CBS Video on H-1B

Date: Monday, January 29, 2007 11:40 PM

<<<<< JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER No. 1631 -- 1/29/2007 >>>>>

CBS posted an online video about H-1B that may the best balanced news they
have ever had on the subject. Typically CBS is more on the side of the H-1B
advocates.

CBS News interviewed a programmer named Oscar McKee who is trying to make a
living off his own software business. McKee is having problems making his
business work because he is being squeezed by competition from low wage
H-1Bs. The video is sympathetic to McKee's plight, but it ends on a sour
note when they interview Lyn Shotwell from CompeteAmerika.

McKee was interviewed briefly last year on Lou Dobbs. The transcript is
below. Unfortunately there is no transcript of the much longer CBS
interview. You can watch the CBS video by clicking this link:

http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=2405640n

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0605/22/ldt.01.html

Aired May 22, 2006 - 18:00 ET

Bill Tucker reports. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL TUCKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): This fire station and three
others in Bloomfield, New Jersey, are getting wireless broadband networks.
The work being done by a small businessmen using American engineers. But
most of the jobs Oscar McKee bids on he loses for one simple reason: wage
costs.

He bids against companies who use engineers here on H1B visas, a visa
originally designed in part to allow companies to hire foreign workers when
no Americans were available. In McKee's experience, the program is abused
and the wages paid by his competitors are dramatically less. Independent
studies back that up.

PAUL KOSTEK, FMR. IEEE-USA PRESIDENT: The salaries that H1Bs are being paid
tend to be $13,000 a year less than the average salary that a U.S.-based
engineer would receive.

TUCKER: That's a hefty price advantage, but the way McKee sees it, it's not
just a price advantage, it's destructive.

OSCAR MCKEE, O-MC SIGNAL RESEARCH: They are lowering my standard of living,
whether it's me as an engineer, whether it's me as an employer of
engineers. They are lowering the standards of the entire technical
workforce in this country.

TUCKER: McKee says the problem is that the H1B program has no oversight,
which leads to the abuses. His experience is not unique, but he does have a
congressman who is listening.

REP. BILL PASCRELL (D), NEW JERSEY: I've seen too many people in my own
district who have been forced out of jobs because of H1B workers. I've seen
people in my district who have been forced out of jobs by the L1.

TUCKER: The L1 visa is a separate guest worker program which has no caps.
It's apparent that few in Congress care, which only rubs salt in the wound.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's our government that's allowing that to happen. You
know, it isn't us. It's the law that was written that's not being really
enforced.

TUCKER: Instead of stepping up enforcement, the Senate is getting ready to
expand the H1B program.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TUCKER: Current immigration legislation would raise the cap on the H1B
program to 113,000 from the current 65,000. And Lou, that cap would
automatically increase every year thereafter by 20 percent each year that
the cap is hit.

DOBBS: Twenty percent a year?

TUCKER: Yes. DOBBS: And the Heritage Foundation reports that we're going to
see immigration, as it's currently laid out in this country, legal
immigration, go up by 66 million. A minimum of 66 million over the next 20
years. Irrespective of any other -- anything else, it doesn't include
natural population or illegal immigration, because obviously there's no
border security proposal either.

What is Congress going to do here? Tell me something.

TUCKER: They are going to do something. They are going to increase the
limits on the H1B program so we can bring more foreign workers in.

DOBBS: You know, as we sit here and we laugh at the absurdity of this, I
mean, as you're reporting, I mean, American citizens are getting hammered
on this.

TUCKER: Yes.

DOBBS: On a -- on a host of issues in this country. What's it going -- has
anybody got a sense of what it's going to take to wake up Congress to what
they are doing with the visa program?

TUCKER: Well, you listen to the -- listen to the man in the piece, Oscar.
His standard of living is being hurt. The standard of living for the
engineers he hires are being hurt. If that doesn't wake them up, Lou, I
don't know what it's going to take to get our elected officials woken up.

DOBBS: And the immigration system in this country is so broken that people
coming into this country, primarily from Mexico and Central America,
working in agriculture, the horse industry, who have visas, who have
entered the country legally, have to leave the country in order to have
that visa extended and apply for its extension. And this Congress is
talking about in that sense moving as many as 20 million illegal immigrants
to the head of the line. And keep saying they are not moving anyone to the
head of the line.

It's an absurdity beyond even the beginning of understanding.

Bill, thank you very much.

Newsletter Homepage:
http://www.JobDestruction.com/shameh1b/JobDestructionNews.htm

Support this Newsletter and www.JobDestruction.com by donating:
www.zazona.com/Donations.htm

To Be removed from this mailing list, reply to this
email with UNSUbSCRIBE in the subject window

Back to archives