-America's Congress and Tech Lobby Sell Out the Middle Class
WE DON'T NEED ANY MORE BURNT FRIES**
Memo to Nancy Pelosi: Take off that babushka and get your ass back to the U.S. and start cleaning up the wholesale sell out of our American professional jobs. You can start right now with ditching those tech lobby (TechNet) sycophants and by whipping all those good old Democratic Senators into shape on tossing out these bills to put our educated tech professionals out of work and drive down wages. You know the ones:
1. STRIVE Act -- Gutierrez (D-IL) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ)
2. H.R.1758 -- David Wu (D-OR)
3. SKIL Bill -- Cornyn (R-TX)
4. Comprehensive Immigration Reform by McCain -- (R-AZ) and Kennedy (D-MA
5. S.1092 -- Hagel (R-NE)
There is no shortage of educated American technology professionals, but corporate America has used this tiresome refrain to cover its thirst for their shortage of cheap, foreign workers with dubious experience and education. Who in Congress is willing to say no to these career lobbyists and "tech elite" who can't get enough burnt fries?** See
Senator Chuck Hagel and the tech lobby, TechNet, are winning the war on America's educated middle class with the help of many Democratic Congressmen and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and other 'Friends' of Silicon Valley's portfolio tech stock inner-circle.
Like global warming, the H1B cheap foreign labor import push is a critical problem that can only be corrected by responsive governments to protect its citizens
Burnt Fries?Who cares about product quality, when executives and investors can reap personal profits by replacing educated Americans with plenty of cheap, foreign workers by importing H1B's or outsourcing jobs
NPR's Morning Edition, April 30, 2007 · Why are so many engineering jobs being sent overseas and why are so many smart, educated Americans unemployed or underemployed? Leaders of tech companies say the United States does not produce enough engineers. But a Duke University study says the real issueis cheap labor. Click below to listen to Vivek Wadhwa discuss his study's findings
and blamed this downword spiral in quality on "the system." So why are we rewarding "the system" of journalists who fail to report on the backdoor deals between the tech lobby (TechNet) and the Beltway that are selling out America's educated middle class? What rewards do these journalists reap to continue to withhold frontpage headlines that reveal the truth about this economic disaster for tens of millions of our educated professionals? When will we hold our elected officials accountable over this smooch-fest between greedy executives and politicians?
MSM Journalists need to start framing this issue with headlines such as:
-What are those 17,000 laid off Citigroup employees up to now?
-Why are the Democrats handing the populist message over to Republican Lou Dobbs?
-WTF is Nancy Pelosi doing by selling out educated American computer scientists by schmoozing with the tech lobby?
-Why do Democrats hate unions and embrace "so called" Free Trade?
It seems that fast-food restaurants are experimenting with local job outsourcing as The Charlotte Observer offers this report.
"Companies began trying remote ordering in 2005. As with outsourcing in other industries, technological advances -- namely high-speed Internet -- made it possible. When customers pull up to the menu, a call center worker takes the order on a computer. The order pops up on a screen inside the restaurant.”
Despite the number of technology companies developing order taker outsourcing solutions, the use of them so far is not widespread. Others have tried centralized order-takers within the st="on"United States, and it is observed that one potential reason for not implementing these outsourced solutions may be “they've found it difficult to prove it saves money.” The article notes other companies who have experimented with limited trials including the parent company of Hardee's. Representatives of Burger King and Taco Bell said they have not tried it and don't plan to at this point. Pizza call center solutions are particularly hot right now, according to this article about a leading provider of call center and online restaurant ordering services that has signed a contract with a New York style pizza chain in st="on"Colorado. Given the nation's high unemployment, if these order taking outsourced solutions have possibly failed to prove cost savings, why the push to take away these jobs from local citizens and hand them to “dedicated restaurant ordering call center call centers”, many which then contract the jobs out to cheaper workers as far away as India? The article also cites a local st="on"Charlotte mother's fast-food order outsourcing experience, as she describes the practice as “an awful lot of trouble” and wonders what the rationale for outsourcing these jobs is all about. She relays her outsourced order taking experience here:
"I had noticed it [several months ago], but I just thought the person taking the order was somewhere else in the store where we couldn't see them," said Elizabeth Banks, a Charlotte teacher and mother of three who takes her 15-year-old daughter and her daughter's friends to Jack in the Box for Oreo milkshakes most Friday afternoons. "It never occurred to me they might be out of the country."
At one point the girls asked the order-taker, "Where are you?" There was a pause, Banks recalled. Then, the person on the other end said, "st="on"Texas."
"I really don't think that's where they were," Banks said.
If outsourcing fast food order taking jobs to people in other countries proves to be unsatisfactory and unprofitable, will common sense thinking prevail? During this country’s economic downturn, employing our citizens first is key to rebuilding our local economies. Whether fast food chains seek to outsource order taking or not is a secondary question, but the imperative, first question should be “if so, why not staff U.S.call centers with U.S.citizens locally instead of sending those jobs to st="on"Indiaor hiring H-1b employees to replace them?”Quality and trusted customer service matters. As this Customer Management Insight article explains, whether you’re referring to the work of individuals or communities, call centers are catching on. The article notes that the big trend that John Boyd, president of site selection consultancy Boyd & Company (Princeton, NJ) observes is a “a return to quality.” The author explains:
“You’ve got to create value beyond the operational savings,” he says. That value comes from productivity, which entails a lot more than reducing labor costs."
"What we all need to be about now is honesty and forthrightness. And the truth is, our political, business and media elites have abandoned the cornerstone of this great nation: equality of rights, equality of economic opportunity and equality of educational opportunity." -Lou Dobbs
Listen up Larry Ellison. And John Doerr, Vinod Khosla and T.J. Rogers. Oh - did I neglect to mention the granddaddy of them all, Bill Gates? Throw in the phantom, hyper-sycophant CEO of Nozpix.com and anyone else I left out in this circle jerk of Silicon Valley'scorporate values driven "establishment" friends of outsourcing, hell-bent on ridding the country of educated white collar Americans. It is feared that theCornyn-Shadegg "SKIL BILL" (co-authored by George Allen) which is a trojan horse crafted to unemploy American high technology professionals will be approved in the lame duck sessions.
Some scoundrels in Washington are plotting to dump foreign workers on the American tech labor market by flooding the labor pool with underpaid, dubiously "skilled" workers from India to take away our professional jobs and further drive down wages.
The "Skill Bill", if passed, would result inAmerican professionals destroyed by theCongressthat is supposed to be protecting their constitutional liberty interest in working in their chosen profession. The "Skil Bill" and the outsourcing machine behind it (courtesyTechNet) ensures that THERE IS NO REQUIREMENT TO GIVE PREFERENCE TO EDUCATED, AMERICAN WHITE COLLAR PROFESSIONALS.
U.S. Rep.Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ-8), last year announced introduction of H.R. 4378, the “Defend the American Dream Act of 2005" to address the flawed H-1B visa program.
Pascrell's reform act addresses the key problem with corporate America's lust for cheap foreign workers.
“In report after report, government investigators have found serious weaknesses and failings in the H-1B program,” IEEE-USA President Gerard A. Alphonse said. The program is used to "fill any job at almost any wage, and the vast majority of employers are not required to recruit American workers first." The IEEE-USA has applauded Rep. Pascrell for drafting a bill that seeks to reform the number one problem of the outsourcing movement: destroying the middle class. See
Here's the Memo to Larry Ellison et al: Like thefast food junkies your companies have become, your hiring binges of plenty of cheap hardly skilled foreign workers bring comfort to you because there are so many of them and they cost so little. Like a fast food container brimming full ofovercooked french fries, you prefer them to a smaller portion of high quality restaurant fries that cost more becauase you feel you are getting such a good deal when you get more of them... Instead, you are making your companies unhealthy with poor quality products and choking the middle class at the same time. Ready to clean up your corporate hiring practices diet and do something good for the heart of your companies and America yet?
There is a simple solution to this manufactued problem by Corporate America: HIRE AMERICANS FIRST, and forget about your bogus claims that educated Americans with advanced degrees from leading U.S. Universities are "unskilled." You unpatriotic traitors. Get your overpaid HR busybodies to form a line that places Americans in the front and THEN determine how many positions are actually left to be filled. You may have less fries, but the ones you will have will taste sooo good and more than satiate your quality production needs. Stop ordering the burnt fries just because you get more of them.
Senators John McCain and Ted Kennedy, respectively
Memo to Bill Gates et al: Like the fast food junkies your companies have become, your hiring binges of plenty of cheap, dubiously skilled foreign workers bring comfort to you because there are so many of them and they cost so little! Like a fast food container brimming full of cheap, overcooked french fries, you prefer them to a smaller portion of high quality restaurant fries that cost more because you feel you are getting such a good deal when you get more of them... Instead, you are making your companies unhealthy with poor quality products and choking the middle class at the same time. Ready to clean up your corporate hiring practices diet and do something good for the heart of your companies and America yet?
Bill Gates went through the motions today before the Senate, "asking" for an unlimited number of H1B visas in Washington DC today in a closed door session. Ted Kennedy, chair of the committee, apparently wasn't interested in hearing from anyone else so nobody else was invited besides Gates and his senatorial groupies. Sen. Orrin Hatch wasted no time getting on his knees
when addressing Gates:
"You've done so much with your wealth that is so good for mankind that I don't think anyone should fail to recognize that," Hatch said, adding: "I usually don't lavish praise on anyone, but I think you deserve it."
Gates suggested that there should be an "infinite" number of H-1B visas. As the last commentary included in this newsletter points out, while Bill Gates does everything possible to crush Microsoft's competition he thinks American workers should be forced to "compete" with cheap labor from abroad. 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." Sen. Gregg wasn't willing to grant Gates a blank check, but what he put on the table must have brought joy to every greedy fiber in Bill Gates' body. Senator Judd Gregg, a New Hampshire Republican, said he agreed that Congress needed to raise the H-1B cap. He asked if an annual cap of 300,000 would be appropriate. "It'd be a fantastic improvement," Gates said. "My basic view is we should welcome as many of 'these people' as we can get."
Some Senators visibly wanted to avoid blaming H-1B for job losses.SherrodBrown, an Ohio Democrat, andSenator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent,blamed outsourcing for the loss of jobs. They didn't even mention H-1B role in the job destruction! How convenient! Pay close attention to the way Brown dodges the issue: "Time and time again, local businesses told me that they just could not find the engineers or the computer scientists they needed to run their businesses," he said. "At the same time, skilled workers in my state are watching their jobs move overseas, not because foreign workers are more qualified, but because U.S. companies can get away with paying poverty wages to workers in other countries."
Bill Gates went through the motions today before the Senate, "asking" for an unlimited number of H1B visas in Washington DC today in a closed door session. Ted Kennedy, chair of the committee, apparently wasn't interested in hearing from anyone else so nobody else was invited besides Gates and his senatorial groupies. Sen. Orrin Hatch wasted no time getting on his knees when addressing Gates:
"You've done so much with your wealth that is so good for mankind that I don't think anyone should fail to recognize that," Hatch said, adding: "I usually don't lavish praise on anyone, but I think you deserve it."
Gates suggested that there should be an "infinite" number of H-1B visas. As the last commentary included in this newsletter points out, while Bill Gates does everything possible to crush Microsoft's competition he thinks American workers should be forced to "compete" with cheap labor from abroad. 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." Sen. Gregg wasn't willing to grant Gates a blank check, but what he put on the table must have brought joy to every greedy fiber in Bill Gates' body. Senator Judd Gregg, a New Hampshire Republican, said he agreed that Congress needed to raise the H-1B cap. He asked if an annual cap of 300,000 would be appropriate. "It'd be a fantastic improvement," Gates said. "My basic view is we should welcome as many of 'these people' as we can get." Some Senators visibly wanted to avoid blaming H-1B for job losses.
Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, and Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, blamed outsourcing for the loss of jobs. They didn't even mention H-1B role in the job destruction! How convenient! Pay close attention to the way Brown dodges the issue: "Time and time again, local businesses told me that they just could not find the engineers or the computer scientists they needed to run their businesses," he said. "At the same time, skilled workers in my state are watching their jobs move overseas, not because foreign workers are more qualified, but because U.S. companies can get away with paying poverty wages to workers in other countries."
(AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson reaches to grabburnt fries)
Hat tip to Joel David @ blog.newsok.com for offering this ingenious solution to AT&T's alleged and mythical skilled worker shortage in his post “LET’S ALL HELP RANDY"
Let's All Help Randy
-by Joel David
Reuters reported yesterday Oklahoma City born AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson as saying he just can’t seem to find skilled workers in the United States to do jobs the company has exported to India. “We’re having trouble finding the numbers that we need with the skills that are required to do these jobs,” said Randy. The corporate goal was to have 5000 jobs returned to the United States from India. To date only 1400 have been returned. That means AT&T only needs 3600 skilled people and the problem is solved. This is just the opportunity I need to advance within the company!
Some would see Randy’s comments as offensive because in a not so subtle way he’s not only stating the American workforce is subpar, but he’s also justifying sending jobs to another country over giving those jobs to people he’s laid off. I don’t see it that way because just like Randy I see opportunity where others see something abhorrent. Since Randy is having such a tough time finding work I figure I’d help him, and you, the unskilled American worker. If you, or someone like you, needs a job, go ahead and e-mail your resume to randall.stephenson@att.com. If you don’t have a computer go ahead and mail your information to
CEO Randall Stephensonc/o AT&T Corporate Headquarters
32 Avenue of the AmericansNew York, N.Y. 10013-2412
The company is now based in San Antonio but I’m pretty sure they forwarded their mail. All we need is 3600 people to apply as skilled workers and we’re doing the company a great service. Tell your friends who are looking for a job.I’m just trying to help.
- Joel Also, I didn’t get his e-mail address from my office. I found it on Yahoo! Calm down corporate security.
1. To fill beyond capacity, especially with food; satiate.
2. To flood (a market) with an excess of goods so that supply exceeds demand.
v.intr.
To eat or indulge in something excessively.
n.
An oversupply.
glut [glÊŒt]
n
1. an excessive amount, as in the production of a crop, often leading to a fall in price
2. the act of glutting or state of being glutted
vbgluts, glutting, glutted(tr)
1. to feed or supply beyond capacity
2. (Business / Commerce) to supply (a market) with a commodity in excess of the demand for it
3. to cram full or choke up to glut a passage
Imagine that you put one end of a hose in your mouth and kept threading it through until it came out of your butt. That's more or less what the alimentary canal is. You put food in one end of the tube and it's processed during its journey to the other end of the tube, where the waste material comes out. Now, let's abuse the process and imagine it gets CRAMMED with more food than it can accommodate leading to the eventual gushing and puking and exploding of its excess. Still with me?
With the unprecedented rise of U.S. unemployment and white collar jobs being outsourced/insourced to Indian nationals, outsourcing and the H-1B visa program originally intended to fill skilled job openings when no American professionals can be found should have gone the way of the dinosaur. Oh – but that might force a few sociopathic corporate managers and CEOs to reform the current corporate culture of greed and neo-feudal overlording and begin rebuilding local civility and economic sustainability into our own communities. Can't have that! Charity, after all, begins in the man-crush bedroom boardroom.
In his excellent new CIS report entitled More Adventures for the H-1B Program, David North cites a study that quotes Michael Teitelbaum, vice president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (which funds basic scientific, economic and civic research) who has confirmed the great labor shortage lie. Teitelbaum said:
“Over the past few years that there are “substantially more scientists and engineers graduating from U.S. universities than can find attractive jobs.”
The socioeconomically unsustainable, wholesale sell-out of local U.S. jobs and plummeting wages doesn't stop with STEM jobs and now includes journalism, marketing, healthcare, and the legal professions. With a glut of educated unemployed and underemployed U.S. citizens, why hasn't our government scrapped the legalized visa practice designed for corporations to displace American workers? Although there are laws on the books in place to investigate visa abuses, North has found that the U.S. Labor Department has now decided to do something about them by “mounting a series of 25,000 investigations of the H-1B operation.”
So why the sudden uptick in this massive number of investigations to monitor H-1B abuses?
North notes esteemed UC Davis computer science Professor Norm Matloff's summary of the H-1B program's intent who “has reminded us from time to time, that the program is designed quite specifically to allow employers to hire high-tech talent at below-market rates.” As Matloff puts it:
“The law ITSELF is the problem, not lax enforcement. If the law were to allow drivers to go 80 mph in a residential neighborhood, you wouldn't blame the police for lax enforcement, would you? The law itself would be the problem, not the police.”
Indeed, the (gluttonous) H-1B law itself is the problem. Rather than budget millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to investigate H-1B visa fraud, why not just scrap the whole socioeconomically unsustainable practice of importing a glut of workers? The H-1B visa program, has, like the BP Oil disaster, over-saturated our fragile and scarce supply of jobs like giant plumes of oil mixed with water in the depths of the finite gulf.
A closer look into North's investigation reveals “a bit of information on the funding of these H-1B investigations” which he uncovered this past week into a Congressional Research Service report which “managed to escape Capitol Hill secrecy.” North explains:
“The most interesting point to me, perhaps well known to others, was that most of the congressional funds set aside for the investigation of fraud in the H-1B program have been diverted by the Executive Branch to other programs. There are $500 and $150 fees, per petition, that are supposed to be going into the "Fraud Prevention and Detection Fee Accounts" and DoL's nominal share of those moneys has been $31 million a year in recent years.
"However," the report continues, "DOL reportedly used only $6.7 million in FY 2007, $5.5 million in FY2008 and an estimated $5.5 million in FY2009 for H-1B, H-2B [farmworker] and L visa [international exchange of managers] fraud investigation activities." (See pp. 21-22 of the Wasem document.) There was no discussion of what happened to the non-DoL share of these funds, which apparently was about $62 million a year.
The Obama Administration is estimated to be using $12.5 million of these funds for fraud detection in FY2010.”
Fox guarding Hen House? While a “moratorium on such visas might be prudent” and even an understatement, North reveals that the budget for this massive number of H-1B investigations may have an economic imperative/profitability motive. He concludes that getting the Congress to fund fraud investigations in non-immigrant programs won't do much good if the Executive Branch (hey, Obama?) diverts most of the monies to other activities. The open question is, where/to whom are they being diverted to?
But the gluttonous parallels between the socioeconomically unsustainable and destructive H-1B visa program /outsourcing disaster and the BP Oil disaster are striking. Below, insert “H1-B” for the BP Oil gushing disaster and, well, you get the picture about the whole unsustainable practice of human labor arbitrage and exploitation that has to be stopped.
In the decisive words of Janet Napolitano, it's time to also extend her oil clean up vision for America to permanently plug this gushing well of cheap imported labor siphoning U.S. jobs and to restore local labor civility to U.S. citizens:
“The right thing to do is permanently plug this well, and that’s what we will do,” Mr. Suttles said.“We want to slowly optimize it to try to capture as much of the oil and gas as we can without taking in a large amount of seawater,” he said. Ms. Napolitano and Mr. Salazar cautioned that the tube was not “a solution.”“We will not rest until BP permanently seals the wellhead, the spill is cleaned up, and the communities and natural resources of the Gulf Coast are restored and made whole," Ms. Napolitano and Mr. Salazar said in a joint statement on Sunday."
(Special thanks to Bloody Mary and the cast and crew of South Pacific)
Happy talk, keep talkin' happy talk, Talk about things you'd like to do. You got to have a dream, If you don't have a dream, How you gonna have a dream come true?
The Capital Times reports this week how Obama's “pretty-close-to-clueless economic team peddled the absurd spin” that the current “recession” MIGHT be easing. But the zillion dollar bailout question is this: How do U.S. CEOs and politicians sleep at night when they sell off U.S. jobs to foreign workers for reduced quality and personal profit?
According to the Times, the Obama team is now down to plying the plebs with happy talk:
“A month ago, when the jobless rate was edging toward 9 percent, it was clear that the most serious challenge facing the Obama administration was rising unemployment.
Unfortunately, Obama's pretty-close-to-clueless economic team peddled the absurd spin that because the rate of increase in the official total of out-of-work Americans had slowed somewhat in May, the current recession might be easing. That happy talk dulled the sense of urgency, and the White House let another month pass without focusing seriously.
That was a bad mistake.
During the month of June, 467,000 more Americans lost their jobs.”
Rob Sanchez's latest Job Destruction Newsletter provides an excellent analysis of Thibodeau's article below as he explains the relationship between how rapidly rising EE unemployment and the importation of foreign engineers to take American jobs is related toH-1B visa and green card holders alike. In other words, call it what you will – call it the 'Fog a Mirror' Visa – but eliminating the disastrous H-1B visa program will not halt American job losses if it is replaced exclusively with green card holders taking jobs as long as U.S. CEOs and politicians continue to profit. Sanchez writes:
“Patrick Thibodeau got in a good jab at IEEE in the last paragraph of his
new Computerworld article. His remark is a bit misleading though, because
the IEEE has criticized H-1B in the past while at the same time supporting
unlimited importation of foreign engineers with instant green cards visas.
They refuse to make any connection at all between EE unemployment and the
importation of foreign engineers.
It's interesting to note that there are still plenty of H-1B visas
available for fiscal year 2010. As many as 20,000 visas are up for grabs
that count towards the cap. It seems that companies aren't even hiring
“As of July 3, 2009, approximately 45,000 H-1B cap-subject petitions
and approximately 20,000 petitions qualifying for the advanced
degree cap exemption had been filed. USCIS will continue to accept
both cap-subject petitions and advanced degree petitions until a
sufficient number of H-1B petitions have been received to reach the
statutory limits, taking into account the fact that some of these
petitions may be denied, revoked, or withdrawn.
Last year it took just a few days to give out all 65,000 visas, and in FY
2008 it took only a day. So far the stampede for visas that H-1B advocates
were predicting hasn't happened -- and yet corporations continue to claim
that the cap must be raised in order to avoid a national emergency.
So, is the slowdown in H-1B hiring good news or bad for American engineers?
In my opinion the trend doesn't bode well for American high tech workers
because they usually have to wait in the back of the line for jobs until
all of the H-1B visas are used up. If employers aren't hiring H-1Bs they
aren't hiring American engineers either. Last year high-tech workers
started to find job opportunities -- but only after the cap was reached.”
American high tech workers have to wait in the back of the line for jobs until all of the foreign workers are recruited BECAUSE? There is no better political moment than during this Depression 2.0 for the Democrats and Obama to take a page from Donald Trump and inform India, Inc. that THEY'RE FIRED!
Talk about the boy sayin' to the girl:
"Golly, baby, I'm a lucky cuss"
Talk about the girl sayin' to the boy:
"You an' me is lucky to be us!"
Politicians, corporate “leaders” and a bevy of lawyers are cleaning up like bandits as they collude against millions of educated American white collar professionals to replace educated Americans with cheap foreign labor. So far, there is no collective outcry from the public, in particular from the Democratic Party which is supposedly the party of the people. The explicit goal is “not to hire an American worker” as instructed in this C&G [Cohen & Grigsby] seminar.
During this election season, one would assume the Democrats would unite and “just say no” but so far, there is an odd silence. Both tech lobby backed leading candidates, Obama and McCain, have pledged to assist the support of this goal by raising or eliminating the H-1B visa cap.
Enter Brad Reese, who explores the Department of Labor’s audit on a law firm that has been linked to Cisco Systems in this NetworkWorld.com article entitled Cisco's immigration law firm audited for improper behavior by U.S. Department of Labor. Millions of white collar American jobs are increasingly being handed over to legal immigrants with questionable skills who will work for a fraction of the compensation. Now the nation’s largest immigration law firm, Fragomen - DelRey - Bernsen & Loewy LLP is being audited by the Department of Labor for indications that it “improperly instructed its clients who filed permanent labor certification applications to contact their attorney BEFORE hiring apparently qualified U.S. workers.”
As white collar jobs continue to disappear due to legal immigration policies designed to eliminate educated Americans from professional positions in the tech, medical, financial and media industries, will the fired CEO of Hewlett Packard, Carly Fiorina’s ominous declaration that
“No American has a God-given right to a job”
be the final nail in the coffin for the American professional middle class or will the people of this country unite against this hostile takeover?
In this video Sue Kwon at the CBS affiliate in San Francisco describes what happened to unemployed programmer David Huber, who tells the viewing audience exactly what happened when he applied for a job at Cisco Systems. Here is Brad Reese’s account of what Huber experienced after responding to an ad in the Chicago Tribune for a position:
Dave Huber gave Brad Reese details on his adventure with Cisco and Fragomen, permitting him to share regarding speaking with [Fragomen's] employee here.
"If you recall, I saw the ad on Sunday, June 3, 2007.
On Monday morning, June 4, 2007, I called Cisco's HQ in San Jose and spoke with a random operator.
I confirmed that the person I was talking to was working at Cisco in San Jose.
I asked the operator something to the effect I was trying to contact a xxxxx.
The operator said xxxx didn't work at Cisco, but that there was a xxxx who worked at Fragomen.
I had never heard of Fragomen.
(And, of course, I didn't even know about the C&G [Cohen & Grigsby] seminar.)
So I googled Fragomen and found out it was an immigration law firm.
I'm getting more curious now, so I decided to contact the closest Fragomen office to San Jose.
This office happened to be in Santa Clara.
I called the Santa Clara Fragomen office, and actually spoke with a xxxx.
I asked her about the ad I saw.
I confirmed through my brief conversation with her, that she was the xxxx in the Cisco ad.
At first, she seemed open, and somewhat willing to answer my questions about the ad.
After about 2-3 minutes, I heard a sense of nervousness in xxxx voice, and she sort of ended the conversation by saying I should just respond to the ad.
My recollection of this was that I was even more perplexed, thinking that something just wasn't right: the newspaper ad; the immigration law firm referenced in ad.
Well, I think the mystery was solved for me when I saw that C & G video.
After about almost a month (end of June), I decided, just for grins, to respond to the Cisco newspaper ad.
I sent my resume, via registered mail, to the Cisco address in the ad.
I did get an eventual response from Cisco, which I think was a result of this specific ad I responded to with registered mail.
An Indian contracting firm contacted me about a job at Cisco in San Jose, paying the princely sum of about $30 or $35/hour.
This compensation was/is a joke, needless to say."
David Huber is one of millions of educated American professionals who have all invested heavily in their educations to be passed over for moreburnt fries. This is legal because?
If Cisco is only one of many large corporations with disproportionate numbers of low wage workers who immigrate here to “do the work that Americans won’t do”, how many more of them are there?
Hey America: Still buying that myth about a Great Labor Shortage?
As long as “new media” channels continue to succeed in getting the asleep at the wheel plebes to look the other way with wedge issues to distract them, this war on America’s middle class to create a nation of serfs is working out just fine.
Travel Safety in the Skies and on Rail: At What Cost to the American Public?
-D.C. Metro and U.S. Airports Outsourcing Tech Development-
For Immediate Release
Washington – Fly the Scary Skies may soon become our national airline industry's leading soundbite, as job losses, pilot/controller fatigue, cutbacks in pilot pay and eroding quality of service abound in the once vibrant “friendly skies” of American air travel. Earlier this week, a Northwest Airbus A-320 overshot its Minneapolis runway destination by nearly 150 miles, leading to speculation that the pilot and co-pilot fell asleep in the cockpit or were somehow otherwise distracted. In America these days, Michael Moore reports pilots are on food stamps. BTW, our own national hero,Pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger has no pension and his pay was reduced by 40% as LWOH reported here.
And how about rail safety? Although no conclusive findings have yet to surface from the NTSB regarding the cause of this year's June 22nd fatal D.C. Metro Red Line crash that killed 9 people and injured at least 80, the Washington Post reports this week that Metro has been working with Annapolis-based ARINC, a transportation communications and engineering systems company to develop a backup for the train protection, or track circuit, system. As LWOH reported here, speculation into computer failure as the cause has yet to be ruled out.
Annapolis, MD headquartered ARINC Incorporated, a portfolio company of The Carlyle Group, provides communications, engineering and integration solutions for commercial, defense and government customers worldwide. ARINC also announced this week that its Managed Services and ServicePower partnership is launching its news On-call IT support for small and non-hub airports. What a great opportunity for U.S. unemployed techies, right? So where are they getting the “On-call IT” support developers from? Will ARINC and ServicePower hire the unemployed and underemployed U.S. IT developers (h/t endh1b.com) who have been replaced by cheap imported labor to put the “Q” back into quality software development and support? Incidentally, UK based ServicePower Technologies Plc is an outsourcing software company that just announced on Sept. 30 that it axed 47 jobs after losses. Well, if American software developers aren't profiting by getting these jobs, who is profiting? Metro needs reliable software programs:
“Metro uses a software program to check for circuit malfunctions. Since the Red Line crash, those software checks have been run twice a day to look for anomalies. If problems are found, crews are sent to inspect the circuit; if necessary, adjustments are made on the spot. Circuits might be disabled if fixes can't be made immediately.
But the software check occurs after rush hour; the new program would run in real time.Officials said they plan to run both systems next week to see whether they pick up the same malfunctions.”
In an interesting side note, the WaPo article adds that ARINC has a $15 million contract with Metro “to provide electronics for the agency's backup operations control center in suburban Maryland and upgrade equipment at the main control center in downtown Washington.” But Metro officials have repeatedly declined to disclose how much the company is charging the transit agency for the additional work on track circuits. Why not disclose the amount for the additional work?
Hopefully, Metro, ARINC and Google all would agree that quality IT development and support deliverables are non-negotiable to ensure public safety. This, all Americans would agree, surely takes precedence over executive and government personnel profiteering at the expense of Joe and Jane Taxpayer's safety.
Metro officials also told a board committee Thursday that the agency is ready to move forward by Jan. 1 to offer riders Google Transit, an online mapping tool,“if key issues can be resolved.”What key issues might those be? “Among them: persuading Google to agree to exempt Metro from liability for downloading corrupt data and Google's request that data be provided in a format that would require more work from Metro employees.”
Why would Metro possibly anticipate “corrupt data downloads” from Google's IT employees and/or contractors? Aren't they supposed to be the best and brightest? How many of them are imported? Given Metro's crash track record, it comes as no surprise that they might not want a lawsuit against them if Google's IT developers provide corrupt data. (OK, sure, nobody is perfect but taking an “accidents happen” attitude about public safety in exchange for profit motives is not applicable here.) And why would Google request that “the data be provided in a format that would require more work from Metro employees”? Ah, for the bygone days when professional American programmers, pilots and engineers were compensated for their education and leadership with good pay and benefits... But such trivial incentives are no longer necessary, as our feudal slave lord inspired government agencies and neo-frat boy run corporations can't seem to get enough Burnt Fries. Who needs skilled American professionals when our politicians can become rich brokering third world imports to take U.S. jobs and drive down wages?
While Metro may be moving closer to sharing data with Google Transit, Metro’s top technical people say that Google Transit may be available to their riders, as Michael Neibauerreports in Examiner, “but only if the search engine giant is willing to abide by the agency’s terms, specifically Metro’s demand that it is shielded from lawsuits spurred by bad data.” Metro has shared data previously under terms which include the right to “institute a license fee at any time” and indemnification….But Google, which has relationships with 121 transit systems nationwide, has refused to meet Metro’s demands.
What to do about improving rail safety standards? There is no federal agency that mandates technology standards for rapid transit systems to date, but there IS a Federal agency that legally allows corporations and gov't. agencies to transfer American jobs to cheap, imported H-1B visa and green card holders.
Forbes recently reported that IT outsourcing poses risks. Isn't it time that the Hope 'n Change administration got onboard the right track to stop it? The United State of Slave Labor has devolved into a cheap labor junkie, willing to risk passenger safety and destroy the quality of life for our best and brightest American professionals like Pilot Sully and millions of other educated Americans who have been kicked to the curb for cheap imported labor so a few beltway and corporate “thought leaders” can wildly, wildly profit. Will citizens of the USA unite to stop these abusive H-1B/green card hiring practices and restore civility and quality again in the workplace on the ground and in the skies?
One of the most popular albeit fellatious fallacious arguments in favor of outsourcing/insourcing cheap imported labor is that there is just not enough gosh darn money for corporations and government agencies to pay competitive wages/benefits commensurate with local standards of living to our educated citizens. Author David Zirin offers this insightful article entitled DC Metro Crash: Who Will Die Next Because We Throw Money at Billionaries and Scrimp on the Public Good? and describes how publicly funded stadiums have become a substitute for urban policy and asks why the District is on the hook for a $700 million ballpark when funds could be spent on upgrading the Metro. It also looks at “the twisted policies of the underfunded Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority” or what the Brookings Institution calls “deficits by design.”
“The WMATA gets no dedicated federal funds despite the fact that it serves thousands of federal workers. In fact, it has no dedicated source of funds at all, depending on fares and ads for three-fifths of its budget.”
Zirin suggests that Americans question our priorities here:
“This is a question of priorities, plain and simple. But not our priorities. A majority of DC-area residents opposed the public funding of the stadiums. These are the priorities of power and they must be opposed at all costs. The advice of peace activist Sister Joan Chittister has some relevance here. "Anger is not bad," she has said. "Anger can be a very positive thing, the thing that moves us beyond the acceptance of evil." It's time to get angry. Or the next city may be your own.”
“Sometimes the greed and arrogance of Ruling Classes makes them careless and social waters heat too quickly. Sensing doom, alert citizen-frogs escape or revolt. Or they stay complacent and boil.” -Joel S. Hirschorn
It’s about time for the Left to wake up and smell the boiling point. Can it?
Bill Moyers recently interviewed Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch and challenged the whole myth of labor shortages that Cretans like Bill Gates and global elites here in this country are hammering the masses here with. Click link below to read transcript of this interview entitled ‘Trade Policy Not Just a Rust Belt Concern Anymore’
One of the most dangerous elements of corporate globalization is that large corporations have historically used militaries and force to protect their access to cheap, natural resources, cheap labor, and the development of new markets. In a 1999 New York Times column, Thomas Friedman said “you can't have McDonald's without McDonnell Douglas, the weapons defensecontractor.” Shades of Leave it to Beaver come to mind when answering that question: “Gee Wally, could this be why the U.S. picked a war with Iraq and will never, ever get out of there?”
Follow what is happening around the SPP meeting in Montebello Quebec August 20-21. Why is a 25 KM security perimeter being planned to keep the public from coming anywhere near this meeting? Why has the meeting space reserved for a public teach-in been taken over by the army?
Can the Left hop out of the pot and finally focus on the power being wielded by corporate elites comprised of an unlikely assortment of characters including but not limited to certain ceo’s, blowhard board members, governors with Austrian accents married to wives on the supposed opposite ideological spectrum, former vice presidents turned businessmen, wildly stock-optioned House Speakers and their technology and Beltway sons and daughters and pals who are robbing this country of any semblance of democracy? Despite it all, will the Left still continue to be warmed by the false promises of our sold out Congress and global elite, fanned by the flames of an ideology in lieu of facing the reality that a hijacked democracy (not by republicans or democrats) but an elite, big-monied inner circle of bipartisan, corporate globalists?
Where is the blogosphere that drew millions of alternative bloggers who set out to challenge the status quo? Oh, right. They turned into the status quo. One need look no further than the HuffPo, that ‘revolutionary alternate source for news’ we could not get from the traditional mainstream news outlets. I have to hand it to Arianna…I would venture to say that most of the pajama clad bloggers who participate in the HuffPo actually think that it started out with an ideological, Bolshevik Arianna sitting in some basement with tussled hair and overdue for a manicure typing furiously at a keyboard at four am. in hot pursuit of making America better for the People. Well, I guess you have to ask “which people.” But that venture is a prime example of good old fashioned capitalism at work. While it has attracted commenters from all across the world to engage in debate, the editorial slant is distinctly global elite and not community values driven. So far, the only consistent content repeatedly pitched is support for Al Gore, the former vice president turned green businessman who also serves as a Senior Advisor to the board of Google.
The Left has been looking right while wealthy, slick globalists run the media (we’re talking alternative and blog media here as well as MSM), in a feverish, 21st Century pitch to spin a veneer of “cool” on winding down America’s middle class. Want to see a third world society of have and have nots? Wake up America, you’re looking at it and the party down on the race to the bottom has just begun. It ain’t about to get any better, thanks to the collective complicity from some on the Left, who continue to talk “Iraq, Iraq, Iraq” (again, think Arianna Huffington) while the elites loot what’s left of our economy and the Left continues to “ooh and aah” about the cool factor of selling off our jobs and infrastructures under the banner of “liberalism.” Is the Left that selfish or just merely blind to the needs of our citizens and our communities?
The capacity for the wealthy, global elites to put profits before people relies upon its media bedfellows
Joel S. Hirschorn writes “Some Americans keep warning us – people like Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, Aaron Russo, Dennis Kucinich, Lou Dobbs, Ralph Nader, Ron Paul, Bill Moyers, Jon Stewart, and Keith Olbermann. They entertain complacent “frogs” and preach to the choir of alert “frogs” that also know the temperature is rising dangerously. Many of the former keep hoping that putting better Democrats or Republicans in office will get us back on the right track. Many of the latter are ready to jump to what our Constitution offers us: an Article V convention."
It is curious that while those on the Left stew in the pot while the global elites in Congress and our corporate communities craft their H1-b legislations to blow the lid off visa caps that will displace and unemploy millions of our educated American white collar professionals, where is the collective righteous indignation from the party of the People?
While affordable imports keep Americans docile and distracted and while we continue to allow our corrupt Congress and House Speaker to use our white collar jobs as a leading national export in order to fatten the wallets of the smug, arrogant, and insufferable frat boys running roughshod over our economy, has the Left really forgotten about the greedy British and how they motivated colonial America to inspire our Revolutionary War?
Only now, with oppression coming from within and the slick media and bloggers lining up at the trough to capitalize off of the backs of our dwindling middle class, will Americans finally choose to sit in the pot until its too late? Has the Left developed a case of ‘elitism-itis’, which is responsible for them morphing into the status quo Cretans they set out to rebel against?
“Business schools teach "grow or die," the idea that we measure success in our economy and society by constant growth, by growing bigger and bigger. Even in a socially responsible business community, people will say, "Well, how much more did your business grow last year?" Or, "Do you have another unit yet?" And when people hear that I'm a successful restaurateur, they will say, "You mean you have only one restaurant?" But I made a conscious decision to stay a small business because I realized that when we grow in physical size, we give up something very important--authentic relationships with the people around us and those we do business with. I came to realize that we can measure our success in other ways besides just growing our size, sales, and profit: we can measure our success by growing our knowledge and expanding our consciousness, by deepening our relationships, increasing our happiness, and having more fun. This way we don't give up what's really most important and authentic--relationships that increase the quality of our lives.”
What the Left, for the sake of this country needs now more than ever is a hot dose of RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION. The 2008 election cycle is picking up steam, and with the candidates being trotted out, we have no choice but to ask which one of them—if any---is standing up for the middle class and what they will do to stop the wholesale sell-out of our jobs and infrastructures, something that so far, the Left has yet to address in any form of mass protest. Hint: don’t look to elitist businessman Al Gore to lead the way any time soon. Unless he kicks ass over at Google and wants to demonstrate he is an anti-elite by reversing this bogus “Myth of an American Labor Shortage”, the educated middle class has him number.
"Ho Sale Since 1869!" 
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