> From: Michael Marsh [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Saturday, November 12, 2005 4:50 PM
<...> > What companies *can* easily do in the U.S. is to require that > applicants be either citizens or permanent residents. You can't force > an employer to pay for your visa. The "permanent resident" > requirement can put up a sizeable barrier. Many tech companies choose > to pay for employee visas because it either makes it easier to fill > the position or it allows them to hire people who, even with the cost > of the visa included, ask a low enough salary to keep average pay > levels down. Good point. Let's not forget that we annually grant somewhere around 140,000 H1-B visa for "guest workers" where employers certify that they can't hire a U.S. citizen or permanent resident for the job. This certification is normally bogus, as the unemployed engineers in California will attest. The Federal government takes the corporations' word regardless. These employees are truly at the mercy of their employer, without whom they will get a quick trip back to their country of origin. They do not complain about unsafe working conditions, excessive overtime or any other abuses and will work for much lower salaries than their U.S. counterparts. The company is required to certify that they are paying the same wages to the "guest worker" as their U.S. counterparts, but that is also widely known to be untrue. These visas only cost the hiring company around USD$500, so it is a tiny price to pay for a low-cost employee who will not dare complain about anything. There is also the L1 visa program, where an multinational can transfer an "employee" from a branch in another country to their U.S. operations. The non-U.S. employee often turns out to be a temporary hire, often from a subcontractor who provides temporary workers, then sent to the U.S. to work for below market wages. As this is a "transfer" within the company, there is no need to make any certification about the wages paid or the availability of U.S. workers for the job. Recent legislation that would have raised the cost of the L1 to USD$1500 was recently rejected, so this is cheap and easily abused. I believe the number of L1 workers in the U.S. is around 50,000 annually. The end result of outsourcing coupled with abuse of the H1-B and L1 visa programs is to lower the wages of technology workers in the U.S. In this respect, it has been successful. In its biennial salary survey, the IEEE reports that the median wage of U.S. engineers has gone down in real dollars for the first time in the 30 years the IEEE has conducted the survey. IMHO, we are just at the beginning of the decline. Already, manufacturing firms who make electronic hardware in China are finding that prices are rising there and are considering moving production to lower cost places, such as Africa. There is always someone who is hungrier. -- Seth Goodman -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
