PBS高端访谈:美国科技产业面临新的签证政策

 　　HARI SREENIVASAN, PBS NEWSHOUR WEEKEND ANCHOR: The Trump¹ administration is revamping the H-1B visa program for highly educated and skilled foreign workers. The application period for the employer-sponsored visas opened last Monday, and by Friday, the 85,000 slots available were gone. This means, as usual, there will be a lottery² for the H-1B visas later this year.

　　Joining me from Miami to discuss changes to the program is "USA Today" immigration reporter Alan Gomez.

　　The H-1B visas, just to put people — kind of give them some perspective, this is something the tech industry has wanted and uses for a long time.

　　ALAN GOMEZ, USA TODAY: Exactly. Companies like IBM, Microsoft, Google — they have been bringing in these workers for a very long time. What they argue is that's just not enough American workers that are graduating in the STEM fields, in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, to fill all the jobs that they need. And so, they need to bring in these workers from oversees³ who are especially trained in these fields to augment⁴ and to build and to continue increasing their businesses.

　　美国科技产业面临新的签证政策

　　SREENIVASAN: It's been controversy⁵ ever since it was introduced, there have been people complaining that this is taking away American jobs.

　　GOMEZ: Yes, it has been incredibly controversial. I mean, we hear all about sort of how undocumented immigrants in the country are taking these lower skilled jobs from American workers, but that argument has absolutely carried over into the high-tech⁶ field. And the argument is that a lot of these companies that, you know, people claim are firing American workers, American computer programmers, technicians, systems analysts⁷, IT workers, and getting rid of their higher salaries and replacing them with these H-1B workers who can come in and in some cases, do the work for cheaper.

　　In some cases, like for example, last year, Disneyworld was accused of laying off hundreds of workers and even having them train their Indian replacements⁸ to take over their jobs. This is — so, this is something that has gotten a lot of people very upset and get a lot of traction⁹ throughout the Republican presidential campaign last year.

　　SREENIVASAN: That wasn't the intent of the law as it was designed. So, how does the Trump administration plan to fix it?

　　GOMEZ: This is one of the areas that we're not exactly sure where President Trump sits. There are people within his administration — for example, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been railing against the H-1B program for years. And so, we saw just on Monday, the Department of Justice issue a notice on that first phase of the H-1B applications saying that the Department of Justice was going to increase their audits¹⁰ of American companies and overseas companies that use these H-1B visas to crack down abuse and to make clear that they weren't going to allow just basically entry level computer programmers to come in through the H-1B program to really focus the program on what it was intended to do — these very high skilled, very hard to find experts to bring in to the United States.

　　SREENIVASAN: What's the ripple¹¹ effect if these audits take place or if the process slows down?

　　GOMEZ: What could happen is you've got these tech companies — it's already hard to get these. As you mentioned, there is I think one out of every three or four applications that are put in that actually get granted. So, that's already hard to plan for something that you have to put an application in, it takes several months for it to come in.

　　And then if the federal government comes and says in auditing¹² the request and the visas granted, that just creates more uncertainty¹³ and as you know very well, businesses need stability, they need some sort of predictability about what their workforce¹⁴ and what their future is going to look like, so that's just going to make it a little bit more difficult for these companies to operate and to plan for expansion, to plan for new programs, things like that.

　　SREENIVASAN: All right. "USA Today" immigration reporter Alan Gomez — thanks so much.

　　GOMEZ: Thank you.

1 trump   

n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭

参考例句：

• He was never able to trump up the courage to have a showdown.他始终鼓不起勇气摊牌。
• The coach saved his star player for a trump card.教练保留他的明星选手，作为他的王牌。

2 lottery   

n.抽彩；碰运气的事，难于算计的事

参考例句：

• He won no less than ￡5000 in the lottery.他居然中了5000英镑的奖券。
• They thought themselves lucky in the lottery of life.他们认为自己是变幻莫测的人生中的幸运者。

3 oversees   

v.监督，监视( oversee的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• She oversees both the research and the manufacturing departments. 她既监督研究部门又监督生产部门。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The Department of Education oversees the federal programs dealing with education. 教育部监管处理教育的联邦程序。 来自互联网

4 augment   

vt.(使)增大，增加，增长，扩张

参考例句：

• They hit upon another idea to augment their income.他们又想出一个增加收入的办法。
• The government's first concern was to augment the army and auxiliary forces.政府首先关心的是增强军队和辅助的力量。

5 controversy   

n.争论，辩论，争吵

参考例句：

• That is a fact beyond controversy.那是一个无可争论的事实。
• We ran the risk of becoming the butt of every controversy.我们要冒使自己在所有的纷争中都成为众矢之的的风险。

6 high-tech   

adj.高科技的

参考例句：

• The economy is in the upswing which makes high-tech services in more demand too.经济在蓬勃发展，这就使对高科技服务的需求量也在加大。
• The quest of a cure for disease with high-tech has never ceased. 人们希望运用高科技治疗疾病的追求从未停止过。

7 analysts   

分析家，化验员( analyst的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• City analysts forecast huge profits this year. 伦敦金融分析家预测今年的利润非常丰厚。
• I was impressed by the high calibre of the researchers and analysts. 研究人员和分析人员的高素质给我留下了深刻印象。

8 replacements   

n.代替( replacement的名词复数 )；替换的人[物]；替代品；归还

参考例句：

• They infiltrated behind the lines so as to annoy the emery replacements. 他们渗透敌后以便骚扰敌军的调度。 来自辞典例句
• For oil replacements, cheap suddenly looks less of a problem. 对于石油的替代品来说，价格变得无足轻重了。 来自互联网

9 traction   

n.牵引；附着摩擦力

参考例句：

• I'll show you how the traction is applied.我会让你看如何做这种牵引。
• She's injured her back and is in traction for a month.她背部受伤，正在作一个月的牵引治疗。

10 audits   

n.审计，查账( audit的名词复数 )v.审计，查账( audit的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Requires that use of all bond funds is subject to independent audits. 需要使用的所有债券基金是受独立审计。 来自互联网
• Support the locations during customer-visits, audits and quality-improvement programs. 支持客户参观，稽核和提高品质等项目。 来自互联网

11 ripple   

n.涟波，涟漪，波纹，粗钢梳；vt.使...起涟漪，使起波纹； vi.呈波浪状，起伏前进

参考例句：

• The pebble made a ripple on the surface of the lake.石子在湖面上激起一个涟漪。
• The small ripple split upon the beach.小小的涟漪卷来，碎在沙滩上。

12 auditing   

n.审计，查账，决算

参考例句：

• Auditing standards are the rules governing how an audit is performed.收支检查标准是规则统治一个稽核如何被运行。
• The auditing services market is dominated by a few large accounting firms.审计服务市场被几家大型会计公司独占了。

13 uncertainty   

n.易变，靠不住，不确知，不确定的事物

参考例句：

• Her comments will add to the uncertainty of the situation.她的批评将会使局势更加不稳定。
• After six weeks of uncertainty,the strain was beginning to take its toll.6个星期的忐忑不安后，压力开始产生影响了。

14 workforce   

n.劳动大军，劳动力

参考例句：

• A large part of the workforce is employed in agriculture.劳动人口中一大部分受雇于农业。
• A quarter of the local workforce is unemployed.本地劳动力中有四分之一失业。