The H1B issue: Yes, American workers, YOU DO QUALIFY FOR THAT JOB.

[jeff47]

45. Could you at least be consistent when trying to justify destroying my profession?

In all my years of work, I have yet to come across one visa petition that I either completed and/or signed that did not comply with the immigration laws in force, including prevailing wage attestations for H-1Bs.

Because as a paralegal, you are an expert in the job duties of software developers.

Also, employers never, ever lie about job duties. That's why they never have to add "and other duties as assigned" to every single job description.

Most are gobbled up by IT, but not all are. (...) In other words, engineers are not the great majority of H-1B recipients.

Pick one. Either most are gobbled up by IT, or engineers are not the majority. Or are you gonna claim that "great majority" requires something like 90%?

Moreover, using a source such as CounterPunch, which provides no back-up to its assertion that H-1B workers lower the wages for everyone else, is not beneficial.

Well, it should be trivial for you to demonstrate H1Bs haven't lowered wages. Just show how wages have gone up despite H1B workers. Oh wait....

Since there are 58,000 H-1Bs available per given year as opposed to millions of workers

BLS says 913,100
Wikipedia claims 1,350,505 with a much broader definition.
So 4-6% H-1B workers, if we use 58k H-1Bs for convenience.. Let's see...is our current 8% unemployment having an effect on wages that's different than the 2% unemployment during the Clinton boom? Yes. Well then maybe 4-6% of software developers can have an effect on wages.

it is actually rather expensive for employers to hire anyone in any visa category (H, L, E, O, etc.)

So employers bother with this much more expensive process instead of hiring or training a US person and don't receive any cost savings. Are you also selling bridges?

Training is quite cheap, especially with the tax benefits and the "you must keep working for us for X years" contracts when you can underpay the now-trained worker. So how strange that these companies are blowing large sums of money paying for visas......or maybe those of us in the industry might have a clue about what effects they're having on our industry.

If anything, the great majority of fraud comes from the L-1B visa

Sure, if you want to avoid having us look at H-1Bs. Since L1s require the the company already be an international company, and the worker must have worked with the foreign part of the company for a year before applying for the L1, and the L1 can only be used for 3 years instead of 6 years for an H-1B. But I'm sure those relevant details just slipped your mind.

The J visa is not an employment-based visa

Well then it's a good thing you decided to discuss it when trying to convince us H-1Bs don't affect employment.

(6) any resume received must be screened and if the applicant appears to meet the minimum qualifications for the job

Here's how the trick for this part works, since it's currently flooding my inbox.
The HR people go on sites like Monster.com, and offer the job to people who are looking for work in other areas. As in, you're looking for work in Los Angeles, and you get an email offering a job in New York. When you turn it down because you aren't interesting in moving across the country, you are used as proof that the employer can't find qualified US employees.

I get about 3-6 of these emails a week.

Lastly, as a legal immigrant myself, I'd like to point out that some posters say jobs should be for U.S. citizens only.

Yes, no one ever uses shorthand on discussion boards. They always make full and complete statements describing in exact legal detail what they believe.