Posted on 03/12/2008 8:59:01 AM PDT by PreciousLiberty
US high-tech companies are being forced to outsource more jobs overseas because of outdated restrictions on immigration, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates told Congress Wednesday.
Gates, echoing a longstanding complaint from the technology sector, told a congressional panel that the US immigration system "makes attracting and retaining high-skilled immigrants exceptionally challenging for US firms."
"Congress's failure to pass high-skilled immigration reform has exacerbated an already grave situation," Gates said in remarks prepared for delivery to a hearing of the House of Representatives Science and Technology Committee.
"As a result, many US firms, including Microsoft, have been forced to locate staff in countries that welcome skilled foreign workers to do work that could otherwise have been done in the United States, if it were not for our counterproductive immigration policies."
Gates said the limits on so-called H-1B visas aimed at highly skilled professionals are far too low for the rapidly growing tech sector.
He said the current cap of 65,000 H-1B visas "is arbitrarily set and bears no relation to the US economy's demand for skilled professionals."
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
'Gates also said the United States needs to improve science and math education to train a new generation of tech leaders, reversing a move away from these fields.
"If we don't reverse these trends, our competitive advantage will continue to erode. Our ability to create new high-paying jobs will suffer," Gates said.'
Well, Bill, the thing is that your reliance on low-cost (yes, the H1B program is all about lowering cost) foreign talent is one of the main things that's driven Americans away from tech careers. Engineering salaries have largely been stagnant, at best keeping up with inflation, over these many years you've been complaining about this 'shortage'. According to simple supply and demand, this shouldn't be so.
The fact of the matter is, pay what you should and there will be plenty of American engineering talent. There are other issues, in particular the pervasive anti-intellectualism in America these days, but this is the worst problem.
Yeah, really.....a friend of ours worked at MicroSoft.....trained his “Indian” replacements before he was laid off.....
How bout paying more mister Billionaire?
With all due respect, Microsoft products do not represent even close to state of the art in anything and their quality long ago achieved a new low. Who the heck cares? Let Gates outsource all he wants. His company has never produced anything new, and never will. Let nature take its course and soon Microsoft will go the way of the Yugo.
What an idiot! Problem is his greed.
Yes, American schools and colleges don’t teach the right things - they teach junk, feminist studies, hate-Whitey studies, black studies and queer studies. However, there are millions of Americans who are qualified in spite of all this nonsense. Like those who finished school a few decades ago.
Yep, Bill Gates is driving down tech salaries to embarrassing levels and then wants American kids to study science and math for peanut wages.
Bill Gates... you are a college dropout. Now bugger off with that crap operating system of yours.
Gates' idiotic pronouncements make me want to do my part to advance that date.
It’s easy to just say Microsoft should pay their code-crankers more money but cranking code ain’t what it used to be. Further, people do indeed like it when Microsoft shares in their 401K’s produce profit. So... usually company’s caught in this dilemma pack up and move.
“With all due respect, Microsoft products do not represent even close to state of the art in anything and their quality long ago achieved a new low. Who the heck cares? Let Gates outsource all he wants. His company has never produced anything new, and never will. Let nature take its course and soon Microsoft will go the way of the Yugo.”
I suggest you take a look at Microsoft’s market cap and P/E ratio. It is an extremely profitable company, and it still has a veritable stranglehold on the PC marketplace. Apple is making some inroads, but it’s not even a horse race at this point.
When one of America’s most powerful companies pitches the government like this, it’s time to pay close attention to protect both individual and national interests.
Dear Bill,
1. Raise the salaries and U. S. citizens will do the jobs.
2. Use the Gates Foundation’s billions to train workers who have lost their jobs in manufacturing to learn tech jobs.
3. Learn a little public relations. Having the richest man in the world complaining that he can’t get U. S. workers to work at the salary someone from India is willing to take is more than a bit hypocritical. Spend your billions on suffering U. S. workers instead of in Africa.
1. They should be tied to the employee rather than the employer. That way a foreign employee's wages would very quickly match a native's of similar skill because the employer couldn't underpay the employee and give them the choice of accepting it or leaving the country.
2. (mutually exclusive from number 1) If the H1B has to remain with the employer, then its price should be set by the employers bidding for slots rather than having a low fixed price. That way the H1B would go back to its original purpose of bringing in foreign workers with unique and highly valuable skills rather than just another hundred cheap Visual Basic programmers for under the market pay. A company might be willing to pay $50k to bring in an advanced semiconductor researcher but not someone to man a help desk. The fact that over 65,000 applications are made in the first week for the visas shows that they are way under priced.
Exactly right. Either of those two options would solve the problem completely - which is why industry screams bloody murder when either one is suggested. ;)
Good thinking, Billy Boy. You left out one critical aspect of this debate: corporate greed. I love the free market and Capitalism as much as anyone, but the reality is that corporations, like MS will always be looking for ways to cut costs. If he got everything he asked for, Billy Boy would be figuring out some other way make higher profits, regardless of what effect that may have on local shops or the country at-large.
He respects no border line, only the bottom line.
This may come as a shock to you, Bill, but some of us see the United States as more than simply an economy.
He was, and always will be, a “Damned Hippie”.
HA....what I did not say about the guy who worked for MicroSoft who trained his replacements? He’s Canadian born (parents brought him here when he was about 7).....I’m hoping, too, that he’s finally becoming a conservative.
I watched the movie “Amazing Grace” last night on DVD. The main argument that the wealthy plantation owners used to justify using slave labor in their sugar cane plantations was that they could not make a profit to pay their taxes to the crown.
Pedro can’t speak English, but he can develop a tremendous operating system.
F*CK MICROSOFT
But keep throwing away billions on "fighting" AIDS in Africa, Gates. You know how to make money (*cough* by outsourcing and screwing the skilled American worker *cough*), but you sure don't know how to spend it.
Oh, that Bill...he says the darndest things! He’s just cute as a button when he says stuff like that. Always good for a chuckle. Money sure doesn’t equal greatness.
ping
It’s not just greed on Gates’ part.
He has all those stockholders to consider, doesn’t he?
Still deplorable though.
He is creating the vicious circle.
Truth be told, they don’t really want to hire Americans, period.
>Dear Bill,
1. Raise the salaries and U. S. citizens will do the jobs.
2. Use the Gates Foundation’s billions to train workers who have lost their jobs in manufacturing to learn tech jobs.
3. Learn a little public relations. Having the richest man in the world complaining that he can’t get U. S. workers to work at the salary someone from India is willing to take is more than a bit hypocritical. Spend your billions on suffering U. S. workers instead of in Africa.<
Your entire post makes me want to boycott these people!
I do. My personal PCs just have Linux on them.
Depending upon what you're talking about, that probably isn't possible - even in theory.
Carnegie Mellon American IT gradutes right here in Pittsburgh caught them on film right here in Pittsburgh at such a seminar just two years ago. There was enough embarassment over the fallout that some of the American graduates actually got hired.
CMU is still turning out graduates and they are still looking for jobs.
Windows XP Pro “student edition” here. ;-D
I can’t help but wonder what happens when the business world runs out of their low wage workers. I saw a story about rising wages in China this morning. Some wages have doubled in the past year so jobs are being outsourced to Vietnam.
“How bout paying more mister Billionaire”
BINGO!
We have a winner!
He is such a liar! Thousands of Americans were laid off of the very jobs he's talking about. WHY, can't he rehire them? Oh, sorry. I forgot. Because he can rape overseas workers for less than Americans will work for. Not surprising coming from a liberal globalist. Will someone please explain to me what credentials give him the right to go before Congress to begin with? He is NOT an elected representative of Americans. I'm fed up with these wealthy elitists telling our Congress critters what America needs to do.
WOW....
Stunning to see so much populist, anti-free trade, pro-protectionism sentiment here on Free Republic.
IMOHO, we could use a tad more protectionism instead of government implemented and sanctioned policies that are killing us by degrees.
I’m seeing these policies more recently as a national security issue, not one of populism.
Free Trade and these work visas are cutting wages.
Outsourcing is making us far too dependent on other countries.
I don’t see how this is a good thing.
All the money the Gates Foundation is spending in other countries could be used to train people right here in the US.
Some of the best engineering and software engineering minds I’ve known have been Russian or Romanian who could barely speak English. Indians have better English skills and there are many who are as good as the Ruskies (needless to say, there are many good native-born Americans as well)
He wants to feed the starving babies in Africa but chokes on his canoli when asked to pony up a little more for you. That’s a liberal human for you. Makes me kind of want to tell em to go to hell when they ask me to fight for them. Maybe they can get the Indian call center guy or starving baby to fight for them.
I mean think about it. We were told how a rising tide lifts all boats and it’s good to foster a middle class in places like India. Oh yeah? So we can pay 110 buck a bbl of oil and rising? A rising tide of oil demand. I guess since the S&P has been logging terrific returns it’s all okay.
/sarcasm
At the same time those same controls serve to make it difficult for intelligent and highly educated people to get into the country.
Those are the two problems that have to be fixed first.
They came up with that device because we'd long ago abandoned any sort of rational basis for immigration and moved to what's known as "family reunification".
Look, if we need Ph.Ds we need them. Someone else's "need" to bring in his mother, sister and niece should not be prefered above "our need" for quality folks who can provide positive input to this country.
The H-1B visa is the biggest scam. Indian companies have rigged the system by placing offices in the USA and staffing them with their own “H1-B” recruiters. These Indian recruiters then discard any American-name sounding resumes in favor of their Indian counterparts...thereby bringing in even more of them. These are the companies that blew the quota up on the first day. Wake up, America! I bet if the H-1B program was disbanded completely that suddenly these companies like Microsoft would “find” American workers to do the job.
The reality is that if we don't get the best minds here in America, they will go to work for overseas firms or start their own in other countries. Just considering India, most American based software companies already have a large presence there.
Bill is wrong, though, when he says, "the United States needs to improve science and math education to train a new generation of tech leaders, reversing a move away from these fields." Stop by any American college and one will find a large proportion of the students are from foreign countries, especially at colleges that focus on the engineering sciences. If our education system is so "broken" why do so many foreigners send their sons & daughters to American schools at considerable expense when they could more cheaply have them educated in their own country?
“’Gates also said the United States needs to improve science and math education to train a new generation of tech leaders, reversing a move away from these fields. “
That much can’t be disputed.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.