Skil Bill on the verge of passing
Skil Bill on the verge of passing
Date: Thursday, December 07, 2006 2:05 AM
<<<<< JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER No. 1601 -- 12/07/2006 >>>>>
Take this late breaking news from Roy Beck of NumbersUSA and from FAIRUS
very seriously. The fact that Roy Beck was working until 3 am to send this
alert out should catch your attention.
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Date: Thursday 7DEC06 3:15 a.m. EST
Phone Senators this morn -- Cornyn SKIL Act giant increase in foreign
workers ready to pass
YOU'VE STOPPED EVERY OTHER IMMIGRATION DISASTER THIS YEAR ...
... NOW STOP THIS LAST ATTEMPT BEFORE CONGRESS GOES HOME
Please phone the congressional leaders listed below and urge them:
"Do NOT entertain debate on Sen. Cornyn's H-1B bill. Oppose all increases
in H-1B visas."
Capitol Switchboard
202-224-3121
By the time you wake up later this morning and read this, Sen. Cornyn
(R-TX) will be well on his way to ramming through a bill to radically
increase foreign workers in the tech, nursing, physical therapy, science
and engineering fields.
Believe me, the only way to defeat this last-minute desperation attempt by
Robber Baron Tech Corporations to keep wages low is if Senate offices are
stunned today by the public outcry against this disreputable maneuver.
A swarm of Microsoft lobbyists -- surely reeking of the musty odor of giant
wads of campaign contributions -- buzzed and stang their way through Senate
offices Wednesday, demanding that they and others of their ilk be given
hundreds of thousands more foreign workers next year.
Will you let them once again get their way at the very last minute of a
Congress?
PHONE THESE CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS NOW
I am sending this email to the more than 20,000 of you who have told us
that you (or somebody close to you) works in the tech, nursing, physical
therapy, science or engineering field.
I am also sending a similar alert to the other 215,000 members of the
NumbersUSA Network, asking them to call their own Senators on this matter.
But I am asking you to go to the leaders of Senate and House who are most
in a position to stop the Microsoft/Cornyn effort.
If you have any connection to the suffering caused by the H-1B program,
mention it to the staffer.
Please call as many of these as you can:
Senate Majority Republican Leaders
Sen. Frist (R-TN)
Sen. McConnell (R-KY)
Sen. Santorum (R-PA)
Sen. Kyl (R-AZ)
Sen. Lott (R-MS)
Senate Minority Democratic Leaders
Sen. Reid (D-NV)
Sen. Durbin (D-IL)
Sen. Dodd (D-CT)
House Majority Republican Leaders
Rep. Hastert (R-IL)
Rep. Boehner (R-OH)
Rep. Blunt (R-MO)
Rep. Cantor (R-VA)
House Minority Democratic Leaders
Rep. Pelosi (D-CA)
Rep. Hoyer (D-MD)
Rep. Emmanuel (D-IL)
Tell Senate leaders to not let Cornyn's bill come up on the floor for any
kind of discussion.
Tell House leaders to inform Senate leaders that they will NOT bring the
bill up if the Senate passes it.
in this email:
1. Call these congressional leaders
2. A key fact for your call
3. The short story of Sen. Cornyn's perfidy against American workers
4. MORE ARGUING POINTS
actions in brief:
Phone Senate & House leaders to stop giant increase in foreign skilled
workers.
Refer all friends to the NumbersUSA.com website.
Check for your latest free faxes to send to Congress & the Administration
at:
NumbersUSA.com/actionbuffet
donate now:
This faxing system is 100% financed by the voluntary generosity of the
235,000-
plus Americans who use it.
A KEY FACT FOR YOUR CALL
The United States has lost 700,000 high-tech American jobs in the past 4
years.
The country is awash in American tech workers who are now unemployed or
working outside their field. While the tech lobbyists claim the companies
face a labor shortage and won't be able to keep providing benefits to the
economy without more foreign labor, there are plenty of skilled Americans
available.
Same thing goes for nurses and physical therapists. Offer better pay for
nursing and underemployed nurses will come out of the woodwork.
Each year, thousands of American students who qualify can't get into
Physical Therapy schools because the schools feel no pressure to expand
their enrollment while such a large percentage of physical therapy jobs are
being filled by foreign therapists.
The message to Congress must be that it should NOT foreclose the future for
our own American students who are seeking jobs in these fields.
The Short Story of Sen. Cornyn's Perfidy Against American Skilled Workers
Americans had been assured that the clock had already run out on this kind
of sneak-pass play. Congress was supposed to be in town this week just to
pass a Continuing Resolution to keep the federal government funded.
But tech industry lobbyists -- desperate to continue to hold down wages
with foreign labor -- have stopped the legislative clock.
A near-football team of Microsoft blockers, tackles and fleet-footed
lobbyists (10 of them!) roamed the Senate hallways Wednesday looking for a
way score on their usual last-minute, rule-breaking, end-of-Congress style.
Many times in recent years, Microsoft and other tech lobbyists have sneaked
through major increases in H-1B visas just as Congress was leaving town.
Since being publicly embarrassed in the late 1990s by debating the merits
of this kind of legislation publicly, Congress has declined to pass these
H-1B visa increases in the true light of day, with standard debate and
using normal procedures.
But nearly all inside staffers told us they had received assurances from
congressional leaders that no sneak play would be allowed this year.
On Tuesday, Senate staffers were stunned to see Sen. Cornyn suddenly emerge
as the person willing to bring shame on himself by carrying the Robber
Barons' water and force his pet project ahead of all others.
We sent an email to all our members last Friday, asking for steady pressure
on Senators to make sure they knew public sentiment in case something like
this happened.
Then Tuesday afternoon, we got word that Cornyn was trying to ram his bill
onto the Senate floor. We went to all of our members in about a dozen
states with Senators who often fight for American workers against foreign
labor importation. We stirred up a flurry of phone calls.
We were pleased that by late Tuesday, many of those Senators had placed
"holds" on Cornyn's bill. But those holds tend to have power to only slow
the process down for awhile and can be overcome if Senate leadership
decides to do so. The word we had late Wednesday was that the "holds" were
breaking as Microsoft's lobbyists gathered more support.
You are calling the congressional leaders just stop the bill from moving to
the floor and to concentrate instead on spending bills.
MORE ARGUING POINTS
Prof. Norm Matloff of the University of California has given this advice to
tech professionals and engineers:
"Ask to speak to someone who handles immigration issues. Do NOT be
long-winded. Keep it down to two or three sentences, something like 'I
OPPOSE any increase to the H-1B program. The program is just used as cheap
labor. Thank you.' If you are asked to elaborate ("Isn't it true that our
schools aren't producing enough programmers and engineers?"), then do so,
but otherwise keep it SHORT AND SIMPLE. And make sure they understand that
you OPPOSE the H-1B increase (some of the staffers get it wrong)."
Dr. Matloff has done many papers showing that there is no shortage of
programmers and engineers.
For much more information about this issue go to our page at:
www.numbersusa.com/interests/hightech.html
For me, the clincher in the debate is that the tech industry has resolutely
fought any effort inside Congress to require that their solicitation of
foreign workers be entirely public and transparent. If they truly need the
workers, then they should not object to posting these jobs on a special
internet website so that all Americans would first have the opportunity to
apply for the jobs and then for that website to keep a record of each
company that ends up hiring foreign workers, the number of workers for each
company and a description of the
job duties and pay for each. This would expose a lot of the fraud that
currently is in the program. But the tech companies want nothing of that
kind of good-faith behavior.
Connect this vote with the personal story you can tell about the impact of
foreign worker programs on you or somebody you know.
THANKS,
-- ROY
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---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Date: Wed, December 6, 2006 9:59 am
Senator Cornyn Tries to Bring the Skil Bill to the Floor:
Call Your Congressman and Say You Oppose Importing More Foreign Workers!!!!
Over two weeks ago, FAIR sent out a warning to our members that certain
members of Congress were thinking of using the lame-duck session of
Congress to slip legislation through that would dramatically increase
high-tech H-1B visas and employment-based visas. The fact that over 900
companies had signed and sent a letter saying they desperately needed to
import foreign workers was just one sign that the corporate lobby was hard
at work. These companies urged Congressional action to increase immigration
before the end of the year. It now appears that the day is at hand.
FAIR has learned that Senator Cornyn, author of the Skil Bill, is trying to
bring up his legislation on the floor of the Senate any moment! If passed,
the Skil Bill will nearly double the number of high-tech H-1B visas and
more than double the number of employment-based visas given to foreign
workers each year. This is a great threat to U.S. workers, who can only
watch as their jobs are given away to cheaper, imported labor. And for
those high-skilled U.S. workers whose jobs aren't taken by foreign workers,
their wages are being depressed by the influx of foreign workers who
compete with them. The only one who benefits from increasing these visas is
big business, which is able to pay their workers less and profit more.
PLEASE take time this very moment to call your Senator and tell him or her
that you oppose importing foreign workers who compete with U.S. workers for
high-tech and other skilled jobs!!!
THERE IS NO TIME TO LOSE!
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