H-1B Foes Challenge Bush Administration In Court 464
theodp writes "Computerworld reports that the Bush administration's recent decision to extend the amount of time foreign nationals can work in the U.S. on student visas is being challenged in a federal lawsuit by H-1B visa opponents. The suit, filed in US District Court by the Immigration Reform Law Institute and joined by The Programmers Guild and other groups, charges that the administration — acting through the Department of Homeland Security — exceeded its legal authority with a no-notice-no-comments 'emergency' rule change that extended the Optional Practical Training work period from one year to 29 months. Critics say this is little more than an effort to skirt around the H-1B cap limit. Because extended stays are limited to those whose degrees are in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) fields, educators are speculating that the rule change will drive international students away from non-STEM majors."
H1b scam. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Land of immigrants (Score:5, Interesting)
Note that there are no mention of non-poor, well-educated people
I left the US, and now work for a company in a country which gives me 5 weeks vacation each year, with pay comparable to what I would have gotten in the Bay Area. And I don't have to worry about the visa crap or whether I will get a green card.
One overlooked benefit ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Anything that reduces the number of lawyers is good, right? Except, of course, since this means that fewer will go into law, existing lawyers will have less competition, so more opportunity to a$$rape their clients. So this is bad, right?
We already spend more than enough on education (Score:5, Interesting)
I would prefer more options for parents to send their children to schools of their choice. This means the dreaded "voucher". Make it so the money follows the child and not the school. This might be the only kick in the pants some school systems will understand. We have great teachers. We spend more than enough to educate the children we have, we just spend it wrong.
The easy solution is to "throw money at the problem" but that is used as an excuse to rid ourselves of the responsibility for making the hard choices. All we get with this thrown money is more cronies. I read my local "paper" to see schools with trailers and look at the changes that go on the system. What do I notice most after capital improvements? How many more people in non teaching positions crop up. Suddenly there are committees paid out of school funds to do work already done elsewhere or not needed. More money means more government employees, not necessarily teachers.
Sorry, no more money. Account for what they have. They owe to the children. We owe it the children.
Education here is not the reason we have H1 visas. We have those because politicians put more value on the money of corporations than the people who elect them. Do any of the three current candidates support scrapping this?
Re:Land of immigrants (Score:3, Interesting)
Or, it could be that they are just malicious and assume everyone is the same as they are.
Or, they are arrogant and self-righteous, so any opinion that does not agree with theirs is automatically evil.
The possibilities are almost endless
Implying (class|race) (warfare|exploitation)? (Score:3, Interesting)
Let me guess:
I want your money, and I want your goods, but you can keep your sorry non-white ass out of my country.
Is this roughly what you're hinting at?
It might appear that I'm trolling, but I'm very much not -- I'm honestly interested if this is what 0xdeadbeef means.
Cheers,
What is this "state of emergency" anyway? (Score:3, Interesting)
Which brings up the broader issue, how do we define "state of emergency", and how do we put saner limits on who gets to say?
Cheers,
It's not money. It's distribution that fails. (Score:3, Interesting)
Instead of encouraging the gifted, the money is pumped into classes for those that are either unwilling or unable to learn. It sounds hard, but some people are just plain dumb. So be it. That money goes poof because you can't make a horse drink, no matter how much water you drown it in.
Second, schools dumb down tests to meet the requirements to get more money. Now, how does that improve learning? Sure, all your students get straight As, wonderful, but that doesn't give them anything in the long run when this A just means that he can do basic math because advanced subjects are brushed aside since teaching (and testing) them would lower the all precious average score.
I had the chance to look at the math of an average, non-private high school final class. Personally, I was appalled. The things this test asked for are fitting for junior high at best, when you compare it to Europe. Basic trignometry was the most complex subject, the whole thing was completely devoid of any integration/differentiation, probability calculation or systems of equation with more than two variables. It was completely spoonfed, not a single question dealt with creating your own equations from a text instruction.
Now how does this prepare you for anything advanced, or any real life applications? Which is, IMO, the primary goal of high school education.
I can't talk about other subjects, but in math at least the US school system fails miserably.
Re:Weak (Score:5, Interesting)
It's always amazing to me how a demonstrably bad idea gets mimicked over and over again.
The problem is even worse (Score:4, Interesting)
How do these companies get away with it? This is how it works. You are:
1. Married to an H1B holder and can legally work. The bodyshopper gets you an H1B visa and tells the INS that *you* are employed by this consultant but you do not get any pay till the consultant gets a contract from some company and you start earning money. Yes, this is illegal but 99% of the consulting companies in the US do this. The employee bears it since this is the only way to get valid status.
2. Are outside the US and want to come in to work but do not have a job. However there is this Indian consulting firm and read the rest of point 1 above
3. In the US but have been laid off and you cannot have a job without a visa and vice-versa. Read rest of point 1 above
4. Are a student about to graduate with an OPT which is worthless (1 year duration) since the consulting companies with their "fake jobs" have gobbled up all the visas.
OPT with it's 1 year duration used to mean something but with these blood-sucking consulting companies in the US, the students either hope to get a job in a good company out of school and pray the company processes H1 after the OPT duration is up. Prolonging the OPT is a fix for the students who come to the US and rough it out unlike the body-shopper import employees.
Although I said Indian consulting companies, the evil trend isn't restricted to Indian companies. Volt Computer Services (largest supplier of contractors to Microsoft, most companies in Bellevue/Seattle, etc etc) does this. I myself was a victim of Volt hiring me during my OPT period, using me for the duration of my OPT (MS paid Volt 60$ per hour and Volt paid me 20$ per hour) and then when my OPT was up, they said "Adios amigo". They contacted INS and said I was no longer their employee, gave me a ticket voucher for 1000$ and said buhbye. I had to find an Indian consultant willing to take me in so he could suck more blood from me.
It's all a fucking dirty business. I have to post this anonymously since uhhh one of employers still gets contractors from Volt. I however got into my current company through another consulting company which will remain unnamed; however Volt made sure they became the near exclusive supplier of contractors.
lies and more lies (Score:4, Interesting)
That's a big stinking lie because H-1b visas have been portable for several years now; H-1b employees can simply change jobs.
take them in and give them Green Cards or
That's a nice theory, except that immigration foes have already made that impossible; the green card process has become so lengthy and involved that the way to get an employment based green card is to come in on an H-1b, immediately apply for a green card, and hope everything works out in time.
Re:Americans are good enough.. just not CHEAP enou (Score:4, Interesting)
How is this insightful? I know plenty of fellow graduates (Canadians) who are making $100K+ fresh out of college. That's not "crappy pay" by any measure I think (these are undergrad degrees, not masters or PhD). Their benefits are also among the best - I know plenty of H1B people at MS who are probably getting *better* medical insurance than they had in Canada! Their vacation and stock plans aren't too shabby either.
I have observed first-hand the shortage of tech workers. We're talking top-tier tech workers, not VB script monkeys. There are PLENTY of great grads coming out of American schools - but it is *not enough* to fuel what I see is a surging demand for skilled coders.
So stop twisting IBM's words. It's absolutely true - there are plenty of talented students coming out of American schools - but not enough. Just because there aren't enough MIT grads to go around doesn't mean IBM needs to start hiring community college code monkeys.
Good summary - Now what about the 12 Rs? (Score:3, Interesting)
- Reading
- Riting
- Rithmetic
- Relationships
- Reviewing
- Responsibility
- Reflecting
- Researching
- Reporting
- Reasoning
- Retention
- Resolve
If I want to employ somebody at any level I need every single one of these.By the way: Now you know the objectives you can ask how they are/should be achieved. For example you can't develop Responsibility without trust...And you have to reward it. So Do you ever see that on TV? Do parents or teachers know how to do it? - - - Discuss.
Re:Weak (Score:3, Interesting)
At first, I was worried that it would cause problems like those you've mentioned, but the test is so easy that an eighth grader should reasonably be able to pass it (pre-algebra, write a two and a half page essay). Realistically there has to be a base level of quality coming out of the schools. The key is don't make it so hard that teachers have to spend 80% of their time on it so the kids will pass, make it easy such that if any teacher is already doing their job, the students will pass with no problem.
All a matter of economics (Score:3, Interesting)
Because the supply of teachers is so high, those that are actually willing to sell their labor for that low of an amount tend to fall into two categories:
1) Teachers who "live to teach" and would do it no matter how much they are paid.
2) Teachers who have no other marketable skills and have no choice but to sell their labor as cheaply as possible.
As much as I would like to say that most teachers fall into category 1, the reality is that most fall into category 2. Those who have other skills outside of teaching will tend to move to those jobs, leaving only those with no other marketable skills (which, sadly, are often also the most unqualified teachers to boot) behind to teach.
The solution is actually simpler to say than it is to implement. The solution is to drastically reduce the supply of teachers while also increasing demand. To increase the demand for teachers, teachers need to have any idea of "tenure" removed. Poor performance = you are fired. No more rubberrooming [nypost.com] of teachers. Also, the qualifications for teaching needs to be gradually increased, without any grandfathering. This will help reduce the supply side. The problem is that both of these are fraught with political pitfalls. As I said, much easier said than done.
Re:Weak (Score:2, Interesting)
We're against H1Bs because they bring dirty foreigners into our country. But we're for making illegal immigrants legal, as long as they have shitty. non-IT jobs "that Americans won't do." (Which begs the question, who will do those jobs once those people are Americans?) Is that it? If you're smart, stay out, but if you're uneducated, have at it? It seems kind of elitist, but who am I to judge...
Re:Weak (Score:4, Interesting)
It goes deeper then that though it's north american insitutional and business culture that is the problem. See here:
See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG3HPX0D2mU [youtube.com]
Listen to the comments of "calficication" of kids in the school system and adults in the workplace. It makes a lot of good points about self management and responsibility.
The idea that the average person thinks everyone is equal is a farce, equal BEFORE THE LAW maybe but no one in their right mind thinks they're equal in ability, looks, etc.
"Some people are just dumb and/or lazy. They can't learn anything. Keeping them in school is the worst possible thing you can do"
I agree that some people are dumb, but I don't agree that some people are just "lazy", they are disengaged because most of the time we don't allow their curiousity to blossom by killing it early through 'school'.
The other problem is that we don't have a place for certain kinds of people in the job market that will pay decent wages. That is the REAL problem, technological displacement.
Modern schools are often harmful and disengaging enviornments, for many it's positively toxic to someones development. No amount of accountability will deal with forced schedules and irrelevant curriculum, the lack of alignment of student curiousity and interest with what they want to learn vs the boring pablum clueless teachers, businesses and government elites, pushing their pablum as 'education'. Many slashdotters can no doubt attest to the low quality of the curriculum and their teachers and school simply not being relevant to what they are interested in, so they 'carve their own path'.
I think something is to be said by not killing childrens motivation and curiousity, which we do very young.
Silly cliche? Uh, what are you basing that on? (Score:3, Interesting)
This leaves them not really understanding trig or algebra fundamentals but just memorizing a series of steps that will allow them to do one of the handful of 'types of problems' that you can expect to see on the test.
This is, of course, a problem that exists with testing in general to some degree. But the greater the separation between the person writing the test and the students, the worse this problem is. When you create an incentive to produce higher test scores, the focus becomes test scores, not actual learning. Testing, like democracy, is a 'worst of all systems - except for all the other ones' approach. It's not really a great way to run learning, but there aren't a lot of other options save really radical ideas like free schools. So focusing on tests as the end all and be all is misguided, at best.
Personally, given that many people in favor of standardized testing seem to be the sort who, philosophically, think that publicly funded schools are a communist plot, I can't help but wonder if there's a hidden agenda to deliberately sabotage the public school system, so that then in a few years, one can say "Well, they're really not working, so let's just privatize the schools'.
While it might be convenient amongst a certain fraction of the political spectrum to pretend that teachers are just lazy, overpaid selfish closet-socialists who are only in it for themselves and for the money, and that's why they fight tooth and nail against standardized tests, that doesn't hold up for 10 seconds. If somebody was motivated by selfish motives and money, what the fuck would they be doing working as a teacher? Why not do a commerce degree/mba/law degree and then go work for an investment bank if all you wanted was money?
I'm not saying there aren't lousy teachers. There really are. There's a lot of burnt-out teachers who have given up caring. But a great deal of teachers are in it for the love of it. Why the fuck else would they put up with working in the public school system?
There _MIGHT_ be a place for standardized tests at the much younger grade levels in say, math or reading comprehension (say, up to about grade 6 or so), but even then there's plenty of better ways to address problems. Standardized tests turns kids into robots, at best, kills creativity, and is indicative of someone peddling easy answers. So let's give a complex problem the respect it deserves.
What we need is sort of a "de-industrialization" of schools. The goals of a public school system in a democracy articulated by guys like Thomas Jefferson are not well served by Taylorism/'scientific management'. What we need is varied curricula and more individual attention based on the fact that people learn at different rate, and have different strengths and weaknesses. A school system is not a Ford assembly line.
Re:Weak (Score:2, Interesting)
Suppose you were told on the test to solve two linear equations simultaneously. If you were taught the normal way, you might solve for x in one equation, substitute this for x in the second equation and solve for y. Since you know y, you can now solve for x. Simple! This is the standard algorithm on how to solve a two equation linear system.
However, on a standardized test it is multiple choice so x and y are given already as the answer. All the student would have to do is plug in the values of x and y in both equations and see if they equal what they say they equal.
To summarize, the first method will teach good algebra practices, thereby teaching you how to solve any set of equations. The second gives you the answer already and is simple 'plug and chug'; if given a real application of simultaneous equations where the answers are not provided, this person would not know how to do it.
This is just one example that I can think of. I am sure there are others.
Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM (Score:2, Interesting)
I love this idea though. Unfortunately, since our congress is bought and sold already to corporate interests, this will never get implemented. It has something to do with 'let the market decide, but only if it benefits us. Otherwise we will pass legislation to only aid our corporate interests through our bought congressmen'.