TheFreeLunch

Billionaire

Welfare Queens

Welfare for billionaires? Absolutely. IT billionaires want Congress to print millions of green cards, worth hundreds of billions of dollars, for IT firms and universities to "give away" in exchange for labor or tuition. No study has ever shown a shortage of trained Americans ready to work, but the best and brightest are not encouraged by wages that have not increased in the last fifteen years or careers that end at age 35. Millions of US citizens are out of work, yet the IT industry wants to bring in more millions of workers to drive wages even lower. Our "crony capitalists" and their rented best friends in Congress want to socialize the cost of labor by trading green cards for campaign funds.

The people who will benefit most from the immigration bill don't pick tomatoes, they are people like Marc Zuckerberg (Facebook), Bill Gates (Microsoft),Robson Walton (Wal-Mart), Larry Ellison (Oracle), and Warren Buffet (Berkshire Hathaway). Congress has received huge amounts in campaign donations and they need to make those “investments” pay off. The high tech industry wants Congress to continue to socialize their costs of labor, and expand it, making you and your children bear the cost of lost educational advantages, lower wages, and “careers” that last less than ten years. Nobel economist Milton Friedman "There is no doubt that the [H-1B] program is a benefit to their employers, enabling them to get workers at a lower wage, and to that extent, it is a subsidy." Donors to political campaigns don't just expect to get their money back, they are not paying Congress to get good government, they want much more; "On Monday [20 March], Congressional investigators unveiled a detailed report showing how Apple subsidiaries based in Ireland but spanning other regions had helped the company pay as little as one-twentieth of 1 percent in taxes on billions of dollars in income." saving $7.7 billion on 2011.

The new immigration bill will decide if you pay for driving your own wages down, or if those who benefit from your lower wages pay the price of providing the public benefits new immigrants need. It costs over $200,000 to take two children from Head Start to a high school diploma, and the last thing working families need are more people looking for work. Not only does Congress want many more people looking for work they want you to pay for the public benefits those immigrants need. Socializing their cost of labor, rewarding our worst employers. If they do that, paying lower wage workers with green cards that will cut wages, cost the taxpayer billions. Cheating our children is putting two-thirds of college graduates in debt, and putting them at a disadvantage for their entire lives.

Wall Street, with millions out of work, wants to increase pressure on wages.

Worse than welfare for billionaires is damaging our security; at a time when Chinese hackers have accessed files showing the names of people the US considers may be spying for foreign powers, information that gives spies a chance to destroy incriminating evidence, or leave the country, Congress is taking actions that discourages US citizens from working in the high tech industry, putting our present and future security at risk.

“No new taxes”? Just kidding, Congress plans to raise your taxes: A tax is anything that creates a greater burden on you. It can be,the loss of your job, the loss of the tech industry to India or China, less clean air, more low wage workers needing part of your social security benefits that you paid for over 30 years. A cut in your benefits) is a tax, no matter what they call it, and if you did not have it in (say) 2007, it is a new tax. Congress has been piling taxes on you, but call them something else; your furlough is “deficit reduction”, all taxes on you, but they refuse to tax billionaire hedge fund managers at your tax rate.

Let's look at some of the many ways Congress increases your burden:

1. Using immigration to hold down or cut your wages.
2. Removing the benefit from your paying for higher education (H-1B visas).
3. Paying immigrants with public benefits that you pay more for than Wall Street does.
4. A “wealth tax on 100% of your wealth, but less than 1% of Mark Zuckerberg's
5. Cutting your benefits, but not the taxes you pay; pay the same but get less.
6. Loaning banks trillions at less than 1%, while you pay high credit card rates.
7. A low minimum wage, less than a living wage, that favors hiring illegal immigrants.
8. Telling you, “We can't tax pollution, that would make the cost of electricity go up”.
9. Potemkin Village agencies, IRS, OSHA, EEOC, and the rest that do little or nothing.
10. Rewarding those with billions of income with rates barely higher than payroll taxes.

Some examples (ther are plenty more):

1. Profits v. Wages: Alan Greenspan, “Illegal immigration has contributed significantly to the growth of the U.S. economy in recent years; these immigrants serve as a flexible component of our workforce that can be quickly hired during good times and discharged when the economy slows. The economy would also benefit from increasing the number of skilled legal immigrants allowed into the country.”
Note when Greenspan says “economy” he means profits, not the general good, or even the gross domestic product (GDP), which is raised by consumer spending rather than investment in China. Pro-immigration advocates admit that immigrants drive wages down, but they say it is limited to $1,000 per worker (just 50 cents per hour worked is just unbelievable). The bottom 40% of US workers have family net worth of less than $1,000, so even losing $1,000 each year hurts them. Lowering the bottom wages, increases the need for public benefits, and cuts all wages.

Greenspan does not consider the future costs of illegal aliens (social security, Medicare, family reunification) nor th costs of unemployment.) Cutting the wages of bottom 40% of workers, the poorest, costs them more than $100 billion per year. Lacking illegal aliens, if employers had to pay a living wage ($13.22 in NVA) rather than the minimum wage ($7.25) often paid illegal workers, the average wage of the bottom 40% would rise by about $4, not the $1 estimated by pro-immigration advocates, so illegal immigrants are costing legal workers somewhere between $100 billion and $240 billion each year, money that would be spent in local stores, giving us more bang for he buck (GDP) than would tax cuts for the 1%.

2. lost education benefit: You send child to schools you pay real estate taxes to build and support, and she goes on to get a degree in a STEM subject, perhaps in computer science. Now that young woman can not get a job because Facebook or Wal-Mart as brought in workers on H-1B visas. Of current college graduates, 38% can not get a job needing a college degree. Their investment in higher education is being lost and many can not repay their loans.”Two-thirds of college seniors who graduated in 2011 had student loan debt, with an average of $26,600 per borrower... At least 38 million borrowers at all stages of life hold a total of more than $1 trillion in outstanding education loan debt, including federal and private undergraduate, graduate, and parent loans”. http://projectonstudentdebt.org/ and Student loan debt, by the numbers - The good jobs do not exist, but the loans live on.

3. More public benefits needed: Nearly two-thirds of the illegal immigrants in the United States are low-skill, low-education, and low-income residents who receive significantly more public benefits than they pay in taxes. The economic benefits brought by these immigrants do not outweigh their costs (legal residents are similar, the point is we can't afford more). Making illegal aliens legal means higher taxes or diluted benefits for citizens (economist Paul Krugman suggests taxes will not be raised, benefits for all citizens will be cut).

4. The Real Wealth Tax; Real Estate Taxes: When Edward N. Wolf wrote “Top Heavy, A Sudy of the Increasing Inequality of Wealth in America” proposing a modest tax on wealth, Wall Street howled, “... Wolff's book has been the target of an astonishing barrage of conservative attacks: Multiple op-eds in The Wall Street Journal ("What Wealth Gap?." asked Michael Novak on July 11), hostile book reviews and so on. Why should such a mild-mannered little volume provoke such rage? ...conservatives don't want the public to know too much because they fear it would hurt them politically.” (- Paul Krugman, “The Accidental Theorist” p52 1998). We need not argue how “the top 20 percent of households in the United States [came to] own 85 percent of the marketable wealth”, in order to ague that they should pay the same taxes as the bottom 80 percent pay on what is usually 100% of their wealth: 1.5% real estate taxes. That most people pay on the only thing of real value that they own, their homes. Why should the super rich pay at least the same taxes we pay? Most Americans, as Krugman points out, realize that many in our society have received gains that reflect luck or favors bought from Congress, and not their own efforts.

Congress could make the tax system more equitable by assuring the public that everyone pays the same wealth tax that 80% already pay (even renters pay as part of their rent.) People like Gates and Zuckerberg pay real estate taxes but even Gates $150 million house is less than 1% of his wealth, and he does not pay a wealth tax on stock or stock options, so your tax rate on what you own is likely 100 times higher than theirs.
5. Cutting benefits, but not taxes: Obama recently said he was willing to cut Social Security benefits. It does not take a genius to figure out that if your still have earn 15.3% for payroll taxes, but get fewer benefits, That is an increase in your burden, a tax. If you are laid off to help cut the deficit, that is a tax, if you get sick because Agriculture has laid off people who inspect food, that is a tax. Fewer benefits while you pay the same tax rates, is a tax increase. Why is that Congress can increase they burden on you, but not the burden on guys making $3 million a day. Think I made that number up? That is the average pay of the top 25 hedge fund managers. Their tax rate, 15%, is lower than what you have to earn to cover payroll taxes, 15.3% (you have earn both halves, the one you pay and the half the employer pays). "Phillip Bullock, the head of the company’s tax operations, confirmed that Apple Operations International has not paid U.S. corporate taxes in five years." Don't you wish tax laws were written for you?

6. Loaning banks trillions of dollars at less than 1 percent: Is a tax on you because the banks can “rent” the money out at for credit card debt, or invest it in the stock market, and any money you have in a savings account is earning less than inflation, it is worth less, and that is a tax on you. To help the banks, which already not that happy with. Big banks can borrow money through the Federal Reserve discount window at a rate of about 0.75%.The interest rate on federal subsidized Stafford student loans is set to increase from 3.4% to 6.8% on July 1st. The low rate offered banks like Goldman Sachs are intended to help mismanaged banks that made bad bets in the stock market “get well”. Rather than help you get well, Congress wants to lower your wage.

7. The low Minimum wage: You hear it often enough, “American citizens are unwilling to work hard, and do the dirty jobs.” The part you don't hear is this, “They won't do hard dirty jobs for less than a living wage; they won't work for what I want to pay.” But illegal aliens will, they have no choice and they can't complain if labor laws are broken and can't sue if they are injured by faulty equipment. This clearly rewards our worst employers, those who will not pay a living wage, and it punishes employers who hire US citizens and pay a wage that respects workers. Those illegal workers not only drive wages down, they drive payroll taxes down, and they want a share when they retire. If Congress wanted to the right thing for illegal aliens, they would let them sue our worst employers for discrimination in paying less than a living wage. Instead, Congress is planning rewarding our worst employers by having you take care of their employees when they retire or become disabled, and even take care of their parents.

8. Pollution taxes you: If you get sick from air pollution, and you might, you may find that diseases like cancer are a huge tax. When you get lower cost energy from a supplier that (say) burns coal, the low cost you pay comes tons of mercury being dumped into the air you breathe, on the land where you food is grown, and in water, where it tends to collect in fish. Pollution is a tax and if you add the cost of your electricity to the cost of the pollution, the real cost is as high as solar or wind energy today, and they will be lower in the future. The cost of pollution, to the public, is estimated at $94 billion every year. Coal fired electricity causes 38% as much damage to the economy as it adds value, and yet Congress will not address the issue in a coherent way (see study, “Environmental Accounting for Pollution in the United States Economy”(American Economic Review article) also see, Paul Krugman, "TheParty of Pollution" and Re-election Strategy Is Tied to a Shift on Smog

9. Potemkin Village agencies: The phrase “Potemkin village” comes from Russia, about 1780, “originally used to describe a fake village, built only to impress. The phrase is now used, typically in politics and economics, to describe any construction (literal or figurative) built solely to deceive others into thinking that some situation is better than it really is.” That describes many of our government agencies that have been hollowed out by the industries they are supposed to regulate and a Congress that is owned by business and does not want them to regulate anyway. The the “revolving door' moves business executives from industries to regulators and back. In June 2009 the Obama administration tapped a BP executive to serve as a deputy administrator for the Minerals Management Service (MMS). Interior Secretary Ken Salazar appointed Sylvia V. Baca . Prior to that she had spent eight years at BP. The MMS was responsible for management of BP's Deepwater Horizon well that started spewing into the Gulf of Mexico. Two weeks after BP's Macondo well blew out in the Gulf of Mexico, the federal government's Minerals Management Service finalized a regulation intended to control the undersea pressures that threaten deep water drilling operations. (Washington Post story August 24, 2010) Sadly, this is the way many agencies act, when Congress and the Presidents let industry make the appointments or write the bills.

10. How do hedge fund managers such low tax rates? They buy them. No panel of citizens or economists could find any justification for giving people who manage hedge funds, the top 25 averaging an income of $3 million day (a lottery winner of just one day's income, would pay tax rates twice as high). The people mange other people's investments, and up to half of those investments are actually a tax on the stock market (high frequency trading where “investments” usually last less than one minute, do those people really deserve rates of 20% when your payroll and income tax take a bigger bite out of what you earn? Most people who have looked at say “no”, and here a a very good reason, absent those tax give-aways, your rate could be lower, or the deficit be less.”But because of the financial lobby’s clout, the loophole most likely won’t be closed. If it isn’t, shame on both parties for giving us another reason to distrust our democracy and our capitalist system. While the tax legislation passed on Jan. 1 increased the top individual-income tax rate to 39.6 percent from 35 percent for couples making more than $450,000 and individuals making mo A re than $400,000, it left carried-interest income taxed at just 20 percent. “ (Costly and Unjust Perk for Financier s- NY Times)

How and why Congress plans to get away with increasing taxes on you:

As Joseph Stiglitz has said in Vanity Fair, “the banker Charles Keating was asked by a congressional committee whether the $1.5 million he had spread among a few key elected officials could actually buy influence. “I certainly hope so,” he replied. The Supreme Court, in its recent Citizens United case, has enshrined the right of corporations to buy government, by removing limitations on campaign spending. The personal and the political are today in perfect alignment. Virtually all U.S. senators, and most of the representatives in the House, are members of the top 1 percent when they arrive, are kept in office by money from the top 1 percent, and know that if they serve the top 1 percent well they will be rewarded by the top 1 percent when they leave office. By and large, the key executive-branch policymakers on trade and economic policy also come from the top 1 percent. When pharmaceutical companies receive a trillion-dollar gift—through legislation prohibiting the government, the largest buyer of drugs, from bargaining over price—it should not come as cause for wonder. It should not make jaws drop that a tax bill cannot emerge from Congress unless big tax cuts are put in place for the wealthy.

“Given the power of the top 1 percent, this is the way you would expect the system to work.” "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%" May 2011

The Congress know that there is no labor shortage in the tech world, that hundreds of thousands of STEM graduates are either unemployed or underemployed, and that the H-1B visa is just a way to drive down wages, even if it also endangers the security of this nation. They also know the pain caused by almost 16 million Americans being out of work, and yet they want to add a million more every year. Why don't they seem to understand?

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary [campaign contributions] depends upon his not understanding it!" _ Upton Sinclair

Low wage workers on H-1B visas (or illegal immigrants picking lettuce for less than a living wage) don't just drive down their labor rates, they drive down your wages, and any economist can show you how. Unemployed tech workers don't just go home to live with their parents, they look for work, and since they don't know how hard your job is to do,or they are younger have no children, they offer to do it for less than you are being paid. That is not a joke, that is EXACTLY what happens. When a bright young college graduate offers to do your job for less, your boss, who is not sure your job is really that hard, or exactly what you do, may not hire him/her but they don't need to give you a raise.

As Bob Dole said in a 1982 Wall Street Journal interview, “When those political action committees give money, they expect something in return other than good government. It is making it more difficult to legislate. We may get to a point where, if everybody is buying something with PAC money, we can't get anything done...Poor people don't make campaign contributions. You might get a different result if there were a 'Poor PAC' up here on Capital Hill.” The article was called “Cash Politics”.

Dole said that poor people are not represented by lobbyists, but it is not just the poor that don't have lobbyists, it is the 99% that Stiglitz refers to; the vast majority of Americans are not represented on Capital Hill. (Dole quote p148 “So Damn Much Money” Robert Kaiser 2009)

Carolyn Loachhead, "Green card plan for students stirs worry"
The giant immigration overhaul now moving through the Senate Judiciary Committee would do just that, with the intention of attracting the world's "best and brightest" to U.S. shores



"But like many past changes to immigration law, this one could have unforeseen consequences, critics warned, potentially turning U.S. universities into "green card mills" and providing a large new pipeline to permanent residency for foreign graduate students, at the same time discouraging Americans from entering the very fields where they are claimed to be in short supply.
"What it's going to do is induce universities to start selling green cards through their master's programs," said Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. "A master's program could be as short as 12 months. What you actually end up doing, I think, is creating very large flows of people who see a master's as a fairly inexpensive way to basically buy a green card." Ron Hira on Brookings report.
"The bill sets no cap on the number of these potential new green cards. It sets no quality standards for the degrees or for the universities and colleges that would grant them. It bypasses the usual requirements that employers seeking green cards for their workers demonstrate that they have sought U.S. workers first." For more information on science careers and the damage from H-1B, see, http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/

Senator Mark Warner at 202-224-2023 - Senator Tim Kaine at (202) 224-4024

TweekImigration

Facebook:

"Fire Americans”

“The industry also hopes to get more from the deal by working to remove some regulatory restrictions in the proposal, including on hiring foreign workers and firing Americans.” NY Times

 

Remember that the H-1B visa program was designed in 1989 to depress US wages for tech firms and the National Science Foundation (NSF) said that this would distort the market, turn U.S. citizens away from science and math,yet we still graduate twice as many STEM students as the industry will hire, hundreds of thousandsare out of work, and still Facebook will not hire US engineers, and Microsft allows H-1B visa holders to choose which Americans are laid off.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/tech-lobby-pushes-for-tweaks-to-immigration-bill/

Tech Lobby Pushes for Tweaks to Immigration Bill

By SOMINI SENGUPTA
 
“Lobbyists for the technology industry, having gained much of their wish list in the immigration bill drafted in the Senate, are now pushing to modify language they consider onerous.
“The Senate bill, which is scheduled for markup in the Judiciary Committee on Thursday[9 May], would allow Silicon Valley companies to bring in many more foreign computer specialists on temporary work visas through a program known as H-1B. The bill also places restrictions on how companies can hire and fire employees, which the industry’s representatives in Washington are trying to massage.
“For one, the industry is worried about a provision, inserted by some Senate Democrats, that would allow companies to hire a foreigner only if “an equally qualified American” is not available. The draft allows the Department of Labor to scrutinize hiring decisions, which the industry calls undue interference.
“The bill also contains language that compels companies to promise not to lay off American workers within three months of hiring foreign guest workers. Additionally, if a company like I.B.M. places a foreign worker at a client company’s site for a short-term project, the bill also requires the bank to prove it did not displace an American worker in the process.

“Lobbyists for Silicon Valley say those provisions are unworkable. They hope to persuade lawmakers to tweak the language to their advantage, even as they continue to aggressively lobby for the passage of the overall immigration package.”

Since 2004 foreign IT engineers have been the MAJORITY in the USA and there have been fewer jobs open to US citizens each year. Some organizations like Fannie,Mae, Homeland Security, and Facebook hire almost no American citizen engineers. We are clearly facing the loss of high technology as an American industry. You can't just sell it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2h013/05/05/us/politics/tech-firms-take-lead-in-lobbying-on-immigration.html?ref=sominisenguppta&_r=0

Latesttt Product From Tech Firms: An Immigration Bill

By ERIC LIPTON and SOMINI SENGUPTA

Published: May 4, 2013

“The advertising blitz reflects the sophisticated lobbying campaign being waged by technology companies and their executives.
“They have managed to secure much of what they want in the landmark immigration bill now pending in Congress, provisions that would allow them to fill thousands of vacant jobs with foreign engineers. At the same time, they have openly encouraged lawmakers to make it harder for consulting companies in India and elsewhere to provide foreign workers temporarily to this country.
“Those deals were worked out through what Senate negotiators acknowledged was extraordinary access by American technology companies to staff members who drafted the bill. The companies often learned about detailed provisions even before all the members of the so-called Gang of Eight senators who worked out the package were informed.

“We are very pleased with the progress and happy with what’s in the bill,” said Peter J. Muller, a former House aide who now works as the director of government relations at Intel. “It addresses many of the issues we’ve been advocating for years.”
Now, along with other industry heavyweights, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the technology companies are trying to make sure the law gets passed — which explains the political-style television advertising campaign, sponsored by a group that has revealed no details about how much money it gets from its individual supporters.

The industry also hopes to get more from the deal by working to remove some regulatory restrictions in the proposal, including on hiring foreign workers and firing Americans.

The profound transition under way inside Silicon Valley companies is illustrated by their lobbying disclosure reports filed in Congress. Facebook’s lobbying budget swelled from $351,000 in 2010 to $2.45 million in the first three months of this year, while Google spent a record $18 million last year.

The inconvenient facts that Congress ignores.

Case 1 2001 California CPA magazine article by Laurie Mason
(This article still exists, but access is limited to members of Calcpa. )

"A year ago Dinesh Ghandi, with a master's degree in computer science and six years of experience as a programmer went looking for job in the high tech industry. He posted his resume on various job Web sites. “To be frank, I got a lot of responses” says, Ghandi, 33. No surprise there, at the time the computer industry was begging for skilled programmers.

"The only thing that seemed to stand between Ghandi and his dream job, was his American citizenship. “I look like and H-1B person, and they called me because of my name” the native of India explains, “Then they asked me 'What is your status?' and I said, 'I am an American citizen.'” Once the companies learned that , he said the stopped calling. “It made me frustrated because I went through all the interviews, and then my final citizenship status comes into the picture.”

Case 2 Seattle Times May 4, 2013

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2020924182_h1bworkersxml.html

...Erickson, who graduated with a 3.52 GPA, has applied for more than 150 jobs, several of them at Microsoft. In February, he finally landed a job he enjoys as project manager for a Web-development company. But it’s only part time...A former Microsoft product manager was one of 1,400 people cut from the payroll in January 2009 as part of Microsoft’s first-ever company wide layoffs in the recession. The supervisors who eliminated her position were here on visas, as were two recent hires in her work group who dodged the downsizing.

Three weeks later, Artech Information Systems, a staffing firm, offered the product manager a three-month contract at Microsoft for what was essentially the same job she had left. The pay was $32 an hour, half her old salary.

Case 3 How to underpay H-1B workers; call them “beginning level”.
http://www.programmersguild.org/archives/howtounderpay.htm
In 2002, Bank of America replaced in-house programmers, earning salaries $70,000-$90,000, with H-1B workers they said were Beginning Level. Do you trust a bank that uses beginning level workers to program software to handle your accounts? In order to receive severance pay, the then current employees had to train their replacements.
“The Department of Labor provides an additional service to assist employers to depress wages in their on-line LCA system. There, employers can get a prevailing wage for Level 1 ("Beginning level employees") workers and Level 2 ("Fully competent employees") workers, which in this example are $41,246 and $69,618 respectively. So now the employer claims the H-1B workers are "Beginning level employees" and uses the lower wage as the prevailing wage.”

Case 4 Is Walmart in the “high tech, innovation,best and brightest industry?

http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/WalmartsVsWipros.txt

Dr. Norman Matloff, UC Davis:

“It turns out that Walmart is hiring, or at least asking DOL permission to hire, a number of H-1Bs under the job title Programmer Analyst. In fact, the firm has asked for more of them each year, 130 in the last year shown, 2011.

“Moreover, Walmart is using as its prevailing wage rate figures in the $50K and even $40K range. These are well below the average starting salary of new graduates in computer science, though as almost always is the case, fully legal.

“Interestingly, in this time of alleged tech labor shortage, the prevailing wage Walmart uses for Programmer Analyst has been pretty much on a DOWNWARD trend in the last five years.”

(if there was a labor shortage, in a capitalist economic system, don't the prices go up? Of course in a socialist system, you would pay with green cards giving them access to public benefits,)

Case 5 If There’s a Gap, Blame It on the Employer

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/07/09/does-a-skills-gap-contribute-to-unemployment/if-theres-a-skills-gap-blame-it-on-the-employer

Peter Cappelli is a professor of management and director of the Center for Human Resources at the Wharton School and the author of "Why Good People Can’t Get Hired: The Myth of the Skills Gap."

“Have you tried raising wages? If you could get what you want by paying more, the problem is just that you are cheap. The fact that I cannot find the car I want at the price I want to pay does not constitute a car shortage, yet a large number of employers claiming they face a skills shortage admit that the problem is getting candidates to accept their wage rates. If you can't find the right person for the job, chances are you're a bad manager, and maybe a bit too cheap.”

Case 6 It doesn’t add up. The press ignore hundreds of thousands unemployed.

http://www.cjr.org/essay/it_doesnt_add_up.php

Shah, an Indian-born US citizen with degrees in physics and engineering, had been laid off earlier by a computer company that was simultaneously hiring foreign workers on temporary visas...Figures from the National Institutes of Health, the National Academies, the National Science Foundation, and other sources indicate that hundreds of thousands of STEM workers in the US are unemployed or underemployed. But they are not organized, and their story is being largely ignored in the debate over immigration reform.

Case 7 Kirk Doran, an economist at the University of Notre Dame

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/10/us-usa-immigration-tech-idUSBRE9390CM20130410

"It is extraordinarily unlikely for a severe shortage to happen in a way that doesn't result in very large wage increases," said Kirk Doran, an economist at the University of Notre Dame who studies immigration and labor.
"We know what a labor shortage looks like: there should be both much lower unemployment than other professions and much higher wage growth. If either of these are not present, then I don't buy the shortage hypothesis."

Case 8 Do you think the 28-year-old inventor of an electronic hula hoop that is already losing market share, but has made him $13 billion, should also get to make immigration decisions that will cut your pay? He could not even get his own stock price set so that investors did not immediately lose money.
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/03/hed-facebook-founder-mark-zuckerberg-eyes-dc-push-89245.html#ixzz2OYqiE2Im

I am P. Harrison Picot, I have lived in Prince William County, Virginia, for the last 30 years. I was born in Richmond, VA, and have lived in this area most of my life. After getting out of college, I taught in high schools in New York City, and Alexandria, Va, for five years and then went into the construction industry, as an estimator, contractor, and later as a software programmer. I worked as a database administrator for many years, first with Oracle Corporation, and last with IRS at New Carrollton, MD, until I was displaced by a contractor using lower cost labor, likely on H-1B visas. I am concerned about jobs and the security of this nation in an age when technology is critical and we are denying our own best a brightest access to the community of technology workers on which our future security will be based.

This is Part 3 All parts are expanded and have live links on-line.

FacebookBuysCongress

Updated 20 May - added to end
Why Facebook

Bought Congress

And avoided offering engineering jobs to U.S. Citizens.

Facebook has a problem, they are close to having 15% of their total workforce on H-1B (non-immigrant) visa and if that happens, they will be legally “H-1B dependent” forced to offer engineering jobs to U.S. Citizens. Note that more than 95% of firms in the software business do not have 15% of their total workforce doing engineering at all, so most firms can have 100% of their engineers be on H-1B visas, and never need offer a job to a U.S. citizen. Firms like Google, Wall Mart, and Facebook want engineers to make private software applications, and private profits, that will never benefit you unless you go their store or visit their web site. Hundreds of thousands of STEM workers in the US are unemployed or underemployed, so why is Facebook asking you to furnish them with green cards to pass out so they can bring more in?

To solve their problem of too many H-1B engineers, Facebook needs to “graduate” many of their H-1B visa holders from non-immigrant H-1B status, to “Green card” immigrant status. So what they need now is a rather larges stack of green cards, worth at least $100,00 each, and where can they get them? Well, you can pay for the cards they give away.

The idea that members of Congress will do pretty much anything for money is not new.

In 2000, Rep. Tom Davis said," (H-1B) is not a popular bill with the public. It's popular with the CEOs." "This is a very important issue for the high-tech executives who give the money." Rep. Davis said his constituent mail was seven to one against H-1B. And in2008, then candidate Obama had dinner with CEOs seeking more H-1B visas and collected $7.8 million in campaign contributions. If you want to be re-elected, you don't take that kind of money and walk away.

In 1989, when the H-1B visa was created, the purpose was to drive down the costs of engineers with advanced degrees, leading to higher profits. The National Science Foundation warned that it would distort the market, leading to a loss interest in science by U.S. Students, and that is exactly what has happened. Tthe USA still graduates more than twice as many students with degrees in STEM subjects than the industry wants to hire (why pay in cash, when you can offer the taxpayer provided services that come with a green card? The same argument that farmers use to get their corps picked, “Be a slave now, and the taxpayer will pick up your retirement and health care.”) More than 70% of H-1B visas are to people who are certified by their employers as ordinary people who will be doing ordinary jobs you or your child could do.

 

he story about how Facebook and universities, are holding out their hands to get valuable bundles of green cards is as much about the failure of the press to investigate as it is a story about government for sale. The press too often listen to lobbyists and repeat as facts, things that are anecdotes that tell one person's story, but are not true for the industry.

The Columbia Journalism Review make these points, “Figures from the National Institutes of Health, the National Academies, the National Science Foundation, and other sources indicate that hundreds of thousands of STEM workers in the US are unemployed or underemployed. But they are not organized, and their story is being largely ignored in the debate over immigration reform...a narrative that has been skillfully packaged and promoted by well-funded advocacy groups as essential to the national interest, but in reality it reflects the economic interests of tech companies and universities.” Private profits, seeking to socialize the cost of labor.

http://www.cjr.org/essay/it_doesnt_add_up.php

If you want to be heard by Congress, what you need is money and the IT industry knows it.

"[We in tech] control massive distribution channels, both as companies and individuals...We have individuals with a lot of money. If deployed properly this can have huge influence in the current campaign finance environment" -- Joe Green, leader of Mark Zuckerberg's new immigration lobbying group.

You can't expect out of work STEM students to argue with Zuckerberg, or the lobbyists he sends to newspapers.

Here are few easy puncture myths the press repeat.

NY Times By SOMINI SENGUPTA Published: April 11, 2013

“Unemployment in the technology industry hovers below 4 percent, far less than the national average.” Proof that if you have a degree in computer science, lose your job, and are about to lose your house, you get a job doing anything. The same numbers are quoted for all college graduates and yet it has been reported that 38% of college graduates have jobs that do not require a degree, like stocking shelves at Wall Mart, BUT they are “employed.” 50% if IT grads do not get IT jobs, much of the cost of their education is wasted, “taxed” by underemployment.

“Supporters of the program point out that new H-1B workers admitted every year represent less than 1 percent of the total American work force.” Huhh? Cops, teachers, firemen, dentists are each less than 1% of the “ total American work force.” The entire IT engineering group is less than 1% of the “total American work force.” Since 2004, immigrants have been the MAJORITY engineering workers in IT, holding more 80% of the jobs in the DC area.

“Immigrants start more companies than do average Americans” Not apples to apples. Every programmer starts a company; after Microsoft had a problem with contractors demanding (and winning) the stock benefits of employees, Microsoft and most others will not deal with individuals, only with corporations (who can not claim to be employees, but can contribute to elections.) On the other hand, skilled workers at Ford do not start a car company. Starting a company is strongly related to the work you are doing. Ford will not hire a company that has only one employee; IT does.

 

Ask yourself, “What do these companies do that is worth letting them drive wages down, bribe Congress, and send the IT industry to India and China?” (We might need a bit for our own security).

The answer is “Nothing”. Google, Facebook, and often Microsoft, are sellers of applications, not inventors of technology. In fact, you can't name a single important thing that Microsoft has invented; give it try but leave out the Internet, word processing, the graphic user interface, spread sheets, the browser, relational databases, web pages, HTML, and everything else: they did not invent it. They sell applications. Facebook is to technology what a hula hoop is to plastic. If you don't know what a hula hoop is, that is my point, exactly (in programming we say, “What Algol68 was to Algol.” Exactly.) In fact most of those innovations were paid for by the U.S. or E.U. Governments (Internet, browser, WWW web pages) and spread sheets were invented at a university and given away free. Al Gore did sponsor legislation to create the Internet (but never said he “invented” it) and we, the taxpayers, paid for it, but why do we want to pay for Facebook?

Who is going to pay now?

Immigration reform is feeding frenzy for lobbyists. A new report by the Heritage Foundation estimates the cost at $3 trillion over 50 years. That figure can never be confirmed but the fact that Congress is not willing to discuss the costs at all has to be worrying (we rushed into Iraq and that also seems to be costing $3 trillion. Let's do better this time.)

We also understand that Wall Street expects to get anything from the reform, and not the bill. Someone other than Wall Street and corporate profits will be hit to cover the costs, and is , or should be, our right to hear a frank discussion of costs. If you want one, you need to call your representative and insist on it. Somebody has done the math, someone will pay for it. As Warren Buffet has said, “If you don't know who the fool in the room is, it is you.” We can't keep on being Congress's fool, we can no longer afford it.

Economist Joseph Stiglitz has said that nothing comes out of Congress unless it has a present for Wall Street, and considering how our campaign financing works that is what we expect.

Economist Paul Krugman has said we can not afford open boarders and the public services we call a “safety net”. If a liberal thinks that, shouldn't we be asking questions? Krugman has also said that out-of-work college graduates today are likely to never catch up (entering the workforce two years later is not something you catch up from).

Walmart is hiring, or at least asking DOL permission to hire, a number of H-1Bs under the job title Programmer Analyst. In fact, the firm has asked for more of them each year, 130 in the last year shown, 2011. Walmart is using as its prevailing wage rate figures in the $50K and even $40K range. http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/WalmartsVsWipros.txt Walmart is looking for ordinary people to do ordinary work, for low wages and a valuable green card provides access to public benefits. Why would you want to help Wall Mart out? Why can't they hire 130 U.S. graduates?

 

The current H-1B visa system has already forced 500,000 U.S. Citizens out of the industry, leaving a majority of foreign workers (20% of whom will return to their homeland with that they have learned here). Do we want to have a policy that incentivizes our own best and brightest to avoid STEM careers? Will we be secure?

Every bill has winners and someone who pays. Often you can identify the winners and losers by where they are in a distribution of income. In the last 40 years, the bottom 40% have taken a real beating, the average family net worth for those two quintiles is less than $1,000. You can't get blood out of a stone, so the beatings seem to be moving up to take what the middle class has left. Do you really deserve an immigration plan that helps a guy, Mark Zuckerberg who already has $13 billion and agrees with Alan Grfeenspan that your wage is too high? Where is benefit for you? Your children?

Providing Wall Mart and Facebook with low cost labor that adds to public expenses, while our own children can not find work , is a bad Idea. We won't benefit from Facebook or Wall Mart software, so why are we paying for it?

Don't spend your children's future by helping Wall Mart and Facebook drive down U.S. wages. For one thing, Facebook is losing market share, they are just entertainment, not cancer research, and they may have already peaked. This is not the time invest in buying them software. Let them invent an act two, and if they can, let them keep the profits, and Wall Mart is the largest corporation in the USA today, let them start paying U.S. living wages.

Senator Mark Warner at 202-224-2023 - Senator Tim Kaine at (202) 224-4024

Update, thanks to comment by Ran Kaille, an excellant resource on this issue:

http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2013_04_05/caredit.a1300063

"Wouldn't you think that before taking a step with potentially momentous long-term consequences for important national institutions, leaders would try to discern the likely effects? If the subject is high-skilled immigration, that supposition would be wrong. With President Barack Obama pushing for action on immigration reform "as soon as possible," we may be only weeks away from congressional consideration of the widely touted proposal to "staple a green card" to every STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) graduate degree issued in the United States.

"Politicians promote this provision as a solution to a mythical technical talent shortage and a boost to innovation and economic growth. (As The Washington Post points out, they may also have in mind the massive political contributions and lobbying efforts by large employers of STEM workers.) Actual experts on the science labor force, however, see quite different possibilities: a financial bonanza for universities, economic benefits for employers, and even harder times ahead for STEM workers, who are already struggling.
"The incentives are all aligned to create massive downward pressures on the labor market" should "stapling" become a reality, says Hal Salzman of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. "It will lower costs in the labor market and effectively disincentivize people to go into [STEM] fields. It diminishes the quality of the jobs. The good Americans [will] go elsewhere."

"Salzman notes, however, that he can only estimate the likely scope of the fallout because, as he and co-authors Daniel Kuehn, a Ph.D. student at American University , and B. Lindsay Lowell of Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of International Migration, both in Washington, D.C., write in a forthcoming research study made available to Science Careers: "[T]here has been no comprehensive assessment of the potential impact this provision would have on colleges, students, or the workforce." Nonetheless, Saltzman believes, by extrapolating from the study's findings and considering what we know about postdoctoral appointments and certain visa programs, we can paint a probable picture of things to come.
....

A market transformed

Entitled Guestworkers in the U.S. Labor Market: Analysis of Supply and Employment Trends of the IT Workforce and scheduled for publication by the Economic Policy Institute later this month, the study examines the "best available evidence" about the effects of high-skilled foreign workers on a particular segment of the STEM labor market. It finds that "the STEM and IT labor markets appear to be responsive to standard economic signals of wage levels and unemployment rates." During the 1990s tech boom, for example, "the IT industry was able to attract increasing numbers of domestic graduates during periods of rising wages and employment, leading to a peak in wages and numbers of computer science graduates in the early 2000s."
Since then, however, a large and continuing flow of foreign IT workers on temporary visas has caused drastic change. "The IT industry [now] appears to be functioning with two distinct market patterns: a domestic supply (of workers and students) that responds to wage signals (and other aspects of working conditions such as future career prospects) and a guestworker supply that appears to be available independent of standard wage and employment signals, plentiful even when wages decline or are stagnant. … [T]he flow of guestworkers from low-wage countries appear[s] to provide firms access to labor … in plentiful supply at wages … too low to induce increased supply from the domestic workforce."  
After rising rapidly during the dot-com boom, "wages in IT have been flat for about 12 years," Salzman says. "Wages today are what they were in 1998–99." As a result, science "[i]s not thought of as a good career."
The effects on domestic workers have been unfavorable, the study finds. A year after receiving their degrees, for example, a third of domestic computer science graduates and almost half of domestic engineering graduates do work unrelated to their major fields. Half of these computer science graduates say they found a better job doing something else; a third say they could find no IT job. Guestworkers, meanwhile, constitute "between a third to a half of the number of all new IT job-holders," the study states.
It is apparent that depressed wages and career opportunities have discouraged Americans from pursuing IT and other STEM careers, but the inestimable benefit of entry into the United States makes guestworker jobs attractive to many hundreds of thousands of foreigners.
The chance to gain permanent residence simply by earning a degree would be a far more powerful draw, Salzman predicts.
.....

(follow link to see the whole article)

Drop_Dead

Note: This headline proved too hard to work with as a first hand out (at 6am, not as many people as you might think want to read something that starts with "Drop Dead) so the lead was changed.)
Message from

John Warner and Tim Kaine

To Classes of 2013,2014, 2015 -

“Drop Dead!”

Here are some real facts that the Class of 2013 and later classes will face:only 38 percent of new PhDs, 50 percent of new master’s graduates, and 33 percent of new bachelor’s graduates are in full time jobs. Overall, STEM unemployment in the US is more than twice its pre-recession level.⁽¹⁾

And how to Kaine and Warner offer to help? By giving billionaires and universities bundles of green cards.

The Gang of 8 immigration bill [now being discussed] would give an UNLIMITED number of green cards to ALL foreign students earning advanced degrees in STEM at U.S. schools, with NO labor certification No requirement NOT to displace a U.S. citizens]. All they would be required to have is a job offer "in a related field" (clerk at Radio Shack?), and they get the green card right away. The potential for gaming the system would be enormous, but even that would pale in comparison to the impact on the STEM job market. Wages, already stagnant would drop considerably. The remark by Georgetown University's Anthony Carnevale, “If you’re a high math student in America, from a purely economic point of view, it’s crazy to go into STEM” would be greatly magnified. The Dickensian conditions for lab scientists found by y the federal National Institutes of Health last year would become absolutely untenable.⁽²⁾

Why would Kaine and Warner invite more workers to compete with our out of work children? Money. "[We in tech] control massive distribution channels, both as companies and individuals...We have individuals with a lot of money. If deployed properly this can have huge influence in the current campaign finance environment" -- Joe Green, leader of Mark Zuckerberg's new immigration lobbying group. ⁽³⁾

Sources: (1) Columbia Journalism Revue, “It Doesn't Add Up.” May 1, 2013

                                 http://www.cjr.org/essay/it_doesnt_add_up.php

Dr. Norman Matloff, UC Davis (2) http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/BenderlyColumbia.txt
                                                  (3)  http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/Quotes.txt 

Links at: http://virginia10th.blogspot.com/

losttech

In 1989 the National Science Foundation warned that the H-1B visa program to bring in low wage workers to replace US programmers and engineers would distort the market, leading US students to abandon science and technology. In 1995 students were told IT was goo job. By 2004 the San Jose Mercury News reported that 50% of U.S. tech workers have been displaced from the profession by workers getting a green card in lieu of average wages. No inventor works alone, many in a community contribute parts to every invention. Increasingly US students are being denied access to the IT community as the USA loses leadership in technology.

Who Lost Tech?

1989 H-1B legislation says that firms with less than 15% of their total workforce are H-1B visa holders, are not H-1B dependent,and need not offer engineering jobs to US citizens. Note that that in more than 95% of software firms, engineers do not make up 15% of workers (most are in sales, or general office support). Workers employed by contractors are not counted so 100% of engineering labor can be H-1B visa holders, and the firm be, by rule, be H-1B independent.

In 2000 a member of Congress showed how legislation is bought. "This [H-1B expansion legislation] is not a popular bill with the public. It's popular with the CEOs...This is a very important issue for the high-tech executives who give the money"--Rep. Tom Davis, was then Chair of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee. His constituents were 7:1 against H-1B.

2008 "...a Ph.D. in computer science is probably a financial loser in both the short and long terms, says [Cisco Systems Vice President for Research] Douglas Comer" -- Science Careers.

Should your son or daughter study engineering? "The half life of an engineer, hardware or software, is only a few years" -- former Intel CEO/Chairman Craig Barrett

2008 candidate Barack Obama raises $7.8 million in one night from CEOs of tech firms wanting more H-1B visas to cut labor cost, they claimed a shortage of workers.

"It is extraordinarily unlikely for a severe shortage to happen in a way that doesn't result in very large wage increases" -- Kirk Doran, University of Notre Dame economist, commenting on the minuscule rate at which software developer wages are rising.

2009 Greenspan says legal and illegal immigration cut middle class wages, a “good” thing.

February 2013, "We thus see that no best and brightest trend was found for the former foreign students in either computer science or electrical engineering," Matloff writes in his report. "On the contrary, in the CS case the former foreign students appear to be somewhat less talented on average, as indicated by their lower wages, than the Americans."

2013 “We [in tech] control massive distribution channels, both as companies and individuals...We have individuals with a lot of money. If deployed properly this can have huge influence in the current campaign finance environment" -- Joe Green, leader of Mark Zuckerberg's new immigration lobbying group that wants more immigrant labor, while Fannie Mae and Homeland Security have engineering that is close to 100% H-1B and H-1B graduates, hiring almost no one born n the USA.

April 2013 Congress writes new immigration bill with help of an immigration law firm that advised employers on how to NOT hire US citizens, a bill that provides more green cards so Facebook and avoid becoming H-1B dependent and thus be forced to offer jobs to US citizens.

Congress lost tech, and in the search for campaign funds, put the USA at risk.

AskCongressH-1B

Congress is not comfortable with the facts about H-1B or just do not know any.
Frankly, are members of Congress are not comfortable when asked to show the benefits from any of their actions, or the money the spend? Asking for the benefits from H-1B is is like asking for the benefits from the war on drugs or the invasion of Iraq. Congress acts like a small business selling off the assets of their constituents, rather than being expected to show a profit from the billions spent.

Ask your congressman to show how you have benefited from the 20+ years of the H-1B program driving down wages in the tech ndustry, driving down wages in an area that was touted as a good investment for students 20 years ago, 10 years ago, but not today.  How did Congress keep those investments in tech careers from paying off?

Congress has a very low approval rating. They did not earn that from listening to you.
Congress Holding Steady at 15%

Here are three  quotes that say their investment in H-1B for you is not paying off (but maybe your Senator has facts he wants to share with you?)

"...a Ph.D. in computer science is probably a financial loser in both the short and long terms, says [Cisco Systems Vice President for Research] Douglas Comer" -- Science Careers, April 11, 2008 

 "GAO noted that... the availability of foreign H-1B post-docs may discourage US students from earning biomedical degrees because of typically lengthy post-docs at relatively low wages" -- Conference Report, Dynamics of the STEM Labor Market, Georgetown University, 2011

"It is extraordinarily unlikely for a severe shortage to happen in a way that doesn't result in very large wage increases" -- Kirk Doran, University of Notre Dame economist, commenting on the minuscule rate at which software developer wages are rising. More H-1B Quotes

Ask your senator to show you your return on investment (ROT) for 20 years of low tech wages and careers that do not last 10 years.

Ask your Senator:

You represent all your constituents, not just the 1%, and you support H-1B, a program that has been running for more than 20 years, a generation. In 1989 the National Science Foundation  said that it would discourage US citizens from getting degrees and jobs in science, and now many federal agencies appear to be staffed with almost 100% foreign born technical workers.

1. What evidence do you have that that your average constituent benefits from this program when it appears they are shut out of much of the spending of their tax dollars to obtain technical service? Where is the proof this program benefits them?  Where are the test results? How many agencies pay more foreign born technical workers than USA born workers?  What are the percentages?

There have been billions of dollars of wages lost by US citizens, to support a program.  Had that program been called "Clean Water", you would be showing us the water was cleaner, or we we would know the money was wasted.

2. You say we need foreign graduates with advanced degrees, but can you show that advanced degrees in STEM subjects pay off for US citizens?

 "...a Ph.D. in computer science is probably a financial loser in
both the short and long terms, says [Cisco Systems Vice President for
Research] Douglas Comer" -- Science Careers, April 11, 2008

3. Does evidence  show that there are there real careers in computer science, when a CEO of Intel has said that "the half-life of a programmer is two years."?

4. for the majority of your constituents, where is the beef in H-1b? The return on their loss of income to foreign workers?

5. Can you show students in your district a financial benefit?

6. what genius scientific breakthrough has Google made? Face book? Isn't their genius presentation, not technical? Just good advertising?

Why does Congress want to ignore you?  Maybe these quotes answer that: money talks:

"[We in tech] control massive distribution channels, both as companies and individuals...We have individuals with a lot of money. If deployed properly this can have huge influence in the current campaign finance environment" -- Joe Green, leader of Mark Zuckerberg's new immigration lobbying group

In 2000, Rep. Tom Davis said," (H-1B) is not a popular bill with the public. It's popular with the CEOs." "This is a very important issue for the high-tech executives who give the money." Rep. Davis said his constituent mail was seven to one against H-1B.

H1B_Brightest

A Know-Nothing Congress

Sometimes we forget, or want to, that we did not elect geniuses in every subject to Congress, we elected people we hoped would be good managers, like the simplest company can hire to handle purchases, and they would gather facts and spend our money wisely. Of course, that simple business would fire any manager that accepted gifts or any sort of benefit from salesmen, so that is not the kind of manager we got; we got the ones that accept and even demand gifts and are not upset that only 13% of the citizens think they are trust worthy.  They know they can lie to us with half truths, and use our money to pay back campaign contributors, and we can't get them fired because they own the microphone.

H-1B is an issue that would get them fired if that was possible, here is what they say they learned from their hearings (hearings look like evidence gathering, like you might see in a court, but the rules would make Judge Roy Bean blush.)

What Congress tells us they learned from taking money from lobbyists and then listening to them (I am not joking, John Kerry said that if you get the money first, then they are not paying you for a favour. If that was so, 95% of drug sale convictions would be thrown out)

If you think that in a capitalist economic system that companies compete on wage and offer workers more money to get better workers, and do not offer public services (the rights you get with a green card) as an inducement to come to the USA to work, you can forget that; these companies expect the tax payer to educate the children of their foreign workers, and after citizenship and "family reunification", they expect the taxpayer to take care of those expenses, thus socializing the cost of their labour, just as banks expect that  the taxpayer will take care of their gambles on the housing bubble. Socialized expenses, but private profits. Do you really need to give up a raise this year so that the billionaires at Google, Microsoft, Face Book, and Oracle can take home a few more million?


What they heard:
1. There is a shortage of skilled engineers.  Not a shortage of engineers willing to accept the low wages they are offering, but a real shortage.
2. The skills they need are not available from US citizens, only the citizens of low wage countries like India and China.
3. The only people that have those skills want green cards and to come to the USA, and have the US taxpayer, not the employer, provide them services.
4. US schools are horrible, a disgrace. Ignore the fact that foreign geniuses want to bring their children here and put them in those schools.
5.  Indians and Chinese are smarter than Americans.
6. The H-1B makes the US more competitive by bringing the world's best and brightest here, where they can work with other Indians and Chinese (not stupid Americans, right?)
7. The best and brightest are willing to work for Wall Mart for $35,000 which is less than the 1995 entry level wage for an IT college graduate.
8. Some Indians and Chinese are really good, everyone agrees on that.
 9. Indian and Chinese engineers make US business more profitable.

The facts are:
1. No reliable study has ever shown any lack of skilled Americans willing to work for wages similar to other professions with the same demands.
2. Many of the immigrants employers want to hire were trained in US universities by "old men" (over 30) that the industry does not want to hire.
3. US citizens will not accept a green card in lieu of wages, that is true.
4. There is no one US school.  US schools that are not burdened with illegal aliens are generally doing fine and the USA graduates many of the best scientists in the world.
5. You can prove that by looking at India and China, but no study shows that.
 There are billionaires in India and China, if these guys,and their pals are so smart, why are they here?
6. The H-1B program distorts the wage market (just as it is designed to do), and discourages US students from entering it (just exactly as the National Science Foundation said would happen in 1989).
7. If so how do we know that they are bright?
8. In the 500,000 US born engineers they replaced, there were also some really bright people, and everyone agrees that is true.
9. Indian and Chinese engineers deny jobs to US engineers on whom our future security and industry depend.

The facts are, the H-1B program is all about cutting middle class wages, just as Alan Greenspan said was good for Wall Street, and bad for workers.

It is just about wages, not a bit about the best and brighest, BUT it has replace more than 2 million Americans, who were willing to work hard for a decent wage, with 2 million lower wage, and often resentful, legal aliens.

Dr. Norman Matloff at the the University of California at Davis has analyzed government data and compared it to industry claims and found them wanting . What follows is an extract of his work, the full  text can be found at:
CohenAndGrigsbyPrevailingWage.txt

Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2007 21:33:22 -0700
From: Norm Matloff <matloff@cs.ucdavis.edu>
To: Norm Matloff <matloff@cs.ucdavis.edu>
Subject: Cohen & Grigsby and the prevailing-wage scam

To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter

I've constantly harped on the fact that the reason employers are so
anxious to hire foreign workers is that they use those workers as cheap
labor.  I've also repeatedly stressed the fact that the crux of the
abuse of the H-1B and employer-sponsored green card programs is the
LEGAL LOOPHOLES in the prevailing wage requirement which both of those
programs have.  These loopholes enable employers to pay their foreign
workers well below what they would have to pay Americans.  In short, the
legally-defined prevailing wage is typically well below the real market
wage.

Here I will give readers a further look at how Cohen & Grigsby, the law
firm in the YouTube scandal, makes use of these legal loopholes.  You'll
see some intriguing data, with big implications.  You'll also see
another egregious example of public statements by the firm which are 
exactly the opposite of their private actions.

I looked at all the PERM (green card) applications filed in 2004 by
Cohen & Grigsby for Software Engineer positions.  (This is from a Dept.
of Labor Web site, http://www.flcdatacenter.com/CasePerm.aspx  Note that
this is NOT the LCA data.  The salaries here are guaranteed to be the
actual salaries for specific workers.)

Here are the results, showing the actual salary, claimed prevailing wage
and employer name, sorted by salary:

   45000.000000 42390.000000 "Algor Inc."
   45150.000000 44762.000000 "Bayer Corporate and Business Services LLC"
   49504.000000 44762.000000 "Bayer Corporate and Business Services LLC"
   60980.000000 64189.000000 "Hexware Technologies

....  (see site for full data)

 
88000.000000 67621.000000 "Ansoft Corporation"
   110000.000000 70242.000000 "Ansoft Corporation"

Now, first of all, let's confirm what we already know.  Of the 83
entries, 74 are less than the OES mean for 2004, $77,330, for Software
Engineers, Applications, and 79 are less in the case of Software
Engineers, Systems Software.  Remember, this is perfectly legal, but
it certainly shows that these people are hired as cheap labor.

But I want to call your attention to something different.  I sorted the
data by salary in order to highlight the fact that there are a lot of
DUPLICATE ODDBALL SALARIES--for different employers.  In other words,
you have several employers offering exactly the same salary, in fact,
the same non-round-number salary.

For instance, 8 different companies, ranging from Bayer Corporate and
Business Services LLC to Union Switch & Signal Inc., ALL
"coincidentally" were paying their Software Engineers the SAME salary of
$64,420!

How come?  Well, prior to the law enacted in December 2004, employers
were allowed to pay 5% below prevailing wage.  And if you look at the
prevailing wages, in the second column above, you will see that that
$64,420 figure is exactly 5% below prevailing wage!  And if you look at
the other applications listed above, you'll see that most are also
exactly 5% below their prevailing wage.

Now, don't jump to conclusions here.  THIS 5% IS NOT AN INTERESTING
LOOPHOLE in its own right.  I'm not pointing to the fact that Cohen &
Grigsby was taking advantage of that extra 5%; that's nickel and dime
stuff.  No, look a little deeper.

What this data shows is a lack of a competitive market, with two
interesting implications:  

1.  We have a bizarre situation in which "the tail is wagging the dog."
The law firm is telling the employers how much to pay their workers!
And it's telling them all to pay the same amount.

2.  The Americans hired by these companies undoubtedy vary from each
other in their salaries, because they can negotiate.  In other words,
you see that THE FOREIGN NATIONALS ARE IN NO POSITION TO NEGOTIATE.
This shows yet another way in which the employers can get away with
paying foreign workers less than Americans.

 Please recall that the prevailing wage is typically a lowball figure to
begin with, well below the market wage.  Though the press accounts have
focused on the firm's comment in video 9 on how to avoid hiring
Americans, video 12 is just as damning, as the law firm talked about how
to get a prevailing wage that can be, in the Cohen & Grigsby attorney
Jennifer Pack's own words, "$10,000 to $15,000" below the market.  Yet
the foreign nationals accept this lowball salary, because in the deal
they are getting a form of nonmonetary compensation which is highly
valuable to them--a U.S. green card.

I love exposing hypocrisy.  Recall that in my original analysis of the
TubeGate videos, at

http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/YouTubeVideosH1B.txt

I pointed to the rank hypocrisy of the Cohen & Grigsby firm.  One of the
firm's attorneys, Matt Phillips, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that
employers do their best to try to find Americans to fill a spot before
resorting to hiring foreign workers--when in the videos, in which
Phillips speaks, the firm is telling employers how to AVOID finding
Americans.

Well, I'm including below an even more outrageous example of the firm's
hypocrisy below, this one on the prevailing wage issue.  This is an
op-ed by Larry Lebowitz, a partner in the firm who served as the MC in
the YouTube videos.  I'm including the full text below, but here are the
highlights:

First, Lebowitz again claims that employers do their best to find
American workers:

#  U.S. companies that bring in foreign professionals usually do so as a
#  last resort

By now you know that there are a number of statements in the videos
which show that to be a lie.

Next, Lebowitz assures readers:

# To hire H-1Bs, a company must: Guarantee the H-1B will be paid the
# prevailing wage or better...

Again, remember in the video, the firm shows how the prevailing wage is
typically lower than the market wage.

 And get this one!

#  These rules actually help U.S. workers, too, by keeping wages high,
#  ensuring that U.S. workers are not displaced and keeping corporate
#  productivity high.

I'm trying not to constantly use the word "chutzpah" in my series of 
postings on Cohen & Grigsby, but what other word fits?  I guess I can
say, "unmitigated audacity." :-)

Now, no lobbyist op-ed and planted article would be complete without
examples of "poster child" companies that supposedly are desperate to
hire, can't find American workers in spite of herculean efforts, and
"must" hire H-1Bs.  Well, one of Lebowitz's poster children here is
Marconi Communications, a major firm you may have noticed in my PERM
data list above.  For instance, Marconi was one of the eight firms that
were all paying their Software Engineers exactly the same oddball figure
of $64,240.  Some desperation, huh?

Norm

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

We need the best and brightest 

The growth of Pittsburgh technology firms is hampered by a freeze on visas
for skilled foreign workers. Let them in.

Sunday, May 21, 2000

By Lawrence M. Lebowitz

CoManage Corp. is a Wexford-based developer of software packages for the
telecommunications industry. Like many high-technology firms, here and
elsewhere throughout the country, the company depends on high-quality talent
to develop products and move them to market fast, before the competition.
The problem: There's a shortage of domestic software engineering talent.

(see link for the rest) 

also see: How To Under Pay H-1B Workers