Congress is back in session. Instead of taking up the financial crisis, the budget deficit, oil speculators, the energy bill, extended unemployment benefits or any legislation that puts U.S. citizens first for jobs in their own country….the very first thing they are going to try to do is, increase employment based Visas by over HALF A MILLION!
550,000 to be exact.
These are employment based Visas. Yet they want to bypass any pretense of considering American workers first and even the requirement to have a high school diploma in order to obtain one!
Just as a refresher, here is the classic caught in the act video of a law firm, making a lot of money, just to ensure an employer doesn’t have to even consider an American worker for a job when bringing in foreign labor on one of these employment based Visas:
Don’t believe us that this is about cheap labor? Yet again, this is another lobbyist written bill, pushed for by Compete America, one of the biggest corporate cheap labor lobbyists on the hill. Where are Americans being represented in Congress? Nowhere. American workers are pretty much on our own here through the valiant grassroots efforts of the few. Please help.
This mass importation of cheap labor will be spun as somehow being pro immigrant when the reality is their agenda, led by the supposed party that wants to help the middle class….is completely about corporate lobbyists, flooding the labor market even while corporations are laying people off in droves and in complete alignment with multinaitonal corporations cheap labor demands.
It doesn’t matter to Congress that are unemployment rate is at a 6 year high or the reports on how corporations use these Visas to undermine wages, age discriminate and transfer critical technology outside of the United States to these multinational corporations’ foreign subsidiaries.
You find this all outrageous? We sure do. Please call the Congressional switchboard, 1-202-224-3121 and ask your Congress Representative why do they insist on putting American workers last.
Ask them to stop H.R. 5882.
Even a journalist in Canada is finding this outrageous.
Other groups are requesting you demand your representatives to represent you. Please call Congress to stop this outrage.
Dr. Norm Matloff has some more background information.
Share and Recommend:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
A most long overdue question on whether Techies should form a union is being asked on InfoWorld.
Sixty-hour work weeks with no overtime or comp time, a BlackBerry hitched to your belt 24/7, mandates from managers who have no clue what you actually do – all for a job that could be outsourced tomorrow. Is it finally time for technology workers to form a union and demand better working conditions?
I say hell yes. Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics…Programmers, System Administrators and Web Designers all have one thing in common, they are being labor arbitraged and treated like disposable people.
And…they do not stand up for their own interests and join forces! Why not? Honestly do you really believe that the world is simply going to reward you on your personal brilliance? That a high IQ cannot be a commodity item just as much as physical labor is?
One of the main issues with forming unions for Professional workers is the reality that people are free agents plus skills are so diverse it’s very difficult to perform wage negotiations as an aggregate work force.
One person might have support skills, another might be a PhD level researcher with decades of investment in their skills, unique in multiple respects.
The question is not should Professionals in the Sciences organize. That’s a given. Right now, both Presidential candidates have promised to increased offshore outsourcing your job by raising the H-1B Visa cap and open the flood gates to labor arbitrage through other manipulations of the United States immigration system. As it is, the United States cannot employ the Science graduates who are U.S. citizens. Clearly on the corporate agenda thus now on both the Democrats and Republican platforms is to guarantee to sell outyour job. Your career will be lost, it’s one of the top priorities of the ITAA, Compete America, NASSCOM and the US Chamber of Commerce.
As it is, the largest Professional society the IEEE has dominated the United States branch and forced policies which are against their members career interests.
Here is a list of current groups trying to give labor representation to Professionals and Techies:
The new Democratic Vice Presidential Pick is being framed as a champion of the middle class.
A regular guy, a blue collar hero, our savior.
Well, let’s look at the record shall we?
Joe Biden championed something alright, the Bankruptcy Bill. Harvard Professor and Consumer Credit Expert Elizabeth Warren describes the the bill:
On April 20, 2005, George W. Bush signed into law a bankruptcy bill that had been pending in Congress for eight years. The bill was written by credit-industry lobbyists, shopped to their friends in Congress, and supported by tens of millions of dollars in lobbying and campaign contributions.
It might be dismissed as just one more piece of highly focused special-interest legislation except for the damaging vision of middle-class America that it reinforced: irresponsible people consumed by appetites for goods they don’t need, who think little of cost, and who would rather file for bankruptcy than repay their lawful debts. More than just a giveaway to the credit-card companies, the bill was a moral judgment against the bankrupt.
Delaware, Biden’s State, is home to thousands of credit card companies. Could the phrase be champion of working people as long as no lobbyists or corporations object? Senator Feingold proclaimed the bankruptcy bill as the utlimate example of why Congress needs to get lobbyists and corporate money out of Washington.
How does Biden stack up in putting US workers and professionals first? Biden, while in India said:
I’ve always promoted the increase in the numbers of H-1B visas
and also implies trading American jobs for some closer relationship is perfectly acceptable. These guest worker Visas are a major tech labor issue. It’s very well documented US professionals are being displaced by foreign guest workers. India demands these Visas constantly for they are critical to their offshore outsourcing operations. In other words, it’s a double whammy of outsourcing US jobs as well as insourcing.
What would you do as president: Expand H1-B visas or scale them back?
A: I have been working with this for a long time, as former chairman of the Judiciary Committee. That’s where it comes out of. We have it about right now, except that the employers aren’t doing their part. They’ve got to offer the job. If there’s an American there who will take the job, they can’t undercut it by hiring an Indian engineer who will work for less; that’s illegal. We’re not enforcing it.
No, this is completely false. It is perfectly legal to hire a guest worker, displace an American and pay that guest worker less. The law is literally written that way.
It’s so bad, supposedly Biden wanted the Republicans to lose on increasing H-1B guest worker Visas simply so Democrats could get the corporate lobbyist money and do the job themselves.
Biden also co-sponsored a bill to increase H-2B guest worker Visas. Does anyone believe the United States does not have enough unskilled labor?
Let’s face it folks, the only way the middle class, working professionals are going to get any representation is to demand representation. Corporations are running this show.
Working Life, a Labor focused blog has a different take but also mention the H-1B Visa votes as being anti-labor. The Huffington Post has a take as well.
Just to show the pocket corruption in the Senate, one Senator pushing strong for US workers and H-1B reforms is Chuck Grassley, the same Senator who sponsored the bankruptcy bill. One one issue they are not corrupt, on another, it’s all hail the mightly lobbyists.
Share and Recommend:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
A most long overdue question on whether Techies should form a union is being asked on 
