I don’t normally like to write alarming articles about bills that are being considered in either the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives, particularly during the early stages of negotiations. As my dad once said, he used to constantly get these email alerts begging him to call or fax his senator or representative right away about some huge issue before the world collapsed. My dad would usually do nothing, and Congress would usually vote the right way.
As early as today or tonight, our U.S. Senators could be voting on various proposals that would, in the words of NumbersUSA, "….when taken together, would grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens and dramatically increase the importation of foreign workers at a time 10 million Americans are looking for jobs and can't find employment." Naturally, since similar proposals were overwhelmingly rejected in June of this year, these proposals are in danger of being piggy-backed onto H.R. 1585, the Defense Authorization bill for fiscal year 2008.
I took notice after seeing how grass-root activism helped the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 go up in flames on the Senate floor on June 28, 2007. Among other measures, the Act would have raised the annual H-1B visa limits for "highly-skilled" workers from 65,000 to 115,000 per year. I knew that business oligarchs led by Bill Gates at Microsoft would not go away quietly. I also knew that these business leaders would use every means necessary, from soft-sell tactics to playing hardball, to get the visa limits raised this year. Knowing that stealth would be their weapon of choice, I resolved to keep my ears open for any new developments. I also resolved to get off my butt recently and start following this story a little bit more closely.
Here’s a little background on the whole saga. In 1990, thanks in part to my U.S. Senator at the time, Spencer Abraham (R-MI), Congress enacted the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1990, which established the H-1B category of "highly skilled" guest workers who were brought in to fill open positions due to a perceived shortage of qualified American candidates. The number of H-1B visas allowed per year fluctuated at various times between 65,000 per year to a peak of 195,000 per year. (Rob Sanchez has a nice history at his Job Destruction website.) From that point on, employers have been falling over themselves to slash as many American information technology and engineering workers as possible from their payrolls and give the jobs to lower paid and (often lower qualified) foreign guest workers, mostly from India.
When the Senate failed to approve the bill raising the H-1B limits to 115,000 in June as mentioned above, the assault began.
On July 5, 2007, Microsoft announced they were forced to open up a new software development office in Vancouver, British Columbia in order to get around the current visa limitation of 65,000 per year.
On July 10, 2007, Hillary Clinton made a video-conference speech to the Indian Institute of Technology 2007 Global Alumni Conference in Santa Clara, California, and affirmed her support for expanding the H-1B visa program.
On July 16, 2007, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sent a letter to the U.S. Senate supporting measures for the "….temporary relief for companies in need of highly skilled workers."
On August 23, 2007, Microsoft filed a lobby registration form with the US Senate showing they were hiring the firm of SC Partners LLC for purposes of lobbying on issues surrounding H-1B visas and Green Cards for tech workers.
On September 11, 2007 (talk about horrible timing!), a bipartisan group of 13 governors sent a joint letter to the US House of Representatives and the US Senate urging our lawmakers to pass legislation to raise the H-1B limit to 115,000 visas.
On September 18, 2007, about 1,000 "highly skilled" legal immigrants rallied at the US Capitol in Washington, D.C. to "…protest long delays and vast bureaucratic backlogs in the immigration system." Paul Donnelly, one of the godfathers of the current H-1B system and now a consultant for American Families United, was quoted by the New York Times as saying. "It is a significant thing to have foreign-born people, who are notoriously hard to organize, organizing themselves." Oh, so this was a grassroots, spontaneous assembly, huh?
Not to mention various well-placed articles appearing here and there talking about the difficulties in hiring qualified people for tech positions, how the public school system contributes to our country’s failure to compete with foreign workers, and the benefits of free trade.
I’ve been vaguely disgusted with the U.S. visa policies for a number of years as I’ve seen high tech workers laid-off, forced to train their lower cost replacements, told their skills were irrelevant, told they lacked work experience after spending time and money to update their skills, and told they were overqualified on the rare occasion the potential employer could find nothing wrong with their work history. I’ve become a very recent convert in the drive against amnesty for illegal aliens when I started witnessing something I thought I would never see – highly educated American workers competing directly against illegal aliens for jobs in the building trades. Big government and businesses have been able to push around American workers for far too long now, and it’s time for all of us to put a stop to it.
Please don’t be afraid to contact your Senators and urge them to vote against any measure that would take away jobs from American citizens.
(Cross-posted at Carrie's Nation.)
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