Orlando Shooter and H-1Bs – A Connection?

When I first heard that Jason S. Rodriguez, the gunman that is accused of shooting six people in Orlando, was an engineer, and that he attacked the offices of a civil engineering firm, I immediately went to work to see if there was an H-1B connection.  As the story unfolded, I found more information about the shooter.  As I assumed, he was an unemployed engineer.  Two years ago, he was fired by the firm, Reynolds, Smith and Hills, Inc. (www.rsandh.com).  A quick check at www.endh1b.com showed that this firm was a sponsor of numerous H-1Bs, as Kim Berry of Programmer’s Guild points out.

Since 2007, the year that Rodriquez was hired, RSH applied for 19 H-1Bs, mostly Civil Engineers and Transportation Engineers.  Rodriquez was “fired” after 11 months at the firm. 

But was he fired to make room for a cheaper H-1B?  Clearly, Rodriquez had some mental issues.  Yet, he was sane enough to get an engineering degree.  He appears to have suffered from schizophrenia, but did his displacement cause him to go off his meds?

And what happened at RSH that made him target that firm?  We know that companies that hire H-1Bs use psychological warfare and all sorts of head games to displace their local workers.  Some go so far as to blackmail their American employees to make them train their H-1B replacements.  Was Rodriquez a victim of such tactics, and is that what caused him to snap?  How does a civil engineer get to work at a company for 11 months and not be qualified from day one, as his RSH supervisors have said?

It is my belief that Rodriquez was pushed aside to make room for an H-1B.  If a company finds that you are incompetent, they will usually get rid of you within 90 days to avoid paying unemployment benefits.  RSH is now going out its way to portray Rodriquez as a fuck up from day one.  Is RSH such a zoo that they hire someone to design bridges, and can’t even evaluate his abilities? 

Company spokesman Mike Bernos said Rodriguez was an entry-level engineer who was fired in June 2007 after working there for a year.

"His performance wasn't up to our standards, so we terminated him," Bernos said. There had been no contact between the company and Rodriguez since then.

- N.Y. Post

Bullshit.

Rodriquez was hired, was good enough to hold a job for almost a year, and then shit-canned.  Bernos is lying.  Bernos is probably the guy who filed the LCAs that made Rodriquez obsolete. 

At the time of the shooting, Rodriquez was making $890 working at Subway.  Think about that – you bust your ass to get an engineering degree, and you end up in your forties, making sandwiches.  You don’t need to be schizo to start thinking about retribution at that point.  I predict that this is just the beginning of a massive wave of violence as middle-aged American men reach their breaking point and start to settle scores.  While I feel bad for the victims at RSH, one of them a 26-year old with a young child, I am convinced that RSH management had as much to do with this tragedy as Rodriquez. 

The scene has played out for almost a decade.  I witnessed it myself – security walking up to a middle-aged guy in a cube, tapping him on the shoulder, and escorting him out.  The next day, an H-1B was in his chair.  What are we to expect these men to do, make fucking sandwiches to feed to the newly arrived H-1Bs?  Give me a break.

Even the blue-balled nut-job George Sodini, who killed three people in Pittsburg back in August, was a systems analyst at a law firm who had survived two waves of layoffs.  That stress has to weigh heavily on a man.  Now that we have double-digit unemployment, how many more men are about to snap?  80 percent of those who have lost jobs in this recession are men.  Millions of them.  Most of the Americans displaced by H-1Bs are middle-aged men.  What happens when their unemployment benefits have run out, when they have haven’t had a job for over a year, when every call they get is from some Desi recruiter talking in Hinglish about some bullshit job?

I think the H-1B program is now a national security issue.  We can’t have an invasion of curry-scented pod-people displacing millions of Americans.  Not to mention the fact that it is very easy for a terrorist from Pakistan to sneak into America posing as an H-1B programmer.  Although “posing” is a redundant term.  They are all poseurs.

So we have two issues – the threat of an American techie going postal, and the threat of a terrorist coming over with a guest worker visa.  If we end the H-1B program right now, we solve both problems.  All the slumdogs would get rounded up and deported, and Americans can take their jobs.  This would force companies to increase salaries for techies and stimulate migration into those fields.  Wages in I.T. have been stagnant for ten years, thanks to the CEWPs, and  now they can start rising without the artificial subsidy given to American corporations that hire cheap visa workers.  The economy would grow, and we would all be safer.

And the cost?  I think the executive pigs at Google and Microsoft that are enriching themselves at the expense of American workers can afford to make a few million dollars less for awhile.