H1B Work Visas

[SHRED]

I've noticed in all the talk about tightening up who comes to this country I haven't heard one word about these particular work visas.
You know, the foreign workers that corporations in the high tech field love to exploit and drive down wages with.

Have you heard anything?

[valerief]

1. Just that corporations want MORE H1Bs.

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/tech-demands-more-h-1b-visas-critics-cry-foul-n77161

[Wilms]

2. Meet Bernie Sanders, H-1B skeptic

Meet Bernie Sanders, H-1B skeptic

The H-1B visa issue rarely surfaces during presidential races, and that's one thing that makes the entrance of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) into the 2016 presidential race interesting.

snip

Sanders is skeptical of the H-1B program, and has lambasted tech companies for hiring visa holders at the same time they're cutting other staffers. He's especially critical of the visa's use by providers of IT services that are headquartered overseas.

"Last year, the top 10 employers of H-1B guest workers were all offshore outsourcing companies," Sanders said in a Senate speech in 2013. "These firms are responsible for shipping large numbers of American information technology jobs to India and other countries."

snip

There are some companies "in some parts of the country that are unable to attract American workers to do the jobs that are needed," said Sanders. But he has also cited a Government Accountability Office report that states that just over half of the H-1B workers are employed in entry-level jobs. And he has cited other studies that suggest that H-1B workers are paid less than U.S. citizens in similar positions.

If Sanders can pick up enough support to become a true national candidate, he could stand in sharp contrast to his current chief rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, the onetime Democratic senator from New York and former secretary of state under President Barack Obama. Clinton has previously voiced support for an increase in the cap on H-1B visas.

Sanders is more likely than other candidates to raise the H-1B issue. For candidates who support raising the cap, the only real upside to discussing the H-1B visa program is as a way to solicit donations from the tech industry. This issue, otherwise, is far too polarizing among tech workers to make championing a cap increase something to remind voters about.

snip

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2916827/it-outsourcing/bernie-sanders-h-1b-skeptic.html

[Warpy]

3. Not while corporations can get 'em cheap

and use them to undercut US wages. Everybody in power will be silent as a tomb about those.

[madfloridian]

4. Interesting link about teachers and these visas.

I wrote several posts about these visas and teachers, but when I linked the posts were not there. They were here at DU during the last few years, but now I get an error message. I know they were not locked or hidden, so maybe the archives are down.

Here is an article I linked to once.

http://www.today.com/id/44708445/ns/today-today_news/t/foreign-teachers-american-dreams-vanish-flash/#.Vmoafr8cfbc

“It’s about your life … changing suddenly without warning,” said Raymundo, a 47-year-old from Manila, recalling the recent job-search expedition across the U.S. “We are not citizens, we are not green card holders … it’s not like you just pack your things and you move onto the next street or you move onto the next state, our home is (thousands of) miles away.”

Raymundo is one of nearly 1,050 foreign teachers caught in the middle of a Byzantine workplace dispute between the Prince George’s County (Md.) Public Schools and the U.S. Labor Department over the former’s recruiting under a temporary worker visa program.

But in an unforeseen irony, their lives also have been ripped apart as the result of an international talent hunt prompted by the 2001 passage of the No Child Left Behind Act — the educational centerpiece of the presidency of George W. Bush.

The teachers — most of them from the Philippines, but also from Chile, Colombia, India and the Caribbean — found out by email in April that the school district might not be able to sponsor them again amid a Labor Department investigation of its participation in the federal H-1B program, which allows employers to bring foreign workers into the country temporarily to fill specialty occupations.

Prince George County recruited a lot of them, claiming a teacher shortage. I believe many went to charter schools. There may be a teacher shortage now, because who wants to enter teaching right now. But when this was written, I doubt there was.

The Filipino teachers said they were drawn to Prince George’s County, just outside Washington, D.C., by officials from the school district — one of the nation’s biggest, with 198 schools, more than 127,000 students and nearly 18,000 employees — who went to the Philippines to recruit them through a local job-placement agency.

Many counties laid off teachers with tenure and seniority and hired TFA teachers or H1B recruits.

[antigop]

5. today's WSJ blog

http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2015/12/10/is-the-u-s-going-to-slash-the-number-of-h-1b-visas-it-issues/

Is the U.S. Going to Slash the Number of H-1B Visas It Issues?

Another month, another U.S. bill aimed at cracking down on Indian outsourcing firms.

Two U.S. senators have filed legislation that would cut the number of skilled-worker permits, known as H-1B visas, the Department of Homeland Security issues to 70,000 from 85,000– a reduction of some 17%.

Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat from Florida, said Tuesday in a statement that the bill he and Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions are proposing also stipulates that the government give the visas based on salary, rather than via a lottery.

This is designed to target outsourcing firms “that rely on lower-wage foreign workers to replace equally-qualified U.S. workers,” according to Mr. Nelson’s statement.

[madfloridian]

6. Here's some more facts and figures about charter school hiring and H1B. Gulen charters.

These schools are taxpayer supported financially, as charter schools are. It's like turning public money over to private sectors...in this case Turkey.

http://perimeterprimate.blogspot.com/2010/07/gulen-schools-and-their-booming-h1b.html

The Cosmos Foundation, which operates approximately 27 Gulen schools in Texas, ranked #1 with 521 visa applications. These schools are heavily, but not exclusively, staffed with Turkish and Turkic teachers. The administrators and founders are nearly exclusively Turkish males.
To contrast, Global Teachers Research Resources (a teacher headhunting organization) ranked #2 with 325 visa applications. GTRR’s newsletters reveal a wide range of teacher nationalities.
Further investigation is likely to reveal that close to 100% of the visa applications of the Gulen schools and their related organizations will be for individuals from Turkey.
Public school districts also applied for visas. In fact, seven of the top-20 largest school districts in the country were also top-100 sponsors for visa applications. These seven districts represent nearly 2,900,000 students attending approximately 3,831 schools. (Table 2)
When averaged, seven of the top-20 largest school districts in the country submitted one H1B visa application for every 6.2 schools.
The average number of visa applications for the Gulen schools was 13.5 H1B visa applications per school!

The hypothesis which has been presented elsewhere in the blogosphere is that the Gulenists operating the charter schools and their related organizations use “teacher shortage” as their rationale for bringing more and more fellow Hizmet volunteers (A.K.A. Gulen missionaries) into the U.S. It is important to note that – unlike a more typical teacher headhunting organization – these schools exclusively seek only those foreign teachers who are Turkish or Turkic, and primarily male. And as more and more Gulen schools are established, the number of Gulen missionaries working as Turkish charter school teachers -- courtesy of all those H1B visas -- can continue to grow. Ten more Gulen charter schools are scheduled to open this coming fall.*

[madfloridian]

7. Deleting duplicate post...getting a lot of those lately.

Last edited Thu Dec 10, 2015, 10:34 PM - Edit history (1)

[Scuba]

8. Hillary is on record as wanting more H1B Visas and, apparently, the lower wages that come with them.

[bigwillq]

9. We should end the H1B Visas program (nt)