Laid Off for Third Time
by AnonymousLink to article
I’m a 48 year old, African-American male, with a Masters in electrical engineering, and I’m currently looking for work. This is the third time I’ve been laid-off and I am no longer considering full time employment as a possibility. My focus is on contract only positions now because all of the jobs I’ve held since I left the telecommunication industry have been, ultimately, temporary anyway.
March 2nd, 2008 at 8:07 am
I am sorry to hear about your problems. It always saddens me whenever I find that hardworking American professionals are the victims of age discrimination. Age discrimination exists in many professions but has become rampant in the high technology field due to the H-1b visa, L-1 visa, and employment-based greencard programs, which allow employers to replace experienced American workers with younger, cheaper, and less experienced foreign workers.
The H-1b and L-1 visa programs create an ever-growing pool of cheap foreign workers who have some knowledge of the technologies and business processes that are created in America and used by businesses based in America. H-1b and L-1 workers often server as offshoring agents, and actually play an active role in sending jobs and critical information back to their home countries. Thus, as more and more of these visas are issued over time, then it becomes easier for employers of all sizes to ship more and more jobs overseas.
Of course, not every technical or professional job can be offshored. Sadly, those jobs that are difficult to offshore are being increasingly filled by low wage H-1b slaves that are desperate to get a greencard for legal permanent residence. So you see, these programs facilitate offshoring and also cause further wage suppression in the remaining jobs that aren’t offshored.
The H-1b and L-1 visa programs accelerate offshoring and the employment-based greencard program skewers the domestic labor supply and demand so that there are more applicants for the remaining jobs, thus causing wage arbitrage here in the U.S.
The best way to learn more about these visa programs is to subscribe to the free job destruction e-mail newsletter published by Rob Sanchez. You can do so by going to the jobdestruction.info web site and clicking on the e-mail links on the left side of the main page.
The H-1b, L-1, and employment-based greencard programs are dismantling the ladders of upward mobility in America. It’s time to shut these career destruction programs down completely.