President Donald Trump on Tuesday will sign an executive order directing federal agencies to recommend changes to a temporary visa program used to bring foreign workers to the USA to fill high-skilled jobs.                                                                                                                                                      Two senior Trump administration officials who briefed reporters at the White House said Trump will also use the "buy American and hire American" order to seek changes in government procurement practices to increase the purchase of American products in federal contracts.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/17/trump-to-seek-changes-in-h-1b-visa-program-to-encourage-hiring-americans.html

I'll patiently wait to see how Unions go about supporting this... (they won't for the most part, if it doesn't effect their union they don't care about buy/hire American).

Watched a libtard hit piece on this on a local Vermont TV station this morning.  Resort managers pretending that local people don't want to work, so they need their foreign waiters, waitresses, and other hospitality staff.  Nobody bothered to ask what they were paying, but they said that wage parity laws meant that foreign workers actually raised the overall wage rate.  What a joke.

Applications for H-1B's are actually down.  Saw an article this morning someplace.  Drudge IIRC.

Appears to be two things. .. H1-B enforcement and government procurement.

Let me guess, they said nothing about the cost of living increase with 10 people cramming into a little house, posting well over fair market value.

Fraud in the H1b visa program is rampant and it directly screws American workers, drives wages down.  We shouldn't import any tech or skilled manufacturing labor.  You come here on a Visa you have to work for peanuts like my great grandfather did, like I did to put myself through school and when I was laid off, like naturalized citizens had to (unless they were hot and married money)..

Actually..... knowing a little about this first hand, we have a huge problem getting motivated Americans to fill housekeeping and kitchen hotel and inn jobs here.  We have a seasonal economy here and most good US workers either don't want to do these types of jobs or they don't seem to want the hassle seasonal jobs.  (Especially when they can just be on welfare all year instead)  The local people we do get all to often have many problems.  They only show up half the time that they are supposed to, they squabble with each other all the time creating too many in season turn over issues, or they are high school/ college kids and want half the week off so they can party and go to concerts.  A lot of the time when they decide they have had enough work for the summer they just leave and don't tell anyone first.  It is sad and I wish that we could find more reliable local help but it just doesn't seem to be there.  Pay can be an issue at some places but it isn't the only part of the problem.  Some of these jobs do pretty well for what they are when tips come into the picture.  There is a reason many businesses went for the foreign workers. They had to in order to stay in business.

Saw that last night

The local news is now spinning "healthy H1-B reform will be good for Silicon Valley"

does this means no more I phone, Ferrari, Bugatti, etc

Ok, all well and good, but the H-1B program is about trying to fill positions that require highly specialized  technical skills that for some strange reason, Americans don't have.

Never mind that the US practically invented Information Technology, there simply aren't many Americans that know how to turn on a computer as far as tech firms go.

So those firms have absolutely NO CHOICE but to contract Indians who just graduated from crank em out IT mills in New Delhi and farmed out to Tata and Infosys.

What do you mean ??

Whats so fucked up about that?

Why?  No reason not to bring in the best and brightest if there is an opportunity for them to contribute.

Pretty much all phones and cars (even the "Americans").

The way it has been was nuts.  However, we cannot also shut everything down.  It would also be nuts.

Is there a bit in there that h1b's are now going to be paid a minimum of 250k per year regardless of the role.

Because otherwise there is no reason to even consider the bill as it will continue to underpay the true market value to them and be an attractive method for businesses to cut labor costs.

You've obviously never worked in an IT firm where the majority of the personnel were Indians. Indians who were trained by American workers who were promptly given a severance package after they finished training their Indian replacements.

You must have met my father-in-law! 

I'm OK with something like H1B when used properly. There are genius geeks all over that would love to work here and can provide a value to the US.

When functioning onsite US based IT staff train their H1B replacement, something is clearly wrong. That is no longer a talent shortage.

Bullshit, its all about the bottom line, If these companies could get Americans to work for the peanuts the import workers do the H1B program would have died long ago.

Probably won't help industry like IT because they'll outsource more.

Ding Ding!  And senior management spins it with something like, "You need to have a team of people trained so there is no drop off when you are out on leave".  Yeah right.  Assign a bunch of super cheap employees to you for training, then cut you loose as soon as the drop off in quality is acceptable.

I hope this changes some things where I work but I don't believe my company will do anything but increase the % of "rightshore" workers vs US based ones.  That's their fancy term for cheap overseas labor.

this ....

Too late & too little here. 
Got 10 days left on the job I've had for the past 16 years. 
Had to train the slurpee's on how to do my job in order to get the 2 weeks per year server severance pay(30 weeks) && the 23 days of unused PTO. 
If someone snaps and takes out the H1B replacements, I wouldn't approve of it but would understand how it could happen.
Fortunately for me, I kept my RN license current and already have a gig going. Half of my co-workers still don't have anything lined up. 

I agree with massive reform. My solution was simple. A company has to pay $25,000 per year per H1B visa in a application fee.

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NO FUCKING SHIT!!!! 
Got 10 days left until I'm laid off after having to train the slurpees. 

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He's not on board with Making America Great Again.  just more #neverTrump derping from the usual suspects

Can you not see what this does to the market long term?  This favors foreign workers over Americans. Suicidal.

That's a problem with businesses fucking their employees.  They could do the same thing with interns/co-ops if the H1-B visas were restricted, right?  If the labor can be done for lower wage and lesser skills some companies will do it.  If it can't their bottom line will suffer when the quality of work drops.  Some companies don't care about training/developing skills internally and are always looking to dump experienced, higher paid employees for cheaper hires.  They are shitty places to work.  The visa program didn't cause this.

Another fucking Executive Order because the republicans in congress aren't doing shit.  And now the cocksuckers want to go on, what is it?  Spring Break?  Summer Break?  Spring-Summer Break???  

They will have worked EIGHT FUCKING DAYS in April and they need a fucking break.  Seriously, why do we put up with this shit???

I think our new CEO is about to boot all the Indian contractors. 

The visa program was changed by lobbyists hired by those companies.

This is just a recent round by Indians themselves:
India’s IT trade body spent a record sum lobbying the US Congress before the H-1B crackdown

How long until the activist courts rule this executive order unconstitutional too?

The root of the problem is companies think they can get the same work done for less money.  If they are correct, they will outsource the work or cut wages across the board.  What am I missing?

Yay more buy American crap that we cant buy, and then have to go through a 1 year long RFI to get some other product approved.

It is not the same work. The quality is SHIT. Those companies usually have to contract AMERICANS to fix the colossal fuckups that those Indians make. So those projects they thought would cost less, end up costing three times more.

Today is a wonderful day for American PhD candidates with shitty dissertations.

More winning.

Just think what Trump could accomplish if the GOP wasn't stuffed with globalist traitors.

What time is it now?

Except that the H1B program exploded because outsourcing wasn't working.  They were having to hire US firms to come and fix all the crap that the outsourced workers screwed up.  The education system within India doesn't teach problem solving and critical thinking.  Rote memorization of facts & figures.  Deviate from what they know by heart and they are lost.  Need troubleshooting in a network environment where solutions are not cookie cutter?  Good luck.  Want design that is not pulled directly from cut and paste websites?  Not from them you won't.

Disney brought in several hundred foreign IT workers and had the US workers they were replacing train their replacements, if they complained they were fired, if they trained them they got severance packages.  This is a direct violation of the H1B law.  Nothing was done by the Obama administration.

Wright State University appears to have had 4 or 5 bad actors using the H1B exemption for Universities from the numerical cap in order to import cheap labor that was then supposedly rented out to other companies.  Under Federal investigation and some of the clowns are still on paid leave since 2015.  The main person involved in this is originally from India.  Also as Provost he blew through a budget surplus of 10s of millions and created a deficit of 10s of millions through such shenanigans as hiring instantly tenured faculty that were not budgeted for.  

I've been in IT since before offshoring and H1Bs.  As individuals people from India are generally fine but culturally have a 'close enough' mentality where their 'close enough' equals our 'no way that'll EVER work'.  The IT industry in the US still has some good companies to work for.  Way too many have gone so far overboard on H1Bs and offshoring that they are descending into mediocrity at best. 

A friend and co-worker with 48 years with the company was laid off yesterday.  Started right out of high school and got his degree on the side.  66 years old and planned on working a few more years due to family situation.  He was hyper competent with a heavily in demand skill set, clients loved him, super productive.  A few years ago he produced twice as much work product as a team of 15+ developers in India produced.  And his work was flawless, he tried to help the Indians, their work was shit.  He has been consistently and is currently fully billed to clients at an expert rate with more margin than the run of the mill person.  AND OUR COMPANY LAID HIM OFF!   And laid off a bunch more people too.  Including me and I am the go to person to put on troubled projects to handle both the problem and the pissed off client or to self learn a niche skill RFN in a pinch or to provide a rescue plan (usually in 8 to 16 hours) for fucked up projects if I can't be freed up to fix it personally.  Fuck IT - I'll be 65 in October and I'm relieved.  Huge company in excess of 100,000 people.  Our immediate managers had no input to the layoffs, names came down from upon high.  Stated company goal is 10% staff onshore (a lot of whom are will be H1Bs) and 90% staff offshore.  The end result will be current upper level management will be gone or golden parachuted when the house of cards collapses.  You can only hide poor market performance behind mergers, acquisitions, business unit spin offs, massive layoffs and deliberate destruction of institutional knowledge thinking that knowledge has no real value, for so long. 

"Best Shore" was the term coined in the god pod overlooking Legacy Drive in a previous iteration of my (until COB Friday) employer.  And the corporate weenies just don't get how idiotic they sound.

This is mostly correct....As someone who's job is mostly to ensure "best-shoring" projects/work-flows and resource development is successful, I can tell you as a whole that culture, language and work ethic are not compatible. Outside "cookie-cutter" or simple, straight forward and simple projects these resources get hopelessly lost. The ONLY way I've been able to remain successful is I have a core set of high-level Architects (network and security) that know the ropes and are willing to hand hold these best shore 'replacements' into completing the tasks. In the long run, these resources costs us more money is lost contracts/business as well as more internal costs in redundant work and loss of productivity. This sadly is Corporate America (especially Tech,) today and is one of the reasons why many US corps are so badly mismanaged.

On  "the books" for the current/next quarter the savings that can be accomplished with H1B workers is seductive but NO ONE goes back and calculates the actual costs associated with these resources. Also lets not forget that while the allure of spending less money on (in the mind of the finance guy,) the "same level" resource is worth it; don't forget these H1B people have to be sponsored by their employer. Meaning sponsoring companies have tremendous power over a h1b worker by continuing to sponsor said worker; no sponsorship means the worker has to go back to his/her home. As a result not only will these workers work for 1/4 to 1/3 rd of their American counterpart but they'll work as many hours, take any job or do anything asked of them. While that might sound great to the business owner, in practice it becomes indentured servitude; not in every case but enough as I've seen it over and over again.

Those are jobs that used to be filled by part time workers like high school students, college student, stay at home moms and retirees. if those people are not applying you are not paying enough.

Maybe you should pay them more.

If you pay minimum wage you're gonna get a minimum employee.....

NO!   Because they are worse than the mafia.  Once they get in they only hire their "type".

While he's in the EO signing mode, could someone slip the President that concealed carry on military bases EO he said he'd sign 88 days ago?

@DJTJR

Sounds like the end result is the H1-Bs aren't actually competing for the same jobs.  American work will demand a premium from companies that value quality.