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."

Comments

No way!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sudden breakout of common sense??

Re:No way!

[bloodhawk]

No, common sense is appointing someone with an unbiased view in either direction, not someone walking into the job with a preconceived position.

Re:No way!

[Murrdox]

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.

Re:No way!

[phantomfive]

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.

Re:No way!

[AK Marc]

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.

Re:No way!

[Just Some Guy]

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.

Re:No way!

[stephanruby]

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.

Re:No way!

[anonymous_echidna]

I've lived in the US on an H1-B visa - it's not hearsay to me. Despite portability provisions allowing workers to move, the moving positions is time-consuming and costly. It is illegal to be in the country the day after employment ceases, meaning that there is no legal way to organise your affairs appropriately if you suddenly find yourself out of a job. The system is set up in a way that supports the anecdotes given by Just Some Guy. If it is more helpful to you, then consider those stories as "use cases" (plausible ways of interacting with the system) instead of "anecdotes" (hearsay that should be dismissed because it is hearsay).

IEEE: The STEM Crisis Is a Myth

[kootsoop]

I wonder why the IEEE agrees with them? http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-wo...

I agree

[msobkow]

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.

Re:You see that too?

[Grishnakh]

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.

Re:Yeah!

[rtb61]

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.

Re:You see that too?

[Crashmarik]

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.

Re:You see that too?

[BarbaraHudson]

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.

Wall Street has eliminated *that* problem.

I predict...

[ixs]

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...

Re:it IS a hoax

[Kaenneth]

Be a real shame if a recording of that were to leak.

It is funny reading all the comments...

[Karmashock]

... 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.