10 Articles Worth Reading
10 Articles Worth Reading
Date: Saturday, October 22, 2005 10:52 PM
JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER
October 22, 2005 No. 1353
COMMENTS FROM ROB: I received this question in regards to Article #4: "If he is on an H-1B visa how can he be here for over a decade???"
Answer: The H-1B in question is a lawyer that came to the U.S. from Russia. He has applied for a green card so he is eligible for the "7th Year Extension" that Bush signed into law in 2002. H-1Bs can apply for this extension every year to hell freezes over! Read this newsletter in the archive for more info: "2002 11-19 Bush Makes Life Easier for H-1Bs."
If any of you have wondered how a border state like Arizona could elect politicians such as McCain, Kolbe, Kyl, and Flake, that want unlimited guest-worker visas and amnesty, Article #7 will clear up the mystery. Polls consistently show that a majority of Arizonans support guest-worker visas, and they don't want to deport illegal aliens. Almost every other state polls the same way. Americans don't want illegal immigration but their lust for cheap labor takes precedence over all other national concerns.
Article #9 will make your head spin, because Jesse Jackson is starting to sound like a Minuteman!
Article 1:
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2005/10/15/stories/2005101503060900.htm
H-1B visa holders being paid lower wages, says US tech workers' group
An analysis of the employers who are paying the lowest H-1B wages reveals that these companies are disproportionately run by Indian nationals, hiring almost exclusively young Indian nationals to displace American workers in our own country, in blatant violation of EEOC, sex, age and national origin laws, says the Programmers Guild, an advocacy group for US technology workers.
Article 2:
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Oct-14-Fri-2005/opinion/3812688.html
Foreign teachers struggling?
This summer, the Clark County School District filled 69 of its hundreds of teaching vacancies with foreign instructors. The foreign teachers were more qualified, concerned parents were assured, and would do a better job. Not even two months into the new school year, it's apparent that these foreign teachers were not at all prepared for their new assignments.
Article 3:
http://www.cio-today.com/news/Expert-Airs-Concerns-Over-Outsourced-Jobs/story.xhtml?story_id=03000108K4R0
Expert Airs Concerns Over Outsourced Jobs
If you've ever passed striking workers opposing outsourcing of jobs overseas, and think your job is safe, don't be so sure. It can be gone faster than you can say "pink slip."
Article 4:
http://remotefarm.techcentralstation.com/101905B.html
My Story: An Anecdotal Argument for Immigration Reform
I began writing for TCS in January 2004, with two articles commenting on President Bush's proposed immigration reform. The first argued that the plan, which would create a sort of "guest worker" program for unskilled laborers, went both too far and not far enough.
Article 5:
http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/19/news/international/india_cisco.reut/index.htm
Cisco to pour $1.1B into India
Cisco Systems Inc., the world's largest Internet equipment manufacturer, plans to invest $1.1 billion in India during the next three years, its president said Wednesday, marking its largest investment outside the United States. Cisco (Research) also plans to triple its Indian staff numbers over three years from 1,400 and will consider setting up a manufacturing plant, reinforcing its bullishness about growth prospects in Asia's third-largest economy.
Article 6:
http://realtytimes.com/rtcpages/20051018_newwage.htm
New Wage Standards Threaten Home Values
The disaster now apparent across the Rust Belt is different. It involves not nature but the reality that global wage rates are beginning to impact U.S. incomes. Don't be smug if you're a white collar worker or a corporate poobah. Declining wages at factories, mills and plants will soon spill over into skyscrapers, office parks and country clubs.
Article 7:
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/1019immig-poll190.html
Most in poll would let immigrants stay
Consistent with these concerns, most of the 600 respondents want the border and immigration to be managed more rigorously by increasing the number of agents or military personnel policing the border, by cracking down on employers and by creating a federal guest-worker program that would allow some of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants to stay in the United States.
Article 8:
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/12961954.htm
46% boost in tech visas proposed
A Senate committee Thursday approved a nearly 50 percent increase in special visas coveted by Silicon Valley companies to hire highly skilled foreign workers and boosted application fees to help ease the federal budget deficit. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, who helped champion the huge increases in H-1B visas passed by Congress in 1998 and 2000, said Thursday that making changes to the program in a budget bill was not appropriate. She said it is an immigration matter that should be the subject of hearings, not dealt with in a ``backhanded'' way through the budget process.
Article 9:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/jesse/cst-edt-jesse18.html
Global economy shafting U.S. worker
***** BY JESSE JACKSON *****
Will America remain the land of opportunity? Will it remain a nation with a broad middle class? Or is it turning into two Americas, one rich and one struggling just to get by? Bush is spending $250 billion and thousands of lives in a failed effort to build a unified democracy in an Iraq torn by civil and religious division. At home, he's just part of the problem. His first move after Katrina was to eliminate the prevailing wage in contracts to rebuild the city, and to waive restrictions on the use of undocumented workers. Instead of decent union jobs going to Katrina's victims and paying them enough to get back on their feet, he'll rebuild New Orleans with illegal immigrant labor that can be exploited to work for next to nothing and then shipped out of the country when the task is complete.
Be sure to read this (text not included in newsletter):
Article 10:
http://www.vdare.com/guzzardi/051021_vfl.htm
View From Lodi, CA: How to Solve the Visa Overstayer Problem: Pay Americans More!
Two weeks after my first column, I wrote in a follow-up that Clark County rejected dozens of qualified candidates including hundreds of local residents including educated professionals, scientists, retired military officers and former teachers including the former Stockton Teacher of the Year, Teresa Porter. All have excellent subject knowledge and are skilled leaders. And now it comes to light that a mere two months after the 2005-2006 school year began, the teachers are having a rough go of it, to put it mildly.
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http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2005/10/15/stories/2005101503060900.htm
H-1B visa holders being paid lower wages, says US tech workers' group
Pratap Ravindran
An analysis of the employers who are paying the lowest H-1B wages reveals that these companies are disproportionately run by Indian nationals, hiring almost exclusively young Indian nationals to displace American workers in our own country, in blatant violation of EEOC, sex, age and national origin laws, says the Programmers Guild, an advocacy group for US technology workers.
Pune , Oct. 14
EVEN as India awaits the outcome of its proposal to the World Trade Organisation that the US raise its annual cap for H-1B visas from 65,000 to 1,95,000, the Programmers Guild, an advocacy group for US technology workers, has claimed that it has uncovered new evidence that H-1Bs in computer jobs are being paid relatively lower wages by several employers and that visas are being used to hire cheap workers who threaten US jobs and wages.
In 1998, the US Congress had created a set of rules specific to the so-called H-1B-dependent companies to prevent - or at least minimise - body shopping: the recruitment of foreign programmers by US businesses at low wages and under restrictive contracts.
However, these rules expired in 2003 and new legal provisions had been introduced to deal with body-shopping.
Under the current provisions, employers are required, as they were under the lapsed rules, to undertake that they will offer jobs to equally qualified American workers before seeking H-1B visa employees and that they will not displace US workers. The sole exception that is provided for is in the case of foreign workers who hold a master's or doctorate degree and who are paid a minimum of $60,000 a year.
Those opposed to these provisions have, for some time now, been arguing that the payment threshold of $60,000 had been established in 1998 and that it has not been adjusted for inflation and the prevailing salaries of American workers, thereby making it worth the while for employers to hire foreign workers.
The critics have sought to substantiate their argument by pointing out that the US cost of living index has gone up by 19 per cent since 1998 and that the average annual salary of computer programmers in America has increased by 23 per cent between 1998 and May 2004.
The Programmers Guild, citing US Department of Labor figures, says the median annual wage paid in the US to workers in computer and math-related occupations was $62,620 in May 2004, and that among the companies seeking at least 100 H-1B visas last year were many who were counting on paying a significantly lower amount to guest workers.
A Guild study, based on its scrutiny of documents called Labor Condition Applications in which American employers have to stipulate the minimum wage they plan to pay H-1B workers, contends that of the 100 employers who planned to pay the lowest salaries, not one intended to offer more than an average of $48,355 a year.
Further, 74 of these companies had pledged to pay an average salary of less than $45,820... even though H-1B rules specifically require employers to provide at least the prevailing wage for the position or the actual rate the employer pays to similar workers, whichever is higher.
While the Programmers Guild does not actually make the charge that the companies are violating H-1B wage rules, it says that its findings reveal a flaw in the visa programme, which benefits employers.
According to the Guild President, Mr Kim Berry, the law allows employers to use a multiplicity of data sources to determine prevailing wage and it should be changed so that a minimum salary, above the median wage of comparable American workers, is specified.
Significantly, the guild says its study reinforces the perception that the H-1B programme primarily benefits India-based employers operating in the US and not American companies.
"An analysis of the employers who are paying the lowest H-1B wages reveals that these companies are disproportionately run by Indian nationals, hiring almost exclusively young Indian nationals to displace American workers in our own country, in blatant violation of EEOC, sex, age and national origin laws. These wages are for jobs that require a BS degree and specialised experienced beyond what a new college graduate would possess. So, why are they being paid significantly less that new US graduates?"
The Guild's list of employers who applied for 100 or more H-1B visas in 2004 makes for interesting reading.
Occupying the second place in the list is Jags Software Inc.
According to the Guild, its corporate Web site "conceals the owners' identities." It adds wryly, "However, they did sponsor Miss Indian America' and that "one Jagjit Malhotra was an investor in India who started a back office business in the US called Compudyne Winfosystems."
Number five on the list is Tata Consultancy Services Ltd which is identified as "a huge predatory Indian consulting company" which has "52,000 employees and is able to undercut US consulting companies for large US contracts have shipping the work (sic) to India, skirting EEOC and other labor requirements imposed upon the competition."
And then again, there is Future Technology Foundation Inc in the twelfth slot. The Guild makes the following observation about this company: Click on "Contacts" (in the company's Web site) - another group of Indians fronting as an American corporation."
Research indicates that approximately 37 per cent of H-1B approvals in 2003 were for workers born in India. According to Mr Kim Berry, 18 or 19 of the 20 lowest paying employers among companies seeking at least 100 visas are headed by Indian citizens or US citizens of Indian descent.
He concedes that the Guild did not carry out an exhaustive study of the companies on its list and that the analysis of the employers' leadership was based primarily on a study of surnames and the base of the companies' operations.
Mr Berry denies any ethnic bias in the Guild's research and says the holes in the visa programme which allows technology staffing firms to bring into the US low-paid H-1B workers even when qualified US employees are available is "a niche" that the Indians have developed.
"It helps to understand the problem to point out what the data shows. Body shops are essentially onshore off-shoring."
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http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Oct-14-Fri-2005/opinion/3812688.html
Oct. 14, 2005
Copyright ) Las Vegas Review-Journal
EDITORIAL: Foreign teachers struggling?
Hiring of 'facilitators' highlights hypocrisy
This summer, the Clark County School District filled 69 of its hundreds of teaching vacancies with foreign instructors. Administrators said an extreme shortage of qualified applicants intensified their annual hiring crisis and prompted them to recruit abroad.
These same administrators rejected applications from hundreds of local residents, among them educated professionals and scientists, retired military officers and former teachers with excellent subject knowledge and leadership skills. These Clark County taxpayers, committed to their communities and eager to help the fast-growing district in its time of need, were told they simply didn't have the necessary experience and training to lead a classroom. They were told they would need to enroll at a local education college if they expected to be successful teachers.
The foreign teachers were more qualified, concerned parents were assured, and would do a better job.
Not even two months into the new school year, it's apparent that these foreign teachers were not at all prepared for their new assignments. The school district is advertising internally for two "facilitators" to help the foreign teachers -- 49 Filipinos, 14 Spaniards and six Canadians -- develop instructional strategies and classroom management techniques.
"Any facilitator position is for the purpose of providing support, training and resources to the teachers of the district," said Karyn Wright, the school district's director of teacher development. In other words, to teach them how to do their jobs.
The district employs five facilitators to help teachers new to Clark County. Because the nation's fifth-largest public school system hires about 2,000 teachers every year, one facilitator is available for every 400 or so new teachers.
But these 69 foreign teachers need two facilitators all to themselves. The district wants applicants for these new positions to have at least five years of experience, so the salaries and benefits paid to them will cost at least $100,000 per year.
Clark County taxpayers should be furious. The education establishment will defend the bureaucratic barriers that keep qualified, motivated American citizens out of the teaching profession, yet will spend six figures to keep underprepared foreigners at the helm of our children's classrooms? Meanwhile, hundreds of local residents who were denied full-time teaching positions are working as long-term substitute teachers -- for significantly less pay, no stability and no benefits.
If the school district is willing to hire facilitators to tutor these foreigners on the basics of teaching, wouldn't it have been easier and cheaper to put qualified local citizens in these jobs and provide them with the same special assistance -- if it was needed at all?
The Clark County School District's experiment with foreign teachers is a practical and public relations failure that should not be repeated. Residents must implore their School Board trustees, state lawmakers and representatives on the State Board of Education to slash the red tape responsible for the valley's teacher "shortage." The education of area children depends on it.
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http://www.cio-today.com/news/Expert-Airs-Concerns-Over-Outsourced-Jobs/story.xhtml?story_id=03000108K4R0
Expert Airs Concerns Over Outsourced Jobs
October 12, 2005 7:20AM
"Unfortunately, many policies are actually accelerating outsourcing," Rochester Institute of Technology researcher Ron Hira says. "It's not simply a natural economic process. We have a guest-worker policy that enables companies to import cheap foreign labor."
If you've ever passed striking workers opposing outsourcing of jobs overseas, and think your job is safe, don't be so sure. It can be gone faster than you can say "pink slip."
"Outsourcing seeps into many jobs," warns Ron Hira, a Western New York outsourcing expert, before his appearance on a National Science Board meeting panel at Massachusetts Institute of Technology . "A wide variety of positions -- some high-skilled, some low -- are vulnerable to outsourcing: computer programming to insurance claims processing to radiology to legal work."
Hira, who has testified several times before Congress on the implications of outsourcing, cited research that up to 14 million, or more than one in 10 of all jobs in this country, could be at risk, including area jobs.
There's a glimmer of hope in that Washington policymakers are "at least talking about this," says the researcher, who now teaches public policy classes at Rochester Institute of Technology. But the downside, he adds, is "the subtext -- - 'it's not really serious.'" He then quotes a CEO of a major offshore outsourcing firm who maintains that any task that can be sent down a wire can be outsourced.
"Think about how few jobs require face-to-face interaction with a customer -- and you get an idea about how big an impact this is going to have on the U.S.," Hira says.
Even a college degree is no protection any more, as the outsourcing expert added: "It's a lot cheaper to educate people abroad than it is in this country. More education doesn't make you immune to having your job shipped overseas. The higher the skill level of the job, the larger the incentive is to outsource it. There's a greater wage differential between the U.S. and low-cost countries."
Hira points out that some American colleges now have overseas branches, adding, "China has also been increasing its science and engineering human capital at all levels -- especially with a rapid increase in the number of doctorate holders."
For three years, Hira researched the exportation of jobs for his new study, "Outsourcing America," penned with his brother Anil, an international economic policy specialist.
The brothers' concerns are many.
"We're concerned about whether, and what types of, jobs are going to be available for our children, and their children in the future," Ron Hira notes. "We're concerned about our national security and economic competitiveness as a nation if we lose our advantages. We're concerned, finally, about the breakdown of cooperation between workers and companies, that made the U.S. the strongest economy and the most desired destination for our immigrants -- including our own family."
There is a lack of consequences for eliminating jobs in this nation.
"Unfortunately, many policies are actually accelerating outsourcing," Hira says. "It's not simply a natural economic process. We have a guest-worker policy that enables companies to import cheap foreign labor."
And then the ultimate insult: "They force their American workers to train their foreign replacements, transferring know-how, before laying off the American workers. Foreign workers then take this knowledge back to their countries and perform the work from there. It's simply amazing that we have policies that encourage this process of knowledge extraction. During the presidential election last year, Sen. [John F.] Kerry pointed out perverse incentives in the tax code that actually give a company incentive to expand its foreign, rather than U.S., operations," he says.
"So, we have a tax system that actually encourages foreign job growth and penalizes U.S. jobs. And you know what? The U.S. Congress gave its blessing to this perversion by reauthorizing this part of the tax code in November."
Hira recommends reforming visa policies, rethinking worker training, reasserting and sustaining dominance in technology.
"The first step -- acknowledge that a problem exists," he suggests. "There are many powerful people ignoring its profound implications on workers -- and the U.S. economy."
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http://remotefarm.techcentralstation.com/101905B.html
My Story: An Anecdotal Argument for Immigration Reform
By Ilya Shapiro Published 10/19/2005
I began writing for TCS in January 2004, with two articles commenting on President Bush's proposed immigration reform. The first argued that the plan, which would create a sort of "guest worker" program for unskilled laborers, went both too far and not far enough.
The second sketched out a vision of what a more complete reform -- starting with a fundamental rethink of the goals behind America's famously incoherent immigration policy -- might look like. I framed the discussion thus:
"First we have to decide what the purpose of immigration is in this brave new world where both economies and terrorists are "globalized." Is it to maintain a young, dynamic population in the face of aging Baby Boomers, declining birth rates, and unsustainable Social Security obligations? Is it to take in the world's tired, poor, and oppressed such that America can remain the land of opportunity and fulfill its manifest destiny as a shining city upon a troubled hill? Is it to fill gaps in the labor market, whether they present a lack of software engineers or gardeners or nannies?"
To these big-picture considerations I would add concerns over maintaining homeland security and respect for the rule of law -- the need to maintain the legitimacy of the legal system by enforcing the laws on the books and the need to distinguish between "real" immigrants and people entering the country to perpetuate gang violence, sexual slavery, drug cartels, and terrorism.
Unfortunately, my burning interest in this policy area is not purely academic. Like Sting, you see, I'm a legal alien, currently on an H-1B professional visa sponsored by and tied to the law firm where I work. Though I have lived in the United States for over a decade -- and though I have sworn four oaths to uphold the Constitution, and worked for a senator, a federal judge, and a presidential campaign -- I am no closer to gaining permanent residence ("a green card"), let alone citizenship, than when I started.
The reason I'm so bluntly revealing my immigration status, and the reason I'm about to violate one of journalism's oldest and most important tenets (don't make yourself the story), is the hope that perhaps my auto-anecdote will help move the ball on an issue that is so hugely important to the future of America -- the country that I have loved since before I even lived here. And so I beg your indulgence.
My parents are both from Moscow and environs. My paternal grandfather, a trail-blazing doctor who spoke five languages and ran an army hospital, was arrested by the Cheka in 1942 -- when my Dad was six -- never to be heard from again. Due to his foreign training (and likely because he was Jewish), he had been declared an enemy of the people -- though of course he was "rehabilitated" (posthumously) under Khrushchev. Most of my paternal grandfather's family had earlier been killed when the Germans overran Poland and Belarus. My Dad and his mother, meanwhile, were exiled to a medium-sized town in western Siberia, and my Dad was not able to return to Moscow until he started university.
My maternal grandfather was a decorated tank commander during World War Two, and helped take Berlin. Most of my maternal grandmother's family perished during the siege of Leningrad (or in combat). My Mom was a brilliant student, eventually earning a PhD in chemical engineering, but she was denied various opportunities throughout her schooling and pre-immigration career because her father was also Jewish.
My Dad had wanted to immigrate even before he met my Mom. Soon after I was born, Mom finally relented, concluding that they would have to leave the U.S.S.R. for my sake. My parents applied for an exit visa, having to quit their jobs at that point and live off meager savings, and selling the vast library they had built up over the years. The visa came through in 1981 -- part of Brezhnev's policy of allowing Jews leave for Israel to release some of the pressure being brought by the human rights movement -- and we left in June of that year.
After passing Red Cross health inspection in Vienna, my family was settled by a refugee organization in a suburb of Rome while awaiting permission to immigrate to the West (my parents never had any intention of going to Israel). Canada gave us entry visas and we arrived in Toronto on October 26, 1981 -- a date that has always been, understandably, a big holiday at my house.
About a year later, my parents found jobs in a small town (pop. 12,000 at the time) about 100 miles northeast of Toronto (think central Michigan or Minnesota). I grew up an only child, a happy kid who loved sports and reading, who dreamed of fulfilling high expectations and taking advantage of this freedom for which his parents had begun life anew.
When I was thirteen, I published a letter in Time; I found it strange that my classmates had little idea of world affairs beyond a general awareness of the Gulf War and memories of footage from the fall of the Berlin Wall. I found it stranger still that those with a political bent preferred Canada's "peace, order, and good government" to the United States' "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness."
Due to my fervent anti-communism, I naturally looked to the U.S. as a beacon for the free world, the place where rule of law flourished. In middle school, I pledged allegiance to the Star-Spangled Banner every morning at my locker, and, to this day, my childhood bedroom sports framed copies of the Founding Documents amid the posters, pennants, and trophies.
Appropriately, my political awakening occurred in an American history class, at the hands of an old curmudgeon who exemplified the idiosyncratic style I later hoped to emulate. "There have only been three true conservatives in history," Neil McLean would pronounce, "Disraeli, my father, and myself."
I had long been fascinated with American civics and the ideals of the Founding Fathers, and thus resolved to gain U.S. citizenship and become involved in the legal and political life of this country. I also resolved, thanks to my high school's service requirement, and after a close reading of de Tocqueville, always to contribute to the civil society of my community.
When I came to college, I was proud of my achievements, grateful for the opportunity to advance, and motivated to use my potential to gain more knowledge than I could imagine. In my upperclass years, while majoring in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, I studied economics, history, and politics. Thanks to "Woody-Woo" and its alumni, I embarked on a series of adventures that profoundly affected my worldview.
I interned on Capitol Hill, where the then-unknown (but already congenial) Senator Bill Frist provided me an insider's view of government. On my first trip outside North America, I spent five months in Argentina, studying Latin America's social transformations, ingesting f?bol culture, discovering one of the most environmentally diverse countries on Earth. The next summer saw another Washington stint and a new side of the policy process, working at a market-oriented think tank while on a fellowship organized by the libertarian Institute for Humane Studies (and funded by the Koch Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the biggest company you've never heard of).
Then came the most rewarding part of my academic career, a senior thesis comparing constitutionalism in Russia and Argentina. My conclusion, briefly stated, ran as follows: With different pasts and different futures, the (then-)convergence of the constitutional paths of Russia and Argentina appears to be an aberration. Russia has serious flaws in the design of its political institutions, with excessive presidential power and subordination of the judiciary. Argentina faces serious challenges in preventing its political institutions from being subsumed by personal and party rivalries. Both require solutions that demonstrate sound legal principles and a profound understanding of each country's particular circumstances -- a lesson not inapplicable to our present remaking of the Middle East.
All was not a bed of roses during my college years, however, as various family issues put a strain on my emotions. Then came a shock that pushed all those aside, the return of the liver cancer that had afflicted my mother when I was in high school, and her subsequent death during my junior year.
After college, I deferred law school and secured a summer position at the United Nations Center for International Crime Prevention in Vienna, where I worked on transnational organized crime issues. Then I completed a master's in international relations, while working for a Member of Parliament in London and completing a thesis on the post-Cold War transformation of the Olympic movement, a part of which formed the basis for this piece.
Immediately prior to law school, I spent a month on military historian Victor Davis Hanson's fruit and nut farm in California's Central Valley, rising early to earn my keep and then reading and discussing classical history and political philosophy. My American Dream had turned to the Jeffersonian ideal of the gentleman farmer.
Then came law school, summer jobs with firms in New York and DC, and the wonderful one-of-a-kind year I spent in Jackson, Mississippi (and traveling around the Deep South) while clerking for a Fifth Circuit judge. Then I moved to Washington, volunteered for three months on the policy staff of Bush-Cheney '04 -- including watching over early polls in Broward County, Florida, the infamous vortex of 2000. Soon after the election I started at my current post, where I practice international litigation and antitrust.
Through it all, my love for America, her people and ideals, has only grown. And yet.
And yet there is no way to become a permanent resident without a spouse or employer acting as a sponsor (or without winning the "green card lottery," for which neither Canadians nor Russians -- were I to reacquire that passport and avoid being sent to Chechnya -- are eligible). Unlike every other immigrant-accepting country, the United States makes no provision for "independent immigration." That is, the executive and legislative branches have not established a set of criteria by which immigration workers can evaluate would-be immigrants -- no "points system" like the one that enabled my engineer parents to come to Canada.
While I am hugely grateful for the opportunity to live and work in America (and in our nation's capital), I am not presently able to use the wonderful education and skills I have been given for the higher purpose that has long directed my path: the service of my country. I cannot work in the State or Defense Departments, in the challenging and critical Justice Department jobs for which I am otherwise qualified, in Executive Office positions, or in any other legal or policy-making posts for which I have prepared my whole life. I cannot even "put my money where my mouth is" (in terms of my support of our engagement in Iraq) by serving in the military JAG Corps -- or even enlisting as a simple infantryman.
I have lived my entire adult life in the U.S. All my friends, my network, all the things that make a life, are here (except my Dad, my only relative, who's retired and still in Toronto). I am willing to sign any number of loyalty oaths and submit to the most detailed background check. I will gladly renounce my Canadian citizenship -- any of you bitter Blue Staters still up for a trade? -- if that's what it takes.
And it is still not enough.
But this column has been (more than) enough about me; however unique my particular case may or may not be, the United States is losing out on a host of social contributions by maintaining its current immigration (non-)policy, while creating incentives for fraud and illegality of every kind. We have all heard about the effect that new security requirements have had on foreign students in America's institutions of higher learning. Quite apart from that -- and many of those changes are quite rational -- America is losing out on the best, most competent, idealistic people that globalization offers.
In the words of perhaps the most famous immigrant public servant:
"[O]ne thing I learned about America is that if you work hard and if you play by the rules, this country is truly open to you. You can achieve anything. ?In this country, it doesn't make any difference where you were born. It doesn't make any difference who your parents were. ?America gave me opportunities, and my immigrant dreams came true. I want other people to get the same chances I did, the same opportunities. And I believe they can. That's why I believe in this country."
To make the Governator's words a reality, something must be done. Not for my sake; for the country's.
In the meantime, if any cute single girls with American passports are reading this, drop me a line.
Ilya Shapiro is a Washington lawyer whose last "Dispatches from Purple America" column argued that Europeans just don't get it.
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http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/19/news/international/india_cisco.reut/index.htm
Cisco to pour $1.1B into India
Will mark Internet gear maker's largest investment outside the U.S.; plans to triple workforce.
October 19, 2005: 9:48 AM EDT
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Cisco Systems Inc., the world's largest Internet equipment manufacturer, plans to invest $1.1 billion in India during the next three years, its president said Wednesday, marking its largest investment outside the United States.
Cisco (Research) also plans to triple its Indian staff numbers over three years from 1,400 and will consider setting up a manufacturing plant, reinforcing its bullishness about growth prospects in Asia's third-largest economy.
"India has rapidly risen to become a major force in the global economy," Cisco President John Chambers, on a three-day visit to India, told reporters.
"India may become the largest market (for Cisco) in Asia," he added, forecasting 30 percent annual growth in Indian revenues in the next three years.
Dozens of Indian firms are using technology to cut costs and investing in telecoms, with heavy demand for Cisco equipment in particular from India's $17.2 billion software services industry, forecast to grow 25 percent in the fiscal year to March 2006.
One Cisco customer, Bharti Tele-Ventures Ltd., India's top-ranked mobile services provider, plans to nearly double its network reach to more than 5,000 towns in the world's fastest-growing major mobile market.
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http://realtytimes.com/rtcpages/20051018_newwage.htm
October 18, 2005
New Wage Standards Threaten Home Values
By any reasonable measure the states of Mississippi and Louisiana are bankrupt, their economies demolished by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The economies of Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania may be next, and no hurricanes are involved. Let me explain.
It's easy to see what happened along the Gulf Coast. The photos are vivid and the images are lingering: Hundreds of thousands of people lost their homes and jobs. There is insufficient revenue to support state and local governments and thus insufficient revenue to support schools, police, trash pick-ups and everything else governments provide. Property taxes, sales taxes and income taxes are irrelevant when property is devalued, stores are closed and people are unemployed.
State economies will need to be re-started -- most likely this will be done with massive re-building projects that will create a new property and income base. As the Gulf area re-populates, state treasuries will be refilled over time, assuming still other massive storms do not hit the area.
The disaster now apparent across the Rust Belt is different. It involves not nature but the reality that global wage rates are beginning to impact U.S. incomes.
General Motors, according to The New York Times, is now building a truck in China for local consumption. The "Wuling Sunshine" minivan is tiny by U.S. standards, but it gets 43 MPG and sells for roughly $5,000. One reason for the low price is the local wage rate: Workers are paid $60 a month. (See: G.M. Thrives in China With Small, Thrifty Vans, August 9, 2005)
In the Rust Belt, U.S. workers at Delphi, the huge auto parts supplier that has some 215,000 employees worldwide, have been getting $27 -- an hour. You don't need an MBA to see the problem: If workers in China are paid $60 a month and workers in U.S. plants are paid $27 an hour, U.S. workers and companies are in trouble. Delphi, for its part, filed for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 8th and according to the Detroit Free Press is hoping to reduce worker wages to $10 to $12 an hour. (See: Delphi's move another blow to workers, state's economy, October 8, 2005)
Under Chapter 11 Delphi will remain in business. But even if Delphi is able to successfully re-organize, how are workers expected to maintain their homes and lifestyles if wages fall by 50 percent or more? And if worker wages drop, what happens to local home values, mortgage payments, neighborhood businesses and community tax revenues?
The traditional standard of a fair day's work for a fair day's wages -- wages that can support a decent standard of living -- is being demolished. The new standard seems to be that some salary, any salary, is better than no salary, a stark choice for workers.
If Delphi can reduce wages on the factory floor, other companies will pursue similar policies. If Delphi is not successful, then how will it continue in its present form? One would have more sympathy for the company -- a company that lost $338 million in the second quarter -- had it not both laid off 6,175 workers over a 15-month period and given increased potential severance packages for top executives.
We have seen jobs going overseas before: "Maquiladoras" were established just across the Mexican border, call centers were built in India and Ireland and textile production was exported to Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. The issue this time is radically different: Instead of moving jobs overseas, lower wages are moving here.
Don't be smug if you're a white collar worker or a corporate poobah. Declining wages at factories, mills and plants will soon spill over into skyscrapers, office parks and country clubs. If you're a company owner, executive or a shareholder, the value of your employment, shares and retirement are tied directly to corporate income and profits.
It's not just big companies that a new wage structure would impact. We are all sellers of goods and services, whether peddled directly to the public or indirectly as suppliers to others. In all cases there must ultimately be buyers for whatever it is that we sell. The question is: If worker incomes are slashed, who will buy? And what can be paid?
What's happening at Delphi is symbolic of a wider problem. The employment base of the United States is being fundamentally devalued. One issue -- serious, but often overstated -- is outsourcing, sending jobs beyond our borders. The far larger problem is the combination of low-wages worldwide and open markets at home that are forcing both companies and workers to re-trench.
But re-trench to where? If we elect, we can manipulate national tax policies to limit overseas outsourcing, but what can we do about foreign workers paid $60 a month? Do we stop imports at our borders to create an insulated domestic market? What future do we have without international trade -- and what future do we have with it? Do we tell Saudi Arabia that we will no longer accept their oil? If we tell China we can't take more of their exports will they refuse to buy more of our debt -- or will they just ask for more interest?
Five or ten years from now it's likely that the Gulf Coast will be both re-built and vibrant. It's also likely that $10 an hour will be far more than the typical wage in many areas of the world. Hopefully the stealth challenge of wage devaluation will get as much attention as the very visible problem of hurricane repair -- and hopefully such attention will start now.
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http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/1019immig-poll190.html
Most in poll would let immigrants stay
But weak border security, terrorists are major concerns
Susan Carroll
The Arizona Republic
Oct. 19, 2005 12:00 AM
Despite their belief that undocumented immigrants are an economic drain on the state, most Arizona voters do not want to force them to leave the United States if they are established in communities and have no criminal record, according to a poll commissioned by The Arizona Republic.
The statewide poll also indicated that nearly two-thirds of voters believe that the border remains far from secure, and 85 percent said the possibility that terrorists could enter the country if the borders are not secured is a major concern.
Consistent with these concerns, most of the 600 respondents want the border and immigration to be managed more rigorously by increasing the number of agents or military personnel policing the border, by cracking down on employers and by creating a federal guest-worker program that would allow some of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants to stay in the United States.
Measures for immigration reform with the greatest support, favored by 60 percent to 80 percent of the respondents, include:
?Making all employers verify the legal status of workers.
?Substantially increasing the U.S. Border Patrol's presence.
?Creating a federal guest-worker program that would permit foreigners to apply for temporary work visas.
?Allowing some undocumented immigrants to stay in the country if they hold jobs, have roots here and have no criminal records.
Negative impact
Calls for stronger immigration enforcement, which cost American taxpayers at least $1.4 billion last year alone, were offset by concern for undocumented immigrants with established lives in the United States.
"I understand the people's plight and wanting to make a better life for themselves," said poll respondent Fred Moore, a 68-year-old retired appraiser who lives in Phoenix. "But on the other hand, we don't have the resources to deal with the people coming here. We're not prepared to handle it."
More than half of respondents said undocumented immigrants are a burden on the state because they take jobs from U.S. citizens and depress wages. Nearly eight in 10 said they are a drain on the state, believing they require substantial social services, the poll found.
But only 28 percent of respondents had the stomach to send all undocumented immigrants back home. About one-fourth were seriously concerned about a possible spike in consumer prices and a worker shortage if all were forced to return home.
Many more voters worried about the suffering that undocumented immigrants might endure if deported. The possibility that families living in the United States for years who have few ties to their home countries would endure personal and economic hardship if deported was a "major concern" of half of the respondents.
"A lot of them have families here," said Joanna Castillo, a 33-year-old homemaker who was born in Texas and has friends who are undocumented immigrants. "What about the children? What are they going to do with them?"
"I'm against the illegal immigration, but I feel that they should be able to come and work, especially considering the economics of the way they live (in Mexico)," added Castillo, a Democrat.
Legal workers
The poll indicated widespread support for some sort of temporary-worker program. Several such programs have been proposed by the Bush administration and members of Congress, including competing plans by Arizona Republican Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl.
Sixty-seven percent of respondents said they would support a federal program for temporary foreign workers, with 63 percent of Republicans, 73 percent of Democrats and 69 percent of independents or members of other parties in favor.
When it comes to allowing undocumented immigrants to stay in the United States, the divide is wider, with 61 percent of Republicans in favor vs. 78 percent of Democrats.
Rosemarie Malroy, 65, said she is concerned that businesses, particularly farmers and growers like her brother-in-law, who owns fruit orchards in Oregon, will continue to struggle to find enough labor without some kind of legal foreign-worker program.
"He is having a hard time getting workers to pick his fruit, because he said Americans don't . . . want this kind of work," said Malroy, an artist and writer who lives in Fountain Hills. "This is an important thing; this is going to be all over the United States, not just for the farmers but for all businesses."
"I think there should be some program where they can have, if not a green card, a card that allows them to work for some time," said Malroy, a Republican.
But Andrew Ambos, a 49-year-old truck driver who lives in Kingman, said he just can't bring himself to support anything remotely resembling an amnesty because of the sheer number of people crossing the border. Ambos said the changes in the country's makeup are evident as far north as his hometown of Milwaukee.
"I have nothing against those people as far as their race. But God, they're flooding into the country," said Ambos, a Democrat. "It's not just from Mexico; it's other countries as well. Now it's even a greater threat, what with terrorism the way it is now. It's not benign; it's a physical danger as well as an economic danger."
The situation along Arizona's border has been building to a crisis level since the late 1990s. In 2000, the number of arrests along the Southwestern border peaked at 1.6 million and then dropped sharply after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Since then, arrests have leveled off during the past few years at more than 1.1 million, with the majority recorded in Arizona.
State of emergency
The sheer volume of illegal crossings and the increasingly brazen behavior of smugglers prompted Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano to recently declare a state of emergency along the state's porous border.
The public is aware of the country's vulnerability, according to the poll, with only 4 percent of respondents saying the government's attempts to secure the border are "very successful." Nearly one-third called the efforts "moderately" successful. The respondents, particularly Republicans, were optimistic that the government could get closer to its goal of securing the border, with 85 percent predicting it could be moderately or very successful in the future.
The two polar-opposite proposals for border reform, fencing the entire 1,951-mile international line and creating an "open border" with Mexico, garnered little support in the poll.
Only about a third of respondents very strongly or fairly strongly supported building a high-security fence along the border, regardless of the cost. Only 14 percent very strongly or fairly strongly liked the idea of opening the border with Mexico, making it the least-popular option.
There was no clear consensus on whether stopping illegal immigration should be a national priority, regardless of the cost. Forty-seven percent said itshould be, even if very costly; 51 percent disagreed and said the goal should be to control it at a "reasonable cost."
There was lukewarm enthusiasm, however, for either cutting other government programs or raising taxes to spend more on border enforcement.
The most popular option was reducing spending on the war in Iraq, with 44 percent of respondents very strongly or fairly strongly in favor. One-third felt that way about eliminating recent tax cuts, and 23 percent felt similarly about reducing federal commitments to the reconstruction of areas damaged by Hurricane Katrina. The least popular proposals were cutting federal spending for health, education or other social services (18 percent)and raising taxes (17 percent).
Keith Shillito, a 36-year-old physician who lives in Parker, said people bent on complaining about the cost of illegal immigration are "not running out there to pick melons and do the labor that the undocumented immigrants do."
"I look at it from a humanitarian perspective, and that is that they're benefiting us and we don't really give them much in return," said Shillito, a Democrat. "Illegal immigration is something that, to some extent, we have to accept. It's not like it's going away."
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http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/12961954.htm
Posted on Fri, Oct. 21, 2005
46% boost in tech visas proposed
SENATE PANEL OKS H-1B HIKE TO 95,000
By Jim Puzzanghera
Mercury News Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - A Senate committee Thursday approved a nearly 50 percent increase in special visas coveted by Silicon Valley companies to hire highly skilled foreign workers and boosted application fees to help ease the federal budget deficit.
The actions, which still are several steps from becoming law, are less a statement of job growth in the tech sector than a pragmatic solution to two problems.
First, the current annual allotment of H-1B visas reverted dramatically two years ago to 65,000 from a temporary level three times higher set during the dot-com boom, leaving far too few visas for the demand.
And second, the federal budget deficit has left Congress scrambling for ways to increase revenue. So when lawmakers began considering an increase in visa fees, the high-tech industry demanded an increase in the numbers of the controversial visas as well.
``Any increase in fees . . . without an appropriate increase in the number of available visas will equate to a tax on competitiveness and we will oppose it,'' Rhett Dawson, president of the Information Technology Industry Council, wrote last week to Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Arlen Specter, R-Pa.
Under a proposal by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the annual number of H-1B visas would increase from 65,000 to 95,000. The increase was approved by the Judiciary Committee after it rejected a proposal by Specter for an increase of twice the size, to 125,000 a year.
High-tech executives have been pushing for more of the controversial H-1B visas, which critics say displace American workers in favor of less expensive foreigners beholden to the company that sponsors them.
The fate of the proposed increase is uncertain. The measure, which also would raise the fee employers pay for each six-year visa by $500, was added to a broad budget bill intended to save $300 million over the next five years.
The legislation still must be approved by the full Senate and reconciled with a version in the House of Representatives that does not make any changes to the H-1B visa program.
The House has proposed increasing fees by $1,500 for L-1B visas, which companies use to transfer foreign employees already working for them abroad to the United States. Feinstein's proposal also included an L-1B visa increase, but only of $750. The current fee for L-1B visas is $685; it is $2,185 for H-1B visas, with an optional $1,000 expedited processing fee that most companies pay because of the high demand.
Under intense pressure from Silicon Valley during the Internet boom, Congress temporarily boosted the annual number of visas in 1998 and again in 2000 to address high-tech worker shortages. The annual number of visas peaked at 195,000 from 2001 to 2003 before dropping to 65,000 in 2004.
Last year, Congress passed legislation exempting as many as 20,000 additional H-1B visas a year for foreign workers with advanced degrees from U.S. universities. But there still have not been enough H-1B visas to meet demand.
``Right now, with our shrinking production of math and science majors, they just can't fill the jobs,'' said Kara Calvert, a lobbyist with the Information Technology Industry Council, which includes leading tech companies such as Intel, Cisco and Hewlett-Packard.
The federal government cut off applications for 2006 visas on Aug. 12 -- more than two months before the fiscal year began.
But Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, who helped champion the huge increases in H-1B visas passed by Congress in 1998 and 2000, said Thursday that making changes to the program in a budget bill was not appropriate.
She said it is an immigration matter that should be the subject of hearings, not dealt with in a ``backhanded'' way through the budget process.
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http://www.suntimes.com/output/jesse/cst-edt-jesse18.html
Global economy shafting U.S. worker
October 18, 2005
BY JESSE JACKSON
Will America remain the land of opportunity? Will it remain a nation with a broad middle class? Or is it turning into two Americas, one rich and one struggling just to get by?
The Delphi Corp., one of the leading automobile parts manufacturers in the world, has filed for bankruptcy. Its CEO, Robert Miller, says it can't meet global competition and pay its workers a union wage. And it must shed its obligations on health care and pensions to its retired workers.
Miller, having dished out some $90 million in severance bonuses to his executives, wants workers to swallow pay cuts from about $27 an hour to about $10 an hour.
But this isn't really about Delphi, it's about Detroit. General Motors verges on bankruptcy, as does Ford. All the auto companies are pressing workers to swallow deep cuts in pay and benefits. The automobile industry is headed down the path of the steel industry, the mining industry and appliance industry. It's going from union jobs that provide a secure, middle-class living to low-wage, low-benefit jobs that leave workers scrambling to get by.
Used to be celebrators of the new global economy like Tom Friedman argued that these workers were just the ''turtles,'' the dim-witted, slow-footed victims who were going to get run over on the global highway to a new economy and a new prosperity. Then the dot.com bubble burst. Many of the programming jobs lost in the bust never came back. They were shipped to India. So were an increasing number of the service jobs in banking, finance and communications. Now the glib Friedman gets tongue-tied when he tries to figure out how this country sustains a middle class in the face of the corporate assault on unions, the shipping of good jobs abroad and the pressure on wages and benefits at home.
Last year was a sterling year of economic growth, according to the Bush administration. Stocks were up, profits were up, and CEO salaries soared. But wages for average workers fell. As the Economic Policy Institute points out, the median wage for a full-time, year-round male worker didn't keep up with the hike in prices -- and that was before gas prices went through the roof.
We teach our children self-discipline. Work hard, stay out of trouble, turn your back on drugs, don't have babies out of wedlock, get the best education you can. The promise is that with self-reliance and self-discipline, you can share in the American dream: a good living, a secure job, a house, a secure retirement, good education for the next generation.
But what happens when the ladder to the middle class is broken? When the jobs that used to provide the way up are gone? What happens when you can't find a union job at $27 an hour with health care and pensions, and must accept a job at $10 an hour without health care and without a pension? What happens to the dream, to America?
This is the fundamental challenge facing our nation. And no leader, outside of John Edwards, is even talking about it. Bush is spending $250 billion and thousands of lives in a failed effort to build a unified democracy in an Iraq torn by civil and religious division. At home, he's just part of the problem. His first move after Katrina was to eliminate the prevailing wage in contracts to rebuild the city, and to waive restrictions on the use of undocumented workers. Instead of decent union jobs going to Katrina's victims and paying them enough to get back on their feet, he'll rebuild New Orleans with illegal immigrant labor that can be exploited to work for next to nothing and then shipped out of the country when the task is complete. Bush and the Republican Congress are still pushing through more tax breaks for the wealthy while blocking any increase in the minimum wage for working people.
But Democrats aren't much better. They talk about education as the answer, but say little about the fact that college education is getting priced out of the reach of working families, or that poor kids who need the most help get the least -- overcrowded schools, the least experienced teachers, outdated textbooks, school buildings that are dangerous to their health.
Working families have to wake up. We need a new movement, a new agenda, and new leadership. And with Delphi suggesting that Detroit is about to go down, we don't have much time.
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