Sign this petition to end h-1b visas... http://www.petitiononline.com/ah1bpr/petition.html

The h-1b program is helping companies move U.S. jobs overseas

Companies like Microsoft are lying when they say they are going to move more jobs offshore unless they get more visas. The truth is, these companies are using the h-1b program to train foreign workers, and then send them back home to start the offshoring process.

Read the Business Week article:

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/feb2007/db20070208_553356.htm

Most h-1b Visas are used to train Indian citizens, who are then sent home, and used to offshore (move) american jobs overseas.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates doesn't care for the U.S. workforce. Microsoft has a corporate policy to shaft it's U.S. workforce. See the following article:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/03/30/EDGRJN7CFB1.DTL

Microsoft, Oracle, and other corporations are escaping from the responsibility of the 8-Trillion dollar federal debt. Half of a U.S. engineer's salary is taxes. These companies are further depressing wages, paying h-1b workers an average of 13,000 dollars (20%) less than their american counterparts. Thus further adding to the U.S. budget deficit and National debt, by reducing the amount of tax revenue and forcing a U.S. worker to the unemployment line.

The h-1b program has no protection for the U.S. workforce. The U.S. Department of Labor has said it is okay to hire an h-1b worker, over a U.S. worker, even if the U.S. worker is better qualified.

This was brought to light in open testimony, before congress, where a U.S. worker phoned a recruiting company and asked to apply for a job. She was told she could not apply for the job, because she was not in the U.S. on an h-1b visa.

The George Bush Department of Labor did not file any charges against the company. Even though most Americans would clearly see this as a case of open-discrimination against the U.S. workforce.

Companies prefer to hire h-1b visa worker over U.S. citizens, because:

* Foreign workers can be trained and then take the skills back home and continue the offshoring of U.S. jobs.

The 3 top users of h-1b visas are all foreign IT offshoring firms. Together these 3 companies take around 70% of the available h1b visas each year.

If the workers cannot come to the USA then the work itself will just head offshore.
From a nation founded and made great by immigrants the current US policies are difficult to understand.

Lance, go read Jake's post.

The H-1Bs are all about Bill Gates' starving American workers and moving operations offshore. Period. Do you really want your tax dollars going towards that?

Yet, remarkably, Bill is also concerned about the quality and quantity of U.S. enrollment in engineering degree programs. Clearly copious supplies of H1-B visas are a huge deterrent and disincentive to those considering an engineering career.
This point is surely not lost on potential U.S. engineering students. We know that they are getting this message loud and clear. So now we must import a continuously increasing percentage of U.S. engineering students each year as well.
The real issues here are systematic age discrimination and labor market wage manipulation. It's about replacing old expensive engineers with young cheap engineers.
Remember that H1-B hires are essentially indentured workers. There are no effective means of preventing the all too common abuses of these workers.
Labor economists tell us that genuine labor shortages cannot exist. The real problem is that engineering graduates keep leaving the field after a few years due to comparatively low salaries and poor working conditions.
Engineering was once an elite and esteemed profession. Salaries were generous and security of employment was a good. H1-B visas would be utterly unnecessary if this were still true today.

The problems with H1-Bs need to be fixed but the answer is not to keep immigrants out who want to work here. Having the privilege of being born to educated wealthy parents in a wealthy country willing to shell out for a fancy degree does not entitle you to a kushy job if there's some equally if not more talented gentleman from bangladesh or somewhere who wants a chance at that kushy job too.

"The problems with H1-Bs need to be fixed but the answer is not to keep immigrants out who want to work here."

But that is THE MAIN problem with H-1B visas: they're letting in too many cheap workers.

If you were to put a sign outside the Ford dealership saying 10 cars for $1000, they'd all be grabbed up in a day or two. It's the same with H-1B visas. Sure, we've got about a million unemployed and under-employed bright US citizens who are trying to get these jobs, but they've got children and/or mortgages and/or cars to maintain and/or more college course-work to do in hopes of competing with these cheap guest-workers.

And, yes, the guest-workers are cheap, and are not especially bright.
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.real.html
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/CaseStudyH1BUnderpayment.txt
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.others.html#studies
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/pub/Immigration/ImmigAndComputerIndustry/Newsday.html
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/IEEESaysH1BsPaidLess.txt
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/IntelH1BWages.txt
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/PGH1BWageData.txt
http://www.oig.dol.gov/public/reports/oa/pre_1998/06-96-002-03-321s.htm
http://www.oig.dol.gov/public/media/testimony/19970410.pdf
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO/HEHS-00-76
http://www.computerworld.co.nz/webhome.nsf/UNID/D843B2E2C2F64947CC256CB8000B351D!opendocument
http://www.techsunite.org/news/techind/030806_gao.cfm
http://www.gao.gov/atext/d03883.txt
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d03883.pdf
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04932.pdf
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-04-932
http://www.cis.org/articles/2005/back1305.html
http://www.ilw.com/articles/2006,0123-miano.shtm
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/StartingSalaryErosionMS.txt
http://www.cis.org/articles/2006/back506.html
http://judiciary.house.gov/media/pdfs/h1blabor62106.pdf
http://news.com.com/Some+H-1B+workers+underpaid,+federal+auditors+say/2100-1022_3-6087367.html
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/immigration/index.html
http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/PhyllisSchlafly/2006/12/18/tech_industry_has_ulterior_motive_regarding_h-1b_visas
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ.html#Summary

In this day and age of a global economy, jobs WILL migrate offshore if "labor" migration is not allowed in the US.

The BusinessWeek article merely states it in another way, but that is really not the point we are discussing here. (By the way, one doesnt really need a H-1B visa to get training. Anybody could come on a normal business visa to get the needed training and go back.)

Yes, it should be a level playing field in which no one is unfairly treated - American or otherwise - but I would rather have people come here to the US and engage in the US economy than have the jobs and the money go to another economy in which ordinary Americans cannot participate.
Let's keep the US economy humming...there is way too much competition coming up and I wouldnt want the US to go the way of the British economy at the turn of the previous century. (Ironically, the US was the "emerging" economy at that time)

Here's the way to call EVERYONE's BLUFF: Change the terms of H1-B to 1) Require that they apply for permanent citizenship 2) That they stay in the country for 5 years or until their citizenship is granted and an extra 5% tax be paid by them payable back to them only upon granting of citizenship and 3) Renounce their current citizenship upon gaining US citizenship.

The point of all of the points I've heard is that the only justification for letting people in is if they become a *permanent* citizen, and *unless* they are permanent, they are indentured slaves. So lets make *both* the immigrants and the employers put up or shut up.

Please do a thorough background check on Indian software programmers especially verifying their their stated work experience...
Allmost all "consultants" are fresh MS degree holders from US universities who put 5 years of fake experience on their resumes and the fact is the hiring companies know it

Anyone concerned with reigning in the H1B fiasco should contact your Senators to push through the Durbins-Grassley Senate bill to put some rules back into the game. This bill will face overwhelming odds from the IT industry, so the workers in the IT business need to contact their representatives and be a loud voice for this bill to make it out of committee. We don't get to talk to a Senate panel like Bill Gates does. Read:
http://news.com.com/2100-1014_3-6172981.html
Do a Google News Search and try to find this article among all the articles about the H1Bs being all used up. The deck is stacked against the IT worker in this country.

From what I've seen, the H1B visas case has many rivets.
I am not familiar with the IT situation, but I can tell about my experience in the chemical industry.
My company, which is based overseas, started one plant project here... at the beginning, we thought it should be easy to accomplish, specially using a "spend all you need" approach. But the all-american engineers that were on charge, failed, (which is still a shame for me). We opted to hire (without laying off anyone) additional enginners from abroad (current company employees), for "assistance".
The process of hiring someone from abroad is pretty nightmarish, you would be surprised on how much we had to spend on lawyers, labor certifications and relocation. They ended up costing a lot of money, more than our "locals".
But they performed good. We ended putting them on charge of the old engineers. Then, the plant started running. Sounds sad, but that's what happened.