Many of you probably read the rec'd diary by Phil In Denver
If you haven't, please read it here: My Whole Family Cried This Week
Phil lost his job in IT, and now has to travel cross-country alone to seek a job. Unfortunately, his story is not unusual.
We're losing one half million jobs per month in this country. Again.. one half million!
IT workers were first decimated by the bursting of the dot com bubble. Each downturn in the economy has further hurt IT workers (as well as many others) throughout the nation.
Even in good times, American corporations found outsourcing IT jobs to India and other countries another way to save on IT costs. And what it couldn't outsource, it found useful yet another government program.. H-1B visas.
Each year, on April 1st, the government awards 65,000 H-1B Visas
The US H1B visa is a non-immigrant visa, which allows a US company to employ a foreign individual for up to six years. As applying for a non-immigration visa is generally quicker than applying for a US Green Card, staff required on long-term assignment in the US are often initially brought in using a non-immigrant visa such as the H1B visa.
Individuals can not apply for an H1B visa to allow them to work in the US. The employer must petition for entry of the employee. H1B visas are subject to annual numerical limits
Now, please understand, this is 65,00 NEW visas each year.. for a maximum of 6 years to stay and work here. That means that at any given time, we have nearly 400,000 H-1B workers here taking jobs Americans could fill.
The H-1B program was designed to allow companies to fill very specialized positions that cannot be filled by American workers. However, the program has become bastardized to the point that there are special consulting firms that help corporations write specs for workers that no American could ever meet.
The work many of these H-1B guest workers do are very often using common IT skills... database administration. program design.. report design and production and analysis. All skills that are in plentiful supply right here in the US by US citizens. IT professionals have been hit hard by outsourcing, but it is even more egregious to see your job lost to a consulting firm that only hires H-1B workers and bids your job out for less than your salary.
And that, my friends, is the bottom line. Greed. Corporate savings. And our government helps them screw the American worker. Why? Because those big consulting firms, and the big corporations that use their H-1B placements are the ones paying the campaign bills of your Congressmen and Senators.
President Obama! Stop the H-1B program today. Put a halt to the legal selling of 65,000 American's jobs this April 1st!
If you, dear reader, agree we should not be putting Americans out of work, please contact the Whitehouse at:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/...
or by phone at: 202-456-1111
Ask the President to delay all new H-1B visas until a thorough review of the program's abuses can be looked at and remedied. This must stop!