Thread: Invest in American workers

Opposing view: Invest in American workers
U.S. relies too heavily on foreign recruits to fill science, tech jobs.

One of President Obama's highest policy priorities is making America energy independent. The president has correctly observed that our reliance on others for essential energy needs is both a source of weakness and an impediment to the development of new technologies that would also strengthen our economy and help the environment.

In much the same way that we have avoided investing in domestic energy sources and new technologies, we have developed an unhealthy reliance on foreign workers to fill our science and technology needs. As technology has become increasingly important to our economy, U.S. companies have spent millions of dollars lobbying for increased access to foreign workers, rather than investing in American workers to fill jobs.

Despite more than 84,000 high-tech layoffs in the first quarter of 2009, by late April, U.S. employers had filed more than 45,000 new petitions to hire foreign workers, under what's known as the H-1B visa program, instead of investing in training and developing American workers. Worse yet,current law allows American workers to be replaced with new H-1B workers.

The free flow of these workers creates a disincentive to America's own best and brightest to train for many of the jobs that are critical to our economic future. Depressing wages by increasing the labor pool of high-tech workers often directs our most talented people to other professions.
Besides depressing opportunities for American workers, importing large numbers of H-1B workers forestalls the urgent need to recruit and train American workers for the jobs of the future. Instead of perpetuating this dependency through ever-larger H-1B quotas, our nation would be better served by making a commitment to cultivate the talents of our own current and future workers.

The original purpose of the H-1B program was to give our nation access to a small number of people who possessed unique skills, and whose presence here would complement our own labor force. We need to get back to that original intent. What America needs is public and private investment in our people, not a convenient substitute for a well-trained domestic labor force.

Dan Stein is president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates reducing legal immigration levels and strict legal-immigration enforcement.

Posted at 12:21 AM/ET, May 12, 2009 in Immigration - Editorial, USA TODAY editorial |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can post a comment on the USA TODAY Online site at this link:

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/05/ ... rkers.html

There should be a halt to all visa programs untill we fix all the problems and inherite fraud,then only bring in what we absolutely must have and get americans back to work.