Market Manipulation, The Economy, and Unionization (was Re: Overqualified)

[Robert La Ferla]

There is a DC-based union for software engineers.  It's web site is 
http://www.washtech.org.  A union is needed if only for lobbying 
congress.  I do urge you all to write your local congressman and express 
your feelings about the H1B visa issue.  I think there is a time when 
H1B visas are necessary but now is certainly not one of them.  I saw 
this coming a few years back when congress was looking to increase the 
number of visas.  At that time, it was clear they were looking for 
"cheap" labor and not because of supply as they stated.  We had tons of 
consulting companies crop up reselling cheap foreign labor at our 
expense.  We are feeling the effects of this political decision now. 
 Once again, you need to make your voice heard by contacting your local 
representative <http://clerk.house.gov/members/index.php>and senator. 
<http://www.senate.gov/senators/senator_by_state.cfm>  I am all for a 
limited number of visas during normal economic times if the person 
intends on immigrating here.  But US citizens and permanent residents 
need to have priority for jobs.  PERIOD.  This benefits everyone because 
if a visa holder eventually becomes a citizen and buys a house here, 
they will need employment like the rest of us.  Some foreign workers 
have reasoned that everyone should be hired based on merit alone.  Merit 
is top criteria but not the only criteria since people just can't pack 
up their house, belongings, mortgage, family, friends, and schools to go 
to another job somewhere else in the world.  Work has to be available 
for people who live here wherever "here" is.  ie.  This should be every 
country's policy.  I also think we have another problem in our industry 
which as Linux users, you certainly understand.  We have a monopoly that 
has deprived other entrepreneurs and companies of prosperity due to it's 
anti-competitive tactics.  If you were to carve up $50 billion of the 
$60+ that Bill Gates has, you would have a lot of innovation and jobs. 
 Say $50 billion was divided amongst 50 states.  Each and every state 
could have several hundred entrepreneural millionaires all employing 
people and creating great products and services.  I think the problem in 
our society is that we're out of balance.  The system is great if noone 
is manipulating the markets.  But just look around and you see 
accounting firms, energy companies, brokerage firms, software behomoths, 
etc... all illegally manipulating the market in big ways.  This isn't 
what we're all about.  We've already sent a great deal of our blue 
collar jobs to foreign countries but what will we all do when our white 
collar jobs go too?  We should send our politicians to foreign countries 
since that's who they currently represent.

Because I think this is such an important issue, if you are interested 
in a Boston based software association (lobbying and perhaps even a real 
union), drop me an e-mail and I'll collect the responses and we'll see 
if we can't take some action.

BTW - I am not at all against foreigners.  My father immigrated here 
from Italy and I am married to a wonderful Japanese woman.  I just think 
we have a political issue here regarding how America conducts it's 
business.  It's correctable but we need to work together to fix it.

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