The Ugly Immigrant

[woodchip]

Ran across this interesting bit of news. Kinda twisty because TC can go and blame the evil corporations and others like me can blame immigrants:

"Massive layoffs are being spearheaded by the multi-billion dollar Southern California Edison utilities company, which is terminating scores of American IT workers and replacing them with immigrant IT workers, from a slew of foreign counties, who are willing to work for far less compensation."

To add a sob story to this as I know you lefties like a good tear jerker:

"This employee invested years of her life working for SoCal Edison but this year found herself jobless, like hundreds of her peers who were ordered to train their foreign replacements in a process dubbed as “knowledge transfer.” SoCal Edison stonewalled her and used her severance package as collateral against her. “You’re going to train your replacement if you want your severance,” she was told."

"She suffers from a physical disability, which amplifies her challenge of finding a job. She told Breitbart News that she lies awake at night entrenched in fear about how she is going to pay for her children’s education, her mortgage, and eventually basic necessities such as food."

No these are not illegal immigrants but those that come in under the H-1B visa program. The visa program that was supposedly to supply a shortage of science and tech people but due to the abuses as shown, there is actually a surplus of American Science and tech people that are jobless due to the immigrants. The interesting thing is the Democrats are feeling the heat through the unions by the mass lay offs of union workers. So it will be a interesting melange of corporate/unions/democrats/republicans and special interests tackling this one. So where do you stand?

[callmeslick]

friends in the industry tell me that COMPETENT IT workers in some sub-specialities are in short supply. I'll have to believe them. As to this example, it's too far away and too unfamiliar to comment upon. I do think the issue overall speaks to American training, education and the globalization of the economy. As I've tried to say here more than once(and yes, some will blame evil corporations) the world has a global labor pool, and that will drive down a lot of wages. A first rate education, with emphasis on comparative thinking and analytical thinking is crucial for today's youth.

[Tunnelcat]

It IS because of evil corporations, greed and globalization. Why hire people from the U.S. when you can train and hire someone willing to work for far less? They come over here and get trained, sometimes paid for by their governments or the corporations that they will soon work for, then they can either return home and work, or work here. But their pay is far less than that of an equivalent U.S. worker. Even Hewlett Packard did the same thing. For example, they paid to train Chinese engineers over here in the U.S., then they brought them back to China to work for smaller salaries than an equivalent American engineer at their Chinese company divisions. Seemed like a good idea, right? It worked so well, these companies got the idea to bring IN people from foreign countries, train them IN the U.S., which has more modern training and schools, then just keep them here, all for the cheaper salaries they'll work for. That's even AFTER spending the money on training them. These are middle class salaried jobs by the way. So Southern Edison can now fire those sick and expensive American workers and hire cheaper, and similarly disposable, foreign workers. Never mind that they're so callous that those former workers are now out on the streets and newly poor. They're no longer consumers in our economy either. And people wonder why wages have been stagnant in the U.S. We're our own worst enemy. Welcome to the new America, now a third world country because corporations want more profit.

[Spidey]

It’s usually the stock holders who pressure utilities for more profit.