AP Investigation: Banks sought foreign workers
AP Investigation: Banks sought foreign workersAP Investigation: Bailed-out banks sought to hire 21,800 foreign workers in past 6 years
* Frank Bass and Rita Beamish, Associated Press Writers
* Sunday February 1, 2009, 10:47 pm EST
"SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP) -- Major U.S. banks sought government permission to bring thousands of foreign workers into the country for high-paying jobs even as the system was melting down last year and Americans were getting laid off, according to an Associated Press review of visa applications."
"The AP reviewed visa applications the banks filed with the Labor Department under the H-1B visa program, which allows temporary employment of foreign workers in specialized-skill and advanced-degree positions. Such visas are most often associated with high-tech workers."
"During the last three months of 2008, the largest banks that received taxpayer loans announced more than 100,000 layoffs. The number of foreign workers included among those laid off is unknown.
"Foreigners are attractive hires because companies have found ways to pay them less than American workers.
Companies are required to pay foreign workers a prevailing wage based on the job's description. But they can use the lower end of government wage scales even for highly skilled workers; hire younger foreigners with lower salary demands; and hire foreigners with higher levels of education or advanced degrees for jobs for which similarly educated American workers would be considered overqualified."
COMMENTS
Help us Joe Biden and Barack Obama!
Read the linked article which may be an eye opener to you.
Everyone wonders why the American economy is going to hell and it is because the jobs Americans were once proud of have and are disappearing everyday. The American middle class who was also the leading block of consumers in America has been tortured by the Republicans during the eight Bush years and the economists are confused why the American consumer is having trouble spending any money or has trouble paying the mortgage or credit card bill.
If American business takes away the jobs from Americans and gives it to aliens then fewer Americans will have disposable income or be able to pay their mortgages or credit cards.
It is not only the H1B problem. but the immigration problem where a million or more illegal aliens undercut and replace Americans in low skill jobs in America. It is also the insane overseas outsourcing of American jobs, also.
America bails out the banks, Fannie Mae, and insurance companies and they continue to hire temporary alien workers (for up to six years) instead of Americans while they have laid off more than 100,000 Americans in the recent months. That is even more arrogant than paying out billions in huge bonuses, extravagant parties, corporate jets, and million dollar office redecoration.
The vice president Joe Biden is heading a task force on the middle class will fail if it does not address the H1B and 20 other similar visa categories problem, the illegal immigration problem, and the way too casual overseas outsourcing of American jobs. Even if the Joe Biden Middle Class task force is successful to build several million new jobs in America, it would take less than a year for unbridled industry to usurp the jobs either outsource overseas, import alien temporary workers to work in America, and even allocate the unskilled or semi-skilled jobs to the illegal aliens. It is happening today and there is nothing to stop it from continuing unless Joe Biden and the task force do something about it.
By the way, not many reporters have mentioned it, but the general level of salaries in the H1B competitive arena in America have been diminishing for the past eight years during the Bush administration even though inflation has eaten heavily into the purchasing power of those jobs when Americans are lucky to be offered one. Evidence says that salary and benefit rates are diminished for Americans where illegal aliens are located in America. Locations where plants have been relocated overseas have been depressed across America and local governments have difficulty paying higher priced teachers, police, and firemen when the tax base is paid minimum wage.
Republican policies have created the recession by beating up on the jobs, wages, and benefits of the middle class. Now we have to pay for it with heavy job layoffs, a failing banking system that will not lend, depreciation of our homes, the inability to sell our home, a stock market where the middle class has lost trillions of dollars in retirement assets, and the prospect to be forced to work late into our retirement jobs. And that does not include high inflation of our food, heating, transportation, bank fees, utility charges, and just about all other things that are necessities that we must purchase. And we have to bail out the banks and insurance companies. And we have to prime the pump spending billions of dollars to create new jobs.
Joe Biden send the H1B and other alien tempoary worker visa holders back to their home countries. Send the illegal aliens back home across the Mexican border. Stop the insane overseas outsourcing of American jobs also. Solve these problems and you have gained employment for more than a million Americans and reduced the opportunity for the jobs to revert back to the aliens. Just think about the trillion dollars of income these workers could earn and the local, state, and federal taxes they could pay. All of the other task force efforts would be gravy.
posted by God Bless America - Bob @ 12:25 AM
0 comments
