LEGAL Immigration

[Greed]

Immigrants Rely on Patchy English Teaching
By JUSTIN POPE, AP Education Writer
Sat Apr 22, 6:35 PM ET

For Lidia Veras and Elena Clarisa Sepulveda, the pace of life is achingly slow, weighed down by confusion and delay.

Unable to speak or read English, the two immigrants and beauty salon co-workers from the Dominican Republic are at the mercy of friends to translate for them. When friends cannot help, doctors' appointments are skipped and mail goes unread, leaving the pair unsure what their banks, insurance companies or children's teachers are asking them to do.

Amid the national immigration debate, Congress has considered stronger incentives for immigrants to take English classes, including money and the potential for accelerated citizenship. But these women say they don't need an extra incentive; they need a desk. They are on a years-long, 400-person waiting list to get into a free, government-supported class at a community program called "Operation Bootstrap."

"It's a little like when a baby wants food and there's isn't any: She cries," says Sepulveda, speaking through a translator at Operation Bootstrap's office in this working-class city north of Boston.

Says program director Don Edwards: "I've got hundreds more of them. They get desperate. They start calling and begging. It really hurts your heart."

The Senate language incentives bill failed, but Congress is under pressure to reconsider broad-based immigration reform. That could draw more attention to the patchwork system of public programs, private companies and less-formal groups — often churches — that teach adult ESL ("English as a Second Language") courses.

New incentives could also increase demand at a time many experts feel the system is already overburdened.

"We will be unprepared," says Fermin Recarte, assistant director for Latino community outreach at Ivy Tech, a community college in Lafayette, Ind. "We won't have the teaching, we won't have the buildings, we won't have anything."

In fact, there are openings for ESL students, even in places with large immigrant populations. Community colleges like Texas Southmost and Queensborough in New York City say they can meet demand from fee-paying students. And there are private companies that will help employers teach their workers how to speak English.

But in many places, slots in free programs like Operation Bootstrap are scarce. Massachusetts has about 17,000 people on waiting lists statewide. Other states, including Texas, don't keep waiting lists but report that overall demand for free programs is huge. In 2003, the three largest programs in the Houston area had a combined waiting list of 12,000, said Federico Salas, assistant state director of Texas Learns, the state office of adult education.

"We can't accommodate most of them," he said. "We can't accommodate even a majority of them."

Nationwide, about 1.1 million people were enrolled in state-administered ESL programs in 2004. The U.S. Department of Education, in a yet-to-be-published study, estimates 28 percent of adult education programs (home to many ESL courses) had waiting lists in 2001-2002. Preliminary results from a new survey by an adult education group show about two-thirds reporting waiting lists.

Cheryl Keenan, director of the division adult education and literacy at the Department of Education, says federal programs are serving more students, and accountability is improving completion rates. Though she worries about recruiting ESL teachers and growing numbers of immigrants illiterate even in their native languages, she sees progress. And she notes language training is increasingly being incorporated into classes other than ESL, such as vocational courses.

But advocates note federal Adult Basic Education spending has actually declined slightly in recent years, and say more resources are needed. There are big variations among states, which account for about three-quarters of the adult education spending. For instance, for each of its residents who reported speaking English poorly or not at all on the 2000 census, Michigan spends about $190 on adult education, while Nevada spends less than $5.

With millions struggling to speak English nationwide, some wonder why the lists aren't longer.

At Operation Bootstrap in Lynn, Edwards says many people don't sign up because word gets out the wait is hopeless. In Indiana, a state official says there's no statewide capacity problem, but Recarte, of Ivy Tech, says community colleges don't offer Spanish-speakers the kind of instruction they need, so few sign up — and then few classes are offered.

Other immigrants may be getting instructed by church and community groups, though experts wonder about the varying quality of that instruction.

Still others might be able to get by at work and home without English. But in Lynn, Sepulveda and Veras say they have no doubt English is essential for their careers, their children and their own happiness. Sepulveda tried to take carpentry training and says she did fine, but could not get work because of the language barrier.

Veras would like to take care of the elderly, but so far they have only been able to work in the beauty shop. Everyone speaks Spanish there.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060422...QJI2ocA;_ylu=X3oDMTA5aHJvMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA--

 

[Greed]

1965 Immigration Law Changed Face of America

1965 Immigration Law Changed Face of America
by Jennifer Ludden

All Things Considered, May 9, 2006 · As Congress considers sweeping changes to immigration law, nearly all the debate has centered on the problem of illegal immigration. Little discussed are the many concerns of legal immigrants, the estimated 3 million to 4 million who are, as it's so often been put --"already standing in line."

The current system of legal immigration dates to 1965. It marked a radical break with previous policy and has led to profound demographic changes in America. But that's not how the law was seen when it was passed -- at the height of the civil rights movement, at a time when ideals of freedom, democracy and equality had seized the nation. Against this backdrop, the manner in which the United States decided which foreigners could and could not enter the country had become an increasing embarrassment.

An Argument Based on Egalitarianism

"The law was just unbelievable in its clarity of racism," says Stephen Klineberg, a sociologist at Rice University. "It declared that Northern Europeans are a superior subspecies of the white race. The Nordics were superior to the Alpines, who in turn were superior to the Mediterraneans, and all of them were superior to the Jews and the Asians."

By the 1960s, Greeks, Poles, Portuguese and Italians were complaining that immigration quotas discriminated against them in favor of Western Europeans. The Democratic Party took up their cause, led by President John F. Kennedy. In a June 1963 speech to the American Committee on Italian Migration, Kennedy called the system of quotas in place back then " nearly intolerable."

After Kennedy's assassination, Congress passed, and President Lyndon Johnson, signed the Immigration and Naturalization Act. It leveled the immigration playing field, giving a nearly equal shot to newcomers from every corner of the world. The ceremony was held at the foot of the symbolically powerful Statue of Liberty. Yet President Johnson tried to downplay the law's significance.

"This bill that we will sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions," Johnson said at the signing ceremony. "It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives or add importantly to either our wealth or our power."

Looking back, Johnson's statement is remarkable because it proved so wrong. Why? Sociologist Klineberg says the government's newfound sense of egalitarianism only went so far. The central purpose of the new immigration law was to reunite families.

Klineberg notes that in debating an overhaul of immigration policy in the 1960s, many in Congress had argued that little would change because the measure gave preference to relatives of immigrants already in America. Another provision gave preference to professionals with skills in short supply in the United States.

"Congress was saying in its debates, 'We need to open the door for some more British doctors, some more German engineers,'" Klineberg says. "It never occurred to anyone, literally, that there were going to be African doctors, Indian engineers, Chinese computer programmers who'd be able, for the first time in the 20th century, to immigrate to America."

Predictions Based on Ignorance?

In fact, expert after expert testified before Congress that little would change. Secretary of State Dean Rusk repeatedly stressed that the number of new immigrants coming to the United States was not expected to skyrocket. What was really at stake, Rusk argued, was the principle of a more open immigration policy.

When asked about the number of people from India who would want to immigrate to the United States, Rusk told the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization: "The present estimate, based upon the best information we can get, is that there might be, say, 8,000 immigrants from India in the next five years. In other words, I don't think we have a particular picture of a world situation where everybody is just straining to move to the Unites States."

Historian Otis Graham, professor emeritus of the University of California at Santa Barbara, says that when he first started studying the 1965 immigration law, he assumed that politicians at the time had lied about the law's potential consequences in order to get it passed. But he says he has since changed his mind.

"In the research of my students, and in the research I've been able to do," Graham says, "so many lobbyists that followed this issue, so many labor-union executives that followed this issue, so many church people -- so many of those involved said the same thing. So you find ignorance three-feet deep. Maybe ignorance is the answer."

Karen Narasaki, who heads the Asian American Justice Center, finds the 1965 immigration overhaul all the more extraordinary because there's evidence it was not popular with the public.

"It was not what people were marching in the streets over in the 1960s," she says. "It was really a group of political elites who were trying to look into the future. And again, it was the issue of, 'Are we going to be true to what we say our values are?'"

In 1965, the political elite on Capitol Hill may not have predicted a mass increase in immigration. But Marian Smith, the historian for Customs and Immigration Services, showed me a small agency booklet from 1966 that certainly did. It explains how each provision in the new law would lead to a rapid increase in applications and a big jump in workload -- more and more so as word trickled out to those newly eligible to come. Smith says a lifetime of immigration backlogs had built up among America's foreign-born minorities. These immigrants would petition for relatives to come to the United States, and those relatives in turn would petition for other family members. Demand from post-colonial countries in Asia and Africa, she notes, jumped after World War II.

The Families Factor

The influx of refugees and of millions of illegal immigrants over the last several decades have certainly contributed to the United States' profound demographic transformation. But the chief driver of this change remains the system of family-based immigration put in place in 1965. Over time, in a process critics call "chain migration," entire families have re-established themselves in the United States. Historian Otis Graham thinks the policy has been a terrible mistake.

"Family reunification puts the decision of who comes to America in the hands of foreigners," Graham says. "Those decisions are out of the hand of the Congress -- they just set up a formula and its kinship. Frankly, it could be called nepotism."

In fact, President Kennedy's original proposal made skills-based immigration the priority. But Graham says a broad lobby pushed for the greater emphasis on families. It included churches, ethnic groups whose members had family in the old country, and the AFL-CIO. Graham says the union worried about competition from too many highly skilled newcomers.

But the Asian American Justice Center's Narasaki thinks the family focus makes sense. She notes that in the Asian community, extended families often function as a close-knit unit. Parents will help raise children, while siblings will pool their money to buy homes and businesses together and to help finance college for the younger generation.

"A family is very important not just to the social and emotional well-being, but also to the economic well-being of these communities," she says.

At a recent naturalization ceremony, 32 immigrants gathered for their oath of citizenship in the ornate rotunda of Washington's National Archives. Of them, three were from Western Europe. The rest were overwhelmingly from Africa, Latin America and Asia.

Later, at a basement reception, the new citizens posed for pictures, holding tiny American flags and a gift bag that included a refrigerator magnet of the U.S. Constitution and an AT&T prepaid calling card. One older woman, dressed in her Sunday best, with a broad-brimmed hat, introduced herself as Hannah Ndubuisi. She is from Nigeria, and her name means "life is first." Ndubisi was sponsored by her U.S. citizen son, Samuel.

"Everybody in the world -- I don't know if you know this -- wants to come to the United States of America," she says. "All you need to do is go to the embassy, any embassy, and see long, long lines of people who want to come here."

In fact, Ndubisi has a long line of relatives still in Nigeria who'd love to come. It's the same with another brand-new citizen at the reception, Emad Ali from Sudan.

"I have my parents, I have sisters, I have brothers," Ali says. "I'm going to apply for them to come here soon -- definitely. I hope they will be here soon."

It may not be soon at all, though. The immigration system set up specifically to reunite families is so overwhelmed with applicants, that relatives who wait their turn must endure being divided for years. 12 min 01sec

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5391395

 

[Greed]

A Family's Wait for U.S. Visas Spans Generations

A Family's Wait for U.S. Visas Spans Generations
by Jennifer Ludden

All Things Considered, May 10, 2006 · The United States admits nearly 1 million legal immigrants a year. Yet that's nowhere near the number of people who want to come. The vast majority of visas are for those joining family members. The system is so overwhelmed that families end up being divided for years while they wait for visas to become available.

Legislation in the Senate aims to cut these wait times by letting in many more legal immigrants each year. But there's been virtually no debate on that measure, as Congress focuses on illegal immigrants.

The Lobo family knows how long the wait can last. This Filipino family has endured two generations of separation to come to America.

Ramon Lobo's family moved to the United States in 1994. His father, Maximo Lobo, had worked for a U.S. air base in the Philippines, which made the family eligibile for a visa to move to the United States.

But Ramon Lobo couldn't join the rest of his family. Just as the Lobos' visas came through, Ramon, the eldest child, turned 21. That put him in a different category, with a much longer wait for a visa. After agonizing, Ramon Lobo's parents and two younger siblings moved to California, leaving Ramon behind in the family house.

Ramon Lobo and his parents thought it would be two or three years until his visa came through. But the wait stretched to nine years. And the separation was all the more difficult because U.S. law does not allow relatives abroad to even visit family in the United States once they've petitioned to live permanently in the United States. They are presumed to be at high risk for overstaying their visa. Even when Lobo's mother became ill with cancer, he was denied permission to visit her.

Lobo's permanent visa finally came through in 2003. He now lives with his family in Sacramento, in a tidy neighborhood of beige stucco ramblers, and works at the Department of Motor Vehicles. But Lobo also left his own family behind. By the time his visa came through, he and his longtime girlfriend, Ana, had had a 2-year-old boy, Patrick. He married Ana after his visa came through, but left her and his son behind to move to the United States.

Lobo has applied for his wife to join him in America. But for now, the couple communicates through a Web cam connection over the Internet. Also joining the conversation is Patrick, now 5, and Tristan, Ramon and Ana's 17-month-old son, who was conceived on one of his father's visits home to the Philippines.

Lobo talks about the cute things his baby son, Tristan, is doing now: dancing to the music on TV, trying to sing in church. Given that he's only flown back home twice in the past two-and-a-half years, he knows an impressive amount of detail about his children's daily lives. But to his great sadness, 5-year-old Patrick rarely wants to chat with him on the computer.

"It's hard sometimes," Lobo says. "But I guess it's his way of coping with it. It's like, you don't really miss somebody if you don't -- try not to talk to him too much."

When Lobo first came to California, he brought Patrick with him. As a dependent, Patrick got traveling papers right away. But Lobo soon decided it was better for the child to be with his mother than in daycare while he worked. So a few months later, he took Patrick back to the Philippines. Thinking of it, Lobo's shoulders slump, and he pulls a blue striped handkerchief from his back pocket. He says he'll never be able to forget the end of that trip, when he left his son at the airport.

"The look on his face was the hard [part] to see," Lobo says. "You know the look on the kid, he's expecting that he's coming with me. Then, he started crying when I gave him to my wife."

Lobo says he could barely make himself get on the plane. But he just kept thinking: There is no future for us in the Philippines.

Ana Sanchez Lobo and her sons live in Ramon's parent's home, about an hour north of Manila, along with one of her uncles and a housemaid. Old Lobo family portraits from when Ramon was a child still hang on the walls.

For all their distance, Ramon and Ana Lobo keep up the mundane chit chat of married life through their regular Web cam sessions.

She tells him about a movie he should see -- "You'll go back to being a teenager," she says. She sees her sister-in-law on the Web cam and asks if she's lost weight.

While Ramon has battled loneliness in America, Ana has had to navigate some cultural pitfalls. When she became pregnant the first time, the two could not marry -- that would have forced Ramon to start his visa process all over. But the Philippines is deeply Catholic. So, they faked a wedding. They bought rings. Ramon faked a wedding photo on his computer. Even their closest relatives didn't know.

"I don't [tell] them the truth," Sanchez Lobo recalls. "I keep on lying, we're married, we're civilly married."

But Sanchez Lobo was a nurse at the time, and that was a problem. Nurses in the Philippines sign an oath to be role models. The hospital kept asking to see her marriage certificate. She quit her job. Now, she lives on the money Ramon sends from California

Ana, Ramon and their children have lived this separated family life for two-and-a-half years. And according to the visa bulletin the U.S. government sends out each month, the wait could be another four years. Sanchez Lobo says the hardest part is explaining it all to Patrick. She focuses on Ramon's next visit, in December. But Patrick can't grasp how far away that is

"He keep on asking me every day, 'Mama, what's next, what's next after May? What's next after June? What's next?' Until we reach December," Sanchez Lobo says.

In the front courtyard, Ana shoots a video of the boys playing so that Ramon will have a record of some of what he's missing.

Ramon Lobo thinks the United States should be more flexible with families. He wonders why loved ones can't wait together in America while visas are being processed. He points out the economics. Just think of the millions of dollars he and others send to their families overseas, instead of spending it in the United States. More importantly, he worries about the social cost.

"A family is the foundation for any country," Lobo says. "If you have bad families, you won't produce good citizens."

Ramon Lobo's parents had hoped to welcome the rest of their family to the United States. But recently, his mother died of her cancer.

Now, Ramon and Ana are planning out his next visit to the Philippines. He'll stay three or four weeks.

"Any longer would make it harder to leave," Lobo says. "This way, they won't really get used to my being there. It'll be just like a dream." 12 min 41 sec

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5397034

 

[Greed]

Legal Immigrants Work; Does the System?
by Jennifer Ludden

All Things Considered, May 11, 2006 · The janitors, restaurant workers, and other low-wage immigrants who've been demonstrating lately have almost no legal way to be in the United States.

Instead, nearly all the permanent work visas issued each year are for highly skilled workers like computer programmers, university professors and nurses. But the system is overloaded and slow.

Businesses say they need more such workers, and warn that America is in danger of losing its competitive edge. 8 min 20 sec

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5399279

 

[Greed]

Somalis fill vacant jobs at Iowa meatpacking plant

Somalis fill vacant jobs at Iowa meatpacking plant

By HENRY C. JACKSON,
Associated Press Writer
Sat Aug 9, 6:05 PM ET

POSTVILLE, Iowa - Nearly three months after a federal immigration raid uprooted almost 400 employees at a meatpacking plant in northeastern Iowa, dozens of Somali immigrants are slowly but steadily filling the depleted ranks left by the arrested workers.

Along Postville's main street, in a storefront that used to hold a mattress store, a dozen Somali men ate dinner and chatted on a recent evening. Some members of the Somali community are renting the room and hope to turn it into a restaurant, said Sadiq Abdi.

"They want a place where we can eat Somali food and just to be," he said.

Federal officials have said the May 12 raid at Agriprocessors, the nation's largest kosher meatpacking plant, was the largest single immigration enforcement effort in U.S. history.

As they fill the jobs vacated by the 389 people — mostly Mexicans and Guatemalans — who were arrested during the raid, the Somalis are now beginning to form their own community within this town of 2,200.

By their own estimates, there about 100 to 150 Somalis in town. Meanwhile, the Somali presence — including some women and other family members — has been more noticeable in recent weeks, as new workers have settled into town.

Abdi arrived recently from Minneapolis, which has one of the nation's biggest concentrations of Somali refugees, and he's thinking about applying at the plant, he said. At the former mattress store, he stood next to Ahmed Ahmed, a Somali man who said he worked his first night shift at the plant several weeks ago. Both say they are in the U.S. legally.

"When I first come here, nobody knows each other," he said. "After a couple of weeks, we get together to eat and talk."

Ahmed works in the plant's sausage department, he said, though he has friends who work in a variety of areas. Though he is Muslim, Ahmed said he saw no difficulty working in a kosher meatpacking plant where most of his bosses are rabbis.

"Work is work," he said. "They are nice and they teach me how to do my work."

Standards for kosher and halal meat are similar. As a result, practicing Muslims in the United States often buy kosher food because it is easier to find.

Chaim Abrams, a manager at the Agriprocessors plant, said the nature of the plant forces employees to work with many different cultures.

"There's nothing specific or different about (the Somali workers) that I note," Abrams said during a recent interview at the Agriprocessors plant. "... This is a town that's home to 26 nationalities. We never bothered to do the statistics or research ourselves, but generally speaking, we've always had many different people from many different backgrounds."

Abrams said his biggest challenge wasn't cultural. He focused more on filling a workforce with "the right people who could appreciate and enjoy this type of work," he said.

The city's mayor, Robert Penrod, said the Somalis were blending into Postville's multiethnic fabric.

"They kind of mingle among themselves, and they don't bother anybody," Penrod said. "Some of them have left because they don't like slaughterhouses, but a lot of them have decided to stay for now."

Ahmed admitted he is still adjusting to the area. Like Abdi, he came to the town from Minneapolis, where he said he had family and a steady supply of Somali food, such as goat meat.

In Postville, Ahmed said, he occasionally eats Latino food in local restaurants, but he hopes an authentic Somali eatery will open soon.

Ahmed also said more Somalis were beginning to think about Postville as a long-term option.

"We are wanting to bring in families," he said. "But we all need to make sure this is long-term. So far, so good. We came here because they were hiring quickly, and I stay here as long as I can keep my hours."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080809/ap_on_re_us/immigration_raid_somalis

 

[QueEx]

Re: Somalis fill vacant jobs at Iowa meatpacking plant

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[QueEx]

Pushing this thread back to the top.

Immigration, legal and illegal, is current.

 

[Greed]

Backlash stirs in US against foreign worker visas

Backlash stirs in US against foreign worker visas
By LAURA WIDES-MUNOZ and PAUL WISEMAN
5 hours ago

Kelly Parker was thrilled when she landed her dream job in 2012 providing tech support for Harley-Davidson's Tomahawk, Wisconsin, plants. The divorced mother of three hoped it was the beginning of a new career with the motorcycle company.

The dream didn't last long. Parker claims she was laid off one year later after she trained her replacement, a newly arrived worker from India. Now she has joined a federal lawsuit alleging the global staffing firm that ran Harley-Davidson's tech support discriminated against American workers — in part by replacing them with temporary workers from South Asia.

The firm, India-based Infosys Ltd., denies wrongdoing and contends, as many companies do, that it has faced a shortage of talent and specialized skill sets in the U.S. Like other firms, Infosys wants Congress to allow even more of these temporary workers.

But amid calls for expanding the nation's so-called H-1B visa program, there is growing pushback from Americans who argue the program has been hijacked by staffing companies that import cheaper, lower-level workers to replace more expensive U.S. employees — or keep them from getting hired in the first place.

"It's getting pretty frustrating when you can't compete on salary for a skilled job," said Rich Hajinlian, a veteran computer programmer from the Boston area. "You hear references all the time that these big companies ... can't find skilled workers. I am a skilled worker."

Hajinlian, 56, who develops his own web applications on the side, said he applied for a job in April through a headhunter and that the potential client appeared interested, scheduling a longer interview. Then, said Hajinlian, the headhunter called back and said the client had gone with an H-1B worker whose annual salary was about $10,000 less.

"I didn't even get a chance to negotiate down," he said.

The H-1B program allows employers to temporarily hire workers in specialty occupations. The government issues up to 85,000 H-1B visas to businesses every year, and recipients can stay up to six years. Although no one tracks exactly how many H-1B holders are in the U.S., experts estimate there are at least 600,000 at any one time. Skilled guest workers can also come in on other types of visas.

An immigration bill passed in the U.S. Senate last year would have increased the number of annually available H-1B visas to 180,000 while raising fees and increasing oversight, although language was removed that would have required all companies to consider qualified U.S. workers before foreign workers are hired.

The House never acted on the measure. With immigration reform considered dead this year in Congress, President Barack Obama last week declared he will use executive actions to address some changes. It is not known whether the H-1B program will be on the agenda.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is among the high-profile executives pushing for more H-1Bs. The argument has long been that there aren't enough qualified American workers to fill certain jobs, especially in science, engineering and technology. Advocates also assert that some visa holders will stay and become entrepreneurs.

Critics say there is no across-the-board shortage of American tech workers, and that if there were, wages would be rising rapidly. Instead, wage gains for software developers have been modest, while wages have fallen for programmers.

The liberal Economic Policy Institute reported last year that only half of U.S. college graduates in science, engineering and technology found jobs in those fields and that at least one third of IT jobs were going to foreign guest workers.

The top users of H-1B visas aren't even tech companies like Google and Facebook. Eight of the 10 biggest H1-B users last year were outsourcing firms that hire out thousands of mostly lower- and mid-level tech workers to corporate clients, according to an analysis of federal data by Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at Rochester Institute of Technology. The top 10 firms accounted for about a third of the H-1Bs allotted last year.

The debate over whether foreign workers are taking jobs isn't new, but for years it centered on low-wage sectors like agriculture and construction. The high-skilled visas have thrust a new sector of American workers into the fray: the middle class.

Last month, three tech advocacy groups launched a labor boycott against Infosys, IBM and the global staffing and consulting company ManpowerGroup, citing a "pattern of excluding U.S. workers from job openings on U.S soil."

They say Manpower, for example, last year posted U.S. job openings in India but not in the United States.

"We have a shortage in the industry all right — a shortage of fair and ethical recruiting and hiring," said Donna Conroy, director of Bright Future Jobs, a group of tech professionals fighting to end what it calls "discriminatory hiring that is blocking us ... from competing for jobs we are qualified to do."

"U.S. workers should have the freedom to compete first for job openings," Conroy said.

Infosys spokesman Paul de Lara responded that the firm encourages "diversity recruitment," while spokesman Doug Shelton said IBM considers all qualified candidates "without regard to citizenship and immigration status." Manpower issued a statement saying it "adopts the highest ethical standards and complies with all applicable laws and regulations when hiring individuals."

Much of the backlash against the H-1B and other visa programs can be traced to whistleblower Jay Palmer, a former Infosys employee. In 2011, Palmer supplied federal investigators with information that helped lead to Infosys paying a record $34 million settlement last year. Prosecutors had accused the company of circumventing the law by bringing in lower-paid workers on short-term executive business visas instead of using H-1B visas.

Last year, IBM paid $44,000 to the U.S. Justice Department to settle allegations its job postings expressed a preference for foreign workers. And a September trial is set against executives at the staffing company Dibon Solutions, accused of illegally bringing in foreign workers on H-1B visas without having jobs for them — a practice known as "benching."

In court papers, Parker claims that she was given positive reviews by supervisors, including at Infosys, which she maintains oversaw her work and the decision to let her go. The only complaint: Her desk was messy and she'd once been late.

Neither Parker nor other workers involved in similar lawsuits and contacted by The Associated Press would discuss their cases.

Parker's attorney, Dan Kotchen, noted that the case centers on discrimination based on national origin but said that "hiring visa workers is part of how they obtain their discriminatory objectives."

Infosys is seeking a dismissal, in part on grounds that it never hired or fired Parker. Parker was hired by a different subcontractor and kept on, initially, after Infosys began working with Harley-Davidson.

A company spokeswoman said Infosys has about 17,000 employees in the U.S., about 25 percent U.S. hires. In filings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said it has more than 22,000 employees with valid temporary work visas, some not in the U.S.

Stanford University Law School fellow Vivek Wadwha, a startup adviser, said firms are so starved for talent they are buying up other companies to obtain skilled employees. If there's a bias against Americans, he said, it's an age bias based on the fact that older workers may not have the latest skills. More than 70 percent of H-1B petitions approved in 2012 were for workers between the ages of 25 and 34.

"If workers don't constantly retrain themselves, their skills become obsolete," he said.

Norm Matloff, a computer science professor at the University of California, Davis, agreed that age plays into it — not because older workers are less skilled but because they typically require higher pay. Temporary workers also tend to be cheaper because they don't require long-term health care for dependents and aren't around long enough to get significant raises, he said.

Because they can be deported if they lose their jobs, these employees are often loath to complain about working conditions. And even half the standard systems analyst salary in the U.S. is above what an H-1B holder would earn back home.

Such circumstances concern Americans searching for work in a still recovering economy.

Jennifer Wedel of Fort Worth, Texas, publicly challenged Obama on the visa issue in 2012, making headlines when she asked him via a public online chat about the number of foreign workers being hired — given that her husband, a semiconductor engineer, couldn't find work.

Wedel said her husband eventually found a job in the health care industry, taking a $40,000 pay cut.

"It's a slap in the face to every American who worked hard to get their experience and degrees and has 10 or 15 years of experience," she said, adding that firms want that experience but don't want to pay for it.

To her, the issue isn't about a shortage of workers who have the right skills. Put simply, she said: "It's the money."

http://news.yahoo.com/backlash-stirs-us-against-foreign-worker-visas-135208422--finance.html

 

[Greed]

Re: 1965 Immigration Law Changed Face of America

1965 Immigration Law Changed Face of America
by Jennifer Ludden
All Things Considered, May 9, 2006

"Congress was saying in its debates, 'We need to open the door for some more British doctors, some more German engineers,'" Klineberg says. "It never occurred to anyone, literally, that there were going to be African doctors, Indian engineers, Chinese computer programmers who'd be able, for the first time in the 20th century, to immigrate to America."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5391395

Still one of my favorite stories.