Jobs

Boy, do I not enjoy Lou Dobbs. But tonight he's discussing the "technical worker" visa holders program and the fact that despite the fact we have YET to return to the number of jobs we had before 9-11 (when many were already unemployed), the government gone nuts to approve more technical workers. These special visa program permits people to come into the country to take work when a particular industry says, "We can't find workers here to fill them so we need foreign workers".

Except the 75,000 jobs here - as it often is - are for positions for which there are many current residents who qualify for and need the job. But before you blame it all on the "damned foreigner" who steps in, this is about corporate America. See, a computer programmer born here and trained here in a specific development language might earn anywhere from $50-120K; that is, unless the companies get foreign workers who will come in, do the same work (and not demand vacations or other benefits) for $15,000-$25,000. And even though these foreign workers are skilled, they sometimes face conditions here that aren't much better than sweat shop labor in a white-collar world.

Tech companies in the '80s and '90s were already securing at least some foreign labors, and I've heard some awful stories about workers over here who are told they aren't covered by our labor laws, may have to put in twice the hours per week for that much smaller paycheck, and sometimes get crammed five-deep into a group home where the workers can be watched when they aren't on the job. Some of the folks who come here are all but in human bondage - taking these jobs to have work but seeing the contractors who bring them in take a huge chunk of their salaries.