[Edmund Ironside]

(03-09-2017 06:15 PM)Fast Eddie Wrote:  

(03-09-2017 06:01 PM)Edmund Ironside Wrote:  

From press briefing Wednesday March 8:

Quote:

Q And then, secondly, does he have any plans to revamp the H-1B visa program by the April 1 deadline?

But I think as the readout mentioned, he was very supportive of their efforts with respect to how we view legal immigration. He mentioned it in his joint address that we're one of only a handful of countries that doesn't use a merit-based system of immigration, and that is something that we need to look at in its totality.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-off...ean-spicer

Uh-oh. That sounds like implied support for a "merit based" immigration system that is designed to bring in foreigners to fill the precious "good" jobs we have left. Let's hope not, but it behooves us to monitor this situation.

The descriptions of "merit based" so far are too vague to give any clue. Even once things become more solid, if the Trump administration makes significant changes it will require a lot of examination of the details, and over time they will have to stick with it or the globalists will just morph their practices rather than revert to paying significantly higher rates to Americans. They might do more of any of these, plus probably others I haven't imagined:
- outsource to offshore firms
- "insource" by directly hiring ... at their own offshore subsidiaries
- buy software with "service" contracts ... where the "service" basically amounts to dedicated offshore people doing what local, internal people used to do
- use "cloud services" where what used to be entire internal departments get replaced by external cloud SAAS (software as a service). For example, you currently have an Oracle ERP system supported by a bunch of H-1Bs ... that used to be supported by a bunch of US citizens? H-1B program gets limited ... no problem. Just have your ERP system users log in to our server instead. We just hired all of those people who used to work on your system, they sit over here and do the same jobs, but it's more high-tech now because ... cloud.

The administration needs to look at all of those possibilities and realize that there really isn't a distinct delineation between products/software/services/labor ... and they need to take on all of it at the same time if they really care about trying to save the US middle class from these people. It will be harder to do now that they have put in a couple of decades of shifting the knowledge to non-citizens.

I hope the reason it's taking time is that they realize the potential pitfalls and want to address it comprehensively ... not that they are using H1b/US IT workers as a bargaining chip with the multinationals. I think they need to take it a step at a time though, and start making some progress and realize that it will be an ongoing effort.