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Ten US Senators Seek Investigation Into the Replacement of US Tech Workers
dcblogs notes this story about a bipartisan group of U.S. senators that has asked for an investigation into whether companies are firing American workers and replacing them with foreign workers for the sake of cutting costs. "Ten U.S. senators, representing the political spectrum, are seeking a federal investigation into displacement of IT workers by H-1B-using contractors. They are asking the U.S. Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security and the Labor Department to investigate the use of the H-1B program "to replace large numbers of American workers" at Southern California Edison (SCE) and other employers. The letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and the secretaries of the two other departments, was signed by U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has oversight over the Justice Department. The other signers are Sens. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), a longtime ally of Grassley on H-1B issues; Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), David Vitter (R-La.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.), James Inhofe (R-Okla.). Neither California senator signed on. "Southern California Edison ought to be the tipping point that finally compels Washington to take needed actions to protect American workers," Sessions said. Five hundred IT workers at SCE were cut, and many had to train their replacements."
I don't have the visibility to say whether this is endemic, but I observer that a manager in my own organization stated openly not long ago that H-1B would get preference in new hires or backfill hires for budgetary purposes. And he has been as good as his word. About half the organization is now made up of foreign contractors, and the percentage is growing.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
It's standard to get ex-employees to sign agreements agreeing to keep their mouth shut in return for severance packages.
I believe this is just political posturing before they sign the bill to substantially increase the number of H1Bs. Now they can say that they "attempted" to punish companies who violate the rules of the H1B program.
From TFA:
"This letter is a significant development in this contentious issue. It arrives at the same time that lawmakers are pushing a substantial increase in H-1B visas under the I-Squared bill, legislation that would raise the H-1B cap. Two of the co-sponsors of the I-Squared bill also signed the letter asking for an investigation into H-1B program practices."
More Americans emigrate than non-Americans immigrate?
And I can't imagine the chart takes illegal/undocumented immigration into account, that is much harder to quantify.
An internal system operation returned the error "The operation completed successfully.".
Nope.
3/4 of STEM workers flee the field due to substandard pay and working conditions compared to other jobs they can get.
Petroleum engineers were scarce at one time, but a 20% pay raise brought a 200% productivity rate from local talent. Problem solved and everyone wins.
Your choice of how the United States saved Jews from the Nazi holocaust by allowing them to immigrate is a poor example:
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007652
But, yes, we have a massive statue. The words on it may have to be updated though: "Give us your tired, your poor, your low-wage workers."
I'm from Canada and it ain't working here either! The company I work for just recently started importing cheap software developers from India using Cognizant, meanwhile my own brother who earned his degree in CS from a top university (while plunging himself neck deep in OSAP debt) is having a hard time finding a job! Its not working anywhere, how can it when you are giving jobs meant for citizens away to foreigners?
Are they TRYING to destroy the country!?
Yes. They are. They are doing the economic equivalent of selling-short. When the US crashes, they will profit. Better for the US (and the world) would be to open the borders, and effectively declare that anyone in the world can be a US citizen, if they so wish. That's how it was when the country was founded.
Anyone here on 4, July 1776 was a citizen, by default. Amnesty for all. But now, the "conservatives" hate everything the founding fathers did.
Learn to love Alaska
Oh the BS stat that stops counting when unemployment funds run out. Come out when your "facts" actually include everyone who is unemployed and not just those in the short period of time you can collect unemployment.
partly population concerns - while Amwerica is a big, wide, empty country you all want to live in very crowded little communities. Increasing immigration causes more pressure on those communities for things like housing and traffic.
Then there's the economic issue, while the wild west had no social care benefits, today you have many. So every new immigrant either has no job and gets benefits, or has a job and pays his own way but helps to displace another worker who then ends up on benefits.
In the UK we see this a lot, while immigration has increased dramatically, the number of jobs has increased relatively slowly, so we have 6 million immigrants but 2 million unemployed. Our health and education systems have not been funded accordingly though, and are showing signs of collapse. Hence, immigration is a good thing, but only to a point - not as an unlimited influx.
Its probably entirely linked to the rate of immigration overall, in the old days when we had few immigrants being drip-fed into the system things were OK, now we have a flood people are getting concerned.
Oh look, unemployment stats. Too bad they don't count the people that aren't on unemployment anymore but can't find work.