John Brian Fast, CPA

The US technology industry lost about 250,000 jobs last year, about 4 percent of its total workforce.  These losses could and should have been prevented.

Where was your job outsourced?

Huge global corporations are encouraging the outsourcing of innovation to other countries around the world.  We are exporting our computer technology to our potential enemy, Red China.  This is a serious national security issue.

We should be nurturing our technology professionals.  We should be offering tax credits to keep our proprietary technology in this country.  A number of other countries, including Canada, have very generous provisions in their research and development tax credits.

In addition, we should be encouraging the Veterans Administration and the US Department of Health and Human Services to move ahead on expanding their health information technology programs.  (See our post at    http://www.johnbrianfastcpa.com/1766/our-veterans-deserve-better-it-systems/     that shows our American veterans desperately need improvements to their claims system.)  Health technologies require tens of thousands of new highly skilled workers.  These are jobs that should not be outsourced overseas.

John Brian Fast, an Army vet, strongly supports improvements to the veterans claim systems.

Re-employed engineers, scientists and other technology professionals will help create more jobs and move the economy forward.

One continuing threat to American tech workers is the H1-B visas given by the huge global corporations to bring in foreign workers to compete with Americans.

Microsoft was granted 1,037 H-1B visas in 2008 and had sought permanent residency for 703 H-1B holders that year.  Intel Corp. received 351 H-1B visas in 2008. A year earlier, Intel’s permanent residence applications amounted to 42% of the 369 H-1B visas it received.  Google received approval for 207 H-1B visas in 2008 and sought permanent residency for 108 visa holders. And now notorious Goldman Sachs was granted 211 H-1B visas in 2008.

Greedy corporations want immigrants, legal or otherwise.

Various estimates put the overall number of technical visa holders in the range of 600,000 H-1B workers.  A decade-old study by Georgetown University estimated that about 50% of H-1B visa holders become permanent residents of the United States.

One study found that visa rules put most of the power to control H-1B workers in the hands of employers.  Visa workers can “switch jobs in very limited circumstances, and their employer can revoke the visa at any time by terminating their employment, forcing the worker out of status with immigration authorities. If employment is terminated, the worker must leave the country immediately,” the study said.  This gives employers the controls they want over the foreign workers.

There is an alphabet soup of visa categories which allow the holder to work here such as H1-B, L-1, and H2-B.  Last year we added 400,000 H1-B’s; 900,000 other work visa holders; and 455,000 temporary workers.   This makes a total of 1,755,000 imported legal workers.   A very conservative estimate is that there are 4 million illegal aliens entering this country annually.

Many of these people take good paying jobs that American informational technology professionals should have.