Students opting out

Editor:

“Fewer college students are pursuing computer-related degrees despite demand increasing as baby boomer IT workers retire. Enrollment in undergraduate degree programs in computer science is more than 50 percent lower than it was five years ago, according to a survey of the Computing Research Association.” (Investors Business Daily, June 24, 2008, p. A2)

Similarly, there is consternation over the declining number of math, science, and engineering degrees issued to American students.

With corporate executives, campaign contribution checkbooks in hand, pushing the issue and Congress (including our own Gabrielle Giffords) falling all over itself to increase the number of H-1B visas and green cards by tens of thousands, no one should be surprised that students are opting out of those programs.

Why go through years of training and come out of college burdened with thousands of dollars of student loan debt, only to see the trained-for job handed over to a foreigner who will work cheaper (while imposing both reduced wages and a significant language barrier on his American co-workers) and who, incidentally, can bring his family with him to take additional American jobs for cheaper wages?

A student bright enough to get through any of the aforementioned programs is bright enough to figure the odds on his job prospects in those fields.

Greedy corporations often are aided and abetted by aggressive pro-immigrationists who offer seminars on how to “prove” the unavailability of qualified Americans, but when one moderately-paid position posted by a large tech corporation draws more than 80 qualifying applications, and a similar job posting by a smaller company paying bare subsistence wages draws multiple applications, it should be obvious to even cash- and vote-hungry politicians that we do not need to expand the number of H-1B visas at the expense of American workers.

Similarly, when ICE staged a raid on a Midwestern meat-processing plant, more than 600 applicants vied for the jobs formerly filled by illegals.

Despite the clamoring of corporations eager to cash in on cheap foreign labor, there is an abundant supply of qualified Americans for almost any job that pays a decent wage. Congress should be “tuned-in” enough to be aware of that.

Mary Dagg, Green Valley