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March 7, 2007 9:56 AM PST
Gates calls for 'infinite' H-1Bs, better schools
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Bill Gates' syllabus for tech and education
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The foundation that Bill Gates built
June 15, 2006 -
H-1B limit reached for next year
June 2, 2006 -
Gates to students: Microsoft wants you
October 14, 2005 -
Gates: Get U.S. schools in order
May 2, 2005 -
Gates wants to scrap H-1B visa restrictions
April 27, 2005 -
Paying a price to be No. 1
October 29, 2004 -
Gates goes to college
March 1, 2004 -
Senator comments on Microsoft
October 16, 1998 -
Gates, enemies clash in Senate
March 3, 1998
In only his third appearance ever at a congressional hearing, Gates urged politicians here on the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee to pursue a three-pronged approach to boosting the nation's competitiveness: equipping American students, teachers and workers with necessary math and science skills; elevating research spending; and rewriting immigration laws to allow American companies to hire more foreigners.
The United States has much to be proud of in the technology realm, Gates told the politicians, but "when I reflect on the state of American competitiveness, my feeling of pride is mixed with deep anxiety."
The Microsoft chairman's message was hardly new. Gates and other high-tech leaders have been lamenting the state of the U.S. educational system and work force, particularly in the realm of math and science, for years. They argue that without dramatic policy changes, the United States will lose its competitive edge in the high-tech realm.
On education, Gates called for doubling the number of science, technology and math graduates in the United States by 2015. Doing that, he told the committee, requires more funding and a number of additional steps, including recruitment of 10,000 new science and math teachers in high schools and creation of 25,000 new undergraduate scholarships and 5,000 new graduate fellowships in the area each year.
On research, Gates implored politicians to dedicate more funding to federal research programs and to make the research and development tax credit permanent, an idea supported by President Bush. (Late last year, politicians approved a temporary extension of the much-beloved break.)
Movement is already under way in Congress to pass a law designed to spend more on federal programs in those areas. Earlier this week, a group of Senate leaders, including Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, introduced a bill, called the America Competes Act, that attempts to promote many of the educational and research goals advanced by Gates and other high-tech leaders.
Politicians indicated they're also willing to take cues from Gates as they craft new laws in the immigration area. In his testimony, Gates said there's only one way to solve what he deemed a "crisis"-level shortage of qualified scientific talent: "Open our doors to highly talented scientists and engineers who want to live, work and pay taxes here."
Gates repeated a now-familiar plea by high-tech companies for an overhaul of the H-1B visa system. Established in 1990, that program currently awards 65,000 visas to foreigners with at least a bachelor's degree in their area of specialty and allows them to remain employed in the United States for up to six years.
Visa shortfall
Gates said there's a "terrible shortfall" in the number of visas available to high-tech companies and cautioned that the nation will "find it infinitely more difficult to maintain its technological leadership if it shuts out the very people who are most able to help us compete."
"America has always done its best when we brought the best minds to our shores," Gates said, citing German-born Albert Einstein as an example.
Several proposals were on the table last year to boost the number of visas, but none of them was ultimately approved. Congress has already approved a cushion of up to 20,000 additional visas for foreigners who receive master's degrees or higher from American schools.
When asked by Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) how many visas Congress should approve, Gates repeated a suggestion he made years ago: that there should be an "infinite" number. "Even though it might not be realistic," he said, "I don't think there should be any limit."
Gregg said he "agreed 100 percent" that there shouldn't be a limit on the number of highly skilled people in the country, but he suggested Congress might not be able to do more than double the quota.
Support for bumping up the number of visas is hardly universal. Advocacy groups representing American computer programmers and scientists, such as the Programmers Guild, have fiercely resisted the idea. They argue that companies like Microsoft have not been making a good-faith effort to recruit qualified Americans and that the current structure of the H-1B program allows American companies to hire foreign workers at lower pay rates than American counterparts.
Committee politicians embraced virtually all of the suggestions made by their high-profile guest.
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Bill is no dummy and his intelligent comments stood in stark contrast to quite a few of the committee member's shallow attempts to push their own agendas.
At least a few of them seemed to "get it".
Here you get to spend $120K for tuition, $2400 for books, and they charge for ID cards and everything in between.
In the 60's the US had "National Defense Student Loans". Low interest (no interest while in school!) for those seeking higher education in technical fields.
If the US is again at high risk due to a shortage of technical talent, why not restore what worked!
Maybe not, that has nothing to due with corporate profits, only US security...
The free market will produce as many highly qualified engineers as is needed but Gates et. al. can't stop gaming the mechanism through which that would happen, wage increases. No one has done more to destroy the outlook of American engineering than this megalomaniac and now that he's destroyed it, he wants to kill it once and for all
through unlimited immigration.
Gates is a sick animal; a sick degenerate lying broken filthy amoral predator who won't stop preying on the American economy and on American democracy until it's nothing but a two-tiered system of haves and have-nots. Anything you can do to hurt Microsoft is good for America. Anything you can do to hurt Microsoft is moral and right and just.
since I've lived it. I'm one of the people lucky enough to have
received an H1B, only because of the then newly approved
Masters or Higher cap.
I've gone through a lot of stress and uncertainty for my visas
over the last few years and it's been the most stressfull part of
my life.
Technically, you're not allowed to make less than 95% of what an
american would make in your position (the other 5% pretty much
counts for the lawyer and visa costs, so it mounts to the exact
same spending for a company). Sometimes this obviously isn't
enforced and people get paid significantly less. Most of the time,
an employee won't say anything to the dept. of labour, since
doing so means losing your job (most likely) thus losing your
visa, but hey, many americans are underpaid due to similar
schemes of bad employers.
The most frustrating part was that it was so hard to obtain the
visa, even though I have a Masters. Especially since when I got
my greencard (I won one in the DV-lottery), the person at the
consulate that interviewed me told me I was exactly the type of
person (based on my degrees and employment history) that they
were looking for in the US. So why did they almost kick me out
for the H1 visa, right?
And my last statement, it's not about 'taking peoples jobs' and
all that stuff. Think about it, if you educate everybody really well
and then kick them out, 'here's a great education, now go use it
someplace else', what happens is that you export the
knowledge. You'll lose more business since all these well-
educated people will start company's, research, etc. abroad as
opposed to in the US. Yes, the US can't compete with
outsourcing, just as it couldn't compete with keeping production
in the US for many indusrties. However, even when many
industries moved to china, taiwan, etc., the US continued to
thrive, americans are richer now than they were 100 years ago.
The way the US can really get an edge, is by doing a lot of
research and development here, then do production abroad and
market things worldwide. Use the global economy. Those people
that now think, 'well, that was my job that's now abroad', they
should realize that they have to seize the opportunity to go into
this research and development, expanding this market.
It's what I plan to do, be it here, or if I get kicked out, someplace
else.....
Want to change things? Run for office. Change the rules by which the game is played. First order of business is- repeal of healthcare and pensions for all congresspigs- sorry, the nation's going broke and we need sacrifices. Oh, and by the way, it's now illegal for congresspigs to work as lobbyists- we have to clean up government and that's the first place to start.
Your congressman and your sentaor coudl give a sh*t about you and your life and your kid's lives and anything else, including this country, which they would like to see dissolved and replaced by one Corporation of the Americas. That's why they sit there and listen to GAtes and praise him b/c Gates wants exactly the same thing- they're corporatists, which is the belief that the corporation is ascendant over all other entities, including people, and what's good for corporations is Good and people are expendable and their lives mean nothing except to the degree that they serve the corporation. That is EXAZCTLY what your congresspig thinks and it's what Gates thinks and it's what all the "business" leaders think. Flooding this country with unlimited labor will OF COURSE destroy your life, of COURSE it will- how can you make a living when there are 1000 other people who are just as good as you- (for the narcissists out there, even if you think you're one in a million, given a billion people, they're are still 1000 other people just like you... do the math...) the answer is you can't . You'll starve in the streets. You have to understand that your congresspigs know this- and that's what they want. They want working Americans on their knees serving and begging at the corporate table. They want to watch us scratch each other's eyes out for some crumb of bread from their table. It's what "pro business' people have always wanted and now in congress there is nothing but "pro business" people. They see the world as rulers and ruled, and they think that that's the way IT SHOULD BE. That that's the natural and right order of things and anything that goes to equality or egalitarianism is "inefficient" and a waste. They really believe that some people are just "more fit" and deserve to have everything and by the way, that's them (or they wouldn't be there). That perfectly describes Gates, your congresspig and the corptocracy America is. If you wnat ot change it, you need to break your congreespig. Run for office. Start a party. Vote for Nader or whoever. Break the back of corporations once and for all or die in the streets of starvation like our vets.
IFthey do THAT to the vets, just imagine how worthless YOUR life is to them.
Stop their pensions. Stop their health care. Put them out of office and deny them government-influencing employment.
When we break their bodies, then we'll change their minds.
http://www.workpermit.com/news/2005_10_26/us/us_h1b_visa_holders_earn_less.htm
The laws aren't enforced, as H1B after H1B has testified, both here and online. They work for whatever they're given.
Even IF the laws were enforced, what happens when every year, the "average" wage for programming goes down by 5% of that year's average wage, which is EXACTLY what can happen, very legally, by flooding the market with H1Bs.... Do the math.
80k -->76k year 1
76k-->72k year 2
72k-->68.5 k year 3
68.5k-->65k year 4
65k-->61.5k year 5
and so on....
Yeah, H1Bs don't effect wages.... like hell they don't
So get your facts straight before you shoot off your mouth on a public forum.
in 2003 there were 230,000 unemployed engineers
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1308962,00.asp
whose jobs were being held by visa holders.
Your congress wants you starving so their corporate funders can buy another Gulf V jet and snort another line of coke. That's what your Congress thinks of working people- they're garbage to be used and raped and sent to war , then kicked out into the street when they come back while your they live a life of luxury on your dime. Unelect the pigs that are doing this to you. Take away their pension and healthcare.
Congress doesn't enforce the laws and neither does immigration. They don't give a crap about people who work.
"When you look at computer job titles by state, California has one of the biggest differentials between OES salaries and H-1B salaries. The average salary for a programmer in California is $73,960, according to the OES. The average salary paid to an H-1B visa worker for the same job is $53,387; a difference of $20,573."
from http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1308962,00.asp
You're denying reality. You're either an H1B or a shill or an idiot or all three.
I hire the best employee for the job, sometimes that is an American, sometimes it is not. Currently, my H1-B employees cost me MUCH more $$$ than my American employees. This is because I have to hire immigration lawyers, pay for misc expenses related to bringing them to America and more.
Wake up politicans and all you isolationists before it's too late for America!
If only.
America's a kleptocracy that will eat itself alive from the inside out. Just like the Texas, who wanted so much cheap labor cheap labor cheap labor... and now that cheap labor is turning the state Democratic. Goooolly, these people we pay dirt wages to, they're not Republicans! How could that have happened?
Swim in it, cheap labor lobby. You're like rats.. you'll just eat and sh*t and eat and sh*t in your own home until even you can't stand what you're living in. I'll be glad to see the big Blue flag of the Democratic party flying over Austin sometime soon now. You earned, greed junkies.
You're all the same. You don't have facts, you don't have an argument, you don't have principles... you just want YOUR bread buttered and will say anything and do anything and destroy everything and everyone to get it... that's all your about and that's all America is becoming... a kleptocracy eating itself alive one Republican dirtbag senator at a time.
- Free market crackheads on the loose
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by asdf
March 7, 2007 8:46 PM PST
- The market is not going to work if you undercut one side of the equation, which is why you can't find anyone (so you say). Gates and the rest destroyed the market for IT workers. Enrollment is dropping because people know that there's no gainful employment to be had between outsourcing and "insourcing" (H1B and L1 visa holders)
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See all 249 Comments >>http://builder.com.com/5100-6375_14-5306904.html
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002906837_computer03m.html
http://www.itfacts.biz/index.php?id=P1087
I know why I never hear a reply to the following assertion- if you allow unlimited labor, then wages will fall drastically. The reason I never hear a reply is because everyone KNOWS it's true.
All the conservative mannon-worshipping freaks who have been snorting claptrap about the "free-market" all their lives and who want unlimited cheap labor and who talk about America's "competitiveness" never mention the fact that their own theories postulate, indeed demand, that as the supply of labor goes up, wages go down. That's your freaking Adam Smith, money-worshipping greedheads.
So don't let's hear them say they don't want UNLIMITED immigration to drive down the cost of labor, because they do. What they want is as close to slave labor as they can get. What they want is to make other people work for them as cheaply as possible so they can have more money (and people stupid enough to waste their best eraning years working for them can have less).
That's what business is ABOUT.
It's about making money.
It's not about what's good for the country or the citizenry or any other freaking thing.
The real question IS NOT - why will business people, like crack addicts, say anything anything anything so they can have more money.
The real question IS NOT why will businesses, like a virus, destroy the country they depend on just so they can have another meal at a five star restaurant and retire to the some island nation where they can "win" the affections of some poverty stricken island girl young enough to be their granddaughter.. ah yes.. strolling hand in hand.. him with his fat, hairy gut hanging out of his Bermuda shorts and her trotting beside him in her high heels... true love at last...
No , those aren't the questions.
The questions are - why does Congress put so much stake in every lie every business tells? Like-
Why, they can't possibly stand to have the regulation .. it will ruin them!
Kyoto treaty...??? oh that will be the end of the world economy !!
Minimum wage increases... ??? you're going to torch millions of businesses!!!
And on and on.
So why does Congress even listen to them? We know what they want- they want their drug- and lots of it.
Other Democracies balance the cravings of the eternally greedy :
http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/26/magazines/fortune/colvin_fortune_0612/
with other considerations like the public good, their citizen's standard of living, the environment the next generation will inherit etc etc. (all things CEOs and corporations could give a sh*t about)
But not the USA. Oh no.. it's all about which dirt bag CEO can show which congresspig the best time of his life.. promise him lucrative after-congress contracts and whatever else these pigs want....
Business is psychotically interested in making money. They're an instrument with one note, and that note is exactly- everything in this world should be arranged so the people at the head of this business can be as rich as possible.
Who CARES WHAT they say? NO matter how tough you get with them, they'll still be crawling all over each other to try to make a buck. It's not like the impulse to make money is a frail flower that needs to be protected from the harsh environment caused by worrying about the citizens of the country.
Maybe you business doesn't need to exist. IF the only way you can survive is by flooding the country with unlimited labor and destroying the living standards of your fellow citizens, maybe you have a sick business model; sort of like the fast food restaurants.
It's called the market. IF your business goes belly up, you know what? Who cares? There's a million cockroaches behind you waiting to find a way to make it work in WHATEVER environment they find themselves in.