emc/h1-b

[jc at trillian.mit.edu (John Chambers)]

| There are a few Senators that are working on such legislation at this time,
| but as was said earlier don't forget about the L-1's I emailed my
| congressmen!  I realize it probably won't help but if everyone does
| something like that it might make some kind of a difference.
...
| > Some friends of mine are thinking about trying to draft
| > legislation which would prohibet H1Bs unless unemployment goes below 4%.
| > How does that sound?

While this may  sound  reasonable  to  us  computer  geeks,
there's  an  important reason why such legislation may well
just silently disappear.

A story that a lot of people in the gummint are  trying  to
deal with:  A year or so back, the CIA admitted that they'd
had recordings that should have tipped them off to the Sept
11  attack.   But  they didn't have enough staff people who
were fluent in Arabic to listen to them and translate  them
before the Big Day.

Now, the  US  has  around  6  million  citizens  of  Arabic
descent,  so  you'd  think  there  would  be little problem
hiring Arabic speakers.  But there is a  problem,  and  the
reason  is quite obvious:  the English-only approach of our
school system.  The  result  is  that,  except  for  recent
immigrants,  most  of  the  Arab-American  population knows
Arabic only as a religious language, They are mostly  about
as  fluent  in  Arabic as most Jews are fluent in Hebrew or
most Catholics are fluent in Latin.  They can quote  a  few
verses of the Koran, and that's about it.

There is a very long  history  in  the  US  of  suppressing
immigrants'   native  languages.   Children  are  routinely
punished for speaking anything other than English. Very few
texts  are  available  to  children  in any language except
English.   The  result  is  the  well-known  phenomenon  of
children who can hardly speak to their grandparents.

This problem is not going to be fixed. In Massachusetts, we
just  had  a referendum pass overwhelmingly that suppresses
all bilingual education.  Educators are  looking  hard  for
ways  around  this,  but  bilingual  teaching can't be done
openly here any more.  Even  after  the  reports  from  the
intelligence   community,   the  citizenry  does  not  want
children growing up speaking Arabic, or any  other  foreign
language.   Children  of incoming refugees will not grow up
fluent and educated in their parents' languages.

But, as people are fond of saying, we live in  a  different
world now.  We badly need translators. A year ago we needed
people fluent in Dari and Pashtu, but  where  do  you  find
them  in  America?   If  you  do  find them, the widespread
attacks on people with ancestors  from  that  part  of  the
world  mean  that they aren't likely to be very cooperative
when approached by  a  government  agent.   Some  of  those
refugees  can  be  hired,  but it must be done with a great
deal of care. And we'll always be fighting the general wish
to suppress those other languages.

The only practical way to find the translators we  need  is
to hire them from outside, or from incoming refugees.  This
means we need exceptions to the  anti-foreigner  employment
laws that are on the books. It's not politcally possible to
repeal such laws, of course, but quiet  exceptions  can  be
made.  And those exceptions will affect a lot more than was
intended.

This isn't a good solution.  We in the computer  field  are
seeing what a crude tool the law can be in such cases.  The
H1-B and L-1 exceptions were  meant  to  handle  situations
like  this.   But  they also mean that employers can easily
fake a labor shortage in other areas to hire cheap workers.

There is really no logical way out of this.  The only  good
solution would be to switch our education system so that it
strongly encourages keeping immigrants' languages alive, so
we  have  Nth-generation  native  speakers  of at least the
major languages in the world.  But this ain't gonna happen.