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Kennedy just added H-1B item to LOWER wages
From: Roy Beck, President, NumbersUSA
Date: Saturday 20nov04 2:30 p.m. EST (Posted 12:43 pm PST)Kennedy sneaked back a provision in H-1B to lower industry wages---Phone to KILL
Dear friends of America's tech workers,
Rosemary just learned the most amazing -- and revolting -- development.
Earlier this week, we told you that your incredible level of phoning and faxing had shaken supporters of the H-1B visa increase to compromise and put a 20,000 per year limit on H-1B foreign workers with grad degrees (instead of an unlimited numbers of visas).
We also won in forcing out a provision that essentially would have allowed companies to hire these foreign workers below industry wage standards and in the process drive down industry wages (already in steep decline since the Bubble Burst).
Well, now we learn that at the last minute, Sen. Kennedy (D-MA) threatened to blow up the whole deal that was inserting the H-1B increase into the giant Omnibus Appropriations Bill (which we think will be voted by tonight).
That would have been a good thing.
But Kennedy's threat was to the people who really wanted the increase. And his threat was that he would stop the increase from happening unless the leaders put back in the provision lowering industrywide wage standards!
You may be wondering how this possibly makes sense from a man who has fashioned his career as representing the working people and the underdogs.
But you need to remember that Kennedy has a huge collection of tech companies in his state.
For whatever reason, Kennedy has done this, his action has made a bad provision much worse.
We believe the whole H-1B mess is deeply cemented into the spending bill.
Perhaps, the H-1B provisions are so outrageous now that you can persuade your and other Members of Congress to vote against the whole spending bill.
I am asking you to go on one more phoning spree to your Representative and two Senators.
Find their phone numbers at: www.NumbersUSA.com/myMembers
Ask them to take a stand for principle and against these backroom deals that trade away the livelihoods of hard-working Americans just to curry favor with a few big-spending Tech Tycoons.
If they vote down the bill, they can simply pass a two-month Continuing Resolution that will keep the government running based on the same monthly budget as last year. Then the next Congress can try again at a spending bill when it begins in January.
Here are the key points you may make if you don't have your own excellent points already in hand:
1. This provision increases visas for foreign tech workers at a time when American tech workers have the high unemployment that is higher than other occupations.
2. The 20,000 visas in effect will keep 20,000 American workers out of a job in their occupation each year.
3. The reason fewer Americans are getting graduate degrees in tech fields is because the industry job market is so depressed they can't make back the investment in the extra education.
4. Tech companies have been consistently laying off American tech workers with graduate degrees.
5. The provision in the spending bill provides for the foreign workers to be paid before industry wage standards -- ensuring that more and more companies will prefer them over their more expensive American counterparts, and ensuring that American wages will decline still further.
Would you like to pay your respects to Sen. Kennedy's offices?
If so, I advise that you not talk about immigration but totally about his abandonment of the American worker.
202-224-4543 SR-317 Washington, DC 20510
617-565-3170 John F. Kennedy Federal Building Boston, MA 02203
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