Firing U.S. workers and keeping H1-B visa foreign workers

The federal government has found companies who have fired U.S. workers and keep H1-B foreign workers. An IT firm in N.J. has been indicted on visa related fraud charges. It appears that the senate has approved stricter rules on hiring H-1B workers.

According to arrest records in six states, the companies involved were firing qualified U.S. workers and replacing them with H1-B visa workers. The fraud related to H-1B visa has deprived many U.S. citizens of employment. In January 2009 the number of workers employed in the H-1B visa program exceeded 241,000 unemployed U.S. citizens in the same occupation. Essentially,these companies were giving our U.S jobs to foreign workers.

According to statics, the number of technology jobs were down 200,000. Currently the cap of 1-B visa is 85,000 visa annually. The company in N.J. only hired foreign workers to fill I.T. jobs which resulted in lost wages and benefits for thousand of U.S. citizens.

My opinion is, any program that encourages moving or displacing U.S. workers should be limited. The drive for profits seems to lead to some form of corruption even if it means hurting U.S. workers.

Immigration and H-1B vista

Immigration and H-1B visa program for Foreign workers has always been a double edge sword. The dig and cut involves companies hiring foreign workers via H-1B while laying of U.S workers.





In this economic recession, there has been talk of the government making it more difficult to hire foreign nationals to increase the hiring of U.S. workers. Many companies claim, there are not enough qualified U.S. works to fill certain job vacancy. This is the key component that needs verification.



The H-1B Visa program allow2 65,000 foreign nationals with skillS not easily found within the U.S. and 20,000 exceptions for graduateS from U.S universities. Companies who have received Trouble Assets Relief Program (T.A.R.P) who have more than 15% of their staffs on Visas; would have to prove they have tried to recruit U.S. workers. The problem with this, there is a lot of fraud related to recruiting U.S. workers.




During this recession, some U.S. High-tech companies are laying of U.S. workers. but are not cutting H1-B visa holders. There definitely should be some restrictions to hiring H1-B visa holders while companies are laying off U.S. workers.




Much of the contention U.S. I.T. workers have is, companies will hire H1-B visa holders even when you have a qualified U.S. worker available. I believe exemptions for U.S. University graduate is O.K., as many foreign students come to the U.S. to study and then work for U.S. companies.

We need a stronger policy that improves hiring of U.S. workers, H1-B visa holders, and limits out sourcing of U.S. jobs.

Immigration and Out sourcing "Profitable business?"

This is a direct correlation between out sourcing U.S. job over seas and hiring illegal immigrants, lower wages and higher profits for companies involved. The easiest solution to both problems is to remove the incentive or profit that companies can make by increasing fines and enforcemnet of existing laws to discourage violators.

At some point it become fashionable to ship U.S. jobs over seas. You got to point to the auto industry to see how shipping U.S. jobs over seas became fashionable. Once it became clear that in the global economy, over seas competitors were able to make a superior product at a lower cost, US jobs were in trouble. The question is, who fault is it that many over seas competitors can make a superior product at a lower cost (management, worker, unions, health care)? Management and Executive sold us on, the only way we compete in the global economy is to send our U.S.jobs over seas. Ever since, it has been down hill and we are still trying to recover.

In a free market, there is great pressure to maximize profit at all cost. Many executive teams at companies have jumped over board in the regard. What can we do to help turn things around especially for the middle class. Many worker advocates would point to the Employee Free Choice Act currently in front of congress.

In my next post, I will look for solutions that will help U.S. companies stay competitive while ensuring more U.S. jobs are not out sourced and overwhelmed with immigration issues.

Immigration "The good, the bad, and the ugly"!

The good immigrants helped build America into the country it is today. Many immigrants came here and built successful business and contributed to our economic growth. The US is truly diverse country where Evey one has a chance to be successful. Additionally the USA has access to talent through out the world, who want to work under our H-1B visa program.

Though out the last few decades, we have heard more stories on illegal immigrants who live in the USA illegally. For many of these people, they have been here for decades and have children who are presumably legal citizen by birth. Many of the the illegals are uneducated and perform very low wage jobs that helps many of our service industries run such as: farming, season employment,construction labor etc. With out these workers, many of our industries would have a problem (labor shortage).

The ugliest of the situation is, many of these people get a free ride (health care, crime,welfare, etc which hurts our legalized citizens. We need to know what has been done to improve the situation? These our the facts I will try to uncover.

Stem cell research

Stem cell research
Does stem cell research have the potential to save and benefit life. If stem cell research can cure cancer in our life time, would we be more tolerant of abortion and pro choice. To really understand these questions, we must understand what stem cell research is all about.

The first scientific break through was related to embryonic stem cells used to grow human cells such as: blood and skin cells. These specific cells can be used to re engineer cells to repair damaged tissue.

Research related to stem cells has been limited, because congress limited public funding for any research related to embryonic cells in 1995. Due to these bans, much of the funding comes from private sector.

The ethical disputes centers on when human life begins? Some people consider human life to begin when the egg is fertilized. In this scenario, the embryo is consider a human life. Conducting research on an embryo would in some way destroy a potential human life.
On the other side, a fertilized egg must be implanted in the uterus to sustain life. In Vitro fertization generates embryos that are excess and therefore, could be used for research.

There is valid points to both agreements and the true test is, whether scientific advances, improve life and are used in the most ethical ways possible.

Health Care reform status:

The for runners of the Health industry have been developing RHIO’s (Regional Health information organizations composed of hospitals health maintenance organizations looking to share information among themselves.

Covinsint and e-market developer help health organizations communicate while keeping all of the information private. There roles is authenticate system users, ensure compliance with regulations, and has created application programming interfaces so practices and HMO’s can connect to various management systems.

There is a growing number of service providers entering health care information exchange market. The development revolves around personal health care records developed by each provider. The health record would theoretically be available from one site. Many question still remaining concerning this approach; can such a company be trusted to handle such personal information? This approach would require each individual to keep their medical records up to date.

People in the industry believe a system is available which can be used to create a national electronic health records system. The bottom line is, the system has to improve services and treatment by effective sharing critical information. Implementation and integration remains a complex and difficult process. To make the system work, there has to be great cooperation, innovation, and investment in health orientated IT. Here in Boston, we have began the ground work.

Health Care reform and records standards

One of the huge problems with government implementing reform is conflicting interest. In most cases private industry can do a much better job than the government especially when it comes to innovation. These conflicting interests usually slow down development until these differences can be hashed out.

The Veterans administration has developed a Electronic Health Records system using Vista, but private medical software providers claim they can develop a better system. This debate has been going on for better than the last decade.

Cooperation between the government and private industry should create interoperability standards using SOA, middleware, and standard file formats, similar to open document format (ODF) and resource description format (rdf) standards for information medication base structured meaning.

There is a process to create Continuity of care, an XML base standard file format standard for Electronic Health Records (EHR) vendors can write in the same file format. To facilitate this conversion, the Commission of the certification of Health IT does certification and creates interoperability and definition guidelines in three key areas: Privacy, format, and content.


The Health care industry use glossary of terms to describe procedure and diagnosis of patients which revolves around International Classification of disease IDC-9 which must convert to IDC-10, IDC-10 holds 155,000 codes allowing the tracking of disease, diagnosis, and treatment procedures. Deploying or upgrading from IDC-9 to IDC-10 is another challenge for Health care professionals and IT staff.

There is an overwhelming amount of information that must be tracked especially related to molecular understanding of disease. The information system needs to help make better decisions while being comprehensive, flexible, and manageable way to handle data.