AFP NV: Road to Reform with Ted Cruz Live at 5:00 pm PT

Americans for Prosperity is hosting a discussion with special guest, Senator Ted Cruz.

Cruz will discuss AFP's Reform America 2015 agenda, which is critical for putting our country back on track.

You realize that AEI is part of the GOPe corporate elite class. They are supporters of amnesty and increased guest workers who will compete against Americans for jobsm, icluding th

s There a STEM Worker Shortage? A look at employment and wages in science, technology, engineering, and math

Using the most common definition of STEM jobs, total STEM employment in 2012 was 5.3 million workers (immigrant and native), but there are 12.1 million STEM degree holders (immigrant and native).

Only one-third of native-born Americans with an undergraduate STEM degree holding a job actually work in a STEM occupation.

There are more than five million native-born Americans with STEM undergraduate degrees working in non-STEM occupations: 1.5 million with engineering degrees, half a million with technology degrees, 400,000 with math degrees, and 2.6 million with science degrees.

An additional 1.2 million natives with STEM degrees are not working — unemployed or out of the labor force in 2012.

Despite the economic downturn, Census Bureau data show that, between 2007 and 2012, about 700,000 new immigrants who have STEM degrees were allowed to settle in the country, yet at the same time, total STEM employment grew by only about 500,000.

Of these new immigrants with STEM degrees, only a little more than a third took a STEM job and about the same share took a non-STEM job. The rest were not working in 2012.

Overall, less than half of immigrants with STEM degrees work in STEM jobs. In particular, just 23 percent of all immigrants with engineering degrees work as engineers.

In total, 1.6 million immigrants with STEM degrees worked outside of a STEM field and 563,000 were not working.

The supply of STEM workers is not just limited to those with STEM degrees. Nearly one-third of the nation's STEM workers do not have an undergraduate STEM degree.

Wage trends are one of the best measures of labor demand. If STEM workers are in short supply, wages should be increasing rapidly. But wage data from multiple sources show little growth over the last 12 years.

Real hourly wages (adjusted for inflation) grew on average just 0.7 percent a year from 2000 to 2012 for STEM workers, and annual wages grew even less — 0.4 percent a year. Wage growth is very modest for most subcategories of engineers and technology workers.

America is currently mired in a period of the slowest economic growth seen in several generations, with persistently high unemployment, anemic job growth, and little bipartisan agreement on how to address these pressing problems. Action is required if America is to get back to work. Immigration policy can, and should, be a significant component of America’s economic recovery. Targeted changes to immigration policy geared toward admitting more highly educated immigrants and more temporary workers for specific sectors of the economy would help generate the growth, economic opportunity, and new jobs that America needs.

The AEI analysis defies logic and commonsense. We have just had the two largest decades of immigration in American history. We have also had the lowest labor participation rates in 38 years. We have a surplus of workers, skilled and unskilled. Using the logic in the AEI piece, we should have a robust economy due to this mass influx of foreign workers. We have had 30 million legal immigrants enter since 1990.

Labor Participation rates 1990-2015

I provided you with the data since 2000. Native born Americans are being displaced by immigrants, legal and illegal. Our welfare rolls are soaring with both the native born and immigrants who use the welfare system even more.

Do you favor more skilled immigrants to enter this country than we have now? This is insanity. It is also Jeb Bush's position. And what impact does this have on our electoral process where immigrants vote more than two to one Dem? Or the demographics of this country and our culture and conservative principles?

Are you preparing for the ever-worsening skills gap?

By Alan J. Kaplan

Evidence is mounting that American employers are facing a genuine, widespread and worsening gap between the skills they need and the skills the workforce possesses.

In a survey by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 53 percent of small-business leaders said they faced a “very or fairly major challenge in recruiting non-managerial employees.” Among last year’s Inc. 5000 CEOs, 76 percent said they were experiencing major problems recruiting qualified people.

Indicators suggest the recovering economy will exacerbate those problems. Job openings across America recently reached the highest level since 2001, and the ratio of job seekers to job openings dropped from 7:1 in 2009 to just 1.7:1 in early 2015. The Skills Gap Misery Index (SGMI) — an analysis of monthly job openings and monthly unemployment numbers — has suggested for five years that there is a serious disconnect between the skills of available workers and the skills required in job postings. What’s more, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics now predicts the number of unfilled jobs in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields will climb to a historic high of 1.2 million by 2018.

“We have been talking about this issue for 15 years, but we are just now hitting the pain points in the skills gap,” says Karen Clay Basile, senior director of learning at Tyco University. “Organizations are starting to actually experience the gap, and some are beginning to realize they have to engage in talent-development efforts that are much bigger and more ingrained in their
core operations.”

The world’s largest fire protection and security company, Tyco started to see across-the-board skill gaps, Basile says. So the Princeton, New Jersey-based company created its own university to heighten employee skills in four key areas: leadership and management, sales and sales management, growth and innovation, and change management.

Develop your own people

But recently, Tyco executives realized they needed to expand their training to include a fifth, crucial area — development of early career talent. “Baby boomers are starting to leave the workforce. Long-tenured, highly knowledgeable and highly skilled employees are retiring, and those departures are exposing gaps in the skills of the workforce,” Basile says.

Tyco realized it couldn’t expect to fill those gaps with highly experienced individuals. Instead, it would need to identify high-potential but less experienced people and create training sessions, mentorship programs, project-experience opportunities and other professional development offerings to accelerate their growth.

Several studies have warned that some employers are exacerbating their own skills-gap problems by doggedly searching for experienced individuals rather than hiring individuals with the right education, skills and potential, and developing those people.

Granted, not every company can afford to create its own university. But companies can ease skills gaps within their ranks by providing employees with increased professional development opportunities (an item that was cut in many budgets during the recession), beefing up mentoring programs and creating opportunities for up-and-coming talent to work on advanced projects.

Companies can further lessen the skills gap by supporting apprenticeship programs, partnerships with schools, and collective educational efforts by professional associations or business groups.

Collaborations among businesses, educators and other groups have the potential to address the country’s skills gaps. Here are a few examples of how American companies are effectively partnering with educators.

Talent pipeline management

In late 2014, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation presented a straightforward challenge (and potential solution) to American employers struggling with the skills gap: Start treating talent development the same way you handle supply chain management.

The Foundation unveiled a framework for easing the skills gap, entitled the “Talent Pipeline Management Initiative.” Stressing that “education and workforce systems in the United States are failing to keep pace with the changing needs of the economy and employers are struggling to find skilled workers,” the framework calls on employers to apply the same importance, rigor and skills used in supply-chain management to talent-pipeline management.

In particular, the framework suggests employers:

Give talent management the same priority and effort throughout their organizations as securing essential supplies;
Think beyond their regions and partner with whatever educational or professional development organizations are best suited to foster needed skills; and
Stretch beyond hard-skills training to develop “whole persons” with solid interpersonal skills, communication skills, business acumen and management skills.

National collaboration

Since 2007, the National Fund for Workforce Solutions has fostered partnerships among employers, workers, industries, communities and philanthropies to close the skills gap. Specifically, the Fund advances and invests in innovative, evidence-based, employer-led training and credentialing programs.

The results have been impressive. A study of unemployed individuals who have earned more than 37,000 degrees and credentials in Fund-supported programs showed those individuals experienced significantly higher success rates in landing jobs, retaining jobs and earning better pay than individuals in other workforce development programs.

Partners in the schools

Realizing that business needs to take a greater role in educating America’s future workforce, Chevron and Lockheed Martin began investing millions in Project Lead the Way (PLTW) — a national nonprofit that supports STEM education in elementary, middle and high schools. The investment, company executives concurred, could help interest more children in STEM careers and eventually ease growing shortages of STEM workers in America.

The strengthened PLTW operations soon started to yield concrete, unanticipated benefits. In 2009, Toyota partnered with PLTW and some community colleges to find promising workers, provide industry-specific training and close its own skills gap. Together, the partners created the Advanced Manufacturing Technician (AMT) program — a two-year, work-study program that enables high-school graduates to earn associate degrees and get training at Toyota facilities. To date, nearly 90 percent of AMT graduates have gone on to fill skilled technician posts at Toyota. The company is so pleased with the results that it is currently expanding the AMT program throughout North America.

Alan J. Kaplan is founder and CEO of Kaplan Partners., a Philadelphia-based executive search and talent advisory firm. www.kaplanpartners.com. Contact him at alan@kaplanpartners.com.

You keep posting the corporate propaganda without addressing the data I have provided to you. Do you support importing more foreign workers into this country? Do you realize what Cruz proposed in terms of numbers? Or that he supports legalization of the lawbreakers already here, i.e., amnesty?

Cruz Tries to Claim the Middle Ground on Immigration

On the other hand, Hispanics in Texas are projected to eclipse the white population sometime in the next decade, and Mr. Cruz cannot afford to alienate large numbers of Latino voters with a strident anti-immigrant tone and a hard-line legislative approach. Major business interests also are supporting a path to citizenship.

What Mr. Cruz has tried to articulate in both word and deed is a middle ground. It got no support from Democrats in Washington, but it goes further than many on the far right want to go by offering leniency to undocumented immigrants here already: A path to legal status, but not to citizenship. A green card with no right to naturalization.

Immigration-reform legislation from the Senate’s so-called Gang of Eight passed that chamber in June and includes a 13-year path to citizenship. Mr. Cruz pushed unsuccessfully for amendments that would have, among other things, eliminated the citizenship component.

Asked about what to do with the people here illegally, however, he stressed that he had never tried to undo the goal of allowing them to stay.

“The amendment that I introduced removed the path to citizenship, but it did not change the underlying work permit from the Gang of Eight,” he said during a recent visit to El Paso. Mr. Cruz also noted that he had not called for deportation or, as Mitt Romney famously advocated, self-deportation.

Mr. Cruz said recent polling indicated that people outside Washington support some reform, including legal status without citizenship. He said he was against naturalization because it rewarded lawbreakers and was unfair to legal immigrants. It also perpetuates illegal crossings, he added.

Besides barring citizenship while instituting some level of legalization for those here already, Mr. Cruz has proposed increasing the number of green cards awarded annually, to 1.35 million from 675,000. He also wants to eliminate the per-country limit that he said left applicants from countries like Mexico, China and India hamstrung when they tried to gain legal entry to this country.

The corporations are lying. They want cheap labor and labor that they can control thru the H-1B process. The guest worker cannot legally change jobs. If the sponsor decides the guest worker is no longer, he must leave the country. And after 6 years the employer can sponsor the guest worker for permanent immigrant status. We don't have a shortage of labor. If we did wages would be going up, not down. We have more STEM workers than we have STEM jobs.

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