Bill Gates Testimony -- Important Links

Date: Thursday, March 13, 2008 9:01 PM

<<<<< JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER No. 1835 -- 3/13/2008 >>>>>

Bill Gates gave his pitch for more H-1B visas in Washington DC yesterday.

Here are a few important links:

http://www.science.house.gov/publications/hearings_markups_details.aspx?NewsID=2117
"Competitiveness and Innovation on the Committee s 50th Anniversary with Bill
Gates, Chairman of Microsoft."
This page is the starting point for the testimony at the House Committee on
Science and Technology page. From this page you can watch a streaming video of
the entire hearing and see a picture of a smiling Bill Gates.

http://democrats.science.house.gov/Media/File/Commdocs/hearings/2008/Full/12mar/gates_testimony_12mar08.pdf
"Written Testimony of William H. Gates Chairman, Microsoft Corporation And Co-
Chair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Before the Committee on Science and
Technology United States House of Representatives March 12, 2008."
This is a 22 page written testimony by Bill Gates.

A transcript of his Gates' oral testimony hasn't been released yet, and they
are not indicating when or if it will be published. The blog below has a
partial transcript of the questioning by U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, who was
about the only one who wasn't licking the ground Gates walks on.

Rohrabacher came on about 49 minutes into the video. The Chairman Bart Gordon
(D-TN) gave Rohrabacher a stern warning that he only has 5 minutes.
Gordon obviously knew that Rohrabacher wasn't there to call Gates a hero or a
rock star like some of the others did.

Overall you will see that Gates is a slick salesman, and he had an adoring
audience which made the pitch very easy to make. Gates almost blew it by
breaking up in laughter when he tried to convince Rohrabacher that hiring H-
1Bs wasn't about reducing wages (55:00). Other than that, his performance was
almost flawless (although I will withhold judgment until I watch all two
hours).

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

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/134123.asp

Transcript: Bill Gates, U.S. Rep. spar over H-1B visas In Washington, D.C.,
today, Bill Gates testified before the U.S. House Committee on Science and
Technology, calling again for Congress to reform the H-1B visa program that
Microsoft and other companies use to bring foreign workers to the U.S.

Here's an excerpt from the text of his prepared remarks (PDF, 20 pages).

Congress's failure to pass high-skilled immigration reform has exacerbated an
already grave situation. For example, the current base cap of 65,000 H-1B
visas is arbitrarily set and bears no relation to the U.S. economy's demand
for skilled professionals. ...

As a result, many U.S. firms, including Microsoft, have been forced to locate
staff in countries that welcome skilled foreign workers to do work that could
otherwise have been done in the United States, if it were not for our
counterproductive immigration policies. Last year, for example, Microsoft was
unable to obtain H-1B visas for one-third of the highly qualified foreign-born
job candidates that we wanted to hire.

If we increase the number of H-1B visas that are available to U.S.
companies, employment of U.S. nationals would likely grow as well. For
instance, Microsoft has found that for every H-1B hire we make, we add on
average four additional employees to support them in various capacities.
Our experience is not unique. A recent study of technology companies in the
S&P 500 found that, for every H-1B visa requested, these leading U.S.
technology companies increased their overall employment by five workers.

The Microsoft chairman's assertions didn't go unchallenged. The question-and-
answer period included a lively exchange on the topic between Gates and U.S.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican.

A transcript, gleaned from the webcast (accessible here):

Rohrabacher: If we bring in more people from the outside, realizing that we're
bringing the most talented people from other countries, will it not hurt those
countries? And will it also not depress the wages in our own country that
people like yourself would have to pay your employees in order to get quality
people or in order to train people within our own society?

Gates: No, no. These top people are going to be hired. It's just a question of
what country they do their work in.

Rohrabacher: I'm really not talking about top people here. You know ...
there's a lot of other people in society rather than just the top people.
It's the B and C students that fight for our country and kept it free so that
people like yourself would have the opportunity that you've had. Those people,
whether or not they get displaced by the top people from another country is
not our goal. Our goal isn't to replace the job of the B students with A
students from India, because those B students deserve to have good jobs and
high-paying jobs.

Gates: That's right, and what I've said here is that when we bring in these
world-class engineers, we create jobs around them. ... The B and C students
are the ones who get those jobs around these top engineers. And if these top
engineers are forced to work, say, in India, we will hire the B and C students
from India to work around them.

Rohrabacher: But according to BusinessWeek, almost 150,000 computer
programmers have lost their job in this country since the year 2000. Now, my
reading of all of this is that there are plenty of people out there to hire
but people want to have the top quality people from India and China and
elsewhere, and they're willing to have these 150,000 American computer
programmers just go unemployed.

Gates: Actually, BusinessWeek doesn't do surveys. I think you're referring to
a quote in BusinessWeek from an Urban Institute study ...

Rohrabacher: That's what I said, according to BusinessWeek, yeah.

Gates: It's not according to BusinessWeek. There was a study that a group at
Urban Institute did that was deeply flawed in terms of how it defined what an
engineer is. When we say that these jobs are going begging, we're in business
every day. We're not kidding about it. These jobs are going begging, and the
result is that in a competitive economy ...

Rohrabacher: You'd have to raise wages.

Gates: No, wages are --

Rohrabacher: If a job's going begging, you raise wages, now in a --

Gates: No, it's not an issue of raising wages. These jobs are very, very, very
high-paying jobs. And we are hiring as many of these people as we can.

Rohrabacher: Well, let me give you one example --

At that point, committee chairman Bart Gordon interrupted to say that
Rohrabacher's time was up, and Rohrabacher suggested that he and Gates
continue the discussion at a reception during the evening.

"I'm sure he's excited to know you'll be there," Gordon said.

Posted by Todd Bishop at March 12, 2008 3:44 p.m.

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