Reaction to 60 Minutes Show
Reaction to 60 Minutes Show
Date: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 2:44 PM
H-1B and JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER
www.ZaZona.com
Leslie Stahl descended to the level of talk show host this week with her 60
Minutes show on IIT (Bombay University). Her pandering during the interview
of Marayana Murthy, founder of the Indian owned bodyshop Infosys, was a sad
commentary on the state of TV news. Murthy was never questioned about his
obvious financial motives in hyping IIT. Stahl didn't even question
Murthy's bigoted comments about American students and WASPs but instead
treated him like as some kind of visionary.
The show was a propaganda victory for the lobbyists who want to import cheap
labor by using H-1B and L-1 visas. Their intention is to lobby Congress to
increase the number of workers allowed into the United States, and 60
Minutes played right into their hand. Since shills like Murthy can no longer
claim there is a shortage of American IT workers they hope to show that
companies have to import labor because Americans are poorly educated.
Let's all hope that Leslie Stahl will give time on 60 Minutes to show the
devastating affects that occur when American technical workers are replaced
by the cheap, young blood of indentured laborers. There are two sides to
this story and the mainstream press seems to ignore what is happening to
workers who are losing their jobs and homes to foreign workers. Why are we
consistently being ignored?
Stahl can be contacted at LesleyStahl@cbsnews.com and will be sent this
newsletter. There is an online form for comments to 60 Minutes:
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/60minutes/main3415.shtml
At the very bottom click on "Feedback"
The following people wrote their thoughts about the biased show that Lesley
Stahl of 60 minutes did concerning IIT.
Joe Guzzardi - Lodi News
Dr. Norman Matloff - UC Davis
Kim Berry - webmaster of http://www.familyinjustice.com/h1b/
Anthony H. Mc Cann - concerned citizen
Saronne Balian - concerned citizen
http://www.vdare.com/guzzardi/imported.htm
CBS’ 60 Minutes Fires First Shot In New H-1B Battle
By Joe Guzzardi
Break the bad news to your children gently.
Tell them the way 60 Minutes sees things:
Abandon all hope of working in Silicon Valley. Those jobs are reserved for
the best and the brightest; the graduates of the Indian Institute of
Technology.
That’s the gospel according to Lesley Stahl’s January 12th piece “Imported
from India”. According to Stahl, I.I.T. is the most demanding university on
the planet and its graduates the most talented, hardest working people on
the face of the earth.
“What do we import from India?” asks Stahl. “Really smart people!”
“Imagine,” gushed Stahl, “Harvard, Princeton and M.I.T. all rolled into
one.”
“American companies,” Stahl continued, “love I.I.T. graduates.”
No one from Harvard, Princeton or M.I.T. was interviewed. But 60 Minutes
assured viewers that the curriculum from I.I.T. is the most rigorous in the
world.
Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems [send him mail] and I.I.T.
graduate made this observation: “If you are a WASP walking in for a job, you
wouldn't have as much pre-assigned credibility as you do if you're an
engineer from I.I.T.”
And, stop the presses! We are blessed that so many of those doors are right
here in the U.S! More than two-thirds of I.I.T. graduates migrate to
America—most of them on H-1B visas.
The 60 Minutes segment represents the first cannon shot in what looms as a
bitter battle over H-1B visa legislation set for October.
Consider this salvo from Khosla: “…the American consumer and the American
business in the end is the beneficiary…”
The industry is lobbying for an increase in the 195,000 level established in
2000; weary, displaced American software workers who want their jobs back
want the total to revert to its original 65,000---or less.
Seasoned immigration observers recall that originally H-1B visas were
intended to “temporarily” satisfy a supposed “shortage” of qualified
American software engineers.
But, as always, temporary became permanent. Soon after the original H-1B
legislation was enacted, fully qualified American workers found themselves
on the outside looking in.
So the stage is set for a tough fight: the money grubbers who must argue
that they need more imported workers—even though Silicon Valley has laid off
hundreds of thousands of workers—against disgusted Americans who want less
immigration across the board.
But this time around won’t be a cakewalk for billionaire moguls who love
cheap, indentured overseas labor. According to University of California at
Davis Professor Norm Matloff, an H-1B expert, there are a lot of reasons
why.
Matloff thinks that the industry may have been lucky to get its increases in
1998 and luckier still in 2000. Now, with the well-publicized lay-offs in
Silicon Valley and a high public skepticism about immigration and visa
abuses, slipping an H-1B visa increase through Congress will be harder.
Too, Matloff points to an increased level of anger and activism among U.S.
programmers. Internet websites like www.zazona.com; www.nomorehib.com and
www.programmersguild.org have unified the unemployed.
Oddly, a decade ago, when 60 Minutes produced “North of the Border”, the
same Lesley Stahl pointed to the H-1B visa as a graveyard for American
software workers.
What a difference ten years can make!
Stahl in 1993: “You're actually saying, I think, that--that there are
computer companies that are firing Americans in order to bring the
lower-wage foreigners in…”
And: “…that there is a deliberate attempt here to--to take the Americans off
the payroll and bring in someone who they'll pay half or less than half.”
Stahl wasn’t the only one who got the drift—then.
Demetrious Papademetriou, former Immigration Official and now an open
borders champion, [send him mail] told Stahl in 1993:
“These are basically run-of-the-mill people with a degree and some skills,
and it seems to me that it is important that we distinguish between people
who are truly skilled--who have unique, specialized skills--and people who
simply provide labor.”
Stahl’s report reflects an astonishingly arrogant “We are the best, we are
the brightest” attitude on the part of I.I.T. graduates. We Americans are
simply inferior. Here’s what Sun’s Khosla thinks of American universities:
“When I finished IIT-Delhi and went to Carnegie Mellon for my Masters, I
thought I was cruising all the way through Carnegie-Mellon because it was so
easy relative to the education I had gotten at IIT-Delhi.”
Remember, this lecture comes from one of the most backward nations in the
world—and is delivered to one of the most progressive.
Immediately after “Imported from India” aired my e-mail in box filled up
with correspondence from offended VDARE.COM readers.
Wrote one:
“The majority of H-1B's that have come here over the last 2 decades are from
well-to-do families that put their kids through private schools and that
eschew contact with lower-caste Indians….
The state of public education in India is in crisis and many of the
communities where we work do not have adequate or functioning primary
schools. In addition to ongoing pressure to improve the public school
system, the WLC program provides children with modest access to daily
learning, either in complement to their existing schooling or in its
absence."
“Why have they all come here if they are so brilliant? Why aren't they
staying and building India into a world-class society?
“Whom and what is the H-1B program subsidizing?
“Basically, what I am saying is that the 60 Minutes presentation is a front
for another assault on America and Americans.”
Joe Guzzardi, an instructor in English at the Lodi Adult School, has been
writing a weekly newspaper column since 1988. This column is exclusive to
VDARE.COM.
January 13, 2003
1/14/2003
Dr. Norman Matloff - UC Davis
Enclosed is the transcript of the 60 Minutes piece on the IITs. I have
lots of comments.
As I said on Friday (and have said in the past), I've interacted with a
large number of IIT graduates, both as students in my graduate courses
and as research colleagues. A few have been truly outstanding, but most
have been merely good to excellent.
In my opinion, the curriculum at the IITs is not as good as that of
top American universities. I have found their course materials
pedestrian and often out of date.
The IITs' main virtue is their high selectivity. However, the claims
being made by the Indians being interviewed here, e.g. Khosla, are
incorrect. Khosla, for example, says that no other school in the world
has such a low acceptance rate as IIT. That's just false; on the
contrary, very low acceptance rates are standard in the top universities
in all Third World countries, e.g. China. Again, keep in mind that
India has a 50% illiteracy rate. So the low acceptance rates don't mean
much.
The point made by the Infosys CEO about his son being accepted to
Cornell but not IIT has a grain of truth in it, but not really in the
way he and Stahl meant. One big advantage the IIT-level (and
almost-IIT-level) students have over U.S. applicants to U.S. schools is
that the Indians tend to have outstanding English verbal skills. So,
they score extremely well on the SAT Verbal. And by the way, it's
real, not just a product of the cram schools mentioned below. These
kids have an excellent daily working vocabulary. Good for them. But it
doesn't mean they are "brilliant" engineers, as claimed here. And by
the way, in applying to a private school like Cornell, I'm sure that it
didn't hurt Murthy Junior's chances of admission that his father is a
wealthy, influential CEO (read, "Someone who will donate a building to
us").
Khosla's statement that he "breezed" through Carnegie Mellon University
is not quite what it seems either. He had been a EE major as an
undergraduate, but was a Biomedical Engineering student at CMU. There
is no comparison of depth of subject matter here; any good EE graduate
would breeze through a Biomedical Engineering program. If he had been
in EE at CMU, he wouldn't have found it "breezy" at all.
And by the way, although it's true that Khosla co-founded Sun
Microsystems, he only played the entrepreneurial role; the technological
stuff was done by two other founders, Bechtolsheim and Joy. And when he
says that Indians have played a "leading" role in so many companies,
that isn't quite what it seems either. The industry lobbyists, for
instance, like to claim that Sun's SPARC chip was designed by an Indian,
Agarwal, but the fact is that it was first designed by a team of
graduate students at UC Berkeley, working under Prof. David Patterson.
Sun then picked up the design and kept refining it over the years;
Agarwal joined in somewhere in the middle. There have always been
hundreds of people working on the chip at any given time, and NO ONE is
indispensable.
No COMPANY is indispensable either. So when these guys claim that
Indians increased the net number of jobs in Silicon Valley through
entrepreneurship, they are incorrect. If Indian firm X were not in
Silicon Valley, the slack would have been taken up, either through the
other firms being larger, or by other entrepreneurship.
I must say that the Infosys example rankled me, especially in the
context of mentioning Sun Microsystems. I just learned recently that
Sun often gets its main job applicants from Infosys, as H-1Bs, and
interviews them specifically because they are cheaper than American
applicants.
And it is certainly possible that the Khosla himself is responsible for
this Sun/Infosys connection. Ethnic hiring is very common in Silicon
Valley--one sees whole divisions, or even whole companies, which are
either all Indian or all Chinese or all Russian; this of course is no
coincidence. Part of that is cronyism and part is nationalistic pride.
The latter point is key. The Indians' pride at becoming so influential
in the U.S. comes through loud and clear in this 60 Minutes piece.
(Though you have to see the video to see Stahl's "Oh my gosh" fawning.)
I fully understand that, and can sympathize. Their feeling is "Here is
India, the proverbial Sick Man of Asia, finally standing up with power,"
and one can't blame them for their pride. Again, good for them.
However, it also leads to cronyism, as I said before, and the wearing of
blinders. It leads to a mentality in which everyone is automatically
"brilliant," etc. This is not good.
I hope 60 Minutes will see fit to show the other side of the H-1B coin
(as they did in the early 1990s). I think it's pretty clear that this
embarrassingly overblown puff piece came as a result of some slick PR
work by the Indian chauvinists and/or the industry lobbyists. It's sad
that the AFL-CIO, an organization that does have the power and
connections to be able to get 60 Minutes' attention on this issue, has
never been willing to back up its criticism of the H-1B program with
actual use of even a little bit of its resources.
Norm
Kim Berry - webmaster of http://www.familyinjustice.com/h1b/
IIT's appeal is driven by the desire to escape the teeming slums that
surround the campus - the lifetime reality for the vast majority of
dwellers. This is America's future if Congress continues its free trade
sellouts.
America can only compete with the third world if we level the field. Most
Americans would not view that is desirable. Ask your congressman if our goal
is to become like India, where more people live in cardboard boxes than
attend IIT.
At 2000 emmigrants per year, IIT represents perhaps 1% of H-1Bs. This
remainder are more likely to have been average students at a mediocre (if
not degree mill) school.
How ironic that Sun, founded by Indian, has been laying off Americans while
hiring Indians. The reporter should have confronted him about this. Does Sun
believe qualified Americans should be terminated in favor of IIT graduates?
The list of companies that were NOT started by Indians is much larger than
the list that were. (Microsoft, HP, Apple, Intel, ...)
While US colleges admit a substantial number of foreigners and California
provides subsidized tuition even to illegal immigrants, it was not clear
that IIT admitted any foreigners.
Do we want an America where on only the top graduates from Ivy League get
jobs? Where the masses are condemed to slums? Is it any wonder Indians want
OUT?
I don't think the segment hurt our cause.
Kim Berry
This is what I placed in the feed back section of 60 mnutes
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/08/60II/main535732.shtml
Is this what you all want to see... millions of americans suffering because
they can't find job's, and people like you go on and glorify these people
who have displaced millions of your fellow citizens? This is only a glipmse
of what is about to become America's 21st Century "Darkest History", and you
have given it a helping hand !
Anthony H. Mc Cann
Last night, I wrote the following "Feedback" to CBS media regarding their
"60 Minutes" IIT propaganda:
"I am amazed that you would jump at the opportunity to spread this
propaganda about the graduates from India's IIT being "the best and
brightest engineers". Why are they not staying in India and advance their
country if they are "the best and the brightest" instead of coming to U.S.
on "temporary" H-1B visas and never returning back to their country?
Many Americans have had first hand experience being forced by their
employers to train these "best and brightest" Indians on the job so that
they could replace the very same Americans who built the systems and trained
these Indians. There are millions of highly qualified American
professionals in the high-tech industry with advanced degrees from
prestigious universities in U.S. that have lost their jobs because they were
forced to make room for these H-1B cheap laborers. The H-1B visa and
outsourcing offshore our systems because of cheap labor are the major causes
of the high unemployment among the high-tech professionals.
You should be embarrassed to take part in Indian propaganda.
Saronne Balian
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