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Carney announces that now the CR and Debt Ceiling have gone Obama's way, the president is putting "immigration reform" back on the front burner. "It's the right thing for America."

Once the fiscal crisis has been resolved, President Barack Obama is going to push for immigration reform, he told the Los Angeles affiliate of Spanish-language network Univision on Tuesday. Obama, who largely managed to hold on to office on the backs of Hispanic voters, has long looked to easing the plight of the country’s 11 million illegal immigrants, but other issues have kept coming in the way during his second term.

President Obama vowed Tuesday that he would pursue an immigration reform vote in the House the "day after" Congress reached an agreement to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling. "Once that’s done, you know, the day after -- I’m going to be pushing to say, call a vote on immigration reform," Obama told Univision's Los Angeles affiliate. "And if I have to join with other advocates and continue to speak out on that, and keep pushing, I’m going to do so because I think it’s really important for the country. And now is the time to do it."

Byron York observed last week that Merck plans to lay off one-fifth of its workers. Yet its V.P of human resources sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi demanding Congress allow more foreign labor into the country.

Some state governments are willing to hire offshore IT service providers to work on healthcare IT projects under controversial contracts that don't bar use of temporary foreign labor, or workers on H-1B visas. Two multimillion-dollar government healthcare IT projects, one in Illinois and the other in the District of Columbia, illustrate what's going on. In Illinois, Cognizant was awarded a $74.1 million contract in June to upgrade the state's Medicaid systems to meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare. In January, the District of Columbia awarded Infosys a $49.5 million contract to develop a...

A top House Republican says in an upcoming interview that the chamber will take up immigration reform in 2013, insisting that “there’s still time” for a comprehensive rewrite despite the rapidly dwindling time left on this year’s calendar. Washington Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, said during an interview with Univision’s “Al Punto” that top leaders are still discussing when to bring immigration bills to the House floor. Speaker John Boehner “over the last few weeks has continued to talk about the importance of the House moving forward on immigration reform,” McMorris Rodgers said, according...

The sun is rising in India for America’s outsourced jobs. But it’s a bad sign for New York’s dwindling middle-class workforce, say labor analysts. New York’s labor markets are in convulsions as American employers ship more well-paid jobs to lower-cost countries like Mexico, the Philippines, China and India — where IBM, culling 747 jobs from the Empire State, has achieved landmark status. It now employs more workers in India than in the US, according to a leaked IBM document reviewed by The Post. The average IBM pay in India is $17,000, compared with $100,000 for a senior IT specialist in...

Some state governments are willing to hire offshore IT service providers to work on healthcare IT projects under controversial contracts that don't bar use of temporary foreign labor, or workers on H-1B visas. Two multimillion-dollar government healthcare IT projects, one in Illinois and the other in the District of Columbia, illustrate what's going on. In Illinois, Cognizant was awarded a $74.1 million contract in June to upgrade the state's Medicaid systems to meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare. In January, the District of Columbia (D.C. awards Obamacare IT work to offshore outsourcer)[snip} "Due...

IBM reached a settlement with Department of Justice over allegations it discriminated against U.S. software and apps developers by favoring job applicants who held H-1B visas or foreign student visas, according to a statement by the Department of Justice on Friday.The Justice Department hit IBM for allegedly violating the anti-discrimination provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act, when it posted online job openings for software and apps developers.In the job postings, IBM allegedly stated a preference for F-1 and H-1B visa holders. F-1 visas are issued to foreign students and H-1B visas to foreign nationals with technical experience in a...

Two House Republicans who had been trying to craft a comprehensive immigration package said Friday they were dropping of bipartisan negotiations. In a joint statement, Texas Republican Reps. John Carter and Sam Johnson said that they had “reached a tipping point” in the talks and “can no longer continue” working on a “broad approach” to a rewrite of the nation’s immigration laws. “We want to be clear. The problem is politics,” they said in a joint statement. “Instead of doing what’s right for America, President Obama time and again has unilaterally disregarded the U.S. Constitution, the letter of the law...

You must have seen the warning a thousand times: Too few young people study scientific or technical subjects, businesses can’t find enough workers in those fields, and the country’s competitive edge is threatened. It pretty much doesn’t matter what country you’re talking about.... the predicted shortfall of STEM (short for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) workers is supposed to number in the hundreds of thousands or even the millions. ... The situation is so dismal that governments everywhere are now pouring billions of dollars each year into myriad efforts designed to boost the ranks of STEM workers. President Obama has...

A Microsoft program manager accused of sexually assaulting another worker on the corporation's Redmond campus has been charged with rape. King County prosecutors contend that Vineet Kumar Srivastava raped a cleaning worker after luring her into his office on July 22. Srivastava, 36, is alleged to have told police that the woman forced him to have sex with her.

The Senate’s immigration bill contains a tech industry handout for some companies like IBM and Accenture. It would virtually eliminate competitors in the market for highly-skilled immigrant labor. Multiple sources close to the immigration debate have told Breitbart News that the provision is a key reason the corporate titans helped build support for passage of the immigration bill in the Senate. They fought hard to pass the law in the Senate and have been strategizing to get final passage in the House. At issue is an overlooked change to the H1B visa system, used primarily by technology companies seeking foreign...

House Republicans aren't the only people rooting for the death of the Senate immigration bill. Ten thousand miles away, almost the entire Indian subcontinent is cheering on the bill's demise. That’s because a coalition of domestic high-tech companies and pro-labor Democrats has twisted the worthy goal of knocking down America’s barriers to technical foreign talent into blatant protectionism. Companies like IBM and Accenture have managed to rewrite the H-1B visa program so as to allow themselves to add foreign workers to their U.S. payrolls while forcing Indian companies in the U.S. to subtract Indian workers from theirs. Not only is...

The dazzling innovative power of the tech industry is one of the few remaining American comparative advantages. Unfortunately, Congress is on the verge of squandering that precious national strength. U.S. dominance in technology has been due to our cultural flair for innovation, good old Yankee ingenuity. Yet, as currently structured, the H-1B work visa and employer-sponsored green-card programs are bringing in workers who tend to be of lesser talent than their American peers. Worse, they are indirectly displacing Americans. The result is a net reduction in the country's talent level. Yet the tech industry is lobbying Congress for an expansion...

A popular meme of the immigration debate has to do with the claim from technology companies that there's a Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) worker shortage in the United States. This is frequently used to bolster the argument that the U.S. should increase the number of temporary visas issued to foreign-born workers in order to fulfill demand in the tech industry for techie talent. A new report from the esteemed Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce presents a pretty significant rebuttal to that claim. Released on Wednesday, the annual report looks at how new college graduates are faring...

The union representing technical and professional engineers today announced its opposition to the immigration bill, S. 744, warning that it sells American workers and students “down the river.” In a letter to the Senate, the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) calls the bill “a cruel betrayal of American workers.” … IFPTE says the amendment eliminates the requirement to prioritize hiring equally qualified American workers and “creates a loophole” to allow employers to fire American workers and replace them with lower-paid foreign workers. …

The debate over H-1Bs is both important and emotional. Given that it involves our jobs, that’s no surprise. However, it’s also an issue infused with myths and posturing, which is why we decided to produce this special report. We want to debunk the myths and set out the facts, describe the realities of the program as they are, not as someone wants them to be. Put together in large part by Associate Editor Dawn Kawamoto, The Facts Behind H-1Bs presents how the program works, how it plays out across the tech workforce, and how it influences our economy. We’ve included...

SC Sen. Lindsey Graham's blatant treachery against the conservative movement, along with that of John McCain and Marco Rubio- often aided and abetted by the corrupt Republican establishment, no less- had gone well beyond the Pale long before today. So conservatives throughout South Carolina have rightfully begun organizing to back a conservative opponent, most likely Lee Bright, to take Graham in the primaries for the 2014 Senate elections. But now Graham has exceeded even his own sickening standards for treason and betrayal. As has become clear over the last last week, Obama has been embroiled in perhaps the most disgusting...

This has been brought up before, but now there's apparently a ground-swell of support and a full-fledged grass-roots movement, to draft true conservative Lee Bright as a primary challenger to treasonous RINO Lindsey Grahamnesty in South Carolina. Lindsey Graham has sold us out many times before, but now he's gone way too far in supporting an America-ruining immigration reform bill centered on increasing the H1B visa and amnesty, at a time when our economy is still reeling from 5 years of Obama's mismanagement and the Depression it's caused. In joining up with his fellow treasonous RINO's in the Gang of...

Thought this would be worth a sort-of repost to help us take down these RINO traitors supporting amnesty and the H1B in the immigration deform bill. 1. Launch a general full-scale assault on the amnesty and H1B-pushing turncoat RINO’s like Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan and Loser Lindsey Graham, especially House Reps like Ryan and Senators like Graham who will have to face primaries in 2014, but even turncoats like Rubio who aren't up until 2016. Let’s work to recruit primary challenges for each of them as well as any other pro-amnesty RINO, and encourage them to start revving up immediately,...

Thursday was another busy day for the Gang of 8 immigration reform effort, which has come to mean Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and his staff were everywhere on talk radio, on the Senate floor, at a press conference, manning their new Web site and sending batches of e-mails to the media to debunk attacks. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) (Alex Wong/Getty Images) Rubio announced his delight that a third hearing, this one by the Joint House and Senate Economic Committee had been scheduled. (“We need more transparency and greater scrutiny of this bill as the process continues, and it’s important for...

While it is well known that the high-tech industries often prefer lower-paid, young, and docile foreign workers to hiring Americans, and while these employers keep screaming about "labor shortages", some of the real labor market numbers on the subject have not been discussed much lately.

Two men are in federal custody as the FBI investigates a possible terror cell that may be linked to suspected Boston Marathon bombers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The men, known only as Diaz and Azmat, were arrested Saturday, April 20, in New Bedford, Mass. While the suspects are being held on immigration violations, their arrest was made after police received new information regarding a possible 12-member terror cell operating in the area. Investigators say the group’s main focus may have been training the brothers to build compact explosives like the bombs used in the marathon attack and those thrown at...

US Asked To Allow More H1B Visas And Green Cards To Indian IT Professionals and Doctors Apr 12, 2013 WASHINGTON: Both Indian IT professionals and Indian-American doctors have appealed to US Congress for immigration reforms that will allow more visas and green cards to be awarded. Observing that nearly 30 per cent of all companies started in the US in 2011 had immigrant founders, Indian IT professionals have appealed to Congressmen to not only consider increasing the H-1B quota but also quick and smooth green card for them. They told the Congressmen that the immigrant-based businesses have generated more than...

Washington - The US received nearly 50,000 packages of H-1B visa applications on the very first day, a media report has said, which is reflective of the sudden surge in demand of the country's most sought after work-visas for the IT professionals. The USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services), officially, has not come out on the number of H-1B applications received by it since April 1 when it started accepting petitions for it for the fiscal 2014 beginning October 1, 2013. According to an estimate provided by FCi Federal, Virginia-based government services and technology provider, which is supplying personnel...

The Homeland Security Department expects applications for high-skilled immigration visas to outpace the available supply in a matter of days, one of the fastest runs on the much-sought-after work permits in years and a sign of continued economic recovery amid new hiring by U.S. technology companies. The urgent race for such visas -- highly desired by Microsoft, Apple, Google and other leading technology companies -- coincides with congressional plans to increase the number available to tech-savvy foreigners. The race to secure one of the 85,000 so-called H-1B visas available for the 2014 budget year started Monday and requests will be...

Visas For High-Skilled Workers Could Double Under Bipartisan Senate Plan By Peter Wallsten March 20 A Senate immigration plan would dramatically increase the number of high-skilled foreign workers allowed into the country and give permanent legal status to an unlimited number of students who earn graduate degrees from U.S. universities in science, technology, engineering or math, according to people familiar with the negotiations. The agreement would be a major victory for the tech industry, which has backed an intense lobbying campaign on Capitol Hill in recent months arguing that Google, Facebook, Microsoft and other companies are having trouble finding qualified...

WASHINGTON -- With the recession hit in 2008, Congress put the idea of a "skills shortage" and a need for more H-1B visas in a closet. That didn't mean, though, that interest in raising the H-1B cap went away for everyone. New York City Mayor Bloomberg, for instance, last year called the limits on both temporary and permanent employment-based immigration a "form of national suicide." Microsoft has long advocated for more work visas. But the company's advocacy was quieted during the recession as well, as it announced in 2009 a layoff of 5,000 workers. Circumstances at Microsoft have since changed...

Michelle Amaral wanted to be a brain scientist to help cure diseases. She planned a traditional academic science career: PhD, university professorship and, eventually, her own lab. But three years after earning a doctorate in neuroscience, she gave up trying to find a permanent job...she took an administrative position at her university, experiencing firsthand an economic reality that, at first look, is counterintuitive: There are too many laboratory scientists for too few jobs. That reality runs counter to messages sent by President Obama and the National Science Foundation and other influential groups, who in recent years have called for U.S....

Are you an immigrant genius who wants to come flex your skills at a company here in the United States? Too bad. Go away! We don't want you. The U.S. just hit its annual cap on visas for educated immigrants, a.k.a.: the H1-B, which means that for the rest of the year, we're in the business of telling smart people from around the world that we don't have a place for them. Here's how this ridiculous system works: Starting each April, the federal government distributes a limited supply of 85,000 of H1-B visas. Companies go on a mad charge to...

A leading Republican in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday unveiled legislation to raise the number of permanent visas for skilled technical workers from foreign countries, but prospects of passage this year could be clouded by election-year politics. Senator John Cornyn, the senior Republican on a panel that oversees immigration, introduced a bill that would make an additional 55,000 visas available each year for graduates with master's and doctoral degrees who have studied at U.S. research institutions. This is one of several immigration-related bills that could be kicked around this year in Congress and in the presidential campaign. But there is...

It's called outsourcing. American firms do it because foreign labor can be cheaper. But now, one company is being accused of bringing those lower-paid workers to the U.S. illegally and that may be costing Americans jobs. -- snip -- Palmer says Infosys, the global high-tech giant, engaged in a systematic practice of visa fraud, a charge the company denies. Palmer said the first thing to catch his attention was an employee that had been in the U.S. from India several times before. "He came up to me and he was literally in tears," Palmer said. "He told me he was...

At a time of high unemployment and with a struggling economy, why on earth would Obama go out of his way to push to extend the H-1B Visas of foreign workers while millions of American engineers are without jobs? That is the question being asked by Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly...

At a time of high unemployment and with a struggling economy, why on earth would Obama go out of his way to push to extend the H-1B Visas of foreign workers while millions of American engineers are without jobs? That is the question being asked by Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly. According to Schlafly, when pressed on this issue, Obama feigns shock that any American engineer was out of work, saying that there’s such a high demand for engineers. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that, counting only U.S.-born individuals, there are 101,000 with an engineering degree who are unemployed, another...

When President Obama was participating in a live video chat, Jennifer Wedel asked him, "Why does the government continue to issue and extend H-1B visas when there are tons of Americans just like my husband with no job?" Her husband is a semiconductor engineer who was laid off three years ago and is still unable to find an engineering job. We all would like the answer to that question. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that, counting only U.S.-born individuals, there are 101,000 with an engineering degree who are unemployed, another 244,000 who are not working or not looking for work...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: There is some interesting data out from Zero Hedge, but I can't see it anymore. Zero Hedge, it's a website, have pointed out some confirmation about something that I've been talking about for a long time; and they have been saying it, too, as well. And that is: If you factor in the smaller workforce, the real unemployment rate would be a good bit higher than it is. There's a companion story to this, and that is in the Wall Street Journal today: "Consumer Confidence Unexpectedly Declines." You know, Obama's trying to set this scenario up where...

I've long railed against the H1B Visa scam, and the premise that there aren't enough qualified American workers to fill jobs here, and thus corporations MUST insource workers from other countries... on the cheap... via H1B Visas. And, anyone that has been following the immigration bills knows that corporations like Microsoft gripe that they need the government to create MORE H1B Visas.Well, this video will make you sick. It's an attorney at a sit down panel showing HOW to avoid hiring Americans, side-stepping immigration laws IN ORDER TO insource workers on the cheap from other countries. CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR...

Never before in American politics have so few offered so little to so many. I refer to the prospective Republican candidates for next year's presidential elections, not a single one of whom elicits a response that might be mistaken for enthusiasm from the voters, the pundits, or the party's elder statesmen. There are a couple of generic governor types like Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota or Mitch Daniels of Indiana, and a long list of has-beens and never was's. But the Republicans despair of finding the man or woman who can define an alternative to a weak and waffling President Barack...

The U.S. visa programs that allow companies to hire skilled foreign workers is "out of control" and is costing Americans hundreds of thousands of jobs, according to an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute. The H-1B and L-1 visa programs currently account for 1 million guest workers in the United States. Many of these foreign workers are employed at companies that have embraced offshore outsourcing of high-wage, high-tech workers as their primary business model. The top four companies that use the H-1B visa to staff their U.S. operations are Indian outsourcing firms: Infosys, Wipro, Satyam and Tata Consultancy. By bringing...

No one knows how many foreign workers with H-1B visas are in the United States at any given time because of “limitations in agency data,” a new report says. Congress created the H-1B visa program in 1990 so U.S. employers could hire temporary, skilled foreign workers to give their companies a competitive edge. Many H-1B workers come here to work in high-tech fields.By law, the number of foreign workers holding H-1B visas is capped, currently at 65,000. But according to the Government Accountability Office, “The total number of H-1B workers in the U.S. at any one time -- and information...

Slamming the critics of H-1B, a US think-tank and corporate America have suggested removal of Congressional cap on this popular work visa programme and allow markets to determine number of skilled foreign workers eligible to work in the country. "The best policy for the United States is one that sides with freedom and innovation, not restriction. It is a policy where the H-1B cap is either eliminated or set high enough that we can let the market decide on the number of new skilled foreign nationals who work in America each year," a report said. The 81-page report titled "Regaining...

Intimidation of Foreign Workers Now Aimed at Americans: Facebook, Yahoo, Comcast Drawn In Donna Conroy, Director of Bright Future Jobs and John Doe, the administrator of Endh1b.com named in the suit comment on the New Jersey order, Apex Technology Group vs. John Does. Nuisance lawsuits and threats of legal entanglement, long used by Indian H-1b labor contractors to silence Indian tech workers, have now been aimed at an American tech worker website, endh1b.com, for reposting an Indian H-1B worker's testimony of mistreatment by Apex Technology Group, including a link to an employment contract binding the worker to Apex. Bond agreements...

Without mentioning H-1B, Obama's says top foreign students should be welcomed in U.S. At the White House jobs summit yesterday, President Barack Obama warned against closing the door on foreign students, calling them one of the country's "greatest competitive advantages." Obama didn't mention H-1B visa specifically or cite any of the pending visa legislation in Congress on this matter, but in referring to foreign students as the "best and the brightest," Obama used a phrase widely repeated by H-1B supporters in defense of the visa, and by opponents as well, but with sarcasm. Over the last two months, H-1B visa...

After months of lackluster response, US authorities have witnessed a sudden increase in demand for H-1B work visa, which is popular among Indian professionals, though the applications received so far are still over 6,000 short of the Congress-mandated cap of 65,000. Latest figures released by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) show an increase in the number of people applying for H-1B visas in the last two months. As a result of which, till November 27, the USCIS had received about 58,900 H-1B petitions. This is still over 6,000 short of the Congressionally-mandated cap of 65,000 H-1B visas in...

Sudhir Kapoor, 25, got the call from his employer late last year. It was bad news: The economic downturn meant the technology company had to let him go. Laxmi Aiyar, who is returning to India after she was laid off by her company, says, "It is Indian talents who made America rich and prosperous. Now, they are throwing us out like a can of Pepsi." Since nearly 40 percent of all H-1B visa holders are from India , the mounting layoffs are hitting Indian professionals particularly hard. ....Lives have been disrupted, and some said they were under tremendous stress to...

U.S. IT providers continue to push jobs offshore, while Indian firms work to refine the amount of work they complete overseas. Although Congress may force the Indian firms to hire more Americans -- and Indian companies have been telling investors that they may have to indeed do that -- the change won't likely affect the overall trend and the shift in jobs outside the U.S. Okay, so where are U.S. jobs going? What's the data show? Data prepared by Everest Group Inc., a research and outsourcing consulting firm, shows in broad brush fashion the shift of jobs overseas by some...

Once the most sought after H-1B American work visa is still having nearly 20,000 slots open seven weeks after the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) started receiving applications for the financial year 2010 beginning October this year. The USCIS on Tuesday said it has so far received approximately 45,500 H-1B petitions counting toward the Congressionally-mandated 65,000 cap. As such, the USCIS would continue to accept petitions subject to till the cap is reached. This is in contrast of the previous few years when the USCIS had to resort to computerized draw of lots as it received petitions outnumbering several...

Asserting that "handcuffing" employers from hiring talented workers will hurt the US economy, two experts have criticised proposals to limit hiring of holders of H-1B visas coveted by Indian technocrats as "misguided." "In order to grow the American economy and support the American workforce, Congress should expand and improve the H-1B visa programme," said James Sherk and Diem Nguyen. As adding regulations to the H-1B programme would be a serious setback to US visa policy and would only end up hurting the US economy, the Congress should instead raise the cap from the current 65,000 to the 2001 quota of...

WASHINGTON - Congress should enact "badly needed" immigration reforms to bring in both unskilled and skilled foreign workers if it wants to maintain the nation's economic vitality, former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan said Thursday. Greenspan called for both a temporary worker program for low-skilled jobs and for an increase in visas for highly skilled workers...in testimony at the first Senate hearing this year on the prospects of an immigration overhaul. Noting the "very large participation" of undocumented workers in both low- and high-skilled jobs, he said, "if you were to remove either of those groups, the economy would be...