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Subject:Re: US professional issues From:Rahel Bailie <rbailie -at- CASTLETON -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 15 Oct 1998 14:17:25 -0700
| For those of you watching the US Congress, HR3736 was revived (after
| being dead, of course) in the US congress to allow 142,500 more visas
| for foreign workers per year. This may be of particular concern to
those
| of you in areas that have seen many layoffs recently.
There's a part of me that hears this and wonders what it is about the
U.S. that makes its government want all the benefits of free trade [sic]
but none of the repercussions. But that's my personal cynicism (Please
don't clutter the list with replies; you can blast me privately if our
politics differ.) coming through.
I've also heard about the shortage of professionals (one engineer told
me she was asked to "beg, borrow, or steal employees from other
companies, states, or countries) in the USA. I suppose high-tech
industry benefits more from this flexibility, as I was told that
knowledge of C++ is more important than knowledge of the English
language. We have a similar situation here. We've been told there are
lots of jobs that can't be filled, so we "recycle" engineers and tech
writers from company to company, and hope that ours won't be stolen
away.
