Saturday, March 3, 2007

Bill Gates Slated to Ask Congress for More H-1b Workers

Bill Gates will plea for an H-1B increase before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee at a public hearing slated for 9:30 a.m. EST on Wednesday morning, March 7, 2007. We don't know whether an advocate on behalf of the U.S. workers who would be harmed will be given equal time.

Gates will claim that H-1b workers are paid the “Prevailing Wage.” To the extent that this means "parity with what U.S. workers earn in the same jobs, this is false. DOL defines four levels of “prevailing wage,” and LEVEL ONE is about the 17th percentile of the average wage of U.S. workers within the job classification – over 80% of H-1b are at LEVEL ONE. DOL approves H-1b programmers to work in Silicon Valley for $40,000 per year - hardly a "prevailing wage" - and hardly an indication that these workers are the "best and brightest."

Gates will claim that there is a shortage of U.S. tech workers. This is false. Open a daily newspaper in a major metro area and note only a handful of computer programmer / software engineer job ads. (Also be aware that up to 50% of the ads are fake – they are run by employers to “prove that no Americans are available” to apply for greencards for their H-1B workers. The employers discard the applications of qualified Americans. There are 500,000 H-1b workers currently in the U.S. – most would like to become citizens. (See the fake ads that run each week in Sacramento Bee.)

According to analysis by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), in Q3 2006 American Software Engineers, Computer Scientists and Systems Analysts have lost jobs this year over last year - a net loss of 93,000.

Microsoft is not making a good faith effort to hire Americans: They do not recruit at ANY of the 22 CSU campuses in California. There is an Engineering Job Fair at CSUS next week. Microsoft is not participating.

There is no shortage of Americans entering this profession: In many schools, like UC San Diego, the programs are impacted and thus turning away qualified U.S. students.

Key propaganda in support of H-1B increase originates from the special interest group “American Immigration Lawyers Association” (AILA) to protect and expand their $100 million industry of processing corporate immigration documents. In fact the hearing for Bill Gates is being coordinated by former directing attorney of the American Immigration Lawyers Association Pro Bono Project, and illegal immigration proponent Esther Olavarria, who is now General Counsel and primary immigration advisor to Senator Edward M. Kennedy - Ranking Member, U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Immigration.

Gates will imply that the H-1b is only being used when no Americans are available. This is false, and is a key deficiency of the visa: It allows employers to sponsor and hire foreign workers EVEN WHEN THE EMPLOYER HAS AS STACK OF RESUMES FROM QUALIFIED AMERICANS WHO NEED THE WORK. Most H-1b have only average skills and work at average jobs - for below average pay. Why is Congress subjecting Americans to this? Displaced Americans have no legal recourse BECAUSE CONGRESS MAKES IT LEGAL!

Finally, the H-1b is having an unintended negative effect on the U.S. economy: Seven of the top ten H-1 users are not U.S. companies, but rather are Indian outsourcing firms which utilize the H-1b program to bring in Indian workers to train them before transferring these jobs and technologies back to India. This is a critical loss of U.S. infrastructure that Congress should stem rather than expand.

SOLUTION

Rather than increasing the cap, Congressman Pascrell (NJ) has H.R. 4378, the “Defend the American Dream Act of 2005” that would add U.S. worker protections. With these protections in place, the current cap of 85,000 would never be reached, and Microsoft and others would have plenty of visas for those rare cases when no Americans are available.

The Programmers Guild advocates for a $5000 annual fee on H-1b, to provide up to $20,000 annually for tuition and expenses for Americans studying Engineering and Computer science.

8 comments:

weaver said...

The H-1B visa is only the tip of the iceberg.

Immigrant Business Based Admissions 2005

Temporary visitors for business . . . . . . . . 4,695,809

Temporary workers/trainees . . . . . . . . . 733,247

Intracompany transferees . . . . . . . . . . . 312,144

All other (I-94)classes, including unknown2 . .
745,987

Employment Base Perm & Diversity Lottery . .
215,000 (Stated caps)

Total
(Does not included spouses and children.)
6,702,187

Seems like a lot of visas considering that Naturalization for 2006 was about 700,000.

Dr Gene Nelson said...

A bloated government subsidy program

The late free - market advocate and Nobel Economics laureate Milton Friedman labelled the H-1B visa program a "Government Subsidy" in a 2002 article.

H-1B is a Government Subsidy

Here is a tabulation by this author using INS and BCIS statistics from FY1985 to FY2002 that shows how bloated this government subsidy program has become.

H-1B is a Bloated Government Subsidy

The Abramoff Visa is an accurate label for this visa program, which has served to significantly boost the profits of the Microsoft Corporation since the H-1B visa was created in 1990. Microsoft Corporation employed criminal lawyer Jack Abramoff and about ten members of "Team Abramoff" to procure beneficial changes to H-1B visa legislation in 1996, 1998, and 2000.

Former U.S. Representative (and Majority Whip) Tom DeLay (R-TX) Dick Armey (R-TX) (Majority Leader) and current U.S. Representative Chris Cannon (R-UT), with former U.S. Senator Spencer Abraham (R-MI) have been some of the beneficiaries of the "Microsoft Millions" that have been used to procure this destructive legislation. This author advocates using RICO statutes, with no time limits, to break up this criminal enterprise.

Please contact this author at c0030180-at-airmail-dot-net for details.

Dr Gene Nelson said...

Demand "Equal Time" for Displaced American Programmers.

Here is some contact information for the Senate HELP Committee and the listing for the hearing as of March 4, 2007:


Senator Edward M Kennedy, Chairman (D-MA) (202) 224 - 2633
Senator Michael B. Enzi, Ranking (R-WY) (202) 224 - 6770
Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
428 Senate Dirksen Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

email: help_comments@help.senate.gov

http://help.senate.gov/Hearings/2007_03_07/2007_03_07.html

Committee: Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
Title: Strengthening American Competitiveness for the 21st Century
Date: Wednesday, March 7, 9:30 a.m.
Place: SH-216

Anonymous said...

Here are some good points from a Business Week article by Vivek Wadhwa
http://www.businessweek.com/
smallbiz/content/jul2006/
sb20060710_949835.htm

1) Shortages usually lead to price increases. If there were a shortage of engineers, salaries should have risen. Yet in real terms, engineering salaries have actually dropped (see BusinessWeek.com, 9/15/05, "Good Time to Learn Accounting").

2) We've got enough qualified computer programmers. The Wall Street Journal reported that

Microsoft received résumés from about 100,000 graduating students in 2004, screened 15,000 of them, interviewed 3,500, and hired 1,000. It said that Microsoft receives about 60,000 résumés a month for its 2,000 open positions.

Anonymous said...

you don't wanna run Windows on your computer written by those CS grads... Though sometimes it seems like they are who wrote all MS core products...

Anonymous said...

I am for FREE and open markets...
But BRAZIL, RUSSIA, INDIA and CHINA are not OPEN markets.
What we need is to tax those behaviors we do not approve. I would suggest an H1B tax of 30% with no limit on the number. The whole import business is rigged. Countries with NO SOCIAL SECURITY and little or no taxes are allowed to import without regard to the welfare of employees. The companies do not have to comply with US laws like COPYRIGHT protection or PATENTS. Envrionmental safety? What is that? I would suggest FELONY jail time for CEO's whether knowlegable or not if the company they are running is found to be employing illegal immigrants or failing to pay the 30% import tax.

To level the playing field we should tax ALL imports at 30% unless those imports are from a country with tax rates EQUAL TO or GREATER than INCOME tax rates in the US.

Anonymous said...

Are we really dependant on imported OIL? Why would we want to become dependant on imported BRAINS? Bill Gates in acting a little unpatriotic and bordering on traiterous. When people are fed up, how safe will you feel Mr. Bill? The revolution is coming.

Anonymous said...

Forget it, there'll be as many H-1b workers even if the fee is raised to $5,000.

Unemployment rate is at 5-year low, who is really unemployed? Those who still carry their 20-year-old skill sets?