"She Can't Hold On Much Longer, Captain"

I mentioned in my recent SNARK ALERT! post the number of articles that have been published recently, all decrying the supposed "high tech skills" shortage. I've noticed that each author has his or her own unique spin on this catastrophe, making it impossible for us bloggers (since we are not being subsidized by Big Business to spend eight hours a day pounding out the party line on our keyboards) to keep up with the task of refuting all of the misinformation being spewed forth.

I give you the following examples:

• Poor Billy Boy has no choice but to open a new software development center in Vancouver, British Columbia in order to skirt the limits on H-1B visas issued in the United States.
• Equally poor Rob Preston from InformationWeek tried his best, but all he could do was come up with a confusing article that seemed to imply there is a talent shortage, but could not seem to muster up any convincing facts or statistics to support his claim. At least he had the guts to face his accusers!
• Moira Herbst's article at BusinessWeek came up with an interesting twist. Sure, there are plenty of IT professionals and engineers out there, but most of them have the wrong skills sets. Enrollment in computer science and engineering programs at colleges and universities is predictably bottoming out, forcing Bill Gates to go on a public relations tour to urge students to switch their majors back to technical degrees.

Just when I thought things couldn't possibly get any worse, Anne Broache from CNET comes up with this gem, "Allow More Green Cards for Foreign Techies, Congress Told".

"But what's sometimes forgotten in the debate is a key point of agreement among at least some representatives of the warring sides. A new joint letter (click for PDF) to Congress from the Semiconductor Industry Association and IEEE-USA, the U.S. branch of the world's largest professional society of electronics engineers, seeks to remind politicos of that common ground, which is this: we need more green cards."

No, Anne, WE HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN ABOUT GREEN CARDS! And, no, Anne, WE DO NOT NEED TO ISSUE MORE GREEN CARDS! We do not mention Green Cards every time we write about this "high skills" debacle because we don't have time to write 300-page treatises debunking these claims each and every time you and your colleagues decide to write another article full of cheap shots aimed at American workers! And besides, have you Googled "Green Cards high tech skills shortage" lately? I came up with 805,000 results!

During the massive KoolAid-sipping debauchery amongst corporations in the 1990's, the decision was made to lower costs by downsizing thousands of experienced American professionals, and either replace them with lower cost H-1B or L-1 visa employees, or just to ship the jobs outright overseas and be done with them, once and for all. Surprise, surprise. We now ONLY HAVE A SHORTAGE of professionals who are perfectly matched for each and every esoteric little high tech position being created, and students, who are smarter than Bill Gates and his Strong American Schools cohorts realize, are REFUSING to major in technical career fields after having seen an entire generation of tech workers given the shaft and having no reason to believe it could never happen again.

U.S. corporations made their beds, now make them sleep in them! Just like the American households that must live with the consequences of their spending habits, U.S. companies should be forced to live with the available American talent pool that their policies have repeatedly diluted and destroyed over the past 15 years. Don't let these guys off the hook by letting them bring in workers from overseas.

I don't have time for any more of this nonsense. Tomorrow I'm going on a fall color tour. Don't anyone DARE try to publish another one of these phony talent shortage articles while my back is turned!

(Cross-posted at Carrie's Nation.)