Bill Gates's Wish Is Homeland Security's Command

theodp writes "PC World reports that DHS has extended the time foreign graduates of US colleges can stay in the country and work to almost two-and-a-half years, an 'emergency' change that drew kudos from Microsoft and other H-1B visa stakeholders. Looks like when Bill Gates says 'Jump,' the government asks 'How high?' Bill Gates's Congressional Testimony, March 12, 2008: 'Extending OPT from 12 to 29 months would help to alleviate the crisis employers are facing due to the current H-1B visa shortage. This only requires action by the Executive Branch, and Congress and this Committee should strongly urge the Department of Homeland Security to take such action immediately.' DHS Press Release, April 4, 2008: 'The US Department of Homeland Security released today an interim final rule extending the period of Optional Practical Training (OPT) from 12 to 29 months for qualified F-1 non-immigrant students.'"

Comments

Re:Give all H-1s US Citizenship Immediately

[cayenne8]

"This ridiculous, xenophobic crap has polluted the American discource since the Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam bitched about the new British arrivals in what would eventually be renamed New York. Yet, despite these waves of low wage immigrants, the United States has managed to become the riches single nation on the planet earth. I've got 13 aircraft carriers, a man on the moon, a kick ass freeway system and gasoline that even today is cheaper than any of our allies to say that a policy of open ended immigration works and works stunningly well."

I'm not talking about immigration. We're talking about something akin to 'ringers' being brought in to drive down wages. H1-B workers are not immigrants, they are not coming here to work to become US citizen and stay here, they are temporary workers that drive down wages, send money home and leave eventually.

I don't think most people have a problem with legal immigrants coming here to live and stay and become citizens. But, that's not what we're arguing here.

Re:bullshit

[sethstorm]

Only if you keep on redefining it to make it impossible to have a citizen comply. Otherwise they do on the larger scale.

Re:Good

[sethstorm]

Personally, had no trouble finding a good paying job coming out of college, so I can't say I see foreign workers "stealing" American programmers jobs. I've worked with many H1-B's and the like, but I've never felt like they were unskilled people here taking my job for less money. Instead, companies tend to use their *very* limited supply of H1-B's to poach the top talent from the foreign workforce, and it has generally been a joy to work with these people.

People have this knee jerk reaction that "them foreigners is taking our jobs." However, this is stupid when you are talking about high tech work. Exception to the rule. They are taking them, and with the help of law firms like Grigsby and Cohen.

The other reason it makes no sense to criticize allowing more foreign workers into the country is that this is part of a larger highly successful strategy that the US has always carried out where we brain drain other countries in order to keep them from from us technologically.

It isn't that there aren't any smart people India who couldn't start their own software company. It's that all of those guys get hired by *American* companies, and end up contributing to the *American* software industry instead of the native Indian one.

Bringing the top foreign talent here, means that we have the first pick at top people that the entire *world* has to offer working for American companies, whereas everyone else has to settle for leftovers.

If anything, the criticism that I level against the H1-B program and other temporary work pograms, is that they are temporary. We should be recruiting top foreign workers for *immigration*. Highly educated people are a *boon* to our national economy, not a drag. More of a reason to take care of our own first. If it means that we have a 99.9999% citizen requirement until the objective is finished, fine. Our citizens are first, others second(if at all).
It is also more of a reason to give incentives that favor citizen workers, then honest corporations. That's as far as one would want to get, but it's time to get back to improving what we already have, not accepting knockoffs of what we don't have.

Citizenship shall not be a penalty.