MercuryNews.com | 10/21/2005 | 46% boost in tech visas proposed — I was amused by the latter part of the story when they talked about a shortfall of good American grads. Gee, I wonder why?
Under a proposal by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the annual number of H-1B visas would increase from 65,000 to 95,000. The increase was approved by the Judiciary Committee after it rejected a proposal by Specter for an increase of twice the size, to 125,000 a year.
High-tech executives have been pushing for more of the controversial H-1B visas, which critics say displace American workers in favor of less expensive foreigners beholden to the company that sponsors them…
“Right now, with our shrinking production of math and science majors, they just can’t fill the jobs,” said Kara Calvert, a lobbyist with the Information Technology Industry Council, which includes leading tech companies such as Intel, Cisco and Hewlett-Packard.
The story fails to mention that the ITIC are stooges for the big outsourcing firms.
I wish both parties would simply start rounding up and slaughtering the middle class. Their current approach is taking way too long!
This is yet another unAmerican action by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
I’m presently in university. My father was shocked to learn I wouldn’t be taking computer science. I informed him I’d like to make better than minimum wage when I’m done!
This way we can train those who will eventually receive our outsourced jobs.
Perhaps we take those liberal whiners Diane Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean, Hillary Clinton, Patrick Leahy, and Barbara Boxer and give them a visa to work in India – and have Edward Kennedy drive them there.
&, M. Cannali, you think the Republicans are going to stop the bills?
The Democrats are trying to out-Republican the Republicans, you dunce.
Hey neocons – lets add ALL the supporters of this bill.
DeLay
Bush
Hassert
etc.
as well as those asses Kennedy, Pelosi and Feinstein.
Mike – Dean is anti outsourcing – nice try.
I am exposed daily to the fact that foreign H1-B workers lower wages in whatever positions or industry they are in. It feels like every QA engineer in the Bay Area is foreign born. And I was personally involved in a cost struggle between my proven abilities, at a higher hourly rate, and the manager’s willingness to find someone else to meet his ever dwindling budget.
The pressure to cut labor costs comes from the highest levels of a company.
And increasingly, the response to those pressures seems to depend on the ethnicity of the manager. The aforementioned manager and a majority of his staff were Indian. I’ve seen the same with Chinese managers, and, of all things, Serbo-Croatians.
All of these people were my friends and colleagues, and most were extremely competent. The same distribution of intelligence and hard work that you would find among, um, “native born” engineers.
These H1-B visas just make it easier for these managers to give their countrymen and women an opportunity, while meeting or exceeding their budget goals. What’s not to love?
I have agonized a lot about this, and I don’t think I’m being racist or seeing a trend and pattern that is not there.
Where are the studies to track the effects of H1-Bs on the labor market? You’d think the liberal labor economists at Berkeley would be all over this.
Meanwhile, we need CS departments that offer classes in Quality Assurance. Not just to teach indispensable skills, but to provide some prestige to what many students and professionals view as a backwater.
Maybe instead of just hotels and restaurants, every service industry will have the equivalent of “dishwashers” who toil away in the back room for (relative) “peanuts,” managed and staffed by a cadre of the same ethnicity. We need to redefine the “puritan work ethic” and a “good days work” in the era of globalization and services, or every corner of our economy will be stratified along ethnic and immigrant lines.