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Instead it turned into a program for lowering wages by approving hundreds-of-thousands of visas for people who have the same skills as Americans but are willing to work for lower wages.
I haven't found that to be the case. Just from my experience, I used to work as a programmer for Motorola, one of the companies listed by the Dobbs "report", and none of the people I worked with and hung out with that were on H1B visas ("them") were getting less than normal salaries that were undercutting "us". And from even more personal experience, my wife is working under an H1B visa as a bilingual teacher, and she doesn't get less than other teachers of similar experience. Both for Motorola and the school district have posted pay grades. Perhaps other companies are different, but for all the things I dislike about Motorola (and there are plenty) I have to defend them on this particular point based on my experience. Of course, offshoring is another story...
And that was my point... even if you think H1Bs do lower wages, what do you think is a bigger problem, H1B visas or offshoring... In my opinion, it's clearly offshoring, though the Dobbs "report" made no mention of this. When you pay someone $5-10 in india or china for a job that pays $30-60 here...
The H1B program should be scaled back to 1,000 per year, not 250,000 per year.
There are more than 1000 bilingual teachers in the US working on H1B visas, so clearly (IMO) 1,000 for all professions isn't enough.
If you haven't already, watch the short clip of the Dobbs report, and how they misrepresent Natasha Humphries, who was displaced because of offshoring not visas. Also note at the end of the "report"...
From the CNN transcript:
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TUCKER: H1B visas were created back in 1990. They were meant to allow companies to bring in foreign labor to ease labor shortages. They last five years. They can be renewed. And, Lou, no one is certain how many workers in the United States of America are actually working on an H1B visa program.
DOBBS: It's remarkable, because we have talked here, I think as our audience knows, to the Department of Labor. We have talked with the Homeland Security Department.
We know, recently, the number issued, no one knows how many of those over that better than a decade have expired, how many of those people remain in this country. It's extraordinary.
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It might have helped to talk to the INS department because that is the department that oversees the H1B visa program, not the department of labor or the homeland department of siphoning money. And I assure you, when your visa is up, they know... and the social security card H1B visa holders get explicitly and prominently states "VALID FOR WORK ONLY WITH INS AUTHORIZATION".
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