.S. has the right to keep free-trade separate from immigration.
We've already seen what can happen if immigration is not closely watched. For example, that's how 2000+ americans were murdered on Sept 11, 2001.
The Indian Commerce minister is a fool to think you can link free-trade with immigration issues.
So don't try to kick the U.S. around India.
It's NOT India.. it's YOUR CONGRESSPIG who linked "the free movement of materials services " to the word "people" to come up with the FreeMarket Freak jingoism "the free movement of goods, services and peoples".....
See, they sort of snuck that last one in there hoping you'd be like he proverbial frog with the water turned slllooowly up.... so slowly you don't realize- you're being boiled alive!
See the same group of fanatics who are curretnly reconstrcuting the Middle East also have a plan for te dissolution of our country and the instantiatiion of a Greater North America...
now they know you're not going to go for that, so they use the device of immigration and trade to effectively dissolve the borders, then , once that's finished, they'll say... well, since these borders are just borders in name only, why don't we just formalize what is the case anyway?
JUST LIKE THEY'RE DOING NOW WITH AMNESTY.. well since these ILLEGAL ALIENS are here now anyway, why not make them legal..
Hell, why not just forget about the rule of law completely??? Sounds good to me.. of course, that's not going to work out so well for everyone....but , oh well... you did it, not me!
It's your SENATOR it's your FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS put together by MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS for THEIR BENEFIT....
Look it up. Google it. Learn about it. Tell your friends. That's what they're afraid of...
Actually, I just think the Indians have been watching and learning from what Mexico does. It works for the Mexicans, why not them?
Business doesn't want to pay a decent wage, consumers don't want expensive produce, government will tell you that Americans don't want the jobs, but the bottom line is cheap labor.
All of this is at that American taxpayers expense.
As a result of lax security and an increase in illegal aliens?
Three of the September 11 hijackers had overstayed their visas, and two of them had re-entered the United States after their visas had expired. Six months after the attacks, the Immigration and Naturalization Service sent approved student visas for two of the terrorists to a Florida flight school.
Mr. Bush has made outreach to Hispanics a key part of his administration, and he wants the amnesty measure as a signal of good faith to Hispanic groups and to Mexico. Now its India and the rest of the world, while us Americans get dumped on.
Under amnesty provisions that the House passed previously, anyone who has overstayed an entry visa or, in some cases, entered the country illegally, but who has a qualifying family relationship or business sponsor, would pay a $1,000 fine in exchange for having his legal status adjusted. He also would avoid having to return to his home country and waiting up to 10 years before applying for green cards.
This is a poison brew of greed ( corporations ) complacency ( Congress ) and ideological, Koolaid drinking Freaks (the globalist / "free" market absolutists ) .... what this last group doesn't understand is borders exist for a reason.. a deep seeded psychological reason... the same deep seeded reason that you have a plot of land with clear borders and your possessions are YOURS and fences DO make good neighbors (as opposed to warring neighbors) and that people WILL identify with a clearly defined group and IF you dissolve the nation state THEN you will get tribalism of WORST sort, that nations are an IMPORTANT construct that over centuries we, as a species, have learned to use to channel and direct population's energies in positive ways, and that if you rip it away, you're NOT going to get the One Global Village you're dreaming of, what you're going to get is a global police state as we try to deal with the fall out of people identifying with groups other than countries and struggle for power.
First the ideologues go into Iraq with their "vision" ... did you know that Iraq was going to be a Libertarian paradise .. a total 'free market" where government would be as small as possible and there would be no forces but market forces? Read all about it:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-3-117-2190.jsp
These same freaks want to dissolve the US borders through unlimited immigration ... with similar results.....
IF you want to learn about the brain-physiology based reality behind human-kinds need to identify with a small group , read http://www.amazon.com/Social-Brain-Gazzaniga/dp/0465078516
(sorry dope-smoking hippies... we're not going to learn to all love each other... but we CAN all get along...that will have to do..)
This no-borders contingent is going to lead to social chaos of the sort that our great grand-children will look back on, like Germans look back on the Nazi regime, and think -how could they have THOUGHT that?
Steve Forbes, Charles Krauthammer,Francis ******** , the Bushies, Scpoter Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, the freaks at National Review will unleash on America and the world exactly what we have in Iraq... ideologically driven chaos overseen by poeple who are "strangely out of touch with reality", as someone once described Krauthammer.
People created nations because they're important to them. People created government because it's important to them. Without those things, there's the alw of the jungle (but see Iraq for detaisl)
The freaks with their visions of re-creating the world from the comfort of their status as the permanently-and-forever-rich and all the security and assurances that buys them no matter what they unleash on the rest of the world, and I am thinking here of Steve Forbes and his neocon friends specifically, will turn your life into a smoking heap social experimentation that, golly, didn't work as we expected.... sorry... little people.....
Take your country back. Stop buying services from ATT who endorses this program. Stop buying MS products who pushes for this program... vote against your senator... go to www.fairus.org and see who voted FOR you and who's a koolaid drinking globalist freak... Unelect them in 2008
Citizens just don't want to do them, they would rather do
something else. So the USA NEEDs those H1B's to take away the
"Something Else" jobs so US Citizens will have to take one of those
less desirable jobs. You want one of those jobs that are going
begging? Sure, easy, visit your local US Marines recruiter.
If Billie Gates of Micro$oft is so concerned about the decline in graduation rates, why shouldn't he use some of his foundation billions to guarantee loan repayment in exchange for service. This is what many rural cities and counties do to help recruit teachers and doctors!
This is probably the best idea I have heard of in order to both improve our country's lack of "qualified" teachers in some of these problem areas of the US. Taking away our jobs and giving them to someone who aspires to lower pay is not the answer. If that were the case (as another poster put it) why go to school in the first place? Big business has removed many incentives for US citizens to take on the drudgery and long hours of college and beyond.
With the under-handed crap that Congress is handing us these past few years(that we paid for in our tax da, I seriously doubt if I would have gone into the IT field.
God Bless!!! to all of those in all fields who are not simply rolling over and letting this travesty in the workplace go on without a fight.
What this means is we take every disadvantaged, impoverished environment kid whose parents are both on crack and we tell teachers - they have to meet No Child Left Behind standards... or even before NCLB.. they have to meet state standards or whatever..... well Japan and Germany and Brazil and China and all the other countries in the world track those kids early into non-college tracks.....
That's why our schools are "failing". But they're not failing! That's just Republican spin on the situation to get you to get behind breaking the teacher's unions so THAT job can be turned into a 8.50 an hour no benefits job... and the schools can be privatized... you know... like the Iraq war was... you know .. with the contractors? There's the free-market freaks "free" market. See what they mean by "free" market is the OWNERS of corporations are GIVEN lucrative contracts by the STATE and YOU the taxpayers pay for that private company to:
1) not deliver a damn thing
2) treat their workers like they're garbage
3) pay themselves 20 grand a day
See how that works? That's what they want to do with your schools too... because why? Because they're failing? Failing at what... turning some kid who's had crack smoke blown into his mouth since year 1 into a college bound Rhodes scholar?
You know who came up with that garbage? Jack Welch of GE. Basically, he said, look, do what we did at GE> Set impossible standards then blame them when hey fail . Anyone who's ever been fired from a private company knows how this game is played. And they're playing it against the teachers. Everyone thinks our schools are failing compared to the test scores of Country X. The fact is, if you tested ALL the student age population of Country X , we'd be far ahead of the vast majority of them. Other countries just tell the kids from a certain background- the train ride ends here for you- get off. We don't do that. It's not in our national character. It's part of what makes us what we are.
Jack Welch and all the the overpaid dirtbags who want to attack the working class teachers so they can "transform education through the miracle of the marketplace" just want another profit center for themselves and their cronies.
Believe me, once they've "privatized" public education, the same think tanks who fed you this BS will start pumping out studies about how it might not be a good idea to require the same standards for all students.... and thus relieve themselves of having to live up to the standards they created expressly for the purpose of making public teachers fail. That's management.. that' s classic management technique #1,302....
They'll be study and pundits talking about how we ought to track kids like these other countries X Y and Z... get it? No Child Left Behind is just a standard there to make sure teachers fail so the Free Market coke snorters can have at that pot of gold called vouchers..... turn teaching into a crappy minimum wage job and conduct schools like the universities conduct themselves now- let the smart kids figure the subjects out basically for themselves and let the ones who can't do that drop out... who cares? We're getting ours and there's all the pressure int eh world to GET INTO schools and colleges so we don't have any shortage of customers, now do we? It's great... pay crappy wages, deliver a crappy product get paid a bundle and retire to Tahiti.....the full Free Market Freak reality, lived in all its glory.
Our schools aren't failing. Americans are amongst the most creative, inventive and brightest people.
- Schools are NOT failing
- by asdf May 16, 2007 1:31 PM PDT
- Well look, the REAL "problem" behind the schools is this: we are the only nation in the world who attempts to bring ALL children up to the level of college-ready. IN EVERY other country in the world, kids are tracked, sometimes before they leave grade-school. Those kids never count into the scores of those nations.... get it?
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
-
- Who says Markets are Anti-union?
- by davemesaaz May 18, 2007 11:56 AM PDT
- Who says the market is anti-union? What we should be concerned with is not the teachers or the Schools but the students. Do they students want to be there? What is good for the students will fix the other too.
- Like this
-
Showing 1 of 2 pages (63 Comments)What this means is we take every disadvantaged, impoverished environment kid whose parents are both on crack and we tell teachers - they have to meet No Child Left Behind standards... or even before NCLB.. they have to meet state standards or whatever..... well Japan and Germany and Brazil and China and all the other countries in the world track those kids early into non-college tracks.....
That's why our schools are "failing". But they're not failing! That's just Republican spin on the situation to get you to get behind breaking the teacher's unions so THAT job can be turned into a 8.50 an hour no benefits job... and the schools can be privatized... you know... like the Iraq war was... you know .. with the contractors? There's the free-market freaks "free" market. See what they mean by "free" market is the OWNERS of corporations are GIVEN lucrative contracts by the STATE and YOU the taxpayers pay for that private company to:
1) not deliver a damn thing
2) treat their workers like they're garbage
3) pay themselves 20 grand a day
See how that works? That's what they want to do with your schools too... because why? Because they're failing? Failing at what... turning some kid who's had crack smoke blown into his mouth since year 1 into a college bound Rhodes scholar?
You know who came up with that garbage? Jack Welch of GE. Basically, he said, look, do what we did at GE> Set impossible standards then blame them when hey fail . Anyone who's ever been fired from a private company knows how this game is played. And they're playing it against the teachers. Everyone thinks our schools are failing compared to the test scores of Country X. The fact is, if you tested ALL the student age population of Country X , we'd be far ahead of the vast majority of them. Other countries just tell the kids from a certain background- the train ride ends here for you- get off. We don't do that. It's not in our national character. It's part of what makes us what we are.
Jack Welch and all the the overpaid dirtbags who want to attack the working class teachers so they can "transform education through the miracle of the marketplace" just want another profit center for themselves and their cronies.
Believe me, once they've "privatized" public education, the same think tanks who fed you this BS will start pumping out studies about how it might not be a good idea to require the same standards for all students.... and thus relieve themselves of having to live up to the standards they created expressly for the purpose of making public teachers fail. That's management.. that' s classic management technique #1,302....
They'll be study and pundits talking about how we ought to track kids like these other countries X Y and Z... get it? No Child Left Behind is just a standard there to make sure teachers fail so the Free Market coke snorters can have at that pot of gold called vouchers..... turn teaching into a crappy minimum wage job and conduct schools like the universities conduct themselves now- let the smart kids figure the subjects out basically for themselves and let the ones who can't do that drop out... who cares? We're getting ours and there's all the pressure int eh world to GET INTO schools and colleges so we don't have any shortage of customers, now do we? It's great... pay crappy wages, deliver a crappy product get paid a bundle and retire to Tahiti.....the full Free Market Freak reality, lived in all its glory.
Our schools aren't failing. Americans are amongst the most creative, inventive and brightest people.
I find you argument flawed in a few ways. Sweden one of the most socialist and strong union countries in the world has seen an increase of the test scores and in increase of private schools by having school vouchers. (Read Free to Choose Free to Learn Economist May 3rd)
In Columbia were kids are randomly selected those using vouchers are 15-20 percent more likely to finish high school than those who attend public schools.
This voucher program is not anti-union any more than the competition between GM and Ford is anti-union.
But I do think that teachers with different skills should be rewarded differently. Math teachers science teachers those who have marketable skills should be paid more than others. But the unions wont let them. We have a shortage of teachers in some areas and a surplus in others.. why not pay more to eliminate the shortage.
Look we may have the greatest school and university system in the world but the world is quickly catching up. Even a fortune as large as bill gates can be spent over a lifetime and our lead in the world economy is equally as fragile.
Look we got where we are today by allowing the Einsteins the Werner Von Braun in the United States in the first place. We don't know what they will invent over the course of their career. When the visa office offered Sergey Brin a H-1b visa they didn't know well this man will invent Google. We should not just limit people because they haven't invented anything yet. Other places are becoming more completive and the choice between San Fransisco and London will not be so obvious.