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  1. #1
    Senior Member zeezil's Avatar
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    Wanted: Foreign tech workers

    Wanted: Foreign tech workers
    Congress faces pressure to raise the number of visas for temporary employees.
    By Eilene Zimmerman, FSB contributor
    September 26 2007: 1:30 PM EDT

    FSB -- When Elizabeth Charnock couldn't find the talent she needed to keep her small Silicon Valley software company Cataphora (cataphora.com) growing, she looked for workers overseas. Finding the skilled employees she sought, the CEO applied for eight H1B visas for fiscal 2008. The documents enable foreigners with technical skills to work temporarily in the U.S.

    "We did everything you're supposed to do," says Charnock. "We hired an immigration lawyer, we filed the first day. It went into a lottery. Five of our eight hires got visas." Two of the three that didn't had already sold their homes to move to California from Europe. "Their lives were turned upside down. They are stuck," adds Charnock, "and so are we. The competition for these people here is insane."

    Charnock is one of a groundswell of entrepreneurs and advocates for immigrants who say Congress needs to raise the cap on H-1B visas to help the economy. Last week 1,000 protestors-mostly legal immigrants-drew attention to the situation of highly skilled foreigners who want to work for companies in the U.S. by marching on Capitol Hill.

    The demonstrators were protesting long delays in securing green cards for highly-skilled workers already in the U.S. The lags make it difficult for businesses in fields such as engineering and software development to secure and keep foreign skilled labor in the country, they say. According to immigration and workforce experts, if the nation does not accept more foreign workers with skills in math, engineering and computer science, we risk losing ground in the global economy, because the computer scientists who can't find work in the U.S. will go to work for economic rivals.

    Governors from 13 states are now weighing in on the issue. California's Arnold Schwarzenegger, Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, and New York's Eliot Spitzer, were among those who signed a Sept. 11 letter (http://gov.ca.gov/index.php?/press-release/7381/) to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader John Boehner urging them to raise the cap on the number of H1-B visas, which the governors say was set "arbitrarily" and today "bears no relation to our economy."

    The H-1B program has its critics, including U.S.-born programmers, who say the visas serve mainly to drive down salaries of American tech workers. Some employers also question the value of the H-1B program. Miles Thomason, CEO of Levia Softwar (leviasoftware.com), a four-person company in Atlanta, says that when other companies hire H1-B workers and pay them a lower wages than Thomason pays his American workers, he loses competitiveness. He has tried to hire foreign-born programmers, but has not had positive experiences: "On paper they look good but the interviews don't go well," he says. "Communication issues alone are problematic for us."

    Nonetheless, many in the technology community have complained for years about the shortage of qualified American job seekers. They have been pushing Congress to raise the cap on the number of H-1B visas granted each year. The current cap of 65,000, set by Congress in 1990, was raised to 195,000 from 2001-2003. It wasn't until 1997 that the number of applications exceeded the H1B cap, according to USCIS spokesperson Marie Sebrechts. On April 2, the first day for applying for visas for fiscal 2008, the USCIS received more than 130,000 applications, forcing the agency - for the first time - to put all applications into a computer-generated selection process similar to a lottery.

    American-born workers do not seem to be rushing to gain the skills that technology companies want. Only about 13 percent of graduate degrees awarded in the U.S. are science degrees, according to the most recent numbers from the National Center for Education Statistics (http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d05/ ... rer=report). And foreign nationals make up about 60 percent of the Ph.D.s in computer science and engineering coming out of U.S. colleges, according to an analysis of education statistics by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (aaas.org).

    Across the tech industry, the inability to hire qualified non-citizens is beginning to pinch. One-third of private, venture capital-backed companies surveyed by the National Foundation for American Policy (nfap.com) for the National Venture Capital Association (nvca.org) last November said the lack of visas had influenced their decision to place more personnel in facilities abroad. Among respondents using H1-B visas, nearly 40 percent said the cap has "negatively impacted their company when competing against other firms globally."

    Hardest hit by the cap may be the nation's small businesses, which often don't have the resources to open up satellite operations in places such as India and China, where they could hire skilled technical workers, says Russell Swapp, a Boston-based partner who heads the national immigration team at law firm Seyfarth Shaw (http://www.seyfarth.com). "I have smaller clients who have been unable to meet their hiring targets because of the cap and feel they are being competitively crippled," he says.

    Foreign-born engineers and computer scientists have been critical to growth and innovation in the U.S., according to a study by The Kauffman Foundation (kauffman.org), Duke University, New York University and Harvard. The study estimates that immigrants founded one in four of the engineering and technology companies created between 1995 and 2005. By 2006, these companies were employing 450,000 workers and generating $52 billion in revenue, according to the researchers. "These [founders] are often true innovators and own the intellectual property on which companies are based," says Swapp. "These aren't fungible positions."

    This summer, hope for raising the cap evaporated when Congress failed to enact a comprehensive immigration reform bill in late June, which included a provision to increase the number of H1B visas to 115,000. A senior House aide familiar with the H-1B issue said House leaders are now in the process of "trying to figure out what parts of immigration reform can move forward with support." On the Senate side, Charles Schumer of New York, Maria Cantwell of Washington State and other democrats and republicans "are working on legislation to reform the H1B system," says a spokesperson in Schumer's office. And President Bush has repeatedly said he wants Congress to raise the cap.

    But even if Congress does provide more H1B visas, it will not solve the larger problem of a growing skills gap in the U.S. workforce. "It isn't just that there aren't enough Americans graduating in the math and science fields, it's also that there is a need for these people across the globe, and everyone is fighting for them," says Stuart Anderson, executive director of the NFAP and a former staff director of the Senate Immigration Subcommittee (http://judiciary.senate.gov/subcommitte ... ion109.cfm). "The question is whether or not the hiring takes place inside the U.S., keeping growth and innovation here, or someplace else."
    http://money.cnn.com/2007/09/25/smbusin ... 2007092613
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  2. #2
    Senior Member redpony353's Avatar
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    American-born workers do not seem to be rushing to gain the skills that technology companies want. Only about 13 percent of graduate degrees awarded in the U.S. are science degrees, according to the most recent numbers from the National Center for Education Statistics
    THERE ARE PLENTY OF AMERICAN BORN TECH WORKERS. THEY WERE MOSTLY DISPLACED IN FAVOR OF CHEAP FOREIGN BORN LABOR.

    IF THERE ARE NOT MANY AMERICAN WORKERS SEEKING TECH DEGREES THESE DAYS IT IS BECAUSE THEY KNOW THEY WILL BE DISCRIMINATED AGAINST.

    IF TECH COMPANIES CANT FIND AMERICAN WORKERS IT IS BECAUSE THEY DONT PAY THEM AND THE PAST DISCRIMINATION AGAINST AMERICAN WORKER.

    STOP THE VISA WORKERS AND LET THEM EAT IT. THEY DESERVE IT. THEY CREATED THIS SITUATION.

    FURTHER MORE TECH COMPANIES HAVE ENGAGED IN THE PRACTICE OF PUTTING PHONEY JOB ADS ONLINE. THEY LET AMERICANS APPLY FOR JOB AFTER JOB AND END UP WITH NOTHING. LET THEM SUFFER NOW THEY WAY THEY MADE THE AMERICAN WORKER SUFFER.
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  3. #3

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    I cannot honestly believe that we cannot find the workers needed in the US. It is all about the high and mighty bottom line on their P & L.

    I can understand why our college students are not majoring in the engineering and tech fields. They know when they go to apply for these much needed jobs it will be a job filled by H1B visa applicant.

    I am so fed up with the way our country is allowing businesses to control their way of governing our country.

  4. #4
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    The title of the article could also have been stated in inverse:

    "American tech workers are unwanted".

    Of course, the article goes into the [all-too-typical] extreme levels of detail in explaining the so-called predicaments of the business manager that seeks "skilled" IT workers. It's interesting that we didn't hear even a peep about her efforts to search for and hire American IT workers (...?)

    Further, she was "surprised", yes folks SURPRISED, when not all the visas were approved for the 8 people she applied to bring in. You mean, Mick Jagger might have been correct when he said "You can't always get what you w-ant..."?

    Re:
    American-born workers do not seem to be rushing to gain the skills that technology companies want.
    Maybe that's because they can earn more money - and more importantly, land the job easier and have better working conditions - by doing something else. When the IT industry wakes up and realizes that slavery is slavery - whether toiling in fields doing manual labor or sitting in an Office Space workplace and having a Bill Lumbergh as your boss, well, it's no surprise that bright people with suitable backgrounds are simply choosing to do something else...

    Let me summarize with just 2 words:
    Kevin Flanagan

    Or, even better, 2 more:
    Sona Shah

    Or, lastly, another 2:
    Manufactured Shortage.

    </end of diatribe>
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  5. #5
    BigMonkey's Avatar
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    If they NEED TECH Workers they should HIRE AMERICAN FIRST.

    These Companies should be required to HIRE AMERICAN FIRST and if after 2 years no AMERICAN wants to work for that firm then and only then can they go outside the US of A for workers
    BigMonkey

  6. #6
    Senior Member BetsyRoss's Avatar
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  7. #7

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    I know BetsyRoss understands this situation very well. I hope I don't bore you guys to tears, but again, I have physics and materials engineering degrees (nanotech, biotech, polymers, solar energy) and I can NOT find a job anywhere - even pouring test tubes and sticking them in the machine. I apply daily to jobs I would excel at, yet I never hear anything back. I spot many of those "phony" ads too - they have a wish list to the moon but the pay is half what it should be. I would gladly take those jobs, rather than rake my 401K down to its last dime to survive, but I never hear anything back. I don't get any assistance from my previous 30 years of paying taxes either. All the subsidies here in San Jose seem to have gone to illegals. PhredE has tried to help as have others and I thank you for caring. There is a big push right now for VC-funded renewable energy companies in the valley. I hope those jobs aren't already reserved for the grand new influx of H1Bs our gov't is pushing. When I get on the train, often I'm the only white person in the car - all the rest are male Indians in their 20s and 30s. Maybe I should just marry one for money instead of using my brains to make it on my own.

  8. #8
    Senior Member MinutemanCDC_SC's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by redpony353
    American-born workers do not seem to be rushing to gain the skills that technology companies want. Only about 13 percent of graduate degrees awarded in the U.S. are science degrees, according to the most recent numbers from the National Center for Education Statistics
    THERE ARE PLENTY OF AMERICAN BORN TECH WORKERS. THEY WERE MOSTLY DISPLACED IN FAVOR OF CHEAP FOREIGN BORN LABOR.

    IF THERE ARE NOT MANY AMERICAN WORKERS SEEKING TECH DEGREES THESE DAYS IT IS BECAUSE THEY KNOW THEY WILL BE DISCRIMINATED AGAINST.

    IF TECH COMPANIES CANT FIND AMERICAN WORKERS IT IS BECAUSE THEY DON'T PAY THEM AND THE PAST DISCRIMINATION AGAINST AMERICAN WORKER.

    STOP THE VISA WORKERS AND LET THEM EAT IT. THEY DESERVE IT. THEY CREATED THIS SITUATION.

    FURTHER MORE TECH COMPANIES HAVE ENGAGED IN THE PRACTICE OF PUTTING PHONY JOB ADS ONLINE. THEY LET AMERICANS APPLY FOR JOB AFTER JOB AND END UP WITH NOTHING. LET THEM SUFFER NOW THEY WAY THEY MADE THE AMERICAN WORKER SUFFER.

    I'll dig a hole six feet long and six feet deep while I'm still able. Next, I'll buy a casket while I still have money left to buy one. Then I'll be prepared to crawl into the hole in the ground and die, to get out of the way of the New World Order work force.

    I can only hope that the laborer who is paid to shovel the dirt on top of me is not an illegal alien.
    One man's terrorist is another man's undocumented worker.

    Unless we enforce laws against illegal aliens today,
    tomorrow WE may wake up as illegals.

    The last word: illegal aliens are ILLEGAL!

  9. #9
    Senior Member BetsyRoss's Avatar
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    Sofedup, your name is legion. I know many people in your boat and for a time I was one of them. The great die-off of the US domestic STEM job market is one of the largest mass wrongful termination episodes in US history, second only perhaps to the withing of our manufacturing capability. We are not merely ignoring our own domestic talent, we are destroying our future capacity to rebound of the political winds change and our allies turn on us.
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