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Anybody here believe the US needs foreign workers for IT jobs?

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raccoon Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 10:07 AM
Original message
Anybody here believe the US needs foreign workers for IT jobs?

I think all that is a bunch of crap. I've seen so much on the Internet, and known people in RL, who are/were in the field, and it's been difficult for them to find jobs. Unless they've been in the same job forever (usually government) and haven't been laid off.

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mrreowwr_kittty Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 10:11 AM
Response to Original message
1. Not me. Unfortunately many of our Dems in Congress believe it. nt
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OmahaBlueDog Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 10:11 AM
Response to Original message
2. I always read that as they need cheaper workers
Or that they needed a bigger overall pool of labor to keep labor prices stable.

That said, the fact is you can get programmers anywhere in the world if you so desire.
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DadOf2LittleAngels Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 12:58 PM
Response to Reply #2
29. Its only marginally about 'cheeper workers'
When you say that to someone who supports H1B's they will counter with the fact that often these guys are paid the market rate... What they leave out is they work these guys 60 hours a week and they are *basically* wage slaves as changing companies is *extremely* difficult if not impossible.

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Greyhound Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 10:12 AM
Response to Original message
3. There are millions of us that cannot even get an interview.
Edited on Tue Apr-01-08 10:12 AM by greyhound1966
ITAA is a corporate chimera created by corporations to give Clinton cover for his great wage suppression agenda (H-1b - L-1 visa program).

:kick: & R



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sinkingfeeling Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 10:13 AM
Response to Original message
4. No.
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kentuck Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 10:14 AM
Response to Original message
5. They're lying out of their asses!
They have helped to tear down this country with their loyalty to greed.
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leftofthedial Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 10:15 AM
Response to Original message
6. anyone here who still defends "free trade" capitalism,
Hillary supporters and the like, for example, does.
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madokie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 10:15 AM
Response to Original message
7. Don't forget the construction workers now
thats what I'm told is we need more lower wage paid workers in our occupations. read it here all the time.
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mrreowwr_kittty Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 11:04 AM
Response to Reply #7
15. Nurses are next.
Already they are being imported from countries like Mexico and the Phillipines to work for lower wages.

Eventually we'll all be fighting for scraps.
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madokie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 11:28 AM
Response to Reply #15
23. The best I can figure from reading here the ones who are advocating cheap construction workers
you know to do the jobs we won't do, which is bullshit btw, and all that are not construction workers. I know that is the situation in the Nurses field too. My wife is a Nurse and is being overworked like all of you are. Our focus needs to be on that aspect of labor rather than having to spend our time fighting off cheap labor. I just don't know
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RethugAssKicker Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 10:23 AM
Response to Original message
8. I work as a DBA at one of the Fortune 100 Companies..
I have been in this business for 25 years.... and in the past 4 years...the company I have is now overwhelming of Indian origin...all basically in the IT
field...

Of the 24 people in my group...18 are Indian.

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Morereason Donating Member (496 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Apr-02-08 10:26 PM
Response to Reply #8
44. Yep, I saw it too, layoff Americans while quietly importing foreigners
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alpizzy Donating Member (737 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 10:29 AM
Response to Original message
9. There is at least one law firm...
that specializes in teaching companies about how to disqualify
American workers. There was a video on YouTube not long ago
showing the firm running a seminar about it.
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Greyhound Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 10:07 PM
Response to Reply #9
30. Yes there is, and here's a link to it.
Edited on Tue Apr-01-08 10:08 PM by greyhound1966
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU">PERM Fake Job Ads defraud Americans. There has been a bit of coverage of this issue, but nothing very accurate as to the real reasons and consequences of this massive corporate welfare scheme.



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Jim__ Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 10:32 AM
Response to Original message
10. I don't - n/t
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undeterred Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 10:32 AM
Response to Original message
11. Hell no!
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The2ndWheel Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 10:33 AM
Response to Original message
12. If you want instant global communication, you're going to get outsourcing
What would be the point of coming up with the ability to do it, if you weren't going to take advantage of that ability?

Plus it's not about the US. It's about the job being done. The only reason it was ever about the US was because place still mattered. It no longer does. You always were a cog, but now there are billions of globally interchangeable parts that can do your job(and easily replaceable units that can replace them).

So no, the "US"(if such a thing exists) doesn't need "foreign"(if such a thing exists) workers to do those jobs. However, those jobs don't need you either. You, and everyone else(human and non-human), is a burden on the system of production.
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northzax Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 11:06 AM
Response to Reply #12
16. ding ding ding!
you are now free to move about the country.

spacial proximity is increasingly irrelevant. the location of hardware is increasingly irrelevant. the location of labor is increasingly irrelevant. the same technology that allows me to make this post without my location being relevant (I could be on my iPhone in Punta Arenas, or my laptop in DC, you can't tell, and it doesn't matter anyway) also means that space is much more fungible than ever before.

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Morereason Donating Member (496 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Apr-02-08 10:28 PM
Response to Reply #16
45. You did not get his point. You are "free" to eventually become a "resource" and slave labor,
that is where it will lead
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HughBeaumont Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 11:37 AM
Response to Reply #12
24. Uh, there's still this little matter of contributing to the economy.
Like, paying bills, buying products, eating, shelter, clothing, etc. You know, those pesky little things economies need to RUN.

And you kind of can't DO that if you have no sustainable living-wage JOB. Economies cannot thrive off of or expand with less-than-pauper-wage positions for all.

But hey, I guess it's all the better to turn the US into one giant Sao Paulo . . . as long as one overseas middle class rises to just over broke, who really cares about the one that got decimated completely along with it's economy as a result, right?

See any of them "green jobs" coming over the horizon? Find anything new to "retrain" for yet? Or are we just going to have "faith" that this Milton Friedman-designed nightmare will eventually work while we keep playing employment musical chairs until we all die?
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The2ndWheel Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 12:36 PM
Response to Reply #24
26. Hell of a reality we've built up eh?
Like I said, we're all a burden on the system. We don't live on the planet, we live in an economic system. That economic system isn't even on any human scale. It's not made for us.

"See any of them "green jobs" coming over the horizon? Find anything new to "retrain" for yet? Or are we just going to have "faith" that this Milton Friedman-designed nightmare will eventually work while we keep playing employment musical chairs until we all die?"

That's what happens when the world is universally standardized. We're all just a number.

"Economies cannot thrive off of or expand with less-than-pauper-wage positions for all."

I wouldn't agree with that. If you can bring in more people, then that economy can expand. It's sort of the same idea with universal healthcare, just that it works the other way. The more people paying into the same health system causes your percentage of the tax to be lower. The more people you bring into the economic system, the less you have to pay each person to get the job done. Plus, the more aspects of the economy that you automate, that is even fewer people you have to employ. True, those people do need to continue to consume(what is an economy without relentless consumption?), but that's why McDonald's(or whatever) exists.

Then you have the whole thing about everyone being able to live better than a king or queen from days gone by. That is only possible with cheap energy. The cheaper the energy, the larger the impact we have on the planet that we don't actually exist on. We insulate ourselves inside the economic system, but everything outside of that system begins to fail, since we're using up more energy. Our economic system is competing with the planet. If we have to have our economies thrive and expand, then we can't do anything about our environmental problems.

The main problem is that we want everything. We want instant communication on a global level, but not outsourcing. We want all the money for ourselves, but when the economy collapses because the cogs in the machine don't have enough to keep the economy functioning, then we want the cogs to bail us out with the money they don't have. We want a world where every person has everything they ever need, but then want a world where we have less impact on our habitat. We want more control over our lives, but then we create global institutions that make us .057% of the total. We don't want to live in physical reality, but we sort of have to. Equal and opposite reaction, and all that jazz.

I agree with you. We shouldn't have to train from an early age to learn how to be trained, and then go train some more, then lose our job because we've become obsolete because we stopped training because we were actually working, only to go train some more, until we finally get to the point where we're no longer obsolete, only to find ourselves obsolete again because the moment we stop training is the moment we become obsolete, so we never get around to getting the job we train for and end up in debt since that's the only way we can continue training and not working, until we die.

If you have an alternative reality to the one we're in that won't be eradicated because of the slightest inefficiency, I'd be more than happy to hear it.
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OhioChick Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Apr-02-08 07:50 AM
Response to Reply #24
41. I see you've updated your journal
since I last read it. Always enjoy looking it over. :thumbsup:
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cascadiance Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 11:21 PM
Response to Reply #12
35. Allowing companies to race to the bottom is not only bad for working people...
It's also bad for global warming.

As long as the world allows companies free movement to go to the place where there's the least amount of wages, the least environmental regulation, etc. to get cheap labor without penalty, the working class is going to get pushed down more and more globally.

Also when companies aren't made to pay for the costs they externalize back onto the world, like the cost of moving their goods and services "globally" and moving outsourced labor "globally" that environmental inefficiency of all that extra transportation will just heat up the atmosphere that much more. These globalized companies work under a more restrictive net of trade agreements, etc. where the world's working class and its environment are factored in to their "profit/loss" equation.
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JDPriestly Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 10:54 AM
Response to Original message
13. No. We don't need foreign workers.
I know many, many Americans who are out of work or underemployed. Many of them are well educated and can learn anything if given a chance. A lot of them are over 50. That's what bugs the employers. They feel perfectly fine with discriminating against older workers. A lot of the unemployed and underemployed are members of minorities. They also are willing to learn a job for decent pay. But employers, again, discriminate. And the Bush regime has been unwilling to prosecute discrimination.
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Romulox Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 10:56 AM
Response to Original message
14. If you decimate the blue collar workforce with free trade, they can't afford expensive US IT workers
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Bozita Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 11:06 AM
Response to Original message
17. Many unemployed American IT workers around here.
SE Michigan.


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PVnRT Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 11:13 AM
Response to Original message
18. No, it's bullshit
Despite the dickweed on NPR this morning whining about how there just "aren't enough American workers in the field," sidestepping questions about qualified people, etc.

The real answer is that they would rather apply for H-1B's than pay American workers a decent salary.
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bean fidhleir Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 11:14 AM
Response to Original message
19. not only No but HELL No. (nt)
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Johonny Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 11:15 AM
Response to Original message
20. I'll join the no vote
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Bozita Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 11:16 AM
Response to Original message
21. Thom Hartmann is talking about H1-b visas now on AAR
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Lydia Leftcoast Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 11:17 AM
Response to Original message
22. What has happened is that a whole generation (or maybe two)
of business executives have been taught to believe that their ONLY function is to run the company in a way that increases returns to the shareholders and bonuses for the executives.

Doing that requires a two-fold approach:

1. Cutting operating expenses to the bone by any means necessary

2. Since this increases profits, whining and moaning about how high taxes are "killing" them so that the feds and states cut taxes way down, leaving more for the shareholders.

Never mind that they could actually lower their taxes by hiring more American workers and building more plants in the U.S. That would leave less for the almighty shareholders and executive bonuses.

(If you want to see the mindset of today's corporate executive at work, go to the message board Flyertalk and see all these 100,000+ mile per year types discuss the airlines' financial problems. Their arguments boil down to 1) Rank and file employees make too much money, and 2) Top executives deserve every penny of their multi-million dollar bonuses. Argue with them and you get called a "Communist." No wonder U.S. airlines are in such a mess.)
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OutNow Donating Member (538 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 12:09 PM
Response to Original message
25. IT Shortage - Not!
I worked for the largest computer company in the country for 25 years. I worked with many great folks who were born somewhere else but came to the U.S. for college and decided to stay. No problem with that.

In the last 10 years this company has fired thousands of employees, especially those 50 years and older. Rather than hire recent college grads they have brought in thousands of "temp" workers, usually from India. This has a double negative impact on American workers: 1. if you are 50 or over expect to lose your job 2. if you are a recent college grad with a degree in computer science expect to have your job opportunities shrink.

Much more detail at

http://www.washtech.org/
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DadOf2LittleAngels Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 12:49 PM
Response to Original message
27. IT is all about hotspots
I had to leave WNY because it was sooo bad... but 2002-2008 in MSP weve had a pretty good IT market. You have to be willing to do the contract to hire thing (its the new probationary period). Seems to be cooling now.

I think right now there is no need for workers, so much has went overseas but four years ago in some markets you could make the case h1b's were needed.. Still the whole point of H1B;s should be a bandaid until the next class or three of American Engineers graduate then they should slide in..
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EnviroBat Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 12:58 PM
Response to Original message
28. No, and I'm getting pretty fucking tired of interviewing ---
resume padders with H1B's. The skill sets are a fucking joke. "3 + years experience in blah blah blah..." Can't answer simple questions about blah blah blah... Resume looks stellar only to find out candidate doesn't know the first thing about the subject. Come to find out later that they may have seen such and such application on somebody else's screen one time, and that was the "experience" they're touting. Or the other one I really love, "Hey could you install such an such on my machine...", (so I can add it to my resume for the next gig).

Bullshit.
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Skittles Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 10:14 PM
Response to Original message
31. it is absolute garbage
I'm in a position to know who is being let go and who is being hired and there is simply no comparison in quality
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The Straight Story Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 10:15 PM
Response to Original message
32. No, and I speak as someone with a lot of experience in IT
There are plenty of people out there in the US who can do these jobs.

I was laid off, and then my company spent 75k hiring programmers in India to do what I was doing. They could not do it. So after wasting that money and laying me off they asked a guy still working at the bank to use my code, and he called me up for help.

After a year+ and many dollars wasted they ended up using what I wrote. But those guys were 'cheaper' since they did not have to pay them benefits and such.

I made 80k a year there, had a 401k, etc, but was booted to save money. And in the end they lost money. My manager thought she was doing the right thing and making money for the company, but in the end she lost them a lot.

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Skittles Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 10:17 PM
Response to Reply #32
33. I used to talk to people like you all night in my job
now I talk to people in India, Egypt, Brazil - what has happened is, as the quality went south, so did the expectations. For example, I used to call security for password resets and it would take 10 minutes. Now we simply expect it to take more than one hour, or two, or three......:puke:
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OhioChick Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 10:19 PM
Response to Original message
34. Hell No.
Study: There Is No Shortage of U.S. Engineers

Duke Study...More at: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Careers/Study-There-Is-No-Shortage-of-US-Engineers/
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Codedonkey Donating Member (153 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 11:29 PM
Response to Original message
36. Yes! Americans aren't smart or educated enough....
I kids... ;)


Of course there is no need for it...
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alittlelark Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Apr-02-08 12:41 AM
Response to Reply #36
38. Uh, yeah........
whatever.
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Firespirit Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-01-08 11:31 PM
Response to Original message
37. I'm a software engineer and I'd work for $45,000.
I went to the same goddamn schools as the foreign workers who were here on visas. Sat in the same classrooms. I'm not undereducated compared to someone in India and I'd love a job in my field. It IS a bunch of crap.
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Hannah Bell Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Apr-02-08 01:15 AM
Response to Original message
39. Sure. The same as we need nurses from the Philippines,
farmworkers & construction workers from Mexico, charter schools, & deregulation.

Cheap labor. Union-busting. Increasing worker insecurity.

Promoting the dominance of capital over labor.

That's important, doncha know.
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Rex Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Apr-02-08 01:16 AM
Response to Original message
40. Just like credit cards, another stupid idea.
But as we see now, stupid people run the world now. Well, not stupid. Rich or whatever perverted word you could use for people 'that rich'.
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aldo Donating Member (297 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Apr-02-08 04:23 PM
Response to Original message
42. Hell no, that just liar culture talk!
Liar culture has taken over U.S. businesses, pushed by M. Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics. (Even the Nobel for economics is a lie, it's a different program.)
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musette_sf Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Apr-02-08 04:28 PM
Response to Original message
43. NO n/t
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