Sen Hatch says Bill Gates is "absolutely right"

Date: Friday, March 02, 2007 1:36 AM

<<<<< JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER No. 1649 -- 3/02/2007 >>>>>

The Senate had their judiciary hearing on immigration on February 28th. At
the time of this writing it's necessary to depend on the Indian press to
explain what happened since nothing concerning what was said about H-1B is
being reported in our newspapers. To make it even more difficult the full
transcription isn't online at the Senate website at the time of this
writing.

The link for the hearing is at:
http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearing.cfm?id=2555

Somehow the Indian press is able to get access to the proceedings before
the American public can. Could it be that the transcriptiions for the
Senate Judiciary web page has been outsourced to India?

Lot's of outrageous things were said, but this one by Senator Orrin Hatch
(R-UT) gets the prize.

"I think (Microsoft founder) Bill Gates is absolutely right
[blabber need for H-1B and whining about people who disagree]

"I personally believe we've got to expand the H-1B program, as
Gates and almost everybody in the high-tech world believes."

Hatch's unquestioning reverence for Bill Gates got me to wondering if
perhaps Gates was listed as a prophet in the Book of Mormon. I searched the
online version at:

http://www.bookofmormononline.org/

The closest match I could find was the following quote: "May the gates of
hell be shut continually before me". Could it be that Orrin Hatch is
getting "gates of hell" mixed up with "Bill Gates" and "H-1B"?

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

http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/mar/01visa.htm

'H1Bs visas must be hiked'

Sridhar Krishnaswami in Washington | PTI | March 01, 2007 | 17:45 IST

Making a case for revising the H1B visas upwards, the US Commerce Secretary
has said high-tech businesses are facing shortages in filling up positions
and lamented that students from India and China cannot stay here and apply
their skills.

Secretary of Commerce Carlos Guttierrez made the point in his testimony
before the Judiciary Committee that was having Comprehensive Immigration
reform as its topic of hearings when the issue of the H1B visas came up for
a brief discussion.

"... Just on the issue of high-skilled workers, what I hear very often from
businesses in the high-tech field and other fields where they cannot fill
their high-skilled engineering, science-based jobs as quickly or as readily
as they would like," the Commerce Secretary said.

"We have students come over from the world: India, China, primarily. They
get the best education money can buy, and then they have to go back home;
they can't stay here and apply their skills. We believe that we should be
able to do better than that in order to serve our competitiveness needs as
a nation," Guttierrez said agreeing with a Republican law maker that the
current quotas on the H-1Bs need to be revised upwards.

Guttierrez was responding to a statement by Republican Senator Orin Hatch
of Utah who called for the H1B visa programme to be revisited as a part of
the comprehensive overhaul of the immigration laws of America.
"The Chinese are educating 300,000 engineers a year. We educate 60,000,
half of whom are foreigners, and many of whom then go home to their
countries and educate their people in competition with us where they would
love to stay here and work as maybe not citizens, but at least as people
who have the credentials to work," Senator Hatch observed.

"I think (Microsoft founder) Bill Gates is absolutely right on that. And we
need to up those figures. But every time we try to up the figures on the
H-1B -- Ph.D. engineers and scientists and others that are going to be
crucial to keep our country moving ahead -- we then have the other side
coming out and saying we're being unfair because you're taking care of them
but you're not taking care of the average person.

"How are we going to balance that? Because I personally believe we've got
to expand the H-1B program, as Gates and almost everybody in the high-tech
world believes.

And then, of course, at the same time, do some reasonable things without
granting amnesty, and having people earn their right to citizenship the way
you've been talking here today," the senior lawmaker said.

The issue of H1B visas was a part of the Senate package on Immigration
reform in the 109th Congress which failed to get anywhere as Republican and
Democratic law makers could not get into a Conference on widely varying
Immigration bills that came out of the House of Representatives and Senate.

Law makers in the 110th Congress are a long way off from any agreement on a
comprehensive package but the Senate version in the 109th Congress had
called for nearly doubling the current levels of H1B's from the current
65,000 annual cap and yearly increases.

The version of Immigration Bill that cleared the House last Congress had
virtually nothing on the H1B visas.

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