HIGHTOWER: A Low Blow to High-Tech Workers

According to park rangers, a tourist to the Grand Canyon actually asked: "Was this man-made?"Well, the Middle Class these days finds itself in a hole that's even deeper than the Grand Canyon, and, yes, their hole "is" man-made, made by global corporate executives and their puppets in Washington.A current example of this hole-digging is a special immigration visa that allows thousands of skilled foreign workers to come to America each year to take high-tech jobs here. Wait a minute -- aren't these high-tech jobs the very ones we're being told are "the future" for American workers? Yes! Indeed, they tell us not to worry about the massive loss of manufacturing jobs from our country, because the U.S. "information industry" is creating new, high-paying positions for what they call "knowledge workers."But that very industry is now using the government's H-1B visa program to bring in 65,000 "foreign" workers to take these positions ... and Silicon Valley lobbyists are demanding that Washington allow even more foreigners to get these high-tech visas. Both Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich want to please big campaign contributors like Bill Gates of Microsoft, so Washington is about to expand the number of H-1B visas to 100,000 immigrants a year.Are there no Americans who can do this work? Of course -- but the computer giants don't want to pay a decent salary for engineers and programmers, and hungry immigrants from India, Russia and elsewhere will do the work for half the going rate paid to skilled Americans. Once the foreign workers get into the country under this temporary employment visa, the companies can then sponsor them for permanent employment status -- completely shutting out American applicants for these jobs, and knocking down the salary level for all other high-tech jobs in the U.S.This is Jim Hightower saying ... It's a win-win for the executives and the politicians -- and a lose-lose for our own workers and our country.