Our goal is clearly NOT TO FIND a qualified and interested U.S. worker.
It's on video, believe it or not, and even presented as a selling point to peddle their services by Cohen & Grigsby Law Firm. That's right, this group of attorneys put an entire seminar on how to screw over the American worker on YouTube. Imagine that, a seminar from lawyers on how to make sure one doesn't have to hire an American worker!
In the video attorneys explain how they assist employers in running classified ads with the goal of NOT finding any qualified applicants, and how they disqualify even the most qualified Americans in order to secure green cards for H-1b workers.
Our goal is clearly NOT to find a qualified U.S. worker ... our objective is to get this person a green card ... so certainly we are not going to try to find a place where applicants would be most numerous. - Lawrence M. Lebowitz, Vice President of Marketing, Cohen & Grigsby
And on getting rid of extremely qualified applicants:
If someone looks like they are very qualified, if necessary schedule an interview, go through the whole process to find a legal basis to disqualify them
From Dr. Norm Matloff:
The law on employer-sponsored green cards is similarly riddled with loopholes. Though that law requires that American workers must be sought before the employer hires a foreign worker for a job, it is routinely circumvented. I've mentioned the outrageous comments by a well-known immigration attorney:
Employers who favor aliens have an arsenal of legal means to reject all U.S. workers who apply
Here are just a few examples of fake job ads this seminar is referring to, run in the Sacramento Bee. The Bee?s editor refuses to discuss the matter, and the fraudulent ads continue to run each week
This video was amplified by the Programmers Guild and the original video clips are here .
This is what Bush and Congress via the current "comprehensive" immigration reform bill really mean by a "shortage of skilled U.S. workers." Microsoft, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, and thousands of other companies are running fake ads in Sunday newspapers across the country each week.
Look at this folks, this is how bad it is. A major selling point of law firms is all about how to screw over the American worker.
Comments
ouch (loboforestal - 6/18/2007 5:00:41 PM)
Harris Miller would be rolling in his grave; he'd never let something like this out.
I'll check on Cohen & Grigsby in my database. Looks like lawyers in firm must buck up to company run PAC. Individuals employed by C&G law firm support some of the usual suspects : Orin Hatch, Joe Lieberman and George Bush.
This S-1348 Senate Bill is trouble for American workers.
if you can believe this (TurnVirginiaBlue - 6/18/2007 7:06:36 PM)
on the dailykos story we have people saying that my diary is "xenophobic". I am just astounded...I mean what about Americans, what about America, what about American workers here!
Which is why I get irritated at the Kossacks (Catzmaw - 6/18/2007 7:19:26 PM)
It's one thing to promote diversity and fairness for immigrants and another thing to deliberately manipulate the legal system so as to squeeze out American workers in favor of the more pliable H-1b visa holder. This is an abuse of our system and a disservice to the people who were born and raised here, not to mention the ones who are here legally.
getting hit (TurnVirginiaBlue - 6/18/2007 8:33:07 PM)
with massive TRs right at the moment and to make matters worse
have a fellow not realizing what's going on siding with them.
Don't worry about it. (loboforestal - 6/18/2007 7:58:50 PM)
People call each other names on blogs now and then. When people get frustrated, they sometimes throw sticks and stones and worse. There certainly are some nuts on the right who have less than brotherly love who advocate extreme positions and it's sloppy rhetoric to paint anybody who opposes the Bush/Kennedy/McCain Bill as being non-supportive of alternative legal immigration policies. I for one would like to see immigration at about 700,000 immigrants a year. Front door only. Citizeship track with a two year probation period. There should be a small, short term guest worker program that goes to the highest bidder. Under few circumstances should any business or sector get special treatment. I went to the beach one time and all the employees were white college aged kids from east Europe on short term guest worker visas and none of the kids working were American black kids from the other side of the sound. Ticked me off. I am not going back soon. Gee, if thinking we ought to hire American kids for summer jobs makes one "Xenophobic", oh well.
and a serious attack fraction. I'm getting it right now.
The foreign summer employees (Catzmaw - 6/18/2007 11:15:06 PM)
have become a fixture at the beach and at parks like Kings Dominion. It doesn't seem to me that employers from those places even go through the motions of trying to hire American teens and college students. I'm not knocking the Eastern European kids. They seem very nice and hard working; but it seems to me that the beach and amusement park employers are deliberately seeking out foreign white kids to run their amusements rather than take a chance on scaring away business with an oversupply of minority youths in the same positions. Conversely, I read during the winter about Jamaican and other island labor being brought in to run the food courts and rides at some ski resorts. Did the employers really make an effort to get Americans for those positions? I have my doubts.
Wow, I am about to sound like a cliche (Hugo Estrada - 6/19/2007 1:06:08 AM)
The high school kid who used to mow my lawn decline to do this this summer; but I unlike other people, I found a willing American to do the work: I had been mowing it myself, allergies and all :P
Again? (Hugo Estrada - 6/19/2007 1:02:12 AM)
Well, you got my rec there this time too. I must have missed those entries when I first read the comments.
You did a good job.
it's big bucks (TurnVirginiaBlue - 6/19/2007 1:15:39 AM)
so you have all sorts of "interested parties" trying to repress these stories
If you dig for awhile you'll see they are labor arbitraging Americans, attorneys, "recruiters" and so on ...
so they have a vested interest in trying to repress these stories anyway they can, including the classic 'racist xenophobe' attacks.
plus we have some people who ...
well, maybe they don't get that Americans are black, Hispanic, women, disabled, Indians (both kinds), Muslims, Africans...
I mean don't you find that strange (I sure do) when one says American the are assuming that means "middle aged white male"
versus all of the diversity of this country?
So, thanks, it's good to see this getting the attention it deserves.
Oh, those comments must have gotten there later (Hugo Estrada - 6/19/2007 10:05:57 AM)
The thread was under 100 comments when I first read it. Last night I looked at it again, it was way over that.
It is amusing how many of these people will tell you how what they are doing is fine, yet they get defensive and start attacking you when you bring it up.
Big beneficiaries include: Rick Santorum and Arlen Specter.
That enrages me - shame on the "race baiters" (relawson - 6/18/2007 8:06:18 PM)
If anyone can watch this video - on how to discriminate against Americans (of all races) and still think this program is OK, they need their heads examined.
And to all the race baiters who want to make this an issue of racism - my bet is that they are corporate lackeys trying to spin this issue and to exploit people of color for political points.
Shame on those who discriminate against American workers and shame on the race baiters. This is not about race, and it never has been.
So True (norman swingvoter - 6/19/2007 12:21:05 PM)
When you have the bush administration, big business, and the US Chamber of Commerce rabidly supporting a law, you can bet it probably screws the American worker. This isn't about racism, it's about supporting the American worker.
Trade Press is picking up on it ... (loboforestal - 6/18/2007 10:49:30 PM)
Is this on the level? (Quizzical - 6/21/2007 12:23:15 AM)
I thought this must be political satire until I read the Information Week article, which quoted the lawyer who moderated the seminar.
But nobody could be stupid enough to put on a seminar like this and then post it to YouTube right when an immigration bill is coming up for a vote -- could they?
oh yes it's real & yes they are that stupid (TurnVirginiaBlue - 6/21/2007 2:25:48 PM)
These attorneys and corporations are so full of themselves, busy making huge bucks off of discriminating against US citizens....they don't even see it as a problem.
They literally called themselves progressive
on their website.
There is this bizarre "anti-Americanism" message out there right now that anything "immigrant" is good and anything "american" is ...racist xenophobe. That's just plain outrageous and I think we need to confront this rhetoric directly...
Supporting Americans and being loyal to this nation, interested in the people of this nation, it's future, it's quality of life is most assuredly not a value that should be attacked.
It's amazing how corporations love this so much, it's so much a standard practice, I'm not surprised a group of attorneys didn't realize they just posted the most blatantly "how to discriminate against Americans" how to on the web....
Story has been picked up by Slashdot (Quizzical - 6/23/2007 10:02:07 PM)
The AFL-CIO formally came out against the bill Wednesday, reflecting the distaste among manufacturing unions and others whose members have been displaced by overseas competition and would have to compete with an influx of cheaper workers who don't have labor rights.
The SEIU which split from the AFL-CIO, supports the legislation but Teamsters oppose.
Rock and a hard place (TurnVirginiaBlue - 6/21/2007 2:29:49 PM)
I think the SEIU is insane frankly and will just contribute to further wage erosion and worker rights from what I've seen of their policy. Yes we need global unions and so forth, but that's not how the world is set up right now.
I'm glad the AFL-CIO has come out against the bill and good for them. I understand their position even on pathway to citizenship and I think we simply need to get that Employee Free Choice Act passed so we can get more Americans into their membership....they need growth and they frankly are the ones representing working America....thank God.
but I'm not surprised with the split of position here at all...but I think the AFL-CIO is the one with the better strategy and understanding of global labor issues frankly.
