With 4M Americans jobless, are the H-1A, H-1B & H-2B labor import progams treason?

Not sure if this is the correct place for this, apologies if it isn't.

Each year corporate America imports at least 120K foreign workers a year: scientists, engineers, programmers, nurses, college professors, all high tech jobs, on the premise that they can't find enough qualified, unemployed American workers to fill those positions. Even with more than four million Americans out of work, they wish to increase the quotas this year.

All of these programs, and I'm not sure how many there actually are, there may be more than these, but these will serve as an example, share some common characteristics. The workers are tied to their importer employer, i.e., they cannot change jobs, they caanot unionize or bargain collectively, and they are paid less than American workers. The wages that are paid to these people often are sent out of the country to support the workers' home economies rather than ours.

So I ask, in these times, is this treason?

www.epi.org...
www.zazona.com...
www.h1b.info...
www.myvisajobs.com...
en.wikipedia.org...
www.internetnews.com...
www.workpermit.com...
www.nfib.com...
www.bloomberg.com...
news.bbc.co.uk...
ruralwelfare.ucdavis.edu...
mikulski.senate.gov...

TextTextText WhiteText I agree these visa's should be repealed. Its time to give these jobs back to the people that need them the most, 'AMERICANS". Tough times call for tough decisions....Roy

You bring up a good point. Most people seemed too preoccupied with janitors and fruit pickers who come across the Mexican border to take "their" jobs, they ignore the people from Europe, India, and China that are taking jobs many Americans would like to have.

The plan all along has been to dumb down all those who've been through Americas secondary education system.Most people that do graduate high school don't have enough education to pass entrance exams for universities.
Most that do enter universities earn liberal arts degrees that actually train them for no available positions. A small percentage do follow the science and mathmatics track.They are in demand.We have to import the highly skilled because we have failed to promote useful educational skills to our youth.
If you are looking for treasonist acts or real conspiracy,look at our higher education system.How can this country spend Billions of dollars in foreign aid per year,with no return on the investment.While that money could be spent on higher education for everyone.A college degree should not cost the student a single dime.The benifits to this country would be imeasurable.
That is the real conspiracy!!

The short answer is YES but for more than just this reason.

Our Companies are no longer "American" companies and they have lost any semblence of giving a damn about the country from where they came or the people in it. Profit over the common good is now the theme.

And as long as they are allowed to outsource, insource foreign labor it just continues the downfall of the American way of life.

We talk about competitiveness in the foreign market, how we cannot compete and in truth we cannot compete and maintain our way of life on numerous fronts.

The US cannot compete with slave labor period on manufacturing. This is why most of our manufacturing base was sent away starting 2 decades ago. We were given the illusion that "service" jobs would be the key to maintaining the American way of life... that to was a lie because regulation was not introduced to keep it that way.

Now the service jobs are being outsourced and not due to competitiveness... It is due to the unadulterated lust for profit.

Does AT&T, Verizon, IBM, HP, etc have to outsource call center jobs to India to remain competitive?? The answer is NO... the difference is (for example) 47 Billion in profit instead of 45 Billion... on large scale terms it is nothing to the bottom line but detrimental to the American people.

Look at this crap just this week with IBM.

money.cnn.com...

Through a program dubbed Project Match, IBM will help interested workers whose jobs are on the chopping block to "identify potential opportunities in growth markets and facilitate consideration by hiring managers in those markets," IBM would not immediately confirm if it means that the workers would be paid local wages and would be subject to local labor laws. "IBM not only is offshoring its work to low-cost countries, now IBM wants employees to offshore themselves," spokesman Lee Conrad told CNN. "At a time of rising unemployment IBM should be looking to keep both the work and the workers in the United States."

So now companies are trying to move American skilled labor to 3rd world holes with low pay and shady labor laws to make an extra buck. This is disgusting.

Now we have "bailout" banks canning Americans to import cheap foreign labor... (And guys, the arguement of these are jobs americans don't want to do is BS! - They are accounting, networking, programmers, etc.)

www.cbsnews.com...
Bailout Banks Sought More Foreign Workers
Number Of H-1B Visas Requested By Banks For Employees Increased By One-Third Last Year

"American citizenship is being undermined working in our own country," Huber said in an AP interview.

Beyond seeking approval for visas from the government, banks that accepted federal bailout money also enlisted uncounted foreign workers, often in technology jobs, through intermediary companies known as "body shops." Such businesses are the top recipients of the H-1B visas.

It is criminal. Most of their profit is from the US and it almost seems they are collectively trying to destroy their largest customer.

If you (USA) cannot fill these 'high tech/educated' jobs from within your own populace, then you have no choice but to let in foreign workers with the right skills/qualifications to fill those posts.

Incidently, you cant just 'train' someone up for these jobs, you have to have some brains and skills.

The same goes in most western societies including Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand and European countries. All of these countries as well as the USA are trawling the same patches of ocean for the same workers.

Take my profession for example: Nursing - The US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand between them are short of 1,000,000 nurses.

Whats going in this country is an absolute disgrace, with piece's of s--t legislation like the Patriot act and NAFTA. Know wonder why we have become 2nd rate citizen's in our own country.

reply to post by Wotan


It's not that we can't, don't, or won't.

It's that American citizens are more expensive and have legal rights. They are more expensive because the cost of living is higher here. They are higher because the top 10% raising costs (medical, housing, power, oil) to increase profits. Americans with doctorates are out of work, displaced by cheaper Asians, Russians, and Indians.

So what do do?

Call your congresscritters every day and demand these programs be abolished and prohibit outsourcing until the unemployment rate drops to below 4%.

reply to post by Wotan


errr... they are firing American accountants and hiring the same position out to a foreign visa holder the next week.

It is blatant and the argument of not enough labor for the demand is false as we have plenty of unemployed professionals.

Next will be the argument that the foreigners are better educated... another line of BS as I met a large group of "university graduates" and their university is about the same as our high school level.

Always a ton of excuses and justifications that are smoke in mirrors.... the reason,

Bottom Line: Labor = cheap, no complaints, no worry about labor violations, workmans comp, retirement, etc.


AP Investigation: Banks sought foreign workers
news.yahoo.com...

During the last three months of 2008, the largest banks that received taxpayer loans announced more than 100,000 layoffs. The number of foreign workers included among those laid off is unknown.

Foreigners are attractive hires because companies have found ways to pay them less than American workers.

Companies are required to pay foreign workers a prevailing wage based on the job's description. But they can use the lower end of government wage scales even for highly skilled workers; hire younger foreigners with lower salary demands; and hire foreigners with higher levels of education or advanced degrees for jobs for which similarly educated American workers would be considered overqualified.

"The system provides you perfectly legal mechanisms to underpay the workers,"

So, Can American workers then request MORE foreign labor (because nobody here can do it cept the people you just canned right?)

Major U.S. banks sought government permission to bring thousands of foreign workers into the country for high-paying jobs even as the system was melting down last year and Americans were getting laid off, according to an Associated Press review of visa applications.

The dozen banks now receiving the biggest rescue packages, totaling more than $150 billion, requested visas for more than 21,800 foreign workers over the past six years for positions that included senior vice presidents, corporate lawyers, junior investment analysts and human resources specialists. The average annual salary for those jobs was $90,721, nearly twice the median income for all American households.

As the economic collapse worsened last year — with huge numbers of bank employees laid off — the numbers of visas sought by the dozen banks in AP's analysis increased by nearly one-third, from 3,258 in the 2007 budget year to 4,163 in fiscal 2008.

The AP reviewed visa applications the banks filed with the Labor Department under the H-1B visa program, which allows temporary employment of foreign workers in specialized-skill and advanced-degree positions. Such visas are most often associated with high-tech workers.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services declined to disclose details on foreign workers hired at the banks that have received federal bailouts. The AP has requested the information under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

Nearly all the banks the AP contacted also declined to comment on their foreign hiring practices. Arlene C. Roberts, spokeswoman for State Street Corp. of Boston, which has received $2 billion in bailout money, said the company has reduced H-1B hiring in recent years, and just hires for specialized positions.

Jennifer Scott of Yreka, Calif., a retired technical systems manager at Bank of America in Concord, Calif., said in 2004 she oversaw foreign employees from a contractor firm that also sent overnight work to employees in India.

"It had nothing to do with a shortage, but they didn't want to pay the U.S. rate," she said, adding that the quality of the work was weak. "It's all about numbers crunching."

[edit on 7-2-2009 by infolurker]