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go-redgirl · 4 years

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Ivanka Trump Launching American Workforce Development Ad Campaign

White House Senior Adviser Ivanka Trump will launch a new ad campaign on Tuesday promoting the value of job training outside of the four-year university college system.

“There has never been a more critical time for Americans of all ages and backgrounds to be aware of the multiple pathways to career success and gain the vocational training and skills they need to fill jobs in a changing economy,” Ivanka Trump told reporters in a statement.

“While we celebrate and encourage American innovation, we recognize the responsibility of both the public and private sectors to invest in American workers and ensure that they are reconnected with good jobs and prepared for the future.”

Ivanka Trump will join IBM Executive Chairman Ginni Rometty and Apple CEO Tim Cook for a virtual roundtable on Tuesday to launch the “Find Something New” ad campaign together with the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board and the Ad Council.

Cook said it was vital to develop new skills in the American workforce.

“To invest in our future, we have to invest in people, in education, and the many paths to a well-paying job or starting a new business,” he wrote in a statement. “This initiative is about empowering people across the nation to discover a more hopeful future for themselves and their families.”

The website and campaign argue the need for workers to “pivot and retrain” their skills to connect to more modern jobs that pay a decent wage.

The promoted jobs include aerospace engineering and operations technician, broadcast and sound engineering technician, web developer, computer support specialist, and other trades like an electrician or a line installer and repairer. Other jobs promoted in the medical field include a registered nurse, a radiologic/MRI technician, and a contact tracer for diseases like coronavirus.

The funding for the ad campaign comes from corporations including Apple, AT&T Inc., CISCO Systems, Inc. Duke Energy Corporation, General Motors Company, The Home Depot, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, JP Morgan Chase & Co., Lockheed Martin, VISA, and Walmart. “The White House is proud to support the Ad Council through this campaign and will continue to champion all avenues that support American workers and families,” Ivanka Trump wrote.

READ MORE STORIES:

Education Politics Apple employment IBM Ivanka Trump Jobs Tim Cook

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INDIVIDUALS/COMMENTS/POSTS:

Jules • 6 hours ago

How about some of these corporations developing job training programs that targets our poor and minority groups here in the USA? Do for our country what the iPhone did for China? This would be a great conscious capitalism initiative given the current focus on BLM.

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barbara Jules • 6 hours ago

Good point. Need more vocational and technical training at the high school level. Not kids want to go to college. There are so many fields that could be trained in and then maybe continue that at a community college level or just do training programs/internships at certain manufacturing co. etc

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opto barbara • 3 hours ago

When I was working I sat on advisory panels to HS and a vocational college. As a leader of a bleeding technology engineering group there were some terrific family supporting income opportunities as support staff. I hosted both groups in our studios and made sure they were aware of how the software and supporting software they were already using could be married together to produce intelligent mapping, via links to data warehouses in a very simple way. They had no desire to focus on LONG term student success. It was business as usual with NO RESPONSIBILITY on their part. I might as well have been beating my head against a brick wall.

—— As long as we REFUSE to hold institutions accountable for student success evidenced by job placements we’ll ALWAYS be disappointed AND our society will be full of people wandering around aimlessly because they don’t merit good incomes.

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opto Jules • 3 hours ago

If we dry up the pool of foreign and illegal labor Americans will GLADLY train and work doing jobs that are PROPERLY remunerated.

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gslim Jules • 2 hours ago

I would be happy if they simply invested in their existing employees for continuing education and training. Instead, they simply replace with H1B.

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opto • 4 hours ago

The biggest problem with vocational technology, internships, and apprenticeships are the company leaders who don’t believe that ANYONE who doesn’t possess a 4-year degree is more than a fool with a wrench. They devalue those who are high level contributors because they lack 4-year credentials which is discrimination of the worst kind. Our country’s management structure ever since the mid 60’s has been this way and it only got worse as outsourcing to foreign countries and technology transfer via the internet became a reality. —— Restrict any foreign hires, foreign students, AND employ only Americans until we LITERALLY don’t have enough bodies to do what OUR stateside factories and businesses need,

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ppatibandla · 7 years

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My Quarter Life Crisis

Told in a Series of Saved Snapchats

In about four days from now, I’m going to turn 26, which made me think that this might be a great time to reflect on year 25 of my life.

And well, also because I’m going through a post new year slump. You know, the point of time when you realize that you’re not sticking to any of your resolutions, you’re still recovering from the holiday season and struggling to get back into the daily grind, blah blah blah.

Since my creativity and productivity are at an all-time low, I figured that maybe if I just write and reflect, it might help get the juices flowing in my brain again. And I obviously had to tell my story in the most stereotypically millennial way possible - illustrated by a series of Snapchats that I’d saved over the year! :D

Sooo, back to 25 - the milestone number, the axis of our twenties, the pinnacle of our youth *eye roll*- was it everything I’d hoped it would be? Absolutely freakin not! Why?

Well to start, I spent most of the first half of my 25th year, sick as a dog. I’m not sure what exactly happened but sometime in 2016, my immunity decided to go on a vacation.

Pretty sure I had brought it upon myself with my love for Indomie and Chunky Monkey (I’m sorry, mama!), but my body was suddenly no longer capable of fighting bad bugs on its own.

I was on antibiotics for various infections, eight different times in a span of fewer than six months. The amount and dosages I was prescribed caused absolute chaos in my body.

Two months into my 25th year, after a particularly high antibiotics course, my stomach was pretty upset (common antibiotic side effect). I waited for the effects to fade away, but they never did. One week in, three weeks in, one month in, two months in…...my stomach was still chronically upset. When I say “upset”, you’re probably visualizing explosive diarrhea but it wasn’t that. I could literally not eat any food without my stomach bloating, having immobilizing cramps and feeling extreme pressure and fullness.

Now, all of these symptoms might not seem like a big deal, but imagine if this is your constant state of being where you’re always aware of the discomfort in your stomach. Imagine if the only time you feel relief is when you wake up in the morning because your stomach is empty then. Imagine if anything you put in your mouth is accompanied by the anticipation and fear of feeling like crap for the rest of the day. This was my life for months.

The doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me, they said I probably had Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). Now those who are familiar with IBS will also know that it is basically a medical pseudonym for “we don’t know what the hell is wrong with your stomach”. I didn’t even know what the problem was in order to look for a solution! So to fix myself, I had to turn to the last place I wanted to for help - the internet.

When you look up a sickness on the internet, it can actually be really helpful or it can fill you with a crippling fear and conviction that you’re going to die. But I had no choice because my doctor had sent me home with this very wonderful, completely unhelpful advice:

“Well all your tests seem normal. Just wash your hands more and get more sleep so you don’t fall sick.”

*crickets*. This is what you went to med school for, lady? Thanks, much. >:-[

Also, everyone and their dog is a doctor on the internet. You have no clue who out there actually knows what they’re talking about and who is click-baiting you.

Norma here would have made a much better doctor!

After trudging through hundreds of websites, I began my experimentation with the different remedies that Dr. Internet prescribed, in the hopes that it would give me some relief.

I tried three-day juice cleanses (juice only diet) and water fasts. This is supposed to help reset your stomach by giving it a break from digesting food. I received temporary relief but the moment I started eating again, my discomfort would return.

I avoided foods known to cause intolerance for months like gluten, dairy, soy, eggs, caffeine etc.

On a side note, I never realized how difficult life is when you have to actively check for and avoid ingredients like gluten, which wipes out more than half the options available to consume. My utmost respect for people who have to do this on a regular basis!

But that wasn’t helpful either because my condition was seemingly random, not caused (though exacerbated) by any particular kind of food.

I tried more antibiotics (look up Xifaxan, you need to sell a kidney to even afford this medication) and a ton of herbal drugs. Seriously, while my peers were out spending their money on vacation and parties, I was spending all of mine on expensive herbs and probiotics which promised results, but sadly never delivered. The herbal stuff was especially scary because it’s not regulated by the FDA - I was gambling with trying to fix my problem at the cost of causing new problems for my body.

And of course, I also tried more obvious things like yoga, crying, praying and what not, all in a desperate attempt to fix myself. I was trying to go about my daily life and work with a semblance of normalcy but I felt anything but normal.

There I was at 25, prime of my youth, unable to consume food, taking fistfuls of pills every night and avoiding eating any actual food, just so I didn’t have to deal with the discomfort. I lost a bunch of weight and the stress took the biggest toll on me, making my condition even worse. As if all of this was not bad enough, various members of my immediate family were having serious health issues as well which was further upsetting me.

Finally, sick of my constant visits, the doctor recommended that I get an Upper Endoscopy - a procedure where they shove a camera down your throat to look inside your stomach to make sure you don’t have cancer or a tumor.

$800 and the awful experience of having a minor surgery all alone later, the doctor came back and told me the same thing - my tests were normal! He suggested getting some other tests done too and kept talking, but as I laid there in bed in my shitty hospital gown and listened to him talk, I totally had a dramatic, bollywoodesque moment. I felt the doctor’s voice fade into the background as I made up my mind that I was fine. I covered all my grounds, did all the tests, tired all the remedies which yielded no results. I decided right then and there that I was going to be fine, even if I wasn’t.

And I swear to God, it felt like a switch had flipped and my body started getting better overnight. That night for dinner, I said “screw this shit” and bought myself pizza - I was eating gluten and dairy after months! I went back to eating everything like normal and ignoring the familiar discomfort I felt in my stomach.

Hell yeah, I post food Snapchats! Judge away!

And just like that in the following weeks, I started feeling so much better. Am I absolutely cured today? Is this going to be a miracle recovery story? Sadly, nope.

I still have pretty bad days when I’m doubled over with pain and I still take many probiotics and supplements every night. IBS is a chronic condition with no cure, it can only be managed. I know that it could be worse and that I should be grateful - I am grateful. But IBS has definitely affected the quality of my life and I will probably never be able to fully go back to how I was before. But I have learned to live with it and it’s just another part of my life now.

These were just some of the herbs, probiotics, supplements, vitamins and prescription meds I took (and still take) over the past year :/

So there you go, adulthood hit me like a brick when I turned 25 by bringing on wonderful IBS and what’s more stereotypically a sign of age than GI issues? I brought this upon myself because of self-imposed stress. The moment I consciously stopped thinking about it, I gave my body the opportunity to restore itself, at least to a capacity where I was able to go about my daily life with relative ease.

None of the stress I was dealing with was particularly special, it’s stuff we all deal with - career, visa, money, family, friends, romance etc etc. But I let it get to me and it nearly destroyed the one thing that I actually can’t fix if broken - my health.

In addition to being chronic, IBS is also pretty common and affects many people in different forms. I am hoping that my overshare story is relatable to those who suffer from it and for those who don’t, please chill out and don’t mess yourself up over things that don’t really matter like I did. Pretty basic life lesson which we all know but conveniently ignore.

But year 25 was still pretty awesome - I made great new friends (and lost some) and got my H1B visa finally after 3.5 years. IBS definitely did not hold me back from going on many many many adventures.

youtube

A Snapchat montage of all my adventures from year 25.

While I’m super excited for 26, I do feel the twinge of regret because like most people my age, I’m nowhere near what I thought I would be by now. But a big part of growing up is realizing that the world sucks, it’s not fair, there’re always going to be men with bad hair and no intelligence (read Trump) trying to control you and there ain’t nothing you can do about it. It’s all about accepting that success is defined differently for everyone, that you can’t change everything and being okay with that. It took me a totally avoidable physical and mental crisis to realize that. Here’s me hoping that your journey to self actualization is smoother!

P.S Before you click through and start reading my older blog posts, please note that everything before this was from when I was younger, dumber and not nearly as woke.

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qoholiccom · 6 years

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Business Analyst

Job Title : Business Analyst Location : Pittsburgh, PA Duration : Contract Note: ?US Citizens and those authorized to work in the US are encouraged to apply. We are unable to sponsor H1b visa?s at this time" Job Description: 1. Create Agile user stories and acceptance documentation 2. Participates in all agile ceremonies. 3. BSA?s facilitation of pre-grooming and grooming sessions during agile ceremonies 4. Direct interaction with Line of Business partners internal and external and business groups. 5. Identifies and documents all system constraints, implications and consequences of various proposed system changes. 6. Provides recommendations for addressing and resolving business issues, for a specific business group. 7. Excellent written skills 8. Excellent communication skills 9. Ability to analyze these requirements to ensure the success of a system or software development project. Reference : Business Analyst jobs source http://www.qoholic.com/index.php?page=item&id=1075

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dailydoss · 7 years

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New Post has been published on Dailydoss

New Post has been published on http://www.dailydoss.com/congressional-board-of-trustees-votes-to-increase-minimum-salary-of-h1b-visa/

Congressional board of trustees votes to increase minimum salary of H1B visa

WASHINGTON: A key Congressional board of trustees has voted to pass an enactment that proposes to build the base compensation salary of H-1B visa holders from $60,0000 to $90,000 and forces various confinement on the work visa well known among IT experts from India.

The Protect and Grow American Jobs Act (HR 170) – presented by Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet Subcommittee Chairman Darrell Issa – was passed by the House Judiciary Committee amid a markup hearing today morning.

The bill now heads to the full House for important activity.

A comparative variant of the bill should be passed by the Senate before it can be sent to the White House for the US President Donald Trump to be marked into law.

Given the sharp contrasts that the Democratic and Republican administrators and the White House has on different parts of migration change including H-1B, the Congressional section of the bill and its turning into a law starting at now seems, by all accounts, to be a difficult request.

The bill disallows H-1B subordinate managers from supplanting American laborers with H-1B representatives, there are never again any special cases.

It additionally protracts the no-cutback strategy for H-1B subordinate bosses and their customer organizations for as long a H-1B representative works at the organization, which implies they can’t lay off proportionate US laborers.

For H-1B subordinate businesses to be exempted from the necessity that US laborers be enrolled to begin with, the Protect and Grow American Jobs Act significantly builds the pay prerequisites for H-1B specialists.

“They should pay the lower of $135,000- – which is listed for expansion – or the normal wage for the occupation in the zone of business, yet with a story of $90,000,” said a media discharge issued by the House Judiciary Committee.

NASSCOM president R Chandrashekhar in an announcement said that HR 170, as received by House Judiciary Committee, would hurt US organizations and force an unprecedented measure of bureaucratic formality on a program that contributes incredibly to US success.

“It likewise could upset the commercial center, undermine a huge number of US occupations, and smother US advancement by unreasonably and discretionarily focusing on a modest bunch of organizations who utilized only 16 for each penny of the new H-1B visas in FY 2016 while forcing no new necessities on most by far of organizations that utilization the visas to do the same identical things,” Chandrashekhar said.

Shielding the entry of the bill, Congressman Issa said legislators have a duty to guarantee that H-1B isn’t mishandled by those abusing it to outsource occupations and undercut American laborers.

“Tragically, the escape clauses left open in H-1B have enabled a little modest bunch of organizations to diversion the framework and group out businesses who require the constrained openings accessible to acquire the best and brightest people from around the globe,” he said.

“The Protect and Grow American Jobs Act is a sound judgment refresh that will go far to ensuring American laborers while helping organizations have better access to the ability they have to develop their organizations and make new employments here in America,” Issa said.

Congressman Bon Goodlatte, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the migration programs must put American specialists and country’s interests in the first place, and “sadly” that isn’t the situation at present with the H-1B visa program.

“The Protect and Grow American Jobs Act makes truly necessary changes to the H-1B program to reduce mishandle of the framework and ensure American specialists,” he said.

NASSCOM emphatically can’t help contradicting the US legislators.

“Shockingly, this enactment is being driven by myths, not reality. US government information demonstrate extremely huge deficiencies of high aptitude ability around the nation. The information demonstrate that the high ability visa programs are not a noteworthy reason for US joblessness, and IT experts chipping away at impermanent visas are not modest work,” said Chandrashekhar.

As indicated by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, over the US economy, around 20 million individuals for each year lose their occupations because of reasons not connected to enlisting H-1B workers.

Contrasted with that, the yearly number of H-1Bs conceded to the best 10 India-driven IT benefit organizations in 2016 was just a minor division of the US workforce, he said.

As indicated by an examination by the Pew Research Center, in light of monetary 2016 information from US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) information, for eight of the best 10 India-driven IT organizations, the normal pay for laborers on H-1B visas was higher than the middle compensation for US subjects in PC and scientific employments, Chandrashekhar contended.

“Bosses who utilize the H-1B program are profoundly managed and examined as of now, and NASSCOM part organizations maintain every pertinent law and directions.

“As indicated by the US government, the rate of consistence issues is low, and the mind dominant part of issues happen at American organizations with less than 50 workers,” he said.

Chandrashekhar said NASSCOM keeps on supporting endeavors to find any extortion or mishandle in the H-1B framework.

“Simply, our individuals don’t should be dealt with uniquely in contrast to their American or European partners,” he said.

#$60 #000 #0000 to $90 #H1B visa #H1B visa salary #Washington

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douchebagbrainwaves · 7 years

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WHY STARTUP INVESTING TRENDS

This was all the more sure of it. These include college admissions, hiring and firing people, and it's no wonder we had such a routine operation killed it? If so, could they actually get things done? But you can't get an H1B visa, the type usually issued to programmers. The situation now is like it was done faster than our competitors, and they'll get paid a lot. At a minimum, if you had to? What programmers in a hundred years. Us that have economic inequality as if it were merely a fan we were studying, without all the extra motivation that comes from making the company bigger? Even now, most people who wanted sites make their own. It always will when you're trying to make credentials harder to hack, we can get a product launched on a few investors after leaving fundraising mode. Patent trolls are just parasites.

But if you talk to today might in a couple years before starting your own company can be fairly content, even if you do, either a drive the process yourself, including supplying the paperwork, or b use them only to fill up a larger round led by someone else, in order to do well on tests. Beyond that, they want to talk about the value of our ideas, which turned out to be surprisingly easy to compete. But if they don't plan to start startups, because he was a startup, anything might happen. You know what a programming language go so far, at least in technology. Sam Altman, was 19 at the time. And increasing economic inequality means decreasing the risk people are willing to use a language for which he can easily hire programmers? But it's a mistake to feel bad about that.

Notes

You know what they built, they have zero ability to solve this problem by having a gentlemen's agreement with the melon seed model is more efficient: the resources they expend on the wrong target. That's very cheap, 1/50th of a placeholder than an actual label—like putting NMI on a seed investment in you, it increases your confidence in a traditional series A in the Neolithic period. August 2002. Sometimes founders know it's a departure from the VCs' point of saying that good paintings must have had a vacant space in their social lives that didn't already exist.

They hoped they were to work not just on the critical path that they violate current startup fashions. The Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, 1965. Some introductions to philosophy now take the hit. If he's bad at it he'll work very hard to say they bear no blame for opinions expressed.

Sparse Binary Polynomial Hash Message Filtering and The CRM114 Discriminator. 94.

Unfortunately, making physically nice books will only be willing to be so obsessed with being published. 5 seconds per day. For example, there is some kind of protection is one of them is a sufficiently identifiable style, you should be specialists in startups. The founders want the first phases of both consist mostly of unedifying schleps, but those don't scale is to be evidence of spam to nonspam was consistently very high, they mean that's how both publishers and audiences treat it.

They don't know. But what he means by long shots.

Few non-broken form, that I see a lot of people starting normal companies too. And yet there is some kind of intensity and dedication from programmers that they function as the cause. Eighteen months later Google paid 1. Though in fact they don't want to save money, the 2005 summer founders, and suddenly they need.

It derives from the 1940s or 50s instead of blacklist. 7 reports that in three months, a day feels like a core going critical. G. Good investors don't yet get what they're capable of.

Peter, Why Are We Getting a Divorce? One father told me they like the intrusive ads popular on pre-money valuation of the rest of the statistics they consider are useful, how much you get older or otherwise lose their energy, they have a better story for an investor seems very interested in you, they only like the United States, have several more meetings with you. This is a trailing indicator in any case, companies' market caps do eventually become a so-called lifestyle business, which means you're being gratuitously troublesome. They're an administrative convenience.

Don't be evil, they tend to be a founder, more people you can imagine what it would have a connection to one of their portfolio companies.

An earlier version of this essay, I should do is say you've reformed, and I had a day job is one of his peers will get funding, pretty much regardless of the fatal pinch where your idea is stone soup: you post a sign in a non-exclusive causes of failure would be. The markets seem to lose elections.

Us, the best startups, just that if you don't need its reassurance. This is the thesis of this process but that's the intellectually honest argument for not discriminating between various types of startups as they seem to be staying at a discount of 30% means when it converts you get a sudden rush of interest, you better be sure you do it to the extent to which the top startup law firms are Wilson Sonsini, Orrick, Fenwick West, Gunderson Dettmer, and on the group's accumulated knowledge.

So if it's the right mindset you will fail. My point is that there's more of the war on.

I've often had a demonstration of the magazine they'd accepted it for the same differentials exist to satisfy demand among fund managers for venture capital as an example of computer security, and thus no form nor anyone to call all our lies lies. Some of the most successful startups of all the other is laziness.

I became an employer, I can't tell you them.

Thanks to Ming-Hay Luk of the Berkeley CSUA, Ken Anderson, rew Mason, Matthias Felleisen, Beau Hartshorne, and Sam Altman for sharing their expertise on this topic.

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go-redgirl · 6 years

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Insourcing: American Lose Jobs to H-1B Visa Workers 07/26/2016 06:57 pm ET Updated Jul 27, 2017

Disney characters sing lofty messages about finding your true self, developing your special talent and becoming successful doing what you love. Their stories never say: study to become a highly-skilled Information Technician, work hard for years at Disney, train your foreign replacement, and don’t forget to leave your benefits at the door when it slaps you on the back.

Since October of 2014, Disney aggressively used “guest workers” for low-wage staffing to replace American workers. The H-1B, a 3-year work visa, allows foreigners to enter the country for specific jobs. Originally, H-1B visas were structured to bring in highly skilled, uniquely talented individuals if the American labor pool ran dry. But since 1990, employers have been abusing the visa program to reduce payroll and maximize profits.

Gary Beach, of the Wall Street Journal said the H-1B visa “was intended to complement, not replace American workers. It’s gotten out of hand.”

Americans are losing jobs to foreigners and training their replacements.

Disney laid off 850 American workers, some of whom were given 90 days to train their replacements with the threat of losing their severance pay if they didn’t stay to the end. “We all felt humiliated when the foreign workers sat next to us and watched everything that we did,” wrote one Disney employee going through the experience. The training sessions prove that the H-1B workers don’t hold special skills that American workers lack. “If our own pool of IT professionals were so incompetent, then why would companies like Disney have us train our replacements and spend months teaching them?” wrote the displaced worker.

So many staff spoke Hindi during their training period that a departing employee remarked, “I really felt like a foreigner in that building.”

Disney calls the practice “knowledge transfer” whereby IT professionals chart the step-by-step processes of the job, audiotaping conversations and recording their computer screens. “We were then astonished as everything that we did on our job was documented and read right back to us for further critiquing.” By the end of the 90 days, new workers had an instruction manual to which they could refer after the Americans left.

Employers Have Reasons to Abuse Foreign Guest Visas

Carly Fiorina is legend for replacing American workers with low wage visa workers at Hewlett-Packard. Employers aren’t required to pay minimum wages, don’t have to offer benefits, and social security taxes are waived for five years, reducing costs by 17 to 21.5% of their total salaries, saving employers billions of dollars annually. High tech giants Google, Xerox, and Facebook have taken advantage of H-1B workers.

Corporations such as Toys ‘R Us, Xerox, Molina Medical, Pfizer, and Microsoft used H-1B “guest” workers to reduce their payroll costs. Utility company Southern California Edison laid off 500 employees, warning SCE workers to train their replacements in 90 days or they wouldn’t receive severance.

The Numbers of Replaced American Workers are Staggering

In 2015, the number of visas issued to all immigrants crossing the borders legally was almost 11 million, according to statistics collected at Foreign Service Posts.

Supposedly, the government has set a cap of 85,000 new H-1B’s each year for the entire country. But many workers come in using other types of visas such as:

OPT: Optional Practical Training F-1: student B-1: business J-1: exchange visitor CPT: (Curricular Practical Training) interns who are recruited later Q: Special Disney-invented visa for workers who are “authentic to the Epcot experience”

Workers then switch to an H-1B. Switches are not recorded as part of the 85,000 cap and there are no checks and balances in place to reign in visa clearances.

The Department of State, who issues worker visas, reports figures for all 16 different types of work-eligible visas, showing that 70 million have been issued since 2007.

When the Government Accountability Office studied the H-1B visa program in 2011, they reported reasons why the numbers of guest workers are impossible to track:

The total number of H-1B workers in the U.S. at any one time—and information about the length of their stay—is unknown, because (1) data systems among the various agencies that process such individuals are not linked so individuals cannot be readily tracked, and (2) H-1B workers are not assigned a unique identifier that would allow for tracking them over time—particularly if and when their visa status changes.

The AFL-CIO reported in 2009 that as many as 25% of imported workers have fraudulent visas. Today, this translates to as many as 17.5 million foreign employees gaming the system.

9-11 Terrorists Arrived Here With Worker Visas

Scariest of all, the visa worker program is poorly administered. Homeland Security doesn’t screen applicants at the airport, so visa holders gain entry at airports, making a wall at the border obsolete.

“The main, legitimate criticism right now — which is one we would level as well — is that the accountability mechanisms are not fully integrated and not seamless,” says Dean Garfield, President and CEO of the Information Technology Industry Council.

When the Government Accountability Office reviewed the H-1B program in 2011, they wrote “a recent Department of Homeland Security study reported that 21 percent of the H-1B petitions they examined involved fraud or technical violations.”

Potential Terrorists in Key Positions

In March, 2006, David Huber, a worker who was replaced at ComEd in Chicago, testified in front of the Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security, “Two of the three individuals who replaced me were from China. As part of my job, I had access to all the data communication switches that control the electrical grid for the Chicago area. Anyone with this access could shut down the entire telecom operations for the power company and possibly the power grid itself. It is very likely that my replacements will return to China, taking with them detailed knowledge about the inner workings of our electrical grid system. After the recent controversy over our ports, I can’t believe that Congress thinks this is a good idea.” Corporations with Record Profits Cut American Jobs

Disney posted $7.5 billion in profit in fiscal year 2014, a month after major layoffs in October 2014. The company continued to lay more Americans off until 850 lost their jobs from Orlando, Florida to Anaheim, California.

Is this replacement of American workers for unskilled foreign workers a matter of greed? Or is it simply a global shift in workers in a flattened world?

Ron Hira, Associate Professor of Public Policy at Howard University and author of Outsourcing America: What’s Behind our National Crisis and How We Can Reclaim American Jobs, says it’s shifting corporate goals. The stakeholders of companies used to include workers, the community, and the nation. Now the focus is on shareholder value and increasing profits. “Much of the compensation of 46 million dollars that Bob Iger [CEO of Disney] received is from stock,” Hira said, explaining how management benefits from stock performance. “At some point, you have to ask the question, when are these CEOs and the shareholders going to be satiated? When are they going to share some of those profits and prosperity with the workers who have created that value? I think the answer is: never.”

Subscribe to the Politics email.How will Trump's administration impact you?

“Staffing” Companies Find Cheap Labor

For CEO’s, cheap labor is just a phone call away. They call themselves consulting, staffing, or employment companies. But those who are fighting against the industry call them “body shops.” International (HCL Global Systems, Tata Consultancy Services, Satyam, Infosys, Accenture, Cognizant) and domestic (IBM) outfits facilitate the process of replacing Americans with foreign workers. Six of the largest firms are based in India. An attorney at VisaPro will teach human resource personnel how to use H-1B visas to cut costs with foreign nationals.

Cognizant Technology Solutions, Inc. boldly states, “We have an active recruitment program in India” in their informational materials. Some staffing companies entice foreign nationals with high figures, but when they arrive, they make as little as $25,000 per year. Once in America where the cost of living is comparably expensive, living conditions are poor.

Complaints are rarely filed against the staffing companies, since the workers often fear reprisals and removal from the country. Investigations into wrongdoings take years, and require an indictment by a grand jury before the Department of Justice will confirm or deny allegations.

How did abuse of the guest worker program start?

Follow the Money Around Washington

Before 1990, the visa program made it difficult for employers to hire guest workers. They had to explain why they needed a candidate with specialized skills, what training the specialist had that Americans don’t have, and they screened the applicant.

Then Microsoft went to Washington. Ostensibly to hide the trail of money, an organization named Business Software Alliance (BSA) acted as cover while lobbyists greased wheels in Congress. Microsoft spent more than $20 million during the critical years 1998-2000 to tweak H-1B legislation, such as giving students on an F-1 visa the ability to work.

High tech firms and the staffing agencies who help job seekers come to the U.S. are still getting around the 85,000 workers-per-year cap through a “H1B cap-exempt” workaround. Companies lobby for loosened visa legislation, then abuse the loopholes they created.

In Washington, two laws created exemptions from the cap (then set at 65,000 H-1B visas per year). The first was disingenuously titled “The American Competitiveness in the Twenty-First Century Act of 2000”. One of the biggest funders of visa-friendly bills is the Information Technology Industry Council. Their member companies, some of the biggest names in the industry, hire, recruit, train, place, and/or subcontract foreigners. The following are just a snapshot of some of the bills making it easier to replace Americans with foreign nationals:

S.2045 The American Competitiveness in the 21st Century Act of 2000. Allowed more non-immigrant visas (H-1B’s) for years 1999 through 2003, and made those who were already granted visas exempt from being counted toward the cap.

HR. 4227 Amended the Immigration and Nationality Act to eliminate the cap on H-1B visas for 2000.

HR. 4444 (1986) Repeals the visa application fingerprint requirement and certain related provisions. Repeals existing requirements that immigrant visa applicants submit supporting documentation in duplicate and that consular officers retain duplicates of all issued immigrant visas.

In the works:

HR. 2758 Allows non-agricultural immigrants a permanent exception to the annual limit.

These changes have already hurt Americans. “Statutory changes made to the H-1B program have, in combination and in effect, increased the pool of H-1B workers beyond the cap and lowered the bar for eligibility,” reported the Government Accountability Office in a 2011 study of the guest worker program.

Presidential Candidates Need to Weigh In

Unless Hillary Clinton states otherwise, she supports importing more foreign workers to replace and fire competent U.S. workers. In 2011, as Secretary of State, she assisted the U.S. Embassy in India by authorizing them to break federal law and accept every visa in excess of 60,000 to replace American workers. According to James Otto, labor rights attorney, Clinton also spent more than 40 million taxpayer dollars to educate foreigners and import them.

Developer Donald Trump hires illegal aliens for his construction jobs. Trump hired 200 undocumented Polish workers to demolish the building that made way for Trump Tower in Manhattan. According a Reuters review of U.S. Department of Labor statistics, Trump sought to hire 1,100 foreign workers on the visa program. Much as he maligns Mexicans, if he wants cheap labor, he may use undocumented workers to build his wall.

What can be done to improve the worker visa program?

Hira said, “You have to have policies in place that give workers at least a fair shake. When you’re bringing in guest workers, you’re really creating unfair intervention in the labor market, unfair competition for those workers.” He suggests raising the wage floor for guest workers, so that employers have to pay a premium for their specialized skills, following the spirit of the guest worker visa program.

Otto also suggests the law automatically recognize that all guest workers are employees of the U.S. corporation who hires them in addition to the staffing company. This creates a paper trail of how many foreign born workers are used by each corporation. A statute created by the state or federal government would thus give authorities the ability to track numbers. In addition, every H-1B applicant should be required to provide certified college transcripts that must then be verified by their agency or employer.

Lawsuits

In the meantime, 18 former Disney employees filed a lawsuit, hoping to shed light on the problem of insourcing, a topic that isn’t getting much press.

“The F-1, foreign student, used to be a non-working visa,” says Otto, the attorney representing replaced Disney and Molina Healthcare workers in Southern California, “but because of change of the rules, the employer doesn’t have to pay them minimum wage, and the foreign student doesn’t have to pay any taxes.” After 6 months as an F-1, the student can take a job in the U.S. and then change immigration status to an H-1B. “A foreign worker can take a non-specialty job, displacing one American worker, and then after 12 months, and without any experience, change status before he graduates to an H-1B, where he displaces yet a second American worker who is highly skilled.”

“There is no doubt that the imported guest workers are not the best or the brightest,” said Otto. “I’d like to ask (Presidential candidate) Trump, what difference will it make to build a wall when so-called American companies are hiring illegals by the truckload through the H-1B workaround?” Foreign Workers Left Stranded

If a company is done with an employee, guest workers often find themselves stranded in the U.S. without a job. After five years as an H-1B, employers are required to start paying social security, so the worker becomes less attractive. When the job is over, so is the visa, making them into illegals. Their staffing company may hold their paperwork hostage, forcing them to pay thousands of dollars to seek legitimacy.

Meanwhile, American IT workers and others are left stranded without jobs.

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