Obama finalizing plans to have your tech job replaced by foreigners
Or, if you're lucky enough to hold onto your job, it's likely your wages will be kept stagnant by the further influx pool of cheap foreign labor.
Tech industry groups lobbied Obama, gave him their "wish list", and he is happily responding in kind: spouses of H-1B visa holders who are currently in the US will be granted the same work visas as their spouses, thus doubling (at the very least) the number of available H-1B's in the US. And surprise, surprise! The US Chamber of Offshoring/Commerce is fully on board with the administration's plan to double the number of H-1B visas through the spouse loophole.
(Followup to some previous posts on the subject.)
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2598332/technology-law-regulation/obama-s-options-for-tech-immigration-take-shape.html
Obama's options for tech immigration take shape
By Patrick Thibodeau
Computerworld | Aug 20, 2014 5:38 PM PT
When President Barack Obama takes executive action on immigration, he's expected to give final approval to a rule allowing spouses of H-1B visa holders, now barred from working in the U.S., to get jobs. There could be more changes as well as the Obama administration has met with various tech groups to collect wish lists.
snip
More certain is final White House approval of a rule to allow spouses of H-1B visa holders who are seeking green cards with authorization to work. For now, spouses can't hold jobs.
Writing in opposition was the Society of Professional Engineering in Aerospace (SPEEA), whose members are employed as scientists and in technical positions at several large companies, including Boeing.
SPEEA said that there is "the strong likelihood" that spouses will have science, technology, engineering and math degrees (STEM), and that in many cases may work for the same employer are their H-1B holding spouse. It warned that if the rule is adopted, "employers will likely exploit this opportunity by preferentially hiring H-1B workers with STEM-degreed spouses in order to acquire two STEM workers with one H-1B visa."
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports the (granting of H-1B's to spouses) rule, arguing that employed spouses "will improve the likelihood that highly skilled H-1B workers will seek to stay in the U.S. on a permanent basis and remain in the U.S. labor force."
Thibodeau: An H-1B cap hike would mean a grim future for workers.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I don't think there are many liberals who support LESS equality in global salaries. (That sounds like a republican/conservative goal.) We want our standard of living to improve even if poorer countries improve faster and eventually catch up with us.
Most of the income gains in the past 25 years have gone to the bottom 70% and the top 5% on the global income scale. Those who have suffered have been the bottom 5% and the 80-90 percentile in income.
There should be a way to reign in the top 5% with their exponential increase in income and redistribute it to the bottom 5% and the 80-90% people. (The folks in the 10%-70% range have had even greater percentage increases in their income than the top 5% has had.) We should be able to do this without jeopardizing the progress made by the lowest 2/3 of the world's population.
The key to help the American middle class while those of poorer countries rise. It can be done as evidenced by many progressive countries with progressive taxes, good safety net, strong unions and effective regulation. These countries have much stronger middle classes than we do. It takes smart legislation on taxes, union, regulation and the safety net. Without such legislation (and we are nowhere near passing anything of the sort), our middle class will continue to suffer.
Doing your fricken' research.
Okay, let me make the connection for you. You made a completely unsubstantiated claim, "rarely do the spouces (sic.) have same STEM occupation". When others offered personal evidence refuting it, you hypocritically demanded empirical proof.
I offered an article which bolstered the anecdotal evidence ("A new working paper by an international team of economists finds that better educated people are increasingly more likely to marry other better-educated people while those with less formal schooling are more likely to choose a less well-educated partner."
This means that those with degrees, including STEM degrees, tend to pair with persons of similar levels of education (STEM and non-STEM). By reducing the number of non-degreed persons from the pool of potential mates, the chance of people pairing with a STEM degreed person increases. It's called assortatative mating.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2385152
So here is what you need to do. If you still think that STEM folks behave like the poles of magnets and repel each other, then you should find an article directly showing it, an article that implies it, or perhaps conduct your own research.
I have a husband in STEM who is affected by these visas, and my working class family (uncles, cousins) has been destroyed by cheap immigrant labor - roofers, masonry, carpentry, you name it. People around here don't seem to understand that Americans actually lived off of those paychecks, and they didn't have to live 10 people to a two-room apartment to do it. Sure, they didn't make much money, but it was a living back then. My brothers did roofing work for a neighbor to put themselves through college (first generation college graduates.) My dad did masonry and painting as a "side" job.
With the oilfield downturn in the eighties, I had family that moved across the country and started their own landscaping business. They did well enough to support their kids, too. It was hard work, but they did it. Now, they can't find work doing that, either.
It's funny how everyone around here supports driving down the wages of the working class, but scream about STEM workers. 
Seriously, how dare American workers feel some sense of entitlement to jobs in our own country? 
remind me not to work for your d-bag company 
And blacks.
And any other person of color.
They don't "fit in."
Glad to see that most employers in Houston don't think the way you think. We have a very diverse STEM workforce here and are proud of it.
Although I'm not in STEM, I'm married to a programmer, and get that geeks tend to have their own culture and tend to dress like slobs 
, but personal religious beliefs and political beliefs tend not to invade that culture around here. The African American guy, the Russian woman, the Mexican American guy, the Texas redneck, and the cajun guy all seem to work great together. The office culture is different from their home culture.
There was a time when a woman couldn't get hired because she didn't play golf or fit in.
Ask anyone who grew up around the construction industry - painters, masonry workers, roofers, tilers, carpenters, sheet rockers, road workers, heavy construction workers, heavy equipment operators.
The fishing industry.
Hotel workers.
Laundry facilities.
Hair and nail salons.
House maids and nannies.
Landscaping crews.
And the list goes on and on.
And getting longer - the trucking industry is moving to that list.
Just about any working class job that doesn't require a good working knowledge of English is suffering from wage suppression, if you can get the job at all.
Just because no one says "illegal immigration is a good thing" doesn't mean they don't support it. Just the fact that it is impossible to have an honest discussion on the subject tells me many support it. I mean who wants to be called "racist," "nativist," "selfish," "right wing" and on and on. I guess I don't care because I've read here for years, and if I have to go back to "read only" it's no skin off my nose. 
Not being emotionally invested here, I don't care what people think.
Which is a good thing for the 95% of the people in the world who aren't Americans, honestly. The USA has over the past century enjoyed the benefits of a grotesquely disproportionate share of global GDP:
See that? From a postwar high of 35% of global GDP, to around 30% in 1980 and 25% in 1990 down to around 22% at present. That curve is only going to keep going down because of the economic rise of China and India. As it well should; I can't think of any good reason why a country with 5% of the global population should take in 25-30% of the total wealth produced.
Very true. However, many aren't look for wealth...just a job to feed and clothe their families. (And, yes, I do know what you mean by "wealth." )
But does globalization really mean that all the construction jobs go to illegal immigrants and the STEM jobs go to immigrants, too?
While I agree that wages are moving towards convergence (the high wages after WWII cannot be duplicated unless we want another world war ), we don't have to assist in destroying the wages of Americans.
Seriously, my working class family did most jobs in construction. Those jobs clothed, housed, and fed us. Why should those wages be suppressed by illegal immigration?
Although the working class has almost no influence on Congress, anymore.
This makes me ill.
