American companies say we need to get educated, get qualified? Fine.

[Deja Q]

Have they read the responses to this site?

http://yitbos96bb.mydd.com/story/2007/6/1/104448/6146


Real, imagined, true, untrue, objective, racist, or whatever else adjectives you can use, it makes for some interesting reading and there are plenty of viewpoints to read.

What's your take?

We need to subsidize American students like foreign students are subsidized by their governments.


(Edit: Addendum - italicized paragraph is one snippet from that web site.)

[LoZoccolo]

1. Recommended.

So true about the subsidy thing as well.

[Deja Q]

3. Thanks! And,

:pals:

The paragraph italicized, it was taken from that website too. (I wish I'd said that don't want to come across as plagiarizing...)

[LiberalEsto]

2. My husband is a DBA at a large company

where they have been replacing experienced American IT people with cheap labor in the form of foreign H1-B workers in recent years. He is lucky to still have a job, but could be laid off at any minute.

Despite legal requirements that the foreigners get paid the same as those people they replaced, this employer finds all kinds of loopholes to get around that. They revise the job descriptions slightly, for example.

The laid-off American IT professionals are out of luck, and it takes many of them years to find work that pays anywhere near what they used to earn. This particular company gets all kinds of breaks from the government and pays no property taxes at all.

I strongly believe any U.S. company that replaces American workers with foreign workers should be required by law to pay back any tax breaks or government subsidies it has received.

Some companies get multi-year property tax breaks from municipalities that want to lure jobs to their communities. Then after a few years, the businesses shut down and move operations out of the U.S., or fire the local workforce and bring in cheap foreign workers. This is plain wrong.

Our tax dollars should not be subsidizing companies that give away our jobs.

[Deja Q]

4. And there was a response in that forum close to the top,

something about how companies bring in these folks, train them for the testing, and the rest of it.

Hell, I'd take a job for less if it gave me OJT training. Who wouldn't?

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

14. And those same jobs, when they advertise them over here...

They want the all the certs, a master's degree or 5 years experience or 10 years or...

It's a rancid dodge.

[midnight]

20. If these foreign workers that are replacing American's are

making about the same pay, what is the purpose of replacing American's?

[cascadiance]

25. The point is that they DON'T get the same pay...

Now there are some companies that try to play by the rules of paying equal pay to what American workers get and follow the true purpose of H-1B visas, but most of them use scams to get around this supposed limit.

This scam has been happening for well over a decade or so! I've seen it in action and joked about in companies I've worked for in the past.

All it takes is a consulting company to "specialize" in hiring H-1B visa people and therefore ONLY hire H-1B Visa people. Since they don't have any other American workers to compare wages with that they employ they can pay them anything they damn well please. Then, instead of "hiring out a contractor" to another company, they hire out a "service" to that company, so that on the books they don't have to quantify the differences in pay in what they pay and what the contracting company pays their workers either.

This scam has been around forever, and the corporations continue to feed on it! Until you get some non-corporate beholden congress critters to fix this legislation, it is going to continue. If you look at cumulative statistics, you'll see that the average salaries that are paid H-1B visad workers are quite a bit less than the average salaries of similar jobs by non H-1B visa workers.

[LiberalEsto]

31. They don't get paid the same

As I wrote in my post, "this employer finds all kinds of loopholes to get around that. They revise the job descriptions slightly, for example."

All it takes is a few changes in the official job description, and bingo -- it's become a different job, so the company can set whatever salary they like for it.

My husband knows H1-Bs making $35,000-$45,000 for jobs that previously paid $80,000-$90,000. It's a bargain for the company, but it screws the American computer professionals, who went to college and paid high tuition to get those IT jobs.

[high density]

5. Hillary wants more H1Bs?

Well, she doesn't have to worry about getting my vote then.

[TahitiNut]

12. Indeed .. that's just one of the stances she's taken that drives me away.

She's still apparently a Goldwater girl ... and even if that's to the "left" of today's fascist right I'm not interested in supporting it.

[cascadiance]

36. That's a big reason why Dems should NOT support the Senate Immigration Bill...

It was a lot more corporate serving and sought to remove H-1B visa caps!

There really should be a *third* option to that bill and the Sensenbrenner xenophobic bill in the House...

[bamacrat]

6. Thats bullshit..

There are tons (including me) College graduates that are educated and qualified to do a lot of jobs, but no everyone wants 3-5 years of experience. How the hell do we get experience if you dont give it to us? We need to kill this countries corporate masters.:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

[Deja Q]

9. Please calm down and do not advocate the k-word.

The problem isn't offshoring as much as it is cost of living makes the wages offered Indians and Chinese a goldmine; but is not viable here.

As Republicans say, rightly so, America needs to become more competitive. The only way to do that is to drop wages and cost of living to MATCH what they pay the Chinese and Indians for their local economies.

It is as simple as that.

The bigger problem is convincing Americans to get further education in these areas being offshored. But we're told to have faith. Maybe we should. Once the American wage/cost-of-living bubble bursts and the world properly globalized, the entire issue will cease.

[ellisonz]

24. How about the r-word?

Nothing will change until we have a redistribution of wealth in America and dramatic resistance to the corporatist ideology that both suppresses and exploits the youth of America.

;):grr:

[Deja Q]

35. Labor creates all wealth.

"redistribution" sounds unfair. And I'd rather earn my keep, as do we all. We're lot leeches. But it's as if the old rules are now worthless; to work hard (amongst other qualifiers) does NOT mean success, and that anything anyone says is spun to make the workers the bad group in all this, which is shocking...

But the irony is astounding...

But for all the blathering Republicans make about America's generosity and how that's better than being forced to pay big bucks to workers (or whatever the excuse), the double standard is they want America to die...

[radfringe]

30. exactly!!!

we need to out third world the third world... it's a race to the bottom and we're behind </end :sarcasm: >

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

7. Well, that's it for me.

Mrs. Clinton can go piss up a rope. I will works against her nomination now and I suspect that all I will need is this one little fact.

So, check one off my list.

What a silly, foolish, short-sighted woman.

[LiberalEsto]

8. Maybe we should all write to her

and make it clear that increasing H1B quotas is unacceptable. Not that I think it will do much good. :mad:

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

10. I charge candidates for my advice.

I have done it before and if asked, I will do it again. I will state my opinions here and give them freely to local candidates but never, ever again will I give my advice for free to anyone who is running for anything above the municipal level.

I know the economics, all too well. I ain't giving my talents, such as they are, away, ever again. I have seen huge amounts of money pissed away on pens and nailfiles, while I ate shit. I have seen huge, obscene amounts of money spent on dog-assed websites while I ate shit.

I learned the hard way. Mrs. Clinton wants my advice, we can enter negotiations. Fool me once, fool me twice and all that.

[LoZoccolo]

11. Do what you want, but it isn't about what is "fair"...

...it's about what works.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

13. I have gotten more than my share...

Of blank looks with the pasted-on smiles from candidates, as I stated my piece. If it conflicts with what is being told them by their paid staffers, they go into cognitively-dissonent shutdown. Everything above the brainstem stops working. Seen it many, many times. How they keep from drooling at those times, I have no idea, but it is an impressive talent.

[LiberalEsto]

29. Oh, I don't consider it advice

I think of it as a scolding for her being such a corporatist

[LiberalFighter]

15. What's the point of getting educated if they corporations outsource the jobs?

[pitohui]

16. it's a subsidy for the "educators," the rest of us get debt

"education" is way over-sold as it is, i think we've all had master degree'd waiters bringing out our food, i know i have

[mitchum]

28. That is absolutely correct

[Deja Q]

17. Very true.

In the past, the number of degrees and types showed an ability of education.

Now it's just being sold off as cheap fodder. And they help pay the H1Bs as well. (or so I've read). If true, something about that isn't quite right. But what would I know?

[Gregorian]

18. To start a business. To create jobs.

I know it sounds canned. But I mean it.

[The Backlash Cometh]

19. We are over-qualified as, well as underqualifed.

For specialized jobs, we have enough bright people to fill the positions, if only our colleges would start connecting with our corporations to teach the jobs of tomorrow.

But we are also intentionally underqualified, as many of our universities are growing because they are becoming diploma mills. The University of Central Florida, comes to mind.

[Ilsa]

21. My husband used to like his work,

but he is tired of doing it 60+ hours a week. My brother said the nurses (RNs) at his hospital are being asked to sweep floors. The speech therapists at the school district are being told to handle loads at 35% to 50% above full case loads.

These are all very well-educated people and they are so tired of all the shit they have to do for less money than their parents.

[Screwfly]

22. Getting a college degree

to make The Big Bucks is turning into just another pie in the sky fantasy like winning the lotto, selling a block buster script to Hollywood, or hitting it big on American Idol.

I knew American had taken a serious wrong turn decades ago, when cocktail waitresses started making more money than nurses and machinists.

I fear that American has been turned into a land of treasure seekers racked with gold fever forever chasing after the next bonanza.

Yesterday everyone wanted to be a real-estate agent and who knows what hot job they'll chasing tomorrow.

[Deja Q]

32. Republiacns whine our society is going downhill or why nobody is enlisting...

Yet they're the same ones who promote the underlying Thatcherism that is the root for the decay of society: "There is no society. Only individual men, women, and families."

[cascadiance]

23. They should understand that with our present system education is becoming more of a bad investment!

Education costs are skyrocketing and becoming increasingly more expensive to make an investment in these days compared to the past!

The return on investment that kids get in terms of jobs that can help pay off this investment is getting signficantly worse, as more and more jobs are outsourced overseas and H1-B visas drop peoples' wages against the dollar. The salaries of jobs kids get from the investment just aren't the same return as they used to be! If corporate execs were truly being honest about this assessment, they'd own up to it being a bad investment these days now.

They instead don't want to own up to the system being rigged by them to increasingly screw kids.

I know the Indian lady I work with says that for Indian students the question is primarily whether to get a post-graduate degree, since all Indians have their undergraduate college years paid for!

[Deja Q]

33. Yet those companies can afford to give lots of training to H1Bs, et al. In America too.

A OJT job with training is one I'd happily work for less $. It all evens out in the end.

And if it is globalization, the costs associated with living must match. Again, India is building a middle class on wages we could (at best) barely live on. China's pulled over 1/3rd is people out of poverty as well. Their cost of living makes low wages a reality.

When will America's cost of living follow the wages they want to pay out?

[ellisonz]

26. The American Dream is dead.

:evilfrown:

[Deja Q]

34. Screw the dream, America is dying.

I can live without some of those freedoms; but nobody wants to do anything because it "costs too much".

On the news, the baseball stadium doorknobs said "We got our stadium, hurrah! But if we got it 5 years ago instead of all you naysayers whining about taxpayer subsidy, it costs three times as much now to make a stadium as it did back then."

So if a fuckin' stadium is so important, why isn't the rest of America's infrastructure getting any treatment? Fuck sports teams; overpaid above-the-law do-nothing-except-run-for-a-living trash in the first place!

[mitchum]

27. Yep, and that's why they are now replacing "pie in the sky" with "the whip...

on your back"

[sentelle]

37. Our studies are subsidized. already, just not by the government.

(full disclosure: I work in the IT field) The US can produce the same world-class people that the rest of the world does. Why it doesn't comes down to a few reasons:

1. Misplaced priorities in schools? What happens to the money that schools get when they get federal aid? Why is it that so much of it goes into the (competitive) athetic divisions? Sure, that is the area in education that makes money, and I am sure that many people take home memories of so-and-so's game over so-and-so for years to come, but is it in the long term interest of the students to funnel so much money into something that doesn't educate?

2. What are we being educated on? I am certain that most students can identify (for example) Paris hilton in a line-up. can we say the same of *? We are being educated to be good consumers, not to innovate. How many advertisements has the average high-schooler seen since they started school? How many logo's can they remember? How much competition is there to be the most in-fashion? Even when students have a hard-science background, they are poorly educated simply because the effort doesn't go into science, but into "science" namely the science of consumerism.

3. lack of standards: I have been reading that my local state (WA) has abandoned their newly instituted standardised tests. The assertion is that the students can't pass so as a result, we cannot deny them? What the hell does that mean for us as a nation? are we so stupid that just because we can't pass, we deserve to get a pass?

Need I go on?

[Deja Q]

38. Welcome to DU! And to answer your points,

1. Bingo. I have no idea what public schools are teaching, or how well. But things need to change there if education is being replaced with a "diploma mill".

(As for parenting, if the parents aren't able or capable (the cost of living makes having one job more difficult for many), they won't have the time to practice family values. They're too busy living under corporate values. if you can call it that. And, yeah, while phy ed/gym is important, the amount of money spent for sports and the luster and prestige placed on it is asinine. We raise a nation of jock lovers and laugh at geeks. That doesn't help matters either... but I digress. Public schools would have to compensate. School teachers used to whack kids' wrists with a stick for chewing gum or having a hair out of place. These days, brats can wear rock concert t-shirts with exceptionally crude slogans and punk all they want and nobody does a thing. That cannot be allowed to continue. Of course, if somebody tried, then everybody screams "free speech"! Children are there to learn, and it's got to return that way.)

2. EXCELLENT point. And one that MUST be addressed. Life is more than just consumerism, but "commercial forces" is what drives people toward doing something. Well, commercial forces combined with a person's inherent traits... the sad part is, even commercial innovation (e.g. graphic design) can be offshored as easily as the most intellectual of fields. And as "techies" are replaced by "cue card reading parrots", "graphic designers" are replaced with "templates". (which can usually be seen a mile away too...)

3. Do you know what those standardized tests involved? I'll agree, people should pass tests and have incentives for passing them... But that's not the point. Where's the incentive for any Americans to even bother if all their money put into education is better spent clogging a toilet? Republicans say "Money is an incentive". Well, just who is their target audience? It's neither you nor I.