Software group says that without more foreign workers in U.S., jobs may go overseas

[OhioChick]

SIIA issues report on state of industry, calls for immigration reform and education improvements


January 24, 2008 (Computerworld) The U.S. software industry is larger than the food processing industry in terms of revenue, according to an IT trade group that wants Congress to raise the annual cap on H-1B visas, give permanent residency to foreign nationals who graduate from U.S. colleges and back trade policies that give companies unfettered access to global markets.

The Software & Information Industry Association today released a report (download PDF) that assembles a variety of economic data in an effort to give policy-makers a better understanding of the software industry's importance to the U.S. economy. For instance, the SIIA said that software vendors and digital content providers employed a combined total of 2.7 million people in 2006, a net gain of more than 400,000 jobs over the 1997 level. That's a 17% increase in head count, the group said.

SIIA president Ken Wasch acknowledged that the timing of the report's release was a little awkward, coming during a time when the stock market is falling, interest rates are being cut and Congress is working to craft an economic stimulus bill.

"Our industry is not going to be able to repeal the economic business cycle," Wasch said. If the U.S. economy goes into a recession, he added, "our industry will be impacted as well."

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9058941&intsrc=hm_list

Comments:

Compete America lobbying material
Submitted by abc on January 24, 2008 - 18:56.

Another propaganda tome engineered and paid for out of the bottomless pockets of the uber-corporate lobbying group called Compete America. Look down the list at this link for the Software & Information Industry Association:

http://www.competeamerica.org/whoweare/coalition/index.html

The forte of Compete America? Creative lying with statistics. Of course, it would be madness to flood the job market with even more foreign workers during a recession. Foreign workers aren't known to be the biggest spenders: they send and spend most of the earned money back home (e.g. India). And if there were layoffs during the recession, you can bet that it would primarily be the more expensive Americans being laid off: not the foreign workers.

Besides, it has already been abundantly shown that the H-1B visa is used to SUPPORT the offshoring of jobs. For instance, the following is quoted from a PRO-guestworker website:

"Effectively the H-1B visa is being put to a starkly different use than originally intended: it is now a critical tool for Indian outsourcing vendors to gain expertise and win contracts from Western companies to transfer critical operations to places like Bangalore.
'It has become the outsourcing visa,' the Indian commerce minister, Kamal Nath, said by telephone this week while attending global trade talks in New Delhi, at which India is pushing the United States for a larger H-1B quota."

http://www.workpermit.com/news/2007_04_16/us/h-1b_visas_indian_outsourcers.htm

From the same article:
"In past years a large percentage of H-1B visas have been granted to citizens of India. Only 7.5% of H-1B's were granted to Indian nationals in 1992, but that had jumped to about 40% in 2005 and then to 43,167 (66.5%) of the 65,000 in 2006. The trend has been strongly toward Indian companies obtaining the H-1B visas, with eight of every ten visas going to Indian-owned outsourcing companies last year."


After $ 75,000 comes $ 0.00 & Unemployment
Submitted by Colleen on January 24, 2008 - 21:51.

SIA says salaries avarage $ 75k.
Whast SIA does not tell us us what comes after $ 75k.
One would expect $ 76 k...
but what we get at age 41 is unemployment.
In other words, after $ 75k comes $0.00.

This is Creative Destruction and is best
explain by Alan Greenspan.

NVCA repeatedly talks about a process called “Creative Destruction”.

For more information on what “Creative Destruction”, see…
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22creative+destruction%22&btnG=Search

Examples:TECHNOLOGICAL : Xerox, Polaroid, 8 Track Tapes/Cassettes/CDs/MP3s OTHER EXAMPLEs: Downsizings & Layoffs to free up (financial)resources so they may be re-allocated elsewhere.

“Creative Destruction” is also mentioned in Alan Greenspan’s video below.

Watch & Listen…
Alan Greenspan on Income Inequality: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqx88MyUSck

Alan’s new book is about capitalism and what it has done.

Alan says Income Inequality… a huge increase in Per-Capita Income never seems to gain acceptance by a vast majority of people. (Alan makes no mension of Per-Capita Debt).

Alan describes capitalism, creative destruction & competition as “difficult” forthose who have been “competed out”… loosing their jobs… having all sorts of problems.

Alan says you cannot have the (capitalists’) benefits of capitalist market growth without the support of a significant portion, virtually ALL, of the people.

Alan says if the rewards of Capitalism are being rewarded unjustly, a capitalist system will not stand.

Alan says the problem is the “decline in our primary & secondary education system”.

Alan says he suggests / supports the augmentation of skilled labor through immigration to “suppress the wages of the skilled”.

The irony here is that Alan not talking about Investment Banker bonuses averaging $ 750,000 annually… instead he singles out the tech workers Per-Capita income.

Do virtually ALL of the people in our society support Investment Bankers’ $ 750,000 annual bonuses as just and fair (especially in the midst of this subprime mess)?

Is Alan Greenspan a hypocrit?
Yep, he sure is.

Is it really justice to suppress the wages of skilled people? ( nope )

Alan Greenspan lives in a glass house… throw stones at this S.O.B. whenever possible.

[MikeNearMcChord]

1. Fine if they do that, then tax the shit out of them

to finance education in this country! Let the software companies and others that outsource, or use foreign workers pay a high price!

[thunder rising]

2. Don't just talk about sending them to India ... do it. At least they will pay the price.

I really want the big corps to sign 100% development in India. Somewhere along the line they will figure out that the business is less about them and more about the data...once your business model goes overseas, it's not your business anymore.

But if you haven't learned by now .. go ahead.

BTW: the reason they are threaten this move is because they REALLY do not want to go. Exactly for the reasons mentioned.

[Yavin4]

6. Amen Brother (or Sister)!! Preach It!!!

The business IS the data. You send all of your data and IT development overseas, then they own the business. They can literally flip a switch, and you're business is done. Gone.

I work as a Project Manager for evidence databases at law firms. When the DBs get too big for our internal servers, we outsource (domestically) to vendors. Our attorneys are at their mercy for their data.

[SharonAnn]

3. So they absolutely won't hire qulified Americans here in the U. S. ? I guess

that's what they're saying.

They want to hire foreigners (and pay them less) so if they're not able to hire them here, they'll hire them over there.

Jerks!

[Yavin4]

7. Think About This, SharonAnn

The U.S. financial and banking system is in a crisis. Why? Because millions of Americans took out sub-prime mortgages that they cannot pay back, and the consumers are running out of money because of the faling housing prices.

Meanwhile, these corp. asshats want our government to do even more to lower wages at a time when the U.S. consumer is running out of money.

[Joanne98]

4. Can you say TARIFFS? Keep it up you greedy assholes!

[OhioChick]

9. You Got It....

Tax the hell out of corporations that outsource.

[ixion]

5. It's not that there aren't enough technologists... they just don't want to pay us what we're worth

they'd rather ship in some cheap labor and pay them 40k a year and have them serve as an indentured servant. :grr:

[fasttense]

8. Seems like a lose lose situation for America.

Either let the IT corporations hire as many foreign workers on HB-1 visas as they want or they are moving to India. In either case how does this help America? I say let them go to India. Either way it does not help America, so lets get rid of the free market traitors.

[WilyWondr]

10. Great!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariff_in_American_history

The GOP under Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush abandoned the protectionist ideology, and came out against quotas and in favor of the GATT/WTO policy of minimal economic barriers to global trade. Free trade with Canada came about as a result of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement of 1987, which led in 1994 to the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA. It was based on George H. W. Bush's plan to enlarge the scope of the market for American firms to include Canada and Mexico. US President Bill Clinton, with strong Republican support, pushed NAFTA through Congress over the vehement objection of labor unions. Likewise in 2000 he worked with Republicans to give China entry into WTO and "most favored nation" trading status (i.e., low tariffs). NAFTA and WTO advocates promoted an optimistic vision of the future, with prosperity to be based on intellectuals skills and managerial know-how more than on routine hand labor. They promised that free trade meant lower prices for consumers.

28 years of sending jobs overseas is long enough. We are, by far, the biggest consumers in the world, not China and India. The American worker needs to be making the goods that the American consumer is consuming plain and simple. 28 years of this "conservative-trickle-down-crap" is all I can take.

How difficult is this to understand?

[RuleOfNah]

11. Jobs aren't the big problem.

The H-1B scam is ancient, expecting anything to be done about it now seems naive. Techs can create new companies themselves, given a viable environment. Keep the playing field level and locals can compete. Yes, the field is far from level...