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Obama opposes House passage of H.R. 6429

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Re: Obama opposes House passage of H.R. 6429

#51

Post by muhfuhkuh »

commandar wrote: post #42
ekm2 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right,the american economy is in danger of tanking if the country does not hire more janitors.Science and Engineering phds can look after themselves elsewhere,Canada maybe?

California's -- in particular -- argicultural economy is highly reliant on unskilled, migrant workers. Producing food for people to eat is somewhat important.

I would daresay more important than, for example, another social networking mobile app. Not that there's anything wrong with another app, but I'd rather eat.

Re: Obama opposes House passage of H.R. 6429

#52

Post by sounds »

commandar wrote: post #25
sharkweek wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A little OT : Here's a great example of a bill being written with explicit intent of making anyone who votes against it look like a terrible person: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protecting_Children_from_Intern... Written by Lamar Smith, Mr. Privacy Invader himself -- make sure to read the Privacy issues section of the wiki page

Rep. Smith is also responsible for the STEM bill in question here. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:h.r.6429 : I've come to associate his name with being a bit of a red flag. EDIT: HN is mangling the hyperlink for some reason. Copy+pasting will get you to the bill.

I hire people who would be considered "STEM," but as mentioned below, this will drive down the wage my employees can get. I oppose this bill for other reasons too – but since my startup is too small, so I can't apply for H1B visa workers, I can't recruit outside the US anyway.

I care about my employees and at this stage I can afford to pay them above market rates. I don't have any trouble holding on to them, though occasionally life interferes – one employee moved for personal reasons.

These big companies that donated to the Obama campaign – "Apple, Microsoft, and Adobe" are called out in the article – if they are having trouble hiring highly educated employees while their profits are measured in billions, would they please consider offering a raise to their current employees?

I'd be surprised if they could demonstrate they raised their salary by 50% and were still unable to fill their open positions. Yes, I know that many companies consider salary one of their biggest cost centers, but I believe that misses the essential feature of hiring an employee: they become part of the company. Employees are compensated with cash; stockholders are compensated other ways. Especially in a large, profitable software company, it isn't _actually_ hard to pay your employees above average rates.

Re: Obama opposes House passage of H.R. 6429

#53

Post by prostoalex »

wtvanhest wrote: post #31
ajays wrote: post #14

On the other hand: does the glut of tech workers drive down wages? If you strictly look at it from a supply/demand angle, one could argue that if these companies wanted more techies, they could just pay more. Being able to increase supply at will (i.e. import techies) will naturally drive down prices (i.e. wages). The same argument is made about illegal immigration: these immigrants fill low-end jobs that don't pay w…

I can't imagine why US engineers would support a bill like this from a benefit analysis perspective. It should be obvious that if you add engineers, prices will go down. I can completely understand supporting it for moral reasons however.

1) It's not a whole lot different than H1-B and those haven't led to wage collapse.

2) Engineers who come into the US tend to start an insignificant number of new businesses, which, in turn, employ other engineers.

3) Countries that severely limit work visas have not turned into meccas of software development.

4) Companies will only increase pay up to a certain ceiling. At some point either the product economics don't make sense, or finding a dedicated development team in Romania/Poland/Ukraine is worth it even with communication overhead.

Re: Obama opposes House passage of H.R. 6429

#54

Post by [deleted] »

sthatipamala wrote: post #44
seldo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are Visas available to anybody, for any reason, from any country. They are good because immigration is good. But let me explain a bit further. Most American visas are related to a specific job, or a family connection, or education. You can't just turn up and stay -- you have to have a reason, and a ton of documentation. But that's not how immigration has, historically, worked: the original American colonists and…

Could you tell me why you claim immigration is fundamentally good? Interested in hearing more.

[deleted]

Re: Obama opposes House passage of H.R. 6429

#55

Post by drx »

temphn wrote: post #13

What is the argument for 55000 random visas at a time when the US economy is doing very poorly? Is this a game? US citizenship clearly has market value. Billions of dollars could be raised by turning these into entrepreneur visas or charging per visa (it's not like the US doesn't already do this, but the price is way too low). If we're taxing current citizens, and we have 50% exit taxes, why not entry taxes? When dem…

> Billions of dollars could be raised by turning these into entrepreneur visas or charging per visa (it's not like the US doesn't already do this, but the price is way too low)

Every year a number of EB-5 visas go unclaimed (which cost around $550K per family).

Re: Obama opposes House passage of H.R. 6429

#56

Post by Evbn »

sharkweek wrote: post #18
btilly wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they want to force Democrats to be on record voting against letting entrepreneurs into the country. The potential for attack ads during the next election cycle matters more in Washington DC than actually getting things done.

A little OT : Here's a great example of a bill being written with explicit intent of making anyone who votes against it look like a terrible person: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protecting_Children_from_Intern... Written by Lamar Smith, Mr. Privacy Invader himself -- make sure to read the Privacy issues section of the wiki page

I don't see the point of these shenanigans. If they want to on TV and lie about their opponents, they can do that. Do they need the phony bill titles for plausibility? The voting public is nowhere near smart enough to soft through the distinctions.

Re: Obama opposes House passage of H.R. 6429

#57

Post by eaurouge »

wmil wrote: post #41
pyre wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a reason that we need to reallocate current visas? Why not just create 55K new STEM visas?

The only requirement for a diversity visa is a high school equivalent. Considering how poor the job market is for HS only graduates, limiting visas to people with marketable skills makes a lot of sense.

Marketability should not be the only metric for valuing skills. How do you select the immigrant whose child will be the next Michael Phelps, or the next Einstein, or the next Pele?

Re: Obama opposes House passage of H.R. 6429

#58

Post by commandar »

Evbn wrote: post #56
sharkweek wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A little OT : Here's a great example of a bill being written with explicit intent of making anyone who votes against it look like a terrible person: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protecting_Children_from_Intern... Written by Lamar Smith, Mr. Privacy Invader himself -- make sure to read the Privacy issues section of the wiki page

I don't see the point of these shenanigans. If they want to on TV and lie about their opponents, they can do that. Do they need the phony bill titles for plausibility? The voting public is nowhere near smart enough to soft through the distinctions.

They do it because it's effective.

Max Cleland lost his Senate race to Saxby Chambliss in 2002 partially on the back of attack ads that showed images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein while claiming Cleland didn't support President Bush's "vital security measures."

In reality, the votes in question involved things like Cleland voting against a Republican and for a Democratic version of a proposal, or larger bills that contained poison pills.

It was downright shameful -- and John McCain called it exactly that -- but it was effective.

Re: Obama opposes House passage of H.R. 6429

#59

Post by marknutter »

I'm not sure it was a good idea to oppose this. It's essentially the republicans saying "We don't want to let any more people in the country, but of the people we are letting in, we prefer the highly educated". In a time when countries like China are graduating 50k engineers a year, you'd think being choosy about who you let into the country would make sense. And I don't see how signing this hurts the Democrats' long term plan for immigration reform. I assume that involves bringing more people into the country, so ok, bring more in later when the economy recovers. Not compromising on this bill setting a bad precedence for any compromise that may happen in the future.

Re: Obama opposes House passage of H.R. 6429

#60

Post by ibarrac »

hack_edu wrote: post #10
dmk23 wrote: post #6

I hope all the Obama supporters here still feel good about helping re-elect the man. Rest assured he is still going to support amnesty for unskilled illegals who are more likely to vote Democrat for years to come. EDIT: It is pretty funny how the downvoters fail to acknowledge the basic facts about the politics of the issue and instead fall for the Administration's excuses and rush to condemn "conspiracy theories". T…

Chill out. This has nothing to do with skilled/unskilled, illegal/legal. Its about reform for all of immigration policy, not just those who can already make a living for themselves anywhere. Plus, and I hate to say it, but there's very clearly much greater need (not demand, need) for the sorts of jobs 'unskilled illegals' end up doing than the high-skill (read: class) jobs that this piece of legislation addresses. An…

I disagree. There is a larger need for skilled workers: that's why they command much higher wages.

I think dmk23 is right. Since Obama got elected there seems to be a higher rate of denials for H1B applications and renewals, without clear guidelines why. Looks like pressure from above. See http://www.indianexpress.com/news/obama-warned-over-h1b-visa...

It does seem like Obama favors unskilled immigration (amnesty for illegals and the like) over skilled immigration, which I think frankly, is stupid and short-sighted, pandering to his increasingly powerful latino (mostly Mexican-American) voters.

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