I had my first “real world” experience with how the H1B program is being administered by congress in a meeting held in congress titled “H-1B Visas : Designing a program to Meet the Needs of the U.S. Economy and U.S. Workers”.

Designing???? After 21 years of being executed. it is completely obvious to me and everyone of my peers in the I.T. world with any knowledge that there is NO DESIGN to meet the need of the U.S. worker. There never was!!!!!! The only design was to follow through with the Alan Greenspan think-alikes’ masterplan of lowering the wages of skilled white collar I.T. workers who he and his cohorts felt (and still do!) are overpaid!

This meeting was held by the Subcommittee for Immigration And Enforcement and was a very full meeting , attended by a few people such as myself and Dr. gene Nelson, who know the real truth of how this program and others like it such as the L1 are decimating the current and future prospects of existing and future US citizens within Science and Technology , but also by a large portion of what looked like lobbyists (they almost smell different!) , along with other congressional aides.

My opinion was that, despite the attempt of Zoe Lofgren, a well publicized long-term advocate of this criminally abused program , I did get the feeling that there were quite a few congressmen who did get that the abuse and fraud within this program and the impact to US citizens is significant!! Whether they were doing lip service for their constituents but not really wanting this fraud stopped I don’t know as yet., but I will be investigating each and every participant to check their voting record and quoted opinions.

The chairman(Elton Gallegly) and committee members spoke first before the testifiers who represented both those for and against the program as it stands. Unfortunately, the only person out of the four speaking against this ridiculously fraudulent program was :

Ron Hira – Associate professor of public policy for Rochester I.O.T.

Of the other 3 testifiers:

Donald Neufeld – An Associate Director for USCIS
Bo Cooper – Partner for Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP (employer shill)
Bruce A. Morrisson – Chairman Morrission public affairs group.

The chairman ( Elton Gallegly) seemed to give a lot of deference to Zoe Lofgren who spent a substantial amount of time talking both before and after the testifiers, giving her usual spiel but ironically enough ADMITTING now that the H-1B creates unfair competition!!!! Now that she is on the crusade for instant green-cards for students , she now admitted:

1. the H1B created unfair competition for the the US workforce.
2. she was “shocked” that even though the average wage for a Silicon valley programmer is 92k , the average for H-1B workers was 52K. Shocked I tell ya She kept asking questions to her Green-card cronies er…i mean , green card advocates, Bo Cooper and Bruce Morrison and conveniently ignoring asking any questions bar one to Ron Hira about the fraud.

Apart form this , Ms. Lofgren AGAIN brought up this loss of our “Best & Brightest” foreign workers while conveniently (deliberately) ignoring the impact to the existing and very real US STEM workers (except in what may be an accidental slip up when trying to promote the unlimited green-cards for foreign student as mentioned in bullet point 1 above!!! I Wonder if she realizes that!!!!!)

She may also want to see the adverts for Job fairs held by U.S. companies ONLY IN INDA!!!! not the U.S., not Europe!!! (please see: http://brightfuturejobs.com/recruiting-drive-for-us-jobs-open-house-for-h1-opportunity-chennai/ )

Ron Hira was very eloquent in his testimony about the H-1B that it needs a “serious overhaul”. Yeah, haul over a cliff!!!!!! He made some very damning comments that should be the death Knell of ANY program with such devastatingly contradicting evidence than the officially declared requirement:

1. Employers are LEGALLY displacing US workers with this program (and others such as L1)
2. they are helping foreign competitors by enabling this “outsourcing visa”
3. the term ‘Knowledge transfer” has been coined for taking this knowledge offshore.
4. according to the GAO, 54% of LCA’s (application applied for before H1b can be filed) were for the ENTRY LEVEL jobs. Get that??? ENTRY LEVEL!!! ARGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
5. Dept. of Labor has certified wages as low as $12.25 per hr for H1B computer professionals!!!! U.S. citizens median is 70K . Those prevailing wages are really working!!!!!!!
6. H1B DO NOT lead to green cards. He cited Tata applied for approx. 2400 H1Bs between 2007-2009. ZERO green card applications!!!!!! roughly 2% of H1Bs get green card sponsorship which completely and utterly refutes ALL comments that the H1B leads to productive US citizens!!!!!

My next post will have details of what I observed with the other participants in this hearing.