In a message dated 4/7/08 3:28:13 A.M. Central Daylight Time, News@JobDestruction.info writes:
<<<<< JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER No. 1850 -- 4/07/2008 >>>>>
According to the article below, the hottest career path in high-tech
industries is to be an immigration attorney. After that mostly true
statement the article goes down hill quickly!
Nowadays it's very fashionable make anti-American comments when talking
about labor issues, and this article has lots of them. Take for example,
Dan LaCivita, VP-executive director of a company called Firstborn. LaCivita
said he doesn't want to take anything away from Americans, but he thinks
foreigners are harder working. While referring to a one-to-ten scale
system, he said that in the U.S. you can hire 100 sevens or eights, but if
you hire foreign workers you can get 100 '11s'. He want on to say that his
company only has 11s, which tells you something about the citizenship
status of his employees.
Darren Paul, managing partner of a 30-person company admits that 18 of his
employees have received worker visas or temporary resident status, and then
made the condescending remark: "I don't want to take anything away from
American-born-and-raised talent, but there does seem to be terrific drive
coming from outside the U.S."
Tom Bedecarre, CEO of AKQA, said that more than a dozen of his U.S.
employees are foreigners. He made a statement that would almost funny if it
weren't so stupid:
Recruiting from different countries gives agencies the advantage
of having a mash-up of digital skill sets. For instance, employees
who come from Japan might be more sophisticated in mobile since
the Japanese mobile market is more advanced than the one in this
country.
Guess who invented the cell phone? According to Wikipedia it was an
American named Martin Cooper who was born in 1928 in Chicago. Nokia (a
Finnish company) is currently the world's largest manufacturer of mobile
phones, with a global device market share of approximately 40% in Q4 of
2007. Other major mobile phone manufacturers (in order of Market share)
include Samsung (14%), Motorola (12%), Sony and Ericsson (9%) and LG Mobile
(7%).These manufacturers account for over 80% of all mobile phones sold and
produced for sale in most countries -- and Sony is the only one that is
Japanese. Considering these facts, how does Bedecarre figure that a
Japanese engineer would be the best qualified to work on cell phones?
I always assumed that companies preferred H-1Bs to green card holders
(permanent resident) because H-1Bs are indentured. Employers want
indentured workers because they are servile and perhaps even more
importantly cannot easily leave the company if they receive expensive
training. If the following paragraph is true I may have to revise that
theory. It sounds like companies have found some clever ways to indenture
green card holders.
Many large companies that help employees gain permanent resident
status will have them sign sponsorship agreements that say they'll
stay with the company for a specific period of time after obtaining
permanent residence status, according to Ms. Gonzalez. And if they
leave before that date, they are required to pay the company back
a specific percentage of the fees the company laid out.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=126180
Hottest U.S. Import: Digital Talent?
Lack of Local Employees Makes Shops Spend Big on Immigration Fees
By Megan Mcilroy
Published: April 07, 2008
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- The new, must-have talent at the country's hottest
digital agencies: immigration attorneys.
The talent shortage in the space in the U.S., combined with the fact that
diversity has become vital to having a viable digital business, means that
more agencies are going through the long, arduous and often costly process
of getting worker visas and even permanent resident status for their
employees who come from Australia, Sweden, Korea, Japan and other countries
with a concentration of digital talent.
Tom Bedecarre, CEO of AKQA
Photo Credit: Darryl Estrine
"I don't want to take anything away from American-born-and-raised talent,
but there does seem to be terrific drive coming from outside the U.S.,"
said Darren Paul, managing partner of Night Agency, a 30-person digital
shop in New York. Mr. Paul estimates about 18 Night employees have received
worker visas or temporary resident status.
"There are a lot of talented people in this country, but there is just a
different work ethic that comes with working with people from another
country," said Dan LaCivita, senior VP-executive director of Firstborn, a
40-person digital agency headquartered in New York. Referring to a
one-to-ten scale system, he said that in the U.S. you can hire "100
'sevens' or 'eights', but you can't hire 100 '11s'. And I want there to be
40 '11s' here."
Legal expenses
Mr. LaCitiva estimates his agency spent over $100,000 on immigration
attorney fees last year, and in one case, about $30,000 to get a
particularly promising employee permanent resident status.
"For us, one of the obvious things about the web is it's a global medium,
and as we create experiences online for global clients, they want to make
sure it is going to be relevant across different cultures," he said. "So it
gives our clients confidence that different eyeballs are looking at that
and saying 'Does that make sense?'"
Depending on the type of visa an employee gets, the immigration process can
cost from $5,000 to $15,000, and that's not including relocation expenses,
said Ana Gonzalez, an attorney at immigration law firm Fragomen, Del Rey,
Bernsen & Loewy, who works with media companies and agencies including
Night Agency.
Many large companies that help employees gain permanent resident status
will have them sign sponsorship agreements that say they'll stay with the
company for a specific period of time after obtaining permanent residence
status, according to Ms. Gonzalez. And if they leave before that date, they
are required to pay the company back a specific percentage of the fees the
company laid out.
Firstborn does not make its employees sign these types of agreements. "For
us, it is all about people truly wanting to be here," Mr. LaCivita said.
"Could it come back to bite us sometimes? Of course. But you also have to
think ... is it worth having someone in your office [who] doesn't want to
be there and is kept there by a piece of paper?"
Local talents
Recruiting from different countries gives agencies the advantage of having
a mash-up of digital skill sets. For instance, employees who come from
Japan might be more sophisticated in mobile since the Japanese mobile
market is more advanced than the one in this country, said Tom Bedecarre,
CEO of AKQA. Mr. Bedecarre said more than a dozen of AKQA's U.S. employees
have gone through immigration proceedings.
Most agency employees will seek H-1B visas, which require a minimum of a
bachelor's degree, she said. H-1B visas are sometimes difficult to get,
though. They can take anywhere from two to three weeks if expedited, or in
some cases, up to 180 days. There is also a limited supply of them -- the
federal government currently caps the number of H-1B visas that can be
distributed in a fiscal year. So even if an agency helps an employee apply
for a visa, there is no guarantee he or she will get one.
Getting permanent resident status is even more time-consuming, taking an
average of about a year, Ms. Gonzalez said.
But despite the lawyer fees, the paperwork and the time spent waiting for
that paperwork to go through, agency executives say the investment pays off
many-fold when employees from abroad become part of their agencies.
"It's definitely an extra cost to the bottom line but we feel we get great
benefit out of it, just from the creativity and the goodwill we have from
people working next to people from other parts of the world," said Mr.
Paul.
"I think it's part of the cost of doing business if you want to have a
global, diverse workforce. You have to be able to support those employees
and help them have the experience they are looking for," Mr. Bedecarre
said.
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