Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2012 22:37:52 -0700 From: Norm Matloff To: Norm Matloff Subject: excellent DPE resource To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter I've been meaning for some time to call readers' attention to an invaluable resource produced earlier this year by the Dept. of Professional Employees, AFL-CIO, Gaming the System 2012, available at http://dpeaflcio.org/wp-content/uploads/Gaming-the-System-2012-Revised.pdf This is the best centralized, up-to-date compendium of information on the problems of H-1B available. It should be required reading for any researcher, journalist or congressional staffer who has a serious interest in the subject matter. Don't make sweeping pronouncements about H-1B without it! DPE sent me a copy when the report first came out, but it wasn't on their Web page at the time. I had made a mental note to announce it when it went up on the Web, but unfortunately forgot about it until now. What jogged my memory was a curious blog in today's Washington Post, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/post/microsoft-hosts-skilled-immigration-debate-roundtable/2012/08/01/gJQA1vyXPX_blog.html The sleek conference room at Microsoft’s Washington, D.C., office was packed Wednesday morning with industry and policy leaders. The conversation topic: The skilled worker pipeline in the U.S., particularly the cap on H-1B visas. Talk ranged from policy prescriptions to where the demand for H-1B visa workers is most concentrated. And the discussion was predictably weighted with empirical evidence, to the point where talk of the anecdote-as-argument against raising visa caps elicited light laughter. The issue, of course, is that last sentence. It's been at least a decade since I've heard the industry lobbyists make this audacious claim, that the evidence against H-1B is merely anecdotal. In fact, there is a ton of statistical evidence on the matter. So I thought it would be good to have a central resource that those "light laughers" could read. This jogged my memory about the DPE report, and there you have it. Norm