Immigration Amendment Would Prevent Companies From Laying Off U.S. Workers
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http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199901841 Immigration Amendment Would Prevent Companies From Laying Off U.S. Workers The amendment would cover an array of employer-based visas, including those used most frequently for hiring technology workers, especially H-1B and L-1. By Marianne Kolbasuk McGee InformationWeek Jun 6, 2007 03:00 PM A new immigration reform amendment that's being proposed by Senators Bernie Sanders (I-V) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) could make it a lot tougher for firms to plan mass layoffs of U.S. workers if those companies have also hired foreign workers on visas. The bi-partisan Sanders-Grassley amendment, which the senators hope to have "in the queue" for introduction before the Senate stops immigration reform debate, would require U.S. companies to certify to the Department of Labor that they haven't had any "mass layoffs" of American workers in the previous 12 months before they could file visa petitions with the U.S. government to hire any new foreign worker, according to Warren Gunnels, senior policy advisor to Sanders. A company that does announce mass U.S. layoffs after its received approval to hire new foreign workers must inform those foreign workers' that their visas will expire in 60 days. So in essence, the amendment would require those companies to also cut their foreign workers if planning U.S. layoffs. The amendment would cover an array of employer-based visas, including those used most frequently for hiring technology workers, especially H-1B and L-1, which are used by multi-national companies to allow foreign employees, particularly managers and executives, into the U.S. to work. The amendment would define "mass layoffs" as the dismissal of 50 or more U.S. workers by companies with more than 100 employees, said Gunnels. "We should be encouraging immigration policy that prevents companies from laying off American workers" rather than promoting them to staff their U.S. workforce with people hired from outside the country, he said. The Sanders-Grassley legislation is among 100 or so immigration reform bill amendments that have been filed in recent weeks. The assortment of Senate provisions range from those that could make it more expensive for businesses to hire H-1B workers, to making it easier to hire H-1B workers. While some observers are uncertain about how much support the Sanders-Grassley amendment will get from others in Congress, "it sheds light on the dubiousness of the skills shortages being claimed by the
ednrgc wrote:
The amendment would define "mass layoffs" as the dismissal of 50 or more U.S. workers...
So lay off 49, wait 6-9 months, and lay off another. The amendment seems too easy to get around.
"A good athlete is the result of a good and worthy opponent." - David Crow
"To have a respect for ourselves guides our morals; to have deference for others governs our manners." - Laurence Sterne
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From the looks of it, it will be scrapped (fortunately). Although I disagree that raising H1-B limits would necessarily be a bad thing. With the unemployment rate currently hovering around 2% for college graduates and being much lower for engineers and those with advanced degrees, there is a brain drain generated by our economy that needs to somehow be filled. Perhaps we can work out some sort of people-trade agreement. For every engineer with an advanced degree India sends us, we'll send them 10 illegal Mexicans.
Red Stateler wrote:
unemployment rate currently hovering around 2% for college graduates and being much lower for engineers
That statistic is a joke. They may be employed, but likely not in the field they studied in college. Most CS jobs are either outsourced or H1B'd. US graduates need not apply, their wage expectations are too high. Most Computer Science pros are telling their kids to look elsewhere, this profession is dead in the US - a direct result of the H1-B program.
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you're not kidding, i wouldnt under any circumstances refer to myself as a "good programmer(not much experiance)," but after graduating a year ago with a computer engineering degree, i had to wait tables for two months before my first interview, and i didnt get an actual offer until about seven or eight months after graduating, its frustrating sitting at home trying to find a job, all the while your friends making comments like "hey college boy, whats the degree doing for you now?" It pissed me off then, but now i look back and theyre still putting up tents and delivering furniture while i sit in a comfortable chair in a semi air conditioned office at the beach...
------------------------------ I win because I have the most fun in life...
VonHagNDaz wrote:
but after graduating a year ago with a computer engineering degree, i had to wait tables for two months before my first interview
I hope you get to enjoy your career for as long as I have. Some advice, to distinguish yourself choose an industry and specialize. That is what protects you from the effects of globalization an in depth knowledge of a particular industry. Mine is insurance so I can bill myself as an insurance professional with an IT speciality.
Mike The NYT - my leftist brochure. Calling an illegal alien an “undocumented immigrant” is like calling a drug dealer an “unlicensed pharmacist”. God doesn't believe in atheists, therefore they don't exist.
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ednrgc wrote:
The amendment would define "mass layoffs" as the dismissal of 50 or more U.S. workers...
So lay off 49, wait 6-9 months, and lay off another. The amendment seems too easy to get around.
"A good athlete is the result of a good and worthy opponent." - David Crow
"To have a respect for ourselves guides our morals; to have deference for others governs our manners." - Laurence Sterne
No need. Go ahead and lay off 100 and ask for H1B replacements. They have no more intention of enforcing this than they did any other immigration law in the past 30 years.
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Matthew Faithfull wrote:
NAU.
North American Union????
Matthew Faithfull wrote:
I'm afraid unless you throw out both the NWO parties from your government
And replace them with what?
Modern liberalism has never achieved anything other than giving Secularists something to feel morally superior about
Yes the North American Union, which your politicians will be telling you for the next decade is 'Not Important for you to know about' and will cause 'No loss of essential national soveriegnty' if our experiance is anything to go by. I'd recommending replacing them with people who actaully believe in democracy and only if they're happy with the condition that you can burn them at the stake if they abandon the constitution. The US is not my country and it's not up to me to say how it should be run. All I can tell you is what has happened in Europe and pray that the US doesn't go the same way even though it's Americans who have sponsored and led the European project from behind the scenes.
Nothing is exactly what it seems but everything with seems can be unpicked.
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you're not kidding, i wouldnt under any circumstances refer to myself as a "good programmer(not much experiance)," but after graduating a year ago with a computer engineering degree, i had to wait tables for two months before my first interview, and i didnt get an actual offer until about seven or eight months after graduating, its frustrating sitting at home trying to find a job, all the while your friends making comments like "hey college boy, whats the degree doing for you now?" It pissed me off then, but now i look back and theyre still putting up tents and delivering furniture while i sit in a comfortable chair in a semi air conditioned office at the beach...
------------------------------ I win because I have the most fun in life...
If you want to separate yourself from the H-1B folks, get a job in a defense company and work on getting a clearance. The H-1Bs can't do that --- you have to be an American citizen. Besides that, the work is really good and you'll work with some really good people.
John P.
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No need. Go ahead and lay off 100 and ask for H1B replacements. They have no more intention of enforcing this than they did any other immigration law in the past 30 years.
This whole thing (amendment) is just a stinking little bone that these Senators think we are too stupid to recognize it for what it is --- a sucker punch to the gut fo every American. Kennedy is nothing more than a total sot who is fat and bloated from all the booze he consumes. McCain is just an ass-kisser to Kennedy. Most of the others are nothing more than liberals packaged in different clothing. The SOBs just want 12-25 million more people to vote for them. They don't give a rat's ass about you and me. The whole lot of them should be lined up against a wall and shot. These people are destroying America, and the sad part is, we are letting them get away with it!
John P.
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Yes the North American Union, which your politicians will be telling you for the next decade is 'Not Important for you to know about' and will cause 'No loss of essential national soveriegnty' if our experiance is anything to go by. I'd recommending replacing them with people who actaully believe in democracy and only if they're happy with the condition that you can burn them at the stake if they abandon the constitution. The US is not my country and it's not up to me to say how it should be run. All I can tell you is what has happened in Europe and pray that the US doesn't go the same way even though it's Americans who have sponsored and led the European project from behind the scenes.
Nothing is exactly what it seems but everything with seems can be unpicked.
I don't disagree with any of that, but I do have a different take on it. One of the most repetitive themes of human civilization is the inevitability of rapid political revolution following long periods of slow economic evolution. All of human history has really been nothing more than political accomodation of changing economic realities. Tribes into city states, city states into nation states, nation states into empires, etc. They were all just a means of gaining control of economics. We now have a global economy, and a global polticial system is going to inevitably rise to control it. The only thing that can stop it is a complete collapse of human civilization altogether. There is no amount of democracy that we could practically hope to muster that has the power to change the inevitability of what is about to happen. The question isn't how do you stop it, the question is what will the nature of the ultimate global political system that arises be? Which culture, which civilization, which set of political principles will remain standing once the dust clears? That is the question.
Modern liberalism has never achieved anything other than giving Secularists something to feel morally superior about
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This sounds like the first of the many 'badly thought through' laws you'll be seeing in the next few years leading up to the next stage of the NAU. I'm afraid unless you throw out both the NWO parties from your government, wholesale, you will see more and more of this no matter the outcome of elections. I can say this because in Europe we've seen it all before. We get insane laws all the time from the EU mostly in order to cause problems so that they can then propose 'more power for the EU' solutions to those same problems, take some more power away from democratic governments and then start all over again. We've had it for 30 years to the point now where our elected leaders have full soveriegnty over almost nothing except health and education.:( By the way we've had immigration ammounting to 1 million people in a country of 60 million in the last 3 years and it's all legal and none of counts as immigration :wtf:
Nothing is exactly what it seems but everything with seems can be unpicked.
Sorry Matthew, but your observations regarding the EU appear to be coloured by the UKIP viewpoint who are particularly noted for their policy to withdraw the United Kingdom from EU membership. As you know, the UKIP viewpoint is narrow in comparison to the other main UK political parties.
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Red Stateler wrote:
unemployment rate currently hovering around 2% for college graduates
you're way off base. there are thousands of good programmers stocking shelves in Home Depot and your local chain grocery stores. and that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Mike The NYT - my leftist brochure. Calling an illegal alien an “undocumented immigrant” is like calling a drug dealer an “unlicensed pharmacist”. God doesn't believe in atheists, therefore they don't exist.
Mike Gaskey wrote:
there are thousands of good programmers stocking shelves in Home Depot and your local chain grocery stores.
Hey Mike, I know 3-4 guys who got H1B jobs this year - two of them in Microsoft. All of them started off at very good salaries. So I am not all that sure that the reason American born programmers are unemployed is because they demand more pay. The H1Bers who are paid low wages are those who directly work for an Indian company that sends them on-site for temporary assignments. The rest of the H1Bers who get regular jobs usually make way more than the average salary for their field and experience.
Regards, Nish
Nish’s thoughts on MFC, C++/CLI and .NET (my blog)
My latest book : C++/CLI in Action / Amazon.com link -
Sorry Matthew, but your observations regarding the EU appear to be coloured by the UKIP viewpoint who are particularly noted for their policy to withdraw the United Kingdom from EU membership. As you know, the UKIP viewpoint is narrow in comparison to the other main UK political parties.
Richard A. Abbott wrote:
the UKIP viewpoint is narrow
Those evil bastards!
Modern liberalism has never achieved anything other than giving Secularists something to feel morally superior about
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Richard A. Abbott wrote:
the UKIP viewpoint is narrow
Those evil bastards!
Modern liberalism has never achieved anything other than giving Secularists something to feel morally superior about
The UKIP (acronym for UK Independence Party) are not evil. They have, in my opinion, misguided policies towards Europe that is likely to cause mass economic suffering to UK business interests and wholesale loss of political influence in Europe. The probability of UKIP success is tiny. Of course, UKIP members will disagree with me, but that is their right.
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Mike Gaskey wrote:
there are thousands of good programmers stocking shelves in Home Depot and your local chain grocery stores.
Hey Mike, I know 3-4 guys who got H1B jobs this year - two of them in Microsoft. All of them started off at very good salaries. So I am not all that sure that the reason American born programmers are unemployed is because they demand more pay. The H1Bers who are paid low wages are those who directly work for an Indian company that sends them on-site for temporary assignments. The rest of the H1Bers who get regular jobs usually make way more than the average salary for their field and experience.
Regards, Nish
Nish’s thoughts on MFC, C++/CLI and .NET (my blog)
My latest book : C++/CLI in Action / Amazon.com linkNishant Sivakumar wrote:
So I am not all that sure that the reason American born programmers are unemployed is because they demand more pay.
Nish, It is a mixed bag, I really don't mean to make it sound black and white. The examples I gave are accurate. Dell layed off thousands and turned around and made a request for additional H1Bers. IBM, ditto. EDS, ditto. Accenture, ditto. My own company does the same or similar. We have a group in New Delhi, Indore and another city that I can't call to mind. Also have a South African group. With all of these entities we've also had huge layoffs here and ramp ups "there". We staff an awful lot of our projects with a mix of pure offshore, H1Bers here and what I now refer to as domestics. The offshore and H1Bers all take "American" jobs. Our business in my division is roughly the same from a headcount or number of projects perspective but our "billable engine" is now 75% offshore / H1B and 25% domestic where in the year 2000 it was 100% domestic. So far all I have discussed are IT types, people like you and me. But H1B is now intruding on the medical field (doctors and nurses) and even teachers. The point of the amendment that I pimp-slapped Red on was one by an independent (who I really do not like, too liberal to suit me) that aimed to provide some level of protection (and I hate this concept, generally) for US professionals by saying that if a company layed off staff then turned around to replace them with H1B visa holders, they couldn't. You really have to look at both sides of the issue. On the one hand, take your native land, India. India had decided that intellectual capital is a fantastic resource, so there's been a huge push to educate your brightest then export them (either via a communictation connection or an airline). So what you really have is a government with some level of dedication to the betterment of its' population. On the other hand, take the USA. We're a capitalistic society (run amuck, possibly) that is focused on increasing margins (profit) at the expense of US workers with very little real concern for the working citizen - the exact opposite of the situation I just described for your native land. The Bernie Sanders amendment that I referred to is a step towards protection for our own professionals. In some measure these circumstances are self correcting. I've been involved with offshore teams, specifically India based, since 2000. Some on a shor
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Nishant Sivakumar wrote:
So I am not all that sure that the reason American born programmers are unemployed is because they demand more pay.
Nish, It is a mixed bag, I really don't mean to make it sound black and white. The examples I gave are accurate. Dell layed off thousands and turned around and made a request for additional H1Bers. IBM, ditto. EDS, ditto. Accenture, ditto. My own company does the same or similar. We have a group in New Delhi, Indore and another city that I can't call to mind. Also have a South African group. With all of these entities we've also had huge layoffs here and ramp ups "there". We staff an awful lot of our projects with a mix of pure offshore, H1Bers here and what I now refer to as domestics. The offshore and H1Bers all take "American" jobs. Our business in my division is roughly the same from a headcount or number of projects perspective but our "billable engine" is now 75% offshore / H1B and 25% domestic where in the year 2000 it was 100% domestic. So far all I have discussed are IT types, people like you and me. But H1B is now intruding on the medical field (doctors and nurses) and even teachers. The point of the amendment that I pimp-slapped Red on was one by an independent (who I really do not like, too liberal to suit me) that aimed to provide some level of protection (and I hate this concept, generally) for US professionals by saying that if a company layed off staff then turned around to replace them with H1B visa holders, they couldn't. You really have to look at both sides of the issue. On the one hand, take your native land, India. India had decided that intellectual capital is a fantastic resource, so there's been a huge push to educate your brightest then export them (either via a communictation connection or an airline). So what you really have is a government with some level of dedication to the betterment of its' population. On the other hand, take the USA. We're a capitalistic society (run amuck, possibly) that is focused on increasing margins (profit) at the expense of US workers with very little real concern for the working citizen - the exact opposite of the situation I just described for your native land. The Bernie Sanders amendment that I referred to is a step towards protection for our own professionals. In some measure these circumstances are self correcting. I've been involved with offshore teams, specifically India based, since 2000. Some on a shor
Wow - thanks, Mike. I read your post twice. It really put things in a much better perspective for me :-)
Regards, Nish
Nish’s thoughts on MFC, C++/CLI and .NET (my blog)
My latest book : C++/CLI in Action / Amazon.com link -
The UKIP (acronym for UK Independence Party) are not evil. They have, in my opinion, misguided policies towards Europe that is likely to cause mass economic suffering to UK business interests and wholesale loss of political influence in Europe. The probability of UKIP success is tiny. Of course, UKIP members will disagree with me, but that is their right.
The probability of a referendum to return the EU to a free trade area succeeding however are rather high. Which is precisely why we will never have one.
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Mike Gaskey wrote:
there are thousands of good programmers stocking shelves in Home Depot and your local chain grocery stores.
Hey Mike, I know 3-4 guys who got H1B jobs this year - two of them in Microsoft. All of them started off at very good salaries. So I am not all that sure that the reason American born programmers are unemployed is because they demand more pay. The H1Bers who are paid low wages are those who directly work for an Indian company that sends them on-site for temporary assignments. The rest of the H1Bers who get regular jobs usually make way more than the average salary for their field and experience.
Regards, Nish
Nish’s thoughts on MFC, C++/CLI and .NET (my blog)
My latest book : C++/CLI in Action / Amazon.com linkNishant Sivakumar wrote:
So I am not all that sure that the reason American born programmers are unemployed is because they demand more pay.
The entire idea that American born programmers are heavily unemployed is a myth. Here's an article[^] from 3 years ago citing the US unemployment rate for computer professionals at 5% (that rate has since sharply declined since) at a time when the tech industry was still limping from the .com-bust and the overall unemployment was 6% . In the lounge there are frequently threads posted by people frustrated by their inability to hire quality people and ads running for many months. Oddly enough, everyone here complaining about the dire situation of computer professionals seems to be gainfully employed.
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I don't disagree with any of that, but I do have a different take on it. One of the most repetitive themes of human civilization is the inevitability of rapid political revolution following long periods of slow economic evolution. All of human history has really been nothing more than political accomodation of changing economic realities. Tribes into city states, city states into nation states, nation states into empires, etc. They were all just a means of gaining control of economics. We now have a global economy, and a global polticial system is going to inevitably rise to control it. The only thing that can stop it is a complete collapse of human civilization altogether. There is no amount of democracy that we could practically hope to muster that has the power to change the inevitability of what is about to happen. The question isn't how do you stop it, the question is what will the nature of the ultimate global political system that arises be? Which culture, which civilization, which set of political principles will remain standing once the dust clears? That is the question.
Modern liberalism has never achieved anything other than giving Secularists something to feel morally superior about
I'm sorry but I consider that a defeatist attitude. If you've given up on democracy and given up on your country and your constitution in the long term then you'd better come up with something better to replace them with than the plans of Voelker, Kissenger, Bilt and Rockerfeller :suss: or we're all going to end up in a global, facist, slave state. X| You'd better come up with it soon as well because they're not mucking around. If you've given up you're already defeated and ripe to be enslaved :(. Personally I'd rather die, which is an option I'm sure they'll give most people sooner or later. Meanwhile I'm going to fight for real freedom, not the Orwellian nightmare of fear and suspicion the Shubbery and our Bliar have been selling :rose:
Nothing is exactly what it seems but everything with seems can be unpicked.
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I'm sorry but I consider that a defeatist attitude. If you've given up on democracy and given up on your country and your constitution in the long term then you'd better come up with something better to replace them with than the plans of Voelker, Kissenger, Bilt and Rockerfeller :suss: or we're all going to end up in a global, facist, slave state. X| You'd better come up with it soon as well because they're not mucking around. If you've given up you're already defeated and ripe to be enslaved :(. Personally I'd rather die, which is an option I'm sure they'll give most people sooner or later. Meanwhile I'm going to fight for real freedom, not the Orwellian nightmare of fear and suspicion the Shubbery and our Bliar have been selling :rose:
Nothing is exactly what it seems but everything with seems can be unpicked.
Matthew Faithfull wrote:
I'm sorry but I consider that a defeatist attitude.
Nothing defeatest about it. Merely a pragmatic observation of likely future events based upon clear historic patterns reflected in ongoing, modern trends. I also said nothing about giving up on democracy. I just claim that democracy, by iteslf, is insufficient to win the day against forces which care nothing for it. If democracy is going to be protected ,it will be done on the battlefield, not the voting booth. Aside from "No world Order" the "New World Order" is inevitable, but its character is not. It will reflect the desires most passionantly embraced by humanity. If the character is to be democratic, we must fiercly promote our uncompromising dedication to those principles regardless of who is offended by it.
Modern liberalism has never achieved anything other than giving Secularists something to feel morally superior about
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The UKIP (acronym for UK Independence Party) are not evil. They have, in my opinion, misguided policies towards Europe that is likely to cause mass economic suffering to UK business interests and wholesale loss of political influence in Europe. The probability of UKIP success is tiny. Of course, UKIP members will disagree with me, but that is their right.
As a Kipper I'd say neither narrow nor misguided, more like dedicated and clear in our thinking. We're democrats and the EU isn't democratic so we don't like it. We believe in freedom and the Eurocrats want to regulate everything down to the shape of a tomato so we don't like it. We're culturists who believe it's fine for the French to be French and the Germans to be German, within reason ;), and any attempt to create a lowest common denominator Euro culture is destructive and doomed to failure, so guess what, we don't like that sort of nonsense or mass immigration either. All just good common sense stuff :cool: and then there are all the things we do like, individual freedoms, maximally localised government, all the great works and traditions of our once vibrant culture, honesty and plain speeking, energy independence, security independence and all the other independences of mind and action that we keep being told are a pipe dream but are in fact only just out of reach :-D Probability of success in the short term is no measure of whether or not we are right. In the end the European project is gaurenteed to fail because it is fundamentally unstable and economically suicidal. Anyone who can see this wants to be as far away from it when it collapses as possible. So in fact our eventual success, it terms of getting out, is assured. We'd just rather not make the stupid mistake of getting involved any worse before people realise what many of us having been saying for years.;)
Nothing is exactly what it seems but everything with seems can be unpicked.
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As a Kipper I'd say neither narrow nor misguided, more like dedicated and clear in our thinking. We're democrats and the EU isn't democratic so we don't like it. We believe in freedom and the Eurocrats want to regulate everything down to the shape of a tomato so we don't like it. We're culturists who believe it's fine for the French to be French and the Germans to be German, within reason ;), and any attempt to create a lowest common denominator Euro culture is destructive and doomed to failure, so guess what, we don't like that sort of nonsense or mass immigration either. All just good common sense stuff :cool: and then there are all the things we do like, individual freedoms, maximally localised government, all the great works and traditions of our once vibrant culture, honesty and plain speeking, energy independence, security independence and all the other independences of mind and action that we keep being told are a pipe dream but are in fact only just out of reach :-D Probability of success in the short term is no measure of whether or not we are right. In the end the European project is gaurenteed to fail because it is fundamentally unstable and economically suicidal. Anyone who can see this wants to be as far away from it when it collapses as possible. So in fact our eventual success, it terms of getting out, is assured. We'd just rather not make the stupid mistake of getting involved any worse before people realise what many of us having been saying for years.;)
Nothing is exactly what it seems but everything with seems can be unpicked.
Matthew Faithfull wrote:
All just good common sense stuff and then there are all the things we do like, individual freedoms, maximally localised government, all the great works and traditions of our once vibrant culture, honesty and plain speeking, energy independence, security independence and all the other independences of mind and action that we keep being told are a pipe dream but are in fact only just out of reach
With these results [^] the dream will just remain a dream, after all the UKIP performance at the last General Election was below 2.5%. So maybe the UKIP don't speak for the majority of people as claimed here [^]. So presumably from this [^] you don't approve of devolving power to local parliamentary authorities. Maybe it's the freedom UKIP want but deny to Scotland as a whole.