Posted by unregistered user at 3/12/08 5:23 p.m.

Dana Rohrabacher doesn't quite get it, either. What's been happening is that A and B student US citizens have been replaced by C students from off-shore.

"U.S. engineers... [are] more creative, excelled in problem solving, risk taking, networking and [have] strong analytical skills..."
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200707.html#20070702

"Dozens of employers asked to compare American engineers to their much-vaunted colleagues from India and [Red China] agreed that 'in education, training, quality of work, you name it, in every which way, Americans are better'. Even the best schools in those countries 'don't hold a candle to our best schools.', he continues. Newly hired American university graduates 'become productive within 30 days or so. If you hire a graduate of an Indian university, it takes between 3 and 6 months for them to become productive.'"
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200801.html#20080104

"Dynamic" vs. "transactional" engineers.
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200512.html#20051213
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200512.html#20051227
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200601.html#20060110

The base limit on H-1B visas is a vastly excessive 65K, the total limit is over 85K, broken down as follows, according to USCIS:
1,400 nationals of Chile;
5,400 nationals of Singapore;
20,000 with master's and doctor's degrees from US colleges and universities;
58,200 with "bachelor's degrees or equivalent experience" from any hole-in-the-wall in the world;
unlimited visas for those employed by non-profit research outfits;
unlimited visas for those employed for local, state and federal research;
unlimited visas for those employed by US colleges & universities.

Those numbers constitute the current open-ended "cap". The numbers actually approved and the numbers of visas issued have been quite a bit above those numbers according to USCIS and State Department data.

H-1B visas approved (USCIS):
year Initial renewed+extended total
1999 134,411 na na
2000 136,787 120,853 257,640
2001 201,079 130,127 331,206
2002 103,584 93,953 197,537
2003 105,314 112,026 217,340
2004 130,497 156,921 287,418
2005 116,927 150,204 267,131

H-1B visas issued (DoS):
1996 58,327
1997 80,547
1998 91,360
1999 116,513
2000 133,290
2001 161,643
2002 118,352
2003 107,196
2004 138,977
2005 124,374
2006 135,861

If they were for the "highly skilled" "best and brightest" a more reasonable cap would be a hard 2K visas in use at any one time.

Yes, the E-3, F, H-1B, J, and L visa programs need to be reformed. First, cut the numbers of visas so that more of the bright, well-educated US citizens can be brought back from cat-sitting to something resembling full employment of their skills. It's a terrible waste to subsidize the educations of foreign students, make it more difficult for US students to succeed, and then destroy the careers of US students who had succeeded, while transferring knowledge and research techniques and capital equipment outside of the USA.

There is no requirement that H-1B visa applicants be "highly skilled". Indeed, the US Labor Department data show that 56% of applications filed are for H-1B workers with the lowest skill level (level 1 of 4).
http://www.cis.org/articles/2007/back407.html

USCIS reports show that hundreds are issued each year to those lacking the equivalent of a US high school education, while hundreds more lack the equivalent of a bachelor's degree. With a few welcome exceptions, these are not "best and brightest" individuals, but ordinary people doing ordinary jobs for which the USA has been producing an excess of US citizen talent for decades.

These elevated numbers of E-3, F, H-1B, J, and L-1 visas have been being used to drive down compensation, to facilitate off-shoring, and to facilitate age discrimination.
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=how_guestworkers_promote_outsourcing

If a foreign student cannot obtain US employment within 2 months after graduation from a US university, then their skills and knowledge must not be in demand. Rather than increasing the time they can legally remain in the USA after graduation from 1 year to 2 years, it should be reduced.

Posted by unregistered user at 3/12/08 10:18 p.m.

Politians have always been more stupid than an average donkey ! "Rohrabacher" ... this dumbhead worthless woman needs vote for herself and thats all she is looking for !

Posted by unregistered user at 3/12/08 10:59 p.m.

May be in Future, India will have Microsoft Headquarters if we follow the advise of Politicians like Rohrabacher. Already 3000 jobs were lost to Canada in 2007 because of the H1B cap been reached. may be americans need to go to any near by University and look at the Roster in Master's and PHD programs to really see how many Americans are really 'Very creative and skillfull'. 90% Masters and PhDs are foreign immigrants or on Student Visa. Stupid Politicians.

Posted by unregistered user at 3/13/08 7:25 a.m.

I figured Microsoft was having trouble finding enough skilled workers. When I loaded Vista, it was pretty apparent :)

Posted by unregistered user at 3/13/08 1:26 p.m.

Just in the grammatic quality of the responses here, you can tell who was educated in the U.S. and who was not. Fact is, Gates is part of the problem, he funded lobbiest in the mid to late 90's to halt the rise in salaries of technology workers, the way they accomplished this was to open the flood gates and let all the foreign technology workers into this country.

The vast majority of the H1B's go to the enterprise body shops who make a fortune on cheap technology labor, even though this is technically against the law to have equal pay for equal work, the reality is very different. Write your congressperson and tell them that Gates has pulled this scam before, just research your newspaper articles on technology salaries from the late 90's.

There are more than enough qualified tech workers here to fullfill the jobs he mentions, the problem is that they can't afford to relocated to Seattle and the Bay Area becasue of outragious housing costs, so they hire the imports who pile up in apartments to save money.

Dana Rohrabacher has it right, Bill Gates is just trying to do the 'end around' one more time before he retires to fulfill his obligations to the elite in the tech industry on the west coast.

Posted by unregistered user at 3/13/08 8:50 p.m.

First, they don't subsidize the fees for international students. Most of them have to pay at least three times the fees as American students because they're not eligible for financial aid or grants.
Secondly, most people educated in the US have poor grammar. Here, there is not emphasis on grammar in colleges so I've seen lots of international students who speak and write better [academically correct] english than their American counterparts. Microsoft does not hire only in Seattle or the Bay, and if they did, why can't they move to these areas? So they can save a few bucks by being unemployed? Also, I'd ask that you deal with the fact that you can't compete with these immigrants. What is wrong with a corporation looking where it can for the most talented employees?

Posted by unregistered user at 3/14/08 7:38 a.m.

I think international students should be encouraged to stay here and work and build careers.

You don't seem to get it, it's not about talent, this is part of the big lie, it's about money. You are willing to work for less money or benefits to have the opportunity to stay in this country, this is where the body shops and Microsofts of the world look to take advantage. Frankly 50% of the technology workers are now from India or the likes, and most of their language skills are horrible, only one in five have decent language skills, I know this because I've been working with them for years.

I don't dislike the people or think they should be denied an opportunity, but companies here now skip over Americans to get at the cheaper labor, this is a fact, I see it everyday, and it is illegal, but the companies skirt the law by using different job descriptions for the same work.

This problem is not new to America, big business has been trying to drive workers to subpar wages since the beginning, it's the nature of capitalism, but it's also the right of people to demand fair treatment, and equal pay for equal work, and this is what Dana Rohrabacher seems to be trying to do, whereas Mr. Gates is simply about himself and his big tech corp buddies.

And think about it, if the flood gates for foreign labor are opened wide, it will also hurt the H1B's that are already here, they will be driven to lower wages as well, which many of them already face from body shops trying to beat them down with threat of going back to India for a job.

Take off the rose colored glasses and smell the coffee, this is all about improving the big companies bottom lines at the expense of technology workers who have to constantly upgrade their skills through out their careers and deserve fair competitve compensation for knowledge which takes more continue effort than most professions.

If the big companies want a better bottom line then they should stop spending their money foolishly.

Posted by unregistered user at 3/14/08 11:43 a.m.

Yes, absolutely hiring submissive students from other cultures where having an "A" doesn't mean having any kind of opinion or critical reasoning skills at all.

CERTAINLY: pay more, get more applicants. If nothing else, it drives more US-born talent to study the field. The problem isn't what they're paying CTO's. The problem is what they're paying everyone who isn't an executive.

It's an easy fix. Cap the ratio of executive compensation as a function of compensation of lowest-paid employees. It won't hamstring the business unless you believe the crap that "There Is Only One Person In The World Who Can Lead Us Out of The Mess The Last Executive Shoved Us Into" and so executives have to be compensated according to their fame. But compensation for merit? There are plenty of executives.

Posted by unregistered user at 3/14/08 1:33 p.m.

Right on Rohrabacher!!! We finally have someone who will stand up to lecherous businessmen such as Bill Gates! What a novel concept providing well paying jobs for Americans, instead of for foreigners. It is time we start looking out for our own. Furthermore, if there are not enough qualified people for his jobs why can not Gates provide seed money to educate and train our own people. Perhaps, Mr. Bill should be now called "floodgates" for desiring to open our country to even more immigration.

Posted by linuxguru1968 at 3/14/08 2:45 p.m.

Anyone who has followed Gates and the H1B issue knows that because he is rich putting lot of lobby money on capital hill – Washington political pimp Jack Abramoff was his biggest client - Gates is allowed to commit perjury freely at Congressional hearings. Irregardless of Rohrabacher's view on global warming (BTW, SOME reputable scientists agree with him), he showed great courage to stand up to Gates as Gates lied about the effect of H1Bs. H1B is a cheap labor program that depresses wages and shortens the careers of native born American scientists and engineers: google Dr. Norman Matloff and Dr. Ron Hira.

Gates muddled and incoherent testimony that US universities are not producing enough STEM graduate was pure perjury: studies by Rand, AP Soan, Urban Institute has shown that there is a glut of STEMs and no shortage. Gates testimony that he pays most of his H1Bs over $100K/year is also a lie: according the LCA database 85% of H1Bs employed by MS are paid less than $50K/year and are not the "best and brightest" or even doing technical work. I applaud Rohrabacher for standing for use native born Americans who invented just about every modern technology. The computer industry that made Gates rich was invented by us native had born Americans NOT Gate's cheap, unimaginative, non-innovative $9/hour Chinese and Indian flunkies.

Posted by unregistered user at 3/27/08 6:03 p.m.

In my opinion when Gates and others like him speak of shortage what they are really mean is a shortage of NEW grad with NEW skills that can be exploited on the cheap for a few years then let go.

The white lie of tech careers is that it is not a career. At best CS/EE/ME and others are 20 year jobs, then you are considered obsolete.

I have a way (tongue in cheek) to control H1B numbers! Let them come to the US BUT require all to take and pass four years of useless high school English. I've wondered why if you're born and educated here you're forced to take 4 years of English comp, literature, writting etc but if you walk in with a H1B or other Visa you don't need any of this crap. And the broken English (spoken and written) of the Visa crowd proves it!

Posted by unregistered user at 3/30/08 12:28 p.m.

Someone mentioned that if a visa student cannot get a job in two months after graduating they should be forced to leave. The person who said it has NO idea how screwed up our visa and immigration system is. The reason why many of the best international students (from MIT or Stanford even) not get hired is because of how bad the visa process is. They might get multiple offers, but they would not be able to start working until the visa approval comes through. In many cases, because of the visa cap - even though they have a job offer, there might not be a visa number available for them to start working.
Also, there are specific salary levels that are set by the US government for people working on visas - these match or exceed industry averages. So, the argument that Gates is trying to use foreign workers to keep out americans is not accurate. Sure - improving the total supply might keep the average salaries from growing as rapidly, but then if you don't do that, as a country we cannot be competitive against countries where there are more technically trained students.