Political Quotes

“I rise tonight, I understand the hour is late, but I think this is a very important issue. We have a program which many Members of Congress are not familiar with. It is called the H-1B visa program. This program allows industries from this Nation to bring over mostly high-tech workers from other countries, 65,000 workers a year right now, for temporary jobs. They can stay here for 6 years. This was a program that was established back in 1990 because we were being told that we had an anticipated shortage of scientists and of engineers. By the time this program was in place, the Berlin Wall had fallen and we did not have as much of a need in the defense industry for this kind of technical expertise. But what ended up happening was many countries found out that they could go overseas, they could bring over computer programmers or reprogrammers rather than train American workers, and we have seen throughout this country a propensity of what I would refer to as job shops, that is companies that are providing computer programmers to our industries. And our industries are laying off unbelievable numbers of American workers, and they are being replaced by these temporary foreign workers. I think we are really headed down a tragic highway in this country.”