Bill Gates urges more H-1B visas and green cards for tech workers

June 25, 2007
High-Tech Titans Strike Out on Immigration Bill
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, June 24 — Bill Gates and Steven A. Ballmer of Microsoft have led a parade of high-tech executives to Capitol Hill, urging lawmakers to provide more visas for temporary foreign workers and permanent immigrants who can fill critical jobs. Google has reminded senators that one of its founders, Sergey Brin, came from the Soviet Union as a young boy. To stay competitive in a “knowledge-based economy,” company officials have said, Google needs to hire many more immigrants as software engineers, mathematicians and computer scientists.

High-tech companies want to be able to hire larger numbers of well-educated, foreign-born professionals who, they say, can help them succeed in the global economy. For these scientists and engineers, they seek permanent-residence visas, known as green cards, and H-1B visas. The H-1B program provides temporary work visas for people who have university degrees or the equivalent to fill jobs in specialty occupations including health care and technology. The Senate bill would expand the number of work visas for skilled professionals, but high-tech companies say the proposed increase is not nearly enough...

Stephen W. Yale-Loehr, a co-author of a treatise on immigration law, said: “High-tech companies are very organized. They have numerous lobby groups. When Bill Gates advocates more H-1B visas and green cards for tech workers, everyone listens. “But that supposed influence has not translated into legislative results,” Mr. Yale-Loehr, who teaches at Cornell Law School, continued. “High-tech companies have been lobbying unsuccessfully since 2003 for more H-1B visas. It’s hard to get anything through Congress these days. In addition, anti-immigrant groups are well organized. U.S. computer programmers are constantly arguing that H-1B workers undercut their wages.”...

Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the Democratic whip, and Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, have a proposal that would overhaul the H-1 B program and give priority to American workers. Their proposal would also define, in great detail, the wages that must be paid to workers who have H-1B visas. Mr. Durbin contended that some companies have used foreign workers to undercut the wages of American workers. And in some cases, he said, foreign workers come to this country for a few years of training, then return home “to populate businesses competing with the United States.” “The H-1B visa program is being abused by foreign companies to deprive qualified Americans of good jobs,” Mr. Durbin said. “Some companies are so brazen, they say ‘no Americans need apply’ in their job advertisements.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/25/technology/25tech.html

He can cram his need for H-1B visas. :grr:

After being outsourced....programming friends of mine have been hired back occasionally to companies around here to 'fix' the cobol and other code from the foreign firms.

They are such unimaginative, copy cats.
Insurance companies in the Hartford area are full of foreign workers....you hardly see Americans in their offices any more.

Let Universal Health care shut them down......damn them.
Many good technology workers have been forced out of work in CT. and the overseas-controlled recruiting firms will NOT interview or hire Americans.

There is no question that foreign workers with newly minted PhD's are often hired even when American workers, often with more experience, are available.

Kids can't afford to live away from home and go to college. Expand targeted education programs locally, and you'll get the kids to finish their degrees and go to work.

:puke:

Bosses love workers they not only can fire but cause to be deported - workers who can't vote.

He lost respect for his country when the Republicans let him bribe his way out of that court settlement.

Universities in Shanghai and India. Moneies they should have put into US High Schools and Universities.
I've been asking myself for years....WHY does Bill Gates hate America's technology students. Leadership in companies such as his and this governmnet have literally given away our technical edge. It's an absolute war on the American middle class and I fear for out young people in the future. I had a wonderful career for the last 40 years, starting as a young housewife(with 2 toddlers), working 2nd whift, who learned how to operate the mainframe computers and go on to support one of the staple softwares for that environment, CA7 scheduling software. I learned a lot and have had a very fullfilling job. I don't think this will be available to our American young people in the future.

For years I've considered Bill Gates and Michael Eisner, enemies of the people, for their total support of outsourcing our labor and good jobs.

how much more money does he need???

These consultants have the goal of making Microsoft and other companies "look" like they're trying to find US workers, but they rig the search to make it very difficult for qualified workers to apply. Then they use the sparse number of US applicants as reason to hire big into H-1B applicants knowing full well these workers come from countries with wages far below what any American could hope to compete against.

It's FUCKING BULLSHIT.

He talks about how America needs HS Grads yet wants to import High Tech workers. I don't think he wants American Citizens to have high paying jobs.

Understand first that Bill Gates has ALWAYS been a cheap-ass punk. This cocksucker has had a contract with the Washington State Department of Corrections to have his products packaged and shipped by prisoners for decades now.

He wants his code to be cut by H1B workers...

packaged by prisoners...

sold by $8/hour Staples employees...

and maintained in the field by $10/hour MCSEs.

I found this beauty at a company called HiWAAY Internet Services. This is for a "network support engineer."

Ideal candidate will have a wide array of knowledge and 3-5 years experience in an enterprise or ISP network environment. Specific skill areas include TCP/IP, IP routing, VPN protocols, router and switch configuration (Cisco, Juniper, others), ADSL, ISDN, T1, VLANs, VoIP, network security, firewall configuration, Linux/UNIX, Microsoft operating systems, Active Directory and Microsoft Exchange. BSCS or equivalent is required. Excellent verbal and written communication skills are required. CCNA, CCNP, or MCSE certification is a major plus. Please email resume and references to nsjobs@hiwaay.net. No phone calls, please.

How much ya wanna bet this pays $12/hour?

In case anyone hasn't seen it yet...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU

The people who come over on visas are bound to the company they're working for, if they wish to maintain their visa. They work for far less than their EQUALLY QUALIFIED and often better experienced American counterparts. So with the Visa program, the company winds up with, in essence, indebted servants on the cheap.

At the same time, it takes a job away from an American software engineer.

Certainly, there are exceptions to the rule, but this is the rule, to be sure. I've met dozens of H-1-B folks, and for the most part -- one exception -- this is their situation.

:mad:

When you set out to create crap products like (Vista) it is no wonder you reach out to the third world for cheap labor. Sometimes it is hard to find American workers who will cut corners and purposely create profit generating crap. You can hire hundreds of "paper" code monkeys...to produce un-thought out garbage.

People who invest a half a million dollars on a education are not going to work for peanuts on a garbage product.