Here are a few great articles that deserve a wide audience or at least every United States working Professional should see them.
The first is an article in the American Prospect, by Dr. Ron Hira, How “Guestworkers” Promote Outsourcing. In the article, Dr. Hira shows how guest worker Visas, particularly the H-1B, actually accelerate offshore outsourcing .
The carefully orchestrated public relations blitz included support from editorial boards of major newspapers and well placed news articles. Most complained that America was shooting itself in the foot by not importing workers for jobs that Americans are incapable of performing. And if persuasion wasn’t enough, the technology industry used the not-so-subtle threat that it will simply shift the work offshore if it can’t import workers.
A number of presidential candidates have taken the bait by publicly supporting an H-1B increase. The deep pocketed technology industry has made it clear to them it wants something in return for being an ATM to the candidates.
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This is quite a sad truth on our Presidential candidates, with only Dennis Kucinich, on the Democratic side, having a position in favor of American workers.
The expanded use of H-1B and L-1 visas has had a negative effect on the workplace of Information Technology workers in America. It has caused a reduction in wages. It has forced workers to accept deteriorating working conditions and allowed U.S. companies to concentrate work in technical and geographic areas that American workers consider undesirable. It has also reduced the number of IT jobs held by Americans.
At its peak in 2000, there were 10.5 million people working in Information Technology in the United States. By 2001, there were fewer than 10 million — despite continued global growth in Information Technology employment. Professor Norman Matloff of UC Davis estimates that in the spring of 2003 there were 500,000 unemployed and underemployed U.S. programmers, while there were 463,000 H-1B workers employed in the field.
The government must ensure adequate funds for the enforcement of visa regulations — including much-ignored regulations prohibiting the use of foreign nationals in critical infrastructure. A special investigator should be appointed to examine the extent and nature of H-1B and L-1 visa fraud and the reasons for heavy use of H-1B and L-1 visas at Enron, WorldCom, and Anderson. We should take seriously the allegations of perjury by corporate leaders who have testified before Congress to request expansion of this program in 1998 and 2000, as well as allegations of the use of the H-1B and L-1 programs in corrupt organizations
Another quote by Dr. Hira:
The U.S. Department of Labor’s 2006 Strategic Plan puts it bluntly, “H-1B workers may be hired even when a qualified U.S. worker wants the job, and a U.S. worker can be displaced from the job in favor of the foreign worker.”
And this point cannot be reiterated enough, that it’s perfectly legal to displace an American worker with a guest worker H-1B Visa holder.
The next is by the Programmer’s Guild President Kim Berry. Business Week has published Berry’s commentary, Skilled Workers Deserve True Visa Reform. On green cards:
n fact, in 2006 about one-third of green cards went to hourly workers with a median wage under $18 per hour, including thousands of low-skill workers earning $6 to $10 per hour. Green-card holders with salaries above $120,000 tend to be managers, attorneys, and medical professionals rather than tech workers. Only a small fraction of the 140,000 green cards go to workers engaged in technical innovations or are related to Americas global competitiveness—and even in those rare instances, American workers are generally available for the jobs
Finally Paul Craig Roberts writes a damning commentary on CounterPunch, Return of the Robber Barons
Good jobs that still remain in the US are increasingly filled with foreign workers brought in on work visas. Corporate public relations departments have successfully spread the lie that there is a shortage of qualified US workers, necessitating the importation into the US of foreigners. The truth is that the US corporations force their American employees to train the lower paid foreigners who take their jobs. Otherwise, the discharged American gets no severance pay.
Bear in mind Roberts is a highly respected economist and here is another fact based astute observation:
Meanwhile, US colleges and universities continue to graduate hundreds of thousands of qualified engineers, IT professionals, and other professionals who will never have the opportunity to work in the professions for which they have been trained. America today is like India of yesteryear, with engineers working as bartenders, taxi cab drivers, waitresses, and employed in menial work in dog kennels as the offshoring of US jobs dismantles the ladders of upward mobility for US citizens.
With all of these great researchers and activists speaking truth, why is it so hard to get the facts out there into the mainstream instead of public relations statements written by Corporate lobbyists?
Finally, please read the articles themselves and go to the links above. They are all exceptional commentary on the still very sad state of affairs for working America, in spite of all the seemingly populist talk and bear in mind that’s really all we have right now, talk and few are really walking the walk.
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