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timosman
01-31-2019, 05:05 AM
https://cis.org/Vaughan/Scrapping-PerCountry-Cap-Helps-Companies-Shun-US-Tech-Workers


November 9, 2018

Proponents of a controversial bill to end provisions in immigration law designed to prevent large immigrant-sending countries from monopolizing the limited number of green cards — the per-country caps — have attracted support in large part by portraying the caps as unfair national-origins discrimination against citizens of India. Ironically, several of the Indian companies who are lobbying for this bill are now defending themselves in federal court against lawsuits alleging that they practice egregious national-origins discrimination in favor of Indian workers over U.S. workers.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYEvSLoZEQY

A trial currently underway in Oakland, Calif., is shedding light on the personnel practices and working conditions at the Indian technology-services companies that use temporary worker programs to place foreign workers, mostly from India, in back office jobs at U.S. companies. The plaintiffs, all former Tata employees who are not citizens of India and who are considered "local" U.S. hires, allege that there was routine discrimination and harassment of non-South Asians by Tata managers and supervisors.

For example, one former engineer, a citizen of Iran, testified that he was not only denied challenging assignments, but also mocked, referred to as a "Pakistani" who would be good at "blowing things up", and set up for petty infractions that led to his dismissal.

David Neumark, a labor economist from the University of California-Irvine, testified on the opening day of the trial that, based on the demographics of Tata's employees, there was more chance of him winning the Mega Millions lottery jackpot than Tata proving it doesn't discriminate against non-South Asians in hiring and firing. More than 70 percent of Tata employees are from India, Bangladesh, and Nepal, while only 20 percent of employees at other companies in the industry are from these countries. Similarly, Tata fires non-South Asian employees at 10 times the rate it lets South Asians go.

Similar class action suits are pending against six other Indian-owned technology-services companies, including Infosys, Cognizant, and Wipro. The Tata client list includes Apple, Kaiser Permanente, and Microsoft.

A number of these Indian firms and their large clients have registered to lobby for HR 392, called the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, which would eliminate the per-country cap.

Versions of this bill have been batted about for at least six years and surfaced a few months ago in the form of an amendment to the must-pass DHS spending bill put forth by Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.). Most significantly, Yoder's provision would end the per-country caps for employment-based green cards. The statutory caps stipulate that if there are more people seeking employment green cards or immigrant visas than are available under the numerical limits set by Congress, then the allocation of the numbers will be capped at 7 percent of the total, plus any numbers not used by citizens of non-capped countries.

The purpose of the caps is to prevent the large immigrant-sending countries such as Mexico, India, China, and others from monopolizing the supply of visas. In practice, the cap preserves the ability of companies who are not major users of guestworker programs to obtain green cards or immigrant visas for skilled individuals from abroad or directly from U.S. universities. In contrast, the applicants who are affected by the caps are citizens of India who are currently in the United States as guestworkers, typically in the IT sector.

Cap opponents misleadingly assert that the per-country cap limits Indians to just 7 percent of the green cards for professionals, which would be just over 8,000 per year. In fact, it doesn't work that way. After worldwide demand is exhausted each year, the un-used numbers roll back to those on the waiting list. In recent years, citizens of India have received more than 20,000 green cards annually, or about 17 percent of all green cards issued in that category — far more than 7 percent under the theoretical cap.

I've been told by a source at USCIS that if the per-country cap were to be lifted, then for the next 10 years, nearly all of the green cards in the ordinary professional worker category would go to citizens of India. That means any company wishing to sponsor a professional from any of the other 150-plus countries that currently receive employment green cards or immigrant visas would have to wait 10 years or take their chances by entering the annual lottery for a temporary H-1B visa for that individual.

Passing this bill would perpetuate a greatly flawed system for issuing employment-based visas, without adopting safeguards for the American workers displaced and disadvantaged by it. The clients of the companies pushing this bill are the same ones that dismissed thousands of U.S. employees, and in many cases forced them to train the guestworkers taking their jobs — who are now complaining that they have to wait too long in line for green cards.

Instead, Congress should enact a merit-based scheme more like the point system proposed in the RAISE Act, which would award immigrant visas to the most qualified and talented applicants from all over the world.

For a more detailed explanation of why it's a bad idea to scrap the cap, see here (https://cis.org/Vaughan/Why-Scrap-PerCountry-Cap).

Hear me debate the bill with Leon Fresco, former chief immigration policy counsel for Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Gang of 8 Bill author, and now a lobbyist for HR 392 supporters.





H.R.392 - Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2017 - https://www.congress.gov/nomination/115th-congress/781



Sponsor: Rep. Chaffetz, Jason [R-UT-3] (Introduced 01/10/2017) :confused:

329 cosponsors :confused:


H.R.3012 - Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2011 https://www.congress.gov/bill/112th-congress/house-bill/3012/text




Sponsor: Rep. Chaffetz, Jason [R-UT-3] (Introduced 09/22/2011)

11 cosponsors

https://twitter.com/SenTomCotton/status/1090656278727327744
1090656278727327744

https://twitter.com/vinkumrect/status/1087612443952586752
1087612443952586752


https://www.kaggle.com/javidimail/h-1b-wage-distribution

https://vgy.me/b9z8EI.png

timosman
01-31-2019, 05:25 AM
Question for the legislators:

Why China, with a bigger population than India, doesn't have these problems? :confused:

timosman
01-31-2019, 06:10 AM
https://twitter.com/varadsakhalkar/status/1090318958450954243
1090318958450954243

https://twitter.com/logicalgong/status/1082400501298151425
1082400501298151425

https://twitter.com/Benioff/status/1070071743786639360
1070071743786639360

https://twitter.com/KrishnaRao87/status/1075839093483933697
1075839093483933697

timosman
01-31-2019, 06:25 AM
1047103621459058688

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1042036131343360000

1041065167893790726

1029901509260206081

1028800142277849089

1028633612672016384

specsaregood
01-31-2019, 06:30 AM
Question for the legislators:

Why China, with a bigger population than India, doesn't have these problems? :confused:

Better question, ask them if they are also in favor of eliminating all legislation or rewards that encourage diversification here in the US.

timosman
01-31-2019, 01:22 PM
https://immigrationvoice.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5&Itemid=47


The Employment-Based (EB) green card system is completely broken due to excessive delays and backlogs of processing petitions of nearly 1.5 million highly skilled workers (plus their families) who are certified by US Government to be doing jobs that no US citizen or green card-holder is willing, qualified or able to do. The delays in obtaining permanent residency are primarily due to a single reason: Per-country caps on EB green cards.

As a result of these Per-country caps on EB green cards, today, the system takes anywhere between 50-70 years to process an EB green card petition for some of the best and brightest of the world who have chosen America as their home.

These future Americans are facing significant quality of life issues and their employers are having difficulty in attracting more of the best and brightest of the world due to this broken system. The system prevents these highly-skilled workers from accepting promotions and switching jobs/employers for the duration it takes to process their green card petition. By restricting career growth and suffocating the creativity of the most innovative and technical minds of the world, America is creating a class of future Americans, who would see no career growth for 50-70 years and turn these high-skilled individuals into under-achievers. Given the currently expected lifespan, each of these adult immigrant workers will be 6 feet under before they get their hands on the coveted green-cards.

Unlike the EB green card system, there are no Per country limits on any of the feeder non-immigrant visas like H-1B, L-1, J-1 etc. In last 20 years, employers have brought more workers from India, China, Philippines, and Mexico, thus creating a huge EB backlog for immigrants from these countries. Additionally, unused visas from the remaining countries that don't use the 7% allocated visas are mostly never allotted to these four countries that offer the highest number of skilled workers, scientists, engineers and doctors willing to make America their future home. It is discriminatory to have laws that subject immigrants from four nations to 70 years long backlogs, especially when they are not allowed to change jobs, thus mandating indentured servitude. When immigrants are stuck with the same employer for 70 years, unwillingly and unknowingly, they are bound to depress wages because the system created and preserved by Congress ensures that immigrant workers have no leverage.

The backlog is so long that imagine someone who is not even born yet in another country, whose parents have not even met, they will one day meet, get married, then conceive that child, that child will grow up, go to school, will one day graduate from College and let's say that child decides to come to the US and applies for a green card. That child who is not yet conceived will receive a green card before people waiting in green card backlog today, just because of that child lucky enough to be not born in one of those four nations!

And this legalized form of indentured servitude for people in green card backlogs incentivizes companies to hire more people from those four nations, especially India. The companies know that if they hire from India, then that person is no longer a worker, but rather, that person is a property of that company for rest of the life of that person. Consider a French company - Capgemini. One would think that given a higher unemployment rate in France that a company like Capgemini would want to hire French "skilled workers". But no. Like every other tech or outsourcing company, Capgemini wants to hire Indian "skilled workers" in large numbers. You can easily find out that although the largest number of workers in all tech companies are Americans, it is also a fact that immigrants from India make the 2nd largest number of workers in all of the large tech companies. The only logical and scientific conclusion could be that "Indians" are smarter or better than everyone else on the planet. But we all know that is not true. No residents of any country or race are better than anyone - and that is the universal truth. The real reason why all sorts of companies want to hire more workers from India is - these companies know that once they hire workers from India, they will "own" these Indian workers because of the 70-year green card backlog. And it all comes down to Per country limits on the EB system. Often folks on blogosphere tend to attack immigrant workers for their accent, or that they have fewer skills etc. The thing is, these immigrant workers are not the enemy or the aggressor, but they are as much the victims of the system created and preserved by Congress on behalf of tech companies. A system which ensures that specific immigrant workers have fewer rights so it is very difficult for these employees to change jobs allowing employers to exploit them and take advantage of them. But the thing is, in a society in which some people have fewer rights, those with more rights are put at disadvantage in the marketplace or when applying for jobs.

Adam Smith in his book 'The Wealth of Nations" said that in a room full of people, if some people are "less equal" than others, that means no one is equal to anyone else. Likewise, extrapolate that to the economy of 110 million people in which if 1.5 million immigrants are "less equal" (meaning have fewer rights) than everyone else, it means no one is equal in the larger marketplace of 110 million people. And now we have a marketplace where workers with fewer rights are exploited. But workers with more rights (US Citizens and Permanent Residents) are discriminated against and they will not land a job, or, will be gradually replaced by workers with fewer rights. And that is at the core of the whole issue and the real reason for instances like Disney, Southern California Edison, and GE etc. Equal rights and equality are not just some nebulous concepts. It is very much visible in the context of immigration.

Outsourcing: Why are outsourcing companies only from India? How many people are required for an outsourcing company? Say, 10,000 or 25,000 or even 50,000 or 100,000 skilled + semi-skilled workers. You can go to any large city in the world today and you can find those workers. You can find these workers willing to take outsourced jobs in Santiago, Chile or Johannesburg, South Africa or Bangkok, Thailand. But then, why do we not have outsourcing companies from Chile, South Africa or Thailand? Why only India? Here is the real reason - for the outsourcing company, it is very important to bring in the small number of employees to the client site to gather the requirements and have the majority of the employees back home in the mother-ship. But the key to lowering the cost for outsourcing business is to have a lower cost for the small set of employees who come to the client site (in this case to America on H-1B or L-1 visas). To lower the cost for these employees in America, outsourcing companies have to ensure a way that they can get away with paying lower wages to these employees and to ensure that these employees are unable to change employer because replenishing new workers from mother-ship is costly. If these employees would be from Chile or Thailand, they can join another employer who will file their green card and they will get it in 1-2 years. However, because these employees are born in India, they know that they will not get a green card for a long, long time. So they accept exploitation and cycle of outsourcing company as a normal business.

Now, imagine a system without Per-country limits on the EB green cards. In such a system, no immigrant's green card petition is given preferential treatment, all applicants will be treated equally, regardless of which country they are born in. All immigrants in EB category will be waiting equally for 3-4 years as per the data made available by the State Department. This will be a system in which employers no longer have an incentive to hire workers from India over US workers or workers from other parts of the world, creating more diversity in the workforce. Such a system won't force immigrants to work for the same employer, but rather let immigrants live up to their full potential to change jobs or start a business which will create more jobs in America. And outsourcing companies from India will no longer be able to use the green card backlogs to gain competitive advantage.

The pressure on backlogged skilled immigrants to go back to their home countries is increasing each day as many world economies, especially India and China are booming and they also happen to be the country of origin of more than half of this skilled foreign-born workforce. If America delays reform of the broken system of EB immigration, the pressure on these individuals to go back would neutralize the incentive to wait here and tough it out with the broken system. It would result in a reverse brain drain where the talent and human capital flows from developed west to the burgeoning Asian economies. The reverse brain drain would exacerbate the effects of overseas outsourcing on the economy. These future Americans have waited for reform for more than 12 years but Congress hasn't reformed the system yet. The fight for the best and brightest in the world is America's to lose.

America has had per-country ceilings since decades on family-based and diversity-lottery based visas and it makes sense to have a uniform distribution of visas to countries where the basis for immigration is the family relationship and family reunification. However, in the EB immigration system, the petitioner is the employer who wants to retain the employee and facilitate employee retention based on skills, knowledge, education, and talent. Employability has nothing to do country of birth. We do not allow employers to discriminate hiring based on their nationality or country of origin. Thus, EB immigration, which is a derivative benefit of employment, should also be free from rationing based on nationality or country of birth.

Congressman Kevin Yoder's [KS-03] bill, H.R.392, The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2017, makes minor technical changes to the system by eliminating Per country limits in a 3-year step-down process whereby bad employers will no longer have wrong/bad incentive to hire immigrant workers over American workers. It's time to make the system work in the best interest of America, Americans, and the immigrants.

timosman
02-13-2019, 08:25 AM
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/02/12/tech-elites-donor-class-unite-with-gop-dems-to-outsource-white-collar-american-jobs/


12 Feb 2019

https://media.breitbart.com/media/2019/02/Donors-Kamala-Mike-Lee-640x480.jpg

Silicon Valley’s business elites and donor-class billionaires are uniting with elected Republicans and Democrats to ensure that white-collar, middle-class American jobs are swiftly outsourced to mostly Indian and Chinese nationals.
A plan known as the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, introduced in the Senate by Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Kamala Harris (D-CA), as well as Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Ken Buck (R-CO), would eliminate the U.S. country caps in the legal immigration system and would fast-track outsourcing of white-collar American jobs to mostly Indian and Chinese nationals imported to the country by businesses, outsourcing firms, and multinational corporations.

The country caps were originally implemented to prevent any one country from monopolizing the legal immigration system. Eliminating the country caps would immediately fast-track up to 300,000 green cards, and eventually American citizenship, to primarily Indian nationals in the U.S. on the H-1B visa, so long as they agree to take high-paying, white-collar jobs from Americans.

In the process, not only would other foreign workers be crowded out from receiving employment-based green cards, but the elimination of the country caps would fast-track the outsourcing of high-paying American jobs that would otherwise go to U.S. graduates.

The plan is garnering support from Silicon Valley tech executives like Google’s Sundar Pichai and Microsoft executives to donor-class heavyweights like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the billionaire GOP mega-donor Koch brothers.

Amazon executives went as far as to post online their gratitude to Lee and Harris for introducing the white-collar outsourcing plan.

On Lee’s Senate website, he touted the support that the plan has from across the political spectrum, ranging from pro-outsourcing outfits like the Information Technology Industry Council to open-borders organizations like UnidosUS, formerly known as La Raza.

In 2017, when identical legislation was introduced, outsourcing firms like Cognizant — which is responsible for outsourcing thousands of American jobs to foreign workers — lobbied lawmakers to support the plan. Other multinational corporations like IBM, Oracle, Cisco, Intel, and Hewlett-Packard lobbied Congress to pass the legislation.

The Senate co-sponsors of the plan include a coalition of Republicans and Democrats:


Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO)
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME)
Sen. Jim Moran (R-KS)
Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE)
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR)
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO)
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR)
Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR)
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO)
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND)
Sen. Krysten Sinema (D-AZ)



The plan is a boon to Silicon Valley billionaires, big business elites, and outsourcing firms, as it would enable them to readily import more lower-paid Indian and Chinese foreign workers to take American jobs, which would have otherwise gone to American citizens.

Last year, when a coalition of Republicans and Democrats attempted to pass the legislation, the pro-American, anti-outsourcing group U.S. Tech Workers said the plan would be “the most radical change to our immigration system in history.”

“Just as Indian outsourcing companies and a handful of big US tech companies have gamed the H1B visa system, so too are they now seeking to game the US green card distribution process, and smaller American startups are shut out of the process, unable to access work visas or green cards for potential employees … ” Marie Larson with U.S. Tech Workers wrote.

The Center for Immigration Studies Director of Policy Jessica Vaughan has explained in detail the impact of eliminating country caps in the U.S. legal immigration system:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYEvSLoZEQY

Experts have said that should the country caps be eliminated, India would be able to monopolize the country’s legal immigration system for the next ten years. After that decade of an Indian-first legal immigration system, the legal immigration flow from India to the U.S. would likely stabilize to make up around 75 percent of all employment-based legal immigration.

Overall, four million young Americans enter the workforce every year, but their job opportunities are further diminished as there are roughly two new foreign workers for every four American workers who enter the workforce. These foreign workers are imported by businesses through visa programs like the H-1B, L-1, OPT, O-1, and J-1 visas, among others, to replace Americans in the workforce.

Superfluous Man
02-13-2019, 10:15 AM
Good.

enhanced_deficit
02-13-2019, 12:53 PM
https://twitter.com/vp/status/989576794964623360?lang=en

Swordsmyth
02-13-2019, 03:59 PM
Good.
Bad.


Unless you want a communist regime..............................

timosman
02-13-2019, 05:21 PM
Bad.


Unless you want a communist regime..............................

https://twitter.com/AmericanFlyer3/status/989601276668383238
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DbvFGJ3U0AECyrS.jpg