Author: Robert Oak

cross posted from the NoSlaves.com blog

While the choices for President slim down to next to none, one might evaluate positions instead of joining the various cheer leading camps.  Who, overall has the best trade, economic positions to stop this global train wreck?

Firstly any group name calling someone protectionist because they acknowledge the obviously massive ~5.6% GDP trade deficit,  is obviously not basing their economics on anything remotely resembling reality.   The reason I link to this Pro Obama group is because they want more bad trade agreements.  They assessed Obama as more of a corporate free trader than Hillary.  Below are some statements from the two for easy comparison contrast.  

Obama

   
• Fight for Fair Trade: Obama will fight for a trade policy that opens up foreign markets to support good American jobs. He will use trade agreements to spread good labor and environmental standards around the world and stand firm against agreements like the Central American Free Trade Agreement that fail to live up to those important benchmarks. Obama will also pressure the World Trade Organization to enforce trade agreements and stop countries from continuing unfair government subsidies to foreign exporters and non tariff barriers on U.S. exports.

   
• Amend the North American Free Trade Agreement: Obama believes that NAFTA and its potential were oversold to the American people. Obama will work with the leaders of Canada and Mexico to fix NAFTA so that it works for American workers.

   
• Improve Transition Assistance: To help all workers adapt to a rapidly changing economy, Obama would update the existing system of Trade Adjustment Assistance by extending it to service industries, creating flexible education accounts to help workers retrain, and
  providing retraining assistance for workers in sectors of the economy vulnerable to dislocation before they lose their jobs.

Hillary

   
• I will oppose the pending trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama

   

• Ensure that trade policies work for average Americans. Trade policy must raise our standard of living, and they must have strong protections for workers and the environment

   

• I will appoint a trade enforcement officer and double the enforcement staff at the office of the United States Trade Representative

   

• I will also systematically review every trade agreement to ensure that it is delivering benefits to American workers

   

• I will also expand the Trade Adjustment Assistance program so that workers negatively affected by the global economy get the help they need.

   

• In my first months in office, I will take a time out from new trade deals to assess their impact before going forward

   

• Reevaluate free trade deals every five years to ensure that they are still meeting our national and agricultural interests

Another excellent resource is this Iowa questionnaire, from a fair trade action group.  This grid has  the most detailed questions I’ve found to date.  Unfortunately neither candidate spells out enough details on their websites.

Clinton Statement

I support pro-America trade. When trade agreements are negotiated without real concern for workers, or when the agreements are not properly enforced, it hurts American families. I believe trade must work for middle-class Americans. Out trade deficit is at unacceptable levels. As President, I will reinvigorate America’s manufacturing base, and ensure that foreign countries do not manipulate their currencies to disadvantage American goods.

The world is changing rapidly, and old assumptions about trade must be reexamined. As President, I will not enter into new trade agreements, or seek trade promotion authority, until my administration has done two things: reviewed all of our existing agreements to determine whether they are benefiting our economy and our workers; and crafted a comprehensive, Pro America trade policy that will strengthen our country in the 21st Century

Obama statement

We can’t stop globalization in its tracks
..
We need to make sure that the rule governing trade are fair and that we’re investing in our workers so that they remain the most competitive in the world
…
I will work to expand our trade agenda beyond lowering tariffs and protecting our commercial interests.

Obama’s statement is quite long mentioning certain details, but I could not locate any overall policy statement to reconsider all trade agreements, especially the China PNTR agreement or overall policy.  Obama does have many more statements seemingly in support of more trade agreements and only mentions environmental and worker standards and worker retraining.  Like Hillary, Obama talks about removing tax incentives to offshore outsource American jobs and also like Hillary to address China’s currency manipulation (pegging the Yuan to the dollar artifically low).

Here is an in depth Economist article on their trade positions and notes Dick Gephardt, a well known opponent of NAFTA and other bad trade agreements is an adviser in the Hillary campaign.   In the Senate, Obama lobbied for the Peru free trade agreement.  Clinton also voted for the Peru trade agreement and both opposed the CAFTA-DR agreement.

While both have flaws it appears Clinton is the best bet for a complete revamp of the United States trade agreements, but with a lot of public support and demand.

note I ignored McCain because he is a United States trade train wreck

Hot off the presses folks!

Yes, that’s right, Mr. Patriotic 9-11 wants to make sure middle class workers are displaced and exposed to labor arbitrage! Aren’t you glad he’s such a loyal American?
Loyal to corporations operating in America that is.

Look at Rudy Giuliani’s top priority:

Expand the number of H1B Visas for skilled foreign workers to meet market demand

Anyone based in reality would never say the program needs to expand since right now American graduates cannot get a job!

Dr. Harold Salzman, The Urban Institute –

The available data indicate that the United States’ education system produces a supply of qualified STEM graduates in much greater numbers than jobs available.

We just had world leading experts testify before congress proving there is no worker shortage and Americans are being shut out of high quality middle class careers.  So Giuliani of course wants to make that situation worse!

Giuliani claims he wants to aggressively push for more bad trade deals and this is his only solution for our trade deficit:

Reduce corporate tax rates and regulatory burden so that Americans can better compete in the global economy.

Oh yes, I’m sure that’s it, has nothing to do with the agreements themselves being written by and for corporate interests, the pegging of the yuan, China’s absurd tariff schedule or slave labor practices.

Oh yeah, Giuliani would approve fast track authority .  Damn the facts Giuliani, just keep chanting 9-11!  We have a massive trade deficit in this country and the dollar is falling in value.  Giuliani’s plan?  To keep pushing along policy that is not in America’s interests!

crossposted on the NoSlaves.com blog

Earlier I wrote a piece exposing Edwards history for promoting more labor arbitraging guest worker Visas, yet in a recent NPR debate he sounds like he might be realizing Americans are being displaced, or at least is feeling the heat.

This is a good thing, certainly most of Edwards positions are more in line with working America (see Clinton on H-1B and yes Obama is about as bad).
From the December 4, 2007 Iowa, NPR debate:

SIEGEL: A question for Senator Edwards. If you’re elected president, you’ll hear competing claims about H1-B visas for highly skilled workers. People like Bill Gates will tell you we should have much, much more of them to bring in more highly skilled workers. Critics of that will say no, the United States is training other countries’ engineers and in fact those workers are working for less than American-trained specialists and engineers would.

What would you do as president? Expand H1-B visas or scale them back?

MR. EDWARDS: Well — well, the first point is, why is America not educating and training American workers to do these jobs? I mean, that’s the starting point —

SIEGEL: Well, there are Americans who say that they are being trained for those jobs but that they can’t compete with workers from India who will work for 10 percent less.

MR. EDWARDS: And that’s the reason — if American workers are actually competent to do those jobs, American workers should be doing those jobs. The whole purpose of the H1-B visa program is to bring people from other places who are — who have to do jobs that we don’t have American workers to do.

Now, I think there are two pieces to this. One is, if there are American workers who can do the jobs, they should be doing them, as I just said. And they will when I’m president.

Second, if we don’t have adequate American workers — and this is the other side of the equation, what Bill Gates and others would argue, and I’ve heard the same arguments — then that means America’s not doing its job of educating our young people, making —

SIEGEL: But are you saying that for you, it’s a matter of fact-finding to see which way you would go on H1-B visas, or have you already made up your mind that they should be limited or they should be increased?

MR. EDWARDS: I believe that there are American workers who can do some of these jobs that people are being brought from other places to do. And I think those American workers, if they’re there and available, should be doing the jobs.

But I — I’ve — you got to give me 30 more seconds on this, because you can’t ignore the underlying issue. The underlying issue is, are we making it easier for kids to go to college? Are we driving our young people into engineering, science and math, the very areas that we’re talking about? And are we doing it in a way that will strengthen the American economy over the long term? Because if we don’t — if we are not the most creative, the best-educated, the most innovative workforce on the planet, it is very difficult for us to compete.

Please note Senator Edwards, the underlying issue is really cheap labor.  We actually have a glut in graduates in Science related fields who cannot get a job.  

We really need a candidate who will stand up for the American people and this sure is a change of rhetoric from Edwards on guest worker Visas which are a major labor issue for Professional workers. He also seems to be realizing to a minor degree the wage repression via illegal workers is real. I’m not thrilled with his comprehensive immigration reform stance, which is the code word for corporate written, guest worker Visa laden bills and labor arbitrage agenda, but at least he is talking about real labor issues versus the usual inane rhetoric when asked.

And in New Hampshire we have

EDWARDS: Guest workers may be necessary where there are worker shortages, but I will eliminate abuses of the H-1B and L-1 guest worker programs by strengthening labor law enforcement and requiring employers to demonstrate that they could not recruit American workers and that they pay the prevailing wage.

and Senator Dodd gets a gold star for this statement:

I continue to express reservations about expanding the guest worker program. It is important that we close loopholes that allow American companies to hire lower-paid, high-tech workers from abroad. In order for America to be a land of opportunity for all, we must, first and foremost, make sure that opportunity exists for Americans

I’m still leery but that said, beyond Kucinch every single Democratic candidate will make sure middle class careers, professionals, especially those in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics will be economically decimated by the global labor arbitrage agenda. I should note Senator Dodd in 2003  tried to reform the L-1 guest worker Visa program.   Still, unfortunately all sitting Senators running for President voted for massive increases both in 2006 and 2007.

Meanwhile, A lone tech worker braves the cold in Iowa demanding candidates stick up for working America while hordes of corporate cheap labor lobbyists court the candidates.

Oh, Biden is just plain wrong about the law, it’s perfectly legal to hire a H-1B worker, displacing an American and for less money.

On that note, this quote is most encouraging from Edwards:

American trade policy is catering to the interests of big corporate America. It has been for a decade and a half. And we desperately need a president of the United States who, instead of asking, is this going to help corporate profits — is this actually going to stand up for American workers and American jobs

crossposted on the NoSlaves.com blog

Most engineers know there are many ways to hide malicious code and design within architecture. Yet, most subscribe to an engineering code of ethics, the thought of such a betrayal analgous  to a Medical Doctor using their skills to commit murder.

Yet in terms of policy is our Government undervaluing the national loyalty of most US citizen engineers?  Are they enabling U.S. Scientists, Technologists, Engineers and Mathematicians to use their skills in support of infrastructure that is within the national interest?

An alarming report, Mission Impact of the Foreign Influence on DoD Software and it’s corollary on hardware was issued recently without much fanfare.

Software has become the central ingredient of the information age, increasing productivity, facilitating the storage and transfer of information, and enabling functionality in almost every realm of human endeavor. However, as it improves the Department of Defense’s (DoD) capability, it increases DoDs dependency. Each year the Department of Defense depends more on software for its administration and for the planning and execution of its missions. This growing dependency is a source of weakness exacerbated by the mounting size, complexity and interconnectedness of its software programs. It is only a matter of time before an adversary exploits this weakness at a critical moment in history.

The software industry has become increasingly and irrevocably global. Much of the code is now written outside the United States(U.S.), some in countries that may have interests inimical to those of the United States. The combination of DoDs profound and growing dependence upon software and the expanding opportunity for adversaries to introduce malicious code into this software has led to a growing risk to the Nation’s defense

The Intelligence Community (IC) does not adequately collect and disseminate intelligence regarding the intents and capabilities of nation-state adversaries to attack and subvert DoD systems and networks through supply chain exploitations, or through other sophisticated techniques.
DoD does not consistently or adequately analyze and incorporate into its acquisition decisions what supply chain threat information is available.

Now read this:

It is not currently DoD policy to require any program, even those deemed critical by dint of a Mission Assurance Category I status, to conduct a counterintelligence review of its major suppliers, unless classified information is involved.

Get that? No one is minding the store!

We already had Trojans (malware) put into Seagate’s Maxtor hard drives and the news barely made slashdot.

There are recommendations in these reports which you may or may not feel are adequate.  One thing I feel certain is that while few, in their goal for labor arbitrage, are paying attention, the reality is the world is a series of nation-states.  While more and more U.S. engineers are being marginalized, their careers cut short,  the reality is fewer will take ethics or national loyalty seriously or even be around to monitor those who do not.

While COTS (Commercial off the shelf system components) must surely be part of military systems as the report points out, a hidden implication of this report is that they have relied on, America has relied on the integrity of it’s STEM professionals as well as their national loyalty much more than is currently acknowledged.   Americans were thrown away in favor of cheaper labor, with nary a thought about the national security implications.

You might also want to watch PBS Frontline’s CyberWar! for further background on national security threats as we become increasingly dependent upon technology.

crossposted on the NoSlaves.com blog

The House Science Committee held a hearing on November 6, 2007 completing their series on Globalization of R&D and Innovation.

Before you go to sleep, some fairly shocking testimony proving there is no worker shortage and some additional shocking facts on how the US debt is affecting job creation as well as how current research grant awards are inversely affecting R&D!
Dr. Harold Salzman, The Urban Institute –

The available data indicate that the United States’ education system produces a supply of qualified STEM graduates in much greater numbers than jobs available.

even further more frightening is the implications that Americans might be displaced in graduate school opportunity:

Although there have been steady increases in the numbers of U.S. citizens and permanent residents pursuing a STEM education at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, the number of graduate students on temporary visas has also grown. It is unknown whether this indicates students on temporary visas are filling a demand for graduate students that U.S. undergraduate colleges cannot meet (serving as a complement to the domestic supply) or whether universities and companies are substituting temporary visa students for academically qualified U.S. students. Most likely, it is some of both.

Most interesting was this observation:

Wall Street now considers firms to be weak if they rely on strong internal R&D rather than external acquisitions of companies, innovations, or technologies.

Look at this, literally if you are a publicly traded company and do not have as your business model acquisitions, wall street, out of some sort of mythical ideal, not by your actual prospectus, will not recommend the stock.   Now that one is really frightening.

The industries most vocal about labor market shortages and the need to import workers may be voicing unrealistic expectations of desired work experience more than deficiencies in the skills or education of a new hire, or just dissatisfaction with the cost of labor.

Dr. Michael S. Teitelbaum, Vice President, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. also testified and frankly knocked my socks off.

TeitelBaum compared typical recent reports, such as Tapping America’s Potential (please note the US Chamber of Commerce, America’s cheap labor lobbyist is involved) and Rising Above the Gathering Storm and shows how they are simply not based in reality.

1.  No one who has come to the question with an open mind has been able to find any objective data suggesting general “shortages” of scientists and engineers. The RAND Corporation has conducted several studies of this subject; its conclusions go further than my summary above, saying that not only could they not find any evidence of shortages, but that instead the evidence is more suggestive of surpluses. I would add here that these findings of no general shortage are entirely consistent with isolated shortages of skilled people in narrow fields or in specific technologies that are quite new or growing explosively.

2. There are substantially more scientists and engineers graduating from U.S. universities that can find attractive career openings in the U.S. workforce. Indeed science and engineering careers in the U.S. appear to be relatively unattractive— relative that is to alternative professional career paths available to students with strong capabilities in science and math.

3. Students emerging from the oft-criticized K-12 system appear to be studying science and math subjects more, and performing better in them, over time. Nor are U.S. secondary school students lagging far behind comparable students in economically-competitive countries, as is oft-asserted.

4. Large and remarkably stable percentages of entering freshmen continue to report that they plan to complete majors in science and engineering fields; however, only about half of these ultimately do so.

5. The postdoc population, which has grown very rapidly in U.S. universities and is recruited increasingly from abroad, looks more like a pool of low-cost research lab workers with limited career prospects than a high-quality training program for soon-to-be academic researchers. Indeed, if the truth be told—only a very small percentage of those in the current postdoc pool have any realistic prospects of gaining a regular faculty position.

6. Rapid increases in Federal funding for scientific research and education is more likely than not to further destabilize career paths for junior scientists. Under the current structure, the effect is substantial growth in “slots” for PhD students and postdocs to conduct the supported research, but only limited increases in the numbers of career positions

Teitebaum really spoke truth to power and says why these special interests put out these false reports:

So why, you might ask, do you continue to hear energetic re-assertions of the Conventional Portrait of “shortages”, shortfalls, failures of K-12 science and math teaching, declining interest among US students, and the necessity of importing more foreign scientists and engineers?
In my judgment, what you are hearing is simply the expressions of interests by interest groups and their lobbyists.

Teitebaum goes even further to talk about graduate school funding in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics).

a large majority of biomedical PhD students and postdocs supported by NIH are financed by research grant funds, rather than by “training” or education funds. This was not the case 25 years ago, but it is now. This means that if NIH research funding is increased in response to too-low success rates for grant applicants, one effect is funding for more PhD students and postdocs who are recruited by NIH grant recipients to do the bench research work. This means that, after a lag of several years, there will be more recent PhDs and postdocs seeking research employment, and applying for NIH research grants. This in turn tends to reduce the grants success rate going forward.

OK, is anyone really listening?

He is saying that the NIH awards more money when these research projects fail!  Can I get on that ticket?   Where’s my research grant?  I can fail with the best of ’em!

He further shows evidence as this happens there is a increase in the unemployment rate for future PhD graduates in that particular research area.   This is really a damning observation on the state of research within Academia, he is implies we have a perverse system of grants that awards failure and increases the unemployment rate in these areas.  WOW!

In his recommendations he says:

What should NOT be done is to take actions that will increase the supply of scientists and engineers that are not intimately coupled with serious measures to ensure that comparable increases occur in the demand for scientists and engineers.

Imagine that, someone paying attention to the realities of labor economics supply and demand trying to tell Congress they might consider economic laws in policy formulation!

Dr. Charles W. McMillion,President & Chief Economist, MBG Information Services also testified, focused on debt and trade and it’s effects.

our economy has worked-off the vastly superior wealth, infrastructure and production systems that it enjoyed at the end of World War II when much of the rest of the world lay in rubble.

1.   The US economy and the scientific and engineering workforce has been sustained by
an unprecedented and unsustainable level of debt for a generation;
2.   Massive and chronic US losses in global trade, a key cause of the debt explosion, have
now produced enormous and unsustainable foreign debts and is rapidly undermining the vast
technology superiority that is essential to our STEM workforce and to our economy;
3.   China and other competitors are quickly creating remarkable dynamism, modernizing
and integrating their innovation and production systems, posing very severe and urgent threats to
the scientific and engineering workforce and to the US economy.

Now connecting the dots to massive foreign debt and the lack of competitiveness in STEM R&D might seem out of left field.  But, in reality he’s dead on.

There is a convention in economics, often useful for theoretical work, that assumes full employment. Unfortunately this purely theoretical convention has come to be adopted as reality by many analysts in the US — although rarely anywhere else. This often unconscious assumption  leads many analysts and policy makers to complacency, focusing exclusively on shifts within a  fully employed workforce rather than on job losses and the wage and other effects of significant
unemployment.

Now look at this connection:

Over the past seven years the US created just 6.1 million total jobs with private sector jobs accounting for only 4.5 million of these with local public schools adding most of the public sector job growth. Even ignoring the multiplier effects of credit and job growth, this works out to over $1.6 million in tax cuts, government contracts, credit card and other debt stimulus for each new job; over $2.2 million for each new private sector job over the past seven years

Mr. Paul Kostek, Vice President for Career Activities, IEEE-USA, one comment:

According to a just-released report from unbiased analysts at the STEM Workforce Data Project – based on data compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics at the US Department of Labor – the decades long growth in employment opportunities for scientists and engineers in the United States appears to have ended in 2001. (Cite 2). Even more troubling is the Project’s finding that real salary growth for most STEM professionals has been flat or declining for at least 10 years.

One can read his policy recommendations but I do note he did not testify that we need our Universities turned into a glorified green card machine for an undergraduate degree.

Mr. Henry Becker, President, Qimonda North American Corporation also testified.  He’s running a semiconductor corporation, so predictably he claims he needs more skilled workers. That said their company is at least investing in educational institutions within the United States. One of the more telling comments was this:

Most of these competitor nations treat technology in general, and semiconductors specifically, on the level of a national strategic interest and as such, have embraced it to the full extent they can – sometimes beyond World Trade Organization norms.

In other words, the United States simply does not have a strategy that is based on the national economic interest. Very true.

The Science committee hearing website has the entire testimony and questions available for streaming and there are numerous policy recommendations covered as well.

Cross posted at Dailykos

Like swarms of locusts, Corporate lobbyists have surrounded the hill and taken legislative staffers hostage.  As I type, various amendments are being renegotiated, gutted, moved around, renamed, folded in…  All, all of this hush, hush last minute activity is per the demands of the Corporate Cheap Labor Lobby.

What happened to doing the right thing for America?  What happened to the national interest?  Where is the spirit of Mr. Smith?

Instead we have a scenario more like the fall of Rome, hordes of corporate lobbyists with Trojan Horse amendments, the silence of public debate or exposure, little legislation or representation for working America and most of all the incredible shrinking constituent.

Corporate lobbyists simply do not have the national interests of America at heart, in fact they have no hearts, so why would our representatives even let them past the door?  Well clearly the dollar almighty is having a major effect.

In a letter to Congress, the IFPTE said:

While the legislation is a blessing for the corporate community, it is clear that from the perspective of American workers this bill includes a laundry list of shortcoming

This is the bottom line, this bill is bad for working America and both the AFL-CIO
and other many labor organizations realize this.

The IFPTE believes that the countless shortcomings included in S. 1348 render it damaged beyond repair and requests that you oppose both cloture and the bill itself

So please, please call and FAX your Senators today and ask them to vote no on cloture on S.1639 (the new bill number for S.1348).  The vote is today with debate starting at  9:30 A.M.  

Please let your Senators know you are Democrats, we are Democrats, and we need this bill to die.  There are surely some Democrats who want to represent us, their constituents and not these hordes of Corporate lobbyists who eat their own young, the American people.  Please please support working America and FAX this morning as well as call requesting a no vote on cloture.

Cross posted at Dailykos

Our goal is clearly NOT TO FIND a qualified and interested U.S. worker.

It’s on video, believe it or not, and even presented as a selling point to peddle their services by Cohen & Grigsby Law Firm.  That’s right, this group of attorneys put an entire seminar on how to screw over the American worker on YouTube. Imagine that, a seminar from lawyers on how to make sure one doesn’t have to hire an American worker!

In the video attorneys explain how they assist employers in running classified ads with the goal of NOT finding any qualified applicants, and how they disqualify even the most qualified Americans in order to secure green cards for H-1b workers.

Our goal is clearly NOT to find a qualified U.S. worker … our objective is to get this person a green card … so certainly we are not going to try to find a place where applicants would be most numerous.                                    – Lawrence M. Lebowitz, Vice President of Marketing, Cohen & Grigsby

And on getting rid of extremely qualified applicants:

If someone looks like they are very qualified, if necessary schedule an interview, go through the whole process to find a legal basis to disqualify them

From Dr. Norm Matloff:

The law on employer-sponsored green cards is similarly riddled with loopholes.  Though that law requires that American workers must be sought before the employer hires a foreign worker for a job, it is routinely circumvented.  I’ve mentioned the outrageous comments by a well-known immigration attorney:  

Employers who favor aliens have an arsenal of legal means to reject all U.S. workers who apply

–Joel Stewart, Legal Rejection of U.S. Workers,  Immigration Daily, April 24,
2000.

Here are just a few examples of fake job ads this seminar is referring to, run in the Sacramento Bee.  The Bee’s editor refuses to discuss the matter, and the fraudulent ads continue to run each week

This video was amplified by the Programmers Guild and the original video clips are here .

This is what Bush and Congress via the current “comprehensive” immigration reform bill really mean by a “shortage of skilled U.S. workers.”
Microsoft, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, and thousands of other companies are running fake ads in Sunday newspapers across the country each week.

Look at this folks, this is how bad it is.  A major selling point of law firms is all about how to screw over the American worker.

Cross posted at Dailykos

Business Week published a front page article, Work Visas May Work Against the U.S. Indian outsourcers file the most applications for temporary H-1B visas. Are they using them to train staff for jobs abroad?.

In Peter Elstrom’s article, the connection between technology transfer out of the United States, trade, offshore sourcing and guest worker Visas are correlated.  Quote:

Outsourcing Conduit…

But a review of new information from the federal government suggests that the companies benefiting most from the temporary worker program aren’t U.S. companies at all. Rather, they appear to be Indian outsourcing firms, which often hire workers from India to train in the U.S. before returning home to work. Data for the fiscal year 2006, which ended last September, show that 7 of the top 10 applicants for H-1B visas are Indian companies.

That brings us to some most disturbing questions:  are foreign offshore outsourcing companies manipulating the US Visa system for a comparative advantage in trade?  Are they using the H-1B to facilitate technology transfer and know how out of the United States?  Are offshore outsourcing companies using the H-1B to simply train workers, on US technology, in the United States, then sending the workers back home, along with the jobs, in order to enable transfer of critical technical expertise out of the United States?

Another Clue, President Bush said in talking about trade with India, “We’ve got to expand what’s called H-1B visas”.  Yet, Under the H-1B program, employers do not have to search for Americans, and can prefer an H-1B [visa holder] over an American citizen or green card holder.

Even for jobs in the United States, by law, offshore outsourcing firms do not have to bother considering a green card holder/US citizen for the position.  There are many such job postings which state “H-1B Visa holders only need apply” on American technical job boards.  This fact is yet another indication that the H-1B Visa program is being used for technology transfer.  Americans are simply cut out of the entire loop, except when potentially forced to train their replacements.

Fig 1.

Let’s examine the WTO, GATS mode 4, known as Movement of Natural Persons by trade.  From Debunking the Myth of Mode 4 and the U.S. H-1B Visa Program

Lori Wallach and Todd Tucker, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, March 2006.

Currently, misunderstandings about the H-1B visa system are being exploited by service industry and U.S. government representatives to try to trick other countries involved in negotiations on the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) into making offers regarding “liberalizing” their countries’ service sectors in exchange for promises of new U.S. immigration rights for foreign workers.

Yet for obvious financial interests, Wipro’s Badiga says

the H-1B visa program allows Wipro workers to get valuable experience in the States and be more effective at serving customers in the U.S.

Yet adding insult to injury, Billionaire offshore outsourcing Wipro Chairman, Azim Premji :

those [Americans] who complain they are not getting jobs, their jobs are getting displaced, are going to be on the fire list anyway because they were not doing their jobs well enough

Now, how can someone insult Americans from Stanford, Georgia Tech, MIT, the best engineering schools in the world, strive to study at these very US schools, yet claim Americans aren’t good enough while he makes billions by offshore outsourcing American jobs?

Here’s a quote Dollars and Sense:

Trading in People

Since guestworkers already face such abusive conditions, it is fair to ask how GATS could possibly make it worse for them. GATS is unlikely to change the circumstances of individual guestworkers. However, it worsens the exploitation of guestworkers as a whole in two fundamental ways. First, the draft GATS agreement erodes even the limited legal protections that are available to guestworkers (whether documented or undocumented) today and blocks the evolution of progressive national and international legal instruments to protect migrant workers’ rights. Second, by making it easier for employers to hire guestworkers, GATS could greatly increase the number of exploited migrant workers worldwide.

Economist Paul Craig Roberts wrote Economists In Denial;  Blind To Offshoring’s Adverse Impact.

Many American software engineers and IT professionals have been forced by jobs offshoring to abandon their professions. The November 6, 2006, issue of Chemical & Engineering News reports that “the percentage of American Chemical Society member chemists in the domestic workforce who did not have full-time jobs as of March of this year was 8.7 percent.” There is no reason for Americans to pursue education in science and technology when career opportunities in those fields are declining due to offshoring.

My ultimate question on the H-1B:  how come none in Congress right now, especially Democrats claiming to be supporting the US Middle Class, are sponsoring or co-sponsoring the The Defend the American Dream Act of 2005?  This bill stops some of the more blatant abuses by corporations using the H-1B.  From the statistics, clearly using the H-1B for technology transfer, i.e. the trading of people[jobs] to gain a trade comparative advantage also needs to be addressed.  Why would any Democrat, anywhere even consider raising the H-1B Visa cap with such obvious abuses surrounding this program, plus being used as a technical expertise transfer vehicle which enables the offshore outsourcing of jobs and adds to the United States trade deficit?

Fig 2.

H-1B, a temporary Visa, is not an immigration issue, as so often mistaken.  The H-1B and L-1 are guest worker Visas and clearly due to the above evidence and abuses described, H-1B is also a trade and an offshore outsourcing issue.  Like other global labor arbitrage vehicles, H-1B is clearly a threat to US national security and economic interests.  Like it or not, the WTO sees people as services and it’s clear nation-states and multinational corporations wish to trade us like cattle via WTO, GATS mode 4.

Indian Outsourcing Industry Set to Jump 33% to $31.3 billion.

Cross post from Dailykos.

Today Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced an amendment, SA 4075, to remove the escalator of 20% automatic increases on the H-1B, which they are already increasing 60%.

I wrote a Dairy on H-1B abuses yesterday.

If this amendment is defeated, it will mean:

year 1

115k

year 2

138k

year 3

165.6k

year 4

199k

….

H-1B Visa increases when the evidence is in they are used as a discrimination tool and as a labor arbitrage technique.
The Corporate Cheap labor lobbyists, including the richest guy in the world, Bill Gates, are out in force to defeat this amendment.

If you care about labor arbitrage and supporting the American profession and working people, please call your Senator to pass this amendment.

What we really need is the Pascrell Bill, but this is better than nothing!

If the escalator is allowed, we are looking at the death of the American engineering professional.

Please, please call your Senators now, pick up the phone and give a ring!  Please help us!

From India Economic Times:

By going through the WTO, India by-passes US congress as well as US immigration law, only the US executive branch has any power and they already want unlimited worker movement across borders.  Now US immigration policy can be seen as a “barrier to trade”.

This is deadly for high paying tech jobs in the US and has implications for any job that cannot be offshore outsourced to be “insourced” instead.

India has used the H-1B VISA system to their comparative advantage as a method to move the US high tech jobs overseas, long term. Cheaper foreigners can come here, get established in the US system, obtain training (it takes about 3 years for an engineer on the job to really become skilled), and then return to their home country, establish offshore outsourcing consulting firms and have “inroads” into US companies to convince them to move the engineering and computer science jobs overseas.

H-1B is supposed to be for professional workers, minimum Bachelors degree, but a percentage of foreign H-1B workers credentials are forged.

An Indian Masters degree, the MSc., is equal to a US Bachelors degree (BS) in terms of education level (comes into to study in American universities as an accredited BS degree)..yet Americans with Masters degrees from America are being replaced with foreign engineers with inferior skills and education level…the reason is it’s all about cheap wages and corporate control.

The corporation operating in the United States controls the H-1B VISA status, plus H-1Bs are paid 20% to 50% less than their US counterpart.

If a corporation doesn’t like what the H-1B VISA holder is doing they can just fire them and thus that person has to return to their home country.

Hira & Hira, Outsoucing America is a very good overall reference on offshore outsourcing, abuse of the US VISA system, trade and it’s ill effects on the middle class.