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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."
Score one for the Republicans! I'm a pretty solid democrat, don't live in Arizona but I'm starting to like Jeff Sessions.
I wonder why the IEEE agrees with them? http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-wo...
"Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get" - Jerry Avins
I'd be happy if they got rid of the H-1B process altogether, just due to the abuse. There are many, many other types of visas people can get to work in the US, and someone who wants to work here can still freely enter and do that on their own merit, and not just they are just cheap labor.
Immigration is needed -- the golden door still needs to be there... but there should be some fairness of who gets to enter, and someone who is there just because they will displace a US worker shouldn't get to be first in line.
Both Canada and the US have no shortage of tech workers. What they have is a shortage of companies willing to pay the prevailing wage, benefits, etc.
I've lost three jobs over the years to "lowest price" bidders -- every single one of which was an Indian-run sweatshop bringing in their workers from overseas and working them to death without paying overtime.
I worked in the US on temporary visas for up to three years at a time (annual renewals), spending over 12 years in the US in total. Was I ever sponsored for residency? Of course not -- then I'd have had some rights and freedoms. The money was good, and I don't regret the time I spent there, but I'm firmly on the side of the anti-H1-B crowd -- it's all a scam to benefit the bottom line of big business, not a legitimate shortage of skilled workers.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Neither party is for the big guy or the little guy. They are each allied to certain interests and industries, and have certain positions on things that make sense to people with different ideologies.
The Republicans are traditionally allied to (dirty) energy industries: coal, oil, gas, as well as Big Ag, and military/defense contractors.
The Democrats are traditionally allied to finance (Wall Street), big media (RIAA/MPAA)/the "copyright cartel", unions (not so much these days), and these days, the tech industry (the CEOs, not the STEM workers).
They also push certain ideologies: the GOP is anti-abortion, anti-immigration (or at least anti-relaxing of immigration policy), anti-gun control, pro-religion, and get their votes from people who value these issues. The Democrats are pro-choice, pro-open borders, pro-gun control, pro-separation of church and state, and pro-environmentalism, and get their votes from people who value these issues. Once in office, they only do so much on these issues, while spending most of their energy working for the moneyed interests who got them there. Sometimes this results in some actual progress, usually to keep their "base" happy, sometimes perhaps because they actually want to do something good, other times probably because their interests (and the moneyed interests behind them) actually align with those of many of us peons.
Recently, Eric Holder **finally** did something about the ridiculous civil forfeiture rules at the federal level, something both parties have done nothing about for ages. This guy sounds like he's finally going to work for American STEM workers, something the Dems seem to oppose for some reason. Honestly, I can't think offhand which moneyed interest this guy's position would benefit, since the big tech companies and assholes like Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs just want to exploit us for greater profit, and there's no STEM worker unions. It could just be like Obama: tough talk to appease the base, with zero actual results forthcoming. Or he's genuinely concerned about us STEM workers. Or the GOP wants to get STEM workers to switch sides (we're generally very strongly Democrat voters).
Personally, I agree with him, which is odd because I find most actions and positions of the GOP abhorrent. But like with Obama, who didn't really do much while in office despite all his grand rhetoric, we'll see how much progress this guy really makes. Maybe they'll blame it all on "Democrat obstructionism".
I do wonder, however, why Democrats seem to prioritize the interests of foreigners over those of American Citizens, even though what they're in effect doing is turning the job market into a libertarian hellhole, and doing the exact opposite of what Democrats of yore did in being big supporters of unions and workers' rights. Unionization is, at its very core, all about restricting the supply of labor to industry, so that a company can't just fire disgruntled workers and hire all-new staff so they can save some money; it's an attempt to give more power to the lower classes this way. Opening the borders to foreign workers is the exact opposite of this: it gives an endless supply of cheap labor to employers so they can exploit it and treat workers as disposable commodities. When exactly the Democrats became better friends of management rather than labor, I'm not sure.
Hire enough H1-B's and it becomes more likely you'll just outsource the entire project to some contracting company overseas. And those companies also have their own management structure possibly eliminating your own boss' position.
I do wonder, however, why Democrats seem to prioritize the interests of foreigners over those of American Citizens,
Democrats traditionally favor large government and using government assistance programs to buy votes of immigrants who in effect become their clients. Their problem is that they perpetually need to replenish the underclass as it becomes depleted by people pulling themselves up into the middle or upper class.
> and is worthless for evaluating things you understand.
I disagree - generally the things you understand get incorporated into your common sense as well - you develop a more accurate "intuition" about how things work after seeing multiple examples, letting you "guesstimate" outcomes far better than you could otherwise. Generally not as good as reasoned analysis, but much, much faster, which is often important. That intuition will help you avoid dead-ends in reasoned analysis, and in situations where there's multiple powerful contributing factors that you understand incompletely, intuition will often guide you better than a reasoned analysis could.
Of course for something like social policy where there's very few examples to draw upon, it's not so easy translating understanding into intuition. But then you could also make similar arguments against the value of reasoned analysis - analysis must be grounded in theory, and an accurate theory needs to be tested against lots of data points.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
People should be allowed to come to the US and compete. We are kidding ourselves if we think that bringing a billion, educated, hungry, motivated people into the world labor market is not going to stress us. It has and is happening and that is the way it is. Ultimately it is a good thing. Many many millions are living better lives (at least physically). If it means I have to work harder or be smarter and/or make less, so be it. The H1-B visa program seems to be designed to enslave. It is the leverage H1B provisions give employers that make these workers attractive. I work with lots of Indian IT workers, some are very good, most are ineffective. I dont know what they are paid. But this is no different than I would expect to find among "native american" IT folks. The real issues seems to be complete ignorance in management who makes the decision to hire large groups of credentialed, but low skilled offshore folks. Generally its very damaging to the companies themselves. Most companies I deal with, that are dominated by Indian IT staffs are mind numbingly burdened with process. Let people come to the US and compete without all the procedural nonsense designed to enslave them. Let them come and become americans. Require English everywhere. Require documentation of identity. Block them from access to entitlements until they become citizens.
... from people that are just mad it was a republican.
We need to get beyond this tribal shit, chaps. There are a lot of people on both sides of the line that are complete fucking assholes. And there are a lot on both sides that are honestly trying to do good things.
Fuck the line. And saying "if you disagree on even one thing I believe in then I hate you" or other intolerant shit. People are going to have some differences of opinion.
Focus on what is important. Ignore the stuff that isn't... nearly all the things people bitch about are not important. Abortion for example doesn't matter because republicans aren't going to repeal it. Same thing for gun control... democrats aren't going to take your guns away. Neither side can do that. Focus on something that might actually happen and focus on the issues that actually matter.
We need to come together and solve common problems with solutions that most of us can accept. Anyone that says otherwise is literally the problem. Those guys thrive on the conflict and don't care if anything ever works. They just want to fight and start fires.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
"Hey, Silicon Valley: we need paid-off with massive contributions or we'll grandstand on this (while not really giving a shit, other than having red meat to throw to our racist base)." -- GOP