Wednesday, April 18, 2007

UCLA lobbying against their own American students

As reported in the 4/18/2007 Daily Bruin, UCLA is lobbying to increase the H-1b cap. The article fails to reveal the substantial harm that the increase will have on UCLA's predominately American students, both immediately upon graduation and throughout their careers as they try to compete for jobs in a job market where employers can select from resumes arriving from the poorest countries on earth. (India and China alone have seven times the population of the U.S.)

The article fails to reveal that the reason H-1b cap is being reached is not because of foreign graduates from U.S. schools, but rather due to the flood of graduates of foreign universites. Unlike UCLA graduates, these graduates do not have huge student loans and thus can accept lower pay, driving down all wages.

The article closes with this gem by Bernard Wolfsdorf, national second vice president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, which lobbies for more H-1b to increase their $100 million industry of processing these visas:

“The fact of the matter is immigrants don’t take jobs, they create jobs.”
This is false. Some employers claim that up to 90% of the applications they receive are from H-1b or people seeking H-1b sponsorship. Under the law of averages, a substantial number of Americans are not getting jobs they apply for due to the H-1b visa - which contains no requirement to first recruit American workers.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

The comment “The fact of the matter is immigrants don’t take jobs, they create jobs.” is definitely false, unemployment claims are still at an industry high. After unemployment benefits run out, unemployed individuals are no longer counted as unemployed. Forcing individuals into others fields other then what they were trained for is also not considered in the unemployment numbers as well. It is proven that the American tech worker are being replaced or forced into other industries for lower paying immigrants or H1b's. Immigrants or H1b's displace American workers and only create an excuse to hire cheaper labor at the cost of American jobs. I don’t see any job creation by immigrants or H1b's only destruction of the American tech industry by corporate greed.

char said...

The jobs created are overseas

Anonymous said...

Looking to India

Companies that specialize in offshore outsourcing of technology work to India have the most requests for skilled-worker visas in the United States.
COMPANIES WITH THE MOST H-1B EMPLOYEES IN 2006…..H-1B POSITIONS REQUESTED
Infosys Technologies…..22,590
Wipro Technologies…..19,450
Cognizant Technology Solutions…..11,330
Patni Computer Systems…..9,922
MphasiS*…..9,908
HCL America…..9,128
Deloitte & Touche…..8,367
Tata Consultancy Services…..7,528
Accenture…..7,253
Satyam Computer Services…..7,235
*Now a subsidiary of Electronic Data Systems
Source: Department of Labor


This is why the H-1B cap is exhausted in one day.

Note these companies are all consulting companies. This means that one job solicited by a client company results in 10 or more "virtual jobs" being solicited by competing consulting companies and job boards.

Using the US immigration system as a temporary employment agency is contitutionally illegal and is a fraud against the people of the United States.

Anonymous said...

Link didn't work. Here it is:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/business/yourmoney/15view.html?em&ex=1176782400&en=fb88952e19550bc8&ei=5087%0A

The DOL quote is on the left sidebar.

Anonymous said...

I'll try it again:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/
business/yourmoney/15view.html?
em&ex=1176782400&en=fb88952e19550
bc8&ei=5087%0A

You may have to paste it back together.

(Blogger sucks)

Anonymous said...

Ha ha. By increasing the number of foreign visas, i.e. increasing the supply of labor, new jobs will magically appear out of thin air? Think about it, who is Bernard Wolfsdorf trying to fool when he said:

“The fact of the matter is immigrants don’t take jobs, they create jobs.”

According to his logic, if we were to import, say 50,000 lawyers, they would not displace any American lawyers. In fact, they would create all kinds of new jobs for lawyers! Believe that?

Do you think AILA would be all for importing 50,000 foreign lawyers into the American labor market?

Economics 101: Increase the supply of tech professionals and the price (salary, benefits, working conditions, ...) of tech professionals is depressed.

In addition, as the supply of tech professionals exceeds the demand some will be forced out of the field.

Anonymous said...

This one's a little off topic. Thanks for your patience.

I earned my BS degree from UCLA in the early 80s. If UCLA in 2007 is anything like UCLA in the early 80s, this comes as no surprise to me.

I remember they didn't have adequate student housing. As an out-of-state student this was especially big headache. Also, after I qualified for in-state tuition, they toughened the requirements and made them retroactive.

Add to that the large minority of the professors who couldn't teach worth a damn (maybe not a problem specific to UCLA): some were incomprehensible, but most thought it demeaning to teach undergraduates.

Sounds like they haven't lost that "fuck you" attitutude.