Permanent Pinkslips
by DeAnne De Witt

Almost every American IT worker I know is out of work, or has taken a non-IT job to pay the bills. From engineers to programmers to technical writers, editors, and support personnel, every one of them has been laid off in the last year, and they have no prospects for finding new gigs anytime in the future. At least not in a state that's been pillaged by Yahoo, Dell, Compaq, EDS, American Airlines/SABRE, Nortel, Texas Instruments, Motorola, Ericsson, Lucent, Alcatel, Fujitsu Ltd., JDS Uniphase, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, Enron, Worldcom and IBM, all in one year. Those are just the big players that laid off more than 400 American workers at a time.

Whereas, all the H-1B visa holders I know are still employed. At serf wages, in horrid working conditions…but employed in IT nonetheless.

In fiscal year 2001, the IT work force in the United States shrank by 528,000 positions, according to a recent survey by the Information Technology Association of America. At the same time, the INS approved 163,200 H-1B visa applications, and approved 28,000 more employer requests for H-1B workers in the last three months of 2001, bringing the total number of H-1Bs in the US to 710,000. Each one of those H-1B workers is entitled to work here for 6 years before renewing their visa.

A report by Department of Labor Inspector General (IG) revealed that the system is often abused by unscrupulous employers, and does nothing to protect United States workers.

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