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IEEE-USA quietly published two position papers asking the US Congress to re-examine and/or clarify sections of the DMCA last year

Actually, there are three papers:

• The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Encryption Research Provisions
• The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Notice-and-Takedown Provisions
• And perhaps most importantly:
• User Rights in Digital Copyright

While Ben Stein's inflammatory screed gets lots of attention, one is better served reading what the National Academies have to say about this. Also enlightening is the 2002 IEEE Employment Survey, with enlightening facts such as: About one-third (36%) would recommend engineering to their son or daughter; 35% are not sure; and 30% would not recommend it at all.

IEEE has an Intellectual Property Committee that researches and investigates IP laws and agreements and such. They often propose policy to the government (US, specifically).

One of the things they're working on right now is collecting information and opinions on pre-assignment agreements (these are the agreements that you're asked to sign at the start of employment, or a contract, which assign all rights to the company you're working for. I highly suggest that everyone who has a strong view go to http://ieeeusa.org/committees/IPC/ and read the information they have and make comments using the form on that page.

-Todd

I think I've said it before, but I'll say it again: From what I know, IEEE International as a whole tries to avoid getting involved with local politics. I can understand them trying to maintain a legal distance.

The United States branch of the IEEE, IEEE-USA, *does* get involved with local legal and politics. See their public policy section, which has a number of position statements.

In summary: If you want to know what IEEE International thinks about the DMCA, etc., you're in for a long wait. Look to see what the IEEE-USA branch is doing instead.

I think I've said it before, but I'll say it again: From what I know, IEEE International as a whole tries to avoid getting involved with local politics. I can understand them trying to maintain a legal distance.

The United States branch of the IEEE, IEEE-USA, *does* get involved with local legal and politics. See their public policy section, which has a number of position statements.

In summary: If you want to know what IEEE International thinks about the DMCA, etc., you're in for a long wait. Look to see what the IEEE-USA branch is doing instead.

I think I've said it before, but I'll say it again: From what I know, IEEE International as a whole tries to avoid getting involved with local politics. I can understand them trying to maintain a legal distance.

The United States branch of the IEEE, IEEE-USA, *does* get involved with local legal and politics. See their public policy section, which has a number of position statements.

In summary: If you want to know what IEEE International thinks about the DMCA, etc., you're in for a long wait. Look to see what the IEEE-USA branch is doing instead.

I think I've said it before, but I'll say it again: From what I know, IEEE International as a whole tries to avoid getting involved with local politics. I can understand them trying to maintain a legal distance.

The United States branch of the IEEE, IEEE-USA, *does* get involved with local legal and politics. See their public policy section, which has a number of position statements.

In summary: If you want to know what IEEE International thinks about the DMCA, etc., you're in for a long wait. Look to see what the IEEE-USA branch is doing instead.

Both are international, and both have strong areas of their respective organizations who are politically and socially active.

See their websites (and particularly public policy areas) at

IEEE Main

IEEE Policy Pages

ACM Main site

ACM Public Policy Pages

What reforms would you like to see made in the H1B visa program?

Many companies depend on the H1B visa program to satisfy their need for tech workers. Several problems have been identified with the current H1B visa program. A September 2000 report by the GAO documents the massive expansion in the H1B program, and concludes that better controls are needed. Organizations such as the IEEE have provided recommendations to reform the current process.

I am interested in your view as to what problems you see in the H1B visa program, and steps you would take to correct them.

In order to estimate the odds of obtaining permanent residency via the F-1 : OPT : H-1B : EAD/485 : GC route, this report on the H-1B population is highly recommended reading. One conclusion is that less than 25,000 H-1B holders will adjust to GC in any given year assuming there are no backlogs.

In practice far fewer will get GC's due to backlogged Labor Certification and Adjustment of Status (485 processing) queues. Recall that over 1999-2003, between 95,000 and 115,000 H-1B's will be issued annually. (In 1999 the INS accidentally issued 20,000 more H-1B visas than the quota allowed.) There is a Senate bill to increase this to 195,000 and it has bipartisan support.

Employment based GC's are capped at 140,000 annually. Due to backlogs, only about half are actually used. Of this number, many will go to H-4 visa holders (wife and children of the H-1B worker). There are also O-1 and P visa categories that compete for these same visas -- how else do you attract foreign actors, musicians and athletes to work in the US? H-1B's will get whatever is left over.

Democrats strongly support the restoration of clause 245i of the Immigration and Naturalization Act(1990). This rule, which expired in 1996, allows undocumented aliens to apply for permanent residency provided they pay a fee of US$1000. In the month before 245i expired, thousands of aliens entered the Labor Certification queue (the first stage of the Green Card process) seriously backlogging the INS. Expect the H-1B piece of the pie to shrink further in the immediate future.

Importing the best and brightest is probably the only way for the US to maintain dominance in intellectual business.

I've considered immigrating to the US through employer sponsorship and have studied the US immigration process for well over two years now. The best and brightest people will proabably do the same and draw similar conclusions to mine before considering coming to the US -- that the immigration system is all one big lottery.

Look at one particularly famous hi-tech immigrant. A Mr. Linus Torvalds, whose H1-B is sponsored by Transmeta. Fortunately for him, his Green Card application is going through a faster route. He's qualified for EB-1 (Employment Based category one) which allows him to forego the lengthy Labor Certification process which would've added at least two years wait. And yet still, Linus complains. The IEEE-USA and Immigration Reform Coalition have even gotten him to sign their letter in support of green cards for new immigrant labor.

What about those H1-B holders whose GC applications don't qualify for EB-1. The EB-2 for jobs requiring a Masters, or the heavily over subscribed EB-3 for any job needing only a bachelors? Waiting times for: Labor Certification + Priority date to become current + i485 processing + Employment Approval Document(EAD) + final ajustment of status to GC holder = in excess of 5 years. Assuming an H1-B is renewed it can only allow a person to work for 6 years in the US.

Technically, once an H1-B holder has reached the EAD stage they can remain in the US indefinitely on their current visa working for the sponsoring employer. The adjustment of status queue itself (the one Linus is currently stuck in) has been bottlenecked for well over a year. Indefinite indentured labor anyone?

And in the space of just 1 year look what has happened to the dot coms. Layoffs, pink slips, bankruptcy. Even well established companies like Shockwave, Qwest and Novell are laying off hi-tech people. Of course, with the labor market so tight, the US citizens and residents will get snapped up by other more successful companies within a weeks. But what of the H1-B holder who now has ten days to find another sponsor or be deported? Even if one is so lucky as to find a new sponsor for the H1-B, the 6 year time limit cannot be reset. 2 years spent at a dot.bomb means only 4 years left at the new company. The GC application must start from scratch, and there simply will not be enough time for it to complete processing.

And even if all the bottlenecks were to magically disappear by noon today, a recent IEEE-USA study suggests that the quota of H1-B's (65,000, or 200,000 if the cap is raised) entering every year would render the Green card process one big lottery for many. Only a tiny fraction of H1-B holders get adjusted to GC in any given year. This number was no more than 25,000 in 1998 due to all the backlogs.

So, No thank you. I don't think I'll be working in the U.S. Maybe, I'll try Canada. From what I hear, a hi-tech professional can get residency within 18 months. Many former H1-B holders from India are migrating northwards taking valuable US hi-tech experience with them.

Well, since there really is no hi-tech shortage in the US, this Computing Science Ph.D. who can program in C/C++, Perl, Java, Python, Tcl/Tk, is familiar with many Internet protocols, OpenGL programming, and gives training courses in Linux/UNIX, will probably not be missed.

Bye

Hey great, we just elected ourselves an "Internet Savvy" President, or is "President in the pockets of large tech corporations" a better description?

The article didn't say where they stood on dramatically increasing foreign work visas, which McCain supports. Which I think is a bigger "geek issue" than taxing Internet commerce.

Corporations don't want to pay high salaries for their tech people, they only do because there's such a demand. If they can get the restriction on visas lifted, the market gets flooded, and salaries and quality drops.

The IEEE has done a pretty good job at fighting this, it should be an issue for anyone working in technology.