This is the latest JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER from Rob Sanchez.


<<<<< JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER No. 1743 -- 8/21/2007 >>>>>

A new stinker of an article is making its way across the mainstream media
and throughout the internet. It's a transparent piece of propaganda written
Jim Romeo, a former engineer turned MBA turned business writer. Romeo is a
corporate toadie and makes no bones about the type of stuff he writes --
according to his online portfolio he is most qualified to write about
management and business related subjects. He never mentioned labor related
subjects which is a good thing since his latest writing, as well as
previous ones, demonstrates a total lack of interest in anything but the
CEO and HR point of view.

You can find out more about Jim Romeo at the following websites:

http://www.articlewriting.50megs.com/

http://www.jimromeo.net/

Romeo's article uses a classic propaganda technique identified by The
Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA) as "selective omission", or
stacking the deck. The way he does it is to totally avoid quoting anyone
who disagrees with his corporatist point of view that there is a shortage
of programmers and a shortage of H-1B visas. The title of the article
initiates the charade with the notion that it has something to do with open
source developers -- nothing could be further from the truth unless you
count a few sob stories from H-1B visa holders. Most of the quotes are from
CEOs and business owners.

After the title things go downhill very quickly. Notice that Romeo never
actually quotes an alternative point of view -- he gives a false impression
of objectivity by mentioning detractors as "critics" or marginalizing
everyone else as a few people with "one comment".

Romeo tried to pull a fast one here:

"The H-1B visas play right into the hands of large corporations,"
says Russ Nelson, vice president of an open source firm and member
of the Open Source Software Institute. "First, because they make it
more expensive to hire the worker you want because of the H-1B
overhead. Second, they tie the worker to the corporation that
created the job, so the worker is not free to change jobs.

Russ Nelson is an H-1B critic alright, but only because he doesn't want any
limits to the quantities of workers he can import! This is another classic
technique called bait and switch -- pay close attention to Nelson's true
agenda of open borders globalism and unlimited immigration:

Since most open source firms are small to medium companies, the H-1B
program generally hurts them. I don't understand what problem is
being solved by restricting immigration. If somebody wants to come
to our country and work hard, I see no reason to stop them."


The end of the article is the worst part and perhaps the most misleading:

His view of the whole H1-B process as it is? "I don't think it
benefits anybody."

Guess who said that? According to Romeo it was from an anonymous Canadian
that complained about all the hoops he had to go through to get a visa.
Boo! Hoo! Actually the entire quote is probably fiction because foreigners
don't go through hoops to get H-1B visas -- their employers do. Employers,
if you remember, are required to do all the paperwork and pay all the fees,
so Romeo's reporting seems to be weak on the facts.

How much you want to bet the quote was actually from an Indian? Canadians
would be more likely to use TN visas, that is assuming they were really one
of those "best and brightest" we hear so much about.


I provide three links to the article but by the time you read this
newsletter there will be many more -- and expect many of them to have
different titles. PCworld and Linuxword allow comments. We shouldn't be
surprised that the Washington Post paid Romeo for the article since Melinda
Gates, the wife of Bill Gates, III is on the Board of Directors of the
Washington Post Corporation.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,13623 ... ticle.html
IT Staff Shortage Predicted

http://www.linuxworld.com/news/2007/082 ... -h1-b.html
Open source developers face H1-B visa puzzle

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 681_2.html
Open-source developers face H1-B visa puzzle

IT Staff Shortage Predicted
Companies say they depend on foreign workers to fill IT positions, but the
demand for H1-B visas is far greater than the quota imposed by Congress.
Jim Romeo, LinuxWorld
Tuesday, August 21, 2007 08:00 AM PDT
According to a July 2007 survey by Gartner Group of 225 U.S.-based
organizations, 66 percent projected some level of increase in IT staff
looking 12 months forward. This is up from 61 percent in 2006. The H1-B
visa program, which allows U.S. firms to petition for workers from abroad,
has been one avenue of meeting this demand. But the number of positions
needing to be filled is seemingly way greater than the allowable quota
imposed by Congress.

Speak to the open source community about the topic and you are likely to
hear a mixed bag of comments about the H1-B program.

One comment is that the H-1B program is too prescribed. The quotas seem
whimsical and aren't tied to actual demand for that year. Plus, they give
too much weight to objective data without looking at who that person is and
what they can offer. Many very capable open source developers don't have a
college degree and the program does not easily accommodate them. In
addition, the process is costly for an employer to petition for the visa,
and also for the candidate to hire attorneys and consultants to insure that
their application is proper.

H-1B visa petitions by U.S. firms began six months before the start of the
Government's 2007 fiscal year in October of 2006. This date fell on a
Sunday. By noon on the following Tuesday, the U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services had received more than 130,000 H1-B petitions for
workers. That is more than two petitions for every available visa. Yes, you
heard that right -- in one day the quota was exceeded.

In the U.S. Government's 2003 fiscal year, 195,000 H1-B visas were allowed,
but the current number, 65,000, is closer to that imposed just before the
dot-com boom at the turn of the new millennium.

One open source developer who commented on the program is now working in
the United States on an H1-B visa. He wished to remain anonymous as he is
gainfully employed as an open source developer and is working on his green
card application.

"There's a great concern over undocumented immigrants and we tend to get
bundled together with that issue," he says.

His application was an inch and a half thick. He hired a specialist to
insure that all the details were included in the application. He considers
himself lucky in being accepted and being able to work for a notable firm
in the open source community.

But others are highly critical of the process as it is an obstacle to many
open source firms who are often small and midsize businesses.

"The H-1B visas play right into the hands of large corporations," says Russ
Nelson, vice president of an open source firm and member of the Open Source
Software Institute. "First, because they make it more expensive to hire the
worker you want because of the H-1B overhead. Second, they tie the worker
to the corporation that created the job, so the worker is not free to
change jobs. Since most open source firms are small to medium companies,
the H-1B program generally hurts them. I don't understand what problem is
being solved by restricting immigration. If somebody wants to come to our
country and work hard, I see no reason to stop them."

Mike Tiemann was one of the founding partners of Cygnus Support, later
Cygnus Solutions, an open source firm that made the Software 500 list in
1996. The firm received numerous awards and accolades, and was acquired by
Red Hat in 1999.

"The fourth or fifth employee at Cygnus Solutions was an H1-B visa case,"
Tiemann says. "He was a talented programmer from the U.K. who wanted to
leave the U.K. and live in Silicon Valley. The trouble was, even though he
had twice developed software programs that generated millions of GBP of
revenue,he never went to college, and so it was quite a challenge to go
through the process. Nevertheless, with several professors at Stanford
University testifying that his work was the equal of a PhD, we hired him.
He was very productive for us, and delighted living in the U.S."

John Weatherby, Executive Director of the Open Source Software Institute
(OSSI) is less critical of the program and hasn't seen many problems with
it.

"I'm sure that the companies who rely on either outsourcing or importing
large numbers of foreign developers have very legitimate reasons and sound
arguments as to why they would like to see an increase in the number of
H1-B visas, but we have not run into that problem, I believe, for a couple
of basic reasons," Weatherby says.

"We work with lots of software development companies who are either
exclusively open source shops, or employ open source as part of their
solutions and service offering. We're also engaged in project management
for selected open source projects on both a national and global scale. In
neither case have we seen a problem with the H1-B visa situation. "

"We also do work with the U.S. Department of Defense, and again the H1-B
visa situation has not been an issue since most DoD work does not allow
overseas or foreign-national development," he adds. "So they depend on the
U.S.'s homegrown talent."

Mark D. Koestler, a partner in the New York City based business immigration
law practice of Kramer, Levin, Naftalis & Frankel, explains that the H-1B
category is the visa status devoted to professional or "specialty
occupation" positions, such as accountants, lawyers, graphic designers,
bankers, advertising executives and others. Engineering, math and computer
science compose some of the highest demand categories. The H-1B is an
employer-sponsored status, meaning you cannot apply if you do not have a
prospective employer who is willing to file a petition.

According to Koestler, there are the principal requirements that must be
satisfied to qualify for the H-1B category. One is that the proposed
position must require at least a U.S. bachelor's degree, or the equivalent,
in a specific area. In addition, the individual must have that degree, or
the equivalent; and the individual's compensation must be the "required
wage" -- the higher of the prevailing wage for the position in the area of
intended employment or the actual wage paid to others holding the position
with the employer. Generally, H-1B status is valid for up to six years with
a few exceptions for longer service.

Critics contend that the program enables foreign workers in the U.S. to
take jobs from American workers. Not surprisingly, executives who use the
program disagree. "This is simply not the case," says Bob Meltzer, CEO of
VISANOW, a Chicago, Illinois based firm who streamlines visa applications
for U.S. employers and foreign workers. "The fact that more than twice as
many applications were filed then visas allotted on the first day of H-1B
filing means that companies cannot fill needed positions."

Meltzer contends that for a technology firm that is seeking to fill its
ranks of software developers, programmers and other information technology
positions, the H1-B visa program is one that is competitive, yet a rich
source for filling much needed technology positions.

Elizabeth Charnock is CEO Cataphora, a firm specializing in sophisticated
software for investigative analytics used by corporate legal staffs and law
firms in document-intense litigation work involving white-collar crime,
securities, and antitrust matters.

"It's difficult to find people" Charnock says. Her firm has had trouble
finding highly qualified IT workers willing to work for her firm. However,
there are many foreign workers hungry for IT jobs. Charnock says that when
her firm posts jobs on Craig's List, they receive many inquiries from
workers in India.

Charnock points out that many job petitions were from outsourcing firms,
based in places like India. These firms simply recruit and place the
workers and profit from the placement.

She cites figures that Infosys, an outsourcing firm that places workers
from India into U.S.-based firms, submitted 5000 petitions for the visas,
out of a total of 65,000 being granted. She compares this to Cisco Systems'
800 petitions, which was ranked 13th in the number of petitions filed.
Staffing firms that specialize in placing foreign workers into U.S.
technology firms are dominating the efforts to attain workers on the H1-B
visa.

San Diego-based staffing firm TalentFuse is one such firm embracing the
H-1B visa program. "Our customer's main criteria are qualified IT
professionals that can get the job done so country of origin does not
matter from a business standpoint," says Brian Margarita, President of
TalentFuse. TalentFuse was recently acquired by SQL Star -- a global
staffing firm based in Delhi, India.

"From our standpoint - -TalentFuse is its own H1-B company -- we don't have
as many visa issues because it's an inter-company transfer when our parent
company SQL Star bring students to the U.S. who have gone to school for IT
certification in its facilities located in India, Singapore and Australia.
These qualified IT personal become SQL Star employees. Many are then
transferred to the U.S. to complete projects in the TalentFuse development
centers."

The demand for workers is significant and the supply does not seem to be
getting much better. Technology firms are working on their own solutions to
find talent.

"Next year it can get worse. It's so much disruption," says Charnock. She
cites the recent announcement by Microsoft, who just disclosed plans to
open up a software development center near Vancouver, British Columbia in
Canada -- not far from their Redmond, Wash., headquarters. This comes on
the heels of a failure by Congress to raise the cap.

"Unfortunately Congress has been unable to successfully shepherd any of the
proposed H-1B program improvements through the legislative process yet"
says says Leigh Ganchan, an attorney with the law firm of Epstein Becker
and Green's Labor and Employment and Health Care and Life Sciences
Practices in the firm's Houston office. "One Senate proposal would have
increased the annual numerical limitation from 65,000 to a more realistic
115,000 per fiscal year."

Ganchan feels that anticipating future periods of economic growth is
important and that any such legislative proposal needs a market-based cap
escalator to take effect in the fiscal year following years in which U.S.
employers experience an increased need for H-1B professionals. Such action
by federal legislators may need a voice from employers.

"It is vital that employers be vocal with Congress about the economic need
for a more realistic H-1B program," says Elizabeth Stern, a business
immigration attorney and partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Baker
and McKenzie.

Charnock, like Stern, feels that a program with a distinct pool of foreign
workers who have a masters or doctorate degree from a foreign institution
would be a welcomed improvement in the program. At present, there is a
separate pool for advanced degree holders, but the degree must be from a
U.S. institution of higher learning.

"Development of visa pools for foreign-based master's holders and
high-salaried foreign hires are among the options that need to be
explored," Stern says.

Whether a prospective hire has a degree or not, they are just hard to find.
The anonymous open source developer we spoke about earlier explained that
his job was posted for two years before he filled it on an H1-B visa after
jumping through all of the hoops in the application process. "It really put
me off, working here," he explains. "I had considered working in Canada."

His view of the whole H1-B process as it is?

"I don't think it benefits anybody."


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