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L-1 Visas: H-1B's Quiet, Powerful, And Even More Evil Cousin...

You're probably familiar with H-1B visas and the annual cap on

Layed Off American IT Workers - Victims of L-1 and H-1B Visa Scam.

them. Their lesser-discussed cousin, the L-1, has no such yearly limit.

American workers may be encouraged by a slowly dipping unemployment rate, but in the IT field, both novices and veterans voice continued frustration about competing for jobs with foreign workers holding H-1B or L1 visas.

Advances in technology and globalization, as well as work-visa laws, during the past decade have made it posssible for companies to hire foreign IT workers and pay them less than they would an American worker.

Now, pundits and lobbyists calling for work visa reform worry that President Obama, faced with a Republican Congress, will expand visa programs as he considers taking executive action on immigration laws.

[Tech employers say good people are hard to find. Job hunters see a broken hiring process. Read The IT Talent Shortage Debate.]

In a blog post published on The Hill, Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at Washington think tank the Economic Policy Institute, says that under-regulated visa programs like the L-1, while appealing to businesses, only end up exploiting low-paid foreign IT workers and shrinking wages for everyone employed in similar roles.

"Employers have a huge financial incentive to hire an L-1 worker instead of an American or an H-1B, and no law requires them to be audited or investigated," Costa wrote. "That's why the tech industry has lobbied the Obama administration for years to expand the definition of L-1B 'specialized knowledge,' which would allow them to bring in countless more underpaid L-1 workers."...

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How study contradicts benefits of H-1B visas

A recent study in the US by three economists – Kirk Doran of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, Alexander Gelber of the University of California, Berkeley, and Adam Isen of the office of tax analysis at the US department of the treasury – has found that H-1B visas do not lead to any significant increase in the number of patents and nor do they result in any significant job creation in America.

The findings of this study contradict many highlights of earlier reports, including one by big IT companies which was discussed at the US congress last month. According to that, every foreign-born worker in the US with a US STEM (science, technology, engineering & management) degree creates 2.62 jobs for US-born workers. It also said that every H-1B visa holder creates 1.83 jobs in the US. The recent report, The Effects of High-skilled Immigration on Firms: Evidence from H-1B Visa Lotteries, is surprisingly not causing concern to Indian IT companies, which are the largest users of H-1B visas and Indian IT professionals.

“It is an academic study. One of its authors has been doing work for years on the impact of immigration and guest workers on the labour market. I think the report will contribute to the debate. Its findings support what we know about how the H-1B programme is being used,” said Ron Hira, an immigration policy expert and associate professor of public policy at Howard University.

The backdrop to the recent debate is the US Immigration Innovation Act (I-Squared Act) which was introduced by senator Orrin Hatch in the US congress and is being promoted by the technology industry. “It would vastly expand the number of H-1Bs but includes no reforms to fix the programme from being used to replace American workers with cheaper guest workers,” said Hira. In his opinion, the Obama administration could do much more to crack down on...

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Girls With Guns

If Your BS Detector Isn't Shrieking, It's Broken

Wishing it was true doesn't make it true--it makes you a chump who fell for the con.

Once upon a time in America, no adult could survive without possessing a finely tuned BS detector. Herman Melville masterfully captured America's fascination with cons and con artists in his 1857 classic The Confidence-Man, which I discussed in The Con in Confidence (October 4, 2006).

An essential component of the American ethos is: don't be a chump. Don't fall for the con. And if you do, it's your own fault. The Wild West wasn't just thieves shooting people in the back (your classic "gunfight" in the real West)--it was a simmering stew of con artists, flim-flammers and grifters exploiting the naive, the trusting and the credulous.

We now inhabit a world where virtually everything is a con. That "organic" produce from some other country--did anyone test the soil the produce grew in? It could be loaded with heavy metals and be certified "organic" because no pesticides were used during production. But what about last year? And the year before? What's in the water used to irrigate the crops?

The employment/unemployment statistics are obviously BS. 93 million people aren't even counted any more--they're statistical zombies, no longer among the living workforce. If the unemployment rate were calculated on the number of full-time jobs and the true workforce (everyone ages 18 - 70 that isn't institutionalized or in prison), the unemployment rate would not be the absurdly delusional 5.6% claimed by the bureaucratic con artists.

The corrupts-everything-it-touches bribe vacuum known as Hillary Clinton is still disgracing the national stage, 24 years after she first displayed her con-artist colors. Hillary's most enduring accomplishment is the Clinton Foundation--a glorification of bribery, chicanery, flim-flam and cons so outrageously perfected that it serves up examples of every con known to humanity in one form or another.

And as she learned from hubby Bill--if the smarmy charm-con fails, quickly revert to veiled threats. "You'll never work in this town again!"

Hillary would fit right into Melville's river boat teeming with con-artists. The accent she uses on the marks--oops, I mean audience--changes as readily as the camouflage on a chameleon. Upper Midwest, Noo Yawk, Fake-Southern--what you hear depends on the credulity of her marks.

The entire American political system is a con, a sleazy mix of legalized bribes, auctioning off of favors, revolving doors between government agencies and the corporations they enrich and the blatant hypocrisy of snake-oil salespeople who know the marks (voters) face a false choice between two parties that are the same poison sold under different labels.

Which brings us to China, one of the greatest credit bubble and financial cons ever. Please examine this chart of the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSEC). Clearly, there is no upper limit to the Chinese stock market: 5,000 today, 10,000 next week, 50,000 the following month and 100,000 shortly thereafter. The sky's the limit, Baby!




That China's credit machine is now dependent on a stock market bubble for its very survival speaks volumes about the true health of China's economy. This dependence was recently explained in Why China Is So Desperate To Blow The Most Epic Stock Bubble.

Everybody who thinks China's economy is healthy because its stock market is soaring has been suckered. Every good con-man/ con-woman knows that the con only works if the chump/mark wants to believe the...

Hot Pick of The Late Night

Girls With Guns

Hot Pick of The Late Night