Tech frustration boils over | TheHill
OPEN BORDERS AND
ENDLESS HORDES OF IMMIGRANTS POURING IN IS ONLY ABOUT KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED
To
cite just one example, if there is a shortage of U.S. engineers, are 1.5
million Americans with engineering degrees either unemployed or working in
other fields? In all too many cases, U.S. tech companies prefer foreign workers
on temporary visas because they are cheaper and more exploitable than
Americans.
UNDER OBAMA, TWO-THIRDS
OF JOBS GO TO HIS PARTY BASE OF ILLEGALS!
“At
the hearing, Dr. Rakesh Kochar, Associate Director for Research at the Pew
Hispanic Center, testified that in the year following the official end of the
recession (June 2009), foreign-born workers gained 656,000 jobs while
native-born workers lost an additional 1.2 million jobs.”
"We
have a situation where the job market — the bottom fell out, yet we kept legal
immigration relatively high without even a national debate," he said.
"As a consequence, a lot of the job growth has been going to
immigrants."
Mr.
Obama did take action this year to grant many illegal immigrants up to 30 years
of age a tentative legal status that prevents them from being deported and
authorizes them to work in the United States.
Some
Republicans in Congress have criticized Mr. Obama's policy, saying it violates
his powers and will mean more competition for scarce jobs.
Silicon Valley Poverty Is Often Ignored By The Tech Hub's Elite
TECH
GIANT APPLE COMPUTER SAYS HELL NO TO PAYING TAXES and HELL NO TO HIRING
AMERIANS! KEEP THE BOATLOADS OF CHINESE AND INDIANS COMING!
Tech firms fight hiring rules in
immigration bill…. NO AMERICANS NEED APPLY!!!
Americans would "be shocked to know that most
of the H-1B visas … are going to outsourcing companies," Sen. Dick Durbin,
D-Ill., said during a recent hearing.
Story Highlights
- Bill provision that would require
firms to post jobs for Americans is targeted
- Technology firms have spent millions
on lobbying on immigration
- Judiciary Committee set to start
working on bill
WASHINGTON – Technology firms,
exercising new political clout on Capitol Hill, are lobbying against a measure
in the leading Senate immigration bill that would make it harder for them to
recruit workers from abroad without first taking steps to hire Americans for
highly skilled jobs in programming, engineering and other fields.
The measure, part of a sweeping
compromise bill drafted by a bipartisan group of eight senators, would require
job openings to be posted on a new government website for 30 days and order
companies to first extend job offers to "equally or better qualified"
U.S. workers. It would give the U.S. Labor Department the power to review and
challenge those hiring decisions.
Proponents say the measures are
needed to curb abuses by companies who they say use the visa program to hire
cheaper labor. Technology companies say the proposed rules would cripple their
ability to hire the best employees from a global workforce and represent
inappropriate government intrusion in internal hiring decisions.
The fight over hiring practices
is part of the massive lobbying campaign underway on the immigration measure
and will offer a fresh test of the technology industry's growing influence in
Washington. The companies involved in the computer and Internet sectors spent
nearly $140 million in lobbying last year -- more than twice the $69 million
the industry poured into influencing Washington a decade earlier, according to
data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks political
spending.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is
set to begin work on the bill Thursday.
The hiring battle centers on the
program that grants H-1B visas, which go mostly to college-educated foreigners
in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields. Technology
companies say they face a chronic shortage of qualified workers in these
fields. The United States sets an annual limit of 85,000 visas for these
companies, and the competition for them is intense: This year, U.S. Citizenship
and Immigration Services opened up the application process April 1, and the cap
was reached within a week.
Industry groups have made big
gains in the Senate's immigration proposal. The bill, for instance, Would
increase the H-1B cap to 205,000 annually. However, tech officials warn the new
recruiting requirements could drive companies to move their skilled jobs
overseas, rather than comply. A commonly cited example: Microsoft's decision to
open a software center in Vancouver, British Columbia, after Congress failed to
pass immigration legislation in 2007 that would have significantly increased
the number of H-1B visas.
Under the bill, "employers
are going to have an arbitrary government standard imposed on every hiring
decision," said Robert Hoffman, the top lobbyist for the Information
Technology Industry Council, a trade group. The proposed rule, he said, ignores
subjective factors that influence hiring. "A perfect example: How does one
define whether or not someone has the personality to fit into a corporate
culture?" he said.
"We are not trying to change
any of the fundamental policy goals that they are trying to achieve" in
the Senate, Hoffman said. "We are just trying to tweak it, so that these
goals and other goals, like retaining the best and brightest and growing in the
United States, so that those types of goals are advanced as well."
Ron Hira, an associate professor
of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, has criticized the
visa program, saying it allows firms to hire "cheap indentured
labor."
"The technology industry is
asking the government to come in and intervene in the normal functioning of the
U.S. labor market, specifically on their behalf," Hira said.
Bruce Morrison, a former
Connecticut congressman who lobbies on behalf of a group that represents
American engineers, said the organization will object to any effort to
"dilute worker protections" as the measure moves through the Senate.
"The arguments from the companies is that there aren't any Americans to
take these jobs," he said, "so there shouldn't be any problem."
The biggest users of H-1B visas
are not brand-name companies, but little-known staffing companies that provide
foreign workers on a temporary basis to U.S. companies — including banks,
health insurance companies and big retailers. Cognizant, a New Jersey-based
company that employs 27,000 people in the USA, is the top user of the temporary
visas, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services records show. Most of its
workers come from India.
In addition, three India-based
outsourcing companies rank among the top five recipients of H-1Bs, according to
the federal data.
Americans would "be shocked
to know that most of the H-1B visas … are going to outsourcing companies,"
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., one of eight senators who drafted the immigration
bill, said during a recent hearing. "They're going to these firms, largely
in India, who are finding workers, engineers, who will work at low wages in the
U.S."
Durbin is a driving force behind
the hiring requirements in the Senate proposal.
The measure would make business
harder for staffing companies dependent on foreign workers. It would impose
higher fees on firms that rely on overseas employees for more than 30% of their
workforce. Starting in 2016, the bill would bar granting any new temporary
visas for foreign workers at companies with more than half their workers on the
visas. Both measures apply to companies that employ more than 50 people.
Cognizant spokesman John Procter
said he did not have a breakdown on the percentage of the company's workers in
the USA on H-1B visas. He said the bill imposes an "arbitrary, detrimental
restriction on the number of skilled immigrants."
"It would really change the
way America does business," he said. "The company is very focused on
educating legislators and making sure this language doesn't make its way into
any final outcome."
Cognizant hired its first federal
lobbyist in 2010 andby last year, it had spent nearly $1 million on federal
lobbying, congressional records show. Its team includes Democratic power broker
Heather Podesta, who did not return a telephone call. Other companies also have
stepped up their political activity.
Last month, Facebook founder Mark
Zuckerberg, Netflix's Reed Hastings, Google's Eric Schmidt and other technology
executives teamed up to underwrite an advocacy group to promote their views on
immigration. Two of its subsidiaries began a seven-figure advertising campaign
to shore up voter support for key senators in the immigration debate.
The tech industry "has
clearly come of age," said Ellen Miller, executive director of the
Sunlight Foundation. "In the last decade, we've seen this tremendous
recognition from Silicon Valley of the need to play in the power circles — to
both protect their bottom line and to alter the political scene to their
advantage."
BILLIONAIRES partner with MEXICO,
OBAMA and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to assault the AMERICAN WORKER….
Amnesty, it’s all about keeping wages depressed and passing along the real cost
of all that “cheap” mex labor to the American middle class.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/08/billionaires-for-la-raza-supremacy.html
WALL STREET LOOTS!
THE STAGGERING COST OF OBAMA’S CORPORATE
WELFARE PROGRAM:
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-staggering-cost-of-obamas-crony.html
LIKE HIS CRONY BANKSTERS, Tech CEOs literally got access
to the Oval Office
while the bill was being shaped,
the New York Times reported in those
heady early
days of Hope and Change, while the CEOs’
lobbyists met down the
hall with top economics
aide Jason Furman.