New York Training Funds

Date: Friday, June 06, 2003 6:14 PM

JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

www.ZaZona.com

H-1B training funds are a boondoggle. Training programs are futile
attempts to train workers that have been replaced by H-1Bs with the
"skills to compete". These 6-12 week courses don't help displaced
Americans but they are a cash cow for community colleges and tech
schools.

In many cases these training programs teach senior level programmers
and engineers how to be system admins or test technicians. Companies
are unlikely to hire these trainees because they will be considered
overqualified. Even if they were hired they will get only a fraction of
their original salary. If money were to be used to help workers it
should be spent on helping these displaced workers get jobs that paid
close to their previous salary.

Skills aren't the reason U.S. workers are losing their jobs because
it's never been proven that H-1Bs have better skills. The fact that so
many Americans are being forced to train their H-1B replacements would
disprove any claims of superior skills or education.

Industry wants to hire H-1Bs because they like the cheap young blood of
indentured laborers. Training won't help that problem. The one course
that might help U.S. workers would be a course called:
"Sweatshops 101."

New York Times

Fees From Visas Now Train Americans

By ANTHONY DePALMA
June 1, 2003

Very few subjects can start an argument faster than illegal immigration
and the way some people see foreigners taking jobs from Americans.

But foreign workers who legally take American jobs may just be one of
them.

Each year, for the last few years, more than 100,000 foreigners have
been given special visas to come to the United States to fill
specialized jobs for which employers said they could not find enough
skilled Americans, despite the national unemployment rate of 6 percent.

A special class of visa, called H1-B, is used to bring in those skilled
foreign workers. And now fees collected on the visa are used to train
Americans at institutions like the Borough of Manhattan Community
College to fill the same jobs.

The visas give foreigners the right to work in the United States for a
maximum of six years, but not to settle here permanently. Usually the
jobs are in high technology fields involving computers and computer
software.

Not surprisingly, unions and some politicians hated the program. They
managed to tack on restrictions to make it more difficult for companies
to import foreign workers. But the number of visas grew steadily until
the technology bubble burst in 2001, and now is declining sharply.

Still, to address the concerns of critics, the government charges a
$1,000 fee for every H1-B visa application, paid by the employer who is
hiring the foreign worker.

The money goes into a national pool, and more than half of the total is
distributed to educational institutions and work force programs around
the country that train American workers to fill the positions for which
foreigners are recruited.

Since the program began in 1998, the government has given out $228.5
million in training grants, according to the Employment and Training
Administration, part of the United States Department of Labor. New York
State has received eight grants, the most recent for $2.87 million that
went to Borough of Manhattan Community College, in partnership with
Thirteen/WNET New York television.

"Part of our responsibility as a community college is to service the
whole community, and that means not just the students but the
for-profits and not-for-profits in Manhattan," said Dr. Antonio Pirez,
the college's president. "When you break it down, our mission is no
different in that regard from any small community college around the
country, except that our community is the financial capital of the
world."

The college, which has 24,000 full-time and part-time students in
several downtown buildings and is part of the City university of New
York, will provide specialized training for 500 people at little or no
charge and then help those
people find jobs or get promotions.

Unemployed or underemployed residents of New York City are eligible, as
is anyone displaced as a result of the terror attacks of Sept. 11,
2001, regardless of where they live. To apply, interested workers may
call the college at (212) 220-8350.

Acti Maldonado, dean of the Center for Continuing Education and
Workforce Development, said the new courses will begin in September at
the college's training center at 45 John Street in the financial
district.

Five different programs will be offered over two years. They include
courses in computer network security, the Cisco Certified Network
Associate program, the Cisco Certified Network Professional program,
Oracle database design and
engineering, and A+, a personal computer technician certification
program.

In the current economic climate, employers who need workers with new
skills simply go out and get them from foreign countries if need be
rather than take the time to retrain existing workers, said Rodney
Alexander, director of the Institute for Business Trends Analysis at
the college.

"What we're seeing is the `just-in-time' delivery system applied to
human resources," he said, referring to the practice, common in
manufacturing, of having parts delivered as needed, rather than keeping
them on site.

Figuring out what skills are most in demand is a complicated process,
because the needs of the high technology companies change so rapidly,
Dr. Maldonado said. The application for the H1-B visa grant that was
originally filed in May 2001 was rejected. It was resubmitted the
following year with multimedia training replaced by network security
classes.

The second time around the application was approved.

"We had to modify it to best suit the labor market," Dr. Maldonado
said, "because in the final analysis, we have to find jobs for these
people."

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