15 Articles Worth Reading

Date: Friday, August 12, 2005 3:40 AM

JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

by Rob Sanchez
August 12, 2005 No. 1310

COMMENT FROM ROB: Diane Alden is angry and she is unloading it [see Article #15] on subjects such as CAFTA, NAFTA, WTO, CFR, free trade, and the Republicans and Democrats that are conspiring to destroy the U.S. as a nation state. This is the first of a multi-series, so there is more to come, hopefully soon! The paper is long but I guarantee you that once you start reading it you will hooked to the end and wish for more.

She has so many good zingers in there it's tough for me to pick two of my favorites:

I have come to the conclusion that if I wanted to
deconstruct a nation, I would have voted or become a
Democrat. If I wanted to lie, cheat, steal, deceive,
be involved in double dealing, payoffs and influence
peddling, I would have become a Democrat. If I wanted
to use ridicule, marginalization and name calling to
silence my opponents, I would have become a leftist
Democrat.

But the New GOP under Bush and the Beltway Iron Triangle
Corporate mob are giving the Dems a run for their money
in the misuse-of-power department.

This one concerns the shortage shouting we hear so much now:

The only shortage that exists is decency among the elite
like Gates and Greenspan and the Beltway morons of both
parties. They are expanding work and student visas and
the caps at this very moment. The caps they put on them
are a charade.

The caps are about as tight as 25-year-old
elastic on a pair of size 26 women's shorts.

Article 1:
http://www.casperstartribune.net/articles/2005/08/09/ap/hitech/d8brtt300.txt
2006 Need for High-Tech Workers Nearly Met
Employers are closing in on the limit for hiring foreign high-tech workers for jobs next year, roughly two months before the start of the 2006 fiscal year, an immigration official said Monday. The number of applications for the jobs, many of them in high-tech companies, was nearly 52,000 as of Thursday, with 22,383 applications for H1-B visas approved and 29,556 pending. "The cap will definitely be hit before Oct. 1, which was when it was hit last year," said Chris Bentley, spokesman for the agency that is part of the Department of Homeland Security.

Article 2:
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050720/workers_of_the_real_world.php
Workers Of The Real World
For the past 20 years, weve been barraged by a relentless mantra: Education is the magic bullet to survive in the global economy. Virtually every politician, armed with rhetoric from academics, tells American workers that, essentially, they are too dumb to make it in the "New Economy." Save yourself, they exhort -- go back to school. Prepare yourself -- get an advanced degree. But this is utter nonsense.

Article 3:
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2005/08/08/us_could_lose_high_tech_edge_study_says/
US could lose high-tech edge, study says
Freeman argues that the growing legions of scientists and engineers, underpinned by huge labor forces, could allow China and India to produce both cutting-edge products and low-cost commodities. He warns that the outsourcing of technical jobs is a harbinger of US economic dislocations. ''When you combine low-wage workers with the ability to compete with your technology," Freeman said in an interview, ''then you have a problem."

Article 4:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/10/business/worldbusiness/10intern.html
M.B.A. Students Bypassing Wall Street for a Summer in India
Mr. Maldonado and Mr. Simonsen, of Riverside, Calif., are part of a virtual invasion of India by American students. Graduate students from top schools in the United States, most from master of business administration programs, are vying for internships at India's biggest private companies. For many, outsourcing companies are the destinations of choice.

Article 5:
http://www.rednova.com/news/technology/203412/illegal_immigrants_obtain_licenses_to_transport_hazardous_materials/
Illegal Immigrants Obtain Licenses to Transport Hazardous Materials
A federal crackdown on fraud at state motor vehicle departments across the country has nabbed more than a dozen illegal immigrants licensed to transport hazardous materials. While none of those apprehended has any known links to terrorism, federal agents said Thursday that the recent busts have revealed a significant threat to homeland security. In one case, a Pakistani man ordered to leave the United States nine years ago was instead driving a tanker truck filled with gasoline for Exxon.

Article 6:
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/business/article/0,1299,DRMN_4_3990876,00.html
Chinese rig at work
Politics, cost-cutting clash over imported workers in Colorado
The first wave of Chinese workers and their rigs are up and running in the Piceance Basin in Garfield County, the state's oil and natural gas hot spot.And next month, two more Chinese rigs and workers will start drilling wells in Garfield and Moffat counties. A U.S. shortage of labor and equipment is driving local energy companies to seek out partnerships with the Chinese. "It is a matter of price and time," explained Bill Croyle, a partner in Western Energy Advisors.

Article 7:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/08/AR2005080801064.html
2006 Need for High-Tech Workers Nearly Met
Employers are closing in on the limit for hiring foreign high-tech workers for jobs next year, roughly two months before the start of the 2006 fiscal year, an immigration official said Monday. The number of applications for the jobs, many of them in high-tech companies, was nearly 52,000 as of Thursday, with 22,383 applications for H1-B visas approved and 29,556 pending.

Article 8:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/235368_tbrf05.html
Cuts in customer-support positions at Microsoft include 33 Issaquah jobs
Microsoft Corp. is cutting 72 positions at customer-support centers in Issaquah; Charlotte, N.C.; and Los Colinas, Texas, and moving the work to operations in Canada and India. About 80 percent of the work that was handled at the three U.S.-based call centers will be shifted to a company in Canada, with the remainder handled at Microsoft's facility in Bangalore, India.

Article 9:
http://www.siliconindia.com/shownewsdata.asp?newsno=29066
GM to increase component purchasing from India
As part of a cost cutting plan, GM is looking at increasing its India-sourced component purchases.

Article 10:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/09/AR2005080901164.html
It's Not a Science Gap (Yet)
Freeman also documents a second worrisome reality: U.S. scientists and engineers aren't well paid, considering their skills and -- especially for PhDs -- the required time for a degree. This means, Freeman says, that "the job market . . . is too weak to attract increasing numbers of U.S. students." What's crucial is sustaining our technological vitality. Despite the pay, America seems to have ample scientists and engineers. But half or more of new scientific and engineering PhDs are immigrants; we need to remain open to foreign-born talent.

Article 11:
http://www.unionvoice.org/washtech/notice-description.tcl?newsletter_id=1471780
Microsoft: The Forest and the Trees
Bill Gates is having trouble finding good quality programmers to work as software engineers. Were so moved by his pleas to an uncaring congress that we want to help.

Article 12:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45582
Two years ago, our tireless troubadour of globalism, the Wall Street Journal, was beside itself with giddiness and excitement. "A Free Trade Majority" is born, said the Journal, hailing as midwife Nancy Pelosi for leading a third of all House Democrats behind free-trade pacts with Chile and Singapore. The Journal mocked the 27 GOP dissidents as union poodles, Northeast liberals, textile-state reactionaries and "protectionists of the Pat Buchanan stripe [who] could fit into a phone booth." Well, something is slouching toward Washington to be born, all right. But it does not appear to be a free trade majority.

NOTE: Text not supplied for 13-15. You will have to click the link to read the article.

Article 13:
http://www.vdare.com/rubenstein/050810_nd.htm
National Data, By Edwin S. Rubenstein
Employment Report Shows Immigrants Displacing Americans -- Again
Which brings us to the point we keep making in VDARE.COM because the Mainstream Media wont get the message: immigrants are getting a disproportionate share of those jobs. Americans are being shouldered aside.

Article 14:
http://www.vdare.com/roberts/050808_crumble.htm
Watching the Economy Crumble
The US continues its descent into the Third World, but you would never know it from news reports of the Bureau of Labor Statistics July payroll jobs release. The media gives a bare bones jobs report that is misleading. The public heard that 207,000 jobs were created in July. If not a reassuring figure, at least it is not a disturbing one. On the surface things look to be pretty much OK. It is when you look into the composition of these jobs that the concern arises.

Article 15:
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/8/10/201400.shtml
The New GOP Betrays America
Diane Alden
The biblical truth "Hope deferred makes the heart sick" described my state of mind on July 27, 2005. That was when the House Republican leadership stopped the clock on the CAFTA vote because they didn't like the way it was going.

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http://www.casperstartribune.net/articles/2005/08/09/ap/hitech/d8brtt300.txt

2006 Need for High-Tech Workers Nearly Met

By SUZANNE GAMBOA
WASHINGTON - Employers are closing in on the limit for hiring foreign high-tech workers for jobs next year, roughly two months before the start of the 2006 fiscal year, an immigration official said Monday.

The number of applications for the jobs, many of them in high-tech companies, was nearly 52,000 as of Thursday, with 22,383 applications for H1-B visas approved and 29,556 pending.

"The cap will definitely be hit before Oct. 1, which was when it was hit last year," said Chris Bentley, spokesman for the agency that is part of the Department of Homeland Security.

H1-B visas are granted to foreigners in specialty professions such as computer programming. Under the program, employers must pay foreign workers the prevailing wage for their job fields and show that qualified U.S. workers are not being passed over.

Federal law provides 65,000 H1-B visas every fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. Of those, 6,800 are set aside for workers from Chile and Singapore.

Bentley said he could not predict when the cap would be hit because a flood of applications could come in on a single day or be submitted over several days.

Employers, particularly high-tech companies, have long argued that not enough H1-B visas are available.

Congress temporarily raised the number to 195,000 during the high-tech boom. In April, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, in a rare visit to Washington, lobbied the Bush administration to lift the limit on H1-B visas, saying anyone with good computer science training is not unemployed. Unions and other critics say the program allows businesses to fill jobs with cheaper foreign labor.

Meanwhile, employers have used about half of the H1-B visas available this year for foreign workers with advanced degrees in math and science. Congress provided another 20,000 for foreigners with master's degrees or doctorates in those fields, although the visas didn't become available until May. About 8,200 applications for those visas for the 2006 fiscal year have been approved or are pending.

On the Net:

H1-B cap count: http://uscis.gov/graphics/services/tempbenefits/cap.htm

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http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050720/workers_of_the_real_world.php

Workers Of The Real World
Jonathan Tasini
July 20, 2005
Jonathan Tasini is president of the Economic Future Group and writes his "Working In America" columns for TomPaine.com on an occasional basis.

For the past 20 years, weve been barraged by a relentless mantra: Education is the magic bullet to survive in the global economy. Virtually every politician, armed with rhetoric from academics, tells American workers that, essentially, they are too dumb to make it in the "New Economy." Save yourself, they exhort -- go back to school. Prepare yourself -- get an advanced degree. But this is utter nonsense.

Lets talk about the real world. Todays global economy is about one thing: labor costs. If a company can move to China to employ workers making 35 cents an hour -- whoosh, they are gone from America. High-tech jobs have been moving offshore for years, first to places like Ireland, and now to India. The world is awash in highly skilled, highly educated and cheap workers.

The hard fact is that in virtually every industry, foreign workers across the globe are increasingly as skilled and productive as American workers. India, for example, has a highly trained, highly skilled workforce capable of pumping out new software, industrial design and other new technological innovations. In India, the starting salary of a software engineer is about $5,000, and senior engineers make $15,000; the country has at least half a million information technology professionals eager to work for wages that are a fraction of the going rate here.

And China is on the verge of dispelling the notion that it is simply the worlds manufacturer of cheap goods. China will "soon be competing for the higher value-added jobs that were once considered the birthright of the industrialized world," writes Oded Shenkar in The Chinese Century.

No one is saying that education is a bad thing in the abstract. And certainly it will help some workers get a better job. But a degree in software engineering is the wrong answer to the global economy because it addresses the wrong question -- how do workers compete when skills are a sideshow to the relentless hammering down of wages?

Even some proponents of so-called "free trade" are starting to be more honest. Last year, Paul Craig Roberts -- a former high-level Treasury Department official in the Reagan administration -- and Sen. Charles Schumer wrote in The New York Times that the basic principles of "free trade" are being undermined by the global economy. In the op-ed entitled, "Second Thoughts on Free Trade," the self-described "free-traders" admitted that, as technology and capital flash around the world on the back of high-speed band-with, "...strong educational systems are producing tens of millions of intelligent, motivated workers in the developing world, particularly in India and China, who are as capable as the most highly educated workers in the developed world but available at a tiny fraction of the cost." Their conclusion: "While some economists and elected officials suggest that all we need is a robust retraining for laid-off, we do not believe retraining alone is an answer, because almost the entire range of "knowledge jobs" can be done overseas."

Why have we been sold the "education is the future" line? Its the corporate version of the hustler in Times Square who lures people into a con game -- you try to keep track of a pea as the hustler shuffles three cups but, most times, of course, you point to the wrong cup; you think youve kept track of the target but, whoosh, its gone...along with your 20 bucks.

In this case, the "con" is so-called "free trade," which has oiled the machinery through which corporations now glide effortlessly around the globe in search of the cheapest labor. But, that unassailable economic truth has to be hidden or, at least, tempered by some calming promise that there is some positive alternative that awaits every American worker. Otherwise, the truth would stand nakedly exposed, endangering the grand economic plan that unfolds as public and corporate policy. Voila -- education as fig leaf.

But, more important, why have we accepted the hustle? I believe that part of the answer can be found in our embrace of American exceptionalism. How many times have you heard politicians of all ideological stripes, as well as other community leaders, proclaim that this country has the best, smartest and hardest-working people in the world? That line of thinking, of course, means that no one should fear the economic future because we are just better than everyone else. Anyone who stands in the way of the New Economy -- for example, by resisting so-called "free trade" -- is simply a "protectionist" who is afraid of the future. And, as a country, we have bought American economic exceptionalism as another pillar of the larger frame of patriotic fervor and national pride.

Of course, on further examination, its preposterous to think that one nation has a harder-working, smarter group of citizens. All any collection of people need is the right set of tools -- which now are broadly deployed across the globe. Today, the rallying cry of American worker exceptionalism sounds hollow, a cheap slogan tinged with racism and nationalism, and certainly not appropriate to the real world.

By tossing off the notion that they are special, American workers will realize that training and education are neither problems nor solutions to a global economic system based on wage competition. And perhaps that clarity will drive U.S. workers to see foreign workers not as their enemies or competitors but as their allies who are caught in the same economic vise.

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http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2005/08/08/us_could_lose_high_tech_edge_study_says/

US could lose high-tech edge, study says
By Robert Gavin, Globe Staff | August 8, 2005

China and India are educating so many scientists and engineers that it is all but certain that the United States will lose some of its technological advantage and will suffer difficult economic adjustments, according to a recently published paper.

By 2010, Chinese universities will graduate more students with science and engineering doctorates than their US counterparts; India will also gain ground, according to the paper, by Richard Freeman, a professor in Harvard University's economics department. And once these countries achieve a large enough pool of technical talent, they can challenge established trade patterns in which the United States exports advanced technology and developing nations produce commodities.

Freeman argues that the growing legions of scientists and engineers, underpinned by huge labor forces, could allow China and India to produce both cutting-edge products and low-cost commodities. He warns that the outsourcing of technical jobs is a harbinger of US economic dislocations.

''When you combine low-wage workers with the ability to compete with your technology," Freeman said in an interview, ''then you have a problem."

Freeman's paper, published in June by the nonprofit National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, came to light as US corporations warned again of shortages of technical talent -- particularly American-born talent. Last week, 15 business groups called for a commitment to double by 2015 the number of bachelor's degrees in science technology, engineering, and mathematics; to strengthen math and science programs in public schools; and to encourage students to pursue careers in these fields.

The nation today relies heavily on foreign-born scientists and engineers, who make up more than half of the doctoral-level scientists and engineers younger than 45, according to Census data cited by Freeman. But businesses have voiced fear that strict immigration policies following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and expanding opportunities overseas will deplete this pool.

In the 2003-04 academic year, for example, foreign enrollment in US colleges and universities fell for the first time in more than 30 years, the Institute of International Education in New York said.

''Foreign workers have allowed us to remain competitive, and businesses across the board are very, very worried," said Chris Goode, senior director of public policy at EMC Corp., a Hopkinton data storage company. ''We need a sense of urgency like after Sputnik," the Soviet satellite that was a catalyst in the space race.

Freeman said businesses need more than a sense of urgency: They must pay more.

In his paper, Freeman argues that fewer American-born workers pursue science and engineering not only because they have more career choices than foreign workers, but also because some choices offer better wages. Average annual salaries for lawyers, for example, amounted to more than $20,000 above those for doctoral-level engineers and $50,000 more than those for life scientists with doctorates, according to Census data that Freeman cites in the paper.

In contrast, science and engineering offer many foreign workers earnings that few occupations in their countries can match, not to mention ''a ticket to the US job market" and even higher comparative earnings, Freeman says.

US companies, he added in an interview, have been quite willing to encourage a foreign supply of technical workers. This has allowed them to pay lower wages, but it has also created conditions that make science and engineering less attractive to Americans.

''You can't say, 'I want more visas' and 'I expect more Americans to enter the field,' " Freeman said. ''The thing that always strikes me about these business guys is they never say, 'We should be paying higher salaries.' "

Increasing financial incentives is just part of the solution, Freeman said. The technological preeminence of the United States will erode because a country with 5 percent of the world's population cannot have an indefinite hold on a third of the world's scientific and engineering researchers.

The spread of technology around the world will prove a benefit, but US workers are likely to suffer lost jobs, Freeman writes. Robert Gavin can be reached at rgavin@globe.com.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/10/business/worldbusiness/10intern.html

August 10, 2005

M.B.A. Students Bypassing Wall Street for a Summer in India
By SARITHA RAI

BANGALORE, India, Aug. 9 - This summer, Omar Maldonado and Erik Simonsen, both students at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University, did something different.

Bypassing internship opportunities on Wall Street, just a subway ride away from their Greenwich Village campus, they went to India to spend the summer at an outsourcing company in Gurgaon, a suburb of New Delhi.

"The India opportunity grabbed me," said Mr. Maldonado, a Boston native whose family is from the Dominican Republic. "I wanted to get a global feel for investment banking and not just a Wall Street perspective."

He and Mr. Simonsen, both 27, are spending three months at Copal Partners, an outsourcing firm with 100 analysts. It produces merger and acquisition pitch books and provides equity and credit analysis and other research to global banks and consultant groups, including those on Wall Street.

Mr. Maldonado and Mr. Simonsen, of Riverside, Calif., are part of a virtual invasion of India by American students. Graduate students from top schools in the United States, most from master of business administration programs, are vying for internships at India's biggest private companies. For many, outsourcing companies are the destinations of choice.

India is not just a line on an American student's risumi, said Kiran Karnik, president of the outsourcing industry trade body, Nasscom, "but also culturally fulfilling." Many students travel while in India, giving them a view of the country and its long history, he said.

Nasscom is now trying to track the ever-increasing numbers of foreign interns. Many are in India to study globalization firsthand, Mr. Karnik said; that is often not possible in China because, unlike India, English is not widely spoken there.

Mr. Karnik said he had met more than a dozen interns from the Harvard Business School who were spending this summer in India. "I expect a bigger horde of students to arrive next year because the ones here said they had a great time and will go home to talk about it," he said.

Elsewhere, too, the trend is on the rise. Four students from Fuqua School of Business at Duke University are interning in India, compared with only one last year and none in 2003. Of this year's interns, three are at Infosys Technologies, an outsourcing company in Bangalore, and the fourth is in Chennai at GlobalGiving, an organization based in Bethesda, Md., that helps support social, economic and environmental projects around the world.

At Georgetown University, Stanley D. Nollen, a professor of international business at the Robert Emmett McDonough School of Business, said India was of growing interest to students.

"No longer is India thought of as a land of snake charmers and bride burnings," he said. "Now India means the world's best software services, and increasingly, pharmaceuticals and auto parts."

Professor Nollen directs the school's programs for M.B.A. students in India, which include "residencies" - academic courses that are centered on consulting projects for companies operating in India. A group of 49 students arrived this month and went to companies like Philips India Software and MindTree Consulting, both in Bangalore; the motorcycle-making unit of Eicher in Chennai; and the ICICI Bank in Mumbai.

India can be a jolt to a first-time American visitor. In Gurgaon, a small town despite its tall office complexes and shiny new malls, Mr. Maldonado and Mr. Simonsen share an apartment where the power fails several times a day. Temperatures are regularly above 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer.

The two men said they came prepared to find inadequate infrastructure, but were not prepared for the daily frustrations of Gurgaon. There is no mass transportation system, and shopping, even for something as basic as an umbrella, can take hours. They rumble to work in an auto rickshaw - a motorized three-wheeler that seats two and is a ubiquitous form of transport in Indian cities.

But the sophistication of the work being done in Copal's Gurgaon office contrasts with the chaotic city outside. Mr. Simonsen said he was amazed. "I came expecting to see number-crunching and spreadsheet type of work; I didn't expect American banks to farm out intricate analytics," he said. The two students are working on a project that analyzes investment opportunities for clients across 23 countries.

Infosys Technologies, the country's second-largest outsourcing firm after Tata Consultancy Services, discovered how popular India had become as an internship destination for Americans when the company began recruiting: for the 40 intern spots at its Bangalore headquarters, the company received 9,000 applications. Only those with a cumulative grade-point average of 3.6 or more made it to a short list, and then they were put through two rounds of interviews.

The final 40, who cut a wide academic swathe from engineering schools like M.I.T. and Carnegie Mellon to business schools like Stanford, Wharton and Kellogg, have since arrived on campus for average stays of three months. The interns work in areas from marketing to technology. They live in a 500-room hotel complex on Infosys's expansive campus in the suburbs of Bangalore, exchanging coupons for meals at the food court and riding the company bus downtown to decompress at the many pubs and bars.

Among the Infosys interns is Caton Burwell, 28, from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. "India has come to symbolize globalization and I wanted to participate in the workings of the global economy," he said. "Besides, it would look great on my risumi."

Mr. Burwell said that, since arriving in India, he had developed a better grasp of the workings of the global economy and the logic behind the choices companies and countries make. "Being here is a powerful experience; it is impossible not to think differently," he said.

Also, his attitude toward outsourcing has changed since meeting Indian employees, who he said work very hard and care a great deal about the quality of their work. "To come here, meet these people, and to return home and turn your back on outsourcing is hard," he said.

Jeffrey Anders, 29, from the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T., is similarly stirred. Mr. Anders is halfway through his internship at the business process outsourcing division of Hewlett-Packard India in Bangalore.

"I can't help but feel that I am witnessing the creation of a new global economic order, a new reality that most people back home don't realize is coming," said Mr. Anders.

After a meeting with the recruiting head of Hewlett-Packard India's back-office unit at a conference at M.I.T., Mr. Anders came to India to help build a group of Indian economists and statisticians to perform complex analytics and predictive modeling for Western multinationals. "These highly educated and qualified people are not stopping at call centers and back-office work," he said. "They are getting ready to compete for every job."

Meanwhile, Indian companies are looking at summer internships as a way of building a diverse work culture.

"Bringing investment bankers here provides our Indian team a perspective and context of Wall Street," said Joel Perlman, co-founder of Copal Partners, a company based in London that has four employees each in New York and London and another 100 or so in India.

Other companies, and even the schools themselves, are looking at internships as a step toward attracting bright young Americans to work in India. Infosys, for instance, hired Joshua Bornstein, a former intern from Claremont McKenna College in California, nearly two years ago as its first American employee based in India.

"In this increasingly global economy, we would expect to see India become an even greater source of employment for our students," Sheryle Dirks, director of the Career Management Center at Fuqua, said.

Mr. Anders, from the Sloan school, works in a new Hewlett-Packard building, where he sometimes works out at the gym in the basement and eats at the cafeteria on the terrace. The employees work in open cubicles, similar to those in offices anywhere in the West. His team consists of four Indians, all with M.B.A.'s like him, and they operate globally, collaborating with teams in California and elsewhere.

Interns like Mr. Anders are getting a close view of social changes that are happening in India. Outsourcing has created thousands of better-paying jobs and spawned communities of young people who can afford cars, apartments and iPods.

"I thought the stipend was the down side," said Mr. Anders, "but coming here is a priceless experience."

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http://www.rednova.com/news/technology/203412/illegal_immigrants_obtain_licenses_to_transport_hazardous_materials/

Illegal Immigrants Obtain Licenses to Transport Hazardous Materials
Aug. 10--WASHINGTON -- A federal crackdown on fraud at state motor vehicle departments across the country has nabbed more than a dozen illegal immigrants licensed to transport hazardous materials.

While none of those apprehended has any known links to terrorism, federal agents said Thursday that the recent busts have revealed a significant threat to homeland security. In one case, a Pakistani man ordered to leave the United States nine years ago was instead driving a tanker truck filled with gasoline for Exxon.

"This is a national security issue," said Elissa Brown, the special agent in charge of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's office in Chicago, where six men were taken into custody.

"Illegal aliens should not have the freedom to transport hazardous materials throughout the United States."

The Department of Homeland Security has begun deportation proceedings against the six illegal immigrants in Chicago, who'd obtained commercial drivers' licenses that allowed them to carry hazardous materials. The men are from Belize, Jordan, Mexico, Mongolia and the Philippines.

In Baltimore, a federal grand jury this week indicted Mansoor Hassan on six counts of making false statements about his citizenship, according to court documents. In 1996, a U.S. immigration judge ordered Hassan to leave the country. He didn't and later got a Maryland commercial driver's license. Hassan drove tanker trucks for three different oil companies before federal authorities caught up with him, they said.

In Florida, more than 100 people have been arrested since late April -- including three Florida motor vehicle department employees -- for distributing some 2,000 drivers' licenses to illegal immigrants as part of massive fraud ring. Thirteen of them were hazardous material commercial drivers' licenses, officials said. Some of those arrested had been convicted on weapons or drug charges or for reckless driving.

Many states have strengthened their hazardous materials license screening since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. However, state laws remain inconsistent, and Customs says it remains relatively easy to obtain fraudulent documents that can be used to get a driver's license. It's unknown how many illegal immigrants obtained such licenses prior to Sept. 11.

The bipartisan commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks criticized sometimes lax state standards for obtaining drivers' licenses. Eighteen of the 19 hijackers in those attacks had valid drivers' licenses or state-issued identification cards.

Earlier this year, President Bush signed a law that requires all driver's license applicants to provide proof of citizenship or legal residency. States have three years to comply.

Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau, said other driver's license fraud investigations are ongoing.

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Denver-based Western Energy Advisors helps China National Petroleum and its subsidiaries sign drilling contracts with U.S. companies. It has contracts to import two Chinese rigs and crews in September.

"Since energy prices are up, the cost of acquiring leases and drilling is up," Croyle said. "On the time side, every lease acquired has a time limit on it that costs the operator, the Bureau of Land Management and the public money if the lease isn't exploited."

As of Aug. 2, Colorado had 80 rigs, reports the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.

Croyle said there's an estimated shortage of 200 rigs in the region. As a result, the cost to run a rig has jumped to anywhere from $13,000 to $16,000 a day from $8,500 a year ago, industry executives say. A rig takes between 10 and 20 days to drill a well.

"So companies are going all around the country, and now all around the world, to find equipment and people to exploit the opportunity," Croyle said, adding that Chinese rigs are paid competitive rates.

Meanwhile, the Colorado Oil and Gas Commission will talk to the companies to make sure "they are taking necessary precautions for imported rigs," said Tricia Beaver, the commission's hearings manager.

The deals have raised political hackles in Colorado.

Rep. John Salazar, D-Colo., whose district includes some of the state's largest gas fields, held meetings with energy companies and community leaders in Garfield and Moffat counties last week. Salazar is not happy with the Chinese imports.

"There are plenty of people in rural Colorado who need good paying jobs and could do the job if we just took the few months to train them," Salazar said. "These companies are trying to cut costs at the expense of American jobs."

Calgary's EnCana Corp., a top gas producer in Colorado, considered hiring Chinese companies to drill wells in Garfield County but backed off those plans.

The controversy comes in the wake of Chinese energy company CNOOC Ltd.'s decision to abandon its $18.4 billion offer to acquire Unocal Corp. following an outcry from inside the Beltway.

Political backlash against Chinese companies didn't have anything to do with EnCana's decision, said Roger Beimens, president of EnCana Oil and Gas, the Denver-based U.S. subsidiary of EnCana.

The local energy industry pointed out that anti-Chinese sentiments run contrary to America's economic interests.

"The rest of the world, including China, is catching up with the U.S. in terms of technology and skilled workers," said Fred Julander, founder of Denver-based Julander Energy Co. "At the end of the day . . . we have to rely on each other to improve our economies and our standards of living."

For The Woodlands, Texas-based Presco Inc., contracting a rig from China was simply a solution to the long-standing problem of a shortage of rigs and crews in Garfield County.

Presco leases 8,000 acres in Garfield County, some of it near a controversial area called Project Rulison where an underground nuclear test in 1969 left much of the natural gas radioactive.

The company has been there for more than four years but drilled its first well in 2003.

Being a small company and competing with giants such as EnCana Corp. and Williams Cos. Inc. is not easy, said Kim Bennetts, Presco's vice president of exploration and production.

"We had a hard time locating a rig because of activity by larger companies like EnCana and Williams, which have most of the rigs under contract," Bennetts said.

Bennetts said Presco discussed importing Chinese rigs with Sajjad Chaudhry, president of Houston- based GTS and a Pakistani immigrant who has been living in the U.S. for many years.

Bennetts and Chaudhry traveled to China's Sichuan province in January and met with executives of HongHua Ltd., manufacturers of rigs.

Satisfied with HongHua's professional manner and high quality of rigs, GTS signed a joint venture agreement with the Chinese company. And Presco signed a contract with GTS to operate a HongHua-built rig for two years, Bennetts said.

The rig was shipped from China and delivered to Rifle in late June. It was assembled in July and started drilling its first well last week. It is scheduled to drill up to four wells this year. Gohar Fayyaz, GTS' head engineer and also a Pakistani immigrant, is overseeing the site.

Four Chinese engineers from HongHua helped set up the rig. Those engineers will be stationed in Garfield County for another few months to ensure the rig operates smoothly, Bennetts said.

"If this rig operates efficiently, we have the option to contract for additional rigs," Bennetts said. "We will make a decision this fall."

Meanwhile, residents of Garfield County and activists remain concerned.

"What's happening now is very much like the boom and bust cycles that had happened in Colorado years ago," said Pete Kolbenschlag of the Colorado Environmental Coalition. "Our concerns are not that the rigs and crews come from China or Pakistan.

"Our concerns are that oil and gas development is happening in an unsustainable fashion. We don't have the workers and the equipment, yet we are rushing into it because it's all about making money for the industry."

Colorado's connections to China

GTS Drilling Services: A Houston-based company signed a partnership with HongHua Ltd. of China to import drilling rigs. The first rig was shipped from China to Rifle in June and began drilling its first well last week. It will drill up to four wells this year. GTS has been hired by The Woodlands, Texas-based Presco Inc., which has leased 8,000 acres in Garfield County.

Golden Bear Drilling & Services: A Denver-based company that will import rigs from subsidiaries of China National Petroleum Corp. Two rigs are scheduled to be shipped from China to Garfield and Moffat counties in September. Golden Bear has not revealed the names of the companies contracting the rigs. It plans to import 10 rigs and experienced Chinese crews to operate at least five of them to this region in the next couple of years.

7. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/08/AR2005080801064.html

2006 Need for High-Tech Workers Nearly Met

By SUZANNE GAMBOA
The Associated Press
Monday, August 8, 2005; 8:42 PM

WASHINGTON -- Employers are closing in on the limit for hiring foreign high-tech workers for jobs next year, roughly two months before the start of the 2006 fiscal year, an immigration official said Monday.

The number of applications for the jobs, many of them in high-tech companies, was nearly 52,000 as of Thursday, with 22,383 applications for H1-B visas approved and 29,556 pending.

"The cap will definitely be hit before Oct. 1, which was when it was hit last year," said Chris Bentley, spokesman for the agency that is part of the Department of Homeland Security.

H1-B visas are granted to foreigners in specialty professions such as computer programming. Under the program, employers must pay foreign workers the prevailing wage for their job fields and show that qualified U.S. workers are not being passed over.

Federal law provides 65,000 H1-B visas every fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. Of those, 6,800 are set aside for workers from Chile and Singapore.

Bentley said he could not predict when the cap would be hit because a flood of applications could come in on a single day or be submitted over several days.

Employers, particularly high-tech companies, have long argued that not enough H1-B visas are available.

Congress temporarily raised the number to 195,000 during the high-tech boom. In April, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, in a rare visit to Washington, lobbied the Bush administration to lift the limit on H1-B visas, saying anyone with good computer science training is not unemployed. Unions and other critics say the program allows businesses to fill jobs with cheaper foreign labor.

Meanwhile, employers have used about half of the H1-B visas available this year for foreign workers with advanced degrees in math and science. Congress provided another 20,000 for foreigners with master's degrees or doctorates in those fields, although the visas didn't become available until May. About 8,200 applications for those visas for the 2006 fiscal year have been approved or are pending.

8. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/235368_tbrf05.html

Friday, August 5, 2005

REGIONAL NEWS

Cuts in customer-support positions at Microsoft include 33 Issaquah jobs

Microsoft Corp. is cutting 72 positions at customer-support centers in Issaquah; Charlotte, N.C.; and Los Colinas, Texas, and moving the work to operations in Canada and India.

Thirty-three people in Issaquah are losing their jobs, Microsoft spokesman Lou Gellos said. About 1,800 people work at the company's customer support center in Issaquah, he said. The company also is creating 16 new jobs in customer support.

The cuts are part of Microsoft's strategy to shift some customer support calls to third-party vendors. Gellos said about 95 percent of the company's "first-tier" calls are currently handled by third parties. About 80 percent of the work that was handled at the three U.S.-based call centers will be shifted to a company in Canada, with the remainder handled at Microsoft's facility in Bangalore, India.

9. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

http://www.siliconindia.com/shownewsdata.asp?newsno=29066

GM to increase component purchasing from India

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

NEW DELHI: As part of a cost cutting plan, GM is looking at increasing its India-sourced component purchases. It plans to buy $1 billion worth of parts from Indian auto component suppliers by 2008, if there proves to be major savings in its strategy. $1 billion should buy a lot of automotive parts in India.

According to GM, parts made in India are 25-30 percent cheaper than those from Europe and American and 15 percent cheaper than parts made in South Korean and Mexico. The cost cutting does not come at a cost of quality either. Other manufacturers, such as Ford, Daimler Chrysler, VW, and Volvo, are looking to source parts from developing countries where the labor cost differential is favorable.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/09/AR2005080901164.html

It's Not a Science Gap (Yet)

By Robert J. Samuelson
Wednesday, August 10, 2005; A17

A nation's economic power could once be judged by tons of steel or megawatts of electricity. But we have moved beyond these simple indicators or even updated versions, such as computer chips. All advanced societies now depend so completely on technology that their economic might is often measured by their number of scientists and engineers. By that indicator, America's economic power is waning. We're producing a shrinking share of the world's technological talent. China and India are only the newest competitors to erode our position. We need to consider the implications, because they're more complicated than they seem.

As late as 1975, the United States graduated more engineering and scientific PhDs than Europe and more than three times as many as all of Asia, reports Harvard University economist Richard Freeman in a recent paper. No more. The European Union now graduates about 50 percent more, and Asia is slightly ahead of us. By Freeman's estimates, China has reached almost half the U.S. total and will easily overtake us by 2010. Among engineers with bachelor's degrees, the gaps are already huge. In 2001 China graduated 220,000 engineers, against about 60,000 for the United States, the National Science Foundation reports.

Freeman also documents a second worrisome reality: U.S. scientists and engineers aren't well paid, considering their skills and -- especially for PhDs -- the required time for a degree. This means, Freeman says, that "the job market . . . is too weak to attract increasing numbers of U.S. students." Consider some pay comparisons. From 1990 to 2000, average incomes for engineering PhDs increased from $65,000 to $91,000, up 41 percent; PhDs in natural sciences (physics, chemistry) rose from $56,000 to $73,000, up 30 percent. Meanwhile, average doctors' incomes increased from $99,000 to $156,000, up 58 percent; and lawyers went from $77,000 to $115,000, up 49 percent.

The true situation may be worse. Next to other elites, scientific and engineering PhDs fare poorly. Look at the 891 MBA recipients of the Harvard Business School's class of 2005. At an average age of 27, they command a median starting salary of $100,000. It's true that the two-year cost of a Harvard MBA is steep ($120,000 and up), and four-fifths of the students are left with debts averaging $81,000. But these new Harvard MBAs also got huge one-time bonuses; the median was $43,000. As for scientific and engineering PhDs, they typically require seven to eight years to finish their degrees, notes Freeman.

All in all, the outlook seems bleak. There's already a whiff of media hysteria. After examining these and other trends, Fortune magazine recently headlined a cover story: "AMERICA: THE 97-LB WEAKLING? . . . We're Losing Our Competitive Edge."

Not so fast. The grim prognosis wrongly presumes that another country's gain must be our loss. Hardly. If a Swedish or Japanese company cured cancer or invented a super-efficient car, Americans would benefit quickly -- just as Swedes and Japanese have benefited from technologies first developed in the United States. If Microsoft's research center in Beijing (to take one oft-cited example) develops stunning new software, the advances will soon be incorporated in Microsoft products worldwide.

It's also forgotten that the United States still dominates global research and development. In 1981 American companies and laboratories accounted for 45 percent of research and development among the members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which are generally the world's richest nations. In 2000 the U.S. share was still 44 percent -- despite the increase in other countries' scientists and engineers and a decline in U.S. defense research and development.

We must be doing something right. Our decentralized research and development system (corporate, government and university laboratories, venture capitalists, and freelance inventors) excels at moving ideas to market and constantly reinvents itself. Here's an example: In 1980 Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act to encourage universities to license discoveries to companies. It worked. In 2002 universities earned $915 million from licensing fees, almost four times the 1993 level, according to economists Richard Jensen and Celestine Chukumba of Notre Dame.

Not every new Chinese or Indian engineer and scientist threatens an American, through outsourcing or some other channel. Actually, most don't. As countries become richer, they need more scientists and engineers simply to make their societies work: to design bridges and buildings, to maintain communications systems, and to test products. This is a natural process. The U.S. share of the world's technology workforce has declined for decades and will continue to do so. By itself, this is not dangerous.

The dangers arise when other countries use new technologies to erode America's advantage in weaponry; that obviously is an issue with China. We are also threatened if other countries skew their economic policies to attract an unnatural share of strategic industries -- electronics, biotechnology and aerospace, among others. That is an issue with China, some other Asian countries and Europe (Airbus).

What's crucial is sustaining our technological vitality. Despite the pay, America seems to have ample scientists and engineers. But half or more of new scientific and engineering PhDs are immigrants; we need to remain open to foreign-born talent. We need to maintain spectacular rewards for companies that succeed in commercializing new products and technologies. The prospect of a big payoff compensates for mediocre pay and fuels ambition. Finally, we must scour the world for good ideas. No country ever had a monopoly on new knowledge, and none ever will.

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http://www.unionvoice.org/washtech/notice-description.tcl?newsletter_id=1471780

Microsoft: The Forest and the Trees

Bill Gates is having trouble finding good quality programmers to work as software engineers.

Were so moved by his pleas to an uncaring congress that we want to help. It's not fair to make the poor man suffer through searching the entire world with a stack of visas in hand when we know that the people he needs are right here in the USA.

It's us, that's right, us.

Bill has said, "Microsoft is trying to hire every great college graduate who has basic computer-science skills", and if you have a degree you are a college graduate. You also certainly have "Basic computer-science skills" if you have any experience at all.

But the company prefers to hire new college graduates. You might be a little bit too old, but I don't actually want to believe that that means age discrimination.

So we're beginning to understand when he says, "It's a big problem for us that we can't get these great students," and goes on to explain, "I'd certainly get rid of the H-1B visa caps."

So heres how you can help Bill out of this jam. Show him that if he cant find enough new college grads that he should take a look at experienced college grads.

Send him your resume and tell him that youre ready to report for duty.

billg@microsoft.com

http://members.microsoft.com/careers/default.mspx resumes

Send a letter to the following decision maker(s):
Mr. Bill Gates

Below is the sample letter:

Dear [decision maker name automatically inserted here],

Heard you're having a hard time finding quality people and I wanted to help out by sending my resume.

Please let me know when I can expect an interview.

Sincerely,

Gerard Wevers

12. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45582

Wednesday, August 3, 2005

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Two years ago, our tireless troubadour of globalism, the Wall Street Journal, was beside itself with giddiness and excitement.

"A Free Trade Majority" is born, said the Journal, hailing as midwife Nancy Pelosi for leading a third of all House Democrats behind free-trade pacts with Chile and Singapore. The Journal mocked the 27 GOP dissidents as union poodles, Northeast liberals, textile-state reactionaries and "protectionists of the Pat Buchanan stripe [who] could fit into a phone booth."

Well, something is slouching toward Washington to be born, all right. But it does not appear to be a free trade majority. Here is how the alarmed editorialists of the Financial Times described what went down in the CAFTA vote Wednesday night on the Hill.

"The White House and the Republican leadership had to resort to every trick in the book to get the bill passed. Mr. Bush and Dick Cheney ... worked the Republican caucus in person. House leaders cut side-deals and loaded pork on the highways and energy bills. With the free trade cause alone insufficient to carry a majority, the bill's sponsors talked national security: the need to protect fragile democracies against the leftist populism of Hugh Chavez and Fidel Castro."

Concluded the FT, "The narrow margins and the intensely partisan vote are matters of serious concern."

You got that right, fellas.

To win a 217-215 vote for a trade deal with five tiny Central American countries and the Dominican Republic, with combined economies not 1 percent of our own, the GOP leadership had to hold voting open for 45 minutes after the allotted 15 minutes expired. Otherwise, they would have lost. As for the WSJ heroine of '03, Pelosi, she led 185 Democrats in opposition. Only 15 Democrats voted for CAFTA.

Query: If, two years ago, the "protectionists of the Pat Buchanan stripe could fit into a phone booth," what can we say today of the Wall Street Journal's "CAFTA 15"?

The Journal seems to be awakening to the revolution even as it cannot understand the causes. On Monday, it wrote: "The political recriminations from the cliff-hanger passage of [CAFTA] are even worse than we thought. Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, is contemplating revenge against the 15 Democrats ..."

The editorial then bugled the cavalry, "We trust the business community will appreciate that Democrats who break with their party's new liberal isolationism deserve support."

What the Journal is doing here is congratulating Democrats for selling out their constituents and signaling its corporate chums to reward them for the betrayal with campaign cash from the political war chests of the Business Roundtable, Fortune 500 and U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Journal is calling for corporate payoffs for the Democratic turncoats.

We all know how the game is played. But the Journal and its con-celebrants of free trade should ask themselves why, if their case for free trade is so strong, their logic so compelling and the benefits so manifest, they need to bribe congressmen and, as Rep. Jim Kolbe sweetly put it, "break arms into a thousand pieces."

If you have a good case, why does the president have to go to the Hill and play the Sandinista card?

The free-trade True Believers need to ask themselves why they are losing Congress when they have all the king's horses and all the king's men behind them: The New York Times and Washington Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, the Heritage Foundation, Cato and Brookings, National Review and the New Republic, Congress and the White House, and most of the corporate lobbyists and big campaign contributors.

Answer: The free-traders are losing Congress because they have lost the country. Every community has now seen factories shut and jobs shipped overseas. Working men and women know their wages are barely keeping up with inflation. They worry about their country's dependency on foreign goods and foreign money. They all now have friends who have lost jobs to outsourcing.

They see the foreign folks pouring in to take jobs from neighbors, and they know the mass invasion of America by armies of illegal aliens is depressing wages, no matter how often the politicians and their corporate contributors say, "Hey, it's a free lunch." They do not need a degree in economics to know a $700 billion trade deficit says something is wrong with America.

A revolution is brewing over the U.S. government's failure to defend America's borders and its betrayal of working Americans via the conscious export of their jobs and importation of foreign labor to compete with U.S. workers at half the wages. The eventual rout of the open-borders, free-trade crowd approaches. That's the real meaning of the midnight rescue of CAFTA.

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