A quote from a Washington Post article:
Second, welcome foreign innovators. Harvard research fellow Vivek Wadhwa reports that immigrants have founded more than half of all Silicon Valley start-ups in the past decade. These immigrant-led, American tech companies employed more than 450,000 workers and grossed $52 billion in 2005. For U.S. companies to employ a highly specialized foreign worker, the employee must hold an H-1B visa, but current law allows for the issuing of only 65,000 H-1B visas per year.
The H-1B cap was established to prevent foreigners from taking American jobs, but, in fact, an education gap frequently leaves American candidates less qualified for these positions. Lawmakers could improve the situation all around by removing the cap on H-1B visas while imposing a 10 percent payroll tax above and beyond the benchmark salary for any position being filled by holders of such visas. The proceeds of the payroll tax could be channeled into U.S. reeducation programs. This compromise would bring the best innovators to work here while subsidizing the continued education of American talent.
First Mr. Wadhwa or is it Ms. Wadhwa scares us by saying that there will be no new innovation in the USA without immigrants, specifically H-1B workers.
Then he goes on to advocate an increase in the H-1B cap to bring in more foreign workers. He is going to offset this with a 10% payroll tax to go to reeducation of Americans.
First, currently each sponsor of an H-1B worker pays in $500 to a fund that is supposed to be used for reeducation of American workers. I have participated in H-1B reeducation programs. I will confess to learning new IT skills in these programs, but there are also several things that could be improved about it.
I worked for a Fortune 500 company whose computer center was in Jackson, MS. Long story about how it ended up there, and I will not bore you now with the details. They did a lot of H-1B training. They were eligible to get this money due to the low-income nature of the area. That’s fine, but all the folks in my classes were co-workers in the IT area making better than average salaries. They also participate because the received payment for providing the training facilities. All of these trainings were of the 3 to 5 day variety. They bring in a trainer (usually certified) and turn on a fire hose. That is they dump a lot of information at you in a very short time. These are fine for picking up skills if you have been in the business for a while, but I do not how it would close a technology gap. Especially since about all the trainings I attended were older technologies and not the technologies in short supply. The trainings had to apply to the existing IT framework of this Fortune 500 company.
I recounted in an early blog how I had read an article on US corporations shifting their education donations for US colleges to institutions in India and China because the felt they got more bang for their buck. These multi-nationals have no loyalty to the “homeland”. There would not be a technology gap (if it really exists) if 1)the cost of education was not so prohibitive in this country 2)once a kid graduated college he knew he could make a decent salary in IT. H-1B workers have driven the market down to the point that enrollment in Computer Science has dropped 70%.
One thing that has made America great is that it is a melding pot. Talented people from all over the globe come here for the opportunities that it supplies. However, we do not need to forget about the folks already here. This is exactly what is happening in the current corporate model that is supported by our politicians who are in large part owned by these corporations. It is profit with no regards to human cost.
We need to:
- Fund our education system, both lower and higher
- Not make it cost prohibitive to go to college
- Not leave our young folk in major debt for years to get this education
- Give them a chance at a decent salary if they take the harder education route of technology and science
The Stimulus Bill is pushing “Buy American”. Let’s do so on educating our own.