PROGRAMMERS GUILD E-NEWSLETTER
DECEMBER 2006

CHRISTMAS 2006 ISSUE

Activists and tech workers - we need your help. See bottom of this letter.

Welcome Senator James Webb (D-VA)

Last month we endorsed James Web for Virginia Senate. He prevailed. He has already appeared on Lou Dobbs as a rational voice, and will be the keynote speaker at Agenda for Shared Prosperity. (The Programmers Guild was on that same November 10th Lou Dobbs show.)

109th Congressional clock runs out on H-1B increase

It's good news for U.S. tech workers that the 109th Congress failed to pass an H-1b increase. Proponents resorted to underhanded tactics: House Republican Majority leader John Boehner attempted to piggyback the increase on the unrelated U.S. nuclear trade with India Act (S 3709).

Democrat Joseph Biden, who assumes the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee next month, rejected the inclusion, saying such issues should be dealt with by the new Democrat controlled Congress. 

Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), like many in Congress, views the U.S. in terms of corporate competitiveness - of "leveling playing fields for U.S. corporations" - rather than a Congress "Of the People," preserving middle class jobs, our standard of living, and quality of life. Accordingly, Cornyn advocates increasing the number of jobs that DOL reserves for foreign workers under he H-1b program

Technology firms and their lobbyists were unable to expand the H1-B hiring program in this last Congress. Our opposition to SKIL Bill and advocacy to give qualified U.S. workers an opportunity to apply for U.S. jobs - and for reasonable protections and limits on H-1b - will continue in 2007.

Outgoing Senator Collins questions H-1b safeguards

The Programmers Guild joins IEEE-USA in commending Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine), outgoing chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, for her letter to DOL chief Elaine Chau, citing that the H-1b approval process is nothing more than a rubberstamp, that is approved in minutes over the internet without any human interaction. 

Indeed, the DOL's LCA Online Application System is an is an on-line reservation system for job openings that Americans aren’t allowed to compete for. You can view the online application at www.lca.doleta.gov/eta_start.cfm. Select "Apply now without registering."

The Senator's letter is here: www.ieeeusa.org/policy/issues/H1bvisa/CollinsH1B.pdf 

Study: U.S. Skill Shortage is not a factor in most H-1b use Even a Study by lobbyist to increase H-1b quota finds that U.S. Skill Shortage is not a factor in most H-1b usage

The study ‘American Made,’ prepared by industry lobbyist Stuart Anderson and commissioned by the National Venture Capital Association, found at page 24 that in the majority of cases employers do not use the H-1b hiring program to fill a shortage shortage of skilled U.S. workers, but rather because they simply desire to hire a specific foreign worker.

The NVCA study can be found here: www.mercextra.com/multimedia/business/final.pdf 

Furthermore, the latest BLS data shows a flat to declining job market during the past six years - compiled by Roy Lawson:

Milton Friedman: "H-1b is a low wage subsidy to employers"

The Economist dubbed Milton Friedman " the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century…, possibly of all of it." Friedman believed that the idea of the government stocking a farm system for the likes of Microsoft and Intel was bad economics. "There is no doubt that the [H-1B] program is a benefit to their employers, enabling them to get workers at a lower wage, and to that extent, it is a subsidy."

Milton Friedman, died November 16, 2006 at the age of 94.

"President Bushachev, Tear down this wage wall"

For the last decade Congress has frozen the "H-1b Dependent" salary cap at $60,000. Congress has arbitrarily set $60,000 as the "fair wage" for U.S. software professionals, presuming that as long as H-1b workers are paid that amount, they do not pose a threat to U.S. workers. Thus employers may have up to 100% percent of their workforce comprised of H-1b workers, with no requirement to recruit U.S. workers - as long as they pay them a $60,000 salary.

Furthermore, as explained on the DOL website, if the H-1b workers have a masters degree, there is no minimum wage requirement: A company comprised of 100% H-1b workers with masters degrees earning $25,000 per year is not deemed "H-1b dependent."

But according to the BLS, a division of DOL, $60,000 is about the 25th percentile of U.S. wages, leaving 75% of U.S. tech workers exposed to wage erosion by Congress' H-1b program: 

"Median annual earnings of computer applications software engineers who worked full time in May 2004 were about $74,980. The middle 50 percent earned between $59,130 and $92,130 . . . According to Robert Half International, starting salaries for software engineers in software development ranged from $63,250 to $92,750 in 2005."

Congress: Please remove this arbitrary wall on tech wages. Please stop flooding the market with foreign workers, and the natural economic law of supply and demand will draw sufficient U.S. workers back into the profession. Please amend H-1b legislation so that the minimal protections of "H-1b dependent" employers apply to all users of H-1b workers, consistent with the Pascrell Bill.

Major Newspapers are running Fake Job Ads

While there is no requirement to try to recruit Americans prior to filling a job with an H-1b worker, after the position has been filled, the law requires the employer to advertise the position as part of a sham PERM process to "demonstrate that no qualified Americans are available." Hundreds of such ads run each Sunday in major newspapers across the U.S., and the unsuspecting applicants have no idea that the ads are a ruse - there is no "job opening."

The sham is that these ads do not represent an actual intent to hire, since the position being advertised is already filled by the H-1b worker.

For two years Sacramento Bee Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Rick Rodriquez has declined to respond to my letters about bogus job openings. He did find time, however, to personally sponsor an LCA for a "Technical Writer." As an employer Rick has the right to overlook qualified Americans and petition virtually anyone to enter the U.S. on an H-1b visa, give them a job, and sponsor them for U.S. citizenship - by running a few fake job ads.

The LCA provides the phone number of Elaine Nakata, Employment Specialist: 916-321-1679. Rick's contact information is here. Documentation of the Sacramento Bee fake job ads and my correspondence can be found at www.programmersguild.org/rir/. 

These ads, out of a handful of total software ads, exhibit the signs of bogus PERM job ads:

• The ads ran on two Sundays within the 30 days, consistent with PERM requirements.
• In spite of the Internet, applicants must mail their resumes - which avoids an electronic trail of a flood of qualified U.S. applicants
• To distinguish from other cases where the employer will sponsor H-1b, these ads sometimes state "Must have legal right to work in the U.S.."
• The LCA database reveals that the employer had previously sought to fill the positions with H-1b workers.
• The ads don't list required skills because PERM rules do not require a skill list.
• All of these employers have previously sponsored PERM greencards. These can be seen in the Access database for 2004, downloadable from the DOL's FLC Data Center (This is worth downloading - DOL found that there were "no qualified Americans" to work as: Donut Maker, Cashier, Cook, Painter, Restaurant Hostess - every row in this database represents fake ads that ran in U.S. Sunday newspapers.)

These ads are reproduced for the purposes of criticism, comment, and education of the public, legislators,
and media, in accordance with Title17 U.S.C. Section 107.

HP continues to lay off off tens of thousands of qualified U.S. workers and has cut headcount at the Roseville facility from 6500 to 4000. Yet HP intends to present these fake ad to DOL as evidence that they tried in good faith but were unable to find any Americans who qualified for the position.

Employers Can Find American Workers

The "Comprehensive Amnesty" plans by Bush and McCain, among others, include the provision that the 12 million illegal workers currently in the U.S. be allowed to retain their jobs, with no requirement that employers first try to fill the positions with U.S. workers. (It sounds a lot like the current H-1b program.)

Senator McCain, with a net worth of $30,000,000, believes that "no Americans would pick lettuce, even for $50 per hour," and that employers are hiring illegal workers because of the unavailability of U.S. workers. But the recent raids on Swift Swift & Co have proved McCain is wrong: The Greeley Tribune reports that "Almost 800 people have taken out applications for jobs at Swift & Co. in the past month, but those applicants increased dramatically last week." 

This New York Post (not Times) Editorial "Jobs Who Won't Do" sums it up nicely:

"Outgoing Mexican President Vicente Fox said it several times. President Bush has referred to "good, honorable, hardworking people here doing jobs Americans won't do" as he tried to drum up support for his "path to citizenship" immigration reform.

But is the conventional wisdom true?

[I]t is a canard - almost a libel on the industriousness of American workers - to blithely say that a liberal immigration policy has little impact on employment or wages because the jobs being taken are ones "'Americans won't do.'"

If Congress would direct the DOL to allow Americans to apply for the 65,000 jobs that they annually reserve exclusively for foreign workers under the H-1b program, they would find a similar flood of qualified applicants.

Phyllis Schlafly: Tech industry has ulterior motive regarding H-1B visas

Last week nationally syndicated columnist Phyllis Schlafly exposed the real intents of the H-1b program. Read her commentary here, and post your own comments. 

Bill Gates hints that demise of U.S. middle-class is inevitable

Phyllis Schlafly's commentary above includes this quote of Bill Gates:

"The United States has been spoiled by being a global leader for so long that there may be an adjustment. We've got to get used to the fact that our relative share of everything — our ability to exercise unilateral decision-making, military power, and economic power — won't be as out of line with our 5 percent share of world population as it is today."

Without explaining how he and many other CEOs can retain a standard of living thousands of times higher than average Americans can, Bill Gates says that the American Middle Class must expect adjustment to the standard of the rest of the world.

Thousands of U.S. programmers made Bill Gates the wealthiest men on earth. Now Microsoft recruits at only a handful of U.S. Universites (ignoring all 22 CSU campuses, for example), and instead spends millions lobbying for no H-1b quota to deny more Americans the chance to apply for the thousands of job openings reserved by the DOL as a way to "adjust" global inequities. Gates should be supporting "fair trade" instead of the race to the bottom that his “free trade” creates.

Bright Future Jobs Needs Your Support

Would you invest $100 to keep a $100,000 job open to Americans & Green Card holders?

If you're like most Americans, you know lots of people who'd stand in line to apply for a job paying $100,000. But under a little known hiring provision called the H1-B program, Congress earmarks 255,000* high-paying jobs every year for NON-citizens. That means American citizens and green card holders can be denied the opportunity to even apply for these high-paying jobs.

Can you contribute $100, $50, or $25 to fight the expansion of the H1-B hiring program?

So what's the real reason why corporations are sending teams of lobbyists to Capitol Hill to get even more jobs reserved? American citizens and green card holders demand fair salaries and the right to quit their job if they are treated unfairly, overworked, or abused. Workers imported under the H1-B hiring program are often paid much less and cyclically unemployed. Worse, when they find a new job they must be released by their former employer -- which gives their employers tremendous control over them.

America outlawed indentured servitude a long time ago – but the H1-B program is bringing it back. Join Bright Future Jobs today to fight to reform the H1-B program. We’re backing the “Defend the American Dream Act” which requires companies to advertise every job in the U.S. for 30 days before they can turn to other countries for employees. That’s fair to Americans, fair to companies, and fair to the H1-B employees.

As a small portion of your Christmas budget, please consider visiting www.brightfuturejobs.org right now and making a small contribution.

Programmers Guild Seeks Plaintiffs

In 2006 the Programmers Guild filed 300 complaints against employers who engaged in discriminatory hiring practices against U.S. workers - favoring H-1b workers.

In 2007 we would like to go after some larger employers - the Hewlett-Packards and TATAs - seeking larger settlements and hopefully effecting some changes in the H-1b program. But we need your help.

If you are willing to apply for positions that you are qualified for and provide us copies of the applications, we need your help. Send your info to justiceone@programmersguild.org.

Additionally, please mail your resume to the PERM job ads cited above, and send us a copy of your application.

Lighter Side

Recording of Lost Bag conversation with United Airlines offshored help-desk

YouTube: Rush Limbaugh tired of 'carrying water'; Franken does victory dance

The Zazona video "Mangoes that glow in the dark" contains a CNN clip of Bush stating the we should not try stem the tide of U.S. companies laying off Americans and relocating to the third world.