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To: hueyone who wrote (158902)	7/30/2003 8:10:24 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

not anymore Hueyone, that was the past. This article is about the L1, which I know for certain is being abused at applied materials by this very firm Tata (L1s are 6mos visas, they bring in new workers every 6mos if you can believe that and the management has to constantly train these people)... but there was a vote a few weeks ago to actually increase H1-Bs and it didn't pass. I think these visas are going to be sharply curtailed almost immediately. Feinstein seeking changes in skilled-worker visas Washington -- Congress appears inclined to clamp down on at least one category of visa for skilled workers, the L-1, that many complain is being used to displace U.S. workers, particularly in the high-tech industry. Former supporters of increasing the number of visas for foreign high-tech workers -- including Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. -- are now calling for a halt to what they call abuses of the L-1 visa, which is intended to allow a company's foreign managers, executives and workers with "specialized knowledge" to transfer to that company's U.S. operations. "Four years ago . . . I had CEOs come to me and tell me they need more H-1B visas, and I bought the argument," Feinstein said in a hearing Tuesday by the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security. But at the hearing, Feinstein expressed outrage over the case, clearly widely circulated in Congress, of Patricia Fluno, a $98,000-a-year computer programmer from Orlando, Fla., who was laid off by Siemens Technologies, which transferred her job and others to an Indian company called Tata Consulting Services. sfgate.com

To: hueyone who wrote (158902)	7/30/2003 8:24:05 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

oh and btw Although I agree with that article you have posted a few times, I feel the need to point out that it is written by Phillis Schafly (you have obviously forgotten that I am a Berkeley graduate). I like the Dianne Feinstein article a little better because there is a timeframe issue which the Phyllis Schafly piece doesn't quite get, or maybe things were different elsewhere in the country vs. the west coast. Anyway I as a manager was tired of hearing all these cries from union labor people and everybody else that H1-Bs were taking jobs up until 2001. There was obviously a job for anybody that wanted one in the tech industry up until 2000, and some of the salary demands were TOTALLY out of line, after all when I was starting out as a programmer in 1991/92I was making about 45K with no stock and happy to get it. In 1999 some guy with 2 years java experience was looking for 100K, it was ridiculous. This Phyllis Schafly article quotes some congress people in 2000 saying the H1-B extension was unpopular, maybe so but it was necessary THEN and thats why Feinstein voted for it. Fast forward to today, we are now in a relentless job offshoring situation and companies are abusing these visas, in some cases they want to offshore something but cannot because the workers need training from staff here first - this is NOT the purpose of an L1, to train workers locally for offshoring. This has gotten out of hand and congress knows it, now. I suspect they kill the L1 and curtail the h1-b heavily. I can already tell that nobody is doing sponsorship for contract work at Cisco, applied etc. anymore.