The phony STEM shortage and the scandal of engineering visas -- will Congress ever act?

[n2doc]

Leo Perrero had worked for the Walt Disney Co. in Orlando for more than 10 years, helping to run the point-of-sale systems at Walt Disney World and its other local parks, until late 2014. That's when he learned that his job, like 300 others, was going to be turned over to a foreign worker within 90 days, during which time he was expected to train his replacement.

"My co-workers and I felt extremely betrayed by Disney," he told a Senate subcommittee Thursday. "They were going to simply cast us aside for their financial benefit.... I followed my dream of having a career in technology to have my very same desk, chair and computer all taken over by a foreign worker who was just flown in to America weeks before."Perrero's story is becoming woefully familiar -- in fact, several congressional committees have been hearing testimony like it for more than a year. It's the story of how a visa program designed to allow high-tech companies to find foreign workers with advanced degrees and unique skills has been subverted by industries using it to replace American journeyman technology workers with lower-paid workers imported from overseas.

A year ago, the wholesale firing of IT teams at Disney, Southern California Edison, and other tech-dependent companies and their replacement by offshore workers with so-called H-1B visas caused a national scandal. We exposed this loophole at the time, and followed up by showing how Congress connived in the visa subterfuge.


more

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-the-scandal-of-engineering-visas-20160226-column.html

[djean111]

1. And Hillary pushed for more H-1B visas. n/t

[truedelphi]

2. A point to consider -

The geniuses who were involved in the tech "revolution" of the 1980's did not EVER voice any comments about all Americans sticking together as a United Front against exportation of jobs.

I lived in Silicon Valley in the 1980's and far too often, I heard fellow members of the techie crowd saying, "Well, how stoopid did you have to be to believe that you could hold on to a job in the textile industry? when that job can so easily go overseas."


A few years later, it was "How stoopid did you have to believe that you could hold on to a job in the steel mills or the auto plants of Michigan?"

These geniuses were totally surprised when in the early 1990's, a lot of tech positions were then going overseas, and the reality that someone in India could program a computer for a lot cheaper than they could. And meanwhile the H1 visas were being issued right and left.

Our American economy would now be a very different place if people in the tech world had stood by all the other workers in the American economy. But they had never considered Rev Niemoller's words about "They came for the Union workers but I wasn't a Union Worker" in the context of the fascists who have destroyed the American economy, until it was far too late.

[SusanCalvin]

4. ^THIS^

[jeff47]

8. Tech workers tend to be libertarian.

Its simplistic views are nice and logical, so they fit very well with tech workers.

The fact that they don't work in the real world is not something most think about.

Unionizing tech workers is going to be extremely difficult. Most believe they can negotiate a better deal by themselves.

[MisterP]

9. it's a common trap of having "made it," especially the middle class and triple-especially

for new sectors: everyone else is carriagewrights and buggy-whip wrappers, while YOUR sector has finally broken the rules of economics and found a new invention that will CHANGE THE UNIVERSE and incidentally go up forever in the market

that's also where you get the "IT can do it better than the gubmint!" types like Thiel and Musk
http://www.cyberselfish.com/

[Igel]

3. The law's poorly worded.

Then again, so's the concept "STEM."

I mean, these IT people can easily get jobs. They're STEM, and, really, we could use more civil engineers and mechanical engineers.

It's like saying that the NSA needs linguists. Why not just hire some bilingual Spanish speakers? Granted, the NSA needs Arabic and Pashto and a few other languages, but a LOTE is a LOTE. What's the diff?

And geography doesn't matter. They can hire the LOTE in San Diego. They can commute a few thousand miles a day, at government expense.

It's a silly debate and discussion, and until terms are defined, distinctions drawn, and everybody agrees to the relevant distinctions and definitions and then sticks to them for the duration of the discussion, it's not gonna get any less silly. (But that's not the point of the discussion, IMHO. It's a "they're taking away what belongs to me" argument, often heard on things that aren't properly possessed, and nearly as often heard concerning things that aren't even promised. Just wanted.)

[Rex]

5. Welcome to the New World Order.

You have to diversify in your field if you want to stay viable with the jackals that hate spending a dime when they could spend a penny.

[AngryAmish]

6. Facebook. Keep using Facebook.

So good for america. Keep using Facebook.

[Jitter65]

7. Not ever. That's how elite immigrants and their families come here around the system. nt