Congressman: More Models, More Techies
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What do models and techies have in common? At the outset, not very much, likely to most geeks' chagrin. Yet, New York Congressman Anthony Weiner, a bachelor who has been linked in the tabloids to several high-profile, beautiful women, has introduced a piece of legislation that would move foreign models' visa class from the H-1B visa to the easier-to-obtain P visa. In their current category, models compete with thousands of IT professionals and the large tech companies that lobby to get them into the country. In the P class, they'll be in the company of entertainers and athletes. Given that in the last few years the U.S. government has been overwhelmed with applications for H-1B visas (there are 65,000 available each year, with an extra 20,000 for foreigners with advanced degrees in STEM fields), Weiner is likely to make friends at Microsoft and the large tech consortiums that are rooting for an H-1B increase. However, the likelihood of the proposed change in category for models alleviating the squeeze on H-1B visas seems low, given that only 349 models received H-1B visas in 2007 and the most given to models in any given year is about 800. |
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Comments (2)
Just a few days a ago, in May, Oracle laid off 500 Software Engineers and staff from a Silicon Valley office.
I had a chance to interview two of these software engineers.
Both had Masters Degrees.
Both had done extensive Web 2.0 work for the company that Oracle acquired (BEA).
Both candidates are living in the heart of Silicon Valley, in Santa Clara.
Both had applied to several dozen companies, over the last few months, with no luck finding a new job. I asked them about this, they said they had advanced notice their positions would be eliminated.
There is a serious, merger related, recession in Software Engineering in Silicon Valley right now.
Companies are laying off the best and the brightest right and left, we need to concentrate on keeping our talented U.S. citizen Software Engineers employed.
Sadly, we can only hire one of these candidates.
Clearly, Oracle doesn't need any more Visas for software engineers, if they are throwing away such excellent U.S. Software Engineers.
Posted by Anonymous | June 17, 2008 10:53 AM
But that is what we Americans are - a throw-away society! First it was trash and now people! Ever notice how the bosses treat people like trash?!? That is why! I had one manager tell us one time that "if we don't like it - there's the door!"
Posted by Ck | June 24, 2008 12:08 PM