“I believe that the wealthy have a responsibility to invest in addressing inequity. This is especially true when the constraints on others are so great,” says Gates. He added that if investments are not made, "we will come out of the economic downtown in a world even more unequal, with greater inequities in health and education and fewer opportunities for people to improve their lives. There is no reason to accept that, when we know how to make huge gains over the long term.”

Now, you might think a foundation focusing on third-world "sustainable" development would devote some significant portion of its resources toward preventing catastrophic global warming. After all, on our current emissions path, we will have destroyed a livable climate by 2100. Most every independent scientific and economic analysis says the developing world will suffer horribly. This goes double for the region Gates is focusing much of the foundation's resources on -- Africa, a continent facing climate-driven desertification in the north and the south, a continent with huge coastal populations.

But, in fact, the Gates Foundation has no program to help prevent global warming. Back in 2006, when Gates first announced that he planned to spend most of his time running the foundation, Newsweek raised the climate change issue in an interview:

Q: I know you're concerned about global warming. Will the foundation become involved with that?

A: I'm already reading some books on energy and the environment, but I will read a lot more two years from now and think whether there's something the foundation should do in those areas. The angle I'll have when I'll look at most things is, What about the 4 billion poorest people? What about energy and environmental issues for them?

Here's what Gates should have learned by now about the key energy and environmental issues facing the 4 billion poorest people. Using a "middle of the road" greenhouse gas emissions scenario, a study in Science found that for the more than 5 billion people who will be living in the tropics and subtropics by 2100, growing-season temperatures "will exceed the most extreme seasonal temperatures recorded from 1900 to 2006." The authors conclude: "Half of world's population could face climate-driven food crisis by 2100."

A study led by MIT economists found that "the median poor country's income will be about 50 percent lower than it would be had there been no climate change." And that was based on a 3-degree C warming by 2100, about half the warming we are currently on track to reach. A further study led by scientists from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that several regions would see rainfall reductions "comparable to those of the Dust Bowl era." Worse, unlike the Dust Bowl, which lasted a decade or two, this climate change would be "largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop."

Labels: Bill Gates, global warming

One option that eliminates the need to work with immigration lawyers is rooting out potential candidates for the open position already on staff. For many hiring and IT managers, training in house technical employees on skills that are considered critical going forward is a better option that [sic] looking outside the company for talent.

"Managers can look for internal talent that may need a little more training or need to work in a different style," says Albert Porco, CIO at Kings County Medical Center in New York. "There are times when the most talented person is two or three levels down in the organization. Also at times, you don't need superstars, you need staff that can get the job done."

Kamal Jain, Director of Operations and Customer Service at Auraria Networks in Boxborough, Mass., agrees saying if IT hiring managers exhaust options outside of the company, then they need to look at the pool of talent already producing at the company.

"Consider career-changers who have the right attitude, intelligence, demeanor, etc. to fit your needs and then take some chances on training and development," Jain says. "It’s not a good way to get senior people, but it can bring in a great pool of talent which can free up enough experienced people to allow them to grow into the senior roles you may need filled."

Digitas' Russell says that her team and the company’s management is using a new mantra when it comes to hiring external or internal candidates that involves considering a broader range of qualified candidates.

"Management and recruiting is pushing people to consider what could be trained. If a candidate has 80% of the skills needed, we can hire them and we can teach the other 20% of skills," she says.

The H-1B visa program was originally created to assist American employers who were having trouble finding American high-tech workers for their businesses. It allowed a fixed number of foreign workers come to the United States to "temporarily" fill those positions while the American companies and the federal government invested time and money in upgrading the training of American workers to meet the new skill levels required.

The H-1B work visa program was supposed to be used to bolster the U.S. economy by helping American-owned companies. Under the program, American companies can use the speciality visa to hire foreign software programmers or computer scientists with rare skills in order to encourage innovation and improving competitiveness. Instead, foreign companies such as Infosys and Wipro are using our own government program to undermine the American economy by wiping out American jobs. These foreign-owned companies are bringing low-cost workers into the U.S., training them in the offices of American business clients, and then rotating them back home after a year or two so they can provide low cost, out-sourced tech services that causes American IT workers to lose their jobs. How is this helping American workers and American businesses?

Labels: Bill Gates, H-1Bs, outsourcing

• We're a nation of dunces.
• We need more foreign guest workers.
• Taxpayers need to foot the bill for basic research and training more high tech workers.
• High tech companies need more tax breaks.

Despite what Gates said in the rest of the pages of his speech, it all boiled down to, We Need More Foreign Guest Workers. If You Don't Give Us More Foreign Guest Workers, We'll Show You Who's Boss By Sending These Jobs Overseas.

Several members of Congress practically tripped over each other as they lined up to profess their fawning admiration for Bill Gates. Why shouldn't they, when so much money for potential campaign contributions and from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is at stake? Representative Bart Gordon, (D-Tennessee), said, "Bill Gates embodies both the American spirit of innovation and the theological virtue of charity. … I can think of no other witness better suited to share his insights with this committee."

A few Representatives had the guts to ask some tough questions. Dana Rohrbacher (R-California), asked if:

..........H-1B workers were driving down U.S. wages or replacing "B and C students" from the United States. Gates said no, citing a study released Monday by the pro-immigration think tank the National Foundation for American Policy, saying that for every H-1B position applied for, companies create an additional five jobs.

[Note from Carrie: How convenient that report came out just a few days before Gates' testimony.]

"The top people are going to be [paid] higher," Gates said. "It's just a question of what country they're working in."

For more good discussions on the National Foundation for American Policy report, you can read Rob Sanchez' and Norman Matloff's newsletters. Please also see Patrick Thibodeau's article at Computerworld for another good recap. (For some reason, I'm having a devil of a time trying to link to his article. If motivated, look for his article "Gates: U.S. Puts Tech Jobs at Risk by Capping Foreign Workers" dated March 12, 2008 under the "Government" section.)

Another member of Congress spoke up:

Rep. Laura Richardson, a California Democrat, challenged Microsoft and other tech companies to fund scholarships for science and engineering students with the money they use to recruit workers and apply for visas.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provides scholarships for 14,000 minority students, Gates noted. But more scholarships won't solve the problem of a lack of U.S. science and engineering students, he said.

"Scholarships can be helpful, but I'm not sure that alone would drive the shift we need," Gates said.

Predictably, by late Thursday afternoon, Gabrielle Giffords, (D-Arizona) introduced the Innovation Employment Act that would double the number of H-1B's being issued from 65,000 to 130,000 per year. A number of safeguards are supposed to be included in this bill, such as:

• increasing the penalties for H-1B fraud
• rejecting applications for "clear indicators of fraud"
• prohibiting companies from hiring H-1B workers and then immediately outsourcing them to other companies
• prohibiting companies "with more than 50 employees that have more than half of their staff as H-1B workers from hiring more H-1Bs"
• prohibiting employers from advertising their jobs as being exclusively for H-1B workers

I say these "safeguards" are little more than window dressing. However, that will be another post for another day.

Many pundits admit that Congress will have a tough time passing legislation for higher numbers of H-1B workers during an election year, when people are finally reaching a consensus that unemployment rates are going higher while the economy is going sour. However, just for extra insurance, Lamar Smith (R-Texas) introduced the catchy-sounding Strengthening United States Technology And Innovation Now (or Sustain) Act, which would triple the number of H-1B visas being issued for 2008 and 2009.

(Cross-posted at Carrie's Nation.)

Labels: Bill Gates, employment, H-1Bs

The topic of the hearing is familiar ground for Gates on Capitol Hill. But what makes his scheduled appearance on March 12 potentially explosive is its timing, less than three weeks before the start of the annual application rush for H-1B visas.

April 1 is the first day that U.S. immigration authorities will begin accepting H-1B applications for the federal government's 2009 fiscal year, which begins in October. Last year, the government stopped taking applications after receiving about 150,000 in a single day — far more than enough to exhaust the annual cap of 65,000 regular visas and 20,000 set aside for foreign nationals who have advanced degrees from U.S. universities.

"Everyday we're learning more and more, but it appears that most H-1B visas are going to foreign-based companies," said Grassley, in a statement. "U.S. businesses that need highly skilled workers are getting the short end of the stick."

In regard to the leasing of H-1B workers, Grassley, in his letter to Chertoff, charged that "hundreds" of foreign workers are "standing by, waiting for work" and are being offered for lease by their employers. The information about this practice came from a constituent in Iowa, not identified in the letter, who was being "bombarded" by these requests to lease H-1B workers, wrote Grassley.

"My constituent even said one company went so far to require him to sign a memorandum of understanding that helps the H-1B "factory firm" justify to the federal government that they have adequate business opportunity that requires additional visa holders," wrote Grassley. "It's a complete falsification of the market justification for additional H-1B workers."

Labels: Bill Gates, employment, H-1Bs, outsourcing

A widespread shortage of information technology (IT) graduates across North America is forcing Microsoft Corp. and other software companies to look to developing countries such as China to meet their needs, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates says.

“When we want to hire lots of software engineers, there is a shortage in North America—a pretty significant shortage,” Gates said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We have this tough problem: If you can’t get the engineers, then you have to have those other jobs be [relocated to] where the engineers are.”

....younger workers have more energy and are sometimes more creative. But he adds there is a lot they don't know and can't know until they gain experience. So he says his company recruits aggressively for fresh talent on university campuses and for highly experienced engineers from within the industry. One is not at the expense of the other, he insists. For him, it is all about hiring the best and brightest—age and nationality are not important. He acknowledges that the vast majority of Microsoft hires are young, but that is because older workers tend to go into more senior jobs and there are fewer of those positions to begin with.

Labels: Bill Gates, education, H-1Bs, L-1s, Microsoft, offshoring

Labels: Bill Gates, Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, Windows Vista