Pro Business republicans are NOT for american people
 

I have several friends in the IT field STILL trying to find a job and our republican majority congress passes crap like this. yahoo news
WASHINGTON - Congress is letting employers hire another 20,000 foreign high-tech workers under a special visa program after businesses reached the annual ceiling on the first day of the government's fiscal year.

Businesses are limited to hiring no more than 65,000 workers annually through the H1-B visa program. They reached that figure in one day, Oct. 1, and immediately began complaining they would lose talented university graduates and potential employees to competitors overseas.

In response, as part of the $388 billion spending bill passed over the weekend and awaiting President Bush (news - web sites)'s signature, Congress is exempting from the limit 20,000 foreign students with masters and above degrees from U.S. universities.

"This is a critical talent pool that American taxpayers have helped to educate," said Sandra Boyd, who chairs the Compete America coalition that lobbied for the exemptions. "It's counterproductive to educate these students and then force them abroad to compete against us."

The coalition includes companies such as Microsoft, Texas Instruments, Hewlett Packard and Motorola.

For example, of the 424 students who earned master's degrees in engineering at the University of Texas at Austin last year, 228 were foreign students; of the 135 who earned doctorates in engineering, 81 were foreigners, Boyd said.

Dan Kane, a spokesman for the Homeland Security Department's Citizenship and Immigration Service, said the exemptions for foreign students will be applicable this year. Rep. Lamar Smith (news, bio, voting record), R-Texas, and Sen. Saxby Chambliss (news, bio, voting record), R-Ga., led the effort to include them in the spending bill.

Kane said his agency will release details on how employers can apply for visas made available after Bush signs the bill, he said.

The popular H1-B visas are granted to foreigners in specialty professions such as architecture, engineering, medicine, biotechnology and computer programming. Under the program, employers must pay foreign workers the prevailing wage for their job fields and show that qualified U.S. workers are not being passed over.

Unions and other critics say the program allows businesses to fill jobs with cheaper foreign labor. Those who use the program say they can't find enough Americans with the necessary math, science and engineering skills.

In addition, Congress doubled H1-B visa application fees from $1,000 to $2,000. Small businesses with fewer than 25 employees pay fees totaling $1,250 for each application. The legislation also expands the authority of the Department of Labor to investigate employers.

On a separate visa issue, Congress tightened rules for using L-1 visas, which allow companies to transfer employees from overseas offices to U.S. offices, while paying the employees their home country wages. Lawmakers had been suspicious that abuse in the program was putting Americans out of work.

I hope you realize that it is the suits on Capitol Hill and the corporate executives that ought to be blamed for cheating Americans out of their jobs.

There is not reason to blame those foreign workers because they are coming to the United States to work legally. And you should not resent those foreign students who are earning graduate degrees in the United States because they also come to this country legally and they pay their tuition just like everyone else.
In fact, most foreign students pay double (of not more) the tuition that AMerican students pay.

My friends in the IT fields WITH DEGREES all have jobs.

Do your friends have the proper qualifications?

Of course I do, thats why the subject refers to pro business republicans and not 'those damn indian foreigners'.(thats a play on the remark and not my personal opinion on foreigners)

congratulations to your friends then.

yes they do, any other questions?

We have disagreed about a jillion times in the past, but this is honestly the first time I've seen truly disingenuous reasoning from you. At least in the past, while you have still in my opinion been wrong, you have been able to back your opinion up with something better than "well none of MY friends are affected by it, so what's the problem?"

I'm not trying to bash here - just wondering if you have a better argument for us.

Sorry but this 'My friends can't get a job' type whining gets old too. No one owes you a job, if you are not needed that’s to bad.

I did have one IT friend who lost his job when the bubble burst. He was the out of high school but I know computers type who were in demand for a while. He got a good job, but when it died he found himself degreeless and screwed.

He is currently back in school.

Plus while I'm at it, the thread title is inflammatory and silly. He should have titled it, Pro Business republicans are NOT for my friends!

yeah, anyway.

I am a "Pro-Business republican" and I am "for american people"

I'm sick of the "my friend lost his job and found out he needed to go back to school to get another one".

I never even graduated from high school, let alone attended any university. I've been working in my field for 10 years and I've earned quite a bit of money from it. I've run my own business for over two years now and I'm about to jump from my industry of 10 years to a completely new one - entering at a close to 6 figure salary level.

My heart goes out to the poor saps that thought they needed to take tens of thousands in loans to obtain a piece of paper stating they learned things that would provide them with a quality work experience. But most of them are arrogant about it, so my heart is small. Degrees are the most overrated scraps of paper ever created.

dksuddeth's friend is out of a job for a number of reasons - not simply because he "isn't needed". But also because of the topic of this thread: off-shoring and actively enabling cheap labor. You wouldn't be "needed" either if your job could be done for 1/10th the price you require. That doesn't mean we should go out of our way (by adding H1B visa slots) to enable our society to make it easier to cut your price down to 1/10th what you currently ask.

Thats great but some of us find value in an education beyond just the paper. My heart goes out to those poor saps who think that an education is worthless.

If my job gets 'off-shored' I don't expect anyone to rescue me. In fact they are trying to 'offshore' my job to some extent, I view it as a challange and I need to improve my product in such a way as to make the 'offshore' prodcut less desireable than my own. The consumer wins.

An education is invaluable and I never said otherwise. I haven't been successful without knowing very well what I do. But you can get an education anywhere, anytime - you can only get a degree by paying for university. Whether dksuddeth's friend has an education that could provide him a job is not the issue. And whether dksuddeth's friend has a degree that claims he has an education is even less relevant.

Rescuing is not the issue (though I'm sure we'd disagree on that one as well) - we're talking about intentionally destablizing your job security in order to specifically benefit a corporations profit. And as we've seen over the past 4 years, coming out the recession, corporations have significantly increased profit while job availability has barely moved.

We are talking about bringing in cheaper help. It happens, no one owes you anything.

I've seen several articles speaking of how offshoring helps the economy in both the long and short run.

Here is the first google hit.

http://www.computerweekly.com/Article129623.htm

A closed and protected economy is the best way to fuck it up.

Yes. It happens because Republicans (specifically) and politicians (in general) make it happen. You act as if it is a natural by product of nation-specific capitalism. It is not. By default, our borders are closed. In order to bring in cheaper help, we have to go out of our way to open them.

No one owes you anything? Hardly relevant. The government should not be taking it away from people in order to please corporations.

As for your studies - I've seen studies that show global warming is real. And I've seen studies that show global warming is fake. Studies that show progressive taxation is "unfair" and studies that show the opposite. That guns should be illegal and that guns should not be illegal.

I wonder if I felt the need to google those organizations that created those studies you linked, would I find they are Republican organizations? I expect so.

I can't imagine why you would expect me to argue against a study, when all you offer are sound bites like "no one owes you anything" and "a closed and protected economy is the best way to fuck it up".

My guess is, you don't even know the why's of the position you hold - but you want to believe it, so you offer sound bites and links to partisan studies to "prove" your belief.

I'm not interested.

Translation, you have nothing to add and can not refute the study so you will ignore it. Thats ok, I didn't expect to convince you of anything.

I've added plenty. You've added nothing but a partisan study and a couple of sound bites. I'm not going to waste my time googling a study that shows outsourcing resulting in negatives. The study for study variation of a discussion is useless - particularly as it seems you don't actually know why you're arguing your position.

I'm satisfied. Go check out KMA's taxation thread for a lesson in how to involve yourself in a real discussion.

All of this talk and argument about a person needing to improve theirselves or get better educated is crap. Pure unadulterated crap. Business DOES NOT GIVE A DAMN HOW EDUCATED YOU ARE!!!!!!! It only cares about how much it has to pay you. Any other reason is nothing but an attempt to misdirect the issue.

It has zero to do with not being needed, if they weren't needed, then there wouldn't be a need for the visa, would there?

Time for you to get a new translator, the one you have is obviously broken.

Keep thinking that way and keep doing nothing to educate yourself. The person next to you will gladly take the higher paying job.

:hmm: Correct me if I'm wrong, and I'm sure that you will...but, aren't you an orthodontist? How in the hell does an orthodontist's job get "offshored"? Well, unless of course you live along the Canadian, or the Mexican border...then, maybe. Otherwise...just how damn much are you charging, when it's more cost effective to put Billy and Susie on a plane to New Delhi, to get thier "rubber bands" tightened. Not criticizing...just having a hard time wrapping my mind around an outsourced orthodontist.

Invisalign, made in Pakistan.

Explain to me how having a top rated degree from a top rated university is going to help you compete against someone who is willing to do the same job (albeit poorer quality than you) but he is willing to do it for $5 and hour. Industry rarely cares about quality nearly as much as it cares about profits. This is the crux of the issue. Jobs are being exported so buisnesses can increase their profit margins.

The rich get richer.

Pop quiz - 28 year old with a doctorate and a 24 year old with a masters both apply for the same job. The 28 year old doctorate asks for 120k a year salary and the 24 year old asks for 80k a year salary. Who are they going to hire?

Tell me again that education matters? :rolleyes:

Also not everyone is trying to get "ahead" some people just want to fucking live. Live without having to be a slave to who knows what working 40+ hours a week to come home and go to sleep. To me that isn't a life, thats a waste. I don't want to have to go back to school every 5 years and blow 10-20k on tuition for some piece of paper to end up getting the same job i left when i found i no longer had enough education.

When people asked me what i wanted to be when i grew up i never had an answer. The reason for that is because i didnt want to be anything but me. Doctor and astronaut be damned.

Okay then using your own logic, if we all choose to use Pakistan-made Invisalign (whatever that is) and not visit a local orthodontist then the customer would save money and invest it in other parts of the economy right? Out of work orthodontists would just be one more outsourcing casualty, but hey they should have seen it coming. Maybe once our currency is devalued enough we can produce an American Invisalign as cheaply as our Paki allies. Won't that be nice, after 7 years of college to know there will be a spot for you in the plastics factory where you can make $.25 an hour.

I'm sorry but globalist economic theory is flawed beyond reason.

I said the same thing in my post. Adapt or die. I don't expect the government to come save me if someone can do what I do better, easier or cheaper.

I don't recall anyone asking the government to 'save us', but I damn sure didn't expect them to make things more difficult, did you?

It's distressing to me that you don't support the U.S. government efforts to help American workers, but you do support their efforts to help foreign workers. Bizarre.

So would you support giving visas to fully-accredited orthodontists to open cut-rate practices in your own community?

The only jobs left soon will be cashiers, stock boys and cart-pushers. We're being adapted right into the gutter.

I bet everyone would welcome some inexpensive dental care these days. With whom may i make an appointment?

Actually, not a bad idea for a business. We rent out some medical office space, wrangle up some foreign dentists and orthodontists, get their visas cleared by a Republican congress, sit back and collect "administrative fees." We can put up the foreigners in a dormitory and facilitate them sending checks home to India or whereever. If we truly industrialize the process we could have 50-100 dentists working under the same roof. Our prices would be unbeatable, people would come from all around. Let's do it Obiex!

Sounds good to me. I know if I had the choice between Dr. Pay me $10000 and have Insurance or get out, and Dr. Joe India for $29.95 - both with the same education - I'd have to go with Dr. Joe India.

They already can do that :)

By helping American workers you mean artificially inflate prices, which hurts American consumers and American business alike. I haven't seen anything to refute the claims that outsourcing some jobs helps increase jobs at home as well due to a more efficient economy.

Lets take an RL example that just happened to me yesterday. I found a new supplier who is about 1/2 to 1/3rd cheaper then my current supplier. What this will allow me to do is cut my overhead, and in turn is going to help me hire another person who I need but was not sure I could afford to do so. Yes the more expensive company is going to loose money I was paying them, and if enough of this goes on they may well close. I am going to employ a new person, and this will help my business grow as well, which in turn may allow me to hire even more people. By your logic if the cheaper company was located in Mexico instead of the US I should be FORCED to use the US company by law (and I thought you liberals didn't like government telling you what you can and can't do, silly me). The end result of this is I would not be able to hire another person. Now here is the really fun part. The office I need the new person at is my worst performing office. The new job I wish to hire is a PR type of person who will promote the office to dentists to send me patients. If I can not afford to hire this new person my choices are to fire one of my existing people (who all have children I might add and have been here for 5-25 years) or hope the area turns around and I get more patients that way. If it doesn't I might have to close the office, which would put even more people out of work. So a worst case scenario would be 9 people out of work as I close one office and focus only on my more productive ones. All this because someone thinks its not fair that salaries are lower in other countries.

Perhaps you should check all your labels and only buy USA from now on. No cheap electronics or clothing for you, just good old American made. After all you might have put some US worker out of a job!!!

Well when everyone else is out of the job you'll be next. Afterall who will be able to afford expensive dental care when they no longer have any use for teeth because they can't feed themselves?

I do tend to do this, why is that so outrageous? Typically though I choose products based on quality more than ethical reasons. American products were once the the best in the world, but now many foreign countries produce things of equal or better quality. Many foreign products are much cheaper than those produced here because their currency is undervalued through government intervention (read:China).

my power is flickering and already blacked out once, so I'm going to cut this short.

Ustwo, the only problem that most pro-business people fail to acknowledge, or purposefully ignore, is that this supposedly great global market economy is only beneficial and advantageous to business' and consumers for profit and lower prices. The labor pool gets manipulated by government and business for their benefit instead of labor having an effective benefit from it also. Business can lobby the government to bring in cheaper workers from a foreign country but an individual doesn't have the ability to utilize the global market to participate.

I'll put money that none of you three has ever tried to run a business, I think that’s pretty obvious.

Did you ever think that perhaps the problem with IT people is they were overpaid for their jobs for a while due to a very high demand and low pool of workers in computers back in 'the dark ages'?

Those "dark ages" were a couple years ago. As far as i can tell, the vast majority of people are just as uninformed about technology now as they were then. The number of neat gadgets may have increased, but people still know little to nothing about them other than how to turn them on.

My business is me, I'm an independent contractor. (and yes, it's in the IT business.)

Hmm social security takes away more money from us then the jobs we lost.

My personal experience is people don't like it when someone takes "Their job" and they don't want to try something new. I think the job market now is just that.

American's are lazy, full of pride, and sometimes outclassed so they refuse, don't take, or get replaced.

The answer is to better yourself I think and seize the oppurtunity even if it may be a field different then what you want.

That has what to do with what I posted above?

Of course there was. The logical slide downward also included the MCSE, then CCNA, then degrees, then every other certificate under the sun. Kids out of high school getting a diploma with MS certifications attached to it were just a part of what ruined the IT sector. The ITAA used tremendous fear tactics in promoting to the public the idea that foreigners were needed with their ridiculous estimates of 800k plus jobs going unfilled per year.

Does pandering cheap labor from across the globe solve the problem? no, it only intensifies it by cheapening an already floundering industry.

that all sounds WONDERFUL for the under 35 crowd, but tell the 54 year old with 30 years experience in a field that he now needs to go get a better education to compete with the 26 year old who has no experience.

Why continue to fight it. Lets just all put on our smocks and grab our pricing guns now.

Pride or the lack of it wont help pay for any further education i may need to find a new job when i don't have a job to make money to pay for an education to find a job to make money with. And even if i did come upon this money for an education, then find a job with this education, who's to say in a year or two (which is highly likely in todays economy) that this job wont be outsourced and i won't be looking for a new way to find money to get an education so i can get a new job to make money.

I agree with Konichiwaneko here.

For those over 35, they should have kept up with the times and taught themselves. It doesn't take a new degree to do so; how about reading the newest manual or articles about your field. Then with the updated know how and the experience they should be able to hold on to a job, and if not then they would be able to find a new job.

In theory, that should work. In reality, thats a completely different story.

My father got into a completely new field 2 months ago and he's 56. Basically he told me

"Son the fire of a challenge is why I changed, it was my own choice and I wanted to work something that made me think."

don't forget about the study that had shown so far fewer jobs have still been created than lost, and at an average salary of $9,000 less per year than the old jobs had been paying.

Yeah the Republican job creation plan seems to be have everyone work two or three minimum wage jobs with no benefits. hooray! more jobs!

Didn't the reports on job creation say that most of the new jobs that have been created were in the goverment and they have great benefits.

no sorry, they didn't. but that was something the Republicans fought against too--remember the Homeland Security Dept. being held up over unionization?

Come on man, the Information Technology Association of America, who commissioned this study, is a trade group for the IT industry. It represents IT companies. Its job is to increase profits for those companies. It has its own PAC. 30 percent of its workforce are lobbyists AND it employs two other lobbying firms. It's whole reason for being is to advance the interests of the IT industry.

You are NOT going to get an unbiased report from these guys on ANY issue that can effect their clients.

Yet you go and quote the study commissioned by ITAA that amazingly enough says that exporting jobs is good for the economy (failing to mention that it's actually good for the IT companies since they now will make more money now that their tech support team consists of a bunch of guys in India making a dollar or two a day).

Find an unbiased source that says getting rid of jobs is good for the economy and I'll listen - but that's immaterial because no intelligent unbiased source would ever say something so preposterous.

The degree thing in the IT field is a myth. You don't need one.. depending on where you work. Programming for MS? Yeah, you'll need one. Square-Enix or Blizzard Entertainment? Yep. Average middle sized business? Nope. Hell, I know programmers who were hired into Ford Motor Company (here in Detroit) with just 3 years of programming experience.

I'm sure the degree helps somewhere, but the majority of the time they hire based on experience. You have a programmer who knows Java, C/C++, ASP, C# (.net), Sql Server, Oracle, DB design, networking, security... and 8 years of experience doing that vs. someone FRESH out of college with a Bachelor's in Comp. Science or Comp. Engineering. I'll bet you any money right now the one without the degree will be hired.

Later on a few years down the road when they're handing out promotions and it comes down to him vs. another programmer with the degree, then yeah, the degree may matter, but it's not a hindrance in helping one find a job.

I know TONS of programmers (myself included) who don't have degrees. In fact, I only have ever met ONE programmer with a degree, and quite honestly, he's not doing much better than I am right now.

I'm going to college now working on my degree, but trust me, I've seen the classes I'll have to take and they won't be teaching me anything that I don't already know or haven't done (well) in all of my years as a programmer. The ONLY thing I'm learning that I don't already know would be the math, and probably some other non-related BS class like chemistry or anthropology.

You may learn a thing or two from the theory classes on programming or design, but nothing you can't learn on your own by reading a few books. Don't get me wrong, I'm still gonna get the degree, but I won't be any more "able" or qualified then compared to now.

It really is just a piece of paper.. at least, computer science is.

I've thought about changing my major to biology though.. that's another story. I don't expect to get hired as a scientist without the proper degrees, but being in IT is quite different.

The problem with the outsorcing of jobs is that there is no real benefits for American laborers OR consumers. Everyone points to lower prices, but this is in the face of lowering real incomes, so actual purchasing power decreases. Also, if you look at the difference between Nike and New Balance, you will find little differece in prices, despite the fact that New Balance is near 100% American employed. Most of the lowered labor costs goes to stockholders and upper management in the form of bonuses or dividends. This problem was talked about in one of my sociology classes, where the American business model since the 60's has been one of increasing profits, while not necessarily increasing production. This has led to stagnation of innovation in many industries and businesses, so when profits are low labor (usually, except in very rare fields, being the highest cost of a business) is the first cost cut by layoffs or outsourcing. This is one of the reasons I'm currently studying Business, because the guys with the MBA's rarely get outsourced (despite the fact that it seems you learn few marketable skills. Honestly when I graduate if someone asks me what I could provide to a company, I can do little more than point at my degree :) )

America seems to differ from many other economic power in our willingness to sacrifice our middle class. If you are in the "elite" (in parental wealth, intelligence, or any other highly marketable talent) the US is the best place to be. But America is having a problem involving the average person. In other countries, developing a good middle class is seen as a priority.

You know. Ustwo has a lot of points that seem to go ignored by the most of you. I'll paraphrase:

1. Its a global market (and that goes for the labor market too). Supply and demand work both ways. The IT folks were getting paid so much in the 90s because there was a high demand for IT labor and a small supply of it. This resulted in high IT wages. The youngsters took a cue, learned IT, entered the IT labor market, thus increasing the supply of IT labor. This puts downward pressure on IT wages. Now if the US closed its economy to foreign IT labor those foreign workers would be doing the same thing for a new firm in another country. That firm would be producing cheaper goods as a result of cheaper labor. Those goods would compete with US goods and cause the US IT firm to loose profits, lay off workers, or possibly go out of business. Closing your economy is a sure way to damn it.

2. I think I covered a few of Ustwo's points in there. I'll read this thread again later and add more if I need to.

I think that instead of cutting taxes and hoping or waiting for the creation of jobs in the US, tax breaks should be tied to creating jobs in the US and/or providing education to workers (even OTJT) as well as manufacturing products domestically.


The problem with this is that labels don't quite tell us what's going on. If something is produced in another country, but assembled in some way in the US, slap goes the US label. Corporations in our territories can use US labels, too.

Case in point, your Invisalign is headquartered in Santa Clara, CA.

BTW, you might be happy to know that they closed their Pakistan and UAE factories two years ago according to this:

-- Business Week Online

It looks like they are produced in Costa Rica and the US.

I don't understand how this equates to outsourcing your particular job, however. I wondered the same thing BOR asked, but didn't realize he had actually asked it until now.


EDIT: here is a more detailed explanation about "Made in the USA" claims:

-- http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/madeusa.htm

It doesn't seem to be quite as easy as I initially thought. But I also don't know how this is enforced. Is it through customer research and complaint? I don't know, but there are two main ways to claim USA sourcing: unqualified (somewhat loosely defined) and qualified (more tightly defined).

Since I have no particular strong emotions about this topic, I'm going to break tradition and try to ask some non-inflammatory questions in regard to your post.

Do you not think that under your scenario, businesses that are unable to receive these tax breaks will be put at even more of a competitive disadvantage in regard to foreign competition?


I would say it equates to a high-tech company outsourcing its engineering work to India.

Outsourcing doesn't bother me as much as others mostly because many companies are getting burned by it, such as Dell. What I am more concerned with are companies that do the majority, if not all, of their work in the US but are incorporated in another country such as the Grand Caymans. Here we have companies getting all the benefits of working in the United States and by incorporating off-shore skirting obligations to abide by US laws and being accountable to the citizens who use their products.

This isn't the same issue as outsourcing unskilled labor. Does anyone have proof that foreign workers get paid significantly less for a job in IT? Our universities are bringing these students in and spending (many times public) money to educate them. We'd like to think that these are the best and brightest from abroad, although where I am I'm not too impressed with many of the international graduate students I've met. Either way, these companies naturally want to hire the best workers--and that's good for our GDP. If international students are more qualified, then what do you expect?

And I defy you to find a biochemist without a high school (or college) education. I agree that the degree is just a sheet of paper, but I couldn't imagine getting that kind of education (especially learning how to work in a lab) outside a university setting.

If it helps, I don't think students from abroad have access to public money.

Their (and out of state students) tuition costs subsidize in-state students. That's how it works in California, anway.