Microsoft Uses Women's Soccer Team to Regurgitate Faulty Data

Microsoft's use of the US Women's Soccer Team and faulty data to try to increase immigration falls to a new low.

Written by Steve Kritzer on Monday July 20th 2015

Subjects: shortage of Computer Science (CS) graduates, Women's Soccer, H-1B train your replacement, shortage debunked, Computer Science degrees

We gained some traction on "train your replacement" H-1B abuse.  Many thanks to the journalists who covered the stories.

Foremost, a big thank you to ComputerWorld's,  Patrick Thibodeau for his tireless work on covering the H-1B and foreign labor arbitrage topic. "About 500 IT jobs are cut at utility through layoffs and voluntary departures", February 4, 2015.

The New York Times, Pulitzer Prize winner, Julia Preston, who wrote, "Pink Slips at Disney. But First, Training Foreign Replacements", June 3, 2015, and was surprised enough about the comments on the article that she did a follow up article.

The Los Angeles Times, Pulitzer Prize winner,   Michael Hiltzik, who covered the Southern California Edison labor arbitrage in, "A loophole in immigration law is costing thousands of American jobs" February 20, 2015. (Sorry, no links, The LA Times is currently behind paywall -- I guess I could delete their cookie.).

The Immigration shills waited a while and have now started regurgitating the faulty, data based, immigration attorney funded, H-1B (temporary foreign labor) propaganda.   The use of women's issues and the US National Soccer Team is a new angle though. The article is pretty well identified as propaganda and discussed on Slashdot.
 

Ten days ago, the United States women’s national soccer team became the most successful team in the history of the FIFA Women’s World Cup by winning the top prize for the third time. However, despite the fact that soccer is not as popular in America as in the rest of the world, it is not surprising that the U.S. women have been dominant in the sport in recent years. The explanation for that success lies in the talent pipeline. With over 1.5 million girls registered in youth leagues, close to 50 percent of all youth players in the U.S. are female and soccer is one of the top three most popular sports among girls ages 5-19.

We only get into the third paragraph before the author whips out the cherry picked graduation data and uses BLS projections rather than actual data.

Unfortunately, the strength in the talent pipeline that we see in female soccer today is not the reality for technology. The U.S. is facing a shortage of Computer Science (CS) graduates. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, every year there are close to 140,000 jobs requiring a CS degree, but only 40,000 U.S. college graduates major in CS, which means that 100,000 positions go unfilled by domestic talent. Even more dramatic is that women in U.S. colleges and universities earn only 18 percent of CS degrees."

-- Changing the face of coding", By Lori Forte Harnick - Microsoft General Manager, Citizenship and Public Affairs, July 15, 2015

First, Computer Science undergraduate degrees are not the only degrees that are applicable to Computer occupations.  Additionally, in 2011, the Census Bureau reports that, 1,013,300 (28%) of those employed in Computer occupations held less than a bachelor's degree.

Citizens and Permanent Residents
Computer related degrees conferred 2013	Total	Female	-/- Percent Female
Master's Degrees	12,725	3,303	25.96%
Bachelor's Degrees	49,204	8,726	17.73%
Associate's Degrees	38,608	8,198	21.23%
Total	100,537	20,227	20.12%

Source: NSF WebCaspar, 11 Computer and Information Sciences and Support Services.


The Bureau of Labor Statistics projections is also rather suspect at 140,000 per year, in fact, since 2009, employment growth in computer occupations is less than 10% of projected, at 13,922.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics: OES

By the way, the H-1B initial employment approvals for Computer-related occupations was 80,877 for 2014 alone.  One year of H-1B intake exceeded five years of recession recovery growth of 69,610.

The latest five years of C.S. and C.I.S. graduation data (2009-13), for citizens and permanent residents only (Master's, Bachelor's and Associate) is 444,912 with 92,716 (20.84%) conferred to women. 

After this investment in time and resources, do our qualified women even get a tryout, when temporary foreign workers have a clear hiring preference?

Incidentally, are there any women with temporary visas on the U.S. Women's Soccer Team?

Train your replacment

Wall Street Journal Blogs
Infosys Employee Testifies on Alleged Visa Fraud
By Megha Bahree and Miriam Jordan
July 28, 2011, 10:48 AM IST

In a statement to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security on Tuesday, Jay Palmer, the whistleblower at Infosys, said the company “intentionally violated our visa and tax laws for the purpose of increasing revenues.” Mr. Palmer accused Infosys of frequently violating U.S. visa laws and of staffing multiple client projects with illegal employees, including at Goldman Sachs, American Express, Wal-Mart and Johnson Control, among others.

Mr. Palmer filed a lawsuit against the company in February in Circuit Court in Alabama, alleging the company sought his help to circumvent U.S. law. The lawsuit has led to a probe by U.S. authorities.

Business Line
Infy visa case: Petitioner wants to prove he is right

Balaji Narasimhan
Bangalore, Nov. 12

In July, he [Palmer] said, “Infosys also decided to flood the consulate with applications in order to get as many approved as possible no matter the level of an individual's skill. This was totally about profit and not hiring Americans for jobs in the US due to higher salary requirements."

Updates Palmer vs Infosys:
Infosys’ H-1B visa misuse: US court denies arbitration in Palmer case

FP Staff Nov 10, 2011

In a major setback to IT bellwether Infosys, a US court has denied arbitration in the visa case filed by employee Jack Palmer against the software major.

Visa misuse: Infosys in trouble, again
Sep 7, 2011 0 Comments

After two earlier complaints of visa misuse, a third whistleblower complaint has been filed against the software giant for non-compliance of form I-9.

Palmer’s lawsuit against Infosys gets teeth as allegations snowball
Sep 9, 2011 14 Comments

All three whistle-blowers, including Palmer have said Infosys misused short-term B1 visitors’ visas to bring in low-cost engineers from India. If Infosys was hoping to settle with Palmer out of court the odds aren’t looking too good for Infosys.

ConputerWorld
Fired IT workers file lawsuit claiming H-1B workers replaced them

Workers file suit against Molina Healthcare and its outsourcer, Cognizant
By Patrick Thibodeau
July 12, 2011 03:53 PM ET

Eighteen IT workers in California have filed a lawsuit against their former employer claiming they were replaced by H-1B workers from India and then laid off in violation of the state's anti-discrimination laws.


In the lawsuit, the 18 workers say that IT managers at Molina Healthcare Inc. increasingly catered to the Indian workers while leaving U.S. workers, mostly security analysts and programmers who earned at least $75,000 a year, feeling excluded prior getting laid off last year.

SFGate
BofA: Train your replacement, or no severance pay for you
June 09, 2006
David Lazarus

"If people want their severance packages, they have to train their replacements," a senior engineer at one of BofA's Bay Area facilities told me. "There's nothing in writing that says this -- the bank's been careful about that. But it's made clear at meetings what we're supposed to do."
 

Shirley Norton, a BofA spokeswoman, confirmed that while workers aren't being explicitly told they have to train their replacements or risk losing severance pay, they are being instructed that severance pay is contingent on satisfactorily completing their jobs.


Completing their jobs, in turn, can include training replacements from India, she said.

San Francisco Business Times
Bank job: You're fired, now go train your replacement
Date: Sunday, November 24, 2002, 9:00pm PST

Sure enough, dozens of Indian tech workers have been visiting BofA's major tech centers in Concord, Jacksonville, Fla., and other cities around the country recently. They're getting training on work they'll do back at home for about half what departing employees are paid. The bank confirms that some laid-off workers are being required to help train new ones (and not speak to the media) as a condition of receiving severance.


The fact that BofA is simultaneously cutting jobs here, outsourcing similar work and requiring old job-holders to train new ones shouldn't lead anyone to assume these moves are in any way related, a spokeswoman insisted.

"Our sourcing strategy and these job cuts in response to economic conditions are completely separate," said BofA spokeswoman Juliet Don in San Francisco.

BusinessWeek
IBMers Training their Replacements?
Posted by: Steve Hamm on March 10

Why not just take the pink slip and tell your boss to shove it? How widespread is this practice of forcing people to train their replacements? How does it work? Do other companies do similar things?

Pleasanton Weekly
Tri-Valley University brought students and spouses into U.S.
Times of India cites ministry report
by Glenn Wohltmann

Tri-Valley University not only brought students over to Pleasanton on illegal visas, but many of those students brought their spouses here as well, according to The Times of India.

The paper cites an Indian ministry report that says a number of immigrants got their spouses admitted at Tri-Valley, which helped them get an extended stay of up to eight years with illegal student work permits, or brought them into the United States through dependent H-4 visas, the report says.

Once in, some secured admission in accredited universities and got F-1 student visas. Later, many shifted to Tri-Valley, according to the report cited by The Times, which said the university gave them the opportunity to work from day one, although Tri-Valley was not authorized to do so.

Department of Justice
THURSDAY, MAY 1, 2008
iGate Mastech Inc. to Pay $45,000 in Civil Penalties to Settle Discrimination Claim

WASHINGTON - The Department of Justice today announced that iGate Mastech Inc. (iGate), a Pittsburgh computer consulting company, has agreed to pay $45,000 in civil penalties to settle allegations that iGate discriminated against United States citizens in its employment practices. The settlement also requires iGate to train its recruitment personnel and to post a nondiscrimination statement on its Web site.

The settlement stems from the Department’s finding that, between May 9, 2006, and June 4, 2006, iGate placed 30 job announcements for computer programmers that expressly favored H-1B visa holders to the exclusion of U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, and other legal U.S. workers. Such preference constituted citizenship status discrimination and is prohibited by the Immigration and Nationality Act.