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September 29, 2000 Passage of visa bill will cost U.S. workers their jobs

On Wednesday, the U.S. Senate voted 94-3 to increase the number of H-1B visas from 115,000 annually to 195,000.

Last week, I wrote about the H-1B visa and explained how it will keep your children and grandchildren from getting jobs in the software industry. The positions will instead go to immigrants from India, China and other distant places, where workers are willing to toil for bargain-basement wages in exchange for being in the U.S.

When the rich team up with the powerful and both sides are polished, practiced liars, the public will get what is just got  a first-class jobbing.

To make the odds against the people even longer, the media and academia have put their considerable muscle behind the software industry and the politicians.

If youre up against a well-heeled software industry, the politicians whose campaigns are financed by that industry, the press who are big users of H-1Bs and universities whose foreign student enrollment keeps government money rolling in, then youre in deep and profound trouble.

How did we get to a place where our leaders embrace hundreds of thousands of foreign workers while they turn their backs on displaced Americans?

The H-1B visa program, in its current form, started in 1990 as a temporary measure to fill a so-called shortage of programmers in the U.S. The temporary program is now entering its 10th year.

The visas are also advertised as temporary. If you call six years temporary, then you have a different definition of the word than most people.

-- K (infosurf@yahoo.com), October 03, 2000

Answers

Subject: Passage of visa bill will cost U.S. workers their jobs - second part of article

As daily newspapers feature story after story about overcrowded schools, roads, airports, and shortages of gasoline and electricity, the Senate vote paved the way to bring in over half a million new residents. Before long, their families will follow.

And although youre certain to read a sob story someday about a visa holder who will be forced to return, most stay right here in the good old U.S.A. In the now-famous words of Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, Nothing is so permanent as a temporary resident in the United States.

Even though the H-1B visa program came under heavy fire recently from a Government Accounting Office report and hearings held by Smith, the powers that be steam ahead.

The GAO report, which questioned every aspect of H-1B program, said it is unconvinced a worker shortage exists.

Another conclusion drawn is that the academic credentials of the best and brightest are frequently falsified. Finally, the report could find no evidence to support the industry claim visa holders are paid competitively.

Smith found a shocking amount of fraud and deceit in the H-1B program. Smiths findings were confirmed by the U.S. State Department, whose independent investigations revealed that 21 percent of H-1B applications are fraudulent, and 45 percent claimed jobs that dont exist.

Quoted in the Congressional Record, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass, said, These are not highly specialized jobs. They do not require advanced degrees or years of training. American workers are the most productive workers in the world. It makes sense to demand that more of our workers be recruited and trained for these jobs.

The latest and most shameless trend is to fire American workers and replace them with H-1Bs. Writing in USA Today on Sept. 27, Linda Kilcrease recounted her story: My American colleagues and I lost our jobs when American International Group Inc., one of the nations largest insurance companies, replaced us with foreign workers who we had to train or else we would lose our severance.

Because this is not against the law, continues Kilcrease, Dun and Bradstreet is now in the process of replacing its American workers with foreign workers. This has become so institutionalized that D&B sent a memo of the plan to its employees advising them to consider the H-1Bs as team members and give them your full cooperation Your continued commitment and dedication are necessary to ensure a smooth transition. 

Youre wondering how this happened.

To understand, at least superficially, remember that we live in the new global America. If you cant move the plant to the cheap workers, then move the cheap workers to the plant.

In the new America, politicians are openly for sale. Theyre as brazen as street hookers, but with fewer scruples. Soon, they may sell space on their clothing on a per-square-inch basis for corporate logos.

If Pete Sampras can have the Nike Swoosh on his shirtsleeve, then why cant Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., have the Microsoft flag embossed on her jacket lapel?

A fee would be charged, of course

Joe Guzzardi, an instructor at the Lodi Adult School, has been writing a weekly opinion column since 1988. He can be reached via e- mail.

-- K (infosurf@yahoo.com), October 03, 2000.