FWD.us

FWD.us backer Elon Musk, who also happens to be one of the world’s most powerful clean-tech boosters, was apparently not amused. In a statement to PandoDaily, climate change activist and journalist Bill McKibben, who once led a White House sit-in against the Keystone Pipeline and who has called on Silicon Valley to mobilize against the fossil fuels industry, said “one hopes that most of our 21st century tech leaders won’t end up supporting 18th century energy technology.”

If you happen to share Musk and McKibben’s misgivings but still want the startup community to have a voice in Washington DC, then you’re in luck: you have an alternative. For more than a year before FWD.us came along and bungled its launch and then pissed off half of Silicon Valley with its first deployment of capital – defended by the organization as politics as usual, as if that’s what the world needs right now – Engine Advocacy was quietly working behind the scenes to build a bridge between the startup community and political leaders in DC.

The difference between Engine Advocacy and FWD.us, however, is that the former can’t draw on the largess of a certain Facebook founder. In fact, Engine doesn’t even charge its members – startups – to be part of the organization. Instead, it relies largely on contributions, making it kind of the NPR of public advocacy. Rather than attempting to represent the wider “tech industry,” which encompasses giant companies that can have interests that conflict with startups’ interests, Engine keeps its focus squarely on early-stage companies.

In a new blog post, Engine has put a call out for donations, saying community support is critical to its ability to “bring the community together, undertake research, and develop successful campaigns to educate lawmakers, local elected officials, and the public about the impact the tech sector can have on economic growth and job creation.”

FWD.us has made immigration reform its top priority, but that’s an issue Engine has been hammering for a while now, as evidenced by its strong support for the March for Innovation, which takes place from May 22 to 23. In a letter that the advocacy group has sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of the Senate immigration bill, which would increase the number of visas for high-skilled immigrants and establish a “startup visa” for foreign entrepreneurs, Engine Advocacy co-founder Michael McGeary says startups “can power the next generation of growth in the American economy if we let them.”

The proposed bill, writes McGeary, would help “catalyze continued economic growth in our community, and opportunity for the country as a whole.”

And yeah, that sounds a lot like what Zuckerberg said. But at least this version doesn’t come with the after-stench of oil-drenched political trade-off.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s young and dynamic CEO conceded that he used to ridicule early users for believing in him in keeping their confidential news.  However, it was a childish remark made by a Harvard student during his college years, now he says that he’s more mature. 

Moreover, the information was taken by former Valleywag Nicholas Carlson at Silicon Insider and was now confirmed by Mr. Zuckerberg in the New Yorker piece.  However, this old quote intensifies Facebook’s privacy policies wherein they continue to revise it at even terms. Furthermore, the CEO, upholds such privacy adjustment by stating that the social standards were replaced by openness. Additionally, tech executive, Anil Dash tells the New Yorker that such amendments are attractive to the boy wonder, Zuckerberg than half a billion of his Facebook users.

Additionally, the division between Zuckerberg’s principle and the users is that the latter would like to have their activities unexposed. When Facebook was initiated, the social network experienced privacy issues one after the other. Due to this the company altered its privacy settings based on their customers’ feedback. Apparently, as the world’s first in the global electronic scene, Facebook will take the criticisms for everything it carries out.

Moreover, just this year, Facebook reported its quarterly revenue of $1.45 billion wherein 30% of which came from mobile advertising. In this we can say, that the company, run by qualified and competent adults knew that the future of their business is dependent on the network’s confidentiality settings.

On contrary, the network’s view toward concealment of private information was often revised frequently and has been consistently scrappy: Do alterations, and then check how people were affected.

Likewise, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg statement was quoted as:

“Mark really does believe very much in transparency and the vision of an open society and open world, and so he wants to push people that way. I think he also understands that the way to get there is to give people granular control and comfort. He hopes you’ll get more open, and he’s kind of happy to help you get there. So for him, it’s more of a means to an end. For me, I’m no as sure.”

We say: Facebook is an application, service or piece of software which runs on hundreds and thousands of machines, computer servers in air-conditioned computer rooms all over the world.

It’s purpose it to make money through advertising and to collect and store personal information.

This from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook

Facebook is an online social networking service, whose name stems from the colloquial name for the book given to students at the start of the academic year by some university administrations in the United States to help students get to know each other. It was founded in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. The website’s membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening to high school students, and eventually to anyone aged 13 and over. Facebook now allows any users who declare themselves to be at least 13 years old to become registered users of the site.

So it was created to replace the paper based student “facebook” that was used in universities. This was it’s target audience, an audience that recognized the behaviours it fostered right at the very beginning.

“there are plenty of other primal instincts evident at work here (within Facebook) an element of wanting to belong, a dash of vanity and more than a little voyeurism.” “And competitiveness was immediately in evidence. From TheFacebooks first day, some users thought of it more as a way to accumulate the largest possible number of friends than to communicate and gather useful information.”

Bearing this in mind it was then opened up to anyone 13 and older in 2006. How do you think the 13 year olds…………..your 13 year olds or young teens are managing these primal instincts? How many 13 year olds would need to use a college facebook anyway? Then how many parents and grandparents would need to use a college facebook?

So what is Facebooks Mission? 

Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. https://www.facebook.com/facebook/info

With this as their mission do you really believe that they care about privacy? Read their mission again very carefully. They highlight the most dangerous aspect of this “service”. “to give people the power to share“. Share what? Anything you want, whenever you want 24/7.

All kinds of things are being “shared” within Facebook. PARENTS YOU MUST WATCH THIS VIDEO

Are people showing self control, respect for the feelings or privacy of others? Let’s be honest this is a power that is not being used but abused by a large number of the 1 Billion+ users.

“Responsible” people keep making mistakes with their power to share. We see it so often in the media. Mistakes that are harming many many relationships. When we consider all the genuine and good people on Facebook who are not coping it makes us wonder about the 83 million accounts that may be fake.!

So as parents in this cyber world do you ever wonder what impact any of this is having on our children, relationships and families. Is Facebook helping us to become better people, or just more open?And then open with what?

Parents how are you going monitoring your children’s 300+ “friends”? If the typical teenager is spending around 2 hours on Facebook a day you would have to spend about the same amount of time just to keep up right? How are you going with that? Oh you have more than one child on Facebook…………..good luck with that.

Oh but your responsible and concerned with the amount of time they spend on the net and so you have parental controls in place to filter porn sites and other nasties. You get your reports and alerts and everything is looking pretty good. The kids never try to access porn or that kind of thing. They are on Facebook all the time so they wouldn’t have the time for anything else anyway.

Well here is some news for you. If you filter the internet, everything else, but not Facebook, you are wasting your time.

What are the top 5 search terms your kids are searching for online?
1. YouTube
2. Google
3. Facebook
4. Sex
5. P0rn

http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2009/12/top-kids-teens-search-terms/

Do any of these searches work within Facebook it’self?

Let’s try something, let’s search for girls. Do you think a 13 year old girl or boy would perform a search like this? Of course………… (you don’t even need a Facebook account to do this!!)

Search results provide Porn, nude girls or suicide girls. Please understand if you are happy for anyone in your family to use and access Facebook then you must also be happy for them to be able to access this kind of information, in your lounge room, by themselves in their bedroom any time of the day or night, on their school provided iPad or iPhone you gave them for their birthday etc. Remember that you pay for the internet access that allows them access to this “service”. Our concern is for those 13 year olds who hear “Happy birthday here is your Facebook log on”, who then stumble across content that would normally be blocked by an internet filter, content that in the past was always restricted to adults, and find they have lost their innocence. Facebook sex page alarms school by shaming kids as young as 13!

‘Verbal sewer’ harming our children – school principal!

Then you have those “responsible” parents who think they can actually “police’ Facebook sharing information like this.

You have got to be joking. Just how are you keeping them safe?

Facebook has given over a Billion users the POWER to share anything they want 24/7. In reality what we have is a service full of the very best and very worst the world has to offer, no one can police or monitor content from so many people, ever………..and it is growing. Facebook accused of being lax on child porn

But why only be concerned about the children. How does this “service” impact on a couple who are going through a rough patch as couples always do? What about someone confused about their sexual identity when they see sponsored ads like those below? Come on you all see them. Do they appear on a sex offenders/predators personal Facebook page? What about a nun or priest, can these sponsored ads lead them or any of us into temptation?

Oh that’s right you can find this kind of content and much worse all over the internet, but that is the thing, with Facebook you don’t need to. While you can access other content via other websites you cannot build relationships with others, interact and share with them the way you can on Facebook. And that is the problem.

Remember Facebook’s mission is to give us the power to share. Here on Facebook you are the judge, jury executioner and sovereign publisher of anything you want to share. How did everyone suddenly become qualified to know what content is and is not appropriate to publish in the public domain? How many relationships, marriages and families have been torn apart because of the misuse of this power?

Social networking was cited in over a third of divorce filings last year http://www.viralblog.com/social-media/facebook-social-media-and-divorce/

Facebook Responsible for a Fifth of Divorces in Wales http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/452598/20130402/facebook-fifth-divorce-reasons-wales-jcp-solicitors.htm

Facebook Relationship Problems: How Social Networking And Jealousy Affect Your Love Life http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/09/facebook-relationship-problems-social-networking_n_955980.html

Do we really need to say anything more?

How much do you need to see to know that the good does not outweigh the bad on Facebook? That this cyber world was never intended for children. It is an adult world that presents the very best and very worst that the world has to offer. It is a world where children are not yet mature enough to cope with the content that it provides, but then the mature members are not coping with it either. 

If you remain a member of Facebook you are supporting this “service” and everything that goes with it.

Please take back your life, protect your family and relationships

Quit Facebook Now.

Chi tiết: http://vietf.vn/2013/05/09/dien-thoai-facebook-htc-first-giam-gia-con-1-usd.html

Image via CrunchBase

Facebook is an online social networking service, whose name stems from the colloquial name for the book given to students at the start of the academic year by some university administrations in the United States to help students get to know each other.^[7] It was founded in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.^[8] The website’s membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening to high school students, and eventually to anyone aged 13 and over. Facebook now allows any users who declare themselves to be at least 13 years old to become registered users of the site.^[9]

Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups, organized by workplace, school or college, or other characteristics, and categorize their friends into lists such as “People From Work” or “Close Friends”. As of September 2012, Facebook has over one billion active users.^[10] According to a May 2011 Consumer Reports survey, there are 7.5 million children under 13 with accounts and 5 million under 10, violating the site’s terms of service.^[11]

In May 2005, Accel partners invested $12.7 million in Facebook, and Jim Breyer^[12] added $1 million of his own money to the pot. A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social networking service by worldwide monthly active users.^[13] Entertainment Weekly included the site on its end-of-the-decade “best-of” list, saying, “How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers’ birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Facebook?”^[14] Quantcast estimates Facebook has 138.9 million monthly unique U.S. visitors in May 2011.^[15] According to Social Media Today, in April 2010 an estimated 41.6% (129.5 million) of the U.S. population had a Facebook account.^[16] Nevertheless, Facebook’s market growth started to stall in some regions, with the site losing 7 million active users in the United States and Canada in May 2011.^[17] Facebook eventually filed for an initial public offering on February 1, 2012, and was headquartered in Menlo Park, California.^[2] Facebook Inc. began selling stock to the public and trading on the NASDAQ on May 18, 2012.^[18]. Based on its 2012 income of USD 5.1 Billion, Facebook joined the Fortune 500 list for the first time, being placed at position of 462 on the list published in the May of 2013.^[19]

But then we started to think about how Mark Paul Zuckerberg would be a great pet name.

Bark Paul Zuckerberg

You could have a dog.

Mark Tall Zuckerberg

You could have a giraffe.

Mark Paul Zuckerbird

You could have a bird.

You could dress them all in hoodies. And then you can come up with a new portmanteau smashing 90s teen celebrity with Millennial social networking tycoon and adopt a new batch of critters.

Ảnh trên Facebook được hiển…

Chi tiết: http://vietf.vn/2013/05/08/google-glass-da-co-the-dang-anh-len-facebook.html

Do you remember when Facebook was really exclusive? Those were the days! I remember I was attending the University of Mary in Bismarck when Facebook first launched (back when Mark Zuckerberg was a normal dude) and I could only be friends with others who had @umary.edu as their email addresses. So crazy to think about!! I remember filling out my profile and putting down all my favorite bands and TV shows. Now those are nowhere to be found on my Facebook profile! I also remember posting crazy drunken photos with college friends…. Those are also definitely down! (I’m a professional now, people!)

I joined Twitter and LinkedIn later, maybe 3 years ago or so. And I have to say, these have become my favorite! Twitter especially; I love Twitter! Who sat down and thought “Let’s develop a social media site where you can only post 140 characters!”?? It’s genius! Little snippets of information, and you can post a whole bunch of crap and nobody gets annoyed! They just continue scrolling on their Twitter feed. I got asked today to head up my company’s Twitter page, and I’m super excited! What a great (and easy) way to promote our company on social media.

It got us thinking though, has Facebook started to take a backseat to the other social media sites? I think so. In North Dakota (and I know, we’re very excluded and probably naive), Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram and others are rapidly gaining popularity. I mean, come on, my MOM’s on Facebook! But Twitter… now Twitter is cool. No Mom’s allowed… Oh wait. Plus, my biggest pet peeve about Facebook in the last year are the little photo/clip art boxes with cute/annoying sayings. Oh look, a cat jumping over a baby to catch a dog – how cute! I’m going to post this on Facebook so I can clog up my friends’ newsfeeds!! I heard at a recent social media seminar that when you post something on your business’s Facebook page, only 16% of your followers see it. That is not a great percentage!

Social media, I will love you until the day I die. You are an integral part of marketing and I love teaching others about it. And I also love that when Regan and Lauren are teenagers, I can say “I remember when social media didn’t exist!” And they’re going to think their Mom is totally lame .

In a study conducted over 20 years ago, 1500 graduate students were asked the same question. “Would you pursue your dream now or pursue a career that will help you become financially secure first?”

Eighty-three percent responded that they would wait until they were financially secure and the other 17% decided to pursue their dream. Twenty years later, out of the 1,245 graduates who decided to chose a job based on paycheck, only one became a millionaire. Whereas the 255 whom chose to work in a career they were passionate about, 100 of the respondents were millionaires.

So what does that say about passion? A whole damn lot.

I came across this study within Ekaterina Walters’ new book, Think Like Zuck. While I am only in the second chapter, the wheels began to churn. How can you define passion? Where can you find passion? And once it is found, what do you do with it?

You can buy a college education, but you can’t buy passion. I bet a lot of people wished it was available on an aisle of a convenience store. But since it is not, I would suggest taking the time reflect. My reflection consists of a glass wine (ok, maybe two) and empty an notepad. What do I love doing? What makes me truly happy? What do I get really excited about? While eating, drinking and bike riding make me happy, it was marketing that generated a real satisfaction. I am fortunate to have found what I love.

Now what?

Mark Zukerberg is passionate about connecting people online so he created a billion dollar idea. I found what I love…as for the billion dollar idea, I wouldn’t hold your breath. The main question at hand: how do I marry my passion with my vision? It’s a puzzle that I am slowly piecing together. Heavy emphasis on the word, slowly. 

What do you love? What challenges you? What subject do you actively pursue learning?

I wish everyone the opportunity to pursue what they love instead of wandering up and down aisle seven.

Facebook is America’s newest childish obsession similar to the Hula Hoop and Frisbee. As a low mentality exercise anyone can partake in the few requirements to be successful. To be part of the Facebook billion one must sign up and provide a profile of his or her life. Though this information is supposed to be private, the owners of this social network believe otherwise. Once the participant is within the system he or she can post pictures of children, friends, dogs or whatever comes to mind. Commentary by most on the Facebook pages is usually limited to a sentence or two. Few debate or post something of significance. Other social mediums draw people with a wider range of thought processes, such as LinkedIn. Measurement of success on Facebook pages comes with the number of people who follow and or befriend you in this medium. Perhaps these numbers play well for advertisers, but for the average user they are meaningless. How many people would want to know the last time you had a Big Mac or when your dog was in heat? Very few! Recently the owners of Facebook went public with a stock offering. Those with diminished capacity bought into the company’s propaganda that it was a worthy investment. In the aftermath of the offering thousands took a literal financial bath when its share value fell to nearly half of its initial price. Since then the stock value has been creeping back, yet continues in a very negative range.  Mark Zuckerberg, the young billionaire who brought Facebook to life has decided to allow his social network to be part of the government’s strategic information pool. He has developed a close relationship with the Obama Administration, allowing them quick access to personal information you have posted in your profile or stated in commentary. Zuckerberg’s reward was an amazing tax break ranging into the billions. To the average user his actions are a betrayal of trust. Facebook has become a fad for tens of millions, for others an obsession. Facebook has reinvented social interaction, no doubt. What is missing from this equation is the human element that no cyber bulletin board can replace. Facebook may be around for many years to come but its value to humanity will diminish with time, as a good fad always does. Mark Davis, MD, President of Healthnets Review Services, www.healthnetsreviewservices.com, platomd@gmail.com  Author of Demons of Democracy and the forthcoming book, Obamacare: Dead on Arrival, A Prescription for Disaster. Manager of the LinkedIn group, Government in Transition, join, comment and debate with some of the best minds on LinkedIn.

The economic impact of the boycott will be negligible to Facebook.

But that’s not the point.

It’s the third recent set of unintended political consequences that Facebook has stumbled over since it launched FWD.us, its lobbying arm.

[related_links /]

FWD is supposed to be a single-issue advocacy group dedicated to immigration reforms that would allow tech companies to bring in more smart, highly qualified foreign workers.

But in pursuit of that narrow goal, it has ended up supporting ads for Big Oil and the politicians who want drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, and the Keystone XL pipeline to be built from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico.

In protest, CREDO Mobile tried to take out ads on Facebook asking CEO Mark Zuckerberg to pull funding for those oil ads. But Facebook banned the CREDO ads — on the grounds that using Zuckerberg’s face is against policy because it’s confusing to users — and handed CREDO way more publicity than its ads ever would have gotten.

And now CREDO is back, with a bunch of fellow travelers, to highlight Facebook’s uneasy political alliances.

“Ostensibly an organization dedicated to comprehensive immigration reform, ads run by FWD.us’s subsidiaries have also attacked health care reform, the 2009 stimulus, and ‘Chicago-style politics,’ CREDO said in a statement.

The boycott group also includes Progressives United, the League of Conservation Voters, and 350.org.

A video that we used to promote the new Computing GCSE that we’re running in September. It’s strange how most of the students focused on the cool office.

Chi tiết: http://vietf.vn/2013/05/06/chieu-doc-cua-zuckerberg.html

Facebook Home, Clearly Defined

For starters, let’s articulate what Facebook Home really is, as even that is a mystery to many. Home is not a “Facebook phone” or a fully functioning operating system; it is a collection of apps that function as your Android phone home base. Facebook activities naturally take center stage, creating a skin that operates on top of your Android OS. With it, your home screen mirrors your Facebook feed, allowing you easy access to likes, comments, and status updates. You’ll see full-screen images from your friends, and virtually everything Facebook offers – except the ads. Facebook Home doesn’t have ads at launch, but smart folks are wagering they will land very soon.

Facebook Home is so invasive that your normal phone activities – emails, missed calls, etc. – will now appear in your “cover feed”, dispersed with the other Facebook updates. Your entire Android phone will therefore become a Facebook-themed experience.

Facebook’s Response about Privacy

Shortly after the official release for Facebook Home, Zuckerberg held a question and answer session. When pressed about the privacy issues, Zuckerberg stated that “Analytics are made anonymous and used for half a percent of the user base.” This also happens to be the same standards that Apple and Google follow, so Zuckerberg seems to be playing by the same rules as the other big players. Or does he?

There’s one obvious discrepancy that shows Facebook may be dodging the real issue. Every action a user takes within Facebook is logged as such, and obviously reveals plenty about habits and interests. The more you share your status updates, photos, links, and other content with your friends, the more Facebook knows about you. Facebook Home is specifically designed to encourage easy and often sharing, clicking, and liking. Therein lies the rub.

Facebook also published a blog about Home’s privacy concerns, and in it they admit that “Home collects information when you interact with the service, such as liking or commenting on a post or sending a message. Home also may collect other information about how you use it.” In typically vague fashion, Facebook is leaving things open-ended. It’s policies like these that leave people mistrustful and concerned.

The Benefits of Home

Why would you want to download Facebook’s new Android mega-app? If you’re a Facebook faithful not concerned with the way the company uses your data, there is a lot to love about Home. In addition to the easy access to your feeds and friends’ profiles, Home also features a new chat service called “Chat Heads”. This app brings messaging to the forefront on mobile devices, something we haven’t yet seen from Facebook. You can even send SMS to any Facebook friend without opening a separate app. Since the cover feed now takes over your home screen, you can stay on top of your friend posts and updates, and can view this data even if your phone is locked.

Facebook Home is unlikely to woo anyone outside of their existing heavy users. For a behemoth like Facebook, however, that will likely equate to millions of downloads. If you are feeling the call to check it out, but would like to safeguard your privacy as much as possible, there are options. You can suppress location sharing by turning off the feature in the options panel, for starters. Likewise, if you decide to share phone numbers or email addresses, list secondary ones that aren’t as critical. There are plenty of Chat controls too, enabling you to only chat with specific friends, or to turn the feature off all together. And just like the web version of Facebook, you can specify that only certain friends see your posts, making it significantly more private.

Above all, remember that if you use Facebook Home, no matter what you do on your Android phone, Facebook follows. It is a fully integrated suite of applications, not just a single app download. That said, all the privacy concerns in the world aren’t going to keep the legions of fans from keeping up-to-the-minute tabs on their Facebook besties. Just bear in mind that consumer privacy protection is not currently a government strong suit, so stay responsible about what you share, and with whom. You don’t have to delete Facebook all together to be smart about protecting your privacy.

http://www.reverbnation.com/store/index/artist_817355

But wait!

STOP RIGHT THERE!!!!!! You know why? Facebook shares this information to everyone, by default. Do you really want some creep to show up at your awesome party and murder you or something? Thought not.

Before typing in that wonderful poetry you call a status update, make sure it’s reaching the right audience. It’s good to be knowledgeable, isn’t it?

After the Party

Fortunately for you and your friends, no unsavoury people came. Yay! Someone took pictures. They ended up online. You’re screwed. Some of them are of a really drunk you. We’re talking the wasted, on-the-floor and unconscious kind of drunk. They even tagged you! Also, you’re friends with a few of your relatives. Oops.

Untag yourself!!!

You don’t want them to see, do you? Also, did you  know that some employers go through your photos when you apply to them? How awkward.

Most people don’t know that Facebook started off as a “Hot or Not” website called Facemash for the students of Harvard’s campus.  Mark Zuckerburg created it for fun as a way for students to rate the opposing sex basic on their attractiveness.

Billions of people know what it has evolved into… (the answer is Facebook if you were stumped)

There is a new app on the block however.  Tinder, an app for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod has exploded onto college campuses under the same basic premise as Facemash.  Its goal is to take the fear of rejection from us men and allow us to talk to women who have deemed us attractive once we have done so as well.

It’s all fun and games until you find someone that you would actually be interested in meeting.  Then the worry sets in… Is she catfishing me?  What if she turns out to be really weird?  How am I supposed to act on a “blind”, internet set up date? (this can work for all internet / blind dating too)

Men’s Fitness wrote just the article for us guys.  It talks all about navigating the first date, to making sure that you dress appropriately, and picking the correct meeting spot.  Also, in case of a train wreck, it talks you through an exit strategy so that yours and her egos stay intact, and you leave no worse off than when you met.

 Are we Exporting or Attracting Talent?

In concert with the recent articles I have presented on my site regarding the Temporary Foreign Worker Program in Canada, it is apparent that the US is also facing this same dilemma, as they prepare to overhaul their distorted immigration system.

America is also grappling with the identical question Canadians have been pondering of late: Do temporary work visas alleviate domestic skills shortages, or facilitate outsourcing?

Nearly half of U.S. employers surveyed say the main reason behind open entry-level positions may be a skills shortage. Meanwhile, in keeping with another study, the number of immigrant-founded tech start-ups has fallen to just below 44% since 2005, down from 52.4%; and according to Mark Zuckerberg’s new immigration advocacy group, 40% of foreign math and science students, reportedly the foremost sought-after by U.S. employers, have to leave the country once they graduate.

On the opposite side, others have long been suggesting that the overwhelming majority of H1B visas, the most favored permit for temporary foreign workers, has systematically been about Indian off-shoring companies like Cognizant, Infosys, Tata and Wipro, that use them to train their workforce. In the mean time, a recent report has found that approximately half of U.S. graduates within the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs manage to find jobs in their own fields.

The latter set of evidence has led some to suggest that, far from promoting “the information economy” tech firms are bent on acquiring permission to hire additional low-cost foreign workers who will displace the locals. However, there’s a far more benign and convincing explanation: The off-shoring vendors are crowding out Silicon Valley companies, competing with them for the sixty-five thousand H1B visas the U.S. offers annually.

The proponents of the present Senate immigration bill are cognizant of this. Thus, the draft legislation seeks to “rebalance the system away from temporary visas and focus more on permanent visas,” Madeleine Sumption, a Senior Policy Analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.

“The thrust of this bill is to heavily penalize the serious user of H-1B. It’s expressly designed to attack specific business models,” she noted. The bill forbids firms from having over half of their workforce on H1B visas, and imposes penalties on firms who use the permits for 30% of their staff. Instead, it favors work permits, which will result in permanent residency, with the thought that the best and brightest should stay and settle.

What the U.S.’s experience, and Canada’s as well appear to indicate is that temporary worker programs address both skills shortages and facilitate off-shoring, without distortions like mandated caps (or, worse still, provisions that enable foreign workers to be paid less) they would most likely satisfy both needs.

Eliminating the program altogether would likely do very little to stop firms from outsourcing certain kinds of jobs to jurisdictions wherever they’ll be done more cost-effectively. When foreign workers cannot get into the country temporarily for proper training, native staff are typically sent abroad to train them.

At any rate, there is proof that the trend toward off-shoring is truly fizzling out (Developed countries are beginning to take back service-industry jobs too). Happily for U.S. STEM graduates, the wage gap between American and Indian IT wages has been quickly shrinking—not as a result of Indians depressed U.S. salaries, but because the two are converging: Americans have gotten cheaper and Indians costlier.

Research Sources: Canadian Business, http://www.canadianbusiness.com/blogs-and-comment/uncle-sam-ponders-its-own-temporary-workers-program-puzzle/  Economist, http://www.economist.com