A law firm has posted a video with some of the steps that companies can take to hire workers from overseas. There’s something poetic about seeing Americans screwing other Americans, don’t you think? :(
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The left brain, right brain theory has been killed years ago. It is suprising to read people still quoting it.
And blaming lawyers for educating corporations about the law has to be one of the silliest things I have read. The last I checked, it was legislative bodies and not lawyers who were responsible for stupid laws.
Yes, immigration is the big issue once again, but it is not about immigration. It is about the 11 million votes illegals have up for grabs that is at stake.
When you have unemployment rates at around 4%, everyone who wants a job has one. One out of 25 Americans is unemployable. Think not? Then you give a job to my brother-in-law. When he shows up drunk, unkempt, and late, you will change your mind.
The reality is that we are in a global workplace, and if labor can be gotten at cheaper rates overseas, it will and should be done. The reason we have unemployment at 4.5% in the first place is because of free trade.
The real outrage to me about coroporate America is how insulated they are. I know first hand about how the laws in some states paticularly Delaware and Nevada coddle corporate America. Corporate management and their boards often have more rights and power than the shareholder owners.
The key to me is not whether outsourcing is right or wrong, but is it consistent? When you ask those in corporate America about their outrageous pay packages, you are told “that is the going rate.” Well, it may be the going rate in the states but it is not in China or India.
The real frustration to me in outsourcing is that no board members or CEOs get outsourced when you can get better performance for less pay abroad. Maybe American workers could be paid better and profits not suffer if American CEOs weren’t such greedy bastards.
[somewhat off topic]
#28, ArianeB, since I’m ambidextrous, no one can figure out whether I’m left or right brained. Some here would say no-brained. But marketing? Please see post 22, and realize that the cost of marketing is built into darned near everything we purchase, the most egregious offender being the drug companies bombarding us 24/7 with adverts about the latest “breakthrough” for some drug folks may need but can’t afford due to marketing.
As an ancient EDS’er, (back when dirt was brand new, EDS had two floors and I was 17) I learned a lot about hiring. I suppose it’s what you need the labor for, but there is no rule of acquisition that addresses: “You always get what you pay for.”
Rule #239 comes close to marketing : Never be afraid to mislabel a product.
All the people complaining about this. Do you buy locally produced goods, or do you buy foreign goods? Do you buy locally or at big-name stores? How about for phone service, do you buy from the local telco or do you go for foreign produced service?
#30 – I get about three resume per week and the lawyers have told me how to find ways to disqualify them —
I’m not unsympathetic to your story at all, and have no problem with your guy, his job, or anything…
But seriously, isn’t it horribly disheartening to have to “find ways” to disqualify candidates? That implies that at least some of these are good candidates.
My issue is with companies that don’t have a position filled and actively pursue non-Americans to fill it just to save some money… as if money were the only thing that was important.
#31 – When you have unemployment rates at around 4%, everyone who wants a job has one.
That’s not true. It means that 4 in every hundred doesn’t, but 4.5% is the national average, and of the 50 sates, 13 of them are at or above 5% with Michigan at 7.1 and Mississippi at 7.6.
Mississippi makes sense, tragically. But Ohio at 5.6% doesn’t and Michigan, which used to be an industrial powerhouse is a tragic reminder of what happens when greed replaces ethics.
Further, I and many believe, and not without good reason, that the federal numbers are under represented due to unemployment benefits having run out and other reasons. I suspect the real number is noticeably higher.
Each percentage point represents very large numbers. We are talking about millions out of work. When we talk about new jobs created, we aren’t being specific at all. We could be talking about low paying service sector jobs – ie: burger flippers. We also are not talking about underemployment, which is a sizable problem in the labor market.
I happen to be underemployed and while I am actively, vigorously seeking better employment, I am facing the reality that I might have to take a McJob to supplement this job, which is a full time technical job with benefits… So to make it in todays economy, I’m about to start working 60 hour 7 day weeks, and for what? Just to eat?
I’m starting to think that I should figure out what disability I can conjure up and start the long and difficult process of getting disability benefits, which is an idea I hate… But really, what is the point of working so hard just to reach a state of misery? Couldn’t I be poor and have my free time to boot? (Now I’d never do this, but you get my point)
Hey… If I did that, I’d drop out of the employment numbers and you could boast about 3.9% unemployment.
—
As I have said before, wealth is created on the backs of labor and by the graces of society and government who permits business to thrive. It has to be a symbiotic relationship for it to work.
For all that is just and good and right about our economic system, what we are seeing today in the economy and labor market is the failures of capitalism. Business should be the bedrock of community. When it isn’t, it is the beginning of the end.
#23
“If you bothered to read the comments you’d see that most people don’t blame the “dark skinned ones”, as you so eloquently put it, for this problem… they blame the lawyers, politicians, and businesses.”
Then how come everytime I turn on the Telly and there’s an anti immigrant campaign all I’m seeing is white folk bitching about it?
“Perhaps next time you should read the comments and actually spend a moment thinking before you start typing.”
Naw, I don’t bother and instead post my own opinion before I read the posts, that way I don’t get predisposed to say something else.
#34 — yes they are qualified and yes it is very disheartening.
I also have issue with not hiring Americans for open jobs. However, that is not the message that you are getting with this video. Take it from me who is in the process of this as we speak. They are talking about the process that you must follow to sponsor someone for a greencard. It’s called the “PERM” process — what you are hearing in this video is what you must do to protect the guy that already has the job and has to have his job posted in order to “prove” that he should not be fired and replaced with a US citizen — and that’s no better than refusing to hire an American.
#37 – Again, I sympathize with what you are saying, and I understand that we are talking about a process here. In a way, you are talking about protecting an existing person’s job. I get it.
But if you need a lawyer to help a company understand how to purposely disqualify candidates, are you worried that eventually, some insightful, intelligent, enterprising American applicant is going to realized he just got screwed and that might lead to a court case that puts all this on display in the public record?
You are in the unenviable position of being forced to do the wrong thing in order to do the right thing. Further there are a whole bunch of people out there diligently trying to get a job or a better job, as per the American dream, whose time (and yours) is being wasted by this borderline fraudulent process.
[Duplicate post. – ed.]
#26,
The notion that we should abandon our lead in science and technology, to become a nation of Marketing execs, is ridiculous. What, pray tell, will you market when we have completely lost our ability to build anything. This is already happening. Witness the current crop of college students who are avoiding engineering careers because of all of the outsourcing. Can anyone blame them?
It’s one thing to out-source low-skilled manufacturing jobs. If unemployment is low and other opportunities exist then maybe that’s not so bad. But once you’ve decided to outsource all of your knowledge-based work, where do you go from there?
Again, spare us the nonsense about creative work being where it’s at. No marketing guru, or movie star, ever put a man into space. This line of thinking is one sure-fire way to ensure that WE will eventually be the low-wage suckers that OTHER countries export jobs to.
#31 – jz
“The left brain, right brain theory has been killed years ago. It is suprising to read people still quoting it.”
Wrong. The popular misconceptions are what have been killed.
Function laterality in the human brain is a demonstrable fact. Research continues. Because the concept, greatly oversimplified and therefore easily grasped, found a period of faddish traction among the general public and has since been deflated doesn’t justify leaping to the erroneous conclusion that the phenomenon doesn’t exist.
Here we all are STUNNED by this video. Then we go out and vote for the traitor Democrats and Republicans that did this to us. Ha, what a joke we are.
#42
If it was France, there would be huge demonstrations. And it wouldn’t have started when the techies were outsourced/H1B:ed, but back when the textile workers where outsourced. It’s called unions… something that isn’t popular in North America.
#24 – ArianeB – The scam goes deeper. H1B workers are required to be paid the prevailing wage, which means that they cannot be paid less than what a US Citizen would be paid at the same skill set. The scam is they are using the cheaper labor to depress my pay!
#30 – Mike T – I applaud you for trying to keep a good worker on. However, I wouldn’t want to work for you for defrauding the rest of us who could do just as good of a job.
Btw, I have friends that I know would have been qualified for the job, but were disqualified so that a foreign worker could be brought in. When it happens to someone you know…
#33: Yes, whenever humanly possible… when the local Wal-Mart doesn’t shut down yet another mom & pop store on my Main Street.
#35: you’re right! The actual rate is shown here:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm
The lower right corner. The present ACTUAL unemploymenr rate nationally is 8.2%
#45 – You need to put U-6 unemployment into context, otherwise you just use it to fit your political book. U-6 employment since it’s last peak in 2004 of 10.5%, and since 1994 it has fallen by 4%. Also, a drop in the participation rate of teenagers accounts for about one-third of the decline in the overall participation rate. So this trend also inflates the U-6 numbers, and last time I check teenagers are not competing for H1B visas.
Plain and simple this is evil.
What makes it right in someone eyes is it’s evil for profit. Execs don’t need to work 30 yrs to retire! They make their millions in less then a year. If things don’t work, they are set for life. Not so for the Average Joe.
Ever since the 60’s we have been on what pleases me now kick! This short sightedness is killing the American Goose that laid the golden egg.
It’s no different then having a sports car and driving it at full tilt and too cheap to do the maintenance. It goes fast but not for long. It’s like the lead up to the ENRON crash, we know it’s wrong, we just need to sustain it. Execs must fight like hell to sustain it and our Government is helping!!!
IT’s NOT SUSTAINABLE, IT’s GOING TO CRASH, IT’s EVIL!
#45: The chart I referenced does not specify teenagers for any reason. There’s no reason for you to do so.
I did put the data into context of “people out of work”. The artificially-low official rate is based only on people collecting an unemployment benefit, according to my state unemployment office. Once that benefit is exhausted, they’re not counted in any official rate. That is deceptive and makes the “official” unemployment rate grossly inaccurate and underreports actual unemployment conditions.
Anyone out there looking for a job knows full well that conditions are far worse than the “official” reports we’re being told.
30–I feel your pain, but wonder if you realize what you are doing?
You expressly state your GOAL is to hire this specific guy. You hire experts to find ways to disqualify AMERICAN applicants:::: “I get about three resume per week and the lawyers have told me how to find ways to disqualify them”
“I know that from the start. I am simply doing what the Feds require me to do so a guy that has had a job for 2 or 3 years and is doing a great job at it can keep it.”—Correct whereas “the system” says your goal should have been to hire and employ him during his legal period and then find a substitute as his work visa expires.
This is a hoot===YOU are the problem!!!!!!!!!!!! “There is a lot of ranting and raving and xenophobic things being said out here on the comments. Sadly, many of you have no idea what you are talking about. I used to think a lot like most of you — just figured foreigners only came over there to take our jobs.”===tell me how exactly this is not what YOU and your good friend are doing?
“These are folks that are as good if not better at their jobs than many of the US citizens we have to pull from.”===Yes, because self interested short sighted folks like yourself have been rigging the system for year to gain this effect.
NO BASIS AT ALL FOR THIS—but I’d love to see your evidence for you pay him a competitive wage? Bet its about as valid as the body of your post.
BTW–NOBODY says the work visa folks aren’t good people. But so are those applicants that are denied employement in the USA because of you and your boy. The difference–USA citizens denied jobs, so why should USA schools teach those disciplines, and the GOUSA economy spirals down to thrid world levels. Good Going!!
Most people are so distracted by this BUSHIE war that this is not a priority for them. BUSHIE and CO. has given us a false BOOGIE to hate, IRAQ and now IRAN.
Meanwhile on the domestic front, BUSHIE is requiring all AMERICANS to have passports ready to transit the CANADIAN and MEXICAN boarder, but can’t seem to build a fence along the MEXICAN boarder. Some lame excuse is always given; how many miles of sound barriers are built along our roads every day, these would make a nice starter fence.
I really have nothing against foreigners, I just think we need to take care of our own also if not first.
Sadly caring for your fellow American is no longer an American value; it is no longer profitable. Just look at the ongoing Katrina’s aftermath.
Final guidelines of the Immigration Bill and H1B quota increase should be finalized by the US Senate in just a few weeks.
Kinda sounds like OFTLO might be a lawyer, doesn’t it?
In my view, WAY more than any other profession, lawyers are PARASITES, plain and simple. Because the overwhelming majority of my fellow citizens are too obtuse to see it, they (the lawyers) will continue to get away with it for awhile yet. Perceptive people have seen it for generations. Even Shakespeare suggested that the first step to a better world would be to kill all the lawyers.
Try to come up with any other profession that does what lawyers do. They have basically created their own existence, and for as long as they have existed they have done nothing but ensure their own job security. As legislators (Representatives and Senators) they make laws so complicated, normal people can’t understand them. That is completely intentional. They do that to make it necessary to have lawyers because normal folks can’t understand the laws. If we got rid of the lawyers and started over making laws, we would do so in plain unambiguous language that everybody could understand and lawyers would not be necessary.
All they really contribute is deliberate obfuscation in order to make themselves necessary as guides, at great expense to the rest of us. Our legal system is like an exclusive toybox full of toys that only lawyers get to play with. No other profession does that. Can you see it?
Lauren, motor function has lateral components. A stroke on the left side of the brain can cause an inability to speak and weakness of the right extremites.
However, the left brain right brain theory has to do more with sensory components like the left brain is logical, and the right brain is artistic. In reality, the brain’s sensory components (e.g. hypothalamus, pitutuary, amygdala) are centrally located. And the left brain, right brain nonsense totally neglects the rest of the body. Anybody who doesn’t think brain function can be modified by testosterone or estrogen is a fool.
I am not sure what you mean when you write “the phenomenon exists”. Brain function is infinitely more complicated than the simplistic right brain, left brain.
51—except for the fact that too many lawyers become parasitic, your post is completely wrong.
There is a lawyer/population/productivity curve that in its upward climb lawyers make the society more productive by making clear rules for competition and the marketplace, fairness, justice, and so forth. The curve levels off, then declines.
Japan for instance is starting to reach the end of the plateau stage. The GOUSA if far past it.
Your Shakespear example is also on the plus side. That statement is made by criminals who would like to get the lawyers out of the way so they can practice their trade.
The most closed profession is the medical one. There is an exception in most statutes to allow nurses to function. Those good docs even have the Feds paying for most of their services, the fight and collude to prevent malpractice investigation/enforcement, they restrict entry into the profession, deny para-professionals, and they are insulted if they are not millionaires by the third year out of residency. The law atleast has small claims and every individual is allowed to represent himself in court—so do lawyers have any monopoly?? Only if you want to win.
OFTLO, man, if you had to be an employer for one month, you would so change your tune.
“Business should be the bedrock of community. When it isn’t, it is the beginning of the end.” Businesses by law are there to make money. If they don’t, you lawyer types sue them for breaching their fidicuary duty. If they put profits first, then you sue them for putting profits above people.
You have to take a job “to eat”? Do you expect anybody to believe that? I have seen institutional food allocations from 30 cents to 3 bucks a day per person without seeing anyone die of malnutrition.
“Wealth is created on the backs of labor and by the graces of society and government who permits business to thrive.” This has to go down as the stupidest statement ever. Wealth is created when there is excess individual capital.Capital = wages – expenses for most people. If you spend all of what you make as you are doing, you will never have any wealth.
You are equating wealth with wages, and that is foolish. Wealth is much more dependent on how early capital is created in one’s life and the % return one gets on one’s investments. A man who makes a million a year and spends that same amount cannot accumulate wealth. A man who makes $50,000 a year and saves $10k per year can.
Turkish CDs are currently yielding 18%. If current exchange rates and interest rates hold, a $125,000 investment would be worth $1 million in 8 years. Please tell me which laborer’s back was broken had I made such an investment and which government and society’s good graces should I reward.
Your concept of underemployment is justification for your personal overspending. Please tell me how the average worker in China makes a fraction of your wage but is able to save 30% of his income.
Is it a surprise to anyone that a liberal thinks the best way to accumulate wealth is to take someone else’s?
#53 – bobbo – While your post was interesting in a historical sort of way, I am still convinced that laws, written in clear, unambiguous and easily understood language could render obsolete the legal profession and, while doing so, could easily provide unmistakable guidelines for the rest of us, INCLUDING doctors. Clear laws with very sharp teeth (stiff and effective penalties) would make life a whole lot easier and more fulfilling.
As for the assertion that only the criminals would benefit from the absence of lawyers – when you have a system that makes folks who don’t wear their seatbelts criminals, maybe you’re right. IMHO, there should be no such thing as a victimless crime, and I welcome you to come with even one example of a law where a crime should still be a crime when there is no victim.
Bottom line – I am still solidly in agreement with Lauren that lawyers are Public Enemy #1
#53 – bobbo – Sorry, missed a point…. the lawyer/population/productivity curve – devised, no doubt, by lawyers. Snort, snicker, LOL – did you really expect anyone to buy THAT?
BertDawg–I welcome your disagreement. You are attributing to me serveral positions I never took and don’t have. I am by and large a free speech, fiscal conservative, existential liberaltarian looking for facts and data before making a first impression. Now, some issues I have gone thru a few times, and my mind is made up on a few issues–made up until some new argument is advanced.
I’m sure you are much the same?
If you think laws can be written clearly for everyone to follow, you have never thought through your proposition.
Do me a favor?? Write a law when you can and post it. Lets see how clearn it is? In return, I’ll see if I can find that lawyer curve thing. I read it in a book years ago, don’t know if its on the internets.
Well, I think its called the Magee Curve. I just googled “lawyer society benefit curve” and got it. Pay for website, so I stopped. The intro blurb sounds like what I posted, but it starts with a negative statement you might like to misquote. (smile!)
http://tinyurl.com/2hf6fj
61—re my post 49==there are 3-4 issues that overlap but are different and we basically say the same thing from slightly different perspectives. I think we agree that the GOUSA has programs in place that encourage the employment of foreign nationals that is impacting our workers of all classes and even our national security. I just do think the analysis/concern should be “what is best for America” not “what is best for transnational businesses.” You do recognize the difference?
61—re my post 55==Nobody said or implied anybody has died of starvation. Total straw man/obfucation.
Yes, poor Americans have it quite good. Let them eat cake. Another straw man–no one said or implied they were “completey victims of their own situation.” Take any position you like, restate it to the extreme. I too will disagree with what is said.
You started stronger than with the drivel you end with. You just need to meet more Chinese, or take the idealogical blinders off.
#58 – bobbo – No problem, although I can’t claim credit – how about THREE laws for starters?
1. Thou shalt not kill.
2. Thou shalt not steal.
3. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s ass. (I’d have a difficult time with that one, as she’s HOT.) : )
And as for the sharp teeth part of the laws (stiff and effective penalties), I propose the death penalty for #1 (no second chance),
and a three strikes arrangement for #2, with death penalty for the third strike. You get the idea.
As for # 3, there is no victim until some ACTION takes place, so until then, it’s no harm – no foul. But if I should be unable to resist acting on that impulse, then I would expect severe punishment.