IT Field - Another Job Americans Won’t Do!

Cross posted from Common Sense America

It seems that our Congress just can’t get rid of American jobs fast enough. First they outsourced them, then they allowed millions of cheap laborers to illegally cross our borders, and now we have the H-1B visa.

We’ve sat idly by while our elected officials have given landscaping, construction, roofing, auto body, restaurant, hotel, trucking, manufacturing, meat packing, warehousing, and many other jobs to illegal foreigners that will work for half the price that Americans need to survive. The last job to be given away was the trucking industry as this administration has decided to open the border to Mexican trucks.

Now, the field of information technology is being given away. Apparently, Americans don’t want to do this job either. The Hartford Courant has an interesting op/ed by Froma Harrop:

The master plan, it seems, is to move perhaps 40 million high-skill American jobs to other countries. U.S. workers have not been consulted.

Princeton economist Alan Blinder predicts that these choice jobs could be lost in a mere decade or two. We speak of computer programming, bookkeeping, graphic design and other careers once thought firmly planted in American soil. For perspective, 40 million is more than twice the total number of people now employed in manufacturing.

And just how are they going to achieve this “master plan”?

We refer to the H-1B visa program, which allows educated foreigners to work in the United States, usually for three years. Many in Congress want to nearly double the number of H-1B visas, to 115,000 a year.

While Congress will argue that the H-1B visas bring talent to America, there is another side to this story:

Ron Hira has studied the dark side of the H-1B program. A professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, he notes that the top applicants for visas are outsourcing companies, such as Wipro Technologies of India and Bermuda-based Accenture.

The companies bring recruits in from, say, India to learn about American business. After three years here, the workers go home better able to interact with their U.S. customers.

In other cases, companies ask their U.S. employees to train H-1B workers who then replace them at lower pay. “This is euphemistically called, ‘knowledge transfer,’” says Hira. “I call it, ‘knowledge extraction.’”

Yes, many Americans have had the insulting experience of having to train their replacements. And many more Americans are seeing our government giving our careers and our livelihoods, to cheap foreign labor. Ms. Harrop ends her op/ed with this warning:

This vision for a competitive America seems to be a few rich U.S. executives commandeering armies of foreign workers. They don’t have to train their domestic workforce. They don’t have to raise pay to American standards.

A provision for revving up the H-1B program is contained in the immigration bill that last year passed the Senate. The co-sponsors, Democrat Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and Republican John McCain of Arizona have contended that their legislation requires employers to search for U.S. workers first. It does not.

Skilled U.S. workers had better start looking out for their interests. No one else is.

If you are not contacting your elected officials, you cannot complain if your job is next.

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Others posting:

HOPE YOU ENJOY FILING YOUR TAXES . . . 15 million future guest workers thank you too from StikNstein

Firefight in . . .Houston from Bear Creek Ledger

Radical Islam…Coming to a Border Near You from DeMediacratic Nation

Illegal is Illegal, Family or Not and Illegal Immigration: A Reversible Curse on America from Illegal Aliens Must Go

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**This was a production of The Coalition Against Illegal Immigration (CAII). If you would like to participate, please go to the above link to learn more. Afterwards, email stiknstein-at-gmail-dot-com and let us know at what level you would like to participate.