More Misinformation at the White House?

[bart95]

President Obama is not the only member of the administration who appears to lack an understanding of how the H-1B visa works. Several months after the president's awkward and widely reported conversation on the subject with Jennifer Wedel, the wife of an engineer who has been out of work for 3 years, a reporter recently asked Vice President Biden whether he thought the U.S. grants too many high-skill visas.

Biden's answer, writes Patrick Thibodeau at Computerworld, reveals that the vice president "doesn't know a thing about the H-1B visa." Biden, for example, did not know that "there's almost nothing to stop an employer from replacing a U.S. worker with an H-1B visa holder," Thibodeau notes. "Those who have had to train their visa-holding replacement" could have set him straight.

But "even odder" than Biden's apparent failure to brush up on the issue after the "embarrassing" Wedel incident is that the vice president appears so uninformed even though "his own former Chief Economist and Economic Policy Adviser, Jared Bernstein, has spoken negatively about the H-1B on various occasions," writes University of California-Davis computer professor Norman Matloff in an e-mail newsletter. Rather than suffering a true shortage of qualified technical personnel -- Matloff quotes Bernstein as saying -- what employers claiming they need to hire employees using the H-1B "really mean is that they can't find enough people at the rate they want to pay."

rest of story

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/sciencecareers/2012/04/president-obama-2.html

[bart95]

1. interesting transcript snippet from West Wing Episode Jan 2000 about 'soft influence'

'soft influence' is the term for this

where they throw groups of American workers to the wolves in favor of foreign interests in exchange for influence other countries

'West Wing' even had a TV episode about it, India and Pakistan were threatening each other (as they were in real life around that time), an president martin sheen at the end of the episode quietly gave India the computer industry for influence

in the episode, American tech workers solely accountable for peace in that region

i was shocked when i saw this, as i was learning about H-1b expansion in real life

i was wondering 'gee, where'd they get the idea for THIS episode?!?', sure, it was just a TV show episode, but they pulled plenty of their ideas from real life, that's what made the show so popular, a show for the 'smart set'


dont beleive me? here's the transcript (Bartlet is the president)

BARTLET
John, please.

MARBURY
You've been paying the world off since the industrial age. Foreign aid,
during the Cold
War was you paying dictators to be on your side. To this very day, you pay
Korea not to
develop nuclear weapons.

BARTLET
What does India want?

MARBURY
A computer industry, and for that, they require an infrastructure, and that
is what you
can give them.

LEO
Why?

MARBURY
It's the price you pay.

LEO
For avoiding a war halfway around the world?

MARBURY
For being rich, free and alive all at the same time, and for the criminally
negligent
behavior of your Congress in not checking the proliferation of nuclear
devices.

BARTLET
Your friend, the prime minister?

MARBURY
Rikki.

BARTLET
He's gonna go for this?

MARBURY
If it's handled properly.

BARTLET
All right, you tell the ambassador we'll discuss this in three months. In
three months,
John. I don't want this to be like quid pro quo.

MARBURY
Yes, sir.

BARTLET
That's the carrot. Leo, what's the stick?

LEO
In the next 24 hours, we want to see recon photos of Indian divisions
retreating. If we
don't, we're gonna seize Indian assets and so will our NATO allies, and
G-7's gonna call
in its loans.

http://www.westwingtranscripts.com/search.php?flag=getTranscript&id=12




Episode 1.12 -- 'He Shall, From Time To Time...'
Original Airdate: January 12, 2000, 9:00 PM EST

[bart95]

2. Veterans did not fight and die so American jobs could be given away

here's a congressman telling that right to bill gates face

in time: 3:50 to 5:30 of video

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