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Senator Who Calls STEM Shortage a Hoax Appointed To Head Immigration
dcblogs (1096431) writes The Senate's two top Republican critics of temporary worker immigration, specifically the H-1B and L-1 visas, now hold the two most important immigration posts in the Senate. They are Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who heads the Senate's Judiciary Committee, and his committee underling, Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who was appointed by Grassley on Thursday to head the immigration subcommittee. Sessions was appointed one week after accusing the tech industry of perpetuating a "hoax" by claiming there is a shortage of qualified U.S. tech workers. "The tech industry's promotion of expanded temporary visas — such as the H-1B — and green cards is driven by its desire for cheap, young and immobile labor," wrote Sessions, in a memo he sent last week to fellow lawmakers. Sessions, late Thursday, issued a statement about his new role as immigration subcommittee chairman, and said the committee "will give voice to those whose voice has been shut out," and that includes "the voice of the American IT workers who are being replaced with guest workers."
No, common sense is appointing someone with an unbiased view in either direction, not someone walking into the job with a preconceived position.
Having an unbiased view? In the realm of POLITICS?! If that is your criterion then nobody in politics should ever get appointed to anything, ever. They're politicians, not judges. It's not their job to be unbiased. In fact their job is completely the opposite, to be biased in favor of those who elected them. I wish it weren't the case, but it is.
The only way to find someone who has no 'preconceived position' is to find someone who knows nothing about the topic. Anyone who looks deeply at the topic is going to see that H1Bs are underpaid, and that to hire one, you might need to interview fifty different people (and find legitimate-sounding reasons they couldn't do the job) who respond to your fake job posting.
That is the reality of the situation. The tech industry does want "cheap, young and immobile labor." Saying that does not make you biased.
Whether or not there is a shortage depends on your point of view. It's a supply and demand situation. We have the supply, but there will never be enough supply for the people who want to hire programmers at $2 an hour. If there are fewer programmers, salaries will rise until companies who can't afford them drop out, and the demand matches the supply.
There can never be an absolute shortage of programmers, there can only be a shortage of programmers willing to work for a certain salary.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The carrot works best when the donkey doesn't eat it, just as it held in front of it's muzzle and this in conjunction with the fear of the stick keeps the donkey ie the masses in check. Don't fall for the promises only congratulate actions. The reality is for decades the general public has only been getting promises whilst the corporations got all the action and that is regardless of which party was in charge and working in collusion with the other party whilst pretending not to.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
If you get what you pay for is "common sense" then "the more you pay the more you get" should be true as well, so if you pay $500 for a widget, and someone else pays $100 for the same widget, yours is provably better, since it cost more.
Common sense is wrong more than it's right. It's only good for making guesses about things you don't understand, and is worthless for evaluating things you understand.
Learn to love Alaska
I predict that this senator will be swimming in campaign contributions from the tech industry in the future. And of course he'll see the light afterwards and understand how misguided he was as he was lacking crucial information about the desolate state of the US STEM sector and increased allotment of H1B visas is the only short-term solution to the industry's plight... But of course, long term solutions will be found. Certain industries have already shown that with depressed wages it is indeed cheaper to manufacture certain items in the US again. I am sure a similar solution can be found for the IT industry...
LOL that's precious. Meanwhile, the H-1B employees I know - my personal friends, people I hang out with and trust - describe a legal hellscape that's pretty much exactly indentured servitude. One of them managed to escape a bad situation by hooking up with a major corporation who could expedite the process to have the transfer done within a couple of months. That's two months of walking on eggshells so that they didn't get fired and deported. Another wasn't quite as lucky and had to ship out to the European branch of their new employer so that they can come back to America in a year or so, presuming everything is in order by then.
You're on crack if you think an H-1B isn't a recipe for suckishness. Regardless of what it hypothetically sounds like on paper, the situations I witnessed firsthand were terrible for the workers involved.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
the American Competitiveness in the 21st Century Act permits H-1B portability, provided another employer is willing to sponsor the H-1B worker. claims that H-1Bs are indentured servitude are entirely baseless.
Yes, I know this, but how many H-1B employees do you know who have made the successful transition?
I know it happens, but it's an incredibly stressful event for the employee in question and there is actually no guarantee that it will succeed considering the temperamental nature of the INS and the unnecessarily small pool of companies willing to go through the trouble of sponsoring a worker already in the US.
I was personally involved in the sponsorship of one Indian employee who had gotten their doctorate from a top US Ivy school, and yet the INS still delayed the visa unnecessarily by an extra year. Thankfully, that person was living in India at the time and my company could afford to wait for the paperwork to finally settle, but imagine if that person had been already living in the US, or if my company had been less patient.
I guess one could try to say the same thing about employment in general. There is actually no guarantee of a job for anyone, even for US workers, but my point is that the constraints are completely different when you're under an existing H1B visa.
And my comparison with indentured servitude is still just as valid. After all, indentured servants in Colonial America were still free to find new employers, assuming those new employers bought out their original contract.
Be a real shame if a recording of that were to leak.