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IEEE: New H-1B Bill Will "Help Destroy" US Tech Workforce
dcblogs writes New legislation being pushed by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) to hike the H-1B visa cap is drawing criticism and warnings that it will lead to an increase in offshoring of tech jobs. IEEE-USA said the legislation, introduced by a bipartisan group of lawmakers on Tuesday, will "help destroy" the U.S. tech workforce with guest workers. Other critics, including Ron Hira, a professor of public policy at Howard University and a leading researcher on the issue, said the bill gives the tech industry "a huge increase in the supply of lower-cost foreign guest workers so they can undercut and replace American workers." Hira said this bill "will result in an exponential rise of American jobs being shipped overseas." Technically, the bill is a reintroduction of the earlier "I-Square" bill, but it includes enough revisions to be considered new. It increases the H-1B visa cap to 195,000 (instead of an earlier 300,000 cap), and eliminates the cap on people who earn an advanced degree in a STEM (science, technology, education and math) field. Hatch, who is the No. 2 ranking senator in the GOP-controlled chamber, was joined by co-sponsors Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) in backing the legislation."
Anyone else notice this: STEM (science, technology, *education* and math)
Pretty sure that should be Engineering...
1. Bring H1-B over to be trained and work.
2. Send back.
3. Open up foreign branch.
4. Reduce costs -> increased profit.
Model 2:
1. American company gets H1-Bs.
2. Sells services as "American" company (really important to government and politicians.)
3. Charge "American" fees.
3. Reduction in costs -> Increased profit.
I'd also like to point out that Hatch was the one who forced to FDA to reduce regulations on the supplement industry so that instead of having to prove their products work, the FDA has to prove they don't. And with state laws of Utah, there is a reason why the supplement industry is based in Utah. (see Bigger Stronger Faster
Meaning, I'm not saying he's corrupt, unethical, or anything like that. Or that he is a disgrace to the Senate and epitomizes everything wrong with our Congress and legislative system in the US and how they are all in the pockets of big business.
Nope. Not me.
Great. It's bad enough that the Indian body shops have set up diploma mills in the US handing out master's degrees for a little C# work and writing some database queries so that they can brag "x% of our programmers earned master's degrees in the US". Now that bullshit will get them around the H1-B cap as well.
The anti-white platform of the Democrats push most of the white majority away and into the arms of the GOP. The whites have nowhere else to go, so the GOP can betray us in this manner. We must drive all foreigners from our lands and hang the elite who aid and abet this invasion.
I'm pretty sure that as a tech worker I'm making more net income than most master electricians and master plumbers. For those who aren't running their own business it isn't even close. And I'm never hip-deep in actual shit, only metaphorical shit.
That article expresses one theory. Of course it doesn't mention the fact that the economy in Texas has been besting the national average since long before the shale boom. Since right about time we started electing Republican governors, of turns out. Before shale, it was tech - tons of tech companies leaving California and coming to Texas.
We'll see what the future holds. I do indeed check my intuition against the facts, and I came across a really nest way of doing so. I wanted to know which is better FOR THE ECONOMY - Democrats or Republicans. There are a like lot of ways to measure that and you can devise statistics to match any conclusion you want. I decided to choose the best, most objective statistic I could of, WITHOUT KNOWING WHAT THE RESULT WOULD BE before I chose the measurement. I decided a reasonable, objective measurement would be economic growth. The president has about as much power as all of the house reps put together, and presidents stick around long enough for their efforts to have some effect, while the house and senate can switch every two years. So decided I'd compare Republican presidents vs democrat presidents. I was a bit nervous to chart the results - it might prove me wrong, very wrong.
I made one other decision before plotting the data. A new president's first budget is for the year AFTER they take office, and generally it takes that year for new policies to be formulated and go into effect, etc., so I decided to assign blame or creditcredit for that first year to the outgoing President. For example, Obama took office in 2009, but his first budget wasn't until 2010, so the 2009 economy wss under the Bush budget and Bush policies. (I actually did this in 2007, so 2009 wasn't on the chart, but 1989 was blamed on / credited to Reagan, etc.
I charted the data and like looked anxiously to see which party had better economic growth. It turned out that both parties had years of high growth and low, all over the place. The chart made one thing very obvious, though. Economic growth had ALWAYS improved under every Republican administration, and always got worse under every Democrat administration's budgets. No exceptions.
Of course after that we had the mortgage crash in 2008, making Bush Jr the only Republican president to have slowing economic growth.
It turns out the data confirmed what I had suspected - Bush was indeed the worst Republican President ever, in terms of the economy, and Republican presidents consistently improve the economy.
You can argue about which party is better for fairness or whatever, I don't know how to measure that objectively.
In a similar fashion, I reversed my position on abortion when I realized the editorials I used to write were wrong. I love learning new things and gaining a fuller understanding.
Well, voting for Obama solidly makes you part of the problem
BOTH PARTIES contribute to the problem. This is not a party-line issue. This story body and TFA point that out: bipartisan bill.
Given the political parties in power there is no good way an American can vote to fix the problem. Both parties listen to the money from businesses who like the cheap slave labor H1-B provides. Who wouldn't want to hire workers for 1/4 the money that cannot leave for another company that pays better?
As a resident of one of the states mentioned in the story I've written my senator in the past about not raising the limits, and just seconds ago wrote again, including my own sad story of a layoff after training my own H1-B replacement in 2012 and learning that he was being paid about 1/4 of my salary, below the poverty line. Not that writing to the senator will do much good as I've written in several times before and only get a form letter "Thank you for mentioned your concerns. They are important. I will now ignore them. Signed, Senator Moneywhore."
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
How much effort does it take to do some research and verify whether a 10 second political ad is truthful?
In politics, "truth" is very flexible. For example, it is true that the Obama administration has reduced the number of annual drone strikes by 80% (over the past five years, in Yemen). It is also true that the Obama administration has increased the number of annual drone strikes by tenfold (over GWB). Likewise, Obama has both increased deficit spending by $1.3T, and reduced deficit spending by $1.2T (although even these numbers are suspect, depending whether you consider 2008 spending to be "Bush's budget" or "Obama's budget." This is one of the reasons you'll hear a lot of percentages and deltas in political ads - they can avoid telling you the denominator or reference point. They can choose a reference that makes their point, regardless of whether that reference is reasonable or relevant, and technically be truthful.
This is the reason no one believes a politician, unless he's saying something they already thought was true.