Before recessing for Thanksgiving, Congress approved legislation that once-again allows the tech industry to hire 20,000 additional foreign workers next year (bringing the total number of foreign workers eligible for H-1B visas from 65,000 to 85,000 next year). The measure was sneaked into an appropriations bill which has to be passed in order for the gov’t to continue normal operations.
As usual, workers in the tech industry (particularly out-of-work IT professionals) are incensed that congress would once again expand the pool of “cheap foreign labor,” and the tech industry’s lobby lauded the measure as “a boon to the economy and U.S. competitiveness.”
You gotta wonder how long the US tech workers will watch their jobs being sent overseas, and foreigners brought in to take the decreasing numbers of jobs in the US without organizing and forming their own lobby. If you see an AFL-CIO representative talking to your local Systems Administrator, don’t be surprised.
Years later … (August, 2008)
I thought I would clarify my position on this, which has probably evolved over the years … I’m not against foreign workers, nor even against short-term visas for foreign workers, but ...
I am against non-immigrant “guest” visas for skilled, high tech workers. If we’re going to bring scientists, programmers, and other professionals in specialty jobs to the USA and give them experience and additional training, we need to do so in a way that puts them on even footing with American citizens, and encourages them to stay here — rather than take their expertise back overseas.
A guest worker visa program may be fine for agriculture — I don’t pretend to know very much about farming — but it’s not the right way to increase the number of high-tech professionals available. If we need more workers, let them come and let them stay! Don’t create a sub-class of people who can’t afford to loose their jobs, and thus can’t negotiate aggressively (that’s bad for those of us who already work here). Don’t create a sub-class of people who are predestined to take their skills away from the country (that’s bad for our country’s competitiveness and for our economy as a whole).
What confuses me is: why can strange things like this be incorporated into other pieces of legislation? Each bill should relate to one specific topic, and that topic only. Late additions should not be allowed unless they directly relate.