H-1b trough Emptied in first day
04/04/2007
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CNET writes:

The rush by companies, particularly of the high-tech persuasion, to apply for H-1B visas has come to an end—only one day after it began.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said Tuesday that it had received 150,000 applications as of Monday afternoon for the controversial work permits, which allow foreigners with a bachelor's degree in their area of specialty to be employed in the United States for up to six years.

Now, what this is really about: there are 10,000,000 folks that apply to get into the US each year. A subset of those folks are willing to do are say anything to get US immigration rights-which are considerably more valuable than anything they can reasonably aspire to in their home companies. Bloated, corporate welfare cases like Microsoft, HP, Intel and Oracle depend on cheap guest worker visas so they can pay employees in immigration rights-rather than cash-and appear like viable companies.

Now, there actually are some plausible business reasons why a company might want to transfer employees around. A true multinational might want to move employees both from and to the US. Occasionally there might be someone with key technical knowledge that would add a competitive advantage to the US—in an expanding market segment—and an employer willing to pay reasonable for the ability to bring that employee to the US. That isn't what is happening here.

The corporate welfare aspect of H-1b is starting to get broad recognition. This story is being discussed on Slashdot.

The first comment:

Those spots should be auctioned off. The more an employer is paying for an H1-B visa, the more highly-skilled the worker in question is likely to be. IOW, we really will be getting those people with skills we can't find here.

Now, the last thing the corporate welfare queens that own the GOP leadership want is a true, competitive market. The reason the "Conservative" movement is coming undone, is it was always based on some fundamental hypocrisy and fraud which will become more apparent in time.

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