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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAmerica's genius glut: Don't expand H-1B program
Source: New York Times
By Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute
... If anything, we have too many high-tech workers: more than nine million people have degrees in a science, technology, engineering or math field, but only about three million have a job in one. Thats largely because pay levels dont reward their skills. Salaries in computer- and math-related fields for workers with a college degree rose only 4.5 percent between 2000 and 2011. If these skills are so valuable and in such short supply, salaries should at least keep pace with the tech companies profits, which have exploded.
... If there is no shortage of high-tech workers, why would companies be pushing for more? Simple: workers under the H-1B program arent like domestic workers because they have to be sponsored by an employer, they are more or less indentured, tied to their job and whatever wage the employer decides to give them.
Moreover, too many are paid at wages below the average for their occupation and location: over half of all H-1B guest workers are certified for wages in the bottom quarter of the wage scale.
Bringing over more there are already 500,000 workers on H-1B visas would obviously darken job prospects for Americas struggling young scientists and engineers. But it would also hurt our efforts to produce more: if the message to American students is, Dont bother working hard for a high-tech degree, because we can import someone to do the job for less, we could do significant long-term damage to the high-tech educational system we value so dearly.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/08/opinion/americas-genius-glut.html
hollysmom
(5,946 posts)I remember that they got cheap workers because "they were learning computers from the US jobs".
uponit7771
(90,347 posts)...conservative.
The 3.7% UR rate for tech workers should only include US citizens but it doesn't
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)Indian and only hire Americans when their percentage of American workers drops so low that it brings attention from state and federal agencies. H-1(b) workers are virtually slaves, so it's not like we're helping them either.
That 3.7% UE rate is also bogus as millions of them have been pushed out of the field over the lat 15 years.
Angry Dragon
(36,693 posts)OhioChick
(23,218 posts)MrSlayer
(22,143 posts)We have more than enough people to fill the jobs. The scumbag owners only want the foreign workers because they're cheaper. Just as they've fucked all of us blue collar workers they're fucking the white collars as well.
uponit7771
(90,347 posts)antigop
(12,778 posts)SunSeeker
(51,571 posts)I seem to recall that an employer had to first prove that there were no available U.S. workers with those skills (presumably by way of affidavit showing what they did to recruit U.S. workers) before they could go outside the U.S. to hire workers. Did the GOP get rid of that requirement as their idea of immigration "reform"?
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)The numbers of unemployed Americans with tech degrees and skills vs. the numbers of H1-B visas granted demonstrates that I am stating a fact.
SunSeeker
(51,571 posts)You should have to submit the ad, show where you posted it, and who applied, along with their resumes. Seems pretty simple to see if they are committing fraud. Also, they need to make penalties for this kind of traitorous BS steep, along with felony criminal penalties.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)applications and check them.
It just isn't worth it. And it would not solve the problem which is that the companies who are willing to spend money to recruit and hire people from other countries are unwilling to hire and add to the training of American citizens who are capable of doing these jobs.
We have a serious unemployment problem here and it will affect our education system and the quality of life in our country. Our government should be concerned about the employment of Americans and not quite so concerned about importing cheap labor for wealthy corporations.
Rest assured, foreign governments are not so ready to give work visas to Americans. Years ago, we could go abroad and work, and even now, there are occasional jobs for teachers of English as a Second Language, but I don't know of any guest worker programs that send Americans to work abroad other than things like the Peace Corps and other volunteer agencies.
The reality is that "free trade" means that corporations get the freedom to shop around for cheap labor while hard-working people from countries with completely different economies have to compete for the same jobs.
Everything that our ancestors here worked so hard to build: water systems, electricity grids, sewers that work well, medical care, our education system, everything is being jeopardized by declining wages, lower tax revenues (due to the ever lower wages paid) and the replacement of jobs by automation.
Regrettably, one of the factors that is contributing to our decline is the H1-B visa which brings a worker from a country in which education is, in American dollars, relatively cheap to compete with an American worker who is struggling to pay back the loans he had to take in order to pay for his education.
We have a crisis in this country due to the fact that American graduates who owe huge amounts in many cases for student loans cannot get jobs and repay their loans. We just don't have the job demand to allow for H1-B visas. If we are going to permit those visas, we should grant a loan amnesty for students who can't get jobs to repay their loans.
SunSeeker
(51,571 posts)Also, employers should have to pay a tax equivalent to one year's salary of the foreigner they hire, with the money going to pay for the education of U.S. workers.
And if they send a few of these scumbag employers to jail for immigration fraud, that would clean up th problem. That's what Europe does and they don't have these problems.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Flatulo
(5,005 posts)uponit7771
(90,347 posts)SunSeeker
(51,571 posts)MattBaggins
(7,904 posts)Want to pretend to have looked for workers in Redmond? Post job vacancies in newspapers in rural Montana.
hootinholler
(26,449 posts)SunSeeker
(51,571 posts)They're norhing more than coyotes.
hootinholler
(26,449 posts)Right after the banksters are jailed.
RKP5637
(67,111 posts)the lowest wage possible. In the long run, America is truly fucked if these outrageous shenanigans are allowed to continue. Americans will clearly be the knuckle draggers of earth and a joke of a place ... but hey, as long as you build the biggest weapons and kill off others with drones what's the problem?
Matariki
(18,775 posts)I've been surrounded by idiot "program managers" who haven't got a clue about the field they work in but make more than the developers they 'manage'. People who actually do things (as opposed people who make themselves look busy in useless meetings) are ALWAYS paid less than they're worth. And yes, I'm bitter ;-p
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)And we don't need to allow anyone who graduates from an American university to stay in the country either. We have a glut of educated people at this time. Let's employ all our American-born college graduates and then once they are all employed think about granting citizenship to people who come here to go to college and want to stay on.
I do think we should give citizenship to those who come here as children and are educated here.
Flatulo
(5,005 posts)uponit7771
(90,347 posts)Flatulo
(5,005 posts)The upper management guys made off with millions.
Haha, made off. Madoff. Get it?
Skittles
(153,169 posts)Chathamization
(1,638 posts)what they really mean is that there aren't enough to flood the markets and depress wages.
pampango
(24,692 posts)I understand that with 'comprehensive' reform everyone might have to give a little - for some a 'path to citizenship' is an 'amnesty' deal-breaker, for some H-1B 'reform' is a anti-labor deal-breaker, for some 'Everify' is a 'big-brother' error-prone deal breaker, etc.
But H-1B 'reform' seems to be a solution to a problem that does not even exist, as least not in the sense that the 'reformers' contend.