I agree with you Ephraim. There are legitimate problems with the H-1b visa - and xenophobia should not cloud the debate.

For one, it is used as a means of labor arbitrage and acts as a subsidy to the IT industry. This subsidy puts downward pressures of American wages and opportunities.

Second, the H-1b visa treats people (mostly from India) as indenture servants. The inability for these workers to work on the open market - and tight bonds between their "corporate masters" is a huge problem. For one - they are effectively indentured servants (which sucks for them). Second, it's also not such a great thing to have to compete with indentured servants. Talk about rolling back America.

All that said, the last thing we need to do is introduce xenophobia into the argument. I condemn the statements of Goode and anyone else who introduces xenophobia into this debate. Fear and raw emotion is understandable, but it is also a distraction from the core issue.

The bottom line is that the H-1b/L1 debate should be about economics and fair play, not about race, religion, or anything else. End of story.

I would encourage anyone - and especially labor activists - to not introduce xenophobia into this argument. That is a direct attack to our credibility and harmful to the debate as a whole.

H1-B is socialism. We are admitting programmers, meanwhile building a wall a the border to keep manual laborers out. Why? Because programmers make more.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Whatever visa laws apply to programmers have to apply to everyone.

I believe my country is great, but not invincible.

Congress has been steadily undermining the US Constitution with disastrous results (Iraq, immigration, Patriot Act).

The suppression and "cooking" of public information by various departments of the government is pandemic.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/7/26/72554/5954

Real wages were highest in 1972.
Go to:
http://www.bls.gov/ces/home.htm#data
Go to:
Get Detailed CES Statistics:
Click on:
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Select:
From: 1964
Not Seasonally Adjusted
Super Sector: Total privateIndustry: Total
privateNAICS Code: N/A
Data Type: AVERAGE WEEKLY EARNINGS, 1982 DOLLARS

The H-1B visa program is the Trojan Horse
of offshoring of US jobs. Nearly all of these companies have hired H-1B "temporary" foreign workers, either directly or through sub-contractors, prior to offshore outsourcing of jobs.
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/lou.dobbs.tonight/popups/exporting.america/content.html

Immigration concerns steer the discussion away from the core problem with the H1-B visa-hiring program: This federal law allows employers to never source local talent for a US job opening. Most techs are unaware that the program never requires companies to compete the job opening, nor does it require employers to show that Americans were considered.

We now have job advertisements for H1-B only, with full protection from the DOL. This is a significant blow to American opportunity. Americans & green card holders can not applying for job openings reserved by the DOL, many can not remain active in their careers, and college graduates can not get a start in their field.

Steering a political discussion away from the core political issue is an age-old trick. It results in discussions that go round and round, exhausting and exasperating participants and observers. Most of you can remember the exhausting and exasperation discussions about whether women were qualified?. When these discussions were reframed by whether employers should be legally protected by recruiting men only, we as a nation understood that the core issue was American opportunity and moved mountains to implement this.

Americans & GC holders are being legally denied the opportunity to compete for job openings. Brightfuturejobs.org is a grass-roots lobby. Our mission is to stop H1-B hiring expansion and pass the Defend the American Dream Act? (DADA), HR 4378, so that we can compete for these job openings.

We will be lobbying for co-sponsors in January with an Indian H1-B support group called Nostops.org. The H1-Bs are experiencing high levels of unemployment. They do not want expansion; they want reform, too.

We technical professionals have transformed our world. Lets take that can do approach to the steps of the American Capitol and transform the H1-B hiring program.

Xenophobia is the accusation of people who can't support their argument with either facts or logic. In fact, the post above is pitifully stupid.

The United States doesn't need either illegal aliens or Indians. The policies that the U.S. government is following are the socialist policies of the United Nations - free trade in human beings under the WTO-GATS agreement.

The multinational corporations are causing the massive migrations of people around the world because they are dominating the markets around the world. They are destroying economies, governments and they are increasing poverty around the world.

The multinationals and socialist UN have an agreement - the global compact. They are helping each other to create a totalitarian socialist system of global governance.

So while the morons above think they are cheerleading for capitalism - the total exploitation of workers, they are in reality cheerleading communism.

They are the people who truly hate this nation. And if we were really fighting against people who want to destroy this country (and other countries as well), we'd be hunting them down like the rabid dogs they are.

To Ephraim Schwartz: I don't know where you live, but there are parts of the southwest that are not recognizable as being in the U.S. I see them everyday, and I live in one. Far from merely assimilating foreign cuisine, the signs are in foreign languages, all spoken words including public services is conducted in Spanish, the music, the festivals, the holidays, all foreign. It is not safe for a white or black man to walk down the street. And I don't mean "not safe" as in something could happen; I mean something *will* happen, and always does. Some cityhalls of towns and citys in California refuse to fly American flags on Veterans' Day, and they do not officially celebrate Independence Day. (well they do, but not ours -- its the Mexican independence day they celebrate.) You simply cannot walk through many neighborhoods carrying the flag of the United States without being accosted. Also, many of the the public school districts make the children take 3 weeks off for Christmas break, so the kids have time to go to Mexico. If you think I am making any of this up, please please check into it yourself. I swear it is all true, and much more. Please educate yourself, go live it first hand. Maybe then you won't make idiotic claims that the only thing we are adopting is their food.

Vincent,
Schools closed down an extra week to go back and visit family in Mexico. There is plenty of precedent for schools accommodating local populations.

I taught upstate New York for a while. And the public schools were closed opening day of hunting season to accommodate all the kids during deer season. And the boys didn't come back to school until they shot their buck.

If you go to parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin, you might see people flying the Swedish or Norwegian flag.

In New York, public schools used to close down for Jewish holidays because there were so few in attendance.

I stand by what I said. Yes, even if what you say is true and rampant, I tell you in another generation or at most two the children or grandchildren of immigrants will be Americans.

As an American that use to make a good living in the Technologies Industry, The H1-B visa as it is written presently, is indeed destroying America. Americans are 2nd choice in hiring for job vacancies. Jobs are filled first by H1-Bs. Americans cannot compete for these jobs. Heck, these jobs aren't even advertised in American newspapers. Many under-privledged were brought out of the lower class status during the 80's an early 90's and given the opportunity participate in the good life of middle class status only to be stripped of their jobs in IT so that the employer could replace them with citizens from abroad that would work for lower wages as indentured slaves. Today, I earn 1/3 of what I did during the 80's and 90's. I am not alone in my rags to riches to rags story.

I don't recall Virgil Goode's comments about Islam having anything to do with the H-1B visa program. This is another example of an attempted cheap smear by someone who isn't interested in the facts but hopes to win the argument through intimidation and name calling.

I used Virgil Goode's comments as an example of xenophobia. He is so afraid of immigration that he thinks a Congressman getting sworn in by holding his hand on the Koran is a dangerous precedent.
I saw an item on the news that pointed out there were even some presidents who did not use any kind of bible to be sworn in.

The problems with H-1b go far beyond the tech industry. Doctors, hospitals, and medical clinics collectively employ very large numbers of foreign H-1b nurses, whose lack of English language skills can endanger the health of the American public.

I recently was given an injection for a viral infection by a Filipino nurse whose English was so poor she misunderstood the Doctor's instructions. The incorrect injection that she gave me caused a reaction that was more severe than the viral infection was!

I was completely convinced that this Filipino nurse was an illegal alien. But then when I complained to the Doctor's office, they told me that the nurse was here legally on an H-1b visa. I have researched this issue and found that there are other citizens who have had similar difficulties.

The assertion by Mr. Schwartz that "in another generation or at most two the children or grandchildren of immigrants will be Americans" cannot be proven in our lifetimes. In the meantime, what about the American citizens whose lives are being shattered by the problems associated with H-1b and other forms of mass immigration? Do our lives even matter, or are we simply living sacrifices on the altar of globalism?

H1-B's problems have nothing to do with xenophobia and everything to do with greed; big business is greedy for semi-indentured workers who will do skilled labor for a fraction of what American workers will ask for.

And do you blame them? The function of a company is to make money. However, the function of a government is to maintain social order. One of the functions of a government is to look after the interests of its citizens over the interests of the citizens of other nations. Now, our (American) government has been so bought out by big business that it's been persuaded that wealthy Americans are more important than less wealthy Americans -- in other words, the needs of the few (company owners and big stockholders) outweigh the needs of the many (American employees without a chance to compete fairly).

This situation is intolerable and broken. H1-B's problems have nothing to do with xenophobia. The program is broken, and needs to be fixed.

I agree with "Odd2". Unfortunately, Americans are now discriminated against in the IT job market and it's not just from a cost basis, it's very much racial and gender based. Sadly, until a few landmark law suits occur (as has happened with sexual harrassment), Americans (born and raised in the USA-white, black, asian, male, female, whatever sexual preference you want) will continue to be discriminated against in the IT world.

There is another aspect of the H-1B scheme that I haven't seen mentioned yet. That is, when American science and technology professionals are unemployed because of H-1B and then have to take low paying jobs outside their specialty, then as time passes their knowledge is no longer current with industry trends. This career rust can then be used as a pretext by Big Business and Congress to increase the H-1B quota again and again.

There's a name for this tactic; it's called a self-reinforcing strategy, and it is an intentional part of the overall strategy to disenfranchise Americans in our own country.

Question and comment for A. Jackson, comment above.

I like conspiracy theories as much as the next guy but why would the government want to disenfrancise Americans?

I suggest you let it all out so I know where you're coming from. Who is doing this and why?
--Ephraim

Ephraim,

Just in case nobody noticed - I agreed with you on not introducing xenophobia into the H-1b debate ;-)

On the Q for A. Jackson - the government isn't interested in disenfranchising Americans. They simply have an interest in helping corporations get their hands on cheap and exploitable labor - as a favor of course for all the campaign contributions or whatever else they have done to grease the wheels.

Their actions to help big business - and especially the tech lobby - disenfranchise Americans. The government either doesn't realize the harm, doesn't care, or justifies it in some way.

You should ask the members of Congress pushing the H-1b why they support expanding a program that harms American workers and puts foreign labor into a defacto indentured servant relationship with their employer. I would like to know what they say about that.