Microsoft Refuses Senator's Request to Cut Foreign Workers First

holy **** basso is reasonable for once.

 

This is a bunch of BS. I heard from one of my friends up in the sjc that its hard to get a job. If its hard to get a job in silicon valley then there is a big problem.

 

Grassley is smarter than this. I assume he's posturing for his 2010 re-election even though he's about as safe as a Senate incumbent can be.

 

And my old roommate got offers from google, amazon and microsoft. Its not simply majoring in CS, you have to be damn good at it. My roommate couldve picked any job in silicon valley, he chose amazon in the end but the point stands. If you're good at CS, you will get a job.

 

and I know 6 people who lost jobs paying 120K with a 700k mortgage. These were all smart people coming from top notch colleges. However, msft should be able to pick who to get rid off, the hb1 program needs to be changed.

 

How many of those people lived in the same household? Because despite what real estate agents may have said, that is a ridiculous debt to income ratio. At a 5% mortgage (and this is a jumbo mortgage, so that may be generous), that's like 38% pre-tax.

That makes no more sense than the stupid diamond commercial who thinks you should pay 3 months salary for an engagement ring.

 

while i agree that probably is too big of a house for a person making 120k, keep in mind in certain markets 700k gets you a mediocre 4 bedroom house in a decent place.

also, the notion of 1/3rd of your income going to the residence depends on your income. someone making 300k, doesn't need 200k to live. one may choose to invest more of their income on their house, which until two years ago, was probably appreciating at a higher rate than your 401k.

of course, all this conventional wisdom, is of now of a bygone era.

 

America has been going through a reverse brain drain for the last few years. With highly educated immigrants choosing to back to their own countries and start new companies that employ many people in high paying job. If we kept them here, they would be paying more taxes into your system and creating more jobs at new startups.

This is very different from the illegal immigrants crossing the border that mooch off the american tax payer by sneaking into our schools,hospitals, non-profits with fake papers.

 

Usually the household income is like 200k, but if one person loses their job then they are screwed. In any case there are a lot of smart people in this country. We also have students that come in to study too. Why don't we start giving doctor's H1's so we can deflate doctor salaries.

 

because the AMA ensures that our healthcare system screws over the average person.

 

Maybe the American IT workers could follow the immigrants lead and look for jobs outside of their home market. I hope one of the byproducts of this recession is that we're a little more open to working overseas when the well dries up over here.

 

It is better to have companies like MS than GM.

That senator is not dumb yet he has to talk dumb to get votes from dumb those dumb voters.

In the end, those politicians get what they want, and those people do not get what they want and do not even know why.

Wake up, people.

 

What's stupid is that we don't just offer these people permanent residence. A country can't have too many smart people living here and paying taxes here. It gives us the advantage.

 

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/biz/6304338.html

Thang Hong Luu pledged his parents’ house in Vietnam as collateral to raise enough money to take advantage of a job opportunity in America.

He says he paid a $10,000 fee to be chosen for a 2½ -year stint as a welder that he thought would earn him more than $100,000 — money that seemed out of reach in Vietnam.

But in February, eight months into his work contract, he was told he’d have to go home, he said.

“There is a lot of injustice and deception that I don’t understand,” he said through an interpreter, Tammy Tran, who is also one of his attorneys.

On Tuesday, he was the first of about 20 workers Tran represents to file a lawsuit claiming Coast to Coast Resources, a Port Aransas-based staffing agency for skilled laborers, and ILP Agency, a Louisiana-based labor firm, promised work for 30 months at $15 per hour but reneged months into the contract.

Luu says the companies charged him and his fellow workers a fee of between $6,500 and $15,000 to be chosen for the U.S. jobs; told them not to speak to outsiders because Americans disliked citizens of communist countries; and overcharged them for housing and transportation.

Hung Quoc Vu, chairman of ILP, didn’t return e-mail or phone requests for comment.

Scott Funk, a Houston attorney for Coast to Coast, said the company denies the allegations and will aggressively defend itself in court.

The company never collected the alleged fee, never told workers to keep quiet and often collected less than what it incurred in housing and transportation costs, he said.

The workers were told they had to return to Vietnam because their visas had expired and extension applications had been denied, Funk said.

The workers were here on H-2B visas that allow foreign workers to take positions, generally for up to 10 months, that U.S. companies cannot fill.

“It is ironic and a shame that Coast to Coast is being punished and disparaged for actually complying with U.S. immigration laws,” he said.

‘Good workers’
Luu and the others worked in Channelview at Southwest Shipyard, which was not named in the lawsuit.

“These are good workers,” said Sanjay Rao, president. “We were told by the subcontractor that their visas had expired.”

If Coast to Coast knew the visas could expire and not be renewed, it shouldn’t have promised workers jobs for 30 months, Tran said.

“If you don’t know if the visa will be attainable, how can you promise it? How would the workers know? They don’t speak English. All they know is they were promised work,” she said.

Funk said Coast to Coast did not promise visas, and if ILP did, it did so without Coast to Coast’s knowledge or consent.

The workers knew only the government could approve the visas and extend the visas, and that issue was beyond Coast to Coast’s control, he said.

“Their agreements all require them to comply with U.S. law, and if they can’t work here lawfully, they would not be in compliance,” he said.

He added that Coast to Coast wouldn’t be contractually obligated to employ them because the workers wouldn’t be in compliance with the contract or U.S. law.

$15 an hour
Luu’s contract with Coast to Coast notes he would earn $15 an hour for the first 40 hours and an additional $22.50 an hour for overtime.

He also agreed to pay Coast to Coast $500 a month in rent, $85 a month for transportation and a management fee of $2 per hour worked, according to a copy of his contract.

He said he didn’t know when he signed the contract that he’d be sharing an apartment with three other workers.

Coast to Coast’s attorney said the management fee was never charged but the various other charges were often lower than the contract allowed.

The charges covered expenses the company incurred for the workers, including assisting them with housing, food, transportation, medical needs, tools, electricity, furniture, a full-time apartment supervisor and a registered nurse, he said.

Luu netted an average $13 an hour, according to Funk.

Afraid to go home
Jobless and afraid to return home without the funds to pay off debt he took on to come to America, Luu remains in limbo.

He and the other workers are relying on the local Vietnamese community for help.

On another legal front, immigration attorneys at Foster Quan said they plan to seek visas for the workers that will let them stay in the U.S. as victims of a crime or of human trafficking during an ongoing investigation.

Luu said he wants to stay in America long enough to earn what he needs to pay off the loan on his parents’ home and help educate his six nieces and nephews.

“I’d like to stay here legally for two to three years,” he said. “I am very scared for my family.”

 

What does this have to do with original post?

And as far as smart engineers and IT folks in the U.S., I will argue that while there is a decent supply, but the work/productivity (which is ultimately what counts) might constitute an attitude change (think how many surf the web at work and :gasp post on message boards). There's being an increasing demand in work life balance in the American work place (though some what warranted since I think average worker's productivity has risen in past years; but I would attribute a lot of it more to technology), something that a foreign worker with limited amount of family and social network would might demand less (might not be true, purely my conjecture). But I also agree with another poster that most of the time, you get what you paid for.

 

as with many things, US human trafficking laws are ridiculously behind the civilized world. the DOJ does a decent job with its reporting of trafficking crimes of other countries, but can do a lot more to help trafficking victims in the country.

 

Crazy ain't it? He actually disagrees with the republican senator.

 

We have to think about this from Microsoft's point of view. These folks aren't just skilled labor, but they are rockstars. Microsoft is hiring the best in the world regardless of country.

It would be the same as the senator telling Morey to keep the american jobs first and send the non-citizens home.

Morey plans on laying off Dorsey and Hayes, but the senator wants him to let go of Yao and Scola first. He argues that Dorsey and Hayes are basketball players and can do the job just as good as a foreign employee.

The Rockets would be at a competitive disadvantage compared to a team like Orlando. How do compoanies compete against these other companies, when they are forced to get rid of their rockstars. The difference is that those employees can go back to their own countries and take new technology patents to foreign competition. Rockstars can always find new jobs.

 

Apparently there aren't enough Americans who are educated well enough to put grammatically correct sentences together.

Sorry, you hit on two pet peeves at once. That was too easy.