I swear there are times when I’m seriously suspecting that the day of revolution really is only months away, when our elected “leaders” could be so mind-numbingly idiotic and clueless to even consider something like this. This is why I’ve never trusted the neocons or big business whiners like Bill Gates (let alone George Soros) as conservative allies- they have only their immediate gratification in mind, and are willing to screw over the vast majority of heartland Americans and our communities in the process. They want to cry us a river that it’s so “unfair” that they can’t hire slave labor from India to push US wages down to Calcutta levels and send USA engineers out of work. But no, they’d never want to move to Calcutta themselves, they want to take advantage of all the legal and other First-World protections of the United States while pretending they can pay Calcutta wages for the privilege, and have PhD engineers cramming into a filthy mud hut for the privilege of slaving away for them.
The thing is, revolutions (the ones full of blood and fire, not the pacifistic, nonviolent kind) historically have come about when people have nothing left to lose, and sense the government is in cahoots with privileged cronies and elites, squarely against the interests of the common man and woman. If the sentiments of my conservative friends and neighbors are any indication- generally the types of unflappable people who otherwise don’t pay much attention to our country’s three-ring circus of political stupidity- then the day of angry revolution really may be drawing very near. Maybe that’s why Congress is so desperate to pass a bill to seize our guns as soon as possible, since they know what’s waiting.
That’s also why we have to mobilize and get mean, to launch an even more powerful Tea Party movement than the one in 2010- maybe the RINO’s and sellouts can ignore us if we stay docile, but when we make their traitorous little lives rough, they start to listen. So light up those switchboards in Congress like in 2006 and 2007 against the H1-B stupidity, call your representatives’ offices and get forceful, send them mail and email, flood the newspapers with op-eds and letters, get your voice heard on talk radio and in public at council meetings and townhalls. When we play rough and show we mean business, they’ll listen.
In the process, perhaps the GOP could finally buy a clue and stop this moronic H1-B visa bill, as well as any other immigration bill from ever reaching Obama’s desk. If they manage to stop these bills and finally manage to act, oh, like a true conservative party, then they’ll be rewarded with massive gains in the House, Senate, statehouses and legislatures and city councils in 2014. Gains that would dwarf even 2010. But that would require the Republican Party to actually be smart and listen to the conservative base for once. We’ll see.
Clinton did something similar. Right when the Clinton Defense Cuts were causing massive layoffs in Southern California and Seattle and other places, suddenly there were boatloads of Russians and Eastern Europeans looking for engineering work at $60,000/year, depressng the engineering job market and making jobs scarce.
Yeah, we have such a labor shortage in this booming economy that we need more H-1B visas.
Plenty of home grown talent tho’ many might be older. I was let go at the same time as they were renewing H1-B visas for two people in our group. P!ssed me off !
The ends times must be upon us, I don't care what happens to this place anymore.
And I'm half serious.
Back in ‘11 I saw an ad for what looked to be a person to test the software that lives in GPS receivers, a non-trivial task.
The position was in the Los Angeles area, probably near Anaheim.
The listed rate (contract, no benefits) was $33 per hour.
That’s not even new-grad pay, and new grads couldn’t do that job.
The proper rate for that job should have been at least twice what was quoted.
They clearly had some Indian lined-up, and were just going through the ritual of proving “there are no Americans available for the job”, so they could get him an H1B visa and stick three or four more like him in a one-bedroom apartment.
What is wrong with this bill? I have seen worse. Any shift away from family centered immigration toward skill centered immigration seems good.
Many people want protectionism for their relatively low-valued tech skills. This will help to ensure that those protection-seeking Americans aren’t getting paid more than they should be getting paid.
H1B bump for later....
ASME (Mechanical Engineer) magazine has an article in this month’s edition about the need to fill the engineering / science / technology / math pipeline. It pushes for further recruitment of women and minorities, outreach, etc.
No where does it address the issue that kids don’t want to go to college for a hard degree that is likely to be outsourced to an HB-1 visa holder here OR the work shipped to India after Americans invent it.
We have the best government money can buy.