H1Bs

Tell me, people who supported Obama from Day One, what in the hell distinguishes him from our beloved, departed dictator, George W. Bush? It is getting more and more difficult by the day to see the difference.

His administration is trying to justify the continued use of H1B workers which undercut the wage and salary base of American citizens.

In a filing with the appeals court late last month, the Obama administration offered a defense of the H-1B visa program while repeating many of the same arguments used by the Bush administration in defending the ruling in the initial case. "The inability of U.S. employers, particularly in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, to obtain H-1B status for highly skilled foreign students and foreign nonimmigrant workers has adversely affected the ability of U.S employers to recruit and retain skilled worker and creates a competitive disadvantage for U.S. companies," the government argued.

Fucking unbelievable. I am beginning to feel McCain should have been elected for all the good Obama is doing.

The Booming Economy

It's too bad, so sad for those H1B workers who were brought into this country to undercut American workers' wages and salaries.

Cry me a goddamned river.
_____

You can't make this shit up:

The climate is warm, there's no shortage of exotic food, and the cost of living is rock bottom. That's IBM (NYSE: IBM)'s pitch to the laid-off American workers it's offering to place in India. The catch: Wages in the country are pennies-on-the-dollar compared to U.S. salaries.

Under a program called Project Match, IBM will help workers laid off from domestic sites obtain travel and visa assistance for countries in which Big Blue has openings. Mostly that's developing markets like India, China, and Brazil.

One of the industry's leading CIOs, Ralph Szygenda, talks about what it takes to be a CIO and what tomorrow's CIO will have to do to prepare.
"IBM has established Project Match to help you locate potential job opportunities in growth markets where your skills are in demand," IBM says in an internal notice on the initiative. "Should you accept a position in one of these countries, IBM offers financial assistance to offset moving costs, provides immigration support, such as visa assistance, and other support to help ease the transition of an international move."

This is as appealing as wading across the Ganges River.
_____

The Booming Economy

I certainly am not surprised about this report of banks importing foreign workers while at the same time the system was going down the shitter.

Why should I be surprised? When companies couldn't outsource jobs for cheap labor, they'd "insource" the cheap labor to undercut workers here.

This really and truly is criminal behavior:

The dozen banks now receiving the biggest rescue packages, totaling more than $150 billion, requested visas for more than 21,800 foreign workers over the past six years for positions that included senior vice presidents, corporate lawyers, junior investment analysts and human resources specialists. The average annual salary for those jobs was $90,721, nearly twice the median income for all American households.

As the economic collapse worsened last year — with huge numbers of bank employees laid off — the numbers of visas sought by the dozen banks in AP's analysis increased by nearly one-third, from 3,258 in the 2007 budget year to 4,163 in fiscal 2008.

The AP reviewed visa applications the banks filed with the Labor Department under the H-1B visa program, which allows temporary employment of foreign workers in specialized-skill and advanced-degree positions. Such visas are most often associated with high-tech workers.

The H1B program has been abused for years solely to undercut white-collar workers. And honestly, white-collar workers didn't bitch when blue-collar jobs were being sent overseas. We kept hearing the mantra of the blue-collar workers being "retrained" for the "new economy" jobs, which in turn would disappear eventually. Now there's virtually NOTHING to be retrained for, except perhaps in health care, but many of THOSE workers are also foreigners.

In the end it's all about greed and destroying what middle class we have left in this country in order to turn this into a third world paradise for the zillionaires and their political hacks. Now that so many people are laid off and have NO income apart from measly unemployment insurance, the whole house of cards has collapsed. Third world country workers who received the stolen American jobs themselves cannot even buy the products they make; the products were made SOLELY for the American consumer market. Well, that's gone with all of these AMERICAN workers being laid off.

It's payback time, and people are going to get madder and madder. Yours truly saw this class warfare be instituted against working-class and middle-class workers when Reaganomics took hold. There's no shock in this neck of the woods about the banks doing the same thing.

(H/T Cannonfire)

The Booming Economy

Home Depot to slash 7,000 jobs.
_____

Nevada's unemployment rate is now at a 25-year high.
_____

GM--2,000 jobs cut.
_____

Why is it a Republican has to be the one to question H1Bs in layoffs:

These work visa programs were never intended to allow a company to retain foreign guest workers rather than similarly qualified American workers, when that company cuts jobs during an economic downturn," Grassley wrote in a letter sent Thursday to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. The letter asked Microsoft to detail the types of jobs that will be eliminated and how those cuts will affect the company's H-1B workers.

"It is imperative that in implementing its layoff plan, Microsoft ensures that American workers have priority in keeping their jobs over foreign workers on visa programs," Grassley added.

_____

Sprint--8,000 jobs to be cut.
_____

Pfizer--8,000 jobs cut.
_____

Caterpillar--20,000 jobs cut.
_____

ING--7,000 jobs to be cut
_____

More than 71,400 job cuts have been announced today alone.
_____