Thread: Schumer Announces Move Regarding Foreign Workers

Schumer Announces Move Regarding Foreign Workers

By Norm Matloff
Wednesday, July 29, 2009, 1:45 PM

Senate Immigration Subcommittee Chair Senator Chuck Schumer has not said anything about increasing the H-1B cap, so far as I can tell. There have been news articles on this in the last few weeks, and to my knowledge Schumer has made no public statements in this regard.

The quote included in the Computerworld article http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/ ... _Labor_Day is:

We must encourage the world's best and brightest individuals to come to the United States and create new technologies and business that will employ countless American workers, but must discourage businesses from using our immigration laws as a means to obtain temporary and less-expensive foreign labor to replace capable American workers.

It would appear to be similar to statements made during the last year by a number of Democrats, including Obama, supporting liberalization of the employment-based green card program. As I've written many times, I am just as strongly opposed to expansion of the green card program as I am to expansion of H-1B, as both have the effects of reducing job opportunities for U.S. citizens and permanent residents. Moreover, though I definitely support bringing "the world's best and brightest individuals" here, very few of the foreign workers are of that caliber.

So I'm not making the distinction between H-1B visas and green cards in order to say that I support, or at least do not mind, what Schumer is apparently planning to do. Nevertheless it is important to know what those plans are, and I believe the expansionary facets of them will focus on green cards, not H-1Bs.

Of course, the second half of Schumer's comments above is designed to give them impression that he wishes to take strong action to stop abuse of the H-1B program. My guess is that that is not the case at all. Instead, I believe his legislation will simply include provisions to stop fraud rather than abuse, via stepped-up enforcement measures. As I've stated so often, the main problem is loopholes in the law, not fraud, so anti-fraud measures would be of little value.

For example, it is a safe bet that Schumer will not propose that all employers be subject to the restrictions currently imposed on H-1B-dependent employers, such as a requirement that the employer attempt to fill the position with an American before hiring an H-1B. After those were temporarily extended to TARP recipients, i.e. the financial industry, earlier this year, Schumer vowed to overturn that legislation.

It is interesting that Schumer on the one hand claims to be opposed to using foreign workers as cheap labor, while on the other using Greenspan as his star witness, who has stated repeatedly that the goal of importing the foreign workers is to keep salaries down. Definitely an "emperor has no clothes" moment.

Greenspan has made such statements many times in the last year or so, and one has to wonder just what he's thinking. The median salary for a mid-career software developer is around $80,000, which while not subsistence-level is not particularly high. New law graduates, using a similar skill set (good analytical and problem-solving abilities, etc.) make $160K. I would assume that Greenspan is just ignorant, rather than flat out lying, but even ignorance would be highly disturbing. As the second article here points out, and as Greenspan himself has said, he had no inkling that the financial industry might implode. This is amazing, since anyone could have understood the danger of selling no-down-payment mortgages to people who can't afford them, selling "insurance" to investors on sliced-and-diced packages of those mortgages, etc.

Some comments on some of the passages in the articles:

One proposal that may get traction in Congress would create an independent commission to manage employment-based visas. The commission would determine whether there are labor shortages and have the authority to make annual adjustments on the cap based on economic need. That idea was pitched by the AFL-CIO in April.

This has been suggested before (including by me), but is likely a political nonstarter. After, the industry--and Schumer himself, as noted above--opposes requiring employers to recruit Americans before hiring H-1Bs, so the industry would certainly not support a commission which would have essentially that same goal. Indeed, an industry lobbyist already criticized the idea in a Associated Press report. Of course, if somehow such a commission were formed, its members would be people from industry and their allies anyway.

Angela Kelly, vice president for immigration policy and advocacy at the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based group that's headed John Podesta, President Clinton's former chief of staff, said an element of any immigration reform bill would have to be its labor protections.

"How do we ensure that by bringing these workers in we're not disadvantaging American workers and how do we invest in our folks for the long haul, so that we've got kids in computer science, math, and engineering programs, which are right now, frankly, dominated by kids who aren't from the U.S. That's the reality and we need to deal with it," she said, in a conference call with reporters.

That is false. For example, only 6% of recipients of bachelor's degrees in computer science are nonresident aliens; see the data from CRA. The large numbers of foreign students occur at the PhD level. But of course Kelly's point about H-1B and offshoring discouraging Americans from studying CS is correct.

Norm Matloff is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of California at Davis. He writes an e-newsletter on the H-1B work visa, offshoring and related issues. We repost his writings here with his permission. To directly subscribe to his e-newsletter, contact him at matloff@cs.ucdavis.edu.

http://www.numbersusa.com/content/nusab ... tid=254574

We must encourage the world's best and brightest individuals to come to the United States and create new technologies and business that will employ countless American workers



Stop right there Chuckie.

Why don't you explain to us why, exactly, we must have foreigners coming into this country to start businesses and merely hire American workers?

It used to be that Americans started businesses and those immigrating came here and went to work for us.

Who in the hell gave your ilk the right to decide that Americans are no longer the employers but merely the employees?

Who in the hell gave you the right to decide that the "best and the brightest" only exist in Third World countries with educational systems so bad that they are charging the gates to get into ours? And then aren't even literate in their own languages, let alone much else, once they do get here which is why our standards are continually being lowered to accommodate them.

Or is it just that you find the need to surround yourself with the under and uneducated because they make you look smart?

You arrogant, backstabbing sonofabi.....biscotti......why don't you just resign before you suffer the humiliation of being thrown out of office the first chance the American voters get?

And when you do, make sure to retire to someplace like India where all of your "best and brightest" reside......you'll be worshipped as an absolute genius over there

Originally Posted by azwreath

We must encourage the world's best and brightest individuals to come to the United States and create new technologies and business that will employ countless American workers



Stop right there Chuckie.

Why don't you explain to us why, exactly, we must have foreigners coming into this country to start businesses and merely hire American workers?

It used to be that Americans started businesses and those immigrating came here and went to work for us.

Who in the hell gave your ilk the right to decide that Americans are no longer the employers but merely the employees?

Who in the hell gave you the right to decide that the "best and the brightest" only exist in Third World countries with educational systems so bad that they are charging the gates to get into ours? And then aren't even literate in their own languages, let alone much else, once they do get here which is why our standards are continually being lowered to accommodate them.

Or is it just that you find the need to surround yourself with the under and uneducated because they make you look smart?

You arrogant, backstabbing sonofabi.....biscotti......why don't you just resign before you suffer the humiliation of being thrown out of office the first chance the American voters get the chance?

And when you do, make sure to retire to someplace like India where all of your "best and brightest" reside......you'll be worshipped as an absolute genius over there

....putting moist finger on hot surface.....sssssssss. A most EXCELLENT commentary as usual.

Originally Posted by SicNTiredInSoCal

Originally Posted by azwreath

We must encourage the world's best and brightest individuals to come to the United States and create new technologies and business that will employ countless American workers



Stop right there Chuckie.

Why don't you explain to us why, exactly, we must have foreigners coming into this country to start businesses and merely hire American workers?

It used to be that Americans started businesses and those immigrating came here and went to work for us.

Who in the hell gave your ilk the right to decide that Americans are no longer the employers but merely the employees?

Who in the hell gave you the right to decide that the "best and the brightest" only exist in Third World countries with educational systems so bad that they are charging the gates to get into ours? And then aren't even literate in their own languages, let alone much else, once they do get here which is why our standards are continually being lowered to accommodate them.

Or is it just that you find the need to surround yourself with the under and uneducated because they make you look smart?

You arrogant, backstabbing sonofabi.....biscotti......why don't you just resign before you suffer the humiliation of being thrown out of office the first chance the American voters get the chance?

And when you do, make sure to retire to someplace like India where all of your "best and brightest" reside......you'll be worshipped as an absolute genius over there

....putting moist finger on hot surface.....sssssssss. A most EXCELLENT commentary as usual.

Thanks Sic

It's been a long day of dealing with the chaos created by wild-eyed, foaming at the mouth, jackals straight out of Escape From New York. I'm in no mood for the likes of Schumer.

For the life of me I don't understand why they have not come out with some drug to cure political diarrhea of the mouth. They've got one for everything else for God's sake

His attitude about foreign workers is just one more example of why New Yorkers and all of America hates him so much.

PS
One of the stupidest things about our politicians bringing in foreign workers and/or welcome illegals is that these people don't pay taxes and we are forced to pay. So virtually, if we don't work, the politicians don't work unless they are wiling to work for free!

He wants to bring in high skilled foreign workers because he thinks they are the only ones who can find employment for the fifteen million illegals he wants to amnesty.

We should continue to let the members of the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration know that their "analysis" of our national security is grossly inadequate. Drug gangs are rooted in our cities, document forgers and visa fraud rings freely set up shop. We are far from "secure" as Sen Schumer insists.
Sen. Charles Schumer, Chair. Sen. John Cornyn, Ranking Mbr.
313 Hart Senate Building 517 Hart Senate Building
Washington, DC 20510 Washington, DC 20510
202-224-6542 202-224-2934

Lets all help Lou!


http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-165543.html
_________________

Originally Posted by azwreath

We must encourage the world's best and brightest individuals to come to the United States and create new technologies and business that will employ countless American workers



Stop right there Chuckie.

Why don't you explain to us why, exactly, we must have foreigners coming into this country to start businesses and merely hire American workers?

It used to be that Americans started businesses and those immigrating came here and went to work for us.

Who in the hell gave your ilk the right to decide that Americans are no longer the employers but merely the employees?

Who in the hell gave you the right to decide that the "best and the brightest" only exist in Third World countries with educational systems so bad that they are charging the gates to get into ours? And then aren't even literate in their own languages, let alone much else, once they do get here which is why our standards are continually being lowered to accommodate them.

Or is it just that you find the need to surround yourself with the under and uneducated because they make you look smart?

You arrogant, backstabbing sonofabi.....biscotti......why don't you just resign before you suffer the humiliation of being thrown out of office the first chance the American voters get?

And when you do, make sure to retire to someplace like India where all of your "best and brightest" reside......you'll be worshipped as an absolute genius over there

HAHA!! Excellent commentary. Sounds like a great monologue.