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updated: 2022-09-18
 

"What shades we are, what shadows we pursue!" --- William Pitt (quoted in Alfred North Whitehead 1927, 1955 _Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect_ pg48)

 
 

2013 May

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"In 2004 the world counted 175M 'documented' international migrants, 3% of humanity.   Perhaps half as many again were 'undocumented'.   Still more were internal migrants, 150M in China alone, drawn from rural hinterlands to fast-growing urban and industrial zones.   Another 20M refugees and displaced persons rounded out the picture.   The [United States of America] and Western Europe remain prized destinations.   The 2000 US census found more than 30M foreign-born residents, or 11.1% of the population.   Of these 13.3M or 44% had arrived in the 1990s.   In western Europe, close to 30M people are foreign born...   A full 58% of Kuwaiti residents are in fact not Kuwaiti.   The population of the United Arab Emirates is 74% foreign." --- Moises Naim 2005 _Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and CopyCats Are Hijacking the Global Economy_ pg89

 
 
 

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Montag	Dienstag	Mittwoch	Donnerstag	Freitag	Samstag	Sonntag
Lunedi	Martedi	Mercoledi	Giovedi	Venerdi	Sabato	Domenica
Latest

captain William Scott's flag for the Republic of Texas.

2013-05-01

2013-05-01
Beryl Lieff Benderly _Columbia Journalism Review_
It doesn't add up; Figures from the NIH, the National Academies, the NSF, and other sources indicate that as many as 2M US citizen STEM workers are unemployed or underemployed

2013-05-01
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
must-read article in Columbia Journalism Review
 
Excellent, must-read article by Beryl Benderly in the august Columbia Journalism Review, on the culpability of the press in acting as an unwitting PR agent for the tech industry.
 
Just yesterday I was interviewed by a local radio program, whose host said (this more or less verbatim), "We in the media have always taken it for granted that there is a STEM labor shortage.   We don't even treat it as a question."   So he didn't give me any push-back when I said that the press was miserably failing its responsibilities.
 
Just from a journalistic POV, there is a HUGE story here that the press is totally ignorant of.   The bill by the Gang of 8 would give an UNLIMITED number of green cards to ALL foreign students earning advanced degrees in STEM at U.S. schools, with NO labor certification.   All they would be required to have is a job offer "in a related field" (clerk at Radio Shack?), and they get the green card right away.   The potential for gaming the system would be enormous, but even that would pale in comparison to the impact on the STEM job market.
 
Wages, already stagnant (see the recent paper by Costa and the one by Salzman et al), would drop considerably.   The remark by Georgetown University's Anthony Carnevale, "If you're a high math student in America, from a purely economic POV, it's crazy to go into STEM.", would be greatly magnified.   The Dickensian conditions for lab scientists found by a blue ribbon commission appointed by the federal National Institutes of Health last year would become absolutely untenable.
 
This transformative (in the highly negative sense) nature of the Gof8 bill ought to be of high interest to the press.   So, where are they?   The recent EPI paper by Salzman et al was covered to some degree by the press, but incredibly, not one news account asked anyone in the Gang of 8 for their opinion on this.   Why not?
 
As many of you know, I've been warning for years of the dangers of the "green cards instead of temporary visas" push by IEEE-USA and others, and the naivete of other activists who think the main problem with foreign worker programs is abuse by the Indian outsourcing firms.   I've pointed out just how much H-1B is about AGE, and that "stapling green cards to the diplomas" of the foreign students would not solve the age problem at all, since new grads are YOUNG.
 
But even I never envisioned such an extreme situation as we have before us now: UNLIMITED green cards, in ALL disciplines in STEM, with NO labor certification.   It is truly mind boggling, and again, something that sharp journalists ought to be on top of.
 
Norm
---30---

2013-05-01
Mike Shedlock _Town Hall_
USA spending on education (graphs)

2013-05-01
Susan Stemper Brown _Town Hall_
this is what religious intolerance smells like
"President Obama's new 'religious tolerance' consultant to the Pentagon, Mikey Weinstein, wants Christian military service members who openly talk about their faith in uniform to be charged with treason, which is a crime punishable by death according to military law...   In recent months, there has been a push against Christianity in the military.   A few notables include a military training instructor labeling Jews, Christians, Catholics and Mormons as extremists alongside al Qaeda.   The Army blocked a Southern Baptist web-site, citing it displayed 'hostile content'...and an Army e-mail was distributed warning fellow soldiers to beware of Christian ministry 'hate groups'...   Weinstein described Christians as 'those evil fundamentalist Christian creatures' who hide behind the 'facades' of 'family values' and 'religious liberty'.   The same attributes could be also pinned to America's founders, whom I suppose Mr. Intolerance would also deem as subversives.   It is obvious, foamy-mouthed Mikey has a bone to pick with Christians..."

2013-05-01
Katie Pavlich _Town Hall_
Boston police say 3 additional suspects arrested in connection with Boston marathon bombing
Ed Morrissey: Hot Air: accessories after the bombing

2013-05-01
John Stossel _Town Hall_
train wreck ahead with ObummerDoesn'tCare

2013-05-01
Bob Barr _Town Hall_
bureaubums bullying food truck operators, stifling innovation

2013-05-01
Terry Jeffrey _Town Hall_
since Obummer regime is obstructing, Boehner must impanel committee to investigate 2012-09-11 attack at Benghazi
"When Ambassador Chris Stevens was planning to visit Benghazi last September, the 'February 17 Martyrs Brigade', which the State Department had hired to help protect Americans there, delivered a message: They were no longer going to support the movement of U.S. personnel in the city -- including the movement of Stevens..."

2013-05-01
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
He gave them victories

2013-05-01
Anthony Watts
record cold in interior Alaska heading into contiguous states -- crops at risk

2013-05-01
Caleb Shaw
beer crisis could trigger ice age

2013-05-01
Bryan Preston _PJ Media_
lawyer for whistle-blower witnesses of terrorist attack on USA consulate at Benghazi says Obummer and Kerry are aware that the State Department is obstruction investigation

2013-05-01
John Rosman _Fronteras Desk_
shortage or surplus of STEM workers

2013-05-01
Stephen J. Dubner _Freakonomics_
surprising explanation for why the U.S.A. unemployment rate is still relatively high

2013-05-01
Jon Feere _Center for Immigration Studies_
S744 contains slush funds for pro-amnesty groups

2013-05-01
Beryl Lieff Benderly _Columbia Journalism Review_
it doesn't add up: USA's STEM talent pool largely untapped while execs claim "shortage"
"In late February, Christine Miller and Sona Shah went to the Capitol Hill office of Miller's senator, Barbara Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat, to talk about immigration reform and the job market for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workers.   Miller, an American-born MIT grad with a PhD in biochemistry, had 20 years of research experience when Johns Hopkins University laid her off in 2009 because of funding cuts.   Shah, an Indian-born US citizen with degrees in physics and engineering, had been laid off earlier by a computer company that was simultaneously hiring foreign workers on temporary visas.   Proposals to increase admission of foreign stem workers to the US, Miller and Shah told Erin Neill, a member of Mikulski's staff, would worsen the already glutted stem labor market...   Neill suggested to Miller and Shah that 'we would have more impact if we represented a large, organized group'.   Miller and Shah are, in fact, part of a large group.   Figures from the National Institutes of Health, the National Academies, the National Science Foundation, and other sources indicate that hundreds of thousands of STEM workers in the USA are unemployed or underemployed.   But they are...largely ignored in the debate over immigration reform...   Meanwhile, The National Science Board’s biennial book, Science and Engineering Indicators, consistently finds that the USA produces several times the number of STEM graduates than can get jobs in their fields.   Recent reports from the National Institutes of Health, the National Academies, and the American Chemical Society warn that over-production of STEM PhDs is damaging America's ability to recruit native-born talent, and advise universities to limit the number of doctorates they produce, especially in the severely glutted life sciences.   In 2012 June, for instance, the American Chemical Society's annual survey found record unemployment among its members, with only 38% of new PhDs, 50% of new master's graduates, and 33% of new bachelor's graduates in full-time jobs.   Overall, STEM unemployment in the US is more than twice its pre-recession level, according to congressional testimony by Ron Hira, a science-labor-force expert at the Rochester Institute of Technology...   many leading STEM-labor-force experts agree that the great majority of stem workers entering the country contribute less to innovative breakthroughs or job growth for Americans than to the bottom lines of the companies and universities that hire them.   Temporary visas allow employers to pay skilled workers below-market wages, and these visas are valid only for specific [targeted] jobs...   'When the companies say they can't hire anyone, they mean that they can't hire anyone at the wage they want to pay.', said Jennifer Hunt, a Rutgers University labor economist, at last year's Mortimer Caplin Conference on the World Economy. Research by Hira, Norman Matloff of the University of California-Davis, Richard Freeman of Harvard, and numerous others has shown how temporary visas have allowed employers to flood STEM labor markets and hold down the cost of tech workers and scientists doing grant-supported university research. Wages in the IT industry...have been essentially flat or declining in the past decade, which coincides with the rising number of guest-workers on temporary visas.   In his new book, _Why Good People Can't Get Jobs_, Peter Cappelli, a human-resources specialist at the Wharton School, concludes that companies' reported hiring difficulties don't arise from a shortage of [able] workers, but from rigid recruitment practices that use narrow categories and definitions and don't take advantage of the applicants' full range of abilities.   Companies so routinely evade protections in the visa system designed to prevent displacement of American citizens that immigration lawyers have produced videos about how it is done.   For instance, tech companies that import temporary workers, mainly recent graduates from India, commonly discard more expensive, experienced employees in their late 30s or early 40s, often forcing them, as Ron Hira and other labor-force researchers note, to train their replacements as they exit.   Age discrimination, Hira says, is an open secret in the tech world...   The proposal before congress to automatically grant green cards to all STEM students with graduate degrees -- regardless of field, origin, or quality -- would exacerbate the problem of already overcrowded markets, according to new research by Hal Salzman of Rutgers University, Daniel Keuhn of American University, and B. Lindsay Lowell of Georgetown University.   It also would benefit universities facing tough financial times by dramatically increasing the allure of American graduate schools, and thus the income potential to universities.   And, as Republican senator Chuck Grassley said at a 2011 hearing, it would 'further erode the opportunities of American students.   Universities would in essence become visa mills.'   Academic departments generally determine how many graduate students they admit, or post-docs they hire, based on the teaching and research work-force they need, not on the career opportunities awaiting young scientists.   Unlike companies, universities have access to unlimited temporary-worker visas.   This allows universities to hire skilled lab workers and pay them very low, trainee wages.   Post-docs are an especially good deal for professors running labs because they don't require tuition, which must be paid out of the professors' grants, notes Paula Stephan, a labor economist at Georgia State University, in her book _How Economics Shapes Science_...   a nationwide survey by political scientist David Hart and economist Zoltan Acs of George Mason University reached a different conclusion. In a 2011 piece in Economic Development Quarterly, Hart and Acs note that between 40% and 75% of new jobs are created by no more than 10% of new businesses—the so-called high-impact firms that have rapidly expanding sales and employment. In their survey of high-impact technology firms, only 16% had at least one foreign-born founder, and immigrants constituted about 13% of total founders—a figure close to the immigrant share of the general population. But the more fundamental problem with Wadhwa's study, Hart and Acs suggest, is that it does not [examine or] report the total number of founders at a given company, making conclusions about immigrants' overall contribution impossible to quantify."

2013-05-01
Liz Peek _Financial Times_
Obummer's war against liberty, productivity and independence: attacking 401(k)

2013-05-01 (5773 Iyar 21)
Michelle Malkin _Jewish World Review_
the Camp Bastion cover-up
Michelle Malkin
"Do you remember what happened last year on 2012/09/14?   Where are the White House phone calls for the families who continue to grieve?   What is being done to prevent another fatal attack like the one on 2012/09/14?   And why is the full truth being withheld from the American public?   Benghazi isn't the only bloody disaster being covered up by the Obama administration.   As I reported in a series of columns and blog posts last fall, three days after the deadly siege on our consulate in Libya, the Taliban waged an intricately coordinated, brutal attack on Camp Bastion in Afghanistan.   Two heroic U.S. Marines -- lieutenant-colonel Christopher Raible and sergeant Bradley Atwell -- were killed in the battle.   Many surviving Marines have been honored for their brave, quick-thinking actions to save their comrades and civilians caught in the cross-fire.   Family members are angry that military brass are still trying to suppress details of the fateful budget and strategic decisions that led to the attack.   But they won't stay silent.   'This is political.', one Camp Bastion relative told me this week.   'Just like Benghazi, they don't want people to know.'   In case you were sleeping or had forgotten: The meticulously coordinated siege at Camp Bastion by 15 Taliban infiltrators -- dressed in American combat fatigues and armed with assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons -- resulted not only in two deaths and nearly a dozen injuries, but also in the most devastating loss of U.S. air-power since VietNam.   Camp Bastion is Britain's main military base in Afghanistan; it's adjacent to our Marines' Camp Leatherneck...   Major-general Charles Gurganus (Mark Gurganus), who recently returned to the U.S.A. after commanding coalition forces in Afghanistan, was ultimately responsible for skimping on security patrols.   'He might as well have made it easier for the Taliban by cutting the perimeter fence himself and putting out the welcome mat.', Hatheway told me.   This is the same Gurganus who ordered Marines to disarm -- immediately after the failed jihadi attack on Panetta last year -- because he wanted them 'to look just like our (unarmed) Afghan partners'."
2011-08-15: Nick Hopkins: Manchester Guardian: Inside Camp Bastion
2012-02-24: BBC: new details of Taliban assault on Camp Bastion (map, images)
2012-09-16: Bill Roggio: Long War Journal: Taliban assault on Camp Bastion
2012-09-29: Michelle Malkin: deafening silence about attack on Camp Bastion
2012-10-12: Emma Graham-Harrison: Manchester Guardian: NATO troops tell of Taliban fire-fight inside Camp Bastian
2013-02-04: Tom Bowman: WTEB National Socialist Radio: Pentagon to brief congress on 2012-09-14 Camp Bastion attack
2013-02-27: Belfast Ireland Telegraph: rockets fired at Camp Bastion
Jimbo Wales's wikipedia

2013-05-01 (5773 Iyar 21)
Jessica Shugart _Jewish World Review_
fNMR scans can predict math ability, tutoring effectiveness
"the kids who responded the best to tutoring tended to have a larger and more active hippocampus...   Menon said he hopes that someday brain MRIs -- which would cost parents upward of $500 -- will help guide educators about the best approaches for teaching math."

2013-05-01 (5773 Iyar 21)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
leftist suffering and confusion
Town Hall
"[Leftists] demonstrate they understand the law of demand -- that raising the cost of something lessens the amount taken -- but they deny that it applies to labor...   [Leftists] suffer confusion and cognitive dissonance because the rest of us don't help explain things to them."

2013-05-01 (5773 Iyar 21)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
is thinking obsolete?
Town Hall
"An e-mail from one young man simply asked for the sources of some facts about gun control that were mentioned in a recent column.   It is good to check out the facts -- especially if you check out the facts on both sides of an issue.   By contrast, another man simply denounced me because of what was said in that column.   He did not ask for my sources but simply made contrary assertions, as if his assertions must be correct and therefore mine must be wrong.   He identified himself as a physician, and the claims that he made about guns were claims that had been made years ago in a medical journal -- and thoroughly discredited since then.   He might have learned that, if we had engaged in a back and forth discussion, but it was clear from his letter that his goal was not debate but denunciation.   That is often the case these days.   It is always amazing how many serious issues are not discussed seriously, but instead simply generate assertions and counter-assertions.   On television talk shows, people on opposite sides often just try to shout each other down.   There is a remarkable range of ways of seeming to argue without actually producing any coherent argument.   Decades of dumbed-down education no doubt have something to do with this, but there is more to it than that.   Education is not merely neglected in many of our schools today, but is replaced to a great extent by ideological indoctrination..."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-05-02

2013-05-02 05:30PDT (08:30EDT) (12:30GMT) (14:30 Jerusalem)
Tom Stengle & Tony Sznoluch _DoL ETA_
un-employment insurance weekly claims report
DoL home page
DoL OPA press releases
historical data
DoL regulations
"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 298,692 in the week ending April 27, a decrease of -27,143 from the previous week.   There were 333,476 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.3% during the week ending April 20, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week's unrevised rate.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 3,016,148, a decrease of 87,321 from the preceding week's revised level of 3,103,469.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.6% and the volume was 3,292,783.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending April 13 was 4,963,449, a decrease of 108,631 from the previous week.   There were 6,597,715 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2012.   Extended Benefits were available only in Alaska during the week ending April 6...   States reported 1,777,737 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending April 13, a decrease of 12,579 from the prior week.   There were 2,724,432 persons claiming EUC in the comparable week in 2012.   EUC weekly claims include first, second, third, and fourth tier activity.   [Note that the population used for calculating the "insured unemployment rate" (the divisor) changes roughly quarterly:
to 132,623,886 beginning 2007-10-06;
to 133,010,953 beginning 2008-01-05;
to 133,382,559 beginning 2008-04-05;
to 133,690,617 beginning 2008-07-05;
to 133,902,387 beginning 2008-10-04;
to 133,886,830 beginning 2009-01-03;
to 133,683,433 beginning 2009-04-04;
to 133,078,480 beginning 2009-07-04;
to 133,823,421 beginning 2009-10-03;
to 131,823,421 beginning 2009-10-17;
to 130,128,328 beginning 2010-01-02;
to 128,298,468 beginning 2010-04-03;
to 126,763,245 beginning 2010-07-03;
to 125,845,577 beginning 2010-09-25;
to 125,560,066 beginning 2011-01-15;
to 125,572,661 beginning 2011-04-02;
to 125,807,389 beginning 2011-07-02;
to 126,188,733 beginning 2011-10-01;
to 126,579,970 beginning 2012-01-01;
to 127,048,587 beginning 2012-04-07;
to 127,495,952 beginning 2012-07-14;
to 128,066,082 beginning 2012-10-06;
to 128,613,913 beginning 2013-01-05;
to 129,204,324 beginning 2013-04-06.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2013-05-02
Matt O'Brien _Inside Bay Area_
Immigration reform: Sili Valley's corrupt hiring practices threatened
San Jose CA Mercury News

2013-05-02
Anthony Watts
SJSU meteorology profs burn books rather than engage in rational argument

2013-05-02
Christopher Ford _PJ Media_
cyber-espionage and Red China's dream of "national return"
"Cyber-attacks upon American computer networks, and the theft of massive amounts of information by means of cyber-espionage -- both against private industry and against the U.S. government itself -- are very much in the news of late, and the People's Republic of China is increasingly being fingered as the culprit.   Since the mid-2000s, Western cyber-security experts have been reporting a dramatic rise in cyber-attacks apparently originating in [Red China], a phenomenon that has come to be known in such circles as the 'advanced persistent threat' (APT).   The office of the U.S. government's National Counterintelligence Executive recently reported that 'Chinese actors are the world's most active and persistent perpetrators of economic espionage.'   [Red China] hardly has a monopoly on modern cyber-espionage against Western targets, but [Red Chinese] hackers are acquiring an unequaled notoriety from garden-variety industrial espionage, to attacks on U.S. defense contractors and government entities, to intimidation and message-control games such as the cyber-attacks on the New York Times after it ran an embarrassing exposé of apparent corruption in the family of [then-Red Chinese] premier Wen Jiabao.   Because of the ease with which cyber-attackers can conceal their points of origin, however, it has always been difficult to prove what has none the less seemed ever more clear to cyber-security experts for several years -- namely, that the [Red Chinese] government is itself responsible for much of the APT, directly orchestrating such attacks itself, enlisting 'cyber-privateers' to invade Western networks on its behalf, or (more likely) doing both of these things."

2013-05-02
Jordan Weissmann _Atlantic_
only 65% of college CEOs say it is "very important" that grads get good jobs

2013-05-02
Neil Munro _Daily Caller_
New immigration bill has more waivers and exceptions per page than ObummerDoesn'tCare
"The senate's 'Gang of 8' has released a new version of the immigration bill that contains 999 references to waivers, exemptions and political discretion.   The revised 867-page bill contains multiple changes from the first 844-page version, released April 18...   The bill includes roughly 1.14 waivers or exemptions per page.   By comparison, the 2,409-page [ObummerDoesn'tCare] law includes 0.78 waivers and exemptions per page.   The [ObummerDoesn'tCare] law contains 1,882 mentions of 'unless', 'notwithstanding', 'except', 'exempt', 'waivers', 'discretion' and 'may'.   'Waiver' is mentioned 209 times in the law.   The new draft of the immigration bill -- which will allow officials much control over the supply and cost of labor needed by American companies -- has 85 mentions of 'unless', 150 uses of 'except', 18 inclusions of 'exempt', 92 mentions of 'waiver', 42 offers of 'discretion', 47 uses of 'notwithstanding' and 618 uses of 'may' in the 876-page bill.   The Daily Caller subtracted mentions of 'may not' from both bills' final tally of exemptions and options...   The limited-immigration group NumbersUSA has estimated that 33M extra people would be able to apply to live in the [United States of America] because of the immigration bill, under the terms of the original draft."

2013-05-02
Alec Rawls
litium ore found in Wyoming
"[T]he Rock Springs Uplift's 18M tons of potential lithium reserves is equivalent to roughly 720 years of current global lithium production."

2013-05-02
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
for the memory of an uncle she never knew

2013-05-02
Mathew J. Schwartz _Information Week_/_UBM_
Red China hacked defense contractor, QinetiQ over a 3 year period, taking tera-bytes of secret data
"For 3 years, boutique defense contractor QinetiQ was compromised by an advanced persistent threat (APT) attack group operating from [Red China].   During that time attackers accessed information about cutting-edge U.S. military drone and robot weapons systems and brought competing products to market...   investigators hired by QinetiQ -- as well as HBGary e-mails that were stolen and leaked by Anonymous -- as sources.   HBGary was one of several firms hired by the defense contractor to investigate apparent intrusions...   launched by the Shanghai-based Comment Crew.   Earlier this year, a report from security firm Mandiant tied the group -- which it dubbed APT1 -- to attacks that compromised 141 businesses, none of which it named, across 20 industries.   According to Mandiant, the attackers weren't just supported by China, but actually part of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Unit 61398, which is an elite military hacking unit...   As a result, investigators said that tera-bytes of data, including classified information relating to military robotics, drones and the Army's helicopter fleet, including PIN codes that could now be used to identify helicopters' deployment and combat-readiness, were stolen...   But many reported incidents, such as the theft of information relating to the advanced Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighter jet in 2009, have been far more extensive than public accounts have suggested.   Interestingly, [Red China] conducted the first test flight of its own stealth fighter in 2012 November...   the theft of information relating to the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor lead some intelligence officials to suggest that it might be unsuitable for combat because stolen information might be used to compromise critical systems."

2013-05-02
Tara Parker-Pope _NYTimes_
suicide rate for men in their 50s rose sharply in USA
"In 2010 there were 33,687 deaths from motor vehicle crashes and 38,364 suicides...   From 1999 to 2010, the suicide rate among Americans ages 35 to 64 rose by nearly 30%, to 17.6 deaths per 100K people, up from 13.7.   Although suicide rates are growing among both middle-aged men and women, far more men take their own lives.   The suicide rate for middle-aged men was 27.3 deaths per 100K, while for women it was 8.1 deaths per 100K.   The most pronounced increases were seen among men in their 50s, a group in which suicide rates jumped by nearly 50%, to about 30 per 100K.   For women, the largest increase was seen in those ages 60 to 64, among whom rates increased by nearly 60%, to 7.0 per 100K."

2013-05-02
W.D. Reasoner _Center for Immigration Studies_
nothing good left un-mangled: senate bill (S744) puts national security & public safety at risk
"the more I read, the more I feel sullied.   To say it is deeply flawed is a sad under-statement, like describing a catastrophic category-5 hurricane as a 'bad storm'...   Section 2104(d)...is a forgiveness clause that excuses failure to register by aliens from certain special interest countries.   It does so by gutting the relevant portion of the federal regulations directing the registration.   Designated 'special interest countries' are those placed on a list out of concern that they are breeding grounds of [force initiation], and whose nationals merit more scrutiny...   When nationals from designated countries arrived or departed, their activity required registration.   Such registration was to ensure that their movements in and out of the [United States of America] could be tracked...   Although the senate bill would gut the regulation, in 2011 May the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) -- whose primary mission is to protect the homeland against terrorism -- took the enlightened step of eliminating the list of countries whose nationals required registration...   Now the Gang of 8 want to ensure that no list can ever be resurrected by future administrations, by statutorily killing the underlying regulation...   our flawed naturalization process, and the harsh reality that background checks aren't very effective and we should therefore be wary of admitting huge numbers of [visitors, students, guest-workers and immigrants]...   Kadyrbayev flunked out of the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth at the end of the Fall semester, thereby forfeiting his student visa, but stayed in the USA anyway.   Tazhayakov's visa had been 'terminated' in January, but for some unexplainable reason, he was allowed to re-enter the country anyway...   [Both] would be eligible to stay in the United States as 'registered provisional immigrants' under the amnesty provisions of the Senate bill, because they entered before 2011 December 31, and fell out of status, with only 'brief, casual, and innocent' departures from the country (as the bill would define it)."

2013-05-02
Jessica Vaughan _Center for Immigration Studies_
S744 rewards & protects law-breakers, undermines law enforcement and national security
"Because the bill essentially excuses nearly all forms of immigration and identity fraud, the integrity of our immigration system is greatly compromised by this bill...   This provision will allow the legalization of those with multiple offenses for drunk driving, vehicular homicide, domestic violence, certain sex offenses, theft, identity theft, and other misdemeanors.   It requires immigration agencies to ignore convictions under state laws on alien smuggling, human trafficking, and harboring illegal aliens altogether.   It waives criminal offenses for anyone under 18 (as opposed to 16 under current law), no matter the seriousness of the offense, and even if the offender was tried as an adult.   This provision will be most helpful to convicted gang members aged 16-18..."

2013-05-02
Bill Snyder _InfoWorld_/_IDG_
how Kaiser bet $4G on medical info privacy violation, and won

2013-05-02
William L. Anderson
Lest anyone think that Paul Krugman is an economist...

2013-05-02 (5773 Iyar 22)
Ann Coulter _Jewish World Review_
USA's most feared economist
"Tellingly, Lott immediately makes all his underlying data and computer analyses available to critics -- unlike, say, the critics.   He has sent his data and work to 120 researchers around the world.   By now, there have been 29 peer-reviewed studies of Lott's work on the effect of concealed-carry laws.   18 confirm Lott's results, showing a statistically significant reduction in crime after concealed-carry laws are enacted.   10 show no harm, but no significant reduction in crime.   Only 1 peer-reviewed study even purported to show any negative effect: a temporary increase in aggravated assaults.   Then it turned out this was based on a flawed analysis by a liberal activist professor: John Donohue, whose name keeps popping up in all fake studies purporting to debunk Lott.   In 1997, a computer crash led to the loss of Lott's underlying data.   Fortunately, he had previously sent this data to his critics -- professors Dan Black, Dan Nagin and Jens Ludwig.   When Lott asked if they would mind returning it to him to restore his files, they refused.   (One former critic, Carlisle Moody, conducted his own analysis of Lott's data and became a believer.   He has since co-authored papers with Lott.)...   of the 177 separate analyses run by all these critics, only 7 show a statistically significant increase in crime after the passage of concealed-carry laws, while 90 of their own results show a statistically significant drop in crime -- and 80 show no difference."

2013-05-02 (5773 Iyar 22)
judge Andrew P. Napolitano _Jewish World Review_
more holes poked in the 4th amendment
"The Fourth Amendment, which guarantees the right to be left alone, was written largely in response to legislation Parliament enacted in the colonial era that permitted British soldiers to write their own search warrants and then use those warrants as a legal basis to enter private homes.   The ostensible purpose of doing that was to search through the colonists' papers looking for stamps, which the Stamp Act required the colonists to affix to all documents in their possession.   The laws that permitted the soldier-written search warrants and the Stamp Act were the British government's fatal political mistakes, which arguably caused a major shift in colonial opinion toward secession from Britain 10 years before the bloody part of the Revolution began.   After the Founders won the Revolution, the Framers wrote the Constitution in large measure to assure that the new government in America would not and could not do to Americans what the king had done to the colonists.   Hence the Fourth Amendment's requirement that only judges issue search warrants and only after the governmental agency seeking the warrants presents evidence under oath of probable cause of crime...   Now the feds want even more personal liberty sacrificed -- this time to make it easier for them to collect digital information.   The [Obummer regime] wants legislation enacted that will punish Internet service providers who fail to cooperate with FBI requests and court orders.   The FBI has revealed that its agents often 'lack the time' to obtain search warrants, and so they have gotten into the bad habit of asking Internet service providers to let them in without warrants...   A search warrant typically authorizes the government to enter private premises and look for the specific items designated in the warrant.   But it does not require the custodian of those specific items to find them for the government.   This proposed legislation would change all that.   The government has subtly revealed that when it comes to digital data it often does not know what it is looking for, and its agents lack the skills to hook into the Internet providers' systems...   The Framers were very careful when they wrote the Fourth Amendment, as it imposes the most explicit requirements on the government found anywhere in the Constitution.   It requires that all search warrants 'particularly describ(e) the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized'.   So, if the government follows the Constitution, it cannot seek what it is unable to identify, and it cannot compel the custodian of whatever records it is seeking to do its work for it."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-05-03

2013-05-03
Grant Gross _Info World_/_IDG_
as congress considers giving out more H-1B visas, US STEM workers struggle to find work: Veteran tech workers see themselves locked out of job market that favors imported immigrants and younger grads
"say they can't find jobs, with many pointing to a glut of cheap workers available through the H-1B visa program...   50-year-old RW, who has been in the tech and engineering fields for 27 years, has worked 10 months out of the last 40, he says.   It's been 8 months since his last pay-check, even though he has a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and a master's in industrial engineering, with an emphasis in human/computer interaction and user interface design.   A recent study from left-leaning think tank, the Economic Policy Institute, backs up claims by RW and other veteran IT workers.   The U.S. has plenty of workers in the science and technology fields, the EPI study says.   But only half of U.S. students who graduate in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields gets a job in those fields -- despite the shortage of STEM grads claimed by tech companies, the study said...   Unemployed engineer RW says he's willing to move for work from his native Indianapolis and has looked in Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and other states.   'The stories are usually that they have tons of locally unemployed tech workers to choose from, so why would they want to pay for me to move there?', he says.   'I've even offered to pay the move myself, and still nothing.'   RW has drawn the line at getting additional training: 'I'll take whatever training a company wants me to take, but I'm not spending my savings to get yet more degrees and more certs just hoping that some company will then hire me.', he says.   'The only way to know for sure is if a company will pay you to take the training.', he says.   'That means it has value to them.   I already have a stinking master's degree and 27 years of experience and yet am having trouble finding a job.'...   Many companies post very specific job requirements in an effort to weed out veteran workers...   Veteran IT workers may have a harder time finding jobs, especially if they need employer training, said MB, vice president and group leader for the IT unit of Kelly Services.   The reasons are fundamentally economic: 'You can take a kid out of college who has some good core technical skills...and you can put the same amount of training in and get them productive to your specific application, and their wage base is a lot lower than someone with 15 or 20 years of experience in IT, she says...   JD, a 51-year-old software developer out of work since October, has been keeping up with Hadoop and other hot IT skills, but he's getting no job offers.   Donaldson also has experience with SQL, Java programming, and data modeling, all supposedly in-demand skills...   JD accepts the need to stay current: 'In the software development field, you either keep abreast of what's current, or you die.', he said.   'I've got the chops, very experienced and totally qualified.'   And yet he's struggling to find work, even though he's based in Oakland, CA, in the San Francisco Bay Area where a huge influx of young and foreign developers and tech workers continues in response to all the unfilled tech jobs at the Silicon Valley epicenter.   Many companies looking for IT workers are 'overly picky', allowing them to pass over veteran workers with similar -- but not the exact -- experience they want, says JD.   'Any halfway decent software developer can jump right into any of those languages.'   BD has long-term experience in data modeling, one of the IT skills that's supposed to be hot.   She has worked in the tech industry since 1986, as a programmer, systems analyst, data-base designer, and project manager.   She's been out of work since December...   'I was just turned down for a job after having a very successful meeting with the data management team at a large corporation.   I was assured by my recruiter that they would make an offer within a week.   Someone came in with a cheaper person, so that job is gone.'   BD, 61, moved to New York City to take a project, then says she was laid off and replaced by a foreign worker.   She has relocated 14 times for jobs, she says.   Many Indian recruiters that Dewing has talked to recently start the conversation by low-balling an hourly rate, she says.   'I personally find it insulting to be treated like a commodity.   The assumption seems to be Get your rate low enough and you'll be hired.'   BD has 2 friends over age 50 who also cannot find work in IT, she says.   One former IT employee 'works as a dog walker, and one lives on recycling cans and bottles, which she fishes out of trash cans'.   GS, who immigrated to the U.S.A. from the former Soviet Union in 1987, says he hasn't worked steadily since 2002.   The resident of Silicon Valley has a master's degree in electrical engineering, a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, and a second bachelor's in biochemistry and molecular biology.   GS, 51, has worked as a nano-technology engineer, a software engineer, and a digital hardware design engineer.   'I'm unemployed, on welfare.', he notes.   'Since 2002, I had just very brief periods of temporary employment as an engineer-consultant, hotel clerk, and a Home Depot associate.'   He's taken college courses throughout his years of unemployment.   'I'm over-educated and over-experienced.', he says.   'The depth and breadth of my education and experience could hardly be matched.   I am able to perform any job in electronics, programming, and biomedical industry, and I'd be able to come up to speed within a week or two.   Still, [there's] no job for me in this country.'   Asked if he's keeping his skill set current, GS says it's difficult to guess what hiring companies want, when technology is constantly changing.   If a developer has experience in Android 2.0, 'the company would be hiring only someone who had at least 6 months of the [Android] 4.0 experience', he says.   'And you cannot get that experience unless you are hired.   And you cannot get hired unless you provably have that experience.   It is the chicken-and-the-egg situation.'"

2013-05-03
Grant Gross _PC World_
debate over H-1B changes pits tech executives against veteran STEM professionals
ComputerWorld
"Modus Operandi, a semantic search software vendor based in Melbourne, Florida, has had 'a hell of a time trying to fill these positions', said Rick McNeight, the company's president [but provides no evidence to support his claim]...   Foreign visas are a large part of the problem for veteran IT workers, said JD, a 51-year-old software developer out of work since October.   'I blame much of my misfortune on the H-1B visas flooding this country.', he said.   'When I picked my computer science major...no one told me I'd be competing against a huge tide of foreign nationals flooding, via dubious means, the national job market every year.'"

2013-05-03
Ritchie King _Atlantic_
April employment/unemployment report (with graphs)
more graphs

2013-05-03
Steve Goreham
the tragedy of climatism is resource waste on a global scale
Washington DC Times

2013-05-03
Edwin S. Rubenstein _V Dare_
immigrants gained jobs at 3 times the rate of US citizens since last April (with graphs, tables)
"Over the past 12 months: Immigrants gained 673K jobs, a 3.0% increase; native-born workers gained 1.056M positions, an 0.9% increase.   ADVANTAGE IMMIGRANTS.   The immigrant unemployment rate fell by 0.7 percentage points -- or by 9.3%; native-born unemployment fell by 0.6 percentage points -- a 7.7% decline.   ADVANTAGE IMMIGRANTS.   IN ADDITION: The labor force participation rate -- a measure of worker confidence -- increased for immigrants but declined for the native-born.   At 66.0%, the immigrant participation rate in April was 3.4% points above the native rate.   Over-arching everything is the inexorable rise in foreign-born population.   It grew 1.7% over the past 12 months, or at nearly twice the 0.9% growth of the native-born population (which, of course, includes the children of legal immigrants—and illegal aliens' anchor babies).   This is the dismal employment environment into which the Schumer-Rubio Amnesty/ Immigration Surge bill proposes to legalize 11M-20M illegals—and double the rate of legal immigration."

2013-05-03
Nick de Santis _Chronicle of Higher Education_
US Customs Service ordered to verify student visa validity... You mean they weren't doing this all along!?!?!?

2013-05-03
Ronald W. Mortensen _Center for Immigration Studies_
S744's $1K "penalty" is a bargain
"The Gang of 8 emphasizes the terrible hardship that a $1K penalty places on illegal aliens applying for RPI status and they do their best to ease the burden by allowing illegal aliens to pay it in installments.   At the same time, they conveniently ignore the fact that illegal aliens routinely pay human smugglers and fraudulent document dealers many times more than this...   For example, for $1K, the 75% of illegal aliens using fraudulently obtained [Socialist Insecurity Numbers -- SINs] get amnesty from [Socialist Insecurity] fraud which carries a prison term of up to 10 years and a $250K fine -- not a bad return on their investment.   Or for $1K, illegal aliens who are gang bangers, drug dealers, pedophiles, identity thieves, perjurers, and intending terrorists are allowed to buy RPI status just as long as they don't have more than one felony conviction or more than 3 misdemeanor convictions (pg62).   Those who have committed felonies, but who have not been convicted, are welcome to stay in spite of assertions to the contrary by Arizona Republican senators John McCain and Jeff Flake...   In order to extend compassion to illegal aliens who routinely commit identity theft in order to get jobs, the Gang of 8 treats their American victims, including a huge number of innocent American children, as collateral damage...   The same $1K buys the [privilege] for illegal aliens to continue using the stolen identifying information of Americans until they apply for RPI status and get their own, brand-new [Socialist Insecurity Numbers, SINs] -- however long that may take. (pp78, 91-92)...   And as a special bonus, the $1K penalty buys pre-paid services for illegal aliens from non-profit groups such as La Raza.   These groups will help illegal aliens and their families file their applications, apply for multiple waivers, learn English and civics, and guide them throughout the entire RPI process. (p. 133)..."

2013-05-03
senator Jeff Sessions
analysis of future immigration flow in S744: more than 30M amnestied in 10 years, 25M granted guest-work visas, total 57M

2013-05-03 (5773 Iyar 23)
Steven Emerson _Jewish World Review_
prosecutors fight CAIR in court, praise it in public
"As her assistants defend the state against a discrimination suit brought by a Chicago-area imam, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan is among a slew of state officials saluting the group representing him in advance of its annual fundraising banquet.   And the imam, rejected by the Illinois State Police (ISP) due to his past work for a Hamas-support network, is being honored at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Chicago chapter banquet Saturday evening and will help with the fund-raising.   CAIR represents Kifah Mustapha in litigation claiming the state discriminated against him and violated his free speech rights when the ISP rescinded a 2009 invitation making Mustapha the agency's first volunteer Muslim chaplain.   The reversal followed a report by the Investigative Project on Terrorism showing Mustapha had been a fundraiser for the Holy Land Foundation, which was convicted in 2008 of being part of a multi-million dollar American-based Hamas-support network.   Mustapha was an unindicted co-conspirator in the case and had been on the Holy Land pay-roll."
Clarion Project: Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
anti-CAIR
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)

2013-05-03 (5773 Iyar 23)
Steven Emerson _Science Daily_
1,700-year-old Roman-era cemetery discovered by archaeologists in Leicester... under a parking lot
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-05-04

2013-05-04
Kyung M. Song & Janet I. Tu _Seattle WA Times_
Excessive visas, low standards for cheap, young, pliant labor with flexible ethics shut out US citizen STEM workers
Pittsburgh PA Tribune-Review
"Though he was then in his late 50s, Erickson figured the drumbeat of complaints from MSFT and other tech companies about a dearth of good applicants promised an easy career switch.   Nine months past his graduation, however, Erickson has yet to find full-time work...   Erickson is among hundreds of thousands of jobless or under-employed programmers and engineers nationwide who've had difficulty finding full-time work despite reports of a scarcity of 'qualified' American high-tech workers.   MSFT, for instance, says it has such trouble filling its more than 3K vacancies for software developers and engineers it expects to offer a third of those jobs to foreigners, the vast majority of them recruited off U.S. college campuses...   Erickson, who graduated with a 3.52 GPA, has applied for more than 150 jobs, several of them at Microsoft.   In February, he finally landed a job he enjoys as project manager for a Web-development company.   But it's only part time...   A former MSFT product manager shares that suspicion.   The manager was one of 1,400 people cut from the pay-roll in 2009 January as part of MSFT's first-ever companywide lay-offs in the recession.   The supervisors who eliminated her position were here on visas, as were 2 recent hires in her work group who dodged the down-sizing.   Three weeks later, Artech Information Systems, a staffing firm, offered the product manager a 3-month contract at MSFT for what was essentially the same job she had left.   The pay was $32 an hour, half her old salary...   About 70% of foreign workers MSFT intends to hire are currently finishing studies at U.S. universities, Smith said during a recent interview in Washington, DC...   40% of the workers whose visas were approved in 2011 were in their 20s or younger, according to USCIS."

2013-05-04
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
valuable materials on the techie [STEM] age issue
 
As most of you know, my writings about H-1B and green cards center on the use of foreign tech workers as cheap, immobile labor.   Cheapness comes in Type I and Type II forms, the former meaning paying a foreign worker less than a comparable American and the latter accruing from hiring younger H-1Bs in lieu of older Americans.
 
During previous waves of attention to the foreign tech worker issue, there often were articles on Type II salary savings.   This resulted in congress commissioning the NRC to investigate (among other things) the problems of older American tech workers in 1998.   As always, I must point out that these problems begin at about age 35.   (NRC used the legal definition for age discrimination, age 40.)
 
The NRC study confirmed that older tech workers have trouble finding work in the field.   Older workers were more likely to be laid off, took longer to find a new job after being laid off, and had to accept a pay cut in the new job; younger workers got a raise.
 
As I have written extensively in the past, it's not an issue of up-to-date skills.   As even Vivek Wadhwa has said, the older engineer with modern skills is still older, thus still more expensive than a younger one.   See my University of Michigan paper for a very detailed analysis of the age and skills issues.   The comments by older tech workers in the articles below tell the story well too.
 
So, for those of you reading this on the Hill, please don't point to the provision in Gof8 to use H-1B user fees to fund retraining.   It was tried in 1998 and failed, as the Dept. of Commerce later determined.   For the reasons given above, it was BOUND to fail (which I said in 1998).
 
But we haven't see much of the press coverage lately.   I think the attention to the age issue in 1998-2000 arose largely through the efforts of IEEE-USA, including their excellent web-site, The Misfortune 500, which profiled 500 older engineers who were having trouble finding work in the midst of the Dot Com Boom.   But in 2000, the IEEE parent organization, dominated by industry and academia, forced IEEE-USA to back off regarding its criticism of H-1B, and the latter organization then dismantled the web-page, and stopped connecting the age and H-1B issues.   (IEEE-USA has been pushing the notion of granting automatic green cards to foreign STEM grads since 2000, which of course just exacerabes the age problem, since the new grads are young.)
 
In that context, I welcome the pair of articles in Computerworld/IDG and TechWorld.
 
One of the articles links to a critique by a major industry lobbyist Robert Hoffman of the recent EPI paper by Salzman et al.   I had not been aware of it before, and will counter it in a separate posting to this e-news-letter later on.   For now, though, I would point out that even Hoffman only claims that there is a labor shortage in SOME areas of STEM.   So even his statements show that the Gang of 8's proposal to give unlimited green cards to foreign grad students in all possible areas of STEM is unwarranted.
 
Of particular interest are these examples in one of the articles:
 
***********************************************************************
 
Modus Operandi, a semantic search software vendor based in Melbourne, Florida, has had "a hell of a time trying to fill these positions", said Rick McNeight, the company's president.
 
The 80-person company has 6 open positions, 3 for Java programmers, with those positions open for months, McNeight said...
 
For McNeight, of Modus Operandi, more foreign visas would, at best, have an indirect impact on his ability to hire workers.   Because his company works with the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, most of his programmers need security clearances.   More H-1Bs might fill open positions at other companies, making it easier for him to recruit, he said.
 
Within the last two weeks, DataStax, a San Mateo, CA, big-data applications vendor, had about 15 open positions, including Cassandra engineer, QA engineer, and product manager.   The 80-person shop wants to hire 160 people in 2013.
 
CEO Billy Bosworth said he's turned to recruiting foreign workers and offering them telework jobs in an effort to close hard-to-fill positions.   More H-1B visas would be helpful to companies like DataStax, he said.
 
***********************************************************************
 
McNeight can't fill a Java position?   Bosworth says a QA (software testing) job is hard to fill?   Are you kidding me?   As usual, let's call them on those claims.
 
McNeight's firm's jobs page is at http://www.modusoperandi.com/Careers.html He's got two Senior openings, and one Intermediate.
 
I looked at the Intermediate position first, and right away noticed that "intermediate" means just 3 years of experience!   It's not surprising, then, that one of the "senior" openings defined that level as 5-10 years of experience, and the other 5-7 years.   Compare that to my age-35 cut-off, and you'll then understand the problem.   McNeight and/or his HR people are likely rejecting those of 35+ years of age as "over-qualified" even for the "senior" jobs, let alone the "intermediate" one.
 
For those of you non-techies out there, I should point out that Java [invented in 1995] is hardly a new skill.   On the contrary, back in 1998 when the industry was (successfully) pushing congress to expand H-1B, employers said they needed H-1Bs because they couldn't fill Java jobs.   McNeight wants a little more specialized knowledge than that, but not much.
 
What's especially troubling is that he lists "Working knowledge of Eclipse IDE" as a required, not just desired, skill.   For you non-techies, Eclipse is simply a work tool, providing the programmer with things like a handy index to the various parts of his program.   It can also provide components for the program itself, which is a little more involved, but McNeight is leaving jobs open for MONTHS, for lack of something that takes just a week or so to become productive (not necessarily 100%, but productive) in.
 
At the end of each job req at McNeight's firm, it says (emphasis added), "E-mail Human Resources (tbaerst@modusoperandi.com) your resume, SALARY HISTORY, and SALARY REQUIREMENTS."   And THAT is the likely reason that McNeight is letting job openings lie vacant for months.
 
The DataStax example is interesting for other reasons.   The article mentioned a QA opening, which is awfully generic, raising a question as to how this position could possibly be hard to fill.
 
It [the job ad linked, above] vaguely asks for some knowledge of cloud computing, not clear just how much.   Again, this is not deep stuff, and refreshingly, the job req even includes a criterion "History of learning new technologies on the fly" -- exactly what people used to take for granted in the pre-H-1B era.   Similarly, there is an item "Knowledge of Python scripting a strong plus, but we offer this as an opportunity for a seasoned programmer to pick up a new skill."
 
Well, wait a minute.   Just how "seasoned" a programmer is this employer willing to hire?   Remember, "senior" means 5-10 years' experience at McNeight's company, and this is typical.   (See my University of Michigan paper for a number of examples.)   Indeed, I suspect that "seasoned" may be closer to "intermediate" in DataStax's mind.
 
I see that DataStax already has an LCA (H-1B hiring form) for a senior product manager; I expect to see one on the QA job coming soon.
 
Norm
---30---

2013-05-04
Bill Straub _PJ Media_
senator Marco Rubio's one-man quixotic mission to sell reprehensible immigration law perversion bill to conservatives
"Once considered the front-runner for the 2016 GOP nomination, the Florida law-maker has run into a buzz-saw wielded by the Tea Party and others who condemn anyone for straying from what they consider [sanity].   Many now view senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), the son of Cuban immigrants who was charged with introducing the Republican nominee Mitt Romney at the Tampa convention, as better presidential timbre than Rubio...   On Thursday about two dozen protesters gathered outside the site of the Lincoln Day Dinner, a fund-raiser Rubio was attending in St. Lucie County, to voice opposition to his involvement in the immigration legislation.   'He was the Tea Party darling.   Until he went to DC and played us.', Christine Timmon, a Tea Party supporter, told WPTV-TV in West Palm Beach, FL.   The Tea Party Patriots...took aim at Rubio by staging what was termed a 'DC intervention', consisting of disgruntled representatives from the organization protesting at his Florida offices...   'Not only might the legislation be bad policy, it has already gone outside of the normal process.', the group said...   Daniel Horowitz wrote on Red State that Rubio's position is counter to what he said during his successful election campaign in 2010...   [Rubio said] 'To people who don't like that solution, all I ask is, What's yours?' [and then ignored the answer: secure the borders, all of the borders, fence them, patrol them with regular troops, reduce the numbers of visas given out to manageable levels to cut down on visa over-stayers, actively seek out illegal aliens and penalize both the illegal aliens and employers with prison terms and high enough civil penalties to exceed the amounts employers gain by using the cheaper labor.   Rubio also said] 'people are very suspicious about the willingness of the government to enforce the laws now'...   And while many conservatives have assumed a jaundiced view of Rubio, talk radio seemingly remains firmly in his corner despite claims by pollster Frank Luntz that several powerful hosts are 'destroying' him.   The big 3 -- Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Mark Levin -- continue to heap praise on Rubio throughout the debate while simultaneously raging against the immigration bill he's championing.   [Jerry Doyle, Rusty Humphrey, Jed Babbin, and Kris Anne Hall have also been critical of the Reprehensible Immigration Law Perversion bill.]"

2013-05-04
Joe Guzzardi _East Valley AZ Tribune_
S744 means 33M more
"the Gang deceitfully pledged that its bill would tighten the border as never before...   According to NumbersUSA, a Washington, DC-based non-partisan, non-profit organization that encourages sensible immigration, during S744's first decade, 33M additional foreign workers would be competing for scarce American jobs.   Here's the math: the existing 11M illegal aliens, plus 11M new immigrants who would arrive by continuing existing immigrant categories and 11M more through new immigration categories and expanded green card provisions.   As bad as the first decade's 33M total is, future decades will experience the same high immigration levels that would devastate the American work-force.   Critics can look at 33M in 2 ways.   First, from a jobs perspective, adding 3.3M new workers annually (275K per month) to the labor force exceeds existing job creation.   In March, for example, the economy added a net 88K jobs.   A staggering 496K discouraged people dropped out of the labor force, and 206K fewer reported actually having a job.   Therefore, even though the official March unemployment rate declined from 7.7% to 7.6%, the proportion of Americans currently employed fell, not rose.   With 22M Americans unemployed or under-employed, the last thing the nation needs is a larger, legally authorized worker population.   Second, 33M more people would compromise Americans' already endangered [alreade degraded] quality of life.   The current U.S. population is about 315M; 33M more represents a 10% increase exclusive of natural increases through births that would push the total even higher.   Most American communities are already over-extended and under-funded; schools, hospitals, highways and housing have reached or exceeded their ability to cope with current population.   More people would create more stressful environmental conditions that no one wants...   Based on the U.S. Census Bureau's 2012 American Community Survey, the U.S. legal immigrant population has increased more than 30% since 2000 from 31.1M to 40.4M.   During the same period, illegal immigration has also increased to 11.1M from 8.4M."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-05-05

2013-05-05
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
NYT gets it partly right, but misses most
 
A few years ago, a congressperson from Texas was asked, in essence, why he was pandering to local industry lobbyists on the H-1B issue.   He replied that they are constituents, just like people are.   Funny, I don't see anything in the Constitution on this, the Citizens United case notwithstanding.
 
Yesterday's New York Times article is the most overt piece of reporting yet to show how much the industry lobbyists are running the show.   It is also the most overt one to show the scape-goating of the Indian [cross-border bodyshops and off-shoring] firms [which use/abuse the largest numbers of H-1B and L-1 visas].
 
The article seems to hint that the authors find the industry's buying of congress outrageous, fine, but they are still falling down on the job.   First, they fail to see just how broad the scope is of the Gang of 8 legislation regarding foreign tech workers.   It would give an automatic green card to any foreign STEM grad student -- an unlimited number of green cards, without regard to field, without regard to quality of the student, etc.   All they need is some job offer "related" to their field.   The offer would not even be subject to prevailing wage requirements.
 
This would have major consequences, and it is the part of the bill that the industry would most like to have enacted, yet all the article can say is that the bill would make green cards "easier" to get, implying that there [are] at least some substantial requirements, which is not the case at all.
 
Granted, H-1B and employer-sponsored green cards are complex topics, but the authors were deceived as to the nature of the tech part of the bill, and one would expect better from the NYT.
 
More importantly, the reporters took at face value the industry lobbyists' claim that the Indian firms are the main abusers of H-1B and green cards.   As I've shown, the abuse pervades the entire industry, including the big-name firms, and in some senses the latter are even worse than the Indian firms.
 
Unfortunately, many of the critics of the foreign tech worker programs have unwittingly helped the industry lobbyists by buying into this blame-the-Indians theme...
 
But still, the NYT reporters should have questioned the industry lobbyists' scape-goating of the Indians.   Given the NYT's high sensitivity to ethnic issues (which I support), it's unfortunate that they are ignoring the industry lobbyists' claim that "only Indians would cheat".   (The "cheating" is [almost] entirely legal, and as I said, pervades the entire industry.   Any firm, whether it's Infosys or Intel, TCS or TI, exploits loop-holes in the tax code, and it's the same for hiring foreign tech workers.)
 
One huge point missed by the article -- and significantly, not understood by many of the critics of foreign tech worker programs -- is that THE BILL WOULD MAKE H-1B LARGELY IRRELEVANT FOR THE MAIN-STREAM FIRMS.   They would instead rely on the bill's provision for automatic STEM green cards, and not bother with H-1B sponsorship.   (The foreign workers would work at OPTs while the green card is pending.)   So the article, by focusing on H-1B, is missing the point, a distraction which illustrates the beauty of the industry's blame-the-Indians PR tack.
 
For all its flaws, the article does exemplify the loss of our democracy.   That, in fact, would have made a good headline for the piece.
---30---

2013-05-05
Josh Stokes _CSPAN student-Cam_/_Viddler_
unemployment in America

2013-05-05
Jason Notte _MSFTN_
claims of STEM talent shortage are hooey
"U.S. colleges are churning out more programmers and engineers than the job market is absorbing.   Roughly twice as many American undergraduates earn degrees in science, technology, engineering and math disciplines than go on to work in those fields.   In 2009 alone, less than two-thirds of employed computer science grads were working in the info-tech sector a year after graduation...   As The Boston Globe discovered, just 4 companies -- New Jersey/[India]-based Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTSH) along with India's Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro (WIT) and Infosys (INFY) -- claimed 20% of the 134,780 H-1B visas approved in [FY]2012."

2013-05-05
Sunita Sohrabji _India West_
US senate told that H-1Bs are mis-used by Indian off-shore firms
"Testifying before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Apr. 22 on a new, broadly-reaching immigration bill, 2 Indian Americans criticized the H-1B program as deeply flawed and unfair to American workers.   'The majority of the H-1B program is now being used to hire cheap indentured workers.', testified Ron Hira, associate professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York.   'The bulk of demand for H-1B visas is driven by the desire for lower cost workers, not by a race for specialized talent or a shortage of American talent.', he stated...   Computer World reported Feb. 13 that the largest users of H-1B visas are Indian off-shore out-sourcers [and cross-border bodyshoppers].   Nearly half the H-1B visas allotted in fiscal year 2012 were gobbled up by just 5 companies: Cognizant, Tata, Infosys, Wipro and Accenture.   In his testimony last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Hira said the current program is unfair to American workers who do not have 'a first and legitimate shot' at jobs for which H-1B workers are hired.   Further, Congress has set the wage floor 'far too low', he stated, noting that an employer could hire an electronics engineer from abroad for $39K a year, whereas prevailing wages in the U.S.A. for that job would be around $61K.   'The (bill) falls short by not fixing the fundamental problems in the H-1B or other guest worker programs.   Employers will continue to bring in cheaper foreign workers, with ordinary skills, to directly substitute for, rather than complement, workers already in America.', stated Hira.   'Under this bill the H-1B program would continue displacing American workers and deny them both current and future opportunities.   It also discourages American students from pursuing these professions.', he said, noting that the problems would continue as cap numbers were increased.   Neeraj Gupta, CEO of Systems in Motion, began his testimony before the committee by saying he was in favor of using H-1B visas to attract skilled talent to the U.S.A.   But Gupta said the visas were not being used to hire specialized talent, but instead, back office information technology work for Indian off-shore interests...   He went on to become the founder and CEO of an IT services company [bodyshop] that was acquired by a large Indian off-shoring company."
* According to State Department annual reports, 80,547 H-1B visas were issued through consular offices in FY1997, 91,360 in FY1998, 116,513 H-1B visas were issued in FY1999, 133,290 in FY2000, 161,643 in FY2001, 118,352 in FY2002, 107,196 in FY2003, 139,037 H-1B visas were issued in FY2004, 124,374 in FY2005, 135,861 in FY2006, 154,692 in FY2007, 130,183 in FY2008, 110,988 in FY2009, 117,828 in FY2010, 129,552 in FY2011, 135,991 in FY2012.   Shankar Srinivasan is "chief people officer" at Cognizant, according to Saritha Rai reporting in TechRepublic on 2012-04-03.   Bill Snyder's InfoWorld/IDG report on 2011-10-06 notes that Cognizant was "paid $72 an hour by Molina for the labor of the on-shore contractors and $26 an hour for those in India, according to Onufrock", but that Molina had previously paid its US workers "$50 per hour".   Toni Bowers reported for Ziff Davis/CBS on 2011-08-22 that displaced IT pros were suing former employer, Molina Healthcare, Amir Desai, and Cognizant.   Patrick Thibodeau reported 2011-07-12 in ComputerWorld/IDG that US employees were even discouraged from celebrating US national holidays and locked out of hiring and other decision-making and promotions...jgo

2013-05-05
Nandita Bose _CBNC_/_Reuters_
need to bribe puts brakes on India's retail growth
NYTimes
"'Right now it's not possible to do business in India without greasing palms, without paying bribes.', said Mr. Tainwala, who is also president for Asia Pacific and West Asia for the luggage maker Samsonite.   Mr. Tainwala said he had refused to pay bribes to licensing officials, though that could not be independently confirmed...   But a daunting array of permits -- more than 40 are required for a typical supermarket selling a range of products -- pushes retailers to pay so-called 'speed money' through middlemen or local partners to set up shop...   The Ease of Doing Business survey by the World Bank ranks India 173rd among 185 countries when it comes to starting a business, behind Malawi, Niger, Sudan and Guatemala.   In 2012, Transparency International ranked it 94th among 174 countries on its corruption table, a fall from 72nd five years earlier...   Permits needed to open a store range from the routine, like a trade license, to the trivial: lighted shelves require a separate permit, and even a shop window needs a license.   Playing music in the store requires a license.   So does selling cosmetics or providing valet parking."

2013-05-05
_Billings MT Gazette_/_Seattle WA Times_
rising coal exports from USA to Asia are stirring a huge fight in the West
"Cloud Peak Energy, operators of this mine, and other companies have proposals that could eventually double the state's coal production -- part of the push for a big expansion of U.S. coal exports.   'There has been more activity in Montana in the last three years than there has been in a generation.', said Todd O'Hair, a senior manager at Cloud Peak.   Standing on the knoll where George Armstrong Custer made his last stand, you can watch the coal trains that already rumble north en route to British Columbia, where coal is now shipped to South Korea, Taiwan and Japan.   To boost overseas sales, Cloud Peak also has secured rights to ship coal through Washington terminals proposed for Cherry Point near Bellingham and for Longview...   To support the exports, the coal industry has stitched together a coalition that reaches from the maritime unions in Washington to Montana's Crow Tribe, which last year signed an agreement with Cloud Peak for the development of up to 1.4G tons of coal on reservation lands.   Proponents say the region stands to gain jobs, a dynamic new Pacific Rim trade and multi-billion-dollar investments in mines, railroads and export terminals."

2013-05-05
Greg Richter _News Max_
Jim de Mint: S744 will cost USA $2T
"DeMint believes the bill will be defeated if people read it."

2013-05-05
Peter Brimelow _V Dare_
Reprehensible immigration law perversion and the myth of "getting it behind us"
"Of course, this economic reality was always obvious to anyone who looked into the question, and eerily echoes the never-reported current consensus among U.S. labor economists that immigration confers no significant advantage to native-born Americans in aggregate (specific Americans benefit, but their fellow-citizens do not)."

2013-05-05
Jerry Seper _Washington DC Times_
ICE agents' law-suit against Obummer regime's anti-deportation policy
"'The court finds that [the Department of Homeland Security] does not have discretion to refuse to initiate removals proceedings' when the requirements for deportation under a federal statute are met, the judge wrote in a 38-page opinion...   They said the policy forces them to choose between enforcing the law and being reprimanded by superiors, or listening to their superiors and violating their own oaths of office."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-05-06

2013-05-06
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
Seattle Times article etc.
 
There was...a very provocative article yesterday in the Seattle Times, titled "Do Visas for Skilled Foreigners Shut Out U.S. Tech Workers?"   I'll report on it tomorrow (I hope).   You'll find it interesting reading, especially the example of the former MSFT worker.
 
The [AEI] research paper (apparently) cited in the article unwittingly illustrates an interesting issue regarding research methods.   It's a non-technical paper, so don't be afraid to tackle it without economics or statistics background.   Here's an amusing but informative bit:
 
The author, Gordon Hanson of UCSD, cites a 2009 paper by Bound, Turner and Walsh, in support of his view favoring an expansive policy on high-skilled immigration:
 
**************************************************************
 
In contrast to low-skilled immigration, high-skilled immigration appears to have direct effects on economic growth.   High-skilled immigrants are disproportionately represented in technical fields, in which recent US productivity growth has been most rapid.   In 2003, foreign-born students accounted for 51% of PhDs in science and engineering fields awarded by US universities, up from 27% in 1973 (Bound, Turner, and Walsh, 2009).   In theory, expanding the supply of scientists and engineers increases the US labor force devoted to R&D, which contributes to higher rates of innovation and has positive effects on economic growth (Jones, 1995).   Empirically, increases in high-skilled immigration are associated with increases in patenting.
 
**************************************************************
 
By contrast, in a recent EPI paper, with the theme that most of the STEM foreign students are of ordinary talent, not the best and the brightest, I include a quote from the SAME paper that Hanson cited:
 
--------------------------------------------------------------
 
If the "best and brightest" image projected by the industry for STEM foreign students were accurate, it should be reflected in a tendency for the students to be enrolled in the more highly ranked U.S. institutions.   However, Bound, Turner, and Walsh (2009) found the opposite to be the case:
 
"In physics, biochemistry, and chemistry much of the expansion [from the mid-1980s to mid-90s] in doctorate receipt to foreign students occurs at unranked programs or those ranked outside the top 50; the growth in foreign students in engineering is distributed more evenly among programs.   Among students from [Red China], Taiwan, and South Korea growth has been particularly concentrated outside the most highly ranked institutions."
 
--------------------------------------------------------------
 
So, Hanson is saying, immigration is great, because it's bringing us all these PhDs, while I'm saying, yeah, but they tend to be of low quality.   :-)
 
And while Hanson says the foreign PhD influx is good because we need PhDs for R&D, in my paper I show that the foreigners are actually LESS LIKELY than comparable Americans to work in R&D, in the CS and EE cases.
 
So, if you as a policy-maker, journalist or just an interested citizen wish to draw conclusions from the research literature, you need to watch out for the hidden (and often unknown) premises, in this case the notion that a doctorate is an inherently good thing, that there are no displacement effects and so on.
 
Norm
---30---

2013-05-06
Amy Cavender _Chronicle of Higher Education_
connecting ideas, project steps, with Scapple

2013-05-06
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
case study of industry lobbyist distortion
 
The other day, I mentioned that Robert Hoffman, one of the top industry lobbyists, had written a web log criticizing (a better description would be [attempting to ridicule]) the recent EPI paper by Salzman, Kuehn and Lowell.   I said I would later comment on Hoffman's assertions.
 
I will focus on just one of Hoffman's claims, as it epitomizes how PR people are so deft at distortion.
 
Hoffman says,
 
*************************************************************************
 
The EPI report also suggests that temporary visas have created downward pressure on wages for U.S. workers.   This finding contradicts a wide range of studies, including 2011 Government Accountability Office (GAO) data that made apples to apples comparisons of skilled talent and found that H-1B professionals earn comparable and, in some cases, higher wages than U.S. professionals of similar age and experience.   For example, the GAO found that the median salary of H-1B electrical engineers, ages 20-39, was $80K, but for U.S. workers, the median salary was $75K.
 
*************************************************************************
 
Whoa!   This is definitely not "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you Zuckerberg." :-)
 
What Hoffman is HIDING from his readers -- it's a safe bet that he made sure everyone on the Hill got copies of his web log -- is that the GAO stated a disclaimer about the figures Hoffman cited above, saying:
 
"[We] did not present analysis of wage rates by occupation within different geographic areas or within education levels because of small sample size constraints in the analysis of CPS data."
 
As the industry lobbyists are fond of pointing out, correctly, the H-1Bs are more likely to have a master's degree or PhD than Americans.   Advanced degrees command a salary premium, e.g. about $10K-$15K for a master's, more for a PhD.
 
So, roughly speaking, THOSE GAO NUMBERS SHOW THAT H-1BS WITH MASTER'S DEGREES ARE BEING PAID THE SAME AS AMERICANS WITH ONLY BACHELOR'S DEGREES.   IOW: THE GAO REPORT SHOWS THAT THE H-1BS ARE UNDER-PAID.
 
This is an excellent example of the distortions the industry lobbyists make so effectively.   If you are a consumer of their literature, keep this example in mind at all times, as it succinctly exemplifies how misleading their claims can be.
 
Now, if Hoffman were in the present conversation, he would say, "Hey, if the Americans don't pursue graduate work, don't blame the employers for hiring H-1Bs with grad degrees."   But as I've explained before, H-1B is the CAUSE of the relatively smaller number of Americans pursuing graduate work, not the SOLUTION, because the influx of foreign students at the graduate level has cut down the salary premium accrued by earning those degrees, not worth the time spent, e.g. 5 years for a PhD.   In plain English, it just doesn't pay to go to grad school in engineering.   This was shown in the congressionally-commissioned NRC study, in the work of UC Berkeley economists Brown and Linden, in the NIH study, and was even implied in the House testimony by Texas Instruments.
 
It is worth adding that in the pre-H-1B days, most major tech employers would pay for part-time master's study by engineers.   That's rare now.
 
Norm
GAO report (pdf)
Matloff's review of this GAO study.   The data Hoffman cites, and the GAO disclaimer that he hid from you, are on page 43.

2013-05-06
Yuval Levin _National Review_
reforming immigration law perversion proposal

2013-05-06
Guy Benson _Town Hall_
special forces rescue team was ordered to stand down while Benghazi consulate was being attacked
Sharyl Attkisson: CBS
"Hicks told investigators that SOCAFRICA commander lieutenant-colonel Gibson and his team were on their way to board a C-130 from Tripoli for Benghazi prior to an attack on a second U.S. compound 'when [lieutenant-colonel Gibson] got a phone call from SOCAFRICA which said, ''you can't go now, you don't have the authority to go now.''   And so they missed the flight...   They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it.'   No assistance arrived from the U.S. military outside of Libya during the hours that Americans were under attack or trapped inside compounds by hostile forces armed with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and AK-47 rifles.   Hicks told congressional investigators that if the U.S. had quickly sent a military aircraft over Benghazi, it might have saved American lives.   The U.S. Souda Bay Naval Base is an hour's flight from Libya...   support teams were repeatedly instructed to get ready, then to stand down, throughout the 8-hour slaughter...   Secretary Clinton actively cut the State Department's counter-terrorism bureau out of the loop during the terrorist attack.   CBS News reported last November that the Obama administration also didn't convene the inter-agency Counter-terrorism Security Group (CSG) during the raid...   an elite US task force training in Croatia could have arrived prior to the latter stages of the siege, during which Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods were murdered...   The US [government] had unmanned predator drones hovering over-head throughout much of the attack.   One Democratic senator couldn't or wouldn't say whether those drones were armed."

2013-05-06
Paul Scicchitano & Kathleen Walter _News Max_
Steve King: S744 is a "breath-taking, outrageous form of amnesty" for illegal aliens

2013-05-06
Julianne Malveaux _Skanner_
blacks under-represented in S744 debate
"The senate's Gang of 8 have put together an 844-page monstrosity known as the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act, legislation that president Obama says he 'basically approves' of.   The crafters of this essentially unreadable bill was put together by Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), [oath-breaker] Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Michael Bennett (D-CO), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsay Graham [a.k.a. Lindsay Grahamnesty] (R-SC)...   it disadvantages some immigrants, especially African and Caribbean immigrants, while helping others.   Further, the senators crafting the bill put goodies into the bill that only serve to advantage themselves or their states.   Senator Lindsay Graham wants more visas for the meat packing industry.   [Oath-breaking] senator Charles Schumer provided special provisions for Irish people with a high school diploma (why?), senator Marco Rubio, the much touted possible presidential candidate in 2016, asked for more visas for the cruise ship industry, and senators Michael Bennett wants more visas for workers in ski resorts...   Many African immigrants come here through this program (Ghana and Nigeria each had 6K immigrants through this program in 2011; African immigrants are 36% of those receiving diversity visas)...   S744 creates between 120K and 200K visas on a 'merit based' system, which gives highest priority to those who have future employment opportunities.   Because employers do not seek out African and Caribbean immigrants for employees (as they seek out Indian and Chinese employees), the merit-based point system is likely to provide fewer opportunities for those from Africa and the Caribbean.   Many hi-tech companies use the H-1B visa program on the grounds that there is a shortage of skilled workers in the United States.   There is evidence that this claim is specious and that employers prefer foreign workers who they can pay less and control more.   The new legislation will prevent employers from holding workers hostage because their continuing employment is necessary in order to keep their visa.   The new legislation gives H-1B 60 days to find a new job.   But why do we have H-1B visas at all.   With unemployment over 7%, and Black unemployment over 13%, surely there are unemployed people who could work effectively in technology companies.   Howard University economist Bill Sprigs has written that there are proportionately more African American students majoring in computer science than White.   Many of these graduates cannot find jobs.   Meanwhile, African and Caribbean immigrants get just a small percentage of H-1B visas...   $4.5G in an attempt to secure the southern border, which will 'secure' our country from Mexican immigrants, but ignores the northern border, which makes our country more open to Canadian immigration.   Of course, Canadian immigrants are more likely to be White, and thus less feared, than Mexican immigrants.   The Congressional Black Caucus is one of many groups that suggest that this $4.5G could be more effectively spent, perhaps on STEM education."

2013-05-06
Hansook Oh & ReAnne Rogers _California State U at Northridge SunDial_
immigration law perversion bill in senate judiciary committee
"On April 19, as the first hearings began for the bill, CSUN president Dianne F. Harrison e-mailed the campus calling for continued conversation that seeks to promote a better understanding of the issues surrounding immigration reform.   She also wants to focus on how it will affect the university's ability to better serve immigrant and undocumented students...   Seokwon Jason Yoon, a graduating senior majoring in Asian American studies, lost his legal status and became undocumented when his family's lawyer did not warn him about a rule governing visas.   Though he entered the country with legal visas, Yoon said he became undocumented at the age of 21 because his immigration lawyer failed to warn him about a requirement in changing his status from dependent upon his parents' visa to an independent student visa.   Yoon thinks that providing a path to citizenship for only the brightest and best undocumented students is unfair for other students who might have lost hope while living with difficult circumstances...   He says he is more fortunate than some of his friends, who went to community college for 6 years and never graduated."

2013-05-06
_Chronicle of Higher Education_
blind psychologist leads students with disabilities into STEM studies

2013-05-06
William la Jeunesse _Fox_
critics say background check provision of S744 is too weak

2013-05-06
William L. Anderson
chutzpah economics

2013-05-06 (5773 Iyar 26)
Mark Steyn _Jewish World Review_
immigration law perversion means a sweeping transformation of the USA
"Most countries in the world have irrelevant numbers of 'immigrants'.   In the Americas, for example, only Canada, the United States and the British West Indies have significant non-native populations.   In Mexico, immigrants account for 0.6% of the population, and that generally negligible level prevails all the way down through Latin America until you hit a blip of 1.4% with Chile and 3.8% in Argentina.   There's an isolated exception in Belize, which, like the English Caribbean, has historical patterns of internal migration within the British Commonwealth -- such as one sees, for example, in the number of New Zealand-born residents of Australia...   Over 20% of all the immigrants on the planet are in the U.S.A.   The country's foreign-born population has doubled in the last 2 decades to 40M -- officially.   Which is the equivalent of Washington taking a decision to admit every single living Canadian, and throwing in the population of New Zealand as a bonus.   Thank goodness they didn't do that, eh?   (Whoops.)...   In 1970, its foreign-born population was 4.7%.   And, while most of the West has embraced mass immigration in the last half-century, America differs significantly from those developed countries, like Canada and Australia, that favor skilled migrants.   Personally, I don't see what's so enlightened and progressive about denuding Third World nations of their best and brightest to be your doctors and nurses, but it does demonstrate a certain ruthless self-interest...   According to Numbers USA, if the immigration bill passed, it would increase the legal population of the United States by 33M in its first decade...   My immigration lawyer explained to me that the examiners devote 6 minutes to each application, and then say yea or nay.   I'm confident that if we toss another 33M into the mix, we can get that 6 minutes cut by two-thirds...   So what's the big deal about making McCain's Dagestani crackdown the 1,000th meaningless safeguard that will be entirely ignored?...   An informed citizenry would trade all the triggers for a straight answer to one simple question: Why?"
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-05-07

1992-05-07: Bill of Rights 2nd amendment, regulating congressional pay raises, was ratified (by Michigan)

2013-05-07
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
Matloff vs. Peri on KCBS
 
On Friday, KCBS radio, the CBS affiliate in San Francisco, held a "debate" between me and my colleague Giovanni Peri of the UC Davis Economics Dept.   I use quotation marks here because there was no back-and-forth, simply a 15-minute interview of me and one of Giovanni.
 
I know Giovanni slightly.   I first met him when I invited him to serve as a guest lecturer for the Freshman Seminar I was teaching on immigration.   I found him to be out-going, friendly and provocative.   I also had another UCD colleague and a major figure in the field, Phil Martin, serve as a guest lecturer on the other side.
 
And that is a key point.   Most economists who work on immigration issues are known, at least in the research community, to have a definite view-point, either positive or negative, on the issue as to what benefits immigration has to the nation -- fiscal, economic, cultural, etc.   Phil is, I believe it is fair to say, viewed as moderately negative, while Giovanni, the relatively new kid on the block, is already viewed as very strongly positive.
 
At the time I first met Giovanni, in 2006, he had not done any research on the issue of skilled immigration.   When I asked his opinion on it at the time, he said that the fact that the industry was hiring H-1Bs must mean that the employers need them.   I was a bit taken aback to see an economist ignore the issue of price, but I assumed that he would eventually do research in the area, and I looked forward to seeing it.
 
That day has now come.   Giovanni, together with his graduate student and a colleague at Colgate University, now has a working paper (econ academic jargon for a draft shared for comments, not yet a peer-reviewed published paper) on H-1Bs.
 
I plan to do a detailed review of the paper at some point (I first will review one by the Kerrs and Wm. Lincoln, with input from Bill Kerr), so in the current posting I will focus on the radio "debate", and even then address only a few points.
 
Giovanni had suggested that he and I get together to trade views before the debate, but it came much sooner than we had thought, no time for meeting.   We did chat by e-mail.   He asked me a number of questions on my views, which I answered in summary form but referred him to my recent paper published paper in Migration Letters (pdf) for details.
 
Since I was already aware of his working paper on H-1B, I only had one question for him, which asked whether he favored the provision in the Gang of 8 bill to grant unlimited, automatic green cards to all foreign STEM grad students.   He replied that he does favor it, which surprised me in spite of my knowing that he is very strongly in the pro-immigration camp.
 
As noted, I'll comment on just a few points Giovanni made in the radio show:
 
1.   He claimed that H-1Bs are not under-paid, and as evidence he said that he had found the mean salary in the computer field for natives to be about $71K, compared to $79K for the foreign-born.   I'm sure many of you can see the flaws in that, but here are a few:
 
(a) The categogy "foreign-born" is of course way, way too broad, much, much broader than just H-1Bs.   Obviously, it includes those who came to the U.S.A. as children under family immigration laws.   But even among those who started work in the U.S.A. as H-1Bs, most of THEM are now U.S. citizens or permanent residents -- and thus not subject to [abuse].   In other words, only a very small minority of the foreign-born in his wage statistics are currently H-1Bs, and thus his numbers aren't relevant to the H-1B under-payment issue.
 
(b) What is Giovanni including in his category, "computer" jobs?   There are lots of different kinds of computer jobs that H-1Bs are not eligible to fill, such as technician jobs.   The category that the computer-related H-1Bs typically fill, Software Engineer, has a median salary nationwide of $90,060, according to the OES data.   So, Giovanni is clearly including far more job categories than he should in a paper about H-1B.   He is, in significant part, comparing native technicians to foreign software engineers, which is invalid.
 
(c) Again we have the issue of differential education levels, as was the case of my critique of industry lobbyist Robert Hoffman's blog in my e-news-letter posting this afternoon.
 
2.   Giovanni says that since the H-1B quota for an entire year is often exhausted within just a few days, that shows that employers really need the H-1Bs.   Of course, once one shows that the H-1Bs tend to be under-paid, that argument goes away.
 
3.   Giovanni says that Americans avoid STEM jobs, because jobs in the law, management and finance are much more lucrative.   This of course raises the obvious question as to WHY that is the case.   Given the supreme economic importance STEM supposedly has -- as stated repeatedly by members of congress and president Obama -- why are STEM careers not financially "competitive" in attracting our own best and brightest young people?   The answer is obvious: The foreign influx is holding STEM wages down.   And this is exactly the effect that the famous internal NSF report advocated, and which former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan has repeatedly called for.   It has also been shown by academic researchers.
 
And Point 3 is probably the most important one, going right to the issue of just what it is we want from immigration, and for our nation.   It is here where Giovanni and I have fundamentally different views.   During my part of the show, I raised the question, "Do we want to have a policy that incentivizes our own best and brightest to avoid STEM careers?"   I treated this as a rhetorical question, taking it for granted that the answer was no.   Giovanni, OTOH, has no problem whatsoever with having the nation permanently, and indeed mainly, rely on foreign influx for STEM.   (He brought up the "let them be lawyers" remark regarding Americans in his e-mail exchange with me as well.)
 
Well, happy listening.   :-)
 
Norm
---30---

2013-05-07
Chris Murphy _Information Week_/_UBM_
FedEx to contract with bodyshoppers for IT services
"IT service providers will handle 25% to 30% of the company's IT... FedEx offered voluntary buy-outs to its entire IT team -- 18% of its IT work-force accepted -- and those taking the buy-out will spend a month to as much as a year transitioning work to [bodyshoppers]."

2013-05-07
Doug Henschen _Information Week_/_UBM_
Cray builds a budget-minded super-computer for $500K
"The new Cray XC30-AC supercomputer uses many of the same components and software elements as those monsters, but it is air cooled, requires no optical cables and costs from $500K to $3M.   The target market is Fortune 100 to Fortune 1000 manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, and oil and gas firms, and smaller universities, government agencies and research labs that want to exploit super-computing techniques...   smaller aircraft and jet engine manufacturers, for example, are among the types of firms looking at super-computing to model airflows and eke out that much more efficiency in their products, said Bolding.   Auto, truck and air foil manufacturers are doing the same to improve the fuel efficiency of vehicles while smaller petroleum exploration and pharmaceutical firms are doing high-end imaging and modeling work...   Cray uses chips from AMD, Intel and Nvidia (having ceased manufacturing of its own chips 7 years ago), but it maintains performance advantages through its internal networking and connection technologies, according to Bolding...   The XC30-AC is available immediately and comes with a Linux-based operating system and software environment including a compiler and software tools for parallel code."

2013-05-07
Victor Davis Hanson _PJ Media_
the great California land rush
"I have lived on the same farm for 59 years and seen at least three boom-and-bust farm cycles -- one in the late 1960s, another in the early 1980s, and a third right now.   I've witnessed raisins, for example, at $1,420 a ton 35 years ago, then $410 a ton, then $700 a ton -- and now almost $2K.   The old wisdom insisted that almond acreage could never exceed 200K acres without a crash, that prices would never go over $1 pound to the farmer, that production could not go much over 3K lbs. per acre.   Now?   There are now 800K plus acres of California almonds, prices near $3 a pound, and new varieties are creeping up to 4K lbs. per acre.   Some almond orchards remind me of alien organisms: lousy soil, undersized trees, tiny roots -- and loaded with nuts to the point that props are needed to keep the trees from toppling over, as agronomy keeps these artificial creations going with daily IV fusions of water and nutrients.   It is almost as if anything on the tree that is not a nut is genetically superfluous.   When I began farming full-time in the cresting boom of 1980, vineyard or orchard went for almost $10K an acre.   I saw it crash 3 years later and prices dip as low as $3K an acre for what was then called 'Thompson Worthless' vineyards.   By the 1990s, prices were back up to between $7K and $10K per acre -- only to go back down too $5K by 2003.   And now?   Bare land can go for $15K an acre and up; a productive vineyard or nut orchard sells for $25K to $30K.   'They' say $35K an acre is on the horizon..."

2013-05-07
Con Carroll _Washington DC Examiner_
Republicans who favor amnesty for illegal aliens... and the illfare state
"Yesterday, the Heritage Foundation released a report showing that the amnesty portion of the Schumer-Rubio immigration bill would cost current American [tax-victims] $6.3T over the next 50 years."

2013-05-07
Katie Pavlich _Town Hall_
Americans still don't think federal government will secure the borders

2013-05-07
Guy Benson _Town Hall_
senator Dick Durbin: no significant reform to immigration will be permitted, only massive perversions

2013-05-07
Rachel Alexander _Town Hall_
anti-Americanism increasing at the UN
"in 2001, when the United States was removed from the UN Human Rights Commission.   Instead, the despotic countries Libya, Syria and Sudan were given seats.   The removal was done in retaliation for the United States' defense of Israel."

2013-05-07
Rick Santorum _Town Hall_
DC elites still don't get it, still disconnected from reality
"You may be hearing a lot these days about the growing separation of the elites in America from everyone else, about how those at the very top in our country are playing by a different set of rules and have different realities than the millions of working families across America.   Well, I agree with this view, and sadly, I see it getting worse by the day.   And nowhere is it as bad as it is on Capitol Hill."

2013-05-07
Anthony Watts
sun's magnetic activity still in a slump

2013-05-07
Fredreka Schouten _USA Today_/_Gannett_
tech execs fight provision to post job ads where US citizens might get a chance to compete for jobs
"Bill provision that would require firms to post jobs for Americans is targeted.   Technology firms have spent millions on lobbying on immigration...   Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, has criticized the visa program, saying it allows firms to hire 'cheap indentured labor'.   The technology industry is asking the government to come in and intervene in the normal functioning of the U.S. labor market, specifically on their behalf.', Hira said.   Bruce Morrison, a former Connecticut congressman who lobbies on behalf of a group that represents American engineers, said the organization will object to any effort to 'dilute [the extremely weak] worker protections as the measure moves through the Senate.   'The arguments from the companies is that there aren't any Americans to take these jobs', he said, 'so there shouldn't be any problem.'"

2013-05-07
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
USA has more educated and trained STEM professionals than STEM job openings
pdf
"No one from the White House or the Department of Homeland Security has pulled together the numbers used by either CIS or EPI above, though all come from official data sets.   Further, one should bear in mind while looking at these supply and demand numbers that the United States is routinely bringing in a million new immigrants a year, as well as more than 100K new H-1B high-skilled workers as non-immigrants...   Most of the H-1B's are in IT...   The remaining data show that there will be three new high-tech degree holders for every two high-tech job openings for the 10-year period, even if employers restricted their future hiring to new grads only.   In addition, there are millions of unemployed college graduates out there, and even larger numbers of STEM-trained people employed in other lines of work.   America is swimming in IT talent.   The focus on new university graduates that dominates the industry's immigration policy statements is a hidden indication of the not-often-discussed elephant in the room -- the ease with which employers can hire docile, young foreign workers permits wide-spread de facto discrimination against older (35-plus) American workers...   Should not the policy discussion be about the total supply of STEM workers and the total need for such workers, not the number of new graduates?   Industry is only too happy to ignore the large numbers of resident STEM workers who are unemployed, or more likely, working in non-STEM jobs...   68% of the workers in the IT industry do NOT have a computer-related degree and 31% of them do not even have a STEM degree...   Most of us, in our private lives, incidentally, probably know a computer whiz or 3, and the chances are that one or more of them did not major in computers in college.   Industry [executives and their lobbyists over-state] the need for advanced degrees...   The BLS's scholarly publication, _Monthly Labor Review_, ran an article last April on this point [Dixie Sommers & Teresa L. Morisi 2012 April 'Employment projections through the lens of education and training' (pdf)] showing the 'typical education needed for entry' into a number of occupations and sub-occupations.   In engineering and architecture there were 35 such sub-categories, and none showed a need for more than a bachelor's degree; in the computer and mathematical field, again, only 3 of the 16 sub-categories called for more than a bachelor's degree...   Andrew Hacker wrote [2009-04-30 'Can We Make America Smarter' _New York Review of Books_ vol56 #7]: '[The] most recent _Occupational Outlook Handbook_ [a BLS publication] uses pay-rolls for 2006 as a base, and then offers employment estimates for 2016.   I was surprised to learn that in 2006 the nation altogether had only 17K paid positions for physicists, apart from teachers, and that only 1K more openings are envisaged for 2016.   The number of employed mathematicians is expected to rise from 3K to 3,300...   Employment for engineers is slated to grow from 1.512M to 1.671M, about the same percentage of growth as for the workforce as a whole.   Indeed, at current rates, 650K new engineers will have received degrees by 2016, 4 times the predicted number of openings.   Hence a high attrition rate.   Most reach salary ceilings early -- chemical engineers average $73,300 at mid-career -- so many shift to sales or management.   Perhaps our society would benefit were we to train more people in science and technology.   But no matter how estimable their knowledge, when employers say they don't need more of these employees, it tells us either that there aren't tasks for them to do, or that money isn't there [to hire them].'...   there is no need for anything as massive and as long-lasting as industry's current requests.   There may be some actual, short-term personnel gaps here and there, but we do not need a permanent Mississippi River flood of new alien workers to close those temporary short-falls...   As [Daniel Costa] indicated in the previously cited article [2012-11-19 "STEM Shortages?: MSFT report distorts reality about computig occupations' from EPI], 'average wages in the computer and mathematical occupations for workers with at least a bachelor's degree' barely moved from 2000 to 2011 when studied in 2012 dollars (i.e., in constant dollars).   Using Current Population Survey data he found that average hourly wages had moved from $37.27 in 2000 to $39.24 in 2011, an average annual increase of about 18 cents an hour."

2013-05-07
Steven A. Camarota & Karen Zeigler _Center for Immigration Studies_
Are there really jobs American's won't do?
"Census Bureau data collected from 2009 to 2011, which allows for detailed analysis of all 472 separate occupations, shows that there were only [6] of majority-immigrant occupations.   Thus, there really are no jobs that Americans won't do...   These 6 occupations account for 1% of the total U.S. work-force.   Moreover, native Americans still comprise 46% of workers even in these occupations.   Maids and housekeepers: 51% native: Taxi drivers and chauffeurs: 58% native; Butchers and meat processors: 63% native; Grounds maintenance workers: 64% native; Construction laborers: 66% native; Porters, bell-hops, and concierges: 72% native; Janitors: 73% native.   There are 67 occupations in which 25% or more of workers are immigrants (legal and illegal).   In these high-immigrant occupations, there are still 16.5M natives -- accounting for 1 out of 8 natives in the labor force.   High-immigrant occupations (25% or more immigrant) are primarily, but not exclusively, lower-wage jobs that require relatively little formal education.   In high-immigrant occupations, 59% of the natives have no education beyond high school, compared to 31% of the rest of the labor force.   Natives tend to have high unemployment in high-immigrant occupations, averaging 14% during the 2009-2011 period, compared to 8% in the rest of the labor market.   There were a total of 2.6M unemployed native-born Americans in high-immigrant occupations.   Some may think that native-born workers in high-immigrant occupations are mostly older, with few young natives willing to do such work.   But 34% of natives in these occupations are age 30 or younger, compared to 27% of natives in the rest of labor force.   It is worth remembering that not all high-immigrant occupations are lower skilled.   For example, 36% of software engineers are immigrants as are 27% of physicians.   A number of politically important groups tend to face very little job competition from immigrants (legal and illegal).   For example, just 10% of reporters are immigrants, as are only 6% of lawyers and judges and 6% of farmers and ranchers...   there are no occupations in the United States in which a majority of workers are illegal immigrants...   just 5% of all illegal immigrants work in agriculture...   The ACS shows nearly 40M native-born Americans ages 18 to 65 not in the labor force...   Of native-born native adults, 14% changed addresses in just the last year.   Moreover, 38% live outside of their state of birth...   There are 22 occupations out of 472 in which illegal immigrants comprise 20% or more of workers.   There are 5.6M natives in these high-illegal-immigrant occupations, 70% of whom have no education beyond high school.   In contrast, in occupations that are made up of 10% or fewer illegal immigrants, 70% of natives have education beyond high school."

2013-05-07
Jerry Kammer _Center for Immigration Studies_
fact-checking the Zuckerberg-Rubio TV ad
"FactCheck.org has done an analysis of the ad, explaining not only how it fudges some facts, but also that it is tied to FB billionaire Mark Zuckerberg.   While FactCheck.org doesn't point this out, FB lobbyists have succeeded in massaging the immigration bill to ensure that Zuckerberg gets access to plenty of visas for foreign high-tech workers.   Moreover, Zuckerberg is bank-rolling the ad in an attempt to win public support for the bill...   'A group with ties to FB CEO Mark Zuckerberg hijacks the credibility of news organizations in a misleading ad that supports a bipartisan immigration overhaul bill.   The ad, featuring senator Marco Rubio, attributes several quotes to media outlets, but the quotes come from opinion pieces written by backers of the immigration bill.'"
Lori Robertson: FactCheck.org
"'opponents, such as senator Jeff Sessions, R-AL, charge that the enforcement plan lacks teeth, prioritizes legalization ahead of border security and ultimately would not be enforced.'..."

2013-05-07
Jerry Kammer _Center for Immigration Studies_
4 nuggets from today's senate hearing

2013-05-07
Bill Hoffmann & Kathleen Walter _News Max_
Obummer wants to leverage immigration and economy disputes to "split the GOP"
"'The president is not too encumbered by the Constitution or a lot of our laws.', he said."

2013-05-07
Guy Benson _Town Hall_
the dam is about to break on Benghazi

2013-05-07
Carol Piatt Liebau _Town Hall_
break down Benghazi
"Those who follow politics and/or are policy wonks show a remarkable and often praiseworthy capacity to get into the deep weeds about timelines, military details and the like.   Such detail is necessary if the real story of Benghazi is ever to be told.   But the press and the public can be lazy..."

2013-05-07
Alicia Powe _Town Hall_
cyber-espionage and Red Chinese military expansion
"'[Red China] continues to leverage foreign investments, commercial joint ventures, academic exchanges, the experience of repatriated Chinese students and researchers, and state-sponsored industrial and technical espionage to increase the level of technologies and expertise available to support military research, development, and acquisition.', David Helvey, the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia the U.S. Defense Department, said at a Pentagon news conference Monday.   The 83-page annual report to Congress on [Red Chinese] military developments provides a detailed overview of [Red China's] military progression.   Beijing's publicly announced a 10.7% increase in military spending to $119G in March and has grown at an inflation-adjusted pace of nearly 10 percent annually over the past decade.   The Pentagon estimates that [Red China's] actual spending for 2012 could range between $135G and $215G.   The cost for People's Liberation Army personnel has risen from about one-third of its budget to roughly one-half...   The U.S. defense budget is contracting and [Red China's] has been growing steadily but military outlays are still about 6 times more in the U.S.A.   President Obama reportedly will request roughly $526G in defense spending for fiscal 2014...   A U.S.A.-based cyber-security firm, Mandiant Corp, issued a report in February accusing a secret [Red Chinese] military unit in Shanghai of years of cyber-attacks against more than 141 companies worldwide since 2006, a majority of them American.   The Obama administration, as part of its fiscal 2014 budget request, is seeking to increase total U.S. government spending on cyber security to $13G, about $1G more than current levels."

2013-05-07
Jason Howerton _Blaze_
Fox reporter tracks down convicted murderer on parole at Columbia U for interview, U security was displeased
"Fox News' Jesse Watters actually managed to track down former Weather Underground radical Kathy Boudin at Columbia University, though she wasn't very talkative.   Boudin spent 22 years in prison for her involvement in a 1981 armored-car robbery that left 2 cops and a Brinks guard dead in Rockland county, NY.   She was hired by Columbia University's School of Social Work in 2008, 5 years after she was paroled for her murderous crime...   'She's shown no remorse for this crime and she's using the college as a soap box to promote her mission to get her husband, who has a 75 year sentence, and other co-defendants out of jail.', said retired NYPD officer Arthur Keenan, who survived the 1981 Brinks robbery.   Watters, who also spoke with many Columbia students, later told Bill O'Reilly that most of the students had no idea that the school had hired a radical involved in the deadly robbery."

2013-05-07
Alan Zafran _CNBC_
CEOs not impressed by USA economy, either

2013-05-07
Niels Lesniewski _Roll Call_
calls for S744 to be examined by security committee may be too late

2013-05-07
Elizabeth Schulze _CNBC_
the economics of immigration reform/perversion

2013-05-07
_Pittsburgh PA Tribune-Review_
immigration reform/perversion
"it's increasingly clear that the floodgates for illegal aliens will be opened before any reasonable 'fix' is applied to border security... While the legislation is clear on who gets what and how, it gets a tad blurry on border enforcement. Oh, there's billions of additional spending for the Department of Homeland Security but 'with no clear requirements on how the money is spent', notes James Carafano for Heritage."

2013-05-07 (5773 Iyar 27)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
bouncing-ball politics
"For years, home ownership was a big 'good thing' among both [leftist] Democrats like congressman Barney Frank and senator Christopher Dodd, on the one hand, and moderate Republicans like president George W. Bush OTOH.   Raising the rate of home ownership was the big red bouncing ball that they pursued out into the street, in utter disregard of the dangers.   A political myth has been created that no one warned of those dangers.   But among the many who did warn were yours truly in 2005, Fortune and Barron's magazines in 2004 and Britain's The Economist magazine in 2003.   Warnings specifically about the dangerous roles of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were made by Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan in 2005 and by secretary of the Treasury John W. Snow in 2003.   Many, if not most, of the children who go running out into the street in pursuit of their bouncing ball may have been warned against this by their parents.   But neither small children nor politicians always heed warnings.   Politicians are of course more articulate than small children, so the pols are able to not only disregard warnings but ridicule them.   That was what was done by congressman Barney Frank and senator Christopher Dodd, among many other politicians who made the pursuit of higher home ownership rates the holy grail...   from the Federal Reserve to bank regulatory agencies and even the Department of Justice, which issued threats of anti-discrimination law-suits -- were used to force banks and other lenders to lower their standards for making mortgage loans.   Lower lending standards of course meant higher risks of default.   But these risks -- and the chain reactions throughout the whole financial system -- were like the traffic ignored by a small child dashing out into the street in pursuit of their bouncing ball...   the latest data show that the rate of home ownership today is lower than it has been in 18 years...   Pursuit of the bright red bouncing ball of 'universal health care' has already begun to produce collisions with reality in the form of rising insurance premiums to cover the cost of generous government-mandated benefits, to be paid for by someone else.   Here again, there have been many warnings, but the political response to those warnings was to rush [ObummerDoesn'tCare] to a vote before even the congressmen who voted for it had a chance to read it...   The same mind-set has prevailed internationally.   Trying to make Middle East countries more 'democratic' is the bipartisan bouncing ball of American foreign policy.   Some of these countries existed thousands of years before there was a [United States of America] -- and, in all that time, they never came close to being democratic."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-05-08 Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
Seattle Times article etc.: Visas Shut Out Americans
 
As promised the other day, enclosed are my comments on the May 4 piece that ran in the Seattle Times titled "Do Visas for Skilled Foreigners Shut Out U.S. Tech Workers?".
 
There is a lot of interesting material in this article.   In commenting on it, among other things I will surprise some of you by strongly agreeing with one of the most active supporters of H-1B, and will tell a sadly ironic anecdote of the "what goes around, comes around" variety.
 
People I've talked to about the article like the opening example the best: Mitchell Erickson decides to go back to school an earn a computer science degree in his 50s but then fails to find full-time work -- right there in the Seattle region, where MSFT is claiming a dire CS labor shortage.  
 
To me, there is a much more important example in the article, but before getting to it, I must note that I certainly don't wish to minimize Erickson's plight.   On the contrary, I've been seeing this kind of thing for years.   Even worse, in 1998 I made the acquaintance of a guy who had already been employed as a programmer but quit his programming job to get his master's degree.   At age 31, HE couldn't find a job after finishing the degree -- at the height of the Dot Com Boom.
 
But I believe the unnamed person in the article is more important, for reasons that will be explained shortly.   Here is the passage describing her.
 
************************************************************
 
A MSFT product manager shares that suspicion.   The manager was one of 1,400 people cut from the payroll in 2009 January as part of MSFT'€™s first-ever companywide layoffs in the recession.   The supervisors who eliminated her position were here on visas, as were 2 recent hires in her work group who dodged the down-sizing.
 
Three weeks later, Artech Information Systems, a staffing firm, offered the product manager a 3-month contract at MSFT for what was essentially the same job she had left.   The pay was $32 an hour, half her old salary.
 
The worker asked not to be named because she has found a new job and did not want to jeopardize it.
 
************************************************************
 
Let's call this woman Ms. X.   [Added 2013/05/10: Today I received an e-mail message from a woman who identified herself as Ms. X, which I confirmed from one of the authors of the article.   Ms. X says that although Artech did contact her about the job, she did not actually apply for it, due to the low salary.]
 
Ms. X's example is very important in light of another passage in the piece:
 
------------------------------------------------------------
 
Professor Ed Lazowska, associate chairman of the computer science and engineering department at the University of Washington, said competition is especially fierce for the most talented, with his students often fielding multiple job offers.
 
Lazowska said the difference between a top software engineer and a middling one is enormous.   That, he speculated, might be one explanation for why some job searches are difficult. Employers, Lazowska said, seek applicants with stellar grades from well-regarded computer-science programs. They also look for successful past internships and resumes showing ability to constantly update skills in a fast-changing industry.
 
------------------------------------------------------------
 
Professor Lazowska has been extremely out-spoken over the years in support of H-1B, and he has an unusually good relation with industry.   His bio notes that he "holds the Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington...is a member of the MSFT Research Technical Advisory Board, and serves as a board member or technical advisor to a number of high-tech companies and venture firms."
 
Please note carefully, though, that I completely agree with Lazowska's remarks above about quality.   As I've frequently noted, there is a huge range in talent among programmers (as anyone who has ever taught computer science students knows all too well).   You may recall my often saying that hiring a weak programmer is worse than hiring no one at all, because the weak one will mess things up for everyone else.
 
And BOTH the foreign and domestic workers include lots of weak programmers.
 
Unfortunately, employers don't recruit on the basis of quality, at least in the first screening.   As I've pointed out so many times, they focus on hiring the new and recent graduates, who are cheaper.   By in essence automatically screening out any applicant over age 35, the employers are shooting themselves in the foot, because many of those applicants are of high quality.
 
At any rate, I do agree with Lazowska that quality is key.   That's why the example of Ms. X is so important.
 
Here's the point: Ms. X presumably does meet MSFT's quality standards.   She was working at MSFT, and though she was included in a round of lay-offs there, she quickly was asked back to work at MSFT via a contractor.
 
Yet MSFT had still laid her off (and 1400 others), and when she was rehired to work there, it was at half her old salary.   THAT is apparently what happened -- she "aged out" of MSFT because her salary had gone up over the years.   THAT is the reason for MSFT's "shortage" claims.   As Wharton's Peter Cappelli, also quoted in the article, has stated many times, what the employers mean by "shortage" is a shortage of people who will work at the low price the employers want to pay.
 
Recall that Senior Vice-President and Chief Technical Officer David Vaskevitch has stated that the vast majority of MSFT hires are young, and MSFT's Brad Smith makes related statements in the article here about new grads, as does Lazowska.   Remember, the rationale given by the industry is that only the new grads know the latest technologies, and recall too that my retort to that is, "Well, who did those new grads learn the latest technologies from?   It's old guys like me!"   Well, this time, I can point out that it's old guys like Lazowska!
 
Lazowska got his bachelor's degree in 1972, which would make him about 63 years old.   Yet this semester he's teaching an operating systems course using Linux, the modern system that runs Android.   His course uses git, the currently fashionable version control and collaboration software, and he is assigning programming work using threads, the key technology to working on today's multicore machines.   IOW, those new grads learned their "modern" skills from a 63-year-old.
 
Lazowska implies in the article that older tech workers will be employed as long as they keep up with technology, but that is generally false, as even Vivek Wadhwa has pointed out, and as Ms. X's example shows.   Again, the employers want the young'uns, as they are cheaper, both in salary and in benefits.   I just received an employer request today for me to send some young people to their firm.
 
UCSD economics professor Gordon Hanson, according to the article, "says his research shows that foreign and American high-tech workers have comparable wages".   Actually, from what I can tell from Hanson's web page, he himself hasn't done any research on the matter; he simply has written non-technical papers that summarize what others have done, such as the paper cited by a TIME article (pdf).   And as I showed other day, that paper of his is extremely selective in its use of the existing research literature.   There are NO papers cited in his bibliography that are critical of H-1B.
 
On the contrary, Hanson himself admits that the H-1Bs (at least the ones being sponsored for green cards) are immobile.   Basic economic theory, not to mention common sense, shows that immobile workers are [more likely to be] under-paid, as they can't move around in the labor market to get the best salary deal.   IOW, Hanson should know as an economist that his claim about wage parity can't be true.
 
Last, a comment on Michelle Lim, the new graduate who toes the UW party line on H-1B and new-grad hiring in the article.   She has a very impressive LinkedIn page, and I'm sure she deserves the attention employers gave her as a new grad.   But, though I hate to "jinx" her, the odds are that 15 years from now, that employer attention will have evaporated.   (Unless she switches to a non-technical job, which her second major in Econ suggests.)
 
Ms. Lim might benefit from reading a posting I made to this e-news-letter in 2009.   I was reporting on a show CNN did at the time, in which it interviewed several students at Georgia Tech (a stone's throw from CNN head-quarters), about their concerns regarding the job market.   One of them, Christine Liu, talks about the plight of her engineer dad, an immigrant from China (emphasis added):
 
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
 
Currently the job market with my dad, because he's an engineer, is hard, really hard, to stay up because we have all these Georgia Tech students who are up with the new information and stuff like that.   THEY'RE COMING IN AND TAKING THE OLDER PEOPLE'S JOBS, so my dad doesn't have the opportunity to get a job.   He's a really smart guy, so he's considering going back to China and starting a job there.   That should never be an option!...   It makes me angry.
 
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
 
Indeed Ms. Liu SHOULD be angry.   The irony, of course, is that most likely her dad started work in the U.S. as an H-1B, and employers hired HIM instead of older Americans.   Now in 2009 HE was the American (I presume he naturalized) being shunned.
 
Of course, Mr. Liu was also being shunned in 2009 in favor of new American grads too, not just H-1Bs.   But as I keep harping, the employers use the H-1B program to swell the young labor pool, greatly exacerbating the age problem.
 
And even worse, the Gof8 bill [S744] would in essence give automatic green cards to ALL the foreign STEM grad students.   Almost all of them are young, so we will have an even greater age problem than we do now if [S744] is enacted.   Remember: Under [S744], H-1B would move into the background; the primary problem would be all those STEM green cards.
 
Norm
---30---

2013-05-08
Patrick Thibodeau _CIO_/_IDG_
a jobs site/data-base tech executives hate
ComputerWorld
"The intent of the data-base is to help improve the odds that a U.S. worker may get hired over a foreign worker.   But the bill's effectiveness may rise and fall on fuzzy terms, such as 'preference' and 'good faith' hiring, and its enforcement provisions.   This is where the legislative battle may be fought...   a requirement for the government to create a national data-base of jobs that employers want to fill with H-1B workers.   U.S. workers [citizens and green card holders] will be able to apply for those jobs, which will be posted for 30 days.   Employers are also barred 'from recruiting or giving preference' to visa workers over U.S. workers.   The tech [executives are] concerned that the immigration bill's recruitment and data-base provisions may extend the amount of time needed to hire an H-1B worker, and, more broadly, increase the risk of litigation and government oversight...   There 'is no enforcement mechanism', in the bill, said John Miano...   There are loop-holes for getting around the good faith requirement.   If an H-1B worker earns more than $60K a year [less than the average offer to new bachelor's degree earners has been for years], or holds a master's degree, they are exempt from the good faith provision.   'The new recruitment provisions are completely meaningless.', said Miano.   Daniel Costa, an immigration policy analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, says the immigration bill only requires non H-1B dependent employers to 'recruit' by using the proposed Labor Dept.'s data-base.   A good faith effort isn't required...   'I think it's crazy not to require that all employers do good faith recruiting.', said Costa.   'If the tech companies are truly recruiting U.S. workers like crazy as they say they are -- then why do they object to proving that they're already doing what they say they're doing?'...   Employers applying for a green card are required to advertise for the job and interview qualified U.S. candidates under a good faith process.   That green card process is also subject to an audit by the Labor Dept. [yet remains easily gamed and rarely enforced]."

2013-05-08
Erica Werner _Minneapolis MN StarTribune_/_AP_
over 300 amendments proposed to S744, from left and right
Fox
David Nakamura & Ed O'Keefe: Washington DC ComPost

2013-05-08
Becket Adams _Blaze_
JOLTS: USA job ads not so hot in March

2013-05-08
Katie Pavlich _Town Hall_
Ted Cruz has all the right enemies

2013-05-08
Katie Pavlich _Town Hall_
mother of information officer killed in Benghazi says I blame Hillary Clinton
Real Clear Politics

2013-05-08
Neal Boortz _Town Hall_
Benghazi and the media
"We're going to learn that Obummer and Hillary Clinton were informed almost immediately that the attack on the Benghazi consulate was being waged by Islamic jihadists connected to al Qaeda...   Obummer had a narrative to protect...   Hillary?   She had incompetence to cover up.   Almost immediately she came to understand that this consulate had requested additional security and protection, and that her chain of command had said no.   Now she had four dead Americans, including one dead Ambassador to deal with.   The 3:00 am phone call came, and her phone was turned off...   When the Watergate scandal broke we had a New York and DC press corps with a burning desire to destroy Richard Nixon.   With Obummer and the Benghazi scandal we have the very same press corps ready to do anything it can reasonably expect to get away with to protect their God-like hero and preserve his presidency..."

2013-05-08
Brian Lilley _Blaze_
Obummer regime funds lawyers for terrorists, harasses Benghazi whistle-blowers

2013-05-08
Jonah Goldberg _Town Hall_
Harvard historian Niall Ferguson steps on all of the left's sacred cows
"Part of Ferguson's bad luck was to recycle an ancient jibe that too many people were too ignorant to know was old hat...   For instance, legendary economist Joseph Schumpeter wrote that Keynes 'was childless and his philosophy of life was essentially a short-run philosophy'....   'The personal is political' is what my feminist professors taught me in college."

2013-05-08
Bob Barr _Town Hall_
NRA convention -- a celebration of confidence
"Over the course of a single, 3-day weekend in 2013 May in Houston, Texas, nearly 90K law-abiding American citizens came together to celebrate freedom at the 142nd annual convention of the National Rifle Association of America.   Those men, women and children who came to Houston did so despite nearly 6 months of relentless attacks on their values and beliefs by president Barack Obama, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York governor Andrew Cuomo, and many others.   These many thousands of law-abiding citizens came together in the heart of the Lone Star State not out of fear, as the gun-control advocates who demonize the NRA would have us believe; rather, these every-day folks joined together based on a firm understanding that our Founding Fathers got it right two and a quarter centuries ago, when they crafted a Constitution that guaranteed to us the principle that power resides in the hands of We the People not They the Government.   Roaming the floor of the Convention Center prior to the Monday morning NRA Board meeting, at which I was sworn in to a sixth three-year term as an NRA Board member, I was struck yet again by the decency, the sense of responsibility, the patriotism, and the everyday common sense of my countrymen who support the NRA.   There were parents, grandparents and children browsing the acres of exhibits, not in protest, but in celebration.   Mixed among theme were bikers, students, military veterans and police officers who shared in the sense that, left to our own devices as citizens, we can rally together and accomplish great things and simple, everyday tasks alike."

2013-05-08
Bob Unruh _World Net Daily_
one of Americans' answers to federal government's violations of US constitution is nullification

2013-05-08
_World Net Daily_
Saudi officials linked to human trafficking case in McLean, VA
2013-05-02: WJLA
Tiffany Gabbay: Blaze: human trafficking in Middle East & USA

2013-05-08
_NBC_
Clinton says that USA must engage in age discrimination against US citizens (video)

2013-05-08
_StockHouse_
Caterpillar CTO Gwenne Henricks asks senate Commerce committee for more cheap, young, pliant foreign labor with flexible ethics
News OK
News Blaze
Finanz Nachrichten
Sacramento CA Bee
MarketWatch/UBM
"'We employ more than 10K engineers, technologists and scientists worldwide who are dedicated to developing technologies that reshape the process of using, managing and owning heavy equipment.   Last year, we filed for nearly 1,100 patents and spent approximately $2.4G on research and development.'...   2012 sales and revenues of $65.875G...   Caterpillar's actual results may differ materially from those described or implied...   (x) inability to realize expected benefits from acquisitions, including ERA Mining Machinery Limited [?once upon a time a subsidiary of super-computer firm Control Data Corporation?], and divestitures, including the divestiture of the Bucyrus International, Inc...   (xi) international trade and investment policies; (xii) market acceptance of our products and services; (xiii) changes in the competitive environment, including market share, pricing and geographic and product mix of sales...   (xvi) compliance with environmental laws and regulations; (xvii) alleged or actual violations of trade or anti-corruption laws and regulations; (xviii) additional tax expense or exposure..."

2013-05-08
Tony Brown
The curious case of rising CO₂ and falling temperatures

2013-05-08
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
Who was the free black man, Isaac Dunn?

2013-05-08
Carlo Munoz _Hill_
Obummer regime refuses to turn over docs related to Benghazi requested by House Armed Services Committee chief Buck McKeon
"Once the 4-man U.S. special operations unit arrived in Tripoli, the mission in Benghazi had shifted from defending the consulate to evacuating the wounded and dead, according to [DoD press secretary George Little]."
more links from Mark R. Levin's radio show of 2013-05-09

2013-05-08
Mitchel Maddux & Dan Mangan _NY Post_
6 state senators among NY politicians secretly taped by Shirley Huntley in coruptionn probe
"Sampson was arrested Monday on federal charges of embezzlement and obstruction of justice, and Smith was arrested last month on federal charges related to his trying to bribe his way onto this year's Republican mayoral primary ballot... Huntley...has pleaded guilty to funneling more than $87K in [tax-victim] funds to a bogus charity and then using that money to splurge on lavish shopping trips with her crony, state Assemblywoman Vivian Cook. Cook has not been charged."

2013-05-08
Gene Marks _Inc._
4 reasons business executives are not confident about the economy
"Since 2009 the country has become accustomed to a trillion-dollar annual deficit.   I've been watching, with a growing sense of panic, the U.S. [government] debt, which is now approaching $17T and is, for the first time in U.S. history, greater than the entire national output.   But some are celebrating.   That's because many projections now show that, with rising tax receipts and some cuts in government spending, the deficit this year is projected to fall to under $800G.   And the projected annual deficit is estimated will decrease to as little (as little?) as $600G by 2015.   This doesn't mean the deficit is under control, and you know it.   Back in 2007, the deficit was only $161G and even that was too high.   Remember, this is all adding to the [federal government's] national debt...   2. The stock market boom does not indicate a strong economy...   [3. Inflation rages on, driven by fiscal practices and the Federal Reserve Board.]...   4. Corporations don't have as much cash as it seems."

2013-05-08
Michael Snyder & Tyler Durden _Zero Hedge_
copper price + 11 other economic indicators are flashing red

2013-05-08
Jessica Vaughan _Center for Immigration Studies_
V visa: Very many more admitted Very quickly

2013-05-08
Niels Lesniewski _Roll Call_
10 immigration amendments to watch

2013-05-08
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
a case history of our dysfunctional immigration system
"While doing some research on the massive misuse of affidavits in the agricultural worker part of the IRCA amnesty -- scores, perhaps hundreds of thousands of fraudulent applicants got legalized this way -- I stumbled on this example of our immigration system at work...   To back up a bit, an illegal alien (whose name was deleted by AAO, as is its wont) tried to obtain legalization under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) even though she was not eligible.   The alien apparently did so by buying an affidavit from an apparently small agricultural operation in New Jersey saying that the alien had worked on the farm for more than 90 days, and thus was eligible for a green card.   Unfortunately for the illegal in this case, according to a 1998 New York Times story the farmer, Royal Crest Meats, had sold 1,400 of these phony affidavits and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was alert enough (at that time) to notice such massive flows of documents from a single source...   So the farm was raided by INS agents, the alien's application was denied at the staff level, and AAO subsequently did the right thing, and confirmed the denial...   In the first place it is a bad idea to rest something as significant as legal presence on an affidavit alone, certainly not an affidavit that was not checked thoroughly at the time.   In this case, I suspect that the alien lost out because she bought the phony document from the wrong vendor -- someone in an urban area claiming 1,400 alien farm workers.   Had the alien chosen her fraud partner more carefully she probably would have gotten away with it.   Second, and equally broadly, it is a terrible public policy to give illegal alien farm workers a special, much easier, path to legal status, as was the case with the Special Agricultural Workers (SAW) in the IRCA program and would be the case again were S744 to be passed in its current form.   Fraud blooms where application requirements are easier, as was the case with the SAWs.   Third, as the AAO decision of 2006 October 31, indicates, amnesties are forever.   A federal court decision re-opened the SAW's decision-making process, and previously rejected SAW applications were revived and a lingering few of them are still producing green cards as shown in the most recent _Yearbook of Immigration Statistics_.   Fourth, even under the then-solid leadership of the late Alan Nelson, the Reagan administration's commissioner of the INS, there were limitations on enforcement resources and a sometimes casual attitude of enforcement agents..."

2013-05-08
Byron York _Washington DC Examiner_
for senator Mike Lee, amending S744 should start with throwing it out
"Each of Lee's first 3 amendments would throw out the Gang’s bill completely and replace it with a relatively simple measure to cover key parts of the immigration issue.   Lee's first amendment would be called the 'Border Security Results Act of 2013'.   His second would be called the 'Accountability Through Electronic Verification Act'.   The third would be called the 'Immigration Innovation Act of 2013'...   The 'Border Security Results Act of 2013' would require the Department of Homeland Security to come up with a plan to secure the border, submit it to Congress, and have it fully implemented within two years.   The entire bill is 12 pages long.   The 'Accountability Through Electronic Verification Act' would require the E-verify system to be up and running across the country in one year.   The amendment is 21 pages long.   The third amendment would re-invent the system of H-1B visas for skilled immigrants.   It, too, is 21 pages long."

2013-05-08
Claudia Peschiutta _KNX CBS Los Angeles CA_
ICE & Border Patrol officials indicted in immigration fraud scheme
KESQ/AP
"KNX 1070′s Claudia Peschiutta reports an 18-count indictment returned Tuesday outlines a wide-ranging bribery scheme in which attorney Kwang Man 'John' Lee allegedly used illegal tactics to procure immigration benefits for clients...   Those named in the indictment filed Tuesday are: USCIS Supervisory Officer Jesus Figueroa, 66, of Tujunga; U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officer Michael Anders, 53, of Torrance; and Mirei Hofmann, 38, of Los Angeles, a native of Japan, who allegedly paid Lee tens of thousands of dollars to secure a permanent resident card.   The additional two officials, USCIS Officer Paul Lovingood, 71, of Newhall, and 46-year-old James Dominguez of Ventura, a special agent with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), were both arrested Wednesday."

2013-05-08 (5773 Iyar 28)
John Stossel _Jewish World Review_
live free or move
Town Hall
"43M Americans moved from one state to another between 1995 and 2010 -- about one-seventh of Americans.   It's good that [some of us] can move!   Moving provides one of the few limits on the megalomania of state bureaucrats.   Americans have moved away from high-taxed, heavily regulated states to lower-taxed, less-regulated states.   Most don't think of it as a political decision.   They just go where opportunities are, and that usually means where there's less government.   They're leaving my state, New York, in droves.   California, despite its great weather, also lost people, and wealth.   Other biggest losers were Illinois, New Jersey and Ohio...   The states that lost the most people and money were New York, California, Illinois, New Jersey and Ohio...   Ironically, one reason Texas continues to have problems with poverty, despite its population growth, is that people don't just move between states.   They also move from other countries in search of opportunity.   For about 1M people, that meant moving across the border from Mexico to Texas.   They start low on the economic ladder but do tend to move upward over time.   For some reason, politicians most sympathetic to those immigrants are clueless about why U.S. citizens move from state to state.   Let people live where they can be free, and get rich."

2013-05-08 (5773 Iyar 28)
Michelle Malkin _Jewish World Review_
Obummer regime launches Operation Smear Benghazi Whistle-Blowers
Town Hall
"Gregory N. Hicks, deputy chief of mission at the USA embassy in Libya and highest-ranking USA diplomat in the country at the time of the Benghazi jihad attacks; Mark I. Thompson, a former Marine who now serves as deputy coordinator for operations in the agency's Counter-terrorism Bureau; and Eric Nordstrom, a diplomatic security officer who was the top security officer in Libya.   Nordstrom first testified last Fall about how State Department brass spurned his requests for increased security at the compound...   Left-wing operatives funded by billionaire George Soros have taken to Twitter to mock reports of fear and intimidation among the new witnesses...   who wouldn't have 'an axe to grind' if your bosses lied to you, blocked you from saving your co-workers and friends, and lied shamelessly and repeatedly to the American public about the reasons for their deaths?...   ATF insiders who testified before congress about Obummer's Fast and Furious gun-running nightmare faced systemic retaliation and harassment -- both from government supervisors who openly declared witch hunts against them and from liberal media water-carriers.   Maverick journalist Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News faced White House retaliation of her own over her Fast and Furious investigations.   Department of Justice spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler 'was just yelling at me', and White House spokesman Eric Schultz 'literally screamed at me and cussed at me', she told radio talk show host Laura Ingraham in 2011.   Former DoJ attorney J. Christian Adams, who blew the whistle on attorney general Eric Holder's rule of law-perverting, race-baiting reign, was basely smeared as a 'liar' and perjurer by DoJ proxy and Washington Post tool E.J. Dionne -- who ignored Adams' stellar career record at DoJ and unassailable sworn testimony.   Gerald Walpin, former AmeriCorps inspector general, was pushed out of his job by the Obamas after exposing fraud and corruption perpetrated by Democratic mayor of Sacramento and [Obummer] friend Kevin Johnson...   Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius threatened to crack down on health insurers for candidly tying [ObummerDoesn'tCare] mandates to rising premiums -- something that Sebelius herself now acknowledges."

2013-05-08 (5773 Iyar 28)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
honest examination of race
Town Hall

2013-05-08 (5773 Iyar 28)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
words that replace thought
Town Hall
"If there is ever a contest for words that substitute for thought, 'diversity' should be recognized as the undisputed world champion.   You don't need a speck of evidence, or a single step of logic, when you rhapsodize about the supposed benefits of diversity.   The very idea of testing this wonderful, magical word against something as ugly as reality seems almost sordid.   To ask whether institutions that promote diversity 24/7 end up with better or worse relations between the races than institutions that pay no attention to it is only to get yourself regarded as a bad person.   To cite hard evidence that places obsessed with diversity have worse race relations is to risk getting yourself labeled an incorrigible racist.   Free thinking is not free.   The Supreme Court of the [United States of America] has ruled that the government has a 'compelling interest' in promoting diversity -- apparently more compelling than the 14th Amendment's requirement of 'equal protection' of the law for everybody.   How does a racially homogeneous country like Japan manage to have high quality education, without the essential ingredient of diversity, for which there is supposedly a 'compelling' need?   Conversely, why does India, one of the most diverse nations on Earth, have a record of inter-group intolerance and lethal violence today that is worse than that in the days of our Jim Crow South?...   Among the candidates for runner-up to 'diversity' as the top word for making thought obsolete is 'fair'.   Apparently everyone is entitled to a 'fair share' of a society's prosperity, whether they worked 16-hour days to help create that prosperity or did nothing more than live off the [tax-victims] or depend on begging or crime to bring in a few bucks...   What 'fair' really means is more arbitrary power for government.   Another word that shuts down thought is 'access'.   People who fail to meet the standards for anything from college admission to a mortgage loan are often said to have been denied 'access' or opportunity."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-05-09

2013-05-09 05:30PDT (08:30EDT) (12:30GMT) (14:30 Jerusalem)
Tom Stengle & Tony Sznoluch _DoL ETA_
un-employment insurance weekly claims report
DoL home page
DoL OPA press releases
historical data
DoL regulations
"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 298,497 in the week ending May 4, a decrease of 2,638 from the previous week.   There were 341,080 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.3% during the week ending April 27, unchanged from the prior week's unrevised rate.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,962,467, a decrease of 66,039 from the preceding week's revised level of 3,028,506.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.5% and the volume was 3,210,670.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending April 20 was 4,874,526, a decrease of 89,292 from the previous week.   There were 6,423,153 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2012.   Extended Benefits were available only in Alaska during the week ending April 20...   States reported 1,763,177 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending April 20, a decrease of 14,560 from the prior week.   There were 2,688,157 persons claiming EUC in the comparable week in 2012.   EUC weekly claims include first, second, third, and fourth tier activity.   [Note that the population used for calculating the "insured unemployment rate" (the divisor) changes roughly quarterly:
to 132,623,886 beginning 2007-10-06;
to 133,010,953 beginning 2008-01-05;
to 133,382,559 beginning 2008-04-05;
to 133,690,617 beginning 2008-07-05;
to 133,902,387 beginning 2008-10-04;
to 133,886,830 beginning 2009-01-03;
to 133,683,433 beginning 2009-04-04;
to 133,078,480 beginning 2009-07-04;
to 133,823,421 beginning 2009-10-03;
to 131,823,421 beginning 2009-10-17;
to 130,128,328 beginning 2010-01-02;
to 128,298,468 beginning 2010-04-03;
to 126,763,245 beginning 2010-07-03;
to 125,845,577 beginning 2010-09-25;
to 125,560,066 beginning 2011-01-15;
to 125,572,661 beginning 2011-04-02;
to 125,807,389 beginning 2011-07-02;
to 126,188,733 beginning 2011-10-01;
to 126,579,970 beginning 2012-01-01;
to 127,048,587 beginning 2012-04-07;
to 127,495,952 beginning 2012-07-14;
to 128,066,082 beginning 2012-10-06;
to 128,613,913 beginning 2013-01-05;
to 129,204,324 beginning 2013-04-06.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2013-05-09
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
Seattle Times -- age, quality, H-1B
 
As promised the other day, enclosed are my comments on the May 4 piece that ran in the Seattle Times titled "Do Visas for Skilled Foreigners Shut Out U.S. Tech Workers?"
 
There is a lot of interesting material in this article.   In commenting on it, among other things I will surprise some of you by strongly agreeing with one of the most active supporters of H-1B, and will tell a sadly ironic anecdote of the "what goes around, comes around" variety.
 
People I've talked to about the article like the opening example the best: Mitchell Erickson decides to go back to school an earn a computer science degree in his 50s but then fails to find full-time work -- right there in the Seattle region, where MSFT is claiming a dire CS labor shortage.
 
To me, there is a much more important example in the article, but before getting to it, I must note that I certainly don't wish to minimize Erickson's plight.   On the contrary, I've been seeing this kind of thing for years.   Even worse, in 1998 I made the acquaintance of a guy who had already been employed as a programmer but had decided to get his master's degree.   At age 31, HE couldn't find a job after finishing the degree -- at the height of the Dot Com Boom.
 
But I believe the unnamed person in the article is more important, for reasons that will be explained shortly.   Here is the passage describing her.
 
************************************************************
 
A MSFT product manager shares that suspicion.   The manager was one of 1,400 people cut from the payroll in 2009 January as part of MSFT's first-ever companywide lay-offs in [this particular] recession.   The supervisors who eliminated her position were here on visas, as were 2 recent hires in her work group who dodged the down-sizing.
 
Three weeks later, Artech Information Systems, a staffing firm, offered the product manager a three-month contract at MSFT for what was essentially the same job she had left.   The pay was $32 an hour, half her old salary.
 
The worker asked not to be named because she has found a new job and did not want to jeopardize it.
 
************************************************************
 
Let's call this woman Ms. X.   Her example is very important in light of another passage in the piece:
 
------------------------------------------------------------
 
Professor Ed Lazowska, associate chairman of the computer science and engineering department at the University of Washington, said competition is especially fierce for the most talented, with his students often fielding multiple job offers.
 
Lazowska said the difference between a top software engineer and a middling one is enormous.   That, he speculated, might be one explanation for why some job searches are difficult.   Employers, Lazowska said, seek applicants with stellar grades from well-regarded computer-science programs.   They also look for successful past internships and résumés showing ability to constantly update skills in a fast-changing industry.
 
------------------------------------------------------------
 
Professor Lazowska has been extremely outspoken over the years in support of H-1B, and he has an unusually good relation with industry.   His bio notes that he "holds the Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington...is a member of the MSFT Research Technical Advisory Board, and serves as a board member or technical advisor to a number of high-tech companies and venture firms."
 
Please note carefully, though, that I completely agree with Lazowska's remarks above about quality.   As I've frequently noted, there is a huge range in talent among programmers (as anyone who has ever taught computer science students knows all too well).   You may recall my often saying that hiring a weak programmer is worse than hiring no one at all, because the weak one will mess things up for everyone else.
 
Unfortunately, employers don't recruit that way.   As I've pointed out so many times, they focus on hiring the new and recent graduates, who are cheaper.   By in essence automatically screening out any applicant over age 35, the employers are shooting themselves in the foot, because many of those applicants are of high quality.
 
At any rate, I do agree with Lazowska that quality is key.   That's why the example of Ms. X is so important.
 
Here's the point: Ms. X presumably does meet MSFT's quality standards.   She was working at MSFT, and though she was included in a round of lay-offs there, she quickly was back at work at MSFT via a contractor.
 
Yet MSFT still laid her off (and 1400 others), and when she was re-hired to work there, it was at half her old salary.   THAT is apparently what happened -- she "aged out" of MSFT because her salary had gone up over the years.   THAT is the reason for MSFT's "shortage" claims.   As Wharton's Peter Cappelli, also quoted in the article, has stated many times, what the employers mean by "shortage" is a shortage of people who will work at the low price the employers want to pay.
 
Recall that Senior Vice-President and Chief Technical Officer David Vaskevitch has stated that the vast majority of MSFT hires are young, and MSFT's Brad Smith makes related statements in the article here about new grads, as does Lazowska.   Remember, the rationale given by the industry is that only the new grads know the latest technologies, and recall too that my retort to that is, "Well, who did those new grads learn the latest technologies from?   It's old guys like me!"   Well, this time, I can point out that it's old guys like Lazowska!
 
Lazowska got his bachelor's degree in 1972, which would make him about 63 years old.   Yet this semester he's teaching an operating systems course using Linux, the modern system that runs Android.   His course uses git, the currently fashionable version control and collaboration software, and he is assigning programming work using threads, the key technology to working on today's multi-core machines.
 
Lazowska implies in the article that older tech workers will be employed as long as they keep up with technology, but that is generally false, as even Vivek Wadhwa has pointed out, and as Ms. X's example shows.   Again, the employers want the young'uns, and I just received an employer request today for me to send some to their firm.
 
UCSD economics professor Gordon Hanson, according to the article, "says his research shows that foreign and American high-tech workers have comparable wages".   Actually, from what I can tell from Hanson's web-page, he himself hasn't done any research on the matter; he simply has written non-technical papers that summarize what others have done, such as this one (pdf) cited by a TIME article. And as I showed the other day that paper of his is extremely selective in its use of the existing research literature.   There are NO papers cited in his bibliography that are critical of H-1B.
 
On the contrary, Hanson himself admits that the H-1Bs (at least the ones being sponsored for green cards) are immobile.   Basic economic theory, not to mention common sense, shows that immobile workers are generally under-paid, as they can't move around in the labor market to get the best salary deal.   IOW, Hanson should know as an economist that his claim about wage parity [are extremely unlikely to] be true.
 
Last, a comment on Michelle Lim, the new graduate who toes the UW party line on H-1B and new-grad hiring in the article.   She has a very impressive LinkedIn page, and I'm sure she deserves the attention employers gave her as a new grad.   But, though I hate to "jinx" her, the odds are that 15 years from now, that employer attention will have evaporated.
 
Ms. Lim might benefit from reading a posting I made to this e-news-letter in 2009.   I was reporting on a show CNN did at the time, in which it interviewed several students at Georgia Tech (a stone's throw form CNN head-quarters), about their concerns regarding the job market.   One of them, Christine Liu, talks about the plight of her engineer dad, an immigrant from China (emphasis added):
 
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
 
Currently the job market with my dad, because he's an engineer, is hard, really hard, to stay up because we have all these Georgia Tech students who are up with the new information and stuff like that.   THEY'RE COMING IN AND TAKING THE OLDER PEOPLE'S JOBS, so my dad doesn't have the opportunity to get a job.   He's a really smart guy, so he's considering going back to China and starting a job there.   That should never be an option!...   It makes me angry.
 
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
 
Indeed Ms. Liu SHOULD be angry.   The irony, of course, is that most likely her dad started work in the U.S.A. as an H-1B, and employers hired HIM instead of older Americans.   Now in 2009 HE was the American (I presume he naturalized) being shunned.
 
Of course, Mr. Liu was also being shunned in 2009 in favor of new American grads too, not just H-1Bs.   But as I keep harping, the employers use the H-1B program to swell the young labor pool, greatly exacerbating the age problem.
 
And even worse, the Gof8 bill [S744] would in essence give automatic green cards to ALL the foreign STEM grad students.   Almost all of them are young, so we will have an even greater age problem than we do now if Gof8 [S744] is enacted.   Remember: Under Gof8 [S744], H-1B would move into the background; the primary problem would be all those STEM green cards.
 
Norm
---30---

2013-05-09
"Clyde"
climate models fail to "predict" droughts in the USA
"results presented last week at the annual assembly of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna suggest that such forecasts are still beyond the reach of current climate models."

2013-05-09
Bill Straub _PJ Media_
joint Economic committee weighs immigration reform/perversion

2013-05-09
Daniel Horowitz _Red State_
senate Judiciary committee seals fate of Gof8 bill (S744)
"The striking thing about the markup is that any casual observer would think we were living in 1965 or 1986, when there was either relatively low legal immigration or no failed amnesty to look back upon.   To most of the senators sitting around the table, the border is more secure than ever (despite the sharp rise in crossings), our record levels of immigration don't exist, and there is no reason to implement the enforcement before the legalization."

2013-05-09
Joel B. Pollak _Breitbart_
Hillary misled congress on Benghazi attack... but not under oath

2013-05-09
Dana Leigh Marks _Hill_
let immigration judges be judges
"Our immigration courts face crushing case-loads and chronically insufficient resources, with a current back-log of 327,483 cases and an average wait of 555 days before a case is resolved.   It's inconceivable that nationwide, we have only 254 judges serving hundreds of thousands of cases each year."

2013-05-09
_Washington Free Beacon_
Nasty Pelosi refuses to visit USA troops in Afghanistan... blames Obummer's sequestration

2013-05-09
_National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council of the American Federation of Government Employees_
letter to Gof8 warning that S744 will endanger public safety
"Unfortunately, S744 provides no guarantee of increased border security.   Instead, it relinquishes congress' authority to establish border security measures to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which will then develop its own unilateral border security plan.   DHS is then permitted to measure its own successes and failures after implementing that plan.   Clearly recognizing the high probability that this approach will fail and DHS will not develop a successful border security plan, S744 establishes a commission to review security at the border five years after the plan has been implemented (if the secretary decides such a commission is needed).   But the powerless commission will have only the authority to make recommendations on how to achieve border security.   Those recommendations may very well be ignored by DHS.   It is important to note that S744 dissolves the commission 30 days after it makes its recommendations to the president, the secretary of Homeland Security, and congress.   S744 also grants the secretary the authority to unilaterally determine the amount of border fencing that will be constructed, which could result in little or no fencing being built.   In summary, S744 appears to provide no tangible provisions for increased border security."

2013-05-09
Kenneth Corbin _IT World_/_IDG_
IT execs lust for more cheap, young, pliant foreign labor in immigration perversion legislation

2013-05-09
Karen Workman _Denver CO Post_/_Digital First Media_
senate Judiciary committee debating amendments to S744

2013-05-09
Claudia Rosett _PJ Media_
Richard Falk and crooked UN rules

2013-05-09
Barry Rubin _PJ Media_
Why Benghazi is very important: corrupt policy, corrupt cover-up

2013-05-09
Steve Sailer _V Dare_
"fury over Mark Zuckerberg's PAC getting louder by the second"

2013-05-09
Patrick Cleburne _V Dare_
Smart thinking: Ted Cruz proposes emulating Swiss solution

2013-05-09
Jon Feere _Center for Immigration Studies_
Obummer immigration policy chief tried to undermine enforcement in 1986 amnesty
"History shows us that for the most part, advocates of 'comprehensive' immigration bills are only after the legalization portion and will do everything in their power to undermine the enforcement provisions as soon as the bill becomes law.   A report published only a few years after passage of 1986's Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) proves this.   The amnesty had only started to roll out, and yet the [National Council of the Racists] produced a report calling for an end to work-place enforcement -- the central enforcement provision of IRCA.   The author of the La Raza report was Cecilia Munoz, currently the Obama administration's chief immigration advisor."

2013-05-09
Michel Martin, Regina Brett, Hilary Shelton & Julianne Malveaux _National Socialist Radio_
who will be harmed the most by anti-reform bill S744?
"This employment-based program -- which continues the H-1B visa, which I don't think we really need.   They're saying essentially they can't find skilled workers in Silicon Valley.   That's just not the truth.   We have high unemployment rate among African-Americans and among whites, and what some of the work has been done shows that African-American students are more likely than white students to major in computer science.   So you've got this whole cadre of untouched people who basically are being passed over in favor of folks who are coming through the H-1B program, which, until these provisions have been made -- which are good provisions -- you were basically held like a slave.   You could not leave your job.   If you were under the H-1B program, you couldn't leave your job, because then you would be deported...   I think she raises a very important point, as a matter of fact.   This would look at any tech visa programs - or STEM is the term they're using these days, as we talk about the high tech field - that we have to make sure that as we're securing these visas, that one of the things that's very clearly in place is actually an increase in the cost of these visas for these corporations.   They want to argue -- and certainly for the Silicon Valley [executive] crowd and others -- argue all the time that we very well need to make sure we can fill these positions now.   And they argue that we don't have people that are prepared for them.   Well, if that's the case, then certainly, they need to reach out to bring in someone right now.   We have to make sure the cost is that actually moves those resources to preparing those in our communities -- our HBCUs and other places -- to make sure they receive those resources, so we can prepare that next generation...   the cost of an H-1B visa in this bill is actually lower than it was before -- than it is right now, so that has to be addressed.   So IOW, the incentive for [corporation executives] to actually look for people right here at home isn't in place and it's actually de-valued with lowering the cost of those H-1Bs.   Well, they're not calling them H-1Bs now, but the high tech stem visas...   you are specifically kind of advocating for African-Americans, people of African descent, Caribbean people, people of Caribbean descent, who are more likely to be black, and that there are some who argue that that's just a kind of a flawed metric, if I can use that term, that that's exactly the kind of thinking we need to get away from..."

2013-05-09 (5773 Iyar 29)
Ann Coulter _Jewish World Review_
here is that "dynamic scoring" you requested
"The Heritage Foundation recently issued a comprehensive report showing that senator Marco Rubio's plan to instantly legalize 11.5M illegal immigrants would add $6.3T to the nation's budget deficits over the next 50 years.   Heritage assumed there are 11.5M illegals, but other estimates put the number at 33M, which would mean adding another $18T to the deficit.   To put that in perspective, the largest U.S. budget deficit in history was $1.4T in 2009.   Currently, the average illegal alien gets about $24,721 in [tax-victim-funded] benefits and pays about $10,334 in taxes.   After full legalization, they will be eligible for a whole new panoply of government benefits such as direct welfare payments, [ObummerDoesn'tCare, Socialist Insecurity] and Medicare.   Heritage concludes that the total government benefits to these former illegal aliens will then rise to about $43,900 per household, while the taxes paid by them will increase only modestly to around $16K.   Rubio says Heritage's report is all wrong because it fails to use 'dynamic scoring'...   How about Rubio explain the hidden rays of sunshine that will appear by applying 'dynamic scoring' to his amnesty bill?...   If lots of uneducated, low-skilled workers boost a nation's gross domestic product, then Haiti should be an economic powerhouse.   For that matter, so should Mexico.   Rubio won't say -- or can't say -- what veiled incentives are lurking in his amnesty bill that will set the economy on fire.   I can think of plenty of incentives in his bill that will harm America.   For example, how do you imagine legalizing at least 11.5M illegal immigrants will change the incentives of Mexicans thinking about coming to the U.S. illegally?   Won't a mass amnesty create an enormous incentive for them to run across the border themselves, hoping to get in on this amnesty -- or the next?   What incentives does 'dynamic scoring' hold for employers of the poorest, least-skilled Americans?   An over-supply of low-skilled workers means employers can pay even lower wages than they currently do, while counting on the American [tax-victim] to take up the slack with government hand-outs.   How about the low-skilled Americans?   Will they have an incentive to try even harder to find one of the few remaining low-wage jobs in America?   Or will they throw in the towel and go on welfare when forced to compete with millions more newly legalized low-skilled immigrants?...   Dynamic scoring better include the ruinous incentives that will be foist on African-Americans by Rubio's amnesty.   They're already our fellow citizens deserving of our concern...   Endlessly repeating 'dynamic scoring!' without understanding what you're saying does not answer that question."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-05-10

2013-05-10
Vincent Gray
the way back to sanity and science
"For over 30 years the world has been saturated with the environmental fallacy.   It has taken over the media; newspapers, radio, TV; the education system;, the schools, the universities.   It has led to a retreat from experimental and theoretical science."

2013-05-10
Anthony Watts
Mauna Loa CO₂ reaches 400p/M, hysterics wail and gnash teeth, earth and mankind prevail

2013-05-10
Brenda Walker _V Dare_
S744: legalizing law-breaking on a massive scale

2013-05-10
Brenda Walker _V Dare_
senator Jeff Sessions lists failures of S744 to make good on enforcement

2013-05-10
John Miano _Center for Immigration Studies_
S744's comprehensive immigration fraud
"The Gang of 8's immigration bill has now grown from 844 pages to 867 pages.   One of the changes is to include 'comprehensive immigration reform' in the title.   While reading a section on H-1B visas, I came across a provision that epitomizes the fraud a disconnected Washington elite is perpetrating on the American people with [reprehensible immigration law perversion]...   The entire LCA process is a meaningless paper-shuffling exercise.   The H-1B statutes include this notorious provision, illustrating the problem of having lobbyists write our laws: 'The Secretary of Labor shall review such an application only for completeness and obvious inaccuracies.   Unless the Secretary finds that the application is incomplete or obviously inaccurate, the Secretary shall provide the certification described in section 1101 (a)(15)(H)(i)(b) of this title within 7 days of the date of the filing of the application.'...   For example, let us assume that an employer made no effort whatsoever to recruit Americans yet checked the box that it did on the LCA.   The Department of Labor has to approve the LCA because the box was checked correctly.   Likewise, the employer can make up an extremely low prevailing wage and know that the LCA will be approved.   There is a simple solution to this problem in the H-1B program: delete that sentence.   The Gang of 8 shows their bad faith in section 4214 of their bill.   It would re-word the offending provision to this: 'The Secretary of Labor shall review such an application only for completeness and evidence of fraud or misrepresentation of material fact and obvious inaccuracies.   Unless the Secretary finds that the application is incomplete or presents evidence of fraud or misrepresentation of material fact, or is obviously inaccurate, the Secretary shall provide the certification described in section 1101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) of this title within 7 days of the date of the filing of the application.'   The problem is that fraud and misrepresentation are higher standards than complete or obviously inaccurate.   Those standards require not only a misstatement but also intent to make that misstatement.   The Gang of 8 is demonstrating that they know where the problems in H-1B are; that they are going out of their way to not fix the problems; but that they want to make it appear that they are reforming the system.   To add insult to injury, the Gang of Eight wants to create a new W visa for agriculture workers in § 2232.   That program has alleged worker protections that are nullified by a similar provision..."

2013-05-10
Jessica Vaughan _Center for Immigration Studies_
S744 mark-up producing few improvements
"Yesterday the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to adopt 22 amendments to the Schumer-Rubio bill, none of which fundamentally improves the bill, and a few that make it worse."

2013-05-10
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
2 of the worst sneaky maneuvers in S744

2013-05-10
Sarah McBride & Alina Selyukh _Reuters_/_Contra Costa CA Times_
Elon Musk & David Sacks quit from Zuckerberg's immigration perversion lobbying group
Newser

2013-05-10
Ronald W. Mortensen _Center for Immigration Studies_
S744 border security provisions focus too much on inputs, not results
"this is, nonetheless, typical inside the belt-way 'gorilla dust', where politicians throw tons of money in the air and then declare a problem solved even though little or nothing has fundamentally changed.   Unless the Gang of 8 establishes results-oriented triggers, such as a 95% apprehension rate for all unauthorized border crossings, a 95% drug smuggling interdiction rate, a visa overstay rate of less than 5%, 98% of students in compliance with their visas, and 99% of all employers using E-Verify before any provisional legal status is granted to illegal aliens, they and their accomplices are just throwing up gorilla dust.   The current so-called triggers in the Schumer-Rubio bill are similar to declaring success by closing the valve on a gushing water main just enough to stop half of the water flowing out while allowing thousands of gallons an hour to continue to flow into the basements of surrounding homes and declaring the problem solved."

2013-05-10
_La Prensa San Diego CA_
low-tech and high-tech braceros

2013-05-10
Dennis Cooke & Carolyn Cooke _Coeur d'Alene ID Press_
S744: a bill to detest
"Legislation out of DC is often jaw dropping to those who want America to survive and thrive as our founders intended.   Now cunning senators have crafted special interest legislation opening the flood gates to cheap foreign labor, irrevocably altering America economically, politically and culturally.   According to senator Jeff Sessions calculations, S744, the 844-page immigration reform bill, increases foreign job seekers by 57M in the first decade alone.   The bill legalizes the 11-plus million illegal aliens plus families through chain migration (including those previously deported) doubles the annual number of legal immigrants plus families, and grants work permits to foreign job seekers at all levels of employment including technical and medical fields.   All foreign workers can apply for U.S. citizenship.   Sessions also found loopholes in the bill allowing early access to welfare and health-care benefits.   What labor shortages justify in-sourcing foreign labor?   There are 26M Americans un-/under-employed.   Wages will collapse even further.   Contrary to the open borders lobby, a mere 1% [actually, they've forced it up to about 15% over the last couple decades] of the U.S. labor market is immigrant!   Cloaked in lies about ending 'de facto amnesty', this bill weakens interior enforcement, only promising future border security and mandatory E-Verify.   This bill is a direct assault against Americans, yet where is the outrage from our elected Idaho officials?"

2013-05-10
Tovin Lapan _Las Vegas NV Sun_
the case for immigration reform as made by an "intense" American nationalist
"Brown, who says an immigrant used his [Socialist Insecurity number, SIN] to illegally work in Southern California, is an advocate of tougher enforcement [i.e. favors reform] and opposes any plan that includes legalization for any immigrant group, young or old, in the country illegally.   As the U.S. senate debates an immigration [law perversion] package that touches on everything from work visas [for cheap, low-skilled, young, pliant foreign labor with flexible ethics] to border security and a path to citizenship for the estimated 11M immigrants in the country illegally, the Sun sat down with advocates on the both sides of the immigration issues...   'I understand that legal and illegal immigration are tied at the hip.   There's never been a time where there was high illegal immigration when there wasn't high legal immigration and vice versa.   That's why I'm worried about this amnesty.   I'm concerned the legalization process for 12M to 20M foreigners will increase illegal immigration, and your legal immigration is going to skyrocket, too.   I'm a proponent for illegal immigration enforcement reform; that's the reform that I think Americans are really interested in.   They want to put an end to illegal immigration...   the E-Verify program, and I believe that's a key to ending illegal immigration...   You don't want the [NIGHTMARE] Act or anything like that.   You don't want to encourage people with driver's licenses...   Let's complete the border fence...   let's get ICE to identify, detain and deport people that they come across...   Every morning I wake up, get a cup of coffee and head to my computer to send out my e-mail.   I put the heat on politicians, especially the Republican Gang of 8 members.   I may send 75 to 100 e-mails a day (to politicians and newspapers).'"

2013-05-10 (5773 Sivan 01)
Emily Alpert _Jewish World Review_
the dirty little secret about Israel's Arabic einwohners
"In 2010, corporal Eleanor Joseph became the first female Arab combat soldier in the Israel Defense Force.   Joseph, a Christian Arab...   Joseph's story represents an incipient trend of integration among Israel's Arab community.   Among other things, this trend is manifest in the consistently rising number of Israeli Arab students who elect to study in Hebrew-language schools and in the rising number of Israeli Arabs who elect to serve in national service, the civilian equivalent of military service.   A poll of Arab youth carried out in late 2007 made clear how widespread this integrationist impulse has become.   75% of Arab youth aged 16-22 supported voluntary national service."

2013-05-10 (5773 Sivan 01)
Michelle Malkin _Jewish World Review_
How low will supporters of the Gang of 8 immigration bill [S744] go to get their way?
"Jason Richwine works for the conservative Heritage Foundation.   He's a Harvard University Ph.D. who co-authored a study that pegs the cost of the Ted Kennedy Memorial Open Borders Act 2.0 legislation at $6.3T.   Lead author Robert Rector is a senior research fellow at Heritage, a former United States Office of Personnel Management analyst and the intellectual godfather of welfare reform.   He holds a master's degree in political science from Johns Hopkins University.   Both Democrats and Republicans leaped to discredit the 102-page report without bothering to read it.   The Washington Post falsely claimed the study did not take into account increased revenues from amnestied illegal alien workers.   It did...   Haley Barbour...is a career politician and paid lobbyist for the government of Mexico who has carried water for open borders since the Bush years.   Richwine received his doctorate in public policy in 2009 from Harvard University's prestigious Kennedy School of Government.   He holds bachelor's degrees in mathematics and political science from American University.   Before joining Heritage in 2010, he worked at the American Enterprise Institute on a dissertation fellowship...   No researcher or academic institution is safe if this smear campaign succeeds.   Richwine's dissertation committee at Harvard included George Borjas, Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social Policy.   The Cuban-born scholar received his Ph.D. in economics from Columbia.   He is an award-winning labor economist, a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research and the author of countless books, including a widely used labor economics textbook now in its sixth edition.   Richard J. Zeckhauser, the Frank P. Ramsey Professor of Political Economy at JFK, also signed off on Richwine's dissertation.   Zeckhauser earned a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard.   He belongs to the Econometric Society, the American Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine (National Academy of Sciences).   The final member of Richwine's 'racist' thesis committee is Christopher Jencks, the Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy at Harvard's JFK School.   He is a renowned left-wing academic who has taught at Harvard, Northwestern, the University of Chicago and the University of California, Santa Barbara.   He edited the liberal New Republic magazine in the 1960s and has written several scholarly books tackling poverty, economic inequality, affirmative action, welfare reform and, yes, racial differences ('The Black-White Test Score Gap')."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-05-11

2013-05-11
_UPI_
Darrell Issa working on House immigration perversion/reform bill
"Issa, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, represents a San Diego-area district heavy in high-tech businesses and has long been seen as friendly to the industry, the newspaper said."

2013-05-11
A. Scott
Still waiting for Spring in Minnesota: ice fishing continues
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-05-12: Mothers' Day

2013-05-12
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
Brookings report: a case study of flawed statistics
 
H-1Bs are paid 20% less than comparable Americans.   No, they make 6.7% MORE than Americans.   No, scratch that, it's only 2.6% more.   Wait a minute, no, no, the H-1B actually are paid TWENTY percent (20%) more than comparable Americans.
 
Confused?   Allow me to help, with a tip from a former statistics professor (me): The key word is COMPARABLE.   Most of the above figures don't make things comparable at all.   And not only does this statistics professor have strong views regarding H-1B, I have even stronger views about proper use of statistics.   So, I want to use this posting as a case study on misuse of statistics.   I apologize in advance if I come across as preachy, especially when I bring up bias issues at the end.
 
Moreover, I want to stress here that journalists, policy makers and so on should NOT, upon seeing such a wide range of study results like those above, simply throw up their hands and say that the overall result is "inconclusive".   On the contrary, as I'll explain below, we ALREADY KNOW conclusively that the H-1Bs are paid less than comparable Americans.   Let me repeat: The question of under-payment of the H-1Bs HAS ALREADY BEEN SETTLED, with the answer being Yes.
 
That first figure above, -20%, comes from my study, published a couple of months ago in the academic journal Migration Letters.   That last figure above, +20%, is from a study released on Friday by the Brookings Institution, which will be the focus of this posting.   (One of the Brookings authors is a reader of this e-newsletter, and I may post an update after I receive responses to a query I sent him yesterday.)
 
I will explain all this in common-sense terms.   You won't need to be a statistician or economist, or even be good at math, to understand the flaws in the study.   And after you read this, I hope you use it as a model from which to view future studies you see on H-1B.
 
As a dentist once pointed out to me, an X-ray is "only a shadow", not as accurate and informative as physically looking inside a tooth.   A dentist can't do the latter, of course, so he/she resorts to an X-ray.   X-rays can indeed be highly useful--providing they are properly read.   Or better yet, providing they are properly aimed; when I broke my leg in 2 places a few years ago (fall from a pull-up bar, long story), they only found 1 of the 2 breaks, because they only aimed the camera in 1 place.
 
Regression analysis is used (among other things) as a technique for making things COMPARABLE, the famous "ceteris paribus" term from economics -- "all other factors being equal".   I use it in my own research on H-1B (though not for my -20% figure above), and, I think more importantly, it is my main research specialization in the statistical methodology work I publish in statistics and computer science journals.   So, I don't have a problem with regression analysis per se.   But as with X-ray shadows, it can be highly useful, IF properly read and properly aimed.
 
Unfortunately, regression is the "X-ray shadow" of the statistics world, often poorly aimed, and even more poorly read.
 
In this posting, I will show why the Brookings authors did not properly "aim and read" its regression analysis.   But before doing so, it is extremely important to state that THE QUESTION HAS ALREADY BEEN ANSWERED.   We have ALREADY "looked inside the tooth, rather than relying on a shadow" in terms of H-1B wages, and we ALREADY know they are under-paid.   Here's why.
 
Two employer surveys commissioned by Congress (which sadly doesn't know what its own commissioned reports say) actually ASKED employers whether they paid H-1Bs less than comparable Americans.   The NRC report, in describing the employer survey the NRC asked Hal Salzman to do, said
 
"...based on interviews with some H-1B employers, Salzman reported that H-1B workers in jobs requiring lower levels of IT skill received lower wages, less senior job titles, smaller signing bonuses, and smaller pay and compensation increases than would be typical for the work they actually did."
 
(Note BTW that the NRC survey covered a wide range of employers, not just the Indian bodyshops.)   The GAO report had similar findings, though with less smoking-gun-ish language.
 
You can't get any better than that folks, straight from the horse's mouth!   No shadows, no superstition.   No trying to just INFER under-payment by drawing lines through data, which is what linear regression analysis does (hyperplanes instead of lines if we have multiple variables).   Just plain, extremely straightforward querying employers, "Do you under-pay your H-1Bs?", with the answer being Yes.
 
In addition, as I've pointed out before, you can see the under-payment of H-1Bs even without data or statistics, as follows.   The H-1Bs tend to be immobile (definitely the case for those being sponsored for a green card, and true to various extents for many others).   If you can't move around freely in the labor market, then you can't negotiate the best salary deal among the employers.   Thus on average, the H-1Bs will be paid less than what they would command in the market if they had their freedom.   This is basic economic theory, not to mention common sense.
 
So, again, we ALREADY KNOW THE H-1BS ARE UNDER-PAID, relative to their market value.
 
Knowing that, i.e. knowing that Brookings is trying to answer a question that has already been definitively answered, let's take a look at the Brookings study.   I will primarily discuss Table 2 in their full report, a regression analysis.
 
Let's begin by discussing Brookings' H-1B data itself.   They claim that this data is representative, but it is certainly NOT representative.   Why not?
 
The Brookings data are a snap-shot of what H-1Bs are paid AT THE TIME OF HIRE.   But workers in general tend to get periodic raises in the years AFTER they are hired, right?   Well, not if you are an H-1B.   The NRC quote above spoke of the H-1Bs getting smaller raises than Americans, and H-1B advocacy groups claim it's common to receive no raises at all.   Indeed, even industry lobbyists have complained that, in the case of H-1Bs being sponsored for green cards, the law actually forbids giving raises, because that would force the employer to open up recruitment again to Americans, who might take the job at the higher price.   (This action is basically forced if, for instance, the H-1B is given a promotion.)
 
How does that affect the Brookings analysis?   The analysis says that salaries in general grow at the rate of 10% per year, and since the visa is good for 3 years, and can be renewed for 3 years [and extended on a year-by-year basis after that], the average H-1B has held his visa for 1.5 years.   Thus his salary should have increased 15% since the time he was hired.   Suppose, as indicated above, that he has gotten no raises.   He is then under-paid by 15% -- but the Brookings data wouldn't show it, because that data only shows salary at the time of hire.
 
Now let's look at Brookings' education variable, reporting highest degree earned.   Frankly, any professional economist or statistician would be shocked by the Brookings analysis regarding education.   Their data set's education variable apparently codes a bachelor's degree with the value 5, 6 for a master's and 7 for a PhD.   Brookings used these codes as a variable, and performed statistical operations on it, e.g. finding the mean.   But these are simply arbitrary codes!   Finding their mean is not much better than averaging a bunch of ZIP codes.
 
The standard way to handle this situation is to make 3 variables from the original one: One variable for bachelor's degree, another for master's and a third for PhD.   Each variable would have the values 0 and 1, the latter meaning yes.   So, if a worker in the data has a master's, he would have a value of 1 for the master's variable and 0s for the other two.   (A 0 value for all would mean the worker has less than a bachelor's degree.)   [Another approach I have frequently seen is using a "FTE years of education" variable...jgo]
 
True, Brookings' variable was at least ordinal (at least with the above codes), but it assumes that the wage difference between a bachelor's and a master's is the same as the difference between a master's and a PhD.   That is obviously false.   For example, in my recent EPI study, the data showed that for the CS field, master's was worth $6,703 more than a bachelor's, while in turn a PhD was worth $21,543 more than a master's.   The Lofstrom and Hayes paper, cited prominently by the Brookings authors, has similar values.   Since, as the industry lobbyists love to point out, an H-1B is much more likely to have a PhD than Americans, this produces a major bias in Brookings' findings.   They are NOT comparing H-1Bs to comparable Americans, in this case, NOT comparing PhDs to PhDs.
 
Next, consider region.   The problem is that Brookings DIDN'T consider region -- their analysis had no region [location, local cost-of-living...] variable.   And that factor matters a LOT.   Look for example at wages for the job category Software Developers, Applications in the OES data, compiled by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.   The mean wage in the Chicago area is $89,990, compared to $116,610 in the San Jose region.   Quite a spread!   Brookings did have location information in its data, but did not use it, causing yet another major error, since the H-1Bs are disproportionately in the high-cost-of-living regions.
 
There are numerous other serious flaws in the Brookings study.   I may discuss some in later postings, but the ones I presented above are already quite enough to show that the authors' findings should not be taken at face value.
 
I will close with the topic of Brookings' relation to MSFT.   I bring this up only with considerable reluctance, because some who read this will overinterpret it.   I know one of the authors a bit, and I judge him to be a decent, ethical person.   Yet the MSFT relation must be stated and discussed.
 
Brookings, like any not-for-profit organization, survives through contributions.   And it is a fact of life that these organizations cannot afford to do many, if any, studies that are counter to the goals of the donors.
 
But unlike many other organizations that have clear agendas, Brookings presents itself as ideologically neutral, with a motto of "Quality, Independence, Impact".   Its web address even sports a .edu domain.
 
Independence.   Nice concept, but how independent can Brookings be on tech issues when its annual report lists a contribution from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in the $2,500,000-4,999,999 category?   (This is the highest category.)   There are also contributions from MSFT Corporation, Google and so on.
 
Is it any wonder that Microsoft people are usually invited as featured panelists in conferences that Brookings holds on the H-1B issue?
 
I'll say, with considerable understatement, that it's impossible for a researchers to be impartial with Microsoft/Gates' millions hanging over their heads.   Bias doesn't have to be as flagrant as fudging data; it can be more subtle, such as telling only part of the story.   The full paper for the Brookings study has NO papers in its bibliography that are directly negative about H-1B.   They do have the recent EPI paper by Salzman et al showing a lack of a STEM labor shortage but nothing negative about H-1B.   They have NO citations to Ron Hira's work, they don't cite the NRC and GAO employer surveys, they have nothing about the internal NSF memo arguing the U.S.A. should bring in foreign students to hold down STEM salaries (which then did occur), etc.
 
Granted, Brookings' web summary of the Brookings study links to my EPI paper.   But there they describe that paper as being about cheap labor, which it is definitely not (it addresses the issue of whether the H-1Bs tend to be "the best and the brightest").   I have to assume the Brookings authors have never bothered to read it.
 
This lack of citing countering views is actually a hallmark of the research literature that is positive about H-1Bs.   This is not what research ought to be like, especially by those with a .edu in their Internet addresses.
 
Norm
---30---

2013-05-12
Bjorn Lomborg
Californians are paying ridiculous subsidies for electric cars
"Tesla gets $45K for each car it sells in state and federal subsidies.   The Tesla S starts at $69K, so about 40% of its total cost is subsidies (Tesla isn't making any big profits)."

2013-05-12
Anthony Watts
Is this what the beginning of glaciation looks like? (video)

2013-05-12
Lee Stranahan _Breitbart_
there is no moral obligation to help illegal aliens stay in the USA
"...straight-talking representative Steve King (R-IA)...   'My real answer is, Why do I have to do anything to solve a problem that people created willingly for themselves?   They choose to come here illegally and live in the shadows.   They are happy enough to take the risk of sneaking into the United States or over-staying their visa, sneaking around and using fraudulent documents to get a job or tapping into welfare and living here in the shadows for the balance of their lives.   That was their best option; the worst would be prison or deportation.   The answer to that question is: I don't have to do anything to fix that problem.   I have no moral obligation to make it easier for people to stay here if they are people who broke the law to get here.   That moral question isn't answered by anyone; I don't have to fix that problem.   The more uncomfortable it gets for them to stay, the less problems we have.   The less uncomfortable it gets, the more problems.'"

2013-05-12
Nicholas Stix _V Dare_
bias at Obummer regime DoJ
"Under Sessions's questioning, attorney-general Eric 'My People' Holder admitted that 'hate crime' protections -- triple penalties, triple jeopardy, expedited federal involvement etc. etc. -- would not extend to groups like white Christians or servicemen.   Holder specifically said that neither homosexuals who committed crimes against Christian preachers, based on the latter's religious-based opposition to homosexual marriage, nor Moslems who committed religiously-motivated mass murder against non-Moslems would be prosecuted under the Hate Crime Law.   In effect, the legislation would institutionalize a 2-tier, caste system of justice -- and is therefore clearly unconstitutional."

2013-05-12
Scott Uhrig
job search economics

2013-05-12
Melissa Sanchez & Enrique Flor _Miyami Herald_
a whole different meaning for "get out the vote":   Hialeah ballot broker's/boletera's notes list candidates' names & payments for election fraud & corruption in 2008;   visited more than 550, "mostly elderly Hispanics" to "help them fill out their ballots"
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-05-13

2013-05-13
Howard Anderson _Information Week_/_UBM_
Ken Olsen
"Ken Olsen, the founder of Digital Equipment, had both great insight and horrible foresight.   He was the first to realize that a stand-alone mini-computer could do some jobs better, faster and cheaper than the larger main-frames...   In 1957, Olsen and Harlan Anderson were getting frustrated because they couldn't raise money for their fledgling computer company.   The Money thought the industry was already too crowded, and well-run companies such as RCA and GE were struggling.   Finally, Georges Doriot of venture capital firm American Research & Development came up with $70K to buy 70% of DEC, an investment that came to be worth $355M...   But DEC's mini-computers were so cheap and rugged that they could be placed right in the lab or on the factory floor.   Each one could be cost-justified based on the specific job it did...   Before DEC, computing was scarce and precious.   After DEC, computing costs dropped like a rock and the early PDP-8s and PDP-11s proliferated like rabbits.   It really wasn't the IT department that bought these minis; it was the factory or lab manager...   He invested in new technology, jumping on it early.   DEC.com was registered in 1985!"

2013-05-13
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
executive lets it slip out -- she doesn't want to hire Americans
 
I should say at the outset that this will not be your usual, "business executive likes H-1B" posting.   This one is different, because the executive in question made quite a slip, as you'll see at the end.
 
Indeed, I've titled a couple of my recent postings to this e-news-letter as "case studies", and this current one indeed fits that description.   It will demonstrate two points:
 
1.   Those employers who are the most adamant in denying they use H-1B for cheap labor are sometimes the ones who are most clearly doing exactly that, hiring foreign workers to save in wages.
 
2.   Those employers who are the most adamant in claiming we have a "shortage" of American programmers and engineers are sometimes the ones who most clearly DON'T WANT TO HIRE AMERICANS.
 
Don Tennant has written an interesting, indeed provocative article, titled Corporate Turnaround Exec: Raising H-1B Visa Cap Just Makes Economic Sense.
 
He e-mailed me that he had referenced me in the article, and he asked me to comment.
 
In the article, Don interviews Kathleen Brush, who describes herself as a "global business consultant" on her web-page.
 
Before I discuss Ms. Brush's comments, I do have to express some reservations I have right off the bat, looking at her LinkedIn page.
 
Brush is basically not a techie.   She did work as a systems programmer 30 years ago, good, but even then she did not do work of the type typically done by people with graduate degrees, the focus of her comments (see below).   She does not have any STEM degree, which by itself is no barrier to doing well in tech, but it is very relevant here since she discusses STEM students.
 
These are not strong reservations, but I do think her statements below should be read in the above context.
 
Now, let's take a look at one of the key passages:
 
*************************************************************
 
We need to raise the cap on the H-1B visas.   I don't think Americans are being robbed of jobs.   I've spent a fair amount of time studying the graduation rates, and I have a lot of statistics on it.   When you look at the people who are graduating with STEM degrees, in graduate school it's something like 60% are foreign; most of them are Asian.   When you look at the shortages of engineers in the United States, the shortage of IT workers, you can tie that back to which ethnicities study which types of subjects.   Without question, it's the Asians.   It's not all Asians, but it's a lot of them -- that includes the Chinese and the Indians, which is the vast majority.   Those are the ethnic groups that are most likely to study for any type of STEM degree.   There has been a marked trend in -- let's call them the European Americans -- moving away from studying the STEM programs.   Latin Americans and African Americans have never really had strong percentages studying in the STEM programs.   So we've got a bit of a challenge here.   For some reason, we have made it more attractive for students to study political science or sociology or other non-STEM fields.   And that's a problem.
 
*************************************************************
 
Brush seems to be confusing Asians with Asian-Americans here, but let's concentrate on her statement about graduate school.
 
It's debatable whether a graduate degree is that useful, say in the computer fields.   But if Brush thinks it's necessary, then there is an easy answer to her question as to why "For some reason, we have made it more attractive for students to study political science or sociology or other non-STEM fields."   Yes, indeed, "we" have done exactly that!
 
I'll give the short version, because readers of this e-news-letter have seen me say it so often: The large foreign influx has suppressed PhD wage growth so much that it is a financial loser to study for a PhD, due to 5-6 years of lost industry-level earnings.
 
This was recognized in the congressionally-commissioned NRC report, and elsewhere.   And, back in 1989 [1986 through 1989], an internal position paper in the federal NSF forecast this effect of the foreign influx suppressing wages, and also accurately forecast that the Americans would then switch to more lucrative fields such as law and business -- which is exactly what happened.   Worse, the NSF paper actually ADVOCATED this.   So, if the under-represenation of Americans in STEM doctoral programs is considered bad, then H-1B is the CAUSE of the problem, not the SOLUTION.   IOW, if Brush wants to see more Americans in grad school, "we" need to reduce H-1B, not expand it.
 
Note BTW that the typical under-grad major for those who later wish to attend law school is political science, one of the fields Brush cites.
 
Brush then says:
 
*************************************************************
 
I've had a lot of H-1B visa folks working for me.   They made the same salaries as everyone else.   We didn't pay them any less.
 
*************************************************************
 
Really?   A cursory look at the PERM (green card application) data for her most recent employer, Openwave Systems, strongly contradicts her claim.
 
In almost all cases, Openwave is paying their foreign workers right at the prevailing wage, the legal minimum.   Recall that a KEY point in H-1B wage analysis is that the legally required wage is typically 20% or more below market level, because it does not take into account the "hot" skills that employers say they hire H-1Bs for, and for which they would have to pay a premium in the open market.   I go into this in detail in my recent Migration Letters publication as well as my older University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform paper (pdf).   It is almost pointed out in the 2003 GAO report, etc.   Even the Brookings paper I discussed yesterday (on which more is coming) essentially made this same comment (also with a 20% figure).
 
IOW, Openwave is under-paying its foreign workers by 20% or more, relative to their actual market value.
 
Recall that that is what I term Type I salary savings accrued by employers of foreign tech workers, i.e. paying the latter less than comparable Americans.   (Remember, the word "comparable" is crucial, e.g. regarding skill sets.)
 
I also talk about Type II salary savings, obtained by hiring young H-1Bs instead of older Americans.   Sure enough, Openwave hires its foreign workers mostly at Level I and II, in essence the younger people.
 
Finally, Brush says:
 
*************************************************************
 
I'm pretty sure I'm right here, that most Indian workers, and I believe Chinese workers as well, they're motivated by their pay-checks.   Their pay-checks can provide them with a lot of things they've never had before.   In the United States, we sort of take for granted a car, and nice accommodations, etc.   In developing countries like India, people are more motivated to get those things.   If you look at [famous psychology theorist Abraham] Maslow, they're more motivated towards those lower-order needs, whereas in the U.S.A. it's the higher order.
 
*************************************************************
 
Some Asian-Americans would be deeply offended by the above language.   Yes, most immigrants do come to the U.S.A. to improve their economic lot, as for instance my father did, but the language is a little edgy.
 
Let's put that aside, though, and look what Brush is really saying, which is that SHE DOESN'T WANT TO HIRE AMERICANS.   Whether you agree with her Maslovian premises or not, her own view is very clear.   Americans, including the U.S. born children of those H-1Bs she has hired, are just too comfy for Brush.   She wants the "lean and hungry" ones, from India and China.   So forget all that talk of hers about a "shortage" of American engineers etc.; she doesn't want them, except maybe for the "talking" jobs, e.g. management, customer interface etc.
 
One final point: I've written a lot on the general level of talent of the H-1Bs, finding that on average, the foreign workers are of weaker talent, relative to the Americans.   Some are extremely sharp and innovative, and their immigration should be facilitated, but most H-1Bs, INCLUDING most foreign graduate students, are not in that league.   See my EPI paper for the data.
 
I've also written, elsewhere (not in the EPI paper nor in Bloomberg), what I believe are the reasons for the foreign students being less innovative and so on.   One of those reasons is that the foreign students tend to come from educational systems that focus on rote memory.   For instance, Wen Jiabao, the recent Premier of [Red China], has expressed deep concern about that problem, which he believes is holding his country back.
 
But another reason I've cited (again, not in EPI/Bloomberg) is that the type of person Brush describes above, who comes here ONLY for the nice cars etc., rather than out of a passion for computers, is bringing down OUR country's innovative ability.
 
In that latter light, I found interesting one of the reader comments on my February 11 Bloomberg article.   There I had summarized my EPI paper, and there is a reader comment there by one Jerry Chen, possibly a former (or current) foreign student himself:
 
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
I do, however, agree with the notion that innovation comes from those who "want to" go into STEM and not those who "have to".   Although the dedication and determination of foreign STEM students do bring competition, which is something valuable, the cultivation of students who like to focus on creativity and innovation may be important as well.
 
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
It's unfortunate that the debate on H-1B focuses on under-payment, a question that, as I pointed out yesterday, is ALREADY SETTLED.   I would argue that an even more important issue concerns quality.   The displacement, mainly indirect but very real, of Americans by the foreign workers means a net loss in quality, in turn hampering our ability to compete on the world technology stage.   Everyone ought to be concerned.
 
Norm
---30---

2013-05-13
Anthony Watts
solar panels as inexpensive as paint?

2013-05-13
Willis Eschenbach
things we don't really know

2013-05-13
Chris McManes _IEEE_/_AAAS EurekAlert_
IEEE-USA urges senate not to expand H-1B visa program... but insanely flooding the market via green cards they support
Today's Engineer
"Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) have introduced amendments to increase the annual H-1B visa cap from 65K to between 300K and 325K.   When exemptions are included, this would equal roughly 10% of the total U.S. engineering work-force.   This is troubling in light of recent reports that the top 10 companies using H-1B visas specialize in shipping American jobs off-shore.   See ComputerWorld/IDT and IEEE-USA press release.   'Out-sourcing [cross-border bodyshopping and off-shoring] is damaging to U.S. workers and the American economy.', Apter said.   'We need laws that promote U.S. job growth, not encourage it to leave our shores.'   Other amendments would strip the bill of language preventing companies from replacing Americans with lower-cost H-1B workers; weakening language requiring companies to hire [able and willing] U.S. citizens before seeking an H-1B; and making it easier for companies to discriminate against Americans when hiring.   'We see no justification for any H-1B increase', Apter said, 'although we'll accept the modest expansion in S744 in light of new work-force protections embodied in the bill's high-skill provisions.'   Another proposed change would remove a protection in current law prohibiting companies from using the L visa (for intracompany transfers) to replace U.S. workers.   If the amendment is accepted, it would only require a company to pay a $500 fee to use an L visa to out-source an American job.   IEEE-USA supports the legislation's call for unlimited green cards for STEM Ph.D.'s.   It has no position on the bill's non-high-tech sections."
Orrin Hatch has been aggressively opposed to reform and pushing for ever more excessive numbers of H-1B visas to be given out for over a decade...jgo

2013-05-13
Michael Ledeen _PJ Media_
drafts show thinking process in Benghazi cover-up
"The first two talk about 'attacks' that were 'spontaneously inspired' by events in Cairo.   However, number 3 edits out 'attacks'...and replaces it with 'demonstrations'.   It took about five and one-half hours to get from 'attacks' to 'demonstrations'.   That's when the video became the deus ex machina..."

2013-05-13
Andrew Klavan _PJ Media_
You can't report here!   This is the news room!

2013-05-13
Jeff Reinitz _Waterloo-Cedar Falls IA Courier_
hiring of illegal aliens at Agriprocessors was no surprise
"'It seemed to be a badly kept secret that there was a problem with illegal aliens in Postville and especially a problem at Agriprocessors.', said [federal prosecutor] Robert Teig...   Court records show that the government had for years been pestering Agriprocessors because Social Security numbers workers were using had yet to be issued or didn't match their names.   For instance, [Socialist Insecurity Abomination] officials told the company at least 500 numbers had discrepancies during the 2005 [extortion] year.   One Immigration and Customs Enforcement report estimated about 76% of the company's work-force in the fourth quarter of 2007 was using fake documents...   Investigators found signs of a straw man scheme to provide vehicle registration to [illegal aliens].   Occasionally an arrest on other charges would turn up a person who was in the country illegally and working at Agriprocessors.   Agents interviewed several former employees and sent an undercover operative to apply for a job at the plant, eventually amassing enough information for a search warrant...   In the end, jurors found Rubashkin guilty of 86 charges including bank, wire and mail fraud, money laundering and failure to pay livestock providers in a timely manner.   In the wake of the convictions, authorities opted to drop original 72 harboring and other immigration-related charges against him...   He said it wasn't that the immigration charges weren't supported, but a second trial wouldn't added much prison time.   Besides, some of the fraud claims related to the hiring of illegal workers, he said.   The others charged in the probe avoided trial by pleading guilty, and sentences ranged from probation to 3 years behind bars...   Rubashkin, now 53, was sentenced to 27 years in prison and is currently housed Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, NY.   He was ordered to pay $26.8M in restitution...   the company pleaded guilty to the child labor violations and was fined $59,145.   So far it has paid $10, according to court records.   About 50 immigrants were able to remain in the United States by obtaining U-Visas, specialized status granted to people who were victims of crime or mistreatment...   Relatives of the visa holders where also allowed to eventually return to the United States..."

2013-05-13
Erica Werner _Seattle WA Post-Intelligencer_/_AP_
corrupt STEM execs push for more, STEM pros push for less in immigration bill
Ogden UT Standard-Examiner
Minneapolis MN StarTribune
Garden City KS Telegram
Wilkes-Barre PA Times-Leader
"High-tech companies looking to bring more [cheap, young, pliant foreign labor with flexible ethics] to the U.S. pushed Monday for more concessions in an immigration bill pending in the senate...   At issue are the highly sought-after H-1B visas that allow [executives at] Google and MSFT [and other corrupt, privacy violation and low-quality software firms] to bring [cheap, young, pliant foreign labor with flexible ethics] to the U.S.A. to fill job openings for engineers, computer software experts, and other positions where employers say there's a shortage of U.S. workers [though the government and other data has shown repeatedly over the last several decades that there never has been such a shortage, or even signs of an immanent shortage, while several studies show clear evidence of a glut].   [Current laws and regulations allowed the handing out of over 129K H-1B visas in FY2011, and over 135K H-1B visas in FY2012, with no de facto minimum skill standards whatsoever, and no background investigations of visa appplicants.]"

2013-05-13
John Lantigua _Palm Beach FL Post_
Rubio applauds amendment to S744 for wasteful pork to increase H-1B fees for "training fund"
"Each state will be able to determine how best to spend the new STEM education funds."

2013-05-13
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
US citizen fights back against age and nationality discrimination
"The citizen is 61 and has been doing serious IT work for a long, long time.   The citizen applied for an advertised job with a New Jersey firm looking for a 15-month-employee as a project manager to work on an IT contract with an "investment bank" in New York City.   The firm's ad — and this shows what I consider both egregious age bias and monumental stupidity -- said that the job was available only to applicants with an 'age not more than 45 years'.   The citizen did not get the job, and was not interviewed.   The applicant hired a lawyer and sued in New Jersey's Superior Court, under that state's state anti-discrimination law, saying that the citizen had not been hired because of age.   I report this for two reasons: 1) The citizen is doing what other experienced citizen programmers should be doing vis-a-vis H-1B employers, suing them for age discrimination; and 2) this citizen has done this before, and though I cannot be certain, I am pretty sure that the citizen won the earlier case.   The employer this time is Samiti Technology, a company with an office in Iselin, NJ, just outside New York City, and another office, perhaps the main one, in India.   Its web-site gives a hint regarding its hiring policies saying 'Samiti is hiring fresh graduates for their staffing process at India office'..."

2013-05-13
Trent Loos _High Plains Journal_
states' powers and individuals' rights: use them or lose them

2013-05-13 (5773 Sivan 04)
Mark Steyn _Jewish World Review_
delusion met reality at Benghazi
"Now we know that, at 20:00 Eastern time on the last night of Stevens' life, his deputy in Libya spoke to secretary Clinton and informed her of the attack in Benghazi and the fact that the ambassador was now missing.   An hour later, Gregory Hicks received a call from the then-Libyan prime minister, Abdurrahim el-Keib, informing him that Stevens was dead.   Hicks immediately called Washington.   It was 21:00 Eastern time, or 03:00 in Libya.   Remember the Clinton presidential team's most famous campaign ad?   About how Hillary would be ready to take that 03:00 call?   4 years later, the phone rings, and Secretary Clinton's not there.   She doesn't call Hicks back that evening.   Or the following day.   Are murdered ambassadors like those 1.43M cables she doesn't read?   Just too many of them to keep track of?   No.   Only 6 had been killed in the history of the republic -- 7, if you include Arnold Raphel, who perished in general Zia's somewhat mysterious plane crash in Pakistan in 1988.   Before that, you have to go back to Adolph Dubs, who died during a kidnapping attempt in Kabul in 1979...   Where's the 'partisan politics'?   Obama, Clinton, Panetta, Clapper, Rice, and the rest did this to one of their own...   But the embassy security chief, Eric Nordstrom, had the best answer to that: It matters because the truth matters -- not least to the Libyan president, who ever since has held the U.S. government in utter contempt.   Truth matters, and character matters.   For the American people to accept the Obama-Clinton lie is to be complicit in it."

2013-05-13 (5773 Sivan 04)
Emily Alpert _Jewish World Review_
recession lowered birth rates for less-educated women
"Between 2008 and 2011, birth-rates fell 13% among women who hadn't finished high school -- nearly twice as much as for women who had earned bachelor's degrees or more, Pew found...   Census data reveal that between 1960 and 2011, the share of new mothers with at least some college education leaped from 18% to 66%...   Almost half of new mothers without high school diplomas were younger than 25, and only 3% of new mothers with bachelor's degrees were as young, Pew found.   Among new mothers who didn't finish high school, 61% of were un-married, compared with only 9% of women with bachelor's degrees or more."

2013-05-13 (5773 Sivan 04)
_AP_
Obummer regime obtained AP phone records
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-05-14

2013-05-14
Robert Curry
leftists' urge to control every aspect of our private lives remains as virulent as ever: TSA and ObummerDoesn'tCare

2013-05-14
Thomas E. Brewton
Obummer vs. America's foreign policy interests

2013-05-14
Heather Ginsberg _Town Hall_
leftist group admits IRS gave them non-leftists' private information

2013-05-14
Michelle Quinn _Politico_
corrupt STEM execs pour on the lobbying for more cheap, young, pliant, low-skilled foreign STEM labor with flexible ethics

2013-05-14
Elizabeth Harrington _Cybercast News Service_
S744 "destroys the rule of law"
"'If we reward people who break the law, they're unlikely to raise their children to respect it.', he said.   'The rule of law, at least with regard to immigration, would be destroyed. And the promise that the law would be enforced from this point forward?   I don't know how we can listen to that with a straight face.', King said."

2013-05-14
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
STEM execs and professionals may sink S744; we're all unhappy with it
"A key issue involves the amount of effort employers must make to hire a U.S. worker before filling a job with a visa holder.   There are also concerns about the amount of power the U.S. Department of Labor and other agencies will have to audit and enforce visa usage.   Hatch wants far more H-1B visas than the maximum 180K cap in the immigration bill and fewer rules about recruitment.   Grassley is his polar opposite on this issue.   'We need to do a better job of protecting American workers.', Grassley said.   He wants a provision in the law to ensure that all H-1B employers make a 'good faith' effort to hire U.S. workers first.   The immigration bill only requires H-1B-dependent companies, meaning those with 15% or more of their work-force on visas, to make such an effort.   Tech industry groups oppose the recruitment and audit rules in the immigration bill."
Note: Orrin Hatch has been pushing for ever more H-1B visas for over a decade.   STEM professionals, OTOH, are concerned that the current numbers of H-1B visas are already orders of magnitude excessive, that there are no minimum skill requirements, de facto no minimum education requirements, no minimum intelligence requirements, no minimum on-the-job wisdom requirements.   The hundreds of thousands of cheap, young, pliant foreign labor with flexible ethics, i.e. those brought in on H-1B and L-1 visas, are not in the same league as the 84 players in the NBA, nor the hand-full of movie stars with a big box-office draw.   The whole high-tech professional workd is already 'up in arms' because neither congress nor DoL nor USCIS nor the State Department have 'done this right', and all the evidence of the last 2 months say that they are belligerently, viciously opposed to doing this correctly...jgo

2013-05-14
Somini Sengupta _NYTimes_
corrupt STEM execs weigh in to senate Judiciary committee on S744, no US citizen STEM professionals seem to have been invited to testify

2013-05-14
Seung Min Kim e-mail _Politico_
on STEM visas Orrin Hatch holds some cards
Erica Werner: AP/Deseret News
Matt Canham: Salt Lake UT Tribune
"Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), a major advocate for [corrupt STEM executives] is viewed as a potential swing vote for the underlying Gang of 8 bill [S744], and he clearly knows he has some leverage in this battle...   The committee will next meet on Thursday to finish working through the part of the 867-page legislation that deals with [perversions] to legal immigration programs...   On Tuesday, the committee accepted some tweaks to the H-1B visa program, including 2 Republican-sponsored measures.   One requires employers to post more information on-line about a job opening before [totally ignoring all US citizen applicants and] hiring a foreign worker for that slot.   Another doubles certain visa fees and funnels that money into a [corrupt slush] fund for science, technology, engineering and math education [which will be wasted and diverted to other favored constituencies, as such funds always have been in the past]."
Orrin Hatch has been pushing for ever more H-1B visas for over a decade...jgo

2013-05-14
Carolyn Lochhead _Seattle WA Post-Intelligencer_
senators argue over best ways to destroy US citizen STEM professionals' career prospects

2013-05-14
Alexander Bolton & Jennifer Martinez _Hill_
friction among the gang of 8
Stephen Dinan: Washington DC Times
"Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) expressed disappointment Tuesday after senators rejected a proposal to strengthen the system for tracking visa holders entering and exiting the country.   The panel rejected a Republican amendment to require a biometric entry and exit system at ports of entry before granting permanent legal status to 11M immigrants estimated to be in the country illegally.   'Immigration reform must include the best exit system possible because persons who over-stay their authorized stay are a big reason we now have so many illegal immigrants.', said Alex Conant, a spokesman for Rubio.   'We wanted the Judiciary Committee to strengthen the legislation by adding biometrics to the new exit system, and we were disappointed by [Tuesday] morning's vote.'   Two Republican members of the Gang of 8, senators Lindsey Graham [a.k.a. Lindsey Grahamnesty] (SC) and Jeff Flake (AZ), teamed up with 10 Democrats on the committee to defeat the amendment, which was sponsored by senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL).   It failed by a vote of 6-12...   [oath-breaking senators] Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Dick Durbin (D-IL), 2 Democratic members of the Gang of 8 on the Judiciary panel...voted against the amendment...   'Senator Rubio will fight to add biometrics to the exit system when the bill is amended on the Senate floor.', Conant said.   'Having an exit system that utilizes biometric information will help make sure that future visitors to the United States leave when they are supposed to.'...   Thursday...senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) may put up for votes a series of amendments designed to loosen restrictions on the H-1B visa program for [cheap, young, pliant, low-skilled foreign STEM labor with flexible ethics]...   Over the past 2 decades, congress has called for the establishment of a biometric measuring system to track visa holders exiting the country using distinctive characteristics such as fingerprints and iris scans.   The proposal has also received the endorsement of the 2001/09/11 Commission.   Sessions said a biometric system is necessary because 40% of those in the country illegally have overstayed their visas, and he argued the senate's comprehensive immigration reform bill should not rely on a weaker system using just photographs...   the airline industry, which has long opposed full implementation of biometric tracking for visa entries and exits...   Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) expressed interest in the Sessions amendment but ultimately voted against it...   'I am concerned that the identification be the best identification we can come up with.', Feinstein said. 'The fraud is enormous in this area...'"
Orrin Hatch has been pushing for ever more H-1B visas for over a decade...jgo

2013-05-14
_CNBC_/_Reuters_
executives, STEM pros spar over H-1B visas in S744
Caren Bohan & Rachelle Younglai: Reuters
WTAQ business execs, unions, STEM professionals spar over visas for cheap, young, pliant, low-skill foreign labor with flexible ethics
"In the letter signed by the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and major technology lobbying organizations, the groups welcomed the increase in the size of the high-skilled worker program and but said they wanted [even weaker] requirements [and standards]...   'Our view is that technology workers in America who have invested in the skills of the future -- as the tech industry wants them to do -- they deserve a fair shot at the jobs of the future.', Hauser added.   Daniel Costa, an analyst with the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, also criticized the proposed amendments, saying that the requirements on [H-1B] visas 'don't seem to be very onerous'."

2013-05-14
Mark Feffer _Dice_
SOME facts behind H-1B debate
interview with Kim Berry of the Programmers Guild (video)

2013-05-14
Dawn Kawamoto _Dice_
how 800K H-1B guest-workers came to the USA

2013-05-14
Ashley Parker _NYTimes_
focus on border security and guest-work visas as senators return to immigration issues

2013-05-14
Ken Stanford _Access North GA_
reps continue to press DHS for answers re: release of 2,228 illegal aliens who had committed additional crimes

2013-05-14
Charles J. Dean _Alabama_
immigration reform advocate, senator Jeff Sessions, getting slapped down as his amendments are voted down
"Sessions issued this statement following the committee's actions.   'Americans believe in immigration.   But they believe in a reasonable flow of immigration that promotes assimilation and improved economic opportunity for both immigrants and citizens alike.   It is perhaps the single issue in which both parties are most out of step with the people...   there is no remaining dispute that the Gang of 8's proposal represents a staggering increase in the future flow of immigration—even as polling shows a majority of Americans believe current levels should be reduced.'...   Sessions said his amendment would have allowed for a larger immigration increase than the nation actually needs."

2013-05-14
Steven A. Camarota _Center for Immigration Studies_
Heritage's finding that less-educated immigrants are a large fiscal drain is incontrovertible
National Review

2013-05-14
Joel Kotkin _Daily Beast_
America's new oligarchs
"Today's tech moguls don't employ many Americans, they don't pay very much in taxes or tend to share much of their wealth, and they live in a separate world that few of us could ever hope to enter.   But while spending millions bending the political process to pad their bottom lines, they've remained far more popular than past plutocrats, with 72% of Americans expressing positive feelings for the industry, compared to 30% for banking and 20% for oil and gas."

2013-05-14 (5773 Sivan 05)
James Bovard _Wall Street Journal_
a brief history of only one of the many kinds of IRS abuse: political targeting

2013-05-14 (5773 Sivan 05)
Thomas Sowell _Town Hall_
Obummer regime lies about Benghazi, Libya
Jewish World Review
"Last week's testimony under oath about events in Benghazi on 2012 September 11 makes painfully clear that what the [Obummer regime] told the American people about those events were lies out of whole cloth.   What we were told repeatedly last year by the president of the United States, the secretary of State, and the American ambassador to the UN, was that there was a protest demonstration in Benghazi against an anti-Islamic video produced by an American, and that this protest demonstration simply escalated out of control.   This 'spontaneous protest' story did not originate in Libya but in Washington, DC.   Neither the Americans on duty in Libya during the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, nor officials of the Libyan government, said anything about a protest demonstration.   The highest American diplomat on the scene in Libya spoke directly with secretary of State Hillary Clinton by phone, and told her that it was a terrorist attack.   The president of Libya announced that it was a terrorist attack.   The CIA told the Obama administration that it was a terrorist attack.   With lies, as with potato chips, it is hard to stop with just one.   After the 'spontaneous protest' story was discredited, the next claim was that this was the best information available at the time from intelligence sources.   But that claim cannot survive scrutiny, now that the 12 drafts of the Obama administration's talking points about Benghazi have belatedly come to light.   As draft after draft of the talking points were made, e-mails from the State Department pressured the intelligence services to omit from these drafts their clear and unequivocal statement from the outset that this was a terrorist attack.   Attempts to make it seem that Ambassador Susan Rice's false story about a 'spontaneous protest' was the result of her not having accurate information from the intelligence services have now been exposed as a second lie to excuse the first lie...   the difference is between an honest mistake and a calculated lie to deceive the American people, in order to win an election."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-05-15

2013-05-15
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
senators begin contentious battle over H-1B and related visas for cheap, young, pliant, low-skilled labor with flexible ethics
"The senate Judiciary committee rejected the idea on Tuesday of requiring all H-1B employers to make a 'good faith' effort in hiring U.S. workers before taking on an H-1b worker.   The good faith amendment to the comprehensive immigration bill was offered by U.S. senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), a longtime H-1B critic.   It was opposed by the Gang of 8, the bipartisan group of senators who drafted the immigration bill.   The [weak, easily gamed] 'good faith' requirement was described as a 'deal breaker', with the potential of sinking the entire bill, and it failed by wide margin.   The committee met all day to vote on more than 300 amendments to the immigration bill.   Tech industry groups are opposing provisions, such as 'good faith' that impose new requirements.   The tech industry's supporters, who appear to be led by senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), will be seeking a higher H-1B visa cap and fewer regulations [rather than the rational reduction of the cap and elimination of exemptions].   A number of Tuesday's amendments were H-1B related, including one from U.S. senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), which sought to raise the H-1B cap to 325K...   Cruz called the immigration's bill plan to raise the cap to as high as 180K, 'a half measure'.   The amendment had little support and failed... committee member Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), questioned the opposition to Grassley's amendment. 'All this requires is that all H-1B employers, not just dependent employers, essentially have a good faith recruitment obligation to be able to show that they tried to recruit a qualified American worker.', said Feinstein. 'What is wrong with that?'   [Oath-breaker] Schumer said 'it sounds good on the surface', but 'good faith' is an 'elastic standard' that's open to interpretation and difficult to prove...   [Oath-breaker] Schumer responded by saying that employers are not allowed to fire American workers.   He didn't go into a detail, but there are non-displacement rules in the bill that prevent employers from immediately [and blatantly] replacing a U.S. worker with a visa holder [but mass lay-offs followed a few months later by out-sourcing or off-shoring, and bringing in guest-workers with slightly different job titles or 'duties', bringing in guest-workers a few months earlier for a period of 'knowledge transfer' to bring them up to speed before the mass lay-offs, and in new hiring rejection of all US applicants -- both citizens and green card holders -- still remain legal]."
Of course, the most straight-forward reforms, that would eliminate the abuses -- the lower pay to guest-workers, the immobility of guest-workers, the unemployment and displacement of US STEM workers -- are a reduction in the numbers of visas, a shorter term, proper background investigations before getting any visa, more immigration judges, and quicker incremental background investigations for changes from one visa category to another.   In contrast, Orrin Hatch has been pugnaciously opposed to reform, pushing for more H-1B visas for over a decade...jgo

2013-05-15
Ying Ma _PJ Media_
immigration to USA is a privilege, not an entitlement
"Immigrating to the United States is a privilege, not a right.   It certainly is not an entitlement program.   Proponents of comprehensive immigration reform like to emphasize that America's immigration system is broken, and they are right...   Few acknowledge that in life, reality is by nature more unpleasant than our most fervent wishes.   Just because people really, really want to come to the United States does not mean they have the right to do so...   Few acknowledge that in life, reality is by nature more unpleasant than our most fervent wishes.   Just because people really, really want to come to the [United States of America] does not mean they have the right to do so."

2013-05-15
Bob Dane _Town Hall_
American workers ask: "What's in S744 for us?"   Answer: Nothing.
"If you're employed in the science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) fields and haven't had a raise in a while and noticed an increasing number of your co-workers are from India, China or Pakistan and willing to work for peanuts, take out your slide rule and put two and two together. Prepare yourself for even more wage stagnation because the senate bill intends to increase H-1Bs from 65K to 110K a year [and visas issued likely to soar from an already orders of magnitude excessive 135K per year to as many as 500K per year], despite the fact that America graduates 2 to 3 times more STEM degree holders annually than are actually hired into the field. The net effect is that U.S. workers will be displaced and American students will be discouraged from investing in high-tech education."

2013-05-15
Susan Jones _Cybercast News Service_
S744 worse than ObummerDoesn'tCare?

2013-05-15
Anthony Watts
4 X-class solar flares in 2 days

2013-05-15
Jake New _Chronicle of Higher Education_
India-based publisher threatens to sue web-logger for $1G in retaliation for criticisms
"The publisher, the OMICS Publishing Group, based in India, is also warning that Mr. Beall could be imprisoned for up to three years under India's Information Technology Act, according to a letter from the group's lawyer.   Mr. Beall received the letter on Tuesday from IP Markets, an Indian firm that manages intellectual-property rights...   Mr. Beall believes he has documented all the statements he made about OMICS...   The OMICS Group's practices have received particular attention from Mr. Beall and some publications, including The Chronicle.   In 2012, The Chronicle found that the group was listing 200 journals, but only about 60% had actually published anything.   The owner of OMICS, Srinu Babu Gedela, said then that his company was not a 'predatory publisher' and was ramping up to be a 'leading player in making science open access'.   IP Markets said OMICS was started 6 years ago and has 500 employees.   On his blog, Mr. Beall accuses OMICS of spamming scholars with invitations to publish, quickly accepting their papers, then charging them a nearly $3K publishing fee after a paper has been accepted.   He also alleges that the publisher uses the names of scholars without their permission...   Ashok Ram Kumar, a senior lawyer with IP Markets, repeatedly mentioned the criminality of Mr. Beall's blog posts.   In India, Section 66A of the Information Technology Act makes it illegal to use a computer to publish 'any information that is grossly offensive or has menacing character' or to publish false information.   The punishment can be as much as 3 years in prison."

2013-05-15
Christina Anger, Vera Demary, Oliver Koppel & Axel Pluennecke _Cologne Institute for Economic Research_
MINT (mathematics, information, natural science and technology) report for early 2013

2013-05-15
John Stossel _Town Hall_
true grit
"During the Revolutionary War, Jackson volunteered to fight.   He was just 13 years old at the time.   The British captured him and made him a servant for British officers.   When one ordered Jackson to clean his boots, Jackson refused, and the officer slashed Jackson's hand with a sword.   When Jackson became president, he showed off the scar.   Jackson had grit.   Do your kids have that much grit today?   I doubt it.   Parents now try to protect kids from all danger.   In New York City, some won't let teenagers go to school by themselves.   Lenore Skenazy, author of Free-Range Kids, thinks that's absurd.   'Free-range kids are kids we believe in.', she told me.   'They can do things on their own.'"

2013-05-15
Terry P. Jeffrey _Town Hall_
Obummer regime has no respect for freedom
Cybercast News Service

2013-05-15
Donald Lambro _Town Hall_
rights recognized by US constitution are under assault by Obummer regime

2013-05-15
Rachel Marsden _Town Hall_
Red China's imperialism

2013-05-15
Mary Grabar _Town Hall_
Bill Ayers has been bringing down the USA, destroying education
"In 1969, hippies and the VietNam War were abstractions to me, glimpses from photos in an occasional Life Magazine.   I had not heard about the Weathermen...   Bill Ayers, Education Secretary of Weatherman, told him that in the revolution, lives would have to be sacrificed.   This week I have been traveling with Larry and Tina Trent, who have helped republish Larry's memoir _Bringing Down America_, about his days with the domestic terrorists."

2013-05-15 (5773 Sivan 06)
Walter E. Williams _Town Hall_
hating the USA
Jewish World Review
"Maybe they hated our nation before college, but if you want lessons on hating America, college attendance might be a good start.   Let's look at it.   'We need to think very, very clearly about who the enemy is.   The enemy is the United States of America and everyone who supports it.'   That's taught to University of Hawaii students by professor Haunani-Kay Trask.   Richard Falk, professor emeritus at Princeton University and the UN Human Rights Council's Palestine monitor, explained the Boston bombings by saying, "The American global domination project is bound to generate all kinds of resistance in the post-colonial world.'   Professor Falk has also stated that president George W. Bush ordered the destruction of the twin towers.   University of Southern California professor Darry Sragow preaches hate to his students in his regulation of elections and political finance class...   A few years ago, Rod Swanson, a UCLA economics professor, told his class, 'The United States of America, backed by facts, is the greediest and most selfish country in the world.'   Penn State University professor Matt Jordan compared supporters of the voter ID laws to the Ku Klux Klan.   Professor Sharon Sweet, an algebra teacher at Brevard Community College, told her students to sign a pledge that read, 'I pledge to vote for president Obama and Democrats up and down the ticket.'   Fortunately, the college's trustees fired her.   University of Rhode Island history professor Erik Loomis tweeted, 'I want (National Rifle Association executive vice president) Wayne LaPierre's head on a stick.'...   Georgetown law professor Louis Michael Seidman, who explained our national problems by saying, 'But almost no one blames the culprit: our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions.'   Professor Seidman worked for The Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia.   When he was sworn in as an officer of the court, I wonder what constitution he swore to uphold and defend."

2013-05-15
Bob Barr _Town Hall_
corrupt congress-critters pushing for national ID KKKard
"Hidden deep within the 800-odd pages of the senate's pending immigration reform bill is a provision for a new government 'photo recognition' system.   This represents the latest in the on-going effort by the federal government to build a database of all U.S. citizens; a process that has accelerated since its initial failure to do so after a number of states balked at the REAL ID Act requirements for a stealth national ID card.   Simply -- and deceptively -- called a 'photo tool', the pending legislation calls for all U.S. employers to 'verify the identity of [new hires] using the photo tool', which will allow them to 'match the photo on a covered identity document provided to the employer to a photo maintained by a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services [USCIS] data-base'.     According to Wired.com's David Kravets, the database would contain the 'names, ages, [Socialist Insecurity numbers, SINs] and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver's license or other state-issued photo ID'.   This isn't the first attempt Congress has launched at a national ID database since the trouble into which the REAL ID stumbled.   Data-base-obsessed legislators on the Hill, from both sides of the aisle, continue trying to slip one by the American public.   The 'E-Verify' system built into the 2011 'Legal Workforce Act' met all of the basic requirements for a national ID card.   Supporters of the system claimed it was designed to prevent illegal immigrants from taking American jobs, but in reality it was nothing more than another backdoor attempt by the government to secure even greater control over American workers and businesses.   Even worse, it set the stage for an 'all-purpose security device, used for cashing checks, confirming the name on credit cards, and looking you up at the prescription counter', according to the CATO Institute's privacy expert, Jim Harper...   the government's data-base could be used in a variety of business capacities; from verifying ages or other background data when making alcohol or gun purchases, to simply picking up a pack of sinus medication.   Anywhere [the government has fabricated an artificial 'need' for government] permission to make a purchase or enter a federally-controlled facility, the data-base could be [abused].   Attempts to opt-out of such a data-base would likely be countered in the same, carrot-and-stick manner as opposition to REAL ID: If you are not part of the data-base, you do not gain access to the goods you need or to the places you need to go.   Should this program survive and the bill be signed into law, we will have surrendered to federal bureaucrats a virtually limitless ability to deny citizens all manner of goods and services, including those guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.   One of the greatest fears Americans should have with such a data-base is that we have no idea how this information [has been, already is, and will be abused] down the road...   a national data-base of seemingly 'basic' information can serve as a starting point for building a bigger, more comprehensive profile on every American citizen, using data from other government agencies.   For example: firearms records from [BATFE], tax information from the IRS, health information via the Department of Health and Human Services, information on veterans from treatment at V.A. facilities [or anyone getting medical examination or treatment anywhere, now that the federal governmet and GE and Siemens have jumped on the medical ifo digitization and dissemination project], and even political contribution information collected by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) would be fair game."
But they adamantly refuse to consider running proper background investigations on visa applicants...jgo

2013-05-15
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
senate debate on H-1B provisions in S744
 
Vigorous debate on the Hill the other day on provisions regarding H-1B in the Senate immigration bill.   One of my readers, who attended, reports,
 
***********************************************************************
 
While [oath-breaking] senator Schumer repeatedly said "we all know there is a shortage" (of native STEM workers), senator Sessions hammered away at that argument with lots of articles showing the glut.
 
Unfortunately, a disproportionate amount of time is being spent on attacking the Indian firms.   Schumer basically said only H-1B-dependent employers are abusing the program.   [When in reality 98% or more of H-1Bs are abuses and only 1% or 2% are proper uses to bring in high-level talent temporarily...jgo]
 
***********************************************************************
 
This is a classical tactic, appealing to the notion that "we all know that..."   As I've often said, that in turn has been the goal of the industry lobbyists over the years, implanting in the American consciousness the idea that we have a STEM shortage.
 
As I've also pointed out, another tactic has been to scape-goat the Indians, which you see above.   Schumer in particular has been at the vanguard of this "movement".
 
One of the issues debated was reported by CNBC as follows
 
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
The senate bill would require employers who want to use a government-run web-site and offer it to any qualified American.
 
One of Hatch's amendments would loosen these provisions and only require employers to take good-faith steps to recruit Americans.   And only "H-1B dependent" companies, which hire a large number of foreign workers, would be required to first offer the job to an American.
 
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
I wish to emphasize once again that under the bill, the H-1B program would be largely eclipsed by the equally-harmful STEM visa provision, which in essence would give blanket green cards to all foreign STEM grad students.   But the U.S. recruitment provision regarding H-1B in the bill IS still important, and what is even more important is that Hatch's amendment shows again the attempt to scape-goat the Indian firms.
 
Hatch's amendment failed, 2-15 with Leahy abstaining,
 
Also of interest are senator Feinstein's comments reported in the San Francisco CA Chronicle:
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Senator Dianne Feinstein, (D-CA), and several other Democrats, including Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Patrick Leahy (VT) and Al Franken (MN) expressed sympathy for the idea.   Feinstein recalled a meeting she had in San Diego with American workers, "all above age 50, all had been replaced by H-1b workers.", Feinstein said.   "You saw it clearly, they were traditional engineers, the technology had moved on", and companies instead wanted, "young, flexible, 'highly qualified' techies, generally Asian in California.   I felt very badly for these people.   If you're above the age of 50 it's very hard for an American to get another job.”
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
These are sympathetic comments, no doubt sincere.   But they wrongly support the myth that the H-1Bs are hired in lieu of older Americans because the latter don't have up-to-date skill sets.   I've shown in detail in the past why this argument is wrong, and in fact it is yet another distract attention from the real issues.
 
Odd that Feinstein mentions that the H-1Bs in tech are generally Asian.   (The largest nationality among the tech H-1Bs by far is Indian, followed by Chinese in a distant second place.)   It's irrelevant, so I wonder what her point was, maybe yet another reflecting of the "blame the Indians" sentiment.
 
Norm
This all seems extremely weak, a tissue of deception.   "Let's require that STEM execs act out a charade.   All they have to do is pretend they are going to seriously consider US citizen STEM workers."   But the STEM exec sock-puppets respond, "Oh, such a horrible burden! We couldn't possible cope with that!"
 
Ditto, with Feinstein's insincere remark.   "I feeeeeel for them, but, after all, they're has-beens.   Sure, they may have IQs of 130, 150, 170 or higher.   They may have designed and built robo-surgery tools and parts for nuclear weapons systems and ground contour following delivery systems and massive logistics data-bases to plan delivery of equipment and personnel and supplies ASAP, but they couldn't possibly know or figure out how to program a much simpler iPad, Android, or iPhone.   They're not highly-skilled, and certainly 'qualified' for today's STEM work on massive privacy-violation schemes."
 
Orrin Hatch has been belligerently pushing for more H-1B visas for over a decade.
 
Of course, the tech execs' and senators' notions of a firm which abuses a high percentage of guest-workers (e.g. 50% of all employees of all kinds) are quite different from the public's and the STEM professionals' impressions (e.g. more than 2% of all employees of all kinds, more than 5% of STEM employees).
 
Indian media often refer to it as "South Asia", and guest-workers from China, SE Asia (including Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines), Japan, Korea, and India are often lumped together as being "from Asia".   It's a bit sloppy, a bit broad-brushed, but it's short.   And yes, a huge proportion of H-1B recipients happen, by design of their government (PM and trade ministers, in particular) and their business executives do go to people born in India.   It's just a fact, and a pecular anomaly, due, in part, because they noticed back in 1990 that they had about 400K unemployed and under-employed Indian STEM professionals there, and saw sending them abroad as a way to boost their economy.   It has been greatly boostig their economy.   And it happens to have also helped drive the unemployment and under-employment of about 2 million US citizen STEM professionals...jgo
 

Matloff follow-up re Feinstein
 
I had not intended to make another posting today, but after receiving several remarks from readers telling me "South Asians ARE Asians!", I need to comment.   (The relevant excerpt from my posting earlier today is enclosed at the end of this message for your convenience.)
 
Of course Indians are Asians.   When I pointed out that the biggest nationality among tech H-1Bs is Indian, followed by Chinese, I was basically saying yes, Feinstein is correct in saying that the H-1Bs tend to be Asian -- whether that be South Asian or East Asian.
 
So my point was not to dispute Feinstein's notions of geography, but rather to ask, Why did Feinstein bring up nationality?   It's not relevant.   I then speculated that Feinstein, probably unconsciously, made the remark after hearing the constant barrage of "blame the Indians" rhetoric.
 
Speaking of Feinstein, you may find it interesting to read Feinstein Backs H-1B
 
Norm
---30---

2013-05-15
Stephen Dinan _Washington DC Times_
Rubio publishes his wish-list of amendments to S744
"On Thursday, the Gang of 8 saw a major test over amendments designed to protect American workers from competition from foreigners who obtain high-tech worker visas.   Several Democrats said they would like to vote for the amendments, but were told by Gang of 8 senators that doing so would be a deal-killer to the bill."
2013-05-02 list (pdf)

2013-05-15
Amy Cavender _Chronicle of Higher Education_
communicating effectively

2013-05-15
James Urquhart _Royal Society of Chemistry_/_Chemistry World_
refine gold using the sugar from corn-starch
324 years of estimates of gold/silver price ratio
Only Gold: historical gold price estimates
Macro Trends: graphs of historical gold price estimates, gold/oil, gold/silver, S&P 500/gold, Dow/gold, platinum prices, etc.
2015-10-30: David Michaud: 911 Metallurgist: the mercury-free gravity-borax method of gold refinement
David Michaud: 911 Metallurgist: refine gold using corn-starch
2013-05-14: Megan Fellman: NorthWestern U: refine gold using corn-starch

2013-05-15
Anthony Watts
Duke U/USGS reports that ground-water has been unaffected by shale gas production in Arkansas

2013-05-15
_Chronicle of Higher Education_
survey: college & university execs juggle finances, reform little
"Nearly every college and university leader (94%) surveyed said that they were increasing fund-raising.   More than 70% mentioned instituting or increasing revenue generating programs as a way to lower costs.   Nearly 40% of college leaders are looking to increase the number of full-pay domestic students as a way to reduce costs for other students; very few (15%) have re-negotiated faculty contracts.   Reducing the sticker price of a college or university education (8%) was reported least frequently."

2013-05-15
Paul Gattis _Alabama_
amnesty for illegal aliens would undermine job market for African-Americans
"granting legal standing to illegal aliens would further inflate the unemployment rate among blacks, which he said was nearly twice the national average.   In 2013 April, the unemployment rate for blacks was 13.2%, according to the U.S. BLS, while the national unemployment rate was 7.5%."

2013-05-15
Bill Straub _PJ Media_
scandals proliferate, S744 lurking under the MSM radar
"'Americans believe in immigration but they believe in a reasonable flow of immigration that promotes assimilation and improved economic opportunity for both immigrants and citizens alike.', Sessions said.   'It is perhaps the single issue in which both parties are most out of step with the people.'   Sessions offered [a weak/generous] amendment that would have effectively capped the number of immigrants at 23M over 10 years and placed a cap of 10M on temporary workers -- limiting the grants of legal status and work authorization to 33M over the next decade.   It failed 1-17.   'After today's committee meeting there is no remaining dispute that the Gang of 8's proposal represents a staggering increase in the future flow of immigration -- even as polling shows a majority of Americans believe current levels should be reduced.', Sessions said.   'At a time when a record number of Americans are on welfare and have dropped out of the work force, our focus should instead be on helping struggling Americans return to the work force.'...   representative Mo Brooks (R-AL) said the U.S.A. can't afford to open its borders to all comers.   As it is, 620K to 1.05M immigrants have been granted American citizenship in each of the past 5 years.   Only those capable of becoming 'net tax producers' who 'generate more than they consume' should be admitted.   'No one else comes close to being as generous as America is with its citizenship.', Brooks said.   'The immigration issue is not about whether America is compassionate and generous -- we are.   The immigration issue is about whether America has the financial resources to accept all of the world's immigrants into America.   There are hundreds of millions of foreigners who, if they could, would immigrate to America.'   Brooks also said he 'can't ratify illegal conduct with my vote' by providing those in the country illegally with 'a path to citizenship'."

2013-05-15
Alan Silverleib _CNN_
S744 is a Leftist plot
"Two committee [members] from the 'Gang of 8', Arizona's Jeff Flake and South Carolina's [RINO] Lindsey Graham [a.k.a. Lindsey Grahamnesty], have been working with the panel's [Leftist] majority to prevent any major changes to the bill...   Louisiana GOP representative John Fleming [asked] 'When in recent years have we passed such a large bill and had a good outcome?'...   Representative Steve Stockman, R-TX, said the 'Gang of 8' would be defeated by a 'gang of millions'.   'They will rise up against (the Senate bill) and it will fail because the people are stronger than the Gang of 8.'...   Critics...say the plan is full of holes and translates to amnesty for those who broke the country's immigration laws...   Among other things, the panel rejected proposals to tighten future immigration caps and force the creation of a biometric visa identification system before granting permanent legal status to undocumented residents.   The 2 amendments were offered by senator Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, who has emerged as the senate's leading opponent to the Gang of 8."

2013-05-15
Katherine Eban, Doris Burke & Frederik Joelving _CNN_
Ranbaxy fraud
"On the morning of 2004 August 18, Dinesh Thakur hurried to a hastily arranged meeting with his boss at the gleaming offices of Ranbaxy Laboratories in Gurgaon, India, 20 miles south of New Delhi...   His boss, Dr. Rajinder Kumar, Ranbaxy's head of research and development, had joined the generic-drug company just two months earlier from GlaxoSmithKline, where he had served as global head of psychiatry for clinical research and development.   Tall and handsome with elegant manners, Kumar, known as Raj, had a reputation for integrity.   Thakur liked and respected him.   Like Kumar, Thakur had left a brand-name pharmaceutical company for Ranbaxy.   Thakur...an American-trained engineer and a naturalized U.S. citizen, had worked at Bristol-Myers Squibb in New Jersey for 10 years.   In 2002 a former mentor recruited him to Ranbaxy by appealing to his native patriotism [which is to say that he broke his US citizenship oath of loyalty]...   Thakur...had returned the previous day from South Africa, where he had met with government regulators.   It was clear that the meeting had not gone well...   an inspection that WHO had done at Vimta Laboratories, an Indian company that Ranbaxy hired to administer clinical tests of its AIDS medicine...   The Vimta tests appeared to be fabricated.   Test results from separate patients, which normally would have differed from one another, were identical, as if xeroxed...   On May 13, Ranbaxy pleaded guilty to 7 federal criminal counts of selling adulterated drugs with intent to defraud, failing to report that its drugs didn't meet specifications, and making intentionally false statements to the government.   Ranbaxy agreed to pay $500M in fines, forfeitures, and penalties -- the most ever levied against a generic-drug company.   (No current or former Ranbaxy executives were charged with crimes.)"

2013-05-15 (5773 Sivan 06)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
looking back... and forward
"Even harder to believe would have been a prediction that totalitarian communism, having mismanaged some of the richest natural resources in the world in the Soviet Union, leaving its people with a standard of living far lower than that in Western Europe, would be seen as a model to follow by other nations.   These nations included China, where the rhetoric of Mao's 'great leap forward' masked the reality of people literally starving to death by the tens of millions.   Meanwhile, Mao was greatly admired by many leading intellectuals around the world, including in Western democracies such as the United States...   The key leader in the events that led to the First World War was a man who was chosen -- if that is the word -- by the accident of birth, kaiser Wilhelm ii of Germany.   He was a vain and headstrong man pursuing his own vision, heedless of the consequences for the people whose lives were in his hand.   Today, our leader is a man chosen by rhetoric, charisma and symbolism to be president of the [United States of America], who is also vain, headstrong and pursuing his own vision, heedless of the consequences for the people whose lives are in his hand."

2013-05-15 (5773 Sivan 06)
Scott Gottlieb _Forbes_
federal government extortionists unconstitutionally & illegally seized 60M personal medical records
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-05-16

2013-05-16 05:30PDT (08:30EDT) (12:30GMT) (14:30 Jerusalem)
Tom Stengle & Tony Sznoluch _DoL ETA_
un-employment insurance weekly claims report
DoL home page
DoL OPA press releases
historical data
DoL regulations
"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 318,203 in the week ending May 11, a decrease of 15,436 from the previous week.   There were 325,094 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.2% during the week ending May 4, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week's unrevised rate.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,876,202, a decrease of 94,854 from the preceding week's revised level of 2,971,056.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.5% and the volume was 3,150,177.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending April 27 was 4,843,806, a decrease of 30,720 from the previous week.   There were 6,273,508 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2012.   Extended Benefits were available only in Alaska during the week ending April 27...   States reported 1,792,101 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending April 27, an increase of 28,924 from the prior week.   There were 2,666,055 persons claiming EUC in the comparable week in 2012.   EUC weekly claims include first, second, third, and fourth tier activity.   [Note that the population used for calculating the "insured unemployment rate" (the divisor) changes roughly quarterly:
to 132,623,886 beginning 2007-10-06;
to 133,010,953 beginning 2008-01-05;
to 133,382,559 beginning 2008-04-05;
to 133,690,617 beginning 2008-07-05;
to 133,902,387 beginning 2008-10-04;
to 133,886,830 beginning 2009-01-03;
to 133,683,433 beginning 2009-04-04;
to 133,078,480 beginning 2009-07-04;
to 133,823,421 beginning 2009-10-03;
to 131,823,421 beginning 2009-10-17;
to 130,128,328 beginning 2010-01-02;
to 128,298,468 beginning 2010-04-03;
to 126,763,245 beginning 2010-07-03;
to 125,845,577 beginning 2010-09-25;
to 125,560,066 beginning 2011-01-15;
to 125,572,661 beginning 2011-04-02;
to 125,807,389 beginning 2011-07-02;
to 126,188,733 beginning 2011-10-01;
to 126,579,970 beginning 2012-01-01;
to 127,048,587 beginning 2012-04-07;
to 127,495,952 beginning 2012-07-14;
to 128,066,082 beginning 2012-10-06;
to 128,613,913 beginning 2013-01-05;
to 129,204,324 beginning 2013-04-06.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2013-05-16
_Wall Street Journal_
both government extortionists and EPA abuse for political purposes
No Tricks Zone: ditto in Germany
"The Washington Examiner reported Tuesday that the EPA under Ms. Jackson has a history of favoring groups that share the agency's political agenda.   'Conservative groups seeking information from the Environmental Protection Agency have been routinely hindered by fees normally waived for media and watchdog groups, while fees for more than 90% of requests from green groups were waived.', according to the report...   At the EPA, fees were waived for [leftist] environmental groups like Greenpeace and EarthJustice almost always.   Meanwhile, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank, 'had its requests denied 93% of the time.   One request was denied because CEI failed to express its intent to disseminate the information to the general public.   The rest were denied because the agency said CEI ''failed to demonstrate that the release of the information requested significantly increases the public understanding of government operations or activities''.'"

2013-05-16
Howard Nemerov _PJ Media_
crime statistics

2013-05-16
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
pay for software developers down 2% from last year
"The average annual wage of all workers in the software services [bodyshop] sector was $99K in 2012, about $2K less than the prior year...   The Cyberstates report puts the tech labor force at 5.95M in 2012, an increase of 1.1% from the prior year.   [OTOH, Dept. of Education and NSF data suggest a US citizen STEM talent pool of between 9M and 15M...jgo]   Of that, 1.87M workers are in software services jobs [bodyshop gigs]...   engineering and tech services [another sub-category of bodyshops], employs 1.62M...   David Foote, the CEO of Foote Associates, which analyzes IT hiring trends and wages, said the supply of workers in the software services [bodyshop] segment 'is plentiful.   Of course, there are many unemployed workers who want to get back to work.'"

2013-05-16
Patrick Thibodeau _CIO_/_IDG_
H-1B politics moves out of public oversight as vote nears: Hatch buys time in his effort to reduce restrictions on H-1B abuse
ComputerWorld
"[STEM executives'] leading advocate in the immigration bill fight, senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), has bought himself some time, perhaps until Tuesday, to try get the immigration bill changed to [even more to their liking and much more destructive to the career opportunities of US citizen STEM professionals].   Negotiations are underway to come up with a compromise where Hatch gets a block of amendments and, in return, [oath-breaking] U.S. senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), gets Hatch's support for the entire immigration bill, according to sources [so bad is working out a deal with extremely bad, with no good in sight]...   If Hatch had enough votes on the senate Judiciary committee members for his amendments today, he could have asked for a vote.   But he didn't have the votes...   Judiciary committee members have been holding firm against adding 'deal breaking' amendments to the gang of 8's comprehensive immigration [law perversion] bill [which would reduce the damage to the average US citizen]...   Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), a leader of Republican [opposition to immigration reform], told the congressional newspaper, The Hill, that Hatch's support 'would be a huge asset'...   Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the committee chairman [totally focused on counting bills passed out of committee regardless of whether they are good, bad, ugly, or downright evil], expressed frustration.   'At some point we have to vote on these things'...   On Tuesday, [a toothless amendment] introduced by senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) was rejected because it was seen as a deal breaker.   It would have required [employers to pretend to make] a 'good faith' effort...to hire a U.S. worker before taking on an H-1B worker...   One of [senator Dick Durbin's (D-IL)] amendments would eliminate an obligation on all employers, proposed in the comprehensive immigration [perveraion] bill, to [merely] attest that they worked to hire an 'equally qualified' U.S. worker prior to hiring an H-1B worker.   The amendment would limit that requirement to H-1B dependent companies, or those with 15% or more of their work-force holding H-1B visas...   In a letter sent on Thursday to the committee, Marc Apter, president of IEEE-USA.   voiced opposition to the Hatch proposals.   'Every part of this package has the same purpose -- to make it easier for employers to fire Americans and replace them with temporary foreign workers.', wrote Apter of Hatch's amendments."
Orrin Hatch has been belligerently opposed to reform and pushing for more H-1B visas to be given out for over a decade...jgo

2013-05-16
Alexander Bolton _Hill_
judiciary panel postpones further action on H-1B visas
"A [conspiracy of executives of businesses] including Accenture, Altria, Hewlett-Packard C. and Intel Corp. supports Hatch's amendments [while millions of US citizen STEM professionals oppose them]."
Orrin Hatch has been belligerently opposed to reform and pushing for more H-1B visas to be given out for over a decade...jgo

2013-05-16
Stephen Dinan _Washington DC Times_
3rd circuit court rejects Obummer's non-recess recess appointments to NLRB
"The 2-1 ruling by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said [pres. Obummer] can use his appointment powers only after Congress has adjourned for the year.   The decision is complex but legally hefty, and has far-ranging implications for the way the president and the Senate handle nominations.   The 3rd Circuit now joins the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, which earlier this year ruled 3-0 against 2 different Obama recess appointments."

2013-05-16
Anne Flaherty _San Jose CA Mercury News_/_AP_
Zuckerberg-led push against immigration reform has opponents on the right and left
Denver CO Post
Walla Walla WA Union-Bulletin
"[Over 129K new H-1B visas were issued through consular offices in FY2011 and over 135K were issued in FY2012, the State Department has reported.]   Scot Melland, president and chief executive of Dice Holdings Inc., which operates a career website devoted to tech jobs, said Dice.com has more than 80K positions posted on its site, which turn over an average of every 2 weeks...   his company [refuses to] track how many jobs result in H-1B visa hires [and how many are for real, full-time, long-term jobs developing software products vs. bodyshop gigs, nor does it allow job-seekers to select based on such criteria]...   According to a recent report by the labor-oriented Economic Policy Institute, the number of skilled guest-workers has increased sharply in recent years while only 1 in 2 U.S. college graduates with high-tech degrees can find a job in their field."

2013-05-16
Benjamin Brophy _American Spectator_
weak men more likely to be leftists
Daily Mail
"Their study discovered a link between a man's upper-body strength and their political views. Scientists from Aarhus University in Denmark collected data on bicep size, socio-economic status and support for economic redistribution from hundreds in America, Argentina and Denmark."

2013-05-16
Patrick Ryan _American Spectator_
federal extortionists read American Spectator's web site over 2,615 times so far in 2013
"In terms of visits, the agency is actually 6th out of 10 different federal agencies to read the site since January; the Department of Homeland Security stands in first place with over 6K visits, while the Department of Justice comes in 4th with over 3K...   The 3 agencies displayed a heightened interest in certain days, such as Thursday, March 7.   On that day, we blogged multiple times about senator Rand Paul's filibuster against CIA director John Brennan, including publishing Attorney General Holder's letter to the senator. Simultaneously, we received 103 visits from DHS, 68 visits from DoJ, and 26 visits from the [extortionists]."

2013-05-16
Anthony Watts
climate models getting worse than we thought
"A paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters finds that the latest climate models are performing even worse than the earlier generations of climate models in predicting 'both the mean surface air temperature as well as the frequency of extreme monthly mean temperature events due to climate warming'."

2013-05-16
_Herald Net_
cabal in US House reaches a deal to pervert immigration laws
"It came after months of secretive talks among the 4 Republican and 4 Democratic House members had seemed to stall in recent days even as an immigration bill in the Senate moved forward.   The House members met for 2 hours Thursday evening, emerging to announce they had a deal.   'We have an agreement in principle...', said representative John Carter, R-TX, a leader of the group.   Representative Luis Gutierrez, D-IL, another member, said over Twitter: 'Important breakthrough, some details still to be worked out, but very pleased things are moving forward.'   Carter and others declined to give details, saying they'd agreed among themselves not to do so...   [previously unresolved issues] included a new visa program for lower-skilled workers, and how to handle health care coverage for [illegal aliens] who would gain legal status under the bill...   Meanwhile, members of the group were under pressure to deliver from other law-makers and outside advocates who feared they would lose their window to have a voice [while suppressing input from the public] in the debate if they didn't produce something soon...   [And here are their perverted priorities:] Overall, the legislation would share the same goals as the Senate plan: boosting border security, an increased focus on workplace enforcement, new means to allow workers to enter this country legally and the eventual prospect of citizenship for millions...   House Judiciary committee chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-VA, separately has moved forward with individual, narrowly focused bills on immigration, including one on work-place enforcement that was discussed at a hearing Thursday...   The committee voted down an amendment by senator Chuck Grassley, R-IA, that would have required the implementation of an electronic employer ID verification system in 18 months, instead of the four years contemplated by the bill.   [RINO] senators Jeff Flake of AZ and Lindsey Graham [a.k.a. Lindsey Grahamnesty] of SC -- 2 of the bill's Republican authors -- voted with Democrats against the amendment, which was defeated 13-5.   So did senator Orrin Hatch, R-UT, a potential swing vote on the bill...   behind the scenes efforts were under way to reach a deal on a series of amendments by Hatch that would benefit the high-tech [executives while harming US citizen high-tech professionals] by making it easier for companies to access and [abuse] H-1B visas, which go to [cheap, young, pliant, low-skilled foreign labor with flexible ethics].   The bill increases the supply of these visas but also adds in [extremely weak] protections aimed at ensuring U.S. workers get the first shot at jobs, and tech companies have objected to some of those provisions, which have been championed by senator Dick Durbin, D-IL.   [Many such token gestures to the STEM pros, however, including several sponsored by senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), were rejected by the senate Judiciary committee.]...   Republicans in the House group are representatives Mario Diaz-Balart of FL, Sam Johnson of TX and Raul Labrador of ID. On the [Left] side, in addition to Gutierrez, they are Zoe Lofgren and Xavier Becerra of CA and John Yarmuth of KY."
Orrin Hatch has been belligerently opposed to reform and pushing for more H-1B visas to be given out for over a decade...jgo

2013-05-16
Jennifer Martinez _Hill_
Orrin Hatch demanding lower standards, more H-1B visas

2013-05-16
Alexander Bolton & Jennifer Martinez _Hill_
senate immigration perversion gangsters frustrate efforts to bolster border security
"'The gang's agreement to stick together is firmly in place.   They've united in opposition to a lot of good amendments.', said senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL).   'Anything that comes close to being a significant vote, they voted no on.'...   [RINO] members of the Gang of 8, senators Jeff Flake (AZ) and Lindsey Graham [a.k.a. Lindsey Grahamnesty] (SC), joined with Democrats to defeat a proposal sponsored by senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) requiring the government to implement an E-Verify program to combat the future hiring of illegal workers within 18 months after the bill's enactment [rather than beginning to require it 4 years from enactment]...   The committee instead moved to soften E-Verify regulations to spare small businesses from added costs, adopting a proposal sponsored by [radical leftist] senator Al Franken (D-MN).   The Franken amendment requires annual accuracy audits of E-Verify and reduces the cap on penalties for businesses failing to use or misusing the program if audits show error rates above 0.3%.   It covers first-time violations.   Franken argued that having to verify the employment eligibility of workers mistakenly identified as illegal is a burden on businesses...   [Oath-breaking] senator Charles Schumer (NY), the lead Democratic sponsor of the bill and a member of the Gang of 8, persuaded Franken to hold off on another amendment that would have exempted businesses with 14 or fewer employees from E-Verify until low error rates had been achieved.   [Oath-breaker] Schumer called that proposal a deal breaker...   [The additional perversions are] 'very welcome to organizations like mine', said Clarissa Martínez De Castro, director of immigration and national campaigns at [National Council of the Racists].   Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), who has taken the lead in selling the bill to conservative voters, praised the changes...   Critics of the bill said the amendments did not go far enough to prevent future waves of illegal immigration.   'After 2 weeks of considering amendments to the Gang of 8 immigration bill, the senate Judiciary committee has generally failed to strengthen the loop-hole-filled enforcement provisions or to reduce the harm of radically expanded immigration numbers on un-employed and under-employed Americans.', said Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, which opposes granting millions of illegal immigrants a path to citizenship...   The Judiciary panel will resume its markup on Monday morning.   Leahy plans to report the bill out of committee by the end of next week."

2013-05-16
Caren Bohan & Rachelle Younglai _Reuters_
senators hit disagreement on STEM provisions in S744

2013-05-16
Holly Wiegreffe PhD _St. Augustine FL_
There is no shortage of STEM professionals
"There is no talent shortage.   Period.   According to a report from the Economic Policy Institute (reported by Chemical and Engineering News, 2013 April 29) only half of all graduates in STEM fields are hired into STEM jobs and wages in STEM fields have not increased since the 1990s.   Rumors of a 'shortage' of scientists and engineers have been around since I was in graduate school decades ago and comes from [industry executives who] want a glut of employees, so they can continue to pay below market wages.   Provide evidence of your position or stop acting as the mouth-piece for IT [executives]."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-05-17

2013-05-17
Humberto Sanchez & Steven T. Dennis _Roll Call_
S744 favors hiring of aliens over US citizens
"The current draft of the senate's immigration overhaul appears to give some employers a $3K-a-year incentive to hire a newly legalized immigrant rather than an American citizen in order to avoid the new employer mandates in the health care law...   The bill is currently being marked up by the senate Judiciary committee, a process that will continue next week.   Judiciary chairman Patrick J. Leahy told his committee members to expect late evening sessions 'to try to complete this' [abomination]...   Harry Reid, D-NV, has made the bill a priority.   'I will bring immigration legislation to the floor in June, regardless of whether we have completed action on the farm bill.', he said Thursday..."

2013-05-17
Cheryl K. Chumley _Washington DC Times_
in bid to boost grant funding, CDCP declares 20% of children have mental illnesses, others point out that 95% of politicians and bureaubums are detached from reality (i.e. schizophrenic)

2013-05-17
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
Gang of 8/S744 Trojan horse
 
A very much-appreciated article in today's San Francisco CA Chronicle, titled "Green Card Plan for Students Stirs Worry" (unfortunately, subscription only) or at her Twit page or the author's Twit page and search for "green card plan".
 
Kudos to the Chronicle for covering this absolutely central topic, and my comments below will include what was in the article, and more.
 
What is different about this article from all other others about the Gang of 8 bill [S744]?   This one is about the MOST dangerous of the tech-related provisions in the bill, "staple a green card".   Yes, this part of the bill would be even more harmful than the H-1B expansion.
 
The bill would in essence grant automatic green cards to all foreign STEM graduate students.   This would be a huge blow to U.S. citizen and permanent resident STEM workers, and to U.S.A. STEM itself.   Its adverse impact would eclipse the impact of expanded H-1B, bad as the latter would be.
 
Keep in mind that the difference between H-1B and green cards is that under the latter, the worker becomes a PERMANENT FIXTURE IN THE LABOR MARKET, i.e. the impact is CUMULATIVE.   Though today many H-1Bs are also sponsored for green cards, most are not.   So, the Gof8 bill's granting of automatic green cards would within a few years swell the STEM labor [supply] like crazy, especially as the Third World higher education system expands.   THAT WOULD GREATLY SUPPRESS STEM WAGES, causing major problems that I will show below.
 
As most of you know, although my research has shown that on average the foreign STEM students are not "the best and the brightest", I do strongly support facilitating the immigration of those who ARE in that league.   But this legislation would make it HARDER for us to attract those top talents: The suppressed wages would make it unattractive for the outstanding students in other countries (who generally have other options) to study and later work in the U.S.A., exactly contrary to what [many congress-critters say they want].   Talk about perverse effects!   Meanwhile, the mediocre students in other countries would see an easy green card, and come here in droves.
 
The universities would see this as a bonanza.   They would increase foreign student tuition, knowing that the green card seekers would pay it.   But a concomitant effect would be that the universities would lower their foreign student admissions standards.
 
The overall result of all this: A REDUCTION IN STEM QUALITY IN THE U.S.A.
 
My view of the public statements of the Gof8 and those of the industry lobbyists (which "for some odd reason" are strikingly similar) is that clearly certain parties are deliberately highlighting the H-1B parts of the bill in order to distract attention from this outrageous STEM green card provision.   The latter is always described in the innocuous language "The bill would make it easier to get a green card" -- an egregious under-statement, as the bill would indiscriminantly give blanket green cards to all the STEM grad students, regardless of field, regardless of quality of school/student, in UNLIMITED numbers.
 
As I said, that under-statement, paired with the flurry of statements on H-1B, is clearly no accident.   This is intended to distract attention from the enormous impact the STEM green card provision would have, just as all the Good Cop, Bad Cop focus on the Indian out-sourcing firms is meant to distract attention from rampant abuse among the main-stream employers.
 
In short, the STEM green card section in Gof8 [S744] is a Trojan horse.   I generally avoid such strong language, but the situation is quite obvious, in my opinion.   [I disagree.   Almost the entire bill is an abomination, an affront to and attack on US citizens and the US constitution.]
 
Note BTW that I've been predicting over the years that the unwarranted demonizing of the Indian firms would not only be used to sneak in an increase in foreign workers for the "Intels", but also in the end Congress would not even clamp down on the "Infosyses".   Well, the web page https://infosys.fdbl.com an Infosys immigration site run by the Fragomen et al. law firm, was pointed out to me this morning.   No way is Fragomen, the largest immigration law firm in the U.S.A., going to allow anything more than cosmetic sanctions on the Indian firms.   And the Indian firms have been quiet [in the US media] for the most part [but not in the Indian media]; I suspect they have been told something will be worked out for them to continue business as usual, for the most part.
 
[Once again, I have to disagree with the professor.   The India-based cross-border bodyshops and off-shorers are demonic... the USA-based intra-USA bodyshops, cross-border bodyshoppers and off-shorers only slightly less so, and many of the firms which are not primarily bodyshops (what the professor calls main-stream firms) but which make great use and abuse of bodies shopped and of off-shoring are equally blame-worthy.   It is the actions which we condemn, and demand that the executivess and government operatives malbehaving to repent...jgo]
 
The Chronicle article notes that I do find one good thing about the STEM visas -- it would remove the ability of the employers to "hand-cuff" the foreign workers, because they would presumably get their green cards within months.   I should point out, though, that this is the case only for the current language in the bill, which could easily change.   Many employers, especially in Silicon Valley, place tremendous value in their current ability to hand-cuff their foreign workers [take advantage of their lower mobility].
 
I've used terms like "in essence" in describing the STEM visas above.   Here is why I have that qualifier.   First, the bill would require the foreign student to have a job offer "in a related field".   But that could be anything, say working as a clerk at Radio Shack, and there would be NO labor certification requirement as with current [change of status from a temporary visa to] green cards.   Second, while the bill technically does limit the qualifying colleges, the last I heard (both from a Hill staffer and an administration official) was that it would include over 200 schools [out of the over 4,400 in the USA]!   Most students at most of these schools would be of mediocre or weak ability.   So yes, the bill would in essenced open the flood-gates.
 
One of the popular buzz-words today is "transformative".   It's usually used in the positive sense, but the Gof8 STEM visas would be radically transformative in a negative sense, a historical event marking the decline of STEM in the U.S.A.   Again, [not very] strong words, but I believe the situation is clear.
 
Norm
This bill needs to be shut down.   Now.   Support reform; oppose perversion...jgo

2013-05-17
Jorge Balan _Wall Street On-Line_/_PR News Wire_/_UBM_
US government to help Mexico up-grade its Sci-Tech industry... but not help US citizen STEM professionals
World Review
News Blaze
"A joint initiative -- the Bilateral Forum on Higher Education, Innovation, and Research -- will offer greater educational and economic opportunities to both countries, writes economist and World Review author Dr. Jorge Balan...   President Nieto has aimed to drive technology and industrial learning to reposition the Mexican economy within global markets...   President Obama plans to take a new direction in the federal agendas for higher education and research in the US.   His administration has announced moves to tackle shortfalls in science education by supporting strategic research and setting a goal of producing 1M university graduates in the sciences over the next decade [as compared with the 9M produced over the last 4 decades, about 2.25M per decade, according to US Dept. of Education statistics]."

2013-05-17
Steve Goldstein _MarketWatch_
UMich consumer sentiment index up from 76.4 in late April to 83.7 in early May

2013-05-17
Brenda Walker _V Dare_
refugee racketeers writing themselves into S744

2013-05-17 (5773 Sivan 08)
Victor Davis Hanson _Jewish World Review_
it's 1973 al over again
"The problem is not just that such scape-goating was untrue, but that our officials knew it was untrue when they said it -- given both prior CIA talking-point briefings and phone calls from those on the ground during the attacks.   One theme ties all the bizarre aspects of Benghazi scandal together -- the doctored talking points, the inexplicable failure to beef up diplomatic security before the attacks and to send in help during the fighting, the jailing of a petty con artist on the false charge that his amateur video had led to attacks on our consulate, and the shabby treatment of nonpartisan State Department whistle-blowers.   There was an overarching pre-election desire last year to down-play any notion that al-Qaeda remained a serious danger...   we also learned that the IRS, administered by the Department of the Treasury, has been going after conservative groups in a politicized manner..."

2013-05-17 (5773 Sivan 08)
Michelle Malkin _Jewish World Review_
a brief history of slimy leftist snoops and dumpster divers

2013-05-17 (5773 Sivan 08)
David Weigel _Slate_
federal extortionists demanded pro-life group to explain its prayers outside racist eugenecist Planned Parenthood
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-05-18

2013-05-18
Thomas Olson _Pittsburgh PA Tribune-Review_
ATM fees up 20% in last 5 years, while actual transaction processing costs have fallen

2013-05-18
Brett Arends _MarketWatch_
college/university class of 2013 has been scammed... just as the classes of 1945-2012 were
"My under-graduate course at Cambridge largely consisted of one hour a week with a tutor, a weekly essay question and research list, and a library card.   This teaching model hadn't changed much, really, since the days of Aristotle.   Student, teacher, discussion...   How on earth do colleges today ramp up costs to $40K a year?"
Jermaine Taylor: CNBC: institutions receiving federal student aid dollars must collect & publish statistics on past graduates -- including graduation rates, average student loan obligations and average starting salaries

2013-05-18
Jennifer Martinez _Hill_
tech executives anxious that House bill won't fulfill their wildest dreams on visas and immigration

2013-05-18
Annie Charnley Eveland _Walla Walla WA Union-Bulletin_
STEM scholars honored by local branch of American Association of University Women
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-05-19

2013-05-19
Somini Sengupta _NYTimes_
tech execs pushing hard to make S744 even worse
"in the give-and-take of political bargaining, the legislation emerged with some provisions the industry considers unappealing.   Now its lobbyists are feverishly working to get rid of them...   Silicon Valley Leadership Group...   As if to under-score the [executives'] concern in passing the bill, the secretary of homeland [insecurity], Janet Napolitano, traveled to San Francisco on Friday to discuss revamping the immigration law with technology executives [but has held no meetings with the USA's millions of US citizen STEM professionals to hear and listen to what we have to say]."

2013-05-19
Victor Davis Hanson _PJ Media_
It CAN happen here

2013-05-19
Thomas E. Brewton
Obummer regime still attacking Americans from behind

2013-05-19
Dave Larsen _Dayton OH Daily News_
NHTSA pushing evil black-boxes in cars: 13 states have passed laws that limit abuse
Michael Williams: How badly do black-boxes violate your privacy?
San Jose CA Mercury News

2013-05-19
David Nicklaus _St. Louis MO Post-Dispatch_
St. Louis MO moves to the front in tech job growth
"Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers confirm that in one key category, computer systems design, Missouri led the nation in percentage growth last year.   (The BLS doesn't have specific metro-level data about the tech industry, but St. Louis accounts for around 40% of the state's economy...)...   The average tech job here pays $81,245, according to Dice.com, compared with $94,335 in Seattle and $101,278 in Silicon Valley.   Employers also say that turnover is far lower here, so they can hire and develop people rather than constantly being raided for talent.   Being cheap, however, does not constitute a winning strategy.   Plenty of other cities are as cheap as St. Louis.   What employers such as Boeing -- and Hudson's Bay Co. and Unisys, 2 other companies that have expanded their technology operations here -- want most is a pool of 'qualified' workers."

2013-05-19
Charlie Kirk _Breitbart_
young Turning Point conservatives look forward to the next generation
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-05-20

2013-05-20
Deborah M. Todd _Pittsburgh PA Post-Gazette_
immigration law change proposals raise job market issues

2013-05-20
Ed Marcum _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
Knoxville Glove company closing after 99 years due to foreign competition
"succumbed to foreign competition.   Knoxville Glove Company, which was founded in 1914, has as many as 350 employees at one time is now down to about 15, Townsend said.   The company has made all manner of work gloves...   supplied gloves to a wide variety of users, including the defense department, the military, pipe fitters, iron workers and NASA."

2013-05-20
Roger L. Simon _PJ Media_
the Obummer regime, Benghazi and going the full Nixon
"The Benghazi scandal, in all probability, would not have happened if the administration and/or the State Department took the War on Terror seriously or even, dare I say it, put the words 'terrorism' and 'Islamic' together in a sentence.   But that would break a thousand narratives in the mind of Barack Obama, from his childhood with Frank Marshall Davis until now and back.   So now he is riding the whirlwind."

2013-05-20
Anthony Watts
time-lapse video of 2013 Nenana Ice Classic break-up
"The ice break-up on the Nenana river occurred on 20 March in both 1964 and 2013.   In 1964 ice break-up occurred at 1141AST and in 2013 it occurred at 1441AST.   The total span of time between Vernal equinox in 1964 and ice break-up was 61 days, 6 hours, 31 minutes.   The total span of time between Vernal equinox in 2013 and ice breakup was 61 days, 12 hours, 39 minutes.   So, like it or not, the ice break-up was more than 6 hours further into Spring in 2013 than it was in 1964, and 2013 is a record."

2013-05-20
_NASDAQ_
3 Red Chinese indicted in theft/illegal export of NMR/MRI
Adam Martin: NY Magazine
Manufacturing.net/AP
NY Post
Quincy Herald-Whig
Tom Hays: San Francisco CA Chronicle
Minneapolis MN StarTribune
"Prosecutors accused Yudong Zhu, an associate professor of radiology at NYU Langone, and two other researchers, Xin Yang and Ye Li, of sharing research that was funded by a $4M grant from the National Institutes of Health, a U.S. [government]-sponsored research agency, with a Chinese company called United Imaging Healthcare and a Chinese government-sponsored research institute, the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology...   Assistant U.S. Attorney Zachary Feingold alleged that Mr. Zhu told federal agents following his arrest that he had been paid $400K by the Chinese company."

2013-05-20
Bill Murphy ii _Inc._
a higher percentage of fashion model applicants for H-1B visas are approved than the percentage for STEM labor applicants -- fun and deception with statistics
Devon Merling: Deseret News
"Roughy 478 foreign applications were 'made for fashion models in 2010', according to Labor Department data...250 of which were approved.   At the same time, 90,800 visas were [approved for] 'computer-related occupations', out of a total of 325K applications...   On average, H-1B fashion models made $161K.     American fashion models make far less -- about $27,330 a year on average...   Roughly a quarter of the fashion model applications were made on behalf of Brazilian women...   More than half of the model applications came from New York-based firms, including Trump Model Management and Ford Models.   Other employers included Beverly Hills, CA-based Playboy Enterprises Inc. and Dallas-based Wilhelmina International Inc."
According to USCIS annual reports, in FY2010, 76,627 applications for new/initial H-1B visas were approved, including 194 for "fashion models" (0.3% of the total) and 31,661 for "computer-related occupations" (41.8% of the total).   According to State Department annual reports, in FY2010, 117,828 H-1B visas were issued through consular offices (and more through unspecified processes).   The declared/reported compensation for USCIS-approved "computer-related occupations" applicants breaks down as follows: 25% were at or below $50K, half were at or below $63K, the average was $70K, and 75% were paid at or below $78K.   For USCIS-approved "fashion models": 25% were at or below $80K, half were at or below $100K, the average was $156K, and 75% were paid at or below $208K...jgo

2013-05-20
Paul Nachman _Billings MT Gazette_
gang of 8 bill, S744, would flood USA with immigrants even worse than present laws and regulations

2013-05-20
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
Dice.com materials -- various view-points on H-1B
 
Nice collection of different view-points assembled by Dice.com's Dawn Kawamoto.
 
To my knowledge, there has never been such a wide range of view-points put in one place.   Thus it's a very valuable resource.
 
Prof. Bardhan's comments are the most interesting, from my POV.   Much of what he says is a bit naive, such as regarding the prevailing wage.   He also presumes there is a shortage of STEM workers, which no study has ever shown, and for which several studies have shown the opposite.   His point about off-shoring is quite correct, though; I've been making the same point for years, and pointing out that the industry lobbyists' cry that "If you don't give us H-1Bs, we'll ship the work abroad.", is very misleading.
 
One minor point: In my illustration of how beholden the universities are to the tech industry -- Gates Hall, Hewlett Hall, etc. -- I was referring to Stanford.   The viewer might mistakenly think I meant UC Davis.
 
Norm
2 important updates
 
Here are updates to 2 recent postings:
 
1.   In green card trojan horse I reviewed the excellent, though unfortunately rare, article on the "Trojan horse" STEM green card provisions in the Gof8 bill.   I mentioned that access to the article requires a paid subscription.
 
However, it was pointed out to me today that the author of the article has put a link to the full text of the article on her Twitter page GreenCardTrojanHorse.txt From there, scroll to "Green card plan", or go directly to the San Francisco CA Chronicle article.
 
Note that I've always added some clarifying language to my review itself.
 
This topic is enormously important.   Please keep the article in mind as the Gof8 bill [S744], and whatever bill the House comes up with, make their way through the legislative process.
 
2.   In Seattle Times article etc.: Visas Shut Out Americans I had a Seattle Times article, in which there was a very illuminating example involving "Ms. X".   Well, Ms. X subsequently wrote to me and identified herself, which I later confirmed with one of the authors of the article.   Ms. X told me that the article was slightly incorrect in one of its facts, though the overall thrust of the article's reporting of X's situation was accurate.   I've changed my wording accordingly.
 
And here again, I've always added some clarifying language to my review itself.
 
Norm
---30---

2013-05-20
Kathy Tomlinson _CBC_
Canadian on unemployment insurance shut out amid foreign worker influx
"A jobless Canadian IT professional who is collecting employment insurance is upset because he now suspects several recent jobs he applied for went to temporary foreign workers...   He applied for 3 IT positions with a multinational company from India, called TCS.   It has several jobs posted in Canada's job bank, for IT work with its large Canadian clients.   Despite his qualifications, Hamel got no response.   In the meantime, a former TCS manager told Go Public the company rarely hires skilled, experienced Canadians...   This letter from TCS to government states 'We are looking for a very specific skill set which appears to be in short supply in Canada.'   However, a former employee with the company claims those skills were not actually necessary to do the jobs..."

2013-05-20
Peter Brimelow _World Net Daily_
S744 feeds "plundering by plutocrats"

2013-05-20
R.G. Hicks _Re-Innovating America_
The guest-worker on H-1B vs. US STEM pro: Who wins and who loses?

2013-05-20 (5773 Sivan 11)
Richard A. Serrano _Jewish World Review_
has the man who murdered Mair Kahane reformed?

2013-05-20 (5773 Sivan 11)
Mark Steyn _Jewish World Review_
Big Government is erecting a panopticon state -- one that sees everything, and regulates everything. It's great "customer service" except that you can never get out of the store

2013-05-20 (5773 Sivan 11)
Hannan Adely _Jewish World Review_
Paterson NJ raised Palestinian flag
"That's because the flag raised -- for the first time in Paterson, and possibly at any city hall in the United States -- was Palestinian.   Symbols or assertions of Palestinian statehood are fraught with political sensitivities, and Khader Abuassab, the event's organizer, said he received harassing phone calls and a text reading 'Drop dead' before Sunday's event...   'Palestine is our country and we are proud of that.', said Clifton, NJ, resident Salwa Ramadan...   Mayor Jeffery Jones...read a proclamation proclaiming May 19 as Palestinian American Day in the city...   Bill Pascrell ii D-NJ, and Democratic state Assemblyman Thomas Giblin showed up -- with Pascrell presenting a letter of Special Congressional Recognition and Giblin presenting an Assembly resolution marking the event.   Shavonda Sumter and Benjie Wimberly, both Assembly members, and state senator Nellie Pou also sent a joint citation.   Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, said in a speech that the Palestinian leadership thanked the city for its gesture..."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-05-21

2013-05-21
James Walsh & Steve Alexander _Minneapolis MN StarTribune_
Medtronic dumping 2K employees worldwide, 500 in MN
"The cuts come at a time when fourth-quarter earnings were better than expected...   Approximately 65% of the job cuts have already occurred, and the rest will be eliminated in the current fiscal year that ends next April, spokeswoman Cindy Resman said.   Most of the job losses are in the company's Cardiovascular Group and in its spine business with nearly half related to Medtronic's efforts to consolidate manufacturing.   The total of 2K jobs to be cut includes the 230 job cuts Medtronic announced earlier this month at the company's Memphis-based spine facility...   Medtronic employs 45K people worldwide.   While noting the reduction of 500 Minnesota jobs, Resman pointed out that the company is actually adding 160 other jobs in the state, putting the net loss of positions here at about 340.   That number also does not include 130 job openings currently listed in Minnesota, she said."

2013-05-21
Alexander Bolton & Jennifer Martinez _Hill_
anti-reform senators Schumer & Hatch strike deal to make H-1B provisions of S744 much worse
unions criticize deal

2013-05-21
Mathew J. Schwartz _Information Week_/_UBM_
advanced persistent threats traced to India
"A multi-year advanced persistent threat (APT) campaign that targeted the government of Pakistan, as well as global businesses operating in mining, automotive, engineering, military and finance sectors, among others, appears to have been run from India.   Organizations targeted for industrial espionage were located in numerous countries, including the United States, Iran, China and Germany."

2013-05-21
Roy Beck _Numbers USA_
USCIS union testifying about being pressured to approve questionable applications; oppose S744 as damaging to public safety and national security
Rick Moran: American Thinker
"Here's what Kenneth Palinkas, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council 119, told Congress and the public today: 'The culture at USCIS encourages all applications to be approved, discouraging proper investigation into red flags and discouraging the denial of any applications...USCIS has been turned into an approval machine.'   The USCIS union today joined the union for ICE agents (Immigration and Custom Enforcement) in opposing the S744 amnesty, noting that it fails to provide for necessary in-person interviews and for those who have committed serious immigration and criminal offenses.   'The legislation was written with special interests -- producing a bill that makes the current system worse, not better...   (The bill would) damage public safety and national security and should be opposed by law-makers.'   The union said it can't protect American security at today's rate of applications and in no way could do so with millions of additional ones coming in."

2013-05-21
Dr. Babak Behta _Cumberland PA Sentinel_
allergies are a progressive disease

2013-05-21
Daniel Greenfield _Front Page Magazine_
Nidal Hasan, Ft. Hood terrorist, has been paid $278K in federal salary since his murders
Atlantic
Scott Friedman: NBC Dallas-Ft. Worth TX

2013-05-21
Roger L. Simon _PJ Media_
former diplomats report more whistle-blowers are waiting in the wings with more info on Benghazi
"The former diplomats inform PJM the new revelations concentrate in 2 areas -- what Ambassador Chris Stevens was actually doing in Benghazi and the pressure put on General Carter Ham, then in command of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and therefore responsible for Libya, not to act to protect jeopardized U.S. personnel.   Stevens' mission in Benghazi, they will say, was to buy back Stinger missiles from al-Qaeda groups issued to them by the State Department, not by the CIA.   Such a mission would usually be a CIA effort, but the intelligence agency had opposed the idea because of the high risk involved in arming 'insurgents' with powerful weapons that endanger civilian aircraft.   Hillary Clinton still wanted to proceed because, in part, as one of the diplomats said, she wanted 'to overthrow Gaddafi on the cheap'.   This left Stevens in the position of having to clean up the scandalous enterprise when it became clear that the 'insurgents' actually were al-Qaeda -- indeed, in the view of one of the diplomats, the same group that attacked the consulate and ended up killing Stevens."

2013-05-21
Kristen Butler _UPI_
only 27% of new grads have jobs lined up related to their majors: dysfunctional job markets continue

2013-05-21
Kristen Butler _UPI_
Systems & Materials Research Corporation develops additive manufacturing of pizza from powders, water and oil

2013-05-21
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
protection against age discrimination to be dropped from S744
 
Senator Hatch seems to be getting his way with the Judiciary committee, with his H-1B-related amendments, and sadly, not a single person on the committee seems to be concerned about the most dangerous part of the bill from a STEM perspective.
 
There is a report at the Hill.
 
Here are my comments:
 
1.   The original text of the bill required employers to give pirority to equally-qualified Americans before offering a job to a foreign worker.   THIS WAS THE BILL'S ONLY PROTECTION AGAINST THE AGE PROBLEM, in which employers hire younger H-1Bs in lieu of older (35+) Americans.   The provision would bar employers from rejecting American applicants as being "over-qualified".   But if Hatch's amendment is adopted, as is expected now, that provision would apply only to H-1B-dependent employers.
 
2.   The committee has done nothing at all to soften the provision that gives automatic green cards to essentially ALL foreign graduate students in STEM, no limit, no labor certification, just waving everyone on through.
 
As I've said, point 2 above is huge; it would be a historical watershed event.   I believe that we will be seeing a lot of very angry people, once they realize what has been snuck through.   They'll demand to know who did this.   Again, these are very strong words, but I cannot imagine any different scenario if this provision is eancted.
 
Norm
---30---

2013-05-21
Cindy Chang _Los Angeles CA Times_
immigration violations over 40% of federal prosecutions
It's really disappointing to me that in the current senate immigration deform bill, they're calling for more of the same -- more resistance by government to securing the borders and ports, more resistance to proper background investigations of visa applicants, more amnesties of illegal aliens, more encouraging of illegal immigration, more violations of US citizens' privacy, more low-standards/no-standards visas when they've been issuing far far too many with insufficient standards for decades...jgo

2013-05-21
_UPI_
abominable immigration deform bill, S744, approved on 13-5 vote by senate Judiciary committee, floor debate and amendments to follow
abc
New Haven CT Register
Quincy Herald-Whig
Denver CO Post
Detroit MI News
Detroit MI Free Press
Ft. Myers FL News Press
Alexander Bolton: Hill
Kaitlin Funary: Global Post
Alan Silverleib: CNN
Ashley Parker & Julia Preston: NYTimes
Oregonian/AP
Lisa Mascaro & Brian Bennett: Los Angeles CA Times
National Socialist Radio
Stephen Dinan: Washington DC Times
Daniel Doherty: Town Hall

2013-05-21
Bridget Johnson _PJ Media_
S744 headed to floor-fight
"Sessions, whose opposition to the legislation was especially vocal during the mark-up, highlighted a letter just released by a coalition of conservative activists urging law-makers to vote against the bill and saying 'no matter how well-intentioned, the Schumer-Rubio bill suffers from fundamental design flaws that make it unsalvageable...   Many of us support various parts of the legislation, but the overall package is so unsatisfactory that the Senate would do better to start over from scratch.', says the letter, which also urges senators to vote against cloture and keep the bill from coming up for a vote.   Signatories include PJ Media's Allen West, Victor Davis Hanson and Andrew McCarthy.   'The coalition letter is an important and decisive moment in this debate, reflecting deep, broad and principled conservative opposition.', Sessions said.   'They note, correctly, that the Gang of 8 legislation is like Obamacare—a large, unwieldy bill filled with broken promises and special interest give-aways.   The letter makes crucial points about how the Gang of Eight legislation will pull down Americans' wages, destroy American jobs and erode the constitutional rule of law as immigration officers have repeatedly warned.   While the number of voices supporting the Gang of 8 legislation shrinks, the number of Americans speaking out against this proposal continues to grow.'   At the end of the mark-up today, Sessions declared that 'this legislation fails to live up to every major promise of its sponsors...   Ironically, the only promise the sponsors of this legislation have kept is their promise to block any attempts to improve the proposal.', he said.   'As a result, we are left with legislation that is fundamentally unchanged and fatally flawed.   It will not become law.'   Sessions also noted 'amendments offered by Republicans to put enforcement first were all rejected...   This bill is bad for workers, bad for [tax-victims] and -- as immigration officers have pleaded for us to hear -- a threat to public safety and the rule of law.   It serves the special interests at the expense of the national interest.', he said.   'Therefore, I must oppose.'...   Grassley, ranking member on the Judiciary committee, said he 'voted for amnesty for [over] 3M people in 1986, and it didn't solve the problem'."

2013-05-21
James Marshall Crotty _Forbes_
Dear HS grad: everything we have been telling you is false
"No doubt you've been told that more -- and better targeted -- skill sets are the expensive answer to your job predicament.   At least that's what the increasingly desperate education industry -- and their lax-loan lackeys in the Obama Department of Education [and Forbes and Bloomberg and Zuckerberg and ACEC, ACIP, AeA, CPR, CSIA, China TechSource, CSI, CompeteAmerica, CCIA, CSPP, CTIA, CII, CRITA, EIA, EWIC, GEIA, IV, IndiaPAC, ITIC, ITIF, ITServe Alliance, LPA, NASSCOM, NCI, NPfaNAE, SIA, SEMI, SHRM, SIIA, TechAmerica, TechNet, TAA, TCEOC, TIC, TPI, TechServe Alliance, TIA, USCIB, UCSI, USIBC...] -- want you to believe.   Unfortunately, as authors Kenneth Gray and Edwin Herr note, only 21% of all jobs in the U.S.A. require a bachelor's degree or higher.   In addition, according to economist and professor Peter Morici, 'more than half of recent graduates are working' in an occupation 'that does not require a college education'.   Moreover, even if you pursue a degree in a field that requires a college diploma, the fast-evolving global marketplace may still determine in a few years time that those 'in-demand' skills you studied so hard to accrue are suddenly superfluous.   Economists call this commoditization.   And just as it happened with web-site designers and A & R hacks in the early 2000s, and lawyers and journalists in the late 2000s, commoditization [has] quickly [transformed] today's in-vogue STEM fields too.   Especially when one considers that for every 2 U.S. students that graduate with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) degrees, only 1 is deployed in a STEM job...   every single field you've been told is technology-proof -- from wet welding to coffee shop barista -- is being radically altered by technology.   And, in each and every case, the demand for human capital decreases as technological commoditization continues its march through one 'industry of the future' after another...   Well, you might ask, 'if more budget-busting [time at a college or university] is not necessarily the answer, and those over-hyped STEM fields are not a sure bet, and carefully tailoring classes, mentors, internships, and volunteer work to a specific company in a 'high-demand' sector is not a guaranteed winning strategy, and making sure one hits all the SEO key-words on my target company's resume-reader is not a dependable meal ticket, what the heck am I supposed to do?"

2013-05-21
Nicholas Stix _V Dare_
murder convictions show how expensive, agonizing and grudging justice is in multi-cultural America

2013-05-21
Phyllis Schlafly _GOP USA_
Gang of 8 betrays USA with S744

2013-05-21
Alexander Bolton _Hill_
Mitch McConnell won't try to block immigration perversion bill, S744, praised 8 gangsters

2013-05-21 (5773 Sivan 12)
John Thorne _Jewish World Review_
Obummer's emptiest Benghazi talking point

2013-05-21 (5773 Sivan 12)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
wimps versus barbarians
Town Hall
"An all too familiar scene was enacted on the campus of Swarthmore College during a meeting on May 4th to discuss demands by student activists for the college to divest itself of its investments in companies that dealt in fossil fuels.   As a speaker was beginning a presentation to show how many millions of dollars such a disinvestment would cost the college, student activists invaded the meeting, seized the microphone and shouted down a student who rose in the audience to object.   Although there were professors and administrators in the room -- including the college president -- apparently nobody had the guts to put a stop to these storm trooper tactics.   Nor is it likely that there will be any punishment of those who put their own desires above the rights of others...   Although colleges and universities across the country have been giving in to storm trooper tactics ever since the nationwide campus disruptions of the 1960s, not all have.   Back in the 1960s, the University of Chicago was a rare exception.   As professor George J. Stigler, a Nobel Prize winning economist, put it in his memoirs, 'our faculty united behind the expulsion of a large number of young barbarians'.   The sky did not fall.   There was no blood-bath.   The University of Chicago was in fact spared some of the worst nonsense that more compliant institutions were permanently saddled with in the years that followed, as a result of their failure of nerve in the 1960s...   It's not just academics who won't defend decency.   Trustees could fire college presidents who cave in to storm trooper tactics.   Donors could stop donating to institutions that have sold out their principles to appease the campus barbarians.   But when nobody is willing to defend civilized standards, the barbarians win.   Whether on college campuses or among nations on the world stage, if the battle comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are bound to win."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-05-22

2013-05-22
Bob Beauprez _Town Hall_
restoring freedom, saving the republic
"Historically, Americans have taken freedom and individual liberty very seriously."

2013-05-22
Ann Coulter _Town Hall_
When did we vote to become Mexico?
World Net Daily
"Before I had resolved which scandal was distracting from which...   Meanwhile, senators Marco Rubio, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham and John McCain are working feverishly to turn the country into Mexico...   For decades, Mexicans have been about 30% of all legal immigrants to the United States, while only a smidgen more than 1% come from Great Britain.   Is that fair?   Granted, their food is better, but why is it the norm is to have nearly 30 times as many Mexican as British immigrants?   We have been taking in more immigrants from Guatemala, the Dominican Republic and Colombia, individually, than from England, our mother country.   There are nearly twice as many immigrants from El Salvador as from Canada, and 10 times as many as from Australia.   Why can't the country be more or less the ethnic composition that it always was?   The 50:1 Latin American-to-European ratio isn't a natural phenomenon that might result from, say, Europeans losing interest in coming here and poor Latin Americans providing some unique skill desperately needed in our modern, technology-based economy.   To the contrary, it's result of an insane government policy.   Teddy Kennedy's 1965 Immigration Act was designed to artificially inflate the number of immigrants from the Third World, while making it virtually impossible for anyone from the nations that historically provided our immigrants to come here.   Pre-1965 immigrants were what made this country what it was for a reason: They were the pre-welfare state immigrants.   From around 1630 to 1966, immigrants sank or swam..."
I don't care from what part of the world foreign students, exchange visitors, guest-workers and immigrants come.   In dinking with genealogy I've found that I have ancestors, cousins and other relatives all around the world.   What concerns me is the excessive numbers and low standards, and the lack of proper background investigations on visa applicants.   Even worse is the government's insulting refusal to take reasonable measures and allow reasonably measured levels of visitors, students, guest-workers and immigrants, their hell-bent drive for low standards and vastly excessive numbers...jgo

2013-05-22
Ann Coulter _World Net Daily_
send us your violent bigots, yearning to butcher us

2013-05-22
Katie Pavlich _Town Hall_
in Orlando, FBI killed man connected to Boston bombing

2013-05-22
Bob Barr _Town Hall_
Obummer scandals to haunt left as Marley's ghost spooked Scrooge
"From 'Operation Fast and Furious', to the Benghazi debacle and cover-up, to the IRS harassment of [non-leftist] organizations, to the Department of Justice campaign against the Associated Press, and now reports the Department has used its power to intimidate FOX News reporters -- the hits just keep on coming."

2013-05-22
Lisa Mascaro _Los Angeles CA Times_
spot-light moves to House on immigration perversion/reform
"'The question remains: Are we learning lessons from the past or repeating the same mistakes?', said representative Robert W. Goodlatte (R-VA), the committee chairman.   'While I commend the Senate for their continuing efforts to tackle the extremely difficult task of reforming our broken system, I must observe that [S744] repeats many of the mistakes of the past [and so does HR2131].'"

2013-05-22
John DerbyShire _V Dare_
should immigration favor the more intelligent?

2013-05-22
_AZ Sonoran News_
Marco Rubio's (Mark Zuckerberg's) deceptive ad

2013-05-22
_AZ Sonoran News_
tracing genealogy of plague back to Justinianic plague of 541CE

2013-05-22 (5773 Sivan 13)
John Thorne _Jewish World Review_
they launched "Arab Spring" but yearn for strong-man

2013-05-22 (5773 Sivan 13)
Michelle Malkin _Jewish World Review_
the Obummer crony in charge of violating your medical privacy
Town Hall
"her politically connected, [tax-victim-subsidized] electronic medical records company may very well know you.   Top Obama donor and billionaire Faulkner is founder and CEO of Epic Systems, which will soon store almost half of all Americans' health information."

2013-05-22 (5773 Sivan 13)
Eoin O'Carroll _Jewish World Review_
scientists examining nothing find something
"Where did the speed of light in a vacuum come from?   Why is it 299,792,458 meters per second and not some other figure?   The simple answer is that, since 1983, science has defined a meter by the speed of light: one meter equals the distance light travels in one 299,792,458th of a second.   But that doesn't really answer our question...   A pair of studies suggest that this universal constant might not be so constant after all.   In the first study, Marcel Urban from the University of Paris-Sud and his team found that the speed of light in a vacuum varies ever so slightly.   This happens because what we think of as nothing isn't really nothing.   Even if you were to create a perfect vacuum, at the quantum level it would still be populated with pairs of tiny 'virtual' particles that flash in and out of existence and whose energy values fluctuate.   As a consequence of these fluctuations, the speed of a photon passing through a vacuum varies, about 50 quintillionths of a second per square meter.   That may not sound like much, but it's enough to point the way toward a new underlying physics.   In the other paper, physicists Gerd Leuchs and Luis L. Sanchez-Soto, from the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Light in Erlangen, Germany, hypothesize how this emergence occurs.   They suggest that the impedance of a vacuum -- another electromagnetic 'constant' whose value depends on the speed of light -- itself depends only on the electric charge of the particles in the vacuum, and not their masses."

2013-05-22 (5773 Sivan 13)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
we are the idiots for being so gullible
Town Hall

2013-05-22 (5773 Sivan 13)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
un-doing the brain-washing
Town Hall
"This time of year, as college students return home for the summer, many parents may notice how many politically correct ideas they have acquired on campus.   Some of those parents may wonder how they can undo some of the brain-washing that has become so common in what are supposed to be institutions of higher learning.   The strategy used by General Douglas MacArthur so successfully in the Pacific during World War II can be useful in this very different kind of battle.   General MacArthur won his victories while minimizing his casualties -- something that is also desirable in clashes of ideas within the family.   Instead of fighting the Japanese for every island stronghold as the Americans advanced toward Japan, MacArthur sent his troops into battle for only those islands that were strategically crucial.   In the same spirit, parents who want to bring their brainwashed offspring back to reality need not try to combat every crazy idea they picked up from their politically correct professors.   Just demolishing a few crucial beliefs, and exposing what nonsense they are, can deal a blow to the general credibility of the professorial pied pipers.   For example, if the student has been led to join the crusade for more gun control, and thinks that the reason the British have lower murder rates than Americans have is because the Brits have tighter gun control laws, just give him or her a copy of the book _Guns and Violence_ by Joyce Lee Malcolm, published by Harvard University Press...   My own recent book, _Intellectuals and Race_, has innumerable documented facts that expose the fallacies in most of what is said about racial issues in most college class-rooms.   For those students who have bought the campus party line on Third World nations, the classic study of that subject is _Equality, the Third World, and Economic Delusion_ by the late Peter T. Bauer of the London School of Economics.   He made a veritable demolition derby of most of what has been said in politically correct circles about the relationship between rich and poor countries.   For those students who have been conditioned to regard the welfare state as the solution to social problems, there is no book that exposes the actual human consequences of the welfare state more poignantly than _Life at the Bottom_ by British physician Theodore Dalrymple.   He has worked in both low-income neighborhoods and in prisons, so he has seen it all.   Although Britain is the setting for _Life at the Bottom_, Americans will recognize very similar patterns here.   Problems found in low-income black ghettoes in the United States are found in low-income white neighborhoods in Britain, where none of the usual excuses about racism, slavery, etc., apply.   The only thing that is the same in both countries is the welfare state and its poisonous ideology.   If your student has been led to believe that 'comprehensive immigration reform' -- amnesty, in plain English -- is the only way to go, a devastating book titled _Mexifornia_, by Victor Davis Hanson, introduces some cold, factual reality into a subject usually discussed in sweeping and lofty rhetoric.   A book that offers a choice between the island-hopping strategy that General MacArthur used in the Pacific and the all-out assault across a broad front that was used by the Allied armies in Europe is titled _The New Leviathan_..."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-05-23

2013-05-23 05:30PDT (08:30EDT) (12:30GMT) (14:30 Jerusalem)
Tom Stengle & Tony Sznoluch _DoL ETA_
un-employment insurance weekly claims report
DoL home page
DoL OPA press releases
historical data
DoL regulations
"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 301,056 in the week ending May 18, a decrease of 19,767 from the previous week.   There were 330,427 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.1% during the week ending May 11, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week's unrevised rate.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,766,163, a decrease of 124,662 from the preceding week's revised level of 2,890,825.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.5% and the volume was 3,124,324.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending May 4 was 4,745,266, a decrease of 98,540 from the previous week.   There were 6,168,434 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2012.   Extended Benefits were available only in Alaska during the week ending May 4...   States reported 1,776,686 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending May 4, a decrease of 15,415 from the prior week.   There were 2,630,544 persons claiming EUC in the comparable week in 2012.   EUC weekly claims include first, second, third, and fourth tier activity.   [Note that the population used for calculating the "insured unemployment rate" (the divisor) changes roughly quarterly:
to 132,623,886 beginning 2007-10-06;
to 133,010,953 beginning 2008-01-05;
to 133,382,559 beginning 2008-04-05;
to 133,690,617 beginning 2008-07-05;
to 133,902,387 beginning 2008-10-04;
to 133,886,830 beginning 2009-01-03;
to 133,683,433 beginning 2009-04-04;
to 133,078,480 beginning 2009-07-04;
to 133,823,421 beginning 2009-10-03;
to 131,823,421 beginning 2009-10-17;
to 130,128,328 beginning 2010-01-02;
to 128,298,468 beginning 2010-04-03;
to 126,763,245 beginning 2010-07-03;
to 125,845,577 beginning 2010-09-25;
to 125,560,066 beginning 2011-01-15;
to 125,572,661 beginning 2011-04-02;
to 125,807,389 beginning 2011-07-02;
to 126,188,733 beginning 2011-10-01;
to 126,579,970 beginning 2012-01-01;
to 127,048,587 beginning 2012-04-07;
to 127,495,952 beginning 2012-07-14;
to 128,066,082 beginning 2012-10-06;
to 128,613,913 beginning 2013-01-05;
to 129,204,324 beginning 2013-04-06.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2013-05-23
Patrick Thibodeau _InfoWorld_/_IDG_
another stinking rotten deal grows in senate, say H-1B critics
"With the votes against him, Grassley, a leading H-1B critic, dropped any need for niceties.   'Let's peel back the onion and see how much this stinks.', said Grassley (R-IA)...   Grassley attacked the legislation across the board...   The amendments add a provision that blocks escalator increases if occupational unemployment for the management, professional and related occupations is 4.5% or higher.   'Did the supporters of the amendment know that the average unemployment (rate) for this group was 3.7% last April, compared with [historical unemployment rates in times of full employment running about 0.7% to 1.1% versus] what this amendment has, 4.5%?', said Grassley...   In the first quarter of this year the unemployment rate for management professionals was 3.8%; for computing and math specialists, 3.5%, and for tech architects and engineers, 3.8%...   all H-1B hiring firms will be required to post jobs on a government sponsored web-site, but only so-called 'dependent firms' -- not all companies -- will be required to offer a job to an 'equally or better qualified' U.S. worker.   Dependent firms are those with 15% or more of the work-force on visas.   'Requiring only the sub-set of H-1B dependent firms to offer jobs to better or equally qualified Americans cancels out the only possibly real and tangible protection that US workers would have gotten in this bill.', said Daniel Costa, an immigration policy analyst at Economic Policy Institute...   John Miano, the founder of the Programmer's Guild, was dismissive of any of the provisions aimed at protecting workers.   'As there is no enforcement in H-1B, it does not matter at all -- yet still they argue over them.', he said."

2013-05-23
Bill Snyder _InfoWorld_/_IDG_
debunking the H-1B hog-wash: STEM grads are pouring out of US colleges and universities
"OT1H, the IT industry always needs fresh blood.   But the large increase in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) grads is already driving up competition for the best IT-related jobs.   Consider the numbers released Tuesday by Dice.com, an IT jobs board: In 2011, 43,072 IT-related bachelor degrees and 37,677 associate's degrees were awarded, jumping 9% and 16% respectively over the previous year.   The number of associate's degrees in particular has jumped 36% over the past four years, Dice said, quoting federal statistics.   Between 2010 and 2011 six major universities reported strong growth in computer science degrees.   They were: University of California at San Diego, 58%; University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 41%; University of California at Berkeley, 29%; North Carolina State University, 25%; University of Minnesota Twin Cities, 17%; and University of Illinois, Urbana Champagne, 11%...   Salaries in computer- and math-related fields for workers with a college degree rose only 4.5% between 2000 and 2011, says Ross Eisenbrey, the vice president of the Economic Policy Institute.   'What's more, 2 out of every 3 people who have a STEM degree are not working in a STEM field.', he says.   If there were a labor shortage, salaries would certainly have increased faster, and STEM graduates would be far more likely to hold jobs that are directly related to their education...   As measured by Dice, the market for tech jobs isn't quite as hot as it was a year ago -- listings are down about 2%.   But the current roster of full- and part-time jobs listed on Dice stands at 83,086, compared to 63,605 in 2010 May, an increase of more than 30%."

2013-05-23
Patrick J. Michaels & Paul C. Knappenberger
anti-information in climate models

2013-06-23
Bill Straub _PJ Media_
State Dept. & DHS not trying very hard to track over 1M visa over-stayers
"While the nation's tracing system has shown improvement over the past 2 years, a number of individuals, collectively known as over-stayers, present a potential threat to national security.   And the failure to address the issue could carry 'catastrophic consequences', according to representative Candice Miller (R-MI)...   'Clearly more must be done to ensure the integrity of the visa system, including enhancement to customs and border enforcements' ability to identify and promptly remove those who overstay their visa.', said Miller, chairman of the House sub-committee on Border and Maritime Security, during a hearing on over-stay problems...   Over the past few months, for instance, ICE has upgraded its Student and Exchange Visitor Information data-base [SEVIS], assuring that port inspectors have the most current information regarding a student visa holder's status at the time of their entry and exit from the U.S.A.   Another database provides inspectors with a daily record of status changes for every individual in the country on a visa, providing information used to determine whether a person should be welcomed in.   The department also is maintaining close contact with international, federal, state, local and tribal partners 'to combat visa fraud and protect the integrity of our visa security system.', he said.   The Counter-Terrorism and Criminal Exploitation Unit uses data to determine potential violations that warrant field investigations.   Between 15K and 20K records are analyzed each month.   Since the creation of the unit in 2003, more than two million such records have been analyzed.   The Department of Homeland Security is paying particular attention to stopping problems at the source.   ICE now has personnel in 75 offices in 48 countries who collaborate with various domestic and international agencies to disrupt and dismantle transnational criminal organizations engaged in illicit activities ranging from money laundering to human rights violations.   The agency also facilitates the repatriation of individuals with final orders of removal, returning violators and those unlawfully present to their home countries.   Shonnie Lyon, acting director of the Office of Biometric Identity Management, told the subcommittee that biometric identity management also is playing 'a critical role in supporting the Department of Homeland Security's mission to secure the nation' by providing biometric analysis services within the department and the intelligence community...   As of 2011 January, DHS's Arrival and Departure Information System (ADIS) contained a back-log of 1.6M potential overstay records.   Since then, the department has closed about 863K records and removed them from the back-log.   But as of April, DHS still maintains more than 1M un-matched arrival-departure records -- 44% involving tourist visas...   Problems also exist in establishing a biometric exit system at air and sea ports of entry.   Since 1996, federal law has required the implementation of an integrated entry and exit data system for foreign nationals, Gambler said.   Earlier this month, the House Homeland Security committee passed the Border Security Results Act of 2013, which contained a provision requiring the department to develop a plan for a biometric exit capability at ports of entry."
The problems is that neither congress nor the executive have ever been serious about securing the borders and ports, nor tracking those in the USA on temporary visas...jgo

2013-05-23
_MarketWatch_
nominally USA brands which are the most popular in Red China

2013-05-23
Walter Dnes & "just the facts"
crowd-sourcing an open-source temperature data monitoring methodology and spread-sheet

2013-05-23
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
"Rebel": the story of Loreta Velasquez on National Socialist Television

2013-05-23
Laura Ingraham
memo to House GOP on immigration
"1.   ...what matters is what comes out of any House/Senate conference.   Will you promise, for example, that you will never bring a bill to the floor that includes a 'path to citizenship'?   Will you promise that you will never bring a bill to the floor that allows illegals to get state and local welfare?   One that doesn't provide for biometric entry-exit tracking of visa-holders?   One that doesn't allow for the consideration of 'country of origin' in determining admissibility?   Will they promise not to bring up any bill at all in a lame-duck session after the 2014 elections?...   If the House/Senate conference is likely to produce a bill we don't like, then we don't want any bill to pass the House at all.   We don't want hearings.   We don't want discussion.   We would rather have them drop the issue altogether and worry about issues that are actually important to the overwhelming majority of Americans.
2.   We distrust any language about how the border system is broken.   That's straight out of the Rubio-Schumer-McCain-Durbin talking points, and we flatly reject their approach.   The system is broken only because George W. Bush and Obama refused to enforce the law.   It seems nuts to reward that type of bad behavior by giving Obama a law that he wants.
3.   We are very skeptical of the notion that our economy is hurting because we don't have enough immigrants.   In the first place, we already have at least 11M immigrants who shouldn't be here.   In the second place, we don't have nearly enough jobs for the people who are already here.   When there is a shortage of labor, we will see wages increase significantly.   Until we see that happen, it is ludicrous to act as though we don't have enough workers.
4.   No immigration reform will 'restore faith in our immigration system'.   After years and years of lies and efforts to undermine border enforcement, we do not believe that either the Democrats or the GOP Establishment ever intends to enforce the borders.   There is nothing Congress can do to change our minds on this point -- we have been burned too many times by laws that were never enforced.   The only way we will be satisfied is when we see that every single law currently on the books is being enforced as written.
5.   We will not be distracted.   No matter how often John McCain and Eric Cantor criticize the [Obummer regime] over the IRS scandal or Benghazi, or how many times Paul Ryan calls for serious entitlement reform, or how many filibusters are led by Mitch McConnell.   If they want our support in 2014, then they have to come through for us on immigration -- period.   Immigration is the Obama Administration's top priority, and if handled badly by Republicans, it will give the Democrats a permanent working majority.   If the Republicans can't get this right, then there is little reason for conservatives [or anyone else] to keep voting Republican."

2013-05-23
J. Christian Adams _PJ Media_
La Raza (the Race) partners with OPM to boost gov't employment of racists

2013-05-23
Leah Barkoukis _Town Hall_
Saxby Chambliss points out the obvious: Obummer's speech will be "viewed by terrorists as a victory"

2013-05-23
David Grant _Christian Science Monitor_
House immigration perversion/reform bill still in the works, but senate anti-American gangsters are obstinately opposed to reform

2013-05-23
David Nicklaus _St. Louis MO Post-Dispatch_
more Wash U STEM grads are staying in St. Louis
"Between 1992 and 2001, the school turned out 471 computer science and engineering graduates, and 25% of them stayed in St. Louis. 13% went to the San Francisco area, including Silicon Valley. Between 2002 and 2012, 677 students obtained CSE degrees. 33% found jobs in St. Louis, and just 11% went to San Francisco. That's a 'serious fraction' staying here, Cox notes, even as Washington U. recruits more students from distant parts of the country."

2013-05-23
Robert P. Murphy
Krugman rantings

2013-05-23
Edwin S. Rubenstein _V Dare_
lessons from 1965: more immigrants = more crime (with graph, tables)
"The national crime rate—violent crimes per 100K population—rose from 200.2 in 1965 to a peak of 758.2 in 1991, according to historical FBI crime data.   That was an increase of 279%.   It's now back down to 403.6.   Over the same period, California’s violent crime rate exploded by 356%.   In New York State, the violent crime rate peaked in at 1,180.9 per 100K population in 1990, or nearly 62% above the national rate that year.   It can hardly be a coincidence that California and New York were the epicenters of mass immigration in the decades following 1965."

2013-05-23
_One Old Vet_
Border Patrol union head shows media that border is not secure
KVOA Tucson AZ

2013-05-23
_One Old Vet_
could Mexican "cartel towns" derail plans for amnesty for illegal aliens?
Fox

2013-05-23
_One Old Vet_
will amnesty gangsters prevail?
Paul Mirengoff

2013-05-23
_One Old Vet_
S744 would "legalize" 45% of illegal aliens who have committed additional crimes
Washington DC Examiner
Center for Immigration Studies
"In just the most recent 6-month period, 3,996 convicted criminals (classified as Level 3 under ICE parlance) and immigration violators would have qualified for legalization under the proposed amnesty...   In the most recent six-month reporting period (October 1, 2012 to March 31, 2013), ICE removed 38,547 aliens who had been identified as a result of arrest by a state, local, or other federal law enforcement agency.   Of these, 55% (21,339) were convicted of a felony or at least 3 misdemeanors.   The other 45% (17,208) were lesser offenders who would be exempt from deportation and eligible for legalization under the Schumer-Rubio amnesty."

2013-05-23
_One Old Vet_
Ryan-Rubio-Zuckerberg pseudo-"conservative" ads for S744 are an insult to US citizens' intelligence
Renew America

2013-05-23
_One Old Vet_
conservatives rally against S744

2013-05-23 (5773 Sivan 14)
Eoin O'Carroll _Jewish World Review_
tyranny here and now and around the corner
"[Obummer's] argument defies logic and 20th-century history.   It reveals an ignorance of the tyranny of the majority, which believes it can write any law, regulate any behavior, alter any procedure and tax any event so long as it can get away with it.   History has shown that the majority will not permit any higher law or logic or value -- like fidelity to the natural law, a belief in the primacy of the individual or an acceptance of the supremacy of the Constitution -- that prevents it from doing as it wishes."

2013-05-23 (5773 Sivan 14)
Victor Davis Hanson _Jewish World Review_
paranoid or prescient?
"Government is now so huge, powerful and callous that citizens risk becoming proverbial serfs without the freedoms guaranteed by the Founders...   We have just learned that the Internal Revenue Service before the 2012 election predicated its tax-exempt policies on politics.   It inordinately denied tax exemption to groups considered either conservative or possibly antagonistic to the president's agenda...   Recently, some reporters at the Associated Press had their private and work phone records monitored by the government, supposedly because of fear about national-security leaks.   The Justice Department gave the AP no chance, as usually happens, first to question its own journalists.   The AP ran a story in 2012 May about the success of a Yemeni double agent before the administration itself could brag about it...   Now, the civil rights divisions of the Department of Education and the Department of Justice have issued new speech codes for campuses, focusing on supposed sex insensitivities.   The result is that federal bureaucrats can restrict the constitutionally protected rights of free speech for millions of American college students -- including during routine class-room discussions -- in ways they feel are proper and correct.   8 months after the Benghazi mess, Americans only now are discovering that the government, for political reasons, failed to beef up security at our Libyan consulate or send it help when under attack.   It also lied in blaming the violence on a spontaneous demonstration prompted by an Internet video.   That pre-election narrative was known to be untrue when the president, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, UN Ambassador Susan Rice and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney all peddled it.   The problem with an all-powerful, rogue government is not just that it becomes quite adept at doing what it should not.   Increasingly, it also cannot even do what it should."

2013-05-23 (5773 Sivan 14)
Wenton Hall _Breitbart_
federal extortionists' organization diagram puts perps Ingram & Lois Lerner at denter of power-madness
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-05-24

2013-05-24
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
House Republicans package their H-1B plan HR2131 on web-site
Mashable
Laura Foote Reiff & Nataliya Binshteyn: GreenburgTraurig: National Law Review
House Judiciary committee
pretty pictures version
YouTube sales pitch
defective TechCrunch site

2013-05-24
Jessica Meyers _Politico_
HR2131 for more cheap, young, pliant, low-skilled foreign labor with flexible ethics
"The tech [executives adore] the bill, which boosts H-1B visas and creates more green cards for certain foreign graduates from U.S. universities. But it also guts a diversity visa program beloved by Democrats."
 
STEM professionals consider both S744 and HR2131 to be personal assaults on their careers, livelihoods, and their families...jgo

2013-05-24
Ray Suarez _National Socialist Television_
Vivek Wadhwa vs. Ron Hira
Over 135,991 H-1B + H-1B1 visas were issued in FY2012, over 129,552 in FY2011, over 117,828 in FY2010, over 110,988 in FY2009, over 130,183 in FY2008, over 154,692 in FY2007.   As Ron Hira notes and the government data show, these are not "highly-skilled guest-workers" but people with ordinary skills doing ordinary jobs that Americans used to do, and for which there is a great surplus of Americans able and willing to do.   These US citizen STEM professionals' skills and lives are being wasted...jgo

2013-05-24
Alexander Boston _Hill_
the senate's 8 corrupt anti-American gangsters vow to close ranks for floor fight

2013-05-24
Ramsey Cox _Hill_
Rand Paul of KY proposed S1037 to improve electronic communications privacy

2013-05-24
Valarie Honeycutt Spears & Jack Brammer _Lexigton KY Herald-Leader_
Rand Paul says he backs amendment to S744 requiring congressional vote every year regarding border security for next 5 years
"Paul, a Republican from Bowling Green and a potential presidential candidate in 2016, said he is in the middle and wants to improve the bill touted by the so-called Gang of 8.   In particular, he wants a tougher standard for measuring border security and has not committed to the bill's proposed path to citizenship for 11M immigrants already in the country illegally...   Paul said he plans to introduce an amendment that would require Congress to vote each year for five years on 'whether or not we are doing a good enough job of securing the border'...   his proposal 'would actually say how many miles of fence you would have to build.'   'It's more specific.', Paul said.   'Theirs is more, ''You have to have a plan to do X.'', Ours is more, ''You have to do X.''   And then you would have to vote that you have done X.'   If the border is secure, Paul said, 'we continue documenting the undocumented workers'.   If it's not secure, 'the process stops'.   Speaking about how long a path to citizenship should take, Paul said 'it shouldn't be too easy, and it shouldn't be too hard.'"

2013-05-24
Rick Moran _PJ Media_
the case against congressional "comprehensive reform" of anything

2013-05-24
John Ransom _Town Hall_
Apple's Tim Cook makes John McCain look more foolish than ever
Bob Beauprez: Rand Paul points out that "Congress should be on trial, not Apple"

2013-05-24
Charlotte Hays _Town Hall_
leftists are trying to destroy our culture of self-reliance and constitutionally secured rights

2013-05-24
Anthony Watts
idiocy only leftist bureaubums could muster: CA wants to ban camp-fires at the beach
Washington DC Times
Joe Sequra: Long Beach CA Press-Telegram

2013-05-24
Milton R. Wolf _Washington DC Times_
tyranny in our time: Americans must repudiate the political class

2013-05-24
Rand Paul _Washington DC Times_
"we should scrap a national identification data-base"
"I think there are better ideas that err on the side of individual privacy while still strengthening our borders.   We should scrap a national identification database and pass immigration reform that secures the border, expands existing work-visa programs and prevents noncitizens from access to welfare.   These simple ideas will eliminate the perceived need for an invasive worker-verification system and a government citizenship data-base.   I am against the idea that American citizens should be forced to carry around a National Identification Card as a condition of citizenship.   I worry that the senate is working to consider a series of little-noticed provisions in comprehensive immigration [deform, S744] that may provide a pathway to a national ID card for all individuals present in the [United States of America] -- citizens and non-citizens.   These draconian ideas would simply give government too much power...   We oppose such measures...because we are wary of giving the federal government this kind of centralized power over our daily lives."

2013-05-24
Aexander Bolton _Hill_
Republicans press Obummer to meet with representatives of National ICE Council
Stephen Dinan: Washington Times

2013-05-24
Robert P. Murphy
Keynesians' war on CBO report

2013-05-24
Charles C. Johnson _Daily Caller_
Marco Rubio has a long history of blocking immigration reform
"Senator Marco Rubio blocked numerous immigration-enforcement bills when he served as speaker in the Florida House of Representatives from 2007 to 2009.   'Rubio blocked any efforts to deal with the problems of illegal immigration on the local or state level.', one former politician from South Florida, who has known Rubio since his city councilman days in West Miami, told The Daily Caller...   'he didn't even let bills to the floor when they sailed through committees'...   But the record shows that Rubio used his power in Florida to block popular immigration-enforcement bills prior to his election-trail conversion into an immigration-hawk...   In 2007 and 2008, Rubio repeatedly kept tough reform bills from getting passed, despite a wave of public support for reforms."

2013-05-24
Linda Bentley _Phoenix AZ Sonoran News_
Remember 1986 Coalition takes to the streets to support immigration reform, oppose S744

2013-05-24 (5773 Sivan 15)
Caroline B. Glick _Jewish World Review_
thank you, Hafez al-Assad
Town Hall
"the most telling aspect of the Syrian civil war is that Israel, the US and Europe are incapable of deciding whether he is better or worse than the alternatives...   But on second thought, since both the al Nusra guys and the al Qaeda in Iraq guys are loyal to al Qaeda boss Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Zawahiri told the al Qaeda in Iraq fellows to move to Syria, and since al Qaeda in Iraq formed and financed the al Nusra Front, it is not at all clear that anyone is splintering off from anyone, or that anyone is upset about anything."

2013-05-24 (5773 Sivan 15)
Diana West _Jewish World Review_
from the Brooklyn Bridge to London
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-05-25

2013-05-25
Phyllis Schlafly _Christian Post_
S744 will worsen unemployment in USA
Town Hall
"Economics 101 teaches that prices of products and wages go up when there is a shortage and go down when there is an ample supply of whatever.   But funny thing, a consortium of billionaire oligarchs and high paid lobbyists have defied those axioms by rejecting U.S. STEM college graduates (science, technology, engineering or math) and then crying about shortages.   Half of American STEM graduates are not currently hired for a STEM job.   Many students are so discouraged about the lack of job opportunities for STEM graduates that they have switched to more promising course majors, such as accounting...   tens of thousands of foreigners have been imported to take jobs in the tech industries.   The corporations welcome this deceit because they pay them less than Americans, bring in foreigners who are not high-skilled for entry-level jobs, force experienced Americans to train them and then lay off the Americans...   Republican senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who has been the people's friend throughout the negotiations, said, 'One of the things that most upsets the American people about Washington is drafting a bill with special interests in secret and jamming it across the finish line in a way that minimizes public involvement and input.'...   As bad as the Gang of 8 bill is for high-skilled workers, it is a disaster for low-skilled U.S. workers because the big majority of new immigrants will be low skilled.   The bill will swallow up opportunities for our own citizens to join the ranks of the employed and it will depress the wages of both U.S. citizens and immigrants...   Legal and illegal immigration over the last several decade's accounts for 40% of the 18-point percentage decline in African-American employment rates, according to evidence produced by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.   The Gang of 8 bill will punish black Americans to benefit foreigners and tech company profits.   Where are the civil rights advocates when we need them?"

2013-05-25
Willis Eschenbach
effects of volcanoes

2013-05-25
Walter Hudson _PJ Media_
the big scandal is that the IRS exists
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-05-26

2013-05-26
_Fox_/_AP_
US citizen high-tech pros big losers, tech execs big winners in S744
Tennessean
Lansing MI State Journal
Over 135,991 H-1B + H-1B1 visas were issued in FY2012, over 129,552 in FY2011, over 117,828 in FY2010, over 110,988 in FY2009, over 130,183 in FY2008, over 154,692 in FY2007...jgo

2013-05-26
Anthony Watts
new El Nino pattern discovered at U of Hawaii

2013-05-26
Benjamin Pimentel _MarketWatch_
economists charge Krugman with "uncivil behavior"

2013-05-26
Daniel J. Mitchell _Town Hall_
pushing Americans out of employment

2013-05-26
James O'Shea _Irish Central_
Irish, South Koreans seek a piece of E-3 visa action

2013-05-26
John Schmid _Milwaukee WI Journal Sentinel_
American workers losing ground on compensation
"'Water finds its equilibrium, its own level.', says Jeff Joerres, chief executive of Milwaukee-based global [bodyshopping] giant ManpowerGroup Inc., who refers to this accelerating leveling of wages as 'global labor arbitrage'.   'It's happening so fast on a global scale that it's scary.', Joerres said.   In the U.S.A., the phenomenon is not limited to isolated and vulnerable sectors, such as commodity manufacturing.   Rather, wages have fallen across the entire national economy -- down 1.1% in the 12-month period from 2011 September to 2012 September, the most recent comparisons available."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-05-27: Memorial Day

2013-05-27
David Nicklaus _St. Louis MO Post-Dispatch_
corporations with publicly traded stock down 46% since 1999

2013-05-27
Patrick J. Buchanan _New Hampshire Union Leader_
Will the West wake up?
DelMarVa Now
Pittsburgh PA Tribune-Review

2013-05-27 (5773 Sivan 18)
Mark Steyn _Jewish World Review_
by-standers in their own fate
"On Wednesday, Drummer Lee Rigby of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, a man who had served Queen and country honorably in the hell of Helmand Province in Afghanistan, emerged from his barracks on Wellington Street, named after the Duke thereof, in southeast London.   Minutes later, he was hacked to death in broad daylight and in full view of on-lookers by two men with machetes who crowed, 'Allahu Akbar!', as they dumped his carcass in the middle of the street like so much road-kill.   As grotesque as this act of savagery was, the aftermath was even more unsettling.   The perpetrators did not, as the Tsarnaev brothers did in Boston, attempt to escape.   Instead, they held court in the street, gloating over their trophy, and flagged down a London bus to demand the passengers record their triumph on film.   As the crowd of by-standers swelled, the remarkably urbane savages posed for photographs with the remains of their victim...""
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-05-28

2013-05-28
_Chicago IL Tribune_/_Reuters_
Red Chinese hackers grab designs of US weapons systems, Australian spy HQ
Doug Stanglin: Cincinnati OH Enquirer-Post-Times Star/USA Today/Gannett
STeve Musil: CNET/CBS
"Among the weapons listed in the report were the advanced Patriot missile system, the Navy's Aegis ballistic missile defense systems, the F/A-18 fighter jet, the V-22 Osprey, the Black Hawk helicopter and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter."

2013-05-28
_Fox_
Conference Board: consumer confidence up from a revised 69 in April to 76.2 in May
CNBC/Reuters
Kathleen Madigan: Wall Street Journal
"The 'jobs hard to get' index slipped from 36.9% to 36.1%, while the 'jobs plentiful' index gained from 9.7% to 10.8%."

2013-05-28
_Numbers USA_
S744 would give 33M competitors preference over US citizens (video)

2013-05-28
Joseph W. McQuaid _New Hampshire Union Leader_
Will America wake up on immigration?
"Buchanan notes that the late Ted Kennedy led Congress in 1965 to abandon U.S. policy that had carefully restricted immigration 'while we absorbed and Americanized the millions who had come over between 1890 and 1920'.   Before the Kennedy bill, immigration policy 'was written to reinforce the Western orientation and roots of America, 90% of whose population could by 1960 trace its ancestry to the Old Continent'.   Since then, immigration policy has been the work of those who 'wanted a new nation that looked less like Europe and more like a continental replica of the UN General Assembly'.   Today, president Obama fights a war, not against Islamic jihadists but against unnamed terror.   And the U.S. senate, more mindful of votes than of American values, pushes for yet another immigration liberalization.   Buchanan asks: Will the West wake up? There is little time for an answer."

2013-05-28
John Avlon _CNN_
Why has the left been trying to turn "patriot" into a dirty word?

2013-05-28
Kevin Glass _Town Hall_
federal extortion code punishes petroleum & natural gas extraction and processing firms, rewards government-backed local monopoly electricity, water, and natural gas firms

2013-05-28
Kevin Glass _Town Hall_
teacher faces disciplinary action for informing students of their constitutional rights when handing out government surveys

2013-05-28
Katie Pavlich _Town Hall_
Galup: majority of Americans say federal government is abusing power not granted by constitution

2013-05-28
Gina Stewart _Chronicle of Higher Education_
so-called "soft sills" for scientists
"What you may lack or need to improve, however, are 'soft skills', like understanding when to push forward and when to let others lead, how to work nicely with a team, how to analyze the politics of the work-place and respond appropriately, and how to explain technical material to a lay audience.   Academe is an insular world, and conducting scientific research can be a relatively solitary endeavor, but in order to succeed in an industry job, you must be able to work and communicate not only with other scientists, but also with non-scientists...   When 2 scientists disagree, each searches for data to support his/her view.   The one with the better data wins, the loser concedes defeat, often with an enhanced sense of respect for the winner.   That is not how the rest of the world operates.   Many non-scientists, when proven wrong, react with anger, pride, and/or shame, and they may attribute those bad feelings to the winner...   Be nonconfrontational and try to understand the other person's POV...   practice talking with nonscientists in nontechnical terms about what you do, how you do it, and how your research is broadly applicable beyond academe.   Take a good hard look at yourself and how others react to you.   Use your laboratory-honed skills of observation in professional and social interactions.   Are others put off or frustrated by you?   Do you think that you have been overlooked (by your adviser, or your department chair, or your dean) for an assignment or promotion?   Have you asked for a favor (more space, less teaching) and had your request flatly denied?   If so, you could be rubbing others the wrong way.   Carefully observe successful people you admire.   How do they treat others?   How do they respond to requests?   Practice empathy.   Always try to see any interaction through the other party's eyes.   Understand that most people do not behave rationally [or at least behave according to incentives which may not be apparent to you]...   The best results are win-win, where each party gets something s/he wants and gives on points of lesser personal importance."

2013-05-28
Walid Shoebat & Ben Barrack
confirmed: Barack Obama's step-brother Malik Obama is in bed with terrorists

2013-05-28
Steve Kolowich _Chronicle of Higher Education_
profs begin to worry about their jobs being out-sourced

2013-05-28
Mark Brunswick _Minneapolis MN StarTribune_
tracking, detecting visa over-stayers isn't easy, and besides DHS & senate don't really want to try
"In 2011 April, DHS had a back-log of 1.6M over-stays: people who arrived on temporary visas and were unaccounted for at the time of their expected departure [and a 2-year back-log in disclosing this to the public].   High-profile cases have brought the issue to attention.   Two of the conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center attacks had over-stayed visas.   More recently, students from Kazakhstan linked to the Boston bombers were living in the United States on expired or in-valid student visas.   In 2011 summer, DHS had completed a review of the 1.6M over-stays.   It found that 863K had left or were otherwise accounted for.   Of the remaining, it identified 1,901 subjects who could pose national security or public safety risks.   The GAO said key challenges still exist, particularly in starting a biometric program for departures at airports and sea-ports that would analyze such characteristics as finger-prints and eyes...   The senate Judiciary committee recently approved an amendment to require biometric exits at [ONLY] the 10 busiest U.S. airports within 2 years."

2013-05-28
Timothy P. Carney _Washington DC Examiner_
amid cris of "tech labor shortage" tech wages fall

2013-05-28 (5773 Sivan 19)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
the bullying pulpit
Town Hall
"We have truly entered the world of 'Alice in Wonderland' when the CEO of a company that pays $16M a day in taxes is hauled up before a congressional sub-committee to be denounced on nationwide television for not paying more...   The federal government already has ample powers to punish people who have broken the tax laws.   It does not need additional powers to bully people who haven't.   What is a tax 'loop-hole'?   It is a provision in the law that allows an individual or an organization to pay less taxes than they would be required to pay otherwise.   Since congress puts these provisions in the law, it is a little much when members of congress denounce people who use those provisions to reduce their taxes.   If such provisions are bad, then members of congress should blame themselves and repeal the provisions."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-05-29

2013-05-29
Bob Barr _Town Hall_
I, big, power-mad government

2013-05-29
Terry Jeffrey _Town Hall_
send us your school drop-outs
"For much of our history, the sheer difficulty of getting to America and surviving here ensured the nation was stocked with immigrants who represented a sort of natural elite...   Here are some key facts presented by the CBO: 1) There are now 40M foreign-born people living in the United States, making immigrants a bigger share of our national population than at any time since 1920.   2) 22M -- a majority of the foreign born -- are non-citizens.   3) 11.5M -- a majority of the non-citizens -- are illegal aliens.   A large majority of the illegal aliens in the United States -- 6.8M, or more than 59% -- come from Mexico.   About another 1.6M -- or 3.9% -- are from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras...   'In 2012', said CBO, '27% of the foreign-born population between the ages of 25 and 64 had not completed high school, compared with 7% of the native-born population.   More than half of the people from Mexico and Central America, 54%, had not finished high school, but only about 9% of the people from Asia and 5% of the people from Europe and Canada had less than a high school education.'   'In addition, at least 55% of the population from Asia had at least a bachelor's degree, as did 51% of the people from Europe and Canada.', said CBO. 'Just 33% of the native-born population had earned at least a bachelor's degree.'... 'For example, in 2011, the median annual earnings of male workers from Mexico and Central America was $24K -- whereas among male workers from Asia, the median was $50K; among their counterparts from Europe and Canada, it was $55K; and among native-born male workers, $46K. Among female workers from Mexico and Central America', said CBO, 'median annual earnings were $17K -- whereas among their counterparts from Asia; the median was $30K; among those from Europe and Canada, it was $35K; and among native-born female workers, $32K."

2013-05-29
Katie Pavlich _Town Hall_
confirmed: orders for federal extortionists to target non-leftists came from the top in DC
"the signatures of senior level IRS officials, including that of IRS Tax Exempt Organizations director Lois Lerner, are on documents that were sent to Tea Party groups asking for more information."
Robert Knight: Town Hall: criminal minds
Fred Wszolek: Town Hall: similar abuses in Obummer regime's NLRB

2013-05-29
Charles Payne _Town Hall_
falling bridges and wasted money (with tables)
"Sadly, those that will shout the loudest about bridges and dams will get a chunk of money and immediately spend it on everything but bridges and dams. The bait and switch has been the hallmark of the current administration although an old political practice. What's intriguing is how often the tax and spend crowd uses the same scare tactics. But, next time we hear this is why we need more stimulus the reply should be what happened to the first batch of stimulus that was to cure infrastructure problems with a slew of shovel-ready projects. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act [TARP] took $840.0G and showered funds all over the place through tax policy and spending, grants and loans. It was sold as a job creator -- it wasn't!   It was sold as a bridge and dam fixer -- it wasn't!...   Only 3.8% of the stimulus budget went towards actual contracts, grants and loans for infrastructure...   $221,355 spent at University of Indiana to study why young men do not like wearing condoms.   $389,357 spent at NYU to study why young adults drank malt liquor and smoked pot.   $850K researching how paying attention improves performance of difficult task.   $1M was spent on road signs in Ohio to tout the stimulus program.   $14,707,949 was used to build an airstrip to nowhere in a community in Alaska nobody ever heard of.   $30M of [tax-victim] money used to build new spring training facilities for Colorado and Arizona baseball teams."

2013-05-29
James Kirkpatrick _V Dare_
Europe's excessive immigration crises point to USA's future

2013-05-29
Erik Rush _World Net Daily_
Will media awaken enough to help stem tyranny?

2013-05-29
Ed Driscoll _PJ Media_
the players at the federal extortionist office near Cincinnati

2013-05-29
Stephen Dinan _Washington DC Times_
citizenry object to illfare hand-outs to newly amnestied illegal aliens
"'This isn't 1907, when the previous wave of immigration peaked.   This is the cradle-to-grave welfare system in the United States.', representative Steve King, Iowa Republican, told his colleagues at a hearing earlier this month called to examine the costs and benefits of immigration.   'Milton Friedman said clearly that an open-borders program and a cradle-to-grave, or welfare, system cannot co-exist.   And that's what we're doing here.'"

2013-05-29
Chas Sisk _Tennessean_
tea party groups favor immigration reform, opppose S744
"Critics say the bill amounts to 'amnesty legislation' that 'legalizes millions of illegal immigrants'.   'It contains dangerous loop-holes that will undermine our national security', the tea party activists write.   'It rewards illegal behavior, punishes those who have followed our rules and undermines our law enforcement.'...   They describe it as similar to [ObummerDoesn'tCare] passed at president Barack Obama's urging in 2010 and the Wall Street [Perversion] and Consumer [Impoverishment] Act passed in response to the 2008 financial crisis.   'Reforming our immigration process and enforcing our existing laws are admirable goals, but this particular legislation will do more harm than good to Tennessee and our nation.', they write."

2013-05-29
Kevin Bouffard _Lakeland FL Ledger_
congressmen say they don't favor S744
"All 3 representatives agreed the Republican-controlled House would look favorably on a bill that creates a guest-worker program for agriculture combined with a so-called 'e-Verify' system, a computer data-base for employers to confirm new hires are legal U.S. residents...   The Rubio bill does away with H-2A and creates a program that would allow at least 336,999 new foreign workers into the U.S.A. in the future.   The Ross bill would limit H-2C program to 500K visas a year...   U.S. agriculture employs 1.2M to 1.5M people, mostly as harvest workers..."

2013-05-29
Beryl Lieff Benderly _AAAS Science Careers_
dissenting views on immigration law perversion bill (S744)
"The [so-called] high-skill provisions in the immigration [perversion] bill that emerged from the senate Judiciary committee on May 21 constitutes 'a transfer of wealth and income from American workers to corporations', scientific labor force expert Ron Hira writes.   'American tech workers have no significant representation in politics and the politicians are looking out for the loudest and richest voices.', he tells Science Careers by e-mail.   Erica Werner of the Associated Press terms the outcome of the committee markup as a 'bonanza for the industry: unlimited green cards for foreigners with certain advanced U.S. degrees and a huge increase in visas for [cheap, young, pliant, low-skilled foreign STEM laborers with flexible ethics]'.   And in a Washington Post interview, senator Bernie Sanders (I–VT) calls the bill, 'a massive effort to attract cheap labor'."
H-1B visas are not "high-skill visas".   There is no minimum level of skill required to get an H-1B.   There is no requirement that the applicant have even average skills, let alone a high skill level...jgo

2013-05-29 Anthony P. Carnevale & Ban Cheah _Georgtown U Center on Education and the WorkForce_
Hard Times 2013: Colleg Majors, UnEmployment and Earnings
"1.   Even as the housing bubble seems to be dissipating, unemployment rates for recent architecture graduates have remained high (12.8%).   Graduate degrees and work experience did not shield these graduates from a sector-specific shock; graduates with experience in the field have the same jobless rates as the economy overall (9.3%).   2.   Unemployment is generally higher for non-technical majors, such as the arts (9.8%) or law and public policy (9.2%).   3.   People who make technology are still better off than people who use technology.   Unemployment rates for recent graduates in information systems, concentrated in clerical functions, is high (14.7%) compared with mathematics (5.9%) and computer science (8.7%).   4.   Unemployment rates are relatively low for recent graduates in education (5.0%), engineering (7.0%), health and the sciences (4.8%) because they are tied to stable or growing industry sectors and occupations..."

2013-05-29 (5773 Sivan 20)
Sara Reardon _Jewish World Review_/_Environmental Nutrition_
genome detectives master matching DNA to names
"Remote but not impossible: In a paper published in Science in January, a team led by Yaniv Erlich, of the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, MA, used publicly available genetic databases to put likely surnames to the anonymous DNA data in HapMap's successor, the 1K Genomes project.   Then, using online phonebooks and the donor age and location information provided by the project, Erlich's team managed to identify about 50 of the donors).   To prevent Erlich's method from being used successfully again, age data has been removed from the project's website.   But the genie is out of the bottle, says Jeffrey Kahn of Florida State University, Tallahassee...   It is especially pertinent, says Kahn, because genetic data carries information about family members as well as the donor.   A relative's genome might reveal your own disease risk, for example, which you might want to keep secret from an employer...   David Craig, of the Translational Genomics Research Institute, Phoenix, Az, whose method of picking a person's genome out of a mix of DNA samples also led to NIH removing some data from the public domain, praises the work of Erlich's team."

2013-05-29 (5773 Sivan 20)
Michelle Malkin _Jewish World Review_
ObummerDoesn'tCare "navigators": another Sebelius privacy violation brigade
Town Hall

2013-05-29 (5773 Sivan 20)
John Stossel _Jewish World Review_
gasoline myths
Town Hall
"Apple's profit margin is about 24%.   McDonald's makes 20%.   Oil companies make half that.   Per gallon, ExxonMobil makes about 7 cents.   Governments, by contrast, grab about 27 cents per gallon.   That's the average gas tax.   If anyone takes too much, it's government...   Also, as James Taylor, an energy expert at the Heartland Institute, pointed out to me, fuel-economy regulations kill.   'In order to make cars more fuel-efficient, auto manufacturers make them smaller -- using lighter materials, they're less crash-worthy...   We're seeing thousands of people dying on the roads that shouldn't be.'   You'd think auto-makers would strongly oppose these regulations -- but if so, why, when President Obama unveiled the regulations, did the heads of 13 car companies shake Obama's hand and smile?   'Even if it is a $60G cost to them', says Dudley, 'if everyone has to do it, they can pass it on to consumers.'...   Regulation makes companies lazier, not more efficient.   Republicans at least talk about de-regulation.   But the 'regulation-killing Republican' is another myth.   Despite being labeled a deregulator, George W. Bush hired 90K new regulators.   Dudley, who was their overseer, now says, 'The pressure to regulate is intense.'...   The truth: We rarely benefit."

2013-05-29 (5773 Sivan 20)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
America deserves the corrupt IRS
Town Hall
"Individually, Americans do not deserve to be subservient to such a fear-mongering, intimidating and powerful agency as the Internal Revenue Service; but collectively, we do...   Since the 1791 ratification of our Constitution, until well into the 1920s, federal spending as a percentage of gross domestic product never exceeded 5%, except during war.   Today federal spending is 25% of our GDP.   State and local government spending is about 15% of the GDP.   That means government spends more than 40 cents of each dollar we earn.   If we add government's regulatory burden, which is simply a disguised form of taxation, the government take is more than 50% of what we produce...   If you're in debt to Bank of America, Wells Fargo or any other private creditor, in order for it to garnish your wages as a means of collecting debt, it must first get a court order.   By contrast, the IRS can garnish your wages without having to get a court order first.   If your employer doesn't obey the IRS and send it a portion of your wages, he will be held accountable for what you owe.   At the minimum, some IRS collection procedures violate one of the basic tenets of the rule of law -- namely, the law of the land applies equally to individuals (and other private entities) and the government (and its officials and agents).   Our Founding Fathers feared the emergence of an agency such as the IRS and its potential for abuse.   That's why they gave us Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution, which reads: 'No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.'   A capitation is a tax placed directly on an individual.   That's what an income tax is.   The founders feared the abuse and the government power inherent in a direct tax.   In Section 8 of Article 1, they added, 'But all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.'   These protections the founders gave us were undone by the Progressive era's 16th Amendment, which reads, 'The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.'   If federal spending were only 5% of our GDP ($750G) -- instead of 25% ($3.8T) -- there would be no need for today's oppressive and complicated tax system.   You might ask, 'How could we be a great nation without all the government spending?'   When our Constitution was ratified in 1791, we were a weak and poor nation.   One hundred forty years later, with federal spending a mere pittance of what it is today, we became the world's richest and most powerful nation.   No small part of this miracle was limited and unintrusive government."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-05-30

2013-05-30 05:30PDT (08:30EDT) (12:30GMT) (14:30 Jerusalem)
Tom Stengle & Tony Sznoluch _DoL ETA_
un-employment insurance weekly claims report
DoL home page
DoL OPA press releases
historical data
DoL regulations
"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 317,732 in the week ending May 25, an increase of 13,653 from the previous week.   There were 346,260 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.2% during the week ending May 18, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week's unrevised rate.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,792,143, an increase of 15,423 from the preceding week's revised level of 2,776,720.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.4% and the volume was 3,060,148.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending May 11 was 4,578,592, a decrease of 166,659 from the previous week.   There were 6,138,246 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2012.   Extended Benefits were available only in Alaska during the week ending May 11...   States reported 1,726,659 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending May 11, a decrease of 50,027 from the prior week.   There were 2,618,445 persons claiming EUC in the comparable week in 2012.   EUC weekly claims include first, second, third, and fourth tier activity.   [Note that the population used for calculating the "insured unemployment rate" (the divisor) changes roughly quarterly:
to 132,623,886 beginning 2007-10-06;
to 133,010,953 beginning 2008-01-05;
to 133,382,559 beginning 2008-04-05;
to 133,690,617 beginning 2008-07-05;
to 133,902,387 beginning 2008-10-04;
to 133,886,830 beginning 2009-01-03;
to 133,683,433 beginning 2009-04-04;
to 133,078,480 beginning 2009-07-04;
to 133,823,421 beginning 2009-10-03;
to 131,823,421 beginning 2009-10-17;
to 130,128,328 beginning 2010-01-02;
to 128,298,468 beginning 2010-04-03;
to 126,763,245 beginning 2010-07-03;
to 125,845,577 beginning 2010-09-25;
to 125,560,066 beginning 2011-01-15;
to 125,572,661 beginning 2011-04-02;
to 125,807,389 beginning 2011-07-02;
to 126,188,733 beginning 2011-10-01;
to 126,579,970 beginning 2012-01-01;
to 127,048,587 beginning 2012-04-07;
to 127,495,952 beginning 2012-07-14;
to 128,066,082 beginning 2012-10-06;
to 128,613,913 beginning 2013-01-05;
to 129,204,324 beginning 2013-04-06.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2013-05-30
Victor Davis Hanson _PJ Media_
Obummer, another "make no mistake about it"/"let me be perfectly clear" president

2013-05-30
Mimi Ito _Fast Company_
the all-white irony behind Mark Zuckerberg's lobby for more cheap, young, pliant foreign labor with flexible ethics

2013-05-30
Jeff Schweers _Lakeland FL Ledger_
U of FL Institute for Food & Agricultural Sciences survey finds central FL citizens opposed to illegal immigration
"The recent survey of 507 Florida residents -- the majority of them over 40, white and living in Central Florida -- found mostly negative attitudes about immigrants who may not have the necessary documentation to be in the U.S.A. legally.   The majority see these immigrants as a threat to their safety, economic livelihood and way of life, and believe they should be deported...   Among the findings, 55% didn't know that children born in the United States automatically become citizens, even if their parents don't have legal status here [and the authors of the 14th amendment would be similarly surprised as they explicitly stated that this was not their intention]...   More than half believe they should not be entitled to public education, while 63% believe they should not be entitled to medical care, and 52% said they should not be eligible for welfare...   35% of the respondents were unfamiliar with E-Verify, while 36% believed that the Internet-based, free method for checking an employee's work eligibility status is [already] mandatory in Florida...   85% said the government should allow a path to citizenship for immigrants despite their status.   51% of those respondents, however, said these immigrants should leave the country before pursuing this path to citizenship...   76% of respondents said immigrants without documentation are a burden on the economy while 58% agreed with the statement [illegal aliens] 'reduce the number of good jobs for Americans'.   Also, nearly a third believed that most immigrants in the U.S. are undocumented.   A slightly higher percentage believed most immigrants are here legally.   In fact, [illegal aliens] account for 29% of the nearly 40M foreign-born people who lived in the U.S.A. in 2010, according to the Center for American [Regress]...   62% of respondents agree [many] immigrants [legal and illegal] work hard, but 47% say they add to the crime rate...   57% said they didn't know a recent immigrant...   Candy Herrera, a UF graduate student who entered Florida illegally at the age of 4 with her mother, said she was disturbed that more than half the respondents -- 56% -- said that [illegal aliens] threaten traditional American culture rather than add to 'cultural diversity' [while it seems to me that they do both]...   Herrera attended public schools in Florida and worked low-paying jobs after graduation from high school [just like US citizen high school grads] to pay her immigration fees so she could attend the University of Florida as an in-state resident [thus demonstrating that 'paths to citizenship' already exist].   41% of the survey's respondents said [illegal aliens] should not be allowed to attend colleges in their home state at in-state tuition rates...   84% said they thought most of those immigrants work in agricultural or outside labor jobs like landscaping.   Only 6% said they worked in hospitality.   [Others work in construction, food service, at colleges and universities, meat-packing, tree-surgery, fisheries, forestry...]   Attitudes toward employers are 'harsh'.   A full 76% believe employers should be penalized for hiring [illegal aliens]."
About 40% of illegal aliens are visa over-stayers.   IRCA1986 created a 5K visa lottery, and provided amnesty for some illegal aliens.   3M applied for amnesty and by 1993 October 88% of those -- about 2.4M -- were granted green cards.   In 1994, amnesties for an additional 578K illegal aliens was enacted, and more were granted under an extension enacted in 1997.   NACARA1997 provided for amnesty for close to 1M illegal aliens from Central America.   HRIFA1998 provided amnesty for 125K illegal aliens from Haiti.   In 2000, a "late amnesty" was granted for about 400K illegal aliens.   2000 LIFE Act granted amnesty to an about 900K more illegal aliens.   Since 1870 legal permanent residence has been granted to over 63.5M, since 1900, LPR has been granted to about 60M.   Since 1910, 51.6M were granted LPR, 26M were naturalized, and 53.5M were removed or returned.   Since 1950, 39.4M were granted LPR, 19.6M were naturalized, 51.6M were removed or returned.   Since 1970, 33.7M were granted LPR, 17.3M were naturalized an 45.8M were returned or removed.   Since 1990, over 23.2M green cards have been granted, 13.9M aliens have been naturalized, and nearly 29M illegal aliens have been removed or returned, according to DHS and State Department reports...jgo

2013-05-30
Anthony Watts
Leland Stanford U announces development of zinc-air-cobalt-oxide-carbon-nano-tube-iron-nickel battery

2013-05-30
Jane O'Brien _BBC_
USA's entrepreneurs use failure to drive success
"Many investors in America even favour companies or individuals who have come back from defeat."

2013-05-30
Timothy P. Carney _Washington DC Examiner_
if your brother or uncle runs the House Armed Services Commottee, why not be a defense lobbyist?

2013-05-30
George Bennett _Palm Beach FL Post_
immigration reform advocates rent bill-board slamming S744

2013-05-30
Hal Salzman, Daniel Kuehn & B. Lindsay Lowell _EPI_
current and proposed guest-work policies discourage US STEM steudents and grads from entering STEM fields of study

2013-05-30 (5773 Sivan 21)
judge Andrew P. Napolitano _Jewish World Review_
an assault on freedom of the press

2013-05-30 (5773 Sivan 21)
Ann Coulter _Jewish World Review_
send us your violent bigots, yearning to butcher our citizens

2013-05-30 (5773 Sivan 21)
Rachel Goddard-Bernstein _Oxford Student_
Islam: peaceful or force-initiating
Sharia UnVeiled
Sharia UnVeiled
YouTube video
Israel Video Network
eHeadLines
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

Latest

2013-05-31

2013-05-31
Rand Paul _Washington DC Times_
We must seriously try to stop malicious people from entering the USA
"Fazliddin Kurbanov is from Uzbekistan, a Central Asian country that borders Afghanistan.   This month, Mr. Kurbanov was arrested in Boise, ID, charged with teaching people how to build bombs that could be used to target public transportation.   He is accused of conspiring with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which the United States recognizes as a terrorist organization.   Mr. Kurbanov was here legally, admitted as a refugee in 2009.   Last year, in Aurora, CO, Jamshid Muhtorov was arrested and charged with providing material support to the Islamic Jihad Union, which the United States recognizes as a terrorist organization.   Like Mr. Kurbanov, Mr. Muhtorov is from Uzbekistan and was also here legally as a refugee.   In 2011, in my hometown of Bowling Green, KY, Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi were arrested and accused of supporting efforts to kill American troops in Iraq.   Both men are from Iraq.   Both were also here legally as refugees...   Ulugbek Kodirov, who was arrested in Birmingham, AL, last year and sentenced to 15 years in prison for plotting to kill president Obama.   Kodirov was from Uzbekistan and was in the country illegally on a student-visa over-stay...   In the case of 2001 Sept. 11, if the State Department had more adequately monitored visa overstays and application screening, most of hijackers would have been detected and caught beforehand.   After the Boston bombing, I asked what faults we might have in our current intelligence that allowed the Russian government to identify the suspects as potential terrorists before the US government did...   The National Security Registration System created by Congress in 2002 was intended to give extra screening to those coming from countries with higher populations of extremists.   Suspended in 2011, to my knowledge, there has been no effort to replace it with similar screening.   There's really no excuse for this.   We send men and women all over the world to fight terrorism and often seem unwilling to take the most common-sense precautions at home with our immigration policies...   some of the things we call 'national security' in our foreign policy actually have little to do with protecting the nation, while some of the simple things we don't do in our immigration policy could better protect us."

2013-05-31
F. Vincent Vernuccio _Washington DC Times_
riches for unions and their bosses, but not for retirees
"Certain union pension plans, known as multi-employer plans, are collectively bargained between a union and several private-sector employers.   Many of these plans, however, are dangerously under-funded, and some could be headed toward insolvency.   The Government Accountability Office (GAO) in March released a report, 'Timely Action Needed to Address Impending Multi-employer Plan Insolvencies', detailing that 'many multi-employer plans have had large funding short-falls and face an uncertain future'.   The GAO noted that the resources of the government's pension insurance agency -- the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.   (PBGC) -- dedicated to multi-employer funds 'would be exhausted in about 2 to 3 years if projected insolvencies of either of 2 large plans occur in the next 10 to 20 years'."

2013-05-31
_BBC_
13.38M Europeans unemployed
"The lowest unemployment rate is in Austria at 4.9%.   The European Commission's statistics office, Eurostat, said Germany had an unemployment rate of 5.4% while Luxembourg's was 5.6%.   The highest jobless rates are in Greece (27.0% in February 2013), Spain (26.8%) and Portugal (17.8%).   In France, Europe's second largest economy, the number of jobless people rose to a new record high in April."

2013-05-31
Anthony Watts & Roger Pielke ii
American GeoPhysical Union says CO₂ is plant food, making arid regions greener

2013-05-31
Jon Feere _Center for Immigration Studies_
Rubio's, Zuckerberg's, Rove's deceptive ads on immigration perversion

2013-05-31
Beryl Lieff Benderly _AAAS Science Careers_
university scientists in Red Chinese research bribery scheme
"New York University (NYU) associate professor of radiology Yudong Zhu and NYU graduate student Xing Yang, both Chinese citizens, were arrested on May 19 on federal bribery charges in connection with an alleged conspiracy to pass nonpublic information from research funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to a Chinese company with ties to the [Red Chinese] government."

2013-05-31
Ruth Mantell _MarketWatch_
UMich consumer sentiment index changed from 76.4 in late April to 84.5 in late May

2013-05-31 (5773 Sivan 22)
Clifford D. May _Jewish World Review_
Why violent Muslims fight
"Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Iran's rulers, Hezbollah, Hamas, and many others who utilize terrorism do indeed see the world through similar lenses...   If you read the writings of Osama bin Laden, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and such Muslim Brotherhood intellectuals as Sayyid Qutb and Hassan al-Banna, there can be no doubt that, by their lights, this conflict is inevitable...   'deranged or alienated individuals' have been 'inspired by larger notions of violent jihad'...   More specifically, they believe that Muslims have been divinely commanded to wage war against those who refuse to accept Allah as the supreme authority of the universe; Mohammed as Allah's prophet; the Koran as the revealed and unchanging word of Allah; and sharia as the law that mankind must obey.   They believe, too, that the world is divided between the Dar al-Islam, the lands where Muslims rule, and the Dar al-Harb, the lands where infidels rule.   They reject the possibility that the 2 realms can -- or should -- peacefully co-exist.   On the contrary, the Dar al-Islam must do whatever is necessary to defeat and destroy the Dar al-Harb.   Many Westerners find it difficult to comprehend that people actually hold such beliefs.   These Westerners -- there is no tactful way to say this -- are ignorant of world history, the millennia of conflicts in which one group after another has attempted to impose its language, culture, religion, and DNA on others...   Contrary to much wishful thinking, 'conflict resolution', tolerance, multi-culturalism, and similar new-fangled Western ideas have not been universally embraced...   a central tenet of the ideology he's discussing holds that Islam is at war with the [United States of America] and other nations that persist in rejecting Islam's message -- and that the conflict must continue until the infidels submit...   Most Muslims have no wish to wage jihad against non-Muslims, no desire to strap their children into bomb vests or even to give money to the Islamic 'charities' that support such missions.   But if only 5% or 10% of the world's more than 1G Muslims do see such efforts as virtuous, we're still looking at an enormous movement — one lavishly funded by the plentiful oil under lands ruled by Muslims.   The president noted that Muslims 'are the most frequent victims of terrorist attacks'.   There can be no question about that -- in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mali, and many other corners of the world.   What's more, the extremists reserve their most vehement hatred for fellow Muslims who reject their ideology, [who are adherents to a different denomination, a different sect, or] who -- as they see it -- have abandoned the true faith in favor of a watered-down interpretation of Islam.   They call such Muslims apostates, and the punishment for apostasy is death.   This is among the reasons so few Muslims dare speak out against the [violence initiating sects and individuals]."
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)

2013-05-31 (5773 Sivan 22)
Michelle Malkin _Jewish World Review_
Who is tracking your children... and you?
"The school year may be over for most American students, but parents must remain as vigilant as ever when it comes to protecting their children's privacy.   Look no further than the shocking, invasive conduct of the Polk County, FL, educational district last week.   It's a surveillance-state sign of the times.   Two days before their Memorial Day weekend break, kids from at least three different public schools -- Bethune Academy (K-5), Davenport School of the Arts (K-5, middle and high school), and Daniel Jenkins Academy (6-12) -- were subjected to iris scans without their parents' knowledge or consent.   The scans are essentially optical fingerprints, which the school intended to collect to create a database of biometric information for school bus security...   'She [the principal] said that she was following instructions from the Polk County School Board (PCSB)'...   Instead of verifying that parents received the letter and ensuring that any families who wanted to opt out had a chance to so, the schools allowed officials from Stanley Convergent Security Solutions into the schools to take iris scans of an unknown number of students as part of a 'pilot' security tracking program for students who ride the bus.   Stanley operates 'identity management' systems using 'Eyelock biometric readers' that 'ensure maximum convenience with unprecedented accuracy'...   In addition, the district had planned to conduct a pilot scan program with another security company, Blinkspot...   Parents have asked the school board for proof that the records have been wiped.   Unsurprisingly, school officials have clammed up now that they are under public scrutiny...   School districts across the country are contracting with private tracking firms to monitor students.   Some are using radio frequency tracking technology (RFID) to log movements.   Khaliah Barnes, the open government counsel with the Washington, DC-based Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), spelled out the chilling implications for freedom of speech, religion and association in a recent CBN interview: 'Imagine for example a student being dissuaded from attending a political interest group because she fears that the tracking technology will alert the principal or other administrators where her political affiliations lie.'   Now, add the threat that the nationalized Common Core [Communist Corpse] student data-bases pose to students and families.   As I've reported previously, the feds are constructing an unprecedented nationwide student tracking system to aggregate massive amounts of personal data -- including health-care histories, income information, religious affiliations, voting status and even blood types and home-work completion.   The data will be available to a wide variety of public agencies.   And despite federal student-privacy protections [supposedly] guaranteed by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act [FERPA, a.k.a. the Bucklay amendment; Public Law 93-380; 20 USC 1232g; 34 CFR Part 99; 88 Stat. 571; and by the Privacy Act of 1974; PA1974; S3418/HR16373; Public Law 93-579; 5 USC 552a; 88 Stat. 1896-1909; GPO S/N 052-001-004-00439-6], the [Obummer regime] is paving the way for private entities to buy their way into the data boondoggle...   The hand that tracks our children rules the world."

2013 May/June
Beryl Lieff Benderly _Columbia Journalism Review_
it doesn't add up: as STEM job-seeker glut & jobs dearth continues to worsen: only a minor fraction of STEM grads get STEM employment -- 33% of bachelor's, 50% of master's, 38% of Ph.D.s; age discrimination expands
 
Proposed Bills 13
 
 

 
Proposed Bills 2013

USA Over-Population Clock
World + USA Over-Population Clocks
Jimbo Wales's WikiPedia on World Over-Population