Friday, July 18, 2008

If you want to be an immigrant -- update your skills to the postgraduate level

"Vivek Wadhwa, an adjunct professor at the Duke University Pratt School for
Engineering, doesn't buy into the noble notion that U.S. companies such as
Microsoft go overseas because the American job pool doesn't have the required,
high-end skills." http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08200/897726-28.stm
Wadhwa, also a former Tech industry Captain, is against the H-1B, but is also sensitive to the postgraduates of American colleges; non-immigrants wishing to become Americans that are trapped in limbo, because of per country quotas in the Employment based green-card system. Conversely, these quotas have saved the U.S. from being overrun with "weak" foreign graduates.
In other posts, I've displayed that our immigration levels are excessive, employment growth is not keeping up with population growth and housing inflation (caused by excessive immigration) is causing Americans to be economically evicted in our own country. The last thing we need is more immigration.

Instead of raising the Employment based visa caps which are adequate... re-arrange some categories to alleviate the backlog, but we need to be selective, as Wadhwa proclaims, some of these foreign degrees are Associate degrees disguised as Bachelor degree equivalent.

1. Create an exemption from the employment based per-country-caps for postgraduates of colleges located within America. (They tell us we need to update our skills if we want to be employed, thus if you want to be an immigrant -- update your credentials.)

2. The employment based (EB) visa quota includes spouses and children -- move these visas from the EB program to the Family sponsored visa quotas.

3. Eliminate the H-1B and L-1 abusive visa programs and put business visa programs back where they belong, under the Business visa (B-1) for the purpose of investment, equipment installation and training only. Non-immigrant employment visas are indenturing, step by step we are on the road to condoning slavery -- see the AGJOBS bill on the removal of worker protections, worker paid fees and wage caps.

4. Employment based immigration caps should not be a hard cap. During recessions, the U.S. does not create enough jobs for our children, but the immigrants keep coming. Employment based immigration should be performance based, i.e. some small percentage of the prior year's employment growth. If employment based immigration were to become performance based, corporations may not be so eager to offshore entire processes.
5. Employment based immigration enforcement is rather simple. If a worker is out of status, simply disallow the employer's tax deduction expense for out-of-status wages. If the employer requires illegal labor to compete, they're already bankrupt and haven't come to terms yet.
Taken from the video embedded below, Wadhwa explains the conclusions of Duke University studies... which eliminates all labor shortage propaganda.
  • "... the multinationals are teaching these employees what they need and they are taking any education that they can get, it doesn't matter that the entire education system in India and China is garbage, and the graduates are weak, American companies will train them up because they are so cheap..."
  • "... in almost every perspective Amercans [workers] were better..."
  • "...the bottom line is that there is nothing wrong with American workers, they were better by far, not by a little, but by a lot..."
  • "In a country that doesn't even have washing-machines, both GE and Whirlpool are designing appliances in India right now..."
  • ...they [China] are desparate to move up the ladder to R&D, they are now coercing American companies to move their R&D there .... if the American companies are going to manufacture there they better move their R&D there."


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