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H1B Tech Visa Workers Being Deported From U.S.
John Murdoch writes "Tens of thousands of programmers, database specialists, and other technical workers come to the United States each year on "H1B" visas--temporary visas for workers with in-demand technical skills. The key word in that sentence is temporary. Congress began the program six years ago, and the H1B visas have a six-year time limit--meaning that thousands of H1B holders are reaching the end of their visas, and they do not have any hope of getting permanent resident status. The Washington Post has an excellent story about the problem (click here for story as posted on MSNBC).
These H1B residents have invested six years of their lives here--they have homes, families, and careers here. There is a generally acknowledged (or perhaps, generally alleged) shortage of programmers and other tech workers in the U.S. The federal government is presently working with Congress to approve legislation increasing the number of H1B workers that can come to the U.S.--while simultaneously sending currently-employed workers home.
"
First a Disclaimer - I've worked both with and for John over the years.
The H1B visa problem is very real, but there are more than two sides to this issue. Some of the better programmers I've ever worked with were in this country on H1B visas, as were some of the worst.
Often times, the employers who bring in people on H1B visas treat these people as virtual slaves. The worst case of this was a woman who ended up taking here case to court. It seems he employer was sexually harassing her, and she complained. The company ended up shutting down, and she ended up deported.
That said, there are a lot of unscrupulous "Visa Brokers" out there. The promise their future employees "Yeah, the visas are always converted. Here, just study for these certification exams, and we'll get you in". In turn, they promise the companies in the us "I can supply you with experienced workers, cheap." Note: Not all of them do this.
The WORST case of this was AIG with Syntel. AIG decided to fire 4500 of their employees, and "Outsource" all their work to Syntel. Syntel brought in all H1B replacement workers, paying them below prevailing wage (there were fines issued). Further, the 4500 employees were told that they would get no severance pay unless they trained their replacements.
Luckily, I was in a different office (with 11 other people) and we were NOT let go. I had to work with these replacements. Most of these people were promised by Syntel that they would be able to stay. The few who DID have their visas converted to green cards left Syntel within a few weeks! Most of the replacements were horrid, and were being treated horribly.
Now, what should we do about this?
Simple - eliminated the H1B visa, and let a smaller number of these people in on green cards! Unless you are a Native American, you, or one of your ancestors, was an immigrant to this country. It's been one of our strengths. Remember "The Melting Pot"? We have to have it back. The people with these skills would be a terrific addition to our country.
Let's stop dangling a false carrot. Either let them in, or DON'T
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Maybe they exist, but I have also yet to see an exploited H1B employee. Everywhere I have worked, H1B's got paid like everybody else, and human resources would press hard to convert them to green cards as soon as possible.
I was accused of xenophobia for this point of view, but the truth is I have had more contact with the Immigration and Naturalization Service than many people because my wife is Thai. One of the things I immediately saw about the H1-B visas was the fact that they allow people only long-term temporary residence in the United States. Think about this, if you moved to a state and lived there for six years, would you still consider your old state "home?" I wouldn't, I would certainly have made friends and set down roots after living someplace for six years. I'd want to have a say in elections (which would effect me) and otherwise be part of the community. People on H1-B visas are not given these opportunities. You could say that people on H1-B visas are "second class citizens" but the truth is even worse, they are not citizens at all. I assume, from my own life, that they must deal with the INS breathing down their neck, demanding that form X be filled out on time if they want to work and permit B recieved before they can travel.
The real truth of this is that it is cynical politicians using the economic fears and, yes, xenophobia of the populace to "divide and conquer." We should all accept the idea of foriegn workers, and once we've accepted the idea, we should realize that granting citizenship to these people (if they want it) is best for all Americans, not just the ones who were born elsewhere.
I can only compare people's attitudes toward H1-B visas, the ones who are glad that they are harsh and inevitably temporary, to the attitude of people who, upon hearing that a blight is affecting crops all over the country say, "Good, I hate those damn farmers anyway." The same percentage (in fact a greater percentage) of our workforce will be foriegn born whether we offer people H1-B's or citizenship. If a person is a citizen, they have the same stake in this country as the rest of us, the same need to protect our civil liberties, the same desire to see that good people are elected to public office. On the other hand, people who are denied citizenship have every reason to be apathetic. Whether they want to speak out on technological issues or not, their voices have less weight with people in power. They certainly can't help elect people who are savvy on tech issues if they can't vote. I often see people posting, "write congress about DMCA, write congress about UCITA," non-citizens have very little reason to care about such things, and would not be listened to if they did.
One last point: It may be that given the choice between an American citizen and an H1-B worker, some companies will choose the H1-B worker. It is possible that one of the reasons they choose an H1-B worker is because these people can be more easily exploited. (I'm not saying it is true, I'm just saying the possibility exists.) However, if the same two workers were both citizens, the only thing the employers could take into account would be competance. If you support citizenship for foriegn workers, you are making certain that you are competing for jobs based on competance and not on your prospective employers desire for the worker who is most easily exploited.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
In a democracy, the government is run by and for the people. The purpose of the government is to serve our collective needs; that's the reason we created it and invested it with power. Geeks are people, as are business types. (I know this latter may come as a shock to some. ;) )
The government, whose officers we elect and whose
taxes we pay, should be a tool for us to solve problems
too big for one individual or one corporation to solve.
Since the problem here is immigration laws, and an
individual can't change the country's laws
by fiat, this seems like a very obvious place
for a legislative solution. What else is the government for?
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
There's a difference between just plain meanness, which you describe very eloquently, and the frustration of paying a lot of money for school, only to discover that you won't get the kind of instruction and help you expect from your teachers, because they can't communicate with you. Teaching is about communication, and if you aren't able to communicate effectively with the students, then you aren't qualified to be a teacher, and trying to do a job you simply aren't equipped for is bound to be painful on both sides. But, in my opinion, you should never have been in that position.
First, make it work, then make it right, then make it fast, then, make it bloated!
That is not the problem. These are promised that they can get thier greencard if they come here. Alot of the H1B visa holders are trick into coming here by empty promises. Some are pais very well while others are paid about half of their American counter parts. I know this because I have friends on the H1B visa.
As an employer I wont hire anyone whos not a US citizen. I dont want to mess with the H1 visa crap. I dont want to pay for it. I believe we have enough talented people in the US and that offices are already overcrowded without adding 20 more H1 visa foreigners. The tech pool may not be big enough but guess what.... That leaves the corperates with one choice, Pay better and make better working conditions or have empty reqs for people.
Having recently worked for a company where h1 visas abounded I watched the company fall apart. Salarys lowered, working conditons became restriced so the person had a 2 1/2 foot deep desk that was 4 feet wide. 17 inch monitors went from the back of the desk to the front. It was disgusting. Yet everytime i turned around they were hiring a new H1 visa. The company degerated to the point that when I left after 6 months I was considered a long timer with the average employee staying 3 months.
Now look at that from the standpoint of the employer, They could fill tech shoes all day with no cares so why change the working conditions because of the H1 visa program. When someone quit they just hired one or two more people to fill there shoes. If they were forced to hire american workers they would have to clean up the workspace, provide people reasonable workspaces and generally pay better. Being a technical manager means I normally get stock options, lots of them however said company was no longer giving them and told me there reason was because they hired so many H1 visas who were just happy to get the job. The problem is these H1's were using there 3 months there to go elsewhere cause the conditons were so bad.
If we throw out all the H1's I wouldnt care, Just means money for those of us who live here permanantly. The us is overcrowded already, we dont need anymore people moving in. We melted enough. Someone wants to come over for 6 weeks or even a year thats fine with me provided that we send someone to there country under the same stipulations at the same time. Balance it out, Dont influx our workforce, it just leads to worse conditions for us.
Presently I work for a company who doesnt hire H1's, Who had a defined policy of 1 person per 10X10 cube and provides all of our needs including food and beer. They want to keep the most talented and technical people, not bring in a few H1 visas for there year or six stint. Im happy to work in this enviroment knowing that tommorow im not going to have 20 indian oracle programers who dont speak english sitting in my cube with me.
--- Always remember. 99.36% of all statistics are inaccurate.
I have worked with people on H1 visas. Thanks to them we were able to get extraordinary talent, which we couldn't otherwise get at any price. They are still crap. There is no reason to withold real green cards from these people. The company held their visas over their heads like some ComBlock country from decades ago. I was ashamed to be an American and face these people.
1Alpha7
Live to be Moderated
Education isn't about learning a trade, or learning to run, (or write) circuit simulators. It's about getting a grasp on history, and nuances, and learning to see new situations and languages in the light of that history and those nuances. Most Americans don't get that sort of education. Neither do most Indians. Imagine that in this country English was taught only to children bound for Ivy-league schools. That's roughly how it is in India.
Back around the turn of the last century, about 5% of the US population got a University education. Today, close to half of the US population goes to something called a University, and still about 5% gets a University education. The rest get a trade-school education.
Nels
See what I've been reading.
I transferred to the equivalent course in another department, taught by an American TA. I did just fine, though I didn't truly understand some of the important concepts until some time after I took the final exam. The important thing was, the essentials got through once I got rid of the communications barriers (in the only way I could).
Every major university has a foreign-languages department, with language labs. I see no reason why TA's whose English vocabulary or accent aren't up to par shouldn't spend time in intensive education or speech therapy as required to get them functioning well enough to get by with the native speakers. This would help the TA's, too. They're almost universally smart cookies, it wouldn't take them long.
--
Build a man a fire, and he's warm for a day.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
The fact is, most tech jobs (sysadmin, programmer, web developper, etc.) are not 40hr/week jobs. They're demanding 60, 70, 80 hour per week jobs. And they're all "salaried" jobs, which means no extra pay for extra hours.
Now young people fresh out of college, and immigrant H1B visa workers have little else in their life to occupy them. Thus they are able to accept the abusive work hours employers expect them to put out.
But now something new has happened. The first BIG wave of IT industry workers are just now starting to reach their upper 30s and 40s.
What happens when a 70 hour/week employee gets married or has a kid?
Suddenly he or she has to cut back working hours to 50 or 40 hours per week as a responsibiliy to their family.
The employer sees this as MAJOR SLACKING OFF BY SOME OLD GRAYING BASTARD. So he's either FIRED. Or sees his salary cut 40% and quits because he can't support his family on a pay cut like that and is forced to QUIT.
The employer then puts an ad out and discovers that lots more older IT workers are applying than years ago when he put that last ad out. These older workers suffer from the same problem... having a life.
So suddenly the employer screams that there is a "shortage of IT workers" and demands the government allow more H1B visa workers in so he can continue his abusive employment practises.
Well, IMO, it's time employers are FORCED to play fair and give up their extremely abusive practises. Naturally they won't want to as screwing people over is highly lucrative and profitable.
Well, it looks like the party may finally be almost over. Can't say I'm not glad to hear it. And I can't say I feel any pity for poor staff strapped IT shops.
So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.
I spent a month in India recruiting programmers to come to the states on the H1 program. I didn't really feel it was right to do this but it was a once in a lifetime experience.
The problem is not that we have a shortage of workers. The problem is that companies can pay people who come from overseas LESS than they can pay a citizen. As opposed to paying a US programmer 80k or so a year (at least in Georgia I would gather) they can bring someone over from another country and pay them 45 or 50k. They won't bitch about salary because if they go unemployed, they have a hsort time period in which they can get rehired or they have to leave the country. Besides that, as one poster said, any other company doesn't want to bother with the visa paperwork.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
90% of the HB1 visas in the US are from India. The vast majority of the developers that come over on an HB1 visa have about a 3 or 6 mo. Microsoft certification course and fly over to work for $15-30/hr. They can do that because they don't mind living 10 to a house and sending every penny they save home. (taken from 5 contractors and 1 permanent employee for my company which are all Indian.)
Why does this piss me off so much? Because tech-staffing firms are charging decent American corporations which are too dumb or too desperate to pay attention $150-200/hr for these guys. The staffing company keeps the change. In addition, American developers who want to be temp or contract workers are not attractive to the agencies because we won't work for $30/hr.
Basically, staffing companies are raping American business and H1B visa holders.
Am I opposed to immigration? Absolutely not! I think american immigration restrictions are way too strict. Am I opposed to loosing my cushy lifestyle built on a lifetime of dedication to the magic glowing box? Of course I am! Would I bitch if it were just the H1B visa holders? Nope, I'd tighten my belt and take it as fate. But when it's a lowsy, stinkin' staffing agency I get pissed.
I say deport THEM!
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
Ball and chain? If the employed decides at any point they don't like the deal, they can violate the terms of the H1B visa and go back to where they came from for free. So obviously they prefer working under these conditions more than living in their home country, and it's not the American corp. that's making the conditions bad in their home country.
So, the "exploiting" company is giving the worker a better life (in the worker's opinion) than if the worker wasn't "exploited". How EVIL of them!
Steven E. Ehrbar
Man, you sound exactly like me. I think our problem is probably a serious lack of self-promotion skills, and an unwillingness to lie to get a job.
Of course, that could just be me :)
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
When they were recruited overseas, do you think the company said "we're going to wait until you get roots set down in the US, then dangle our ability to get you deported so we can treat you like and indentured servant."
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Have a look at an issue of the linguist list from 1995 here.
Known as the Muhlenberg vote, it was an attempt by a group of Germans to have all Federal laws printed in German as well as English. From waht I can gather there was a vote on ajournment of the discussion which was carried by one vote, the final result of the discussion was unrecorded (but I can assume it failed!). The story since seems to have acquired urban legend status that the overall referendum on an official language failed by one vote, beleivable since at the time there were a fair number of German speakers in the population and there most wanted to assert their independence from the Brits.
Good story though!
There is racism all over the world, actually, but you'd be hard pressed to find less than exists in the US. Here, large numbers of people of many races live and work together and minority rights are protected not only by law, but in the hearts of the average citizen. We're not perfect, of course, but it's such a good place that many poor Hispanics, Asians, and blacks are willing to risk their lives to get here. Rich ones content themselves with paying bribes. But come they do, and it makes sense: the places they come from are generally hellholes, where individual rights are not respected.
... that INS needs to sponsor some H1Bs for foreign, skilled paperwork-pushers. :)-
---------------------------------------------
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
Granted, this still won't get past those headhunters who use a simple search criteria to screen potential candidates - but it does bolster your chances if and when someone actually reads your resume and/or cover letter.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Yeah, and TN-1s suck. I can't get into the States, even though I'm a) Canadian, and b) literally one of the few people on the planet who can do a certain job. Why? Because I don't have a university degree. Why don't I have a uni degree? Because I wanted a job, not an education. So I went to College to learn computer programmer/analyst, until such time as the job offers started rolling in. Then I dropped out and never looked back. But because I don't have a degree (and I personally think that university degrees are superfluous for what I do; my buddy with a PhD in Computer Science can write an A.I., but he can't admin a database.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Bullshit bullshit bullshit. Christ I am so pissed today. It's cheap labor and nothing more. I am so tired of America taking care of the world like this. There are plenty of people here that could do the work but companies are too fucking cheap to pay. It doesn't matter how goddamn skilled someone is. It doesn't matter how goddamn motivated someone is.
Don't tell me America is supposed to take care of the world and "that's not what the country is supposed to be about". The rest of the world is LAUGHING at us because we cave in to every little thing to preserve our precious place in the world. We try to please everyone and you all know that doesn't work. I'm tired of the US making concessions for everyone in the world but its own citizens. If I go to work in another country I am expected to learn the language. No one makes any concessions for me. I'm tired of having to CHOOSE english as an option at an ATM. I live in the US for chrissakes what fucking language do you THINK I speak? I'm tired of alot of things.
If the internet access were cheaper overseas I would move there. And I would learn the language first.
And don't try and pull a race card or a xenophobe card either because it doesn't fly with me. Being nationalistic does not a racist make.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
I count none. I made an empirical assertion, which you haven't denied.
Oh, and the most frightening part is that one of the companies offered to let me telecommute. To America. American gov't needs to learn that lines on maps don't mean quite so much these days.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
An explanation first, by all rights, I "should" be an anti-alien proponent but I am not, actually quite the opposite. And here's why and how I think a lot of this argument is based on people who are afraid of competition, don't understand what this country is actually based on and want everything for free.
As a Boy Scout I was taught from a very young age to love America, and then doubling up and being in JROTC taught me the same. I was practically raised in a para-military uniform. I even joined the National Guard while I was still in HS, matter of fact I spent my Junior-Senior summer in Basic training(That's Basic as in Hut-Two-Three-Fower, not If-Then-Else). As I hadn't actually experienced any of the world at that point, I was an extreme Xenophobe and believed that America should close it's borders and put guns on top of them. (BTW I already started my love of Computers in the BSA when I earned my Computing merit badge around 1988 or thereabouts :-) and helped fix Sergeants computers in my AIT immediately after HS graduation.)
After wandering around for a year after HS I went Active Duty. THIS CHANGED EVERYTHING!!! After spending a short tour in Bosnia I realized, #1 America rocks. #2 War sucks.
America is absolutely the best country in the world, even for all of it's problems. 99.9% of the people never have to worry about getting shot at, being starved, being raped by government order, being forced to work for the government. Can you imagine what it is like to wake up and wonder who is in charge today, and if they like the group you are in enough to let you live through the day? Many of these former Soviet countries are DIRT POOR and the only chance they ever will have to be something other than poor is to come to America! Most of THOSE WHO COME HERE ON THESE VISA'S ARE NOT FREE RIDERS LOOKING TO SCAM THE AMERICAN PUBLIC!!! If you were in their shoes where would you want to be? And if you are from one of these countries, you should realize I am not knocking your country. America IS the land of opportunity, that's why you're here. But, the only way we can truly grow as a nation and as a people is by continuing to welcome those who not only want to be with us, but who want to make our country prosper and share their knowledge with us.
I know many H1B's who are currently being manipulated by the system. People who came to America, with HIGH level degrees, who have studied for years with the dream of coming to America and becoming one of us and adding to our rich heritage. But they are stuck not knowing where they will be tomorrow, they are not much better off then they were in their home country. If it wasn't for these "foreigners" coming to America, I would still be working for a trucking company. I would never have ever tried to become a Programmer. I always thought it was for people who were super intelligent and gifted. IF these people who came from America were out to rape the American public do you think that they would spend the time sitting down with some Average Joe and teaching him how to program and think logically? NO, they would have been happy to see me toil at something I hated and never would have lifted a finger to intervene. All of this with no promise of ANYTHING in return.
I witness the suffering of my friends everyday. I know how hard they have worked and how frustrated they are with their hands tied. Why don't we believe and follow our own cherished words? Why don't we continue the tradition of a proud people with open hearts who know that the way to victory is not to become afraid and close-minded, but to welcome the thoughts and ideas of a varied people.
The point I am trying to make it that if you are afraid of losing your jobs to people who are more qualified, dedicated and harder working than yourselves. Then maybe you should re-evaluate your own dedication? Freedom doesn't mean that everything is handed to you, it only means you have to chance to succeed or fail, Freedom has nothing to do with the outcome except that you get to chose it. And that the whole idea of allowing people to come to America to only work for 6 years, then having to return to their country reeks of indentured servitude and turning people into mercenaries. These people should be given their due citizenship's because they have proven they want and can make America a better place.
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe FREE!
free?http://www.ugeek.com/news/geeknews/jan2000/ge e2000320000988.htm
Freedom - it's the most expensive idea ever known I apologize for any ramblings I have made, unless they make sense, in that case. I told you so!
My hypothesis regarding monkeys and typewritters revolves around the concept of broken typewritters and smeared feces on
int CountBitsInByte() { return sizeof(char) * 8; } /* iirc. My C is rusty. I mostly do SQL these days. */
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
historical correction: there was a *proposal* to use german, and it never would have flown. Even *if* it had had an actual chance of getting by Congress, it would have been ignored by the states--which at that point had all the power.
In short, there was *never* a real issue about language. Many things have been proposed, including Aaron Burr's proposal to paint the white house black. non-starters all . . .
hawk
That ain't racist, it's just reality. University's really should offer/require some form of English-language speech training for TA's who don't speak English as their first language.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
New Delhi becomes Silicon Valley, 2004. Won't happen. They tried this with Bangalore and the public works system couldn't keep up. In the two weeks I was in the city our hotel (Le Meridien) had no less than 3 power outages a day.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
However I got disgusted after two years of watching people get screwed over on their salary reviews, promotions, and other benefits because they were tied to their job. They can't quit.
The greed disgusted me. They were getting people with masters degrees for cents on the dollar from what they would pay anyone else. The entire program has led to economic slavery. I won't be sorry to see the program revoked for the good of the workers.
Dr. Fardook drfardook@evilconspiracy.com
Not quite correct.
If you read the orginal Declaration of Independence:andYou see it specifically writes " united States of America" with a lowercase "u". Which means, America is the name of the geographic LAND.
The definition of the United States can be found in the Constitution :
Which means United States is the name of the LEGAL ENTITY. (Black's Law for "Legal Entity" states: "An entity, other then a natural person.")
Now the definition of U.S. citizen in the Bill of Rights you notice it also uses an uppercase "u".
Notice the and! Which means it is possible to expatriate (give or revoke up your U.S. citizenship) and become an State Citizen or an American.
And yes, I know Black's Law Dictionary defines American as "pertaining to the United States", but American != United States as I have tried to show above.
You might want to also read this link, which shows there are actually THREE definitions of United States
Please read before replying
Cheers
How else do you think they got that way? They didn't by paying too much for their labor :-)
--
Could you imagine if Einstein was sent home after his 6 year H1B was up? WWII would have been a bit trickier to end, eh?
Because you can't, you won't, and you don't stop...
These workers got exactly what they bargained for. Having worked here, their skills will be in greater demand when they return home--leading to higher salaries.
Yes, there are crummy employers out there. Maybe we should reform the system to make it easier to sweitch employers mid-visa. But I find the suggerstion that the workers have been wronge to be, at the least, odd.
hawk, economist at large
Ten years experience, or at least, that's what it was at the time. (2 years ago). We were thinking about getting me a lawyer, but I started working at a newly acquired Canadian subsidiary, with the intent of waiting a year then getting the L1 (I think) intra-company transfer visa. Then, fortunately, I realized that I didn't WANT to live in the States. :-)
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
As a foreign student at an American school, I agree fully. I don't think most Americans realize, however, how badly the INS misrepresents them. It is my strong opinion that the INS is one of the most hateful government-sanctioned groups of people in the Western world.
Any foreign citizen who resides in the US knows that crossing the border is dangerous. The INS goes out of their way to turn law-abiding, honest people into criminals. They are horrible human beings; the worst America has to offer, outside of the prison system. I won't bore you with stories... Just ask the immigrant in the cubicle next to you.
I have enjoyed living and learning in America, and have made a lot of good friends. Americans are warm, open, and welcoming. Despite that, as soon as I finish my degree, I'm going away and I don't expect to ever return. Thank you for your hospitality America, but living in fear of the INS is too draconian for my liking.
1) all visas are open to abuse. the H1-B actually has a number of provisions to protect the alien. in order to file for an H, you must obtain a Labor Condition Application. part of the LCA is an attestation that the employer will pay the alien the greater of either a) the actual wage paid to employees having similar experience and qualifications employed in the alien's specific occupational field or; b) the prevailing wage level (set by the state's department of labor) for the occupational classification in the area of intended employment.
2) US immigration works like this (this is my field), you tell the US why you want to come by applying for a visa type that most closely matches your situation. If your visa is approved, you are bound by the conditions of that visa type. The H1-B is a NONIMMIGRANT visa. By entering with an H1-B you are implicitly agreeing to leave at the end of the visa.
3) nothing prevents you from applying for permanent residence/citizenship once your here. the unfortunate thing is that most people don't realize just how long that takes in the US (3 - 4 years) to apply for permanent residence. Our dear governments feeling is that the laws are available and it's the alien's responsibility to find out. and plenty of people DO find out. trust me that the INS is adjuticating thousands of H to permanent resident cases as we speak.
This whole discussion is quite amusing. I am from India, briefly lived in Bangalore, (which seems to be the Death Star as far as some members of this board are concerned) and am not on an H1B. There, I've got that out of the way. Why this disc. is amusing to me, is because I have had to trim my normal English vocabulary *considerably* to make myself understood in normal situations in this country. I have to keep reminding my wife that most of the English she uses will only elicit a "What?" from most of the people we meet and speak to in daily conversation - and that includes college graduates and "skilled engineers" who have grown up in the American education system. We get asked if we're from England ... how's that for using English? IMHO, the dumbing down of the American education system is continuing rapidly - when there are large numbers of citizens of this country, whose only claim to communication skills is a severely shrunken vocbulary of English, I think it's time to stop saying "Screw the immigrants because they don't speak English".
And since I also want to make the point that English=Education is a flawed equation, I'd end with an anecdote about how my wife met an engineer, educated in the US, who had no idea where London was on the map. Unless, of course, you redefine education to encompass nothing outside the United States. That is exactly the kind of the thinking the Asian economies want you to indulge in, while they learn to do your jobs better than you.
When I was looking for a job in Indiana, with a few years of HP3000 Cobol & Powerhouse experience, I was very fortunate to find a manager who gave me a chance in an AS/400 shop - my background was with HMO's, but this was a distribution & retail company. This manager realized that I had a history of learning new packages and languages as required, so he knew that after a few shorts weeks I'd be a good fit for his department - and he was right. Too often, however, headhunters & managers base their searches on criteria such as x years of Java, or y years of C++ experience. In doing so, they are blinding themselves to a vast number of programmers out there who want to develop new skills, but aren't getting the opportunity to do so. The other skills they may bring to the job (experience with the development process, etc.) can more than make up for any learning curve they may have to go through on the technical side.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
When I was in Mexico, in a tourist town where everyone spoke English, I made sure I had some rudimentary Spanish. Som of my traveling companions thought it a waste of time, but it is my opinion that everyone appreciates an effort to speak in his language.
When I was in England I did my best to speak quietly and not play the part of the loud American tourist-buffoon. I'll admit that I learned no Flemish when in Belgium--I did not have time to find any resources before my trip. Fortunately the Flemish are a decent bunch who happen to be polyglots, and everything worked very well.
It's amazing how quickly one can begin to pick up a language if one wishes to.
Not all of us are boors, you know.
I often wonder if we arn't doing the developing countries of the world a disservice by hiring away their best and brightest people. How will countries like India and Russia (the main sources of H1B workers, IME) get their economies going if everyone with brains or talent leaves?
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Consider: High-tech worker (possibly from upper classes of their society, certainly educated) comes to America and is immersed in our culture for six years. What happens when he goes home?
Does he not yearn for a REAL Coke? Doesn't he know that Nikes are cool? Doesn't he want to drive his car to work instead of riding the train? Doesn't he want his government to work as well as ours? (knock it if you want, but for all the kinks and bullshit the US government has, it is light years ahead of most others.)
The US government couldn't buy a better missionary. We tried the Peace Corp earlier, and it didn't work for this purpose. One, because it was frequently used as a cover for three letter agency types, and two, because it was a bunch of Americans handing down the "way it shall be". A much better approach is to let folks in other countries come see what is better, and then send them back to want it and do something about it in their own areas. If you want to know, it was this apporach that pretty well started the old Soviet Union off to ruin. A bunch of dudes from the state department make sure that every Soviet countryman that came to the states was able to see a supermarket, a department store, and a family in action. And then sent them home to tell the neighbors...
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
I've always assumed this was two different subpopulations on /. Any time immigration is raised as an issue, you get a lot of mostly AC's posting inarticulate and ignorant cliche-ridden messages effectively expressing the sentiment "me good; dang furriners bad."
In real life and on /., this sentiment invariably comes from people who are lacking in various assets or abilities, whether it be communication, education, intelligence, socialization, or whatever. It seems fairly obvious why they would feel threatened by people smarter and more ambitious than they are, coming to the U.S. to compete for jobs and other resources.
But I've always retained the fond hope that the /.ers who read HHGTTG, Neal Stephenson, etc., aren't the same ones who have knee-jerk reactions to anyone a little different from themselves. I would think anyone with the capacity to appreciate that sort of literature would also have the capacity to discuss, in a reasonably rational way, the pros and cons of immigration and the issues which surround it.
Call me an idealist!
Wait a minute! What did the government imply that they would do? They offered 6 year work visas to those how wanted to work in the US. The 6 years are up, and back go the workers. So where's the problem?
-Brentand we don't WANT them too (which is the real point). That's the whole reason they were granted this type of temporary visa.
(most green card applications are fought for by company lawyers, whose
interests don't necessarily coincide with that of the immigrant), or
who come from a country with a lot of competeing applicants, and find
their case being pushed back and back by quota restrictions.
There is nothing determinate about the length of these processes.
They needn't terminate within six years.
I know some H-1Bs who aren't being exploited by their employers. Both of them describes the INS as the most inefficient, corrupt, and wholly-distasteful organization they've encountered. Comparisons with KGB and Stasi are frequent. INS officials are often abusive - there are no appeals at ports of entry, and the enforcement mentality permeates the organization to the last man.
If you ever want to see the banality of evil in America, you need look no further than your nearest INS office.
Millions of dollars on APCs and H&K MP5 submachine guns to get a rugrat from Cuba out of a house. Over a year to process the form that says "OK, given that DOL has approved your labor cert (6-8 months upfront), so once we process this form (I-140), you'll be allowed to apply for the Green Card and wait another four years for that form (I-485) to be processed".
First Presidential candidate who abolishes INS and replaces it with a Beat-On-The-Illegals arm and a funded Services-To-Legal-Immigrants arm, gets my vote. The present organization appears to be little more than "Beat-On-Everyone".
Uncle Sam and our big high-tech companies fucked these people in the ass. In fact, we went out of our way to do so. That is just plain wrong, no matter how you slice it.
I'm not saying the program has good terms or that it isn't a crummy way to treat people, just that those terms were clear and upfront. Personally, I have no problem at all allowing broad immigration of well-educated people from other countries, and I think we ought to do more of it. A LOT more, especially as the native education levels continue to decline in the absence of any real competition. I just think it ought to be at the front end, instead of from a sudden rules change at the back end. As eager as I am to get the heck out of the US, I'm certainly not a xenophobe or a nativist.
--
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
What about all of those unfortunate H1B Tech Mastercard workers? Did anyone think about them???
"bargain" as in "deal," "contract," etc., not as in "less than otherwise available" :)
I would find it difficult to believe that these foreign workers are any better at their jobs than American workers. Many if not most are incompetent, and language and cultural problems may make it more difficult for them to work with the rest of the team.
Whether these problems exist or are relevant, however, is not for the government to decide. It's for the clients of the giant software houses to decide. They can send a strong message that the products are crap by not buying them. Then the management can decide for themselves whether or not hiring more workers - foreign or not - will increase profits, and act accordingly.
Me, I see a market for about 25% as many tech workers as we have today. Employers could reduce their personnel problems by 1) using less technology; most jobs are better performed without it anyway, and there is strong evidence that computers don't increase productivity for most jobs; 2) using better tools; it's no surprise that supporting microsoft and other inferior products consumes the bulk of any tech worker's time; 3) using more selective hiring processes; 10 good people are infinitely better than 100 lousy ones; 4) in the case of software houses, scrapping obsolete products, streamlining their offerings, and rewriting or discontinuing unmaintainable code bases.
More workers? I don't think they're needed. Smarter management, yes. Better workers, yes. Higher quality education, yes. But, as Fred Brooks would love to remind us, throwing more workers - many poorly educated and inexperienced - at a problem only makes it worse.
...let's face it, programming in the USA was rapidly approaching the status of "doctor" or "lawyer". In the late 80's, a hot programmer could freelance for a fortune.
This made life very tough on Sun, Oracle, Microsoft and IBM. The last thing they needed was having to pay $40-$100 an hour for programmers.
Thus, immense financial pressure begat H1B. I knew it was a lie from the start, intended to hobble the wealth and status of American Software Engineers, Developers and programmers.
I would have far preferred we let in a mix of people from a variety of backgrounds, on a permanent basis. Lawyers, Police, Doctors, Nurses, Politicians, Pilots, Teachers, whatever. But the various unions would have stopped it cold. Thus, the congress had to target geeky programmers -- highly paid, but no organizing skills.
Now we're stuck with the result. H1B Programmers and Technicians only; many of which will not be granted permanent residence and thus have to return home.
IMHO, this is one of the most egregious actions that the congress of the USA has ever taken, and that's saying a lot since they generally fuck everyone on the globe on a daily basis.
The downturn in the economy, the global corporatists (GE just opened a $100M engineering facility in Bangladore), stagnation of the platform have all contributed to this situation.
All I can say is, take a look at the local want ads. There are a fraction of the programming jobs that existed just a few years ago. My brother works for a massive aerospace company which has 100s of job openings on their website. The resumes pour in, but the jobs are never filled, and only rarely is anyone even interviewed.
Why? because the company uses vacant engineering slots to pressure the government in a lot of ways -- more time to complete projects, more pressure to expand H1B, etc.
Hate to say it, but for many H1B people, this was your vacation in America. Some global corporation got to pay you a fraction of what he would have paid me. Now, it's time for the next crop. Sooner or later, most programming will be done in China and India, and you will make more than the guy down the street.
Who really wins? The big shareholders in the Globals. That is, the top 1-5% of the US population. Many will do well in India/China, though. Personally, I think you got a pretty good deal.
Who can say Linus + family wouldn't have an enjoyable life back in Helsinki? I seriously doubt he'd have trouble finding a job!
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
These people were swindled. Congress is screwing over not only the immigrants by the high-tech sector of the US.
--
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Well.. it is healthier for a country to educate it's CITIZENS into the roles it needs rather than simply importing the help from another country.
In the long run, much better.
Linus is on an H1B visa. I recall reading an article about his visa troubles about a year ago.
You must mean your communication skills. You know, these people speak more languages than you do, and far better than you possibly ever could.
Otherwise, how's your Hindi, Chinese or Korean doing?
Other countries may hand out work permits and immigration visas less easily, but they probably generally administer the ones they give out more efficiently.
Most employers and employees therefore had to start taking a different approach: they would apply for H1B visas first and then apply for a green card while the employee was working on the H1B. That approach worked fine for a while. However, over the last few years, INS processing has become so inefficient that it can take three or four years to process a green card. If the H1B visa expires before the green card application has been mostly processed, the employees face deportation. Because the INS processing times skyrocketed so suddenly, many employees were caught by surprise: they thought that two years would be ample time to get their green card application through and were planning for that, and then were left without enough time to complete their application. Because of the baroque nature of US immigration law, there are no exemptions. Once the H1B has run out, people have to leave the country. There is no other status to convert to.
US immigration law is also rife with other outdated rules and bizarre notions. For example, it talks a lot about "intent": you can't travel on a visitor's visa if you have some "intent" to immigrate. Family reunification (even of more distant relatives) is preferred over any kind of skilled immigration. And dual citizenship is recognized by the US only if a US citizen acquires another citizenship, but the US still expects immigrants to renounce any former citizenship (although in practice, that isn't enforced much anymore). The immigration procedures themselves are a bizarre mix of rules and questions pertaining to 19th century immigration by boat, puritan notions of "good moral character", McCarthy-era concerns about communism, and modern day concerns about terrorism.
Perhaps the most important problem is that even if the delays are the INS's fault (as they usually are), the applicants are not protected from deportation. If the INS sits on someone's application for two years and their current visa expires, that person is subject to deportation.
Altogether, I don't consider the US very welcoming to skilled immigrants anymore. In addition to visa issues and processing delays, there are numerous other problems immigrants face in the US. For example, immigrants must pay full taxes but cannot take advantage of the social safety net (such as it is) and entitlements they have paid for. Legal protections for immigrants are also limited in some important ways. And even after becoming citizens, naturalized citizens are always potentially subject to denaturalization, in which the INS can challenge and reverse the naturalization process until the day an immigrant dies. The statute of limitations for denaturalization was abolished about 10 years ago, another instance of what looks like a fairly hostile attitude towards immigrants.
In a social and business sense, Americans are very welcoming to immigrants and foreigners, and that makes this country a special place to live and work. And the US will probably always remain attractive to immigrants from economically disadvantaged countries. But the US government and the US Congress have become so hostile to immigrants and foreigners that I think anybody coming from another first world country should very carefully weigh the tradeoffs involved. If the US wants to continue to be attractive skilled workers from Europe, Japan, and Australia, US immigration law will need a major overhaul.
China is not outright hostile towards you, they simply don't want you telling them what to do.
"More like they are prized so highly because the paperwork makes it so hard for them to change jobs - you don't have to give them as many raises and other incentives to stay with the company. "
The way the job market is (I was on an H1 in Denver), I doubled my salary in 1.5 years. Everytime a review came along, I threatened to quit and forced concessions out of my employer. And please don't tell me that this was only possible because H1's get paid less either (many people assert this incorrectly.) The first step in preparing an H1 is a submission to the state Labor Dept. to ensure that the non-immigrant will be paid the prevailing wage for the area. I had the same starting salary as all the American graduates that I worked with.
"And for some reason there's always more communications difficulties with them as well. Not all, but some. It doesn't matter how well you know the technical stuff, if you can't understand what you're being asked to do (because of language) you can't get the job done. "
Most of the non-immigrants that I worked with more than made up for comms difficulties with willingness to please and try to work. I know how frustrating language can be: being English I thought I would be fine... it took a month or two until my American co-workers were finally able to translate what I was saying for our boss (an American formally from Romanian)!
The currenty implimentation of the H1B visa is kinda like the Death Penalty: nice idea, the way it's done sucks.
So what's wrong with the current H1B? Three things:
If the intention was for short-term help for an industry, six years is way to long. Fundamentally, on this one, the AFL/CIO is correct: companies use H1Bs to import cheap labor rather than retrain US citizens (the IT shortage is so bad that they retrain US citizen anyway, but look at other industries (like Civ Eng) that don't do this). "Temporary" is a joke. If people were serious about this, the term would be 3 years, max.
Remaining in the US after the 6 years is up is nigh-on-impossible, no matter how important you are to a company's wellbeing. When it's up, out you go. Getting a subsequent H1B to come back again is alot harder than getting the first H1B. This is stupid.
If you are here on an H1B, there are only 2 circumstances that I know of that allow you to remain here (ie, convert your H1B visa to some other sort of visa): (1) you marry a US citizen, in which case you get to apply for permanent residency (Green Card), or (2) apply for asylum/refugee status (which is horribly torturous). Companies can sponsor you for a Green Card if they want, but the rules require you to return to your home country while they consider your application. Which can take 6 months or a year (or alot longer). And there is no way you can stay on your own without a sponsor.
Fundamentally, H1Bs should be for 2-3 year, "work-and-leave" use, kinda like a contractor. We should create another type of visa which allows us to have people in for a period of time (several years) and then convert it easily to a permanent resident status. That way, we keep the smart ones here.
This is the worst part of the current H1B - we bring in lots of talented people, train them up in our stuff so we can make use of them, then send them back to their home country, full of knowledge on how we do business. Dumb! The U.S.'s major competative advantage is it's brainpower - if we don't try to keep our brainpower, then where does that leave us? For years, the U.S.'s immigration policy has been such that we skim the cream of intellectuals from other countries (e.g. get them to imigrate to the US) so we keep our brainpower as the top. The H1B actively defeats this idea. Stupid.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
I think it's appaling the way these workers are being treated, it is certianly not what America is supposed to be about.
I keep hearing about this shortage of IT workers. What is really happening is that corporations are watching a health US IT labor market eat up a fraction of thier profits and are lobbying heavily to allow more forign workers into the country to try to bring the salaries down.
I think that the competitive salaries and frequent job hopping are not only good for most IT workers, but good for IT in general. Knowlwdge is sperad more quickly, more people have access to the knowledge and it is difficult for one company to hold on to a competitive edge for long. They must contiune to innovate (except maybe M$)creating new competitive advantages. The market grows, consumers get better products faster and smart motivated workers are rewarded with a better more flexible and lucritive work place.
This is not to say that we should shut the door and not allow any forign IT workers in. We should just be sure that the Government and Corporate America are not fixing the numbers to hurt IT workers.
-Dan Rode
There is no equivalent visa program in Germany. There are very few
countries that will repatriate you after you have built a life in the
country for such a long length of time.
Its shocking and very dissappointing to read all the posting here. Even more dissappointing is the fact that these are views of slashdotters. Honestly expected them to be more "open" etc.
... my salary here makes a lot of my american coleagues here envious.
... blah blah" ... in probably better or worse words.
:-).
As someone who recently started work in the US, I wish I had known earlier that deep down even the bright Americans are of such opinions. I came to the US not because I earn a higher salary here... To all the "frogs in the well" here who think that Indians come here to avoid starving... incidentally my purchasing power in India was much higher than out here and before you conclude
I came here to work with the best people in the industry.
A lot of you will yell at me saying "Go back if you don't like this
All I have to offer such people is "thank you" for letting me know the true feelings of americans towards people like me - they are too ashamed to say such things on my face
I wish more Indians just leave this country to run itself... Good luck.
There is a good reason for this. If you lie on you application for citizenship, say about your stint as the commander of a death squad, the INS can revoke your citizenship and deport you. Don't let the door hit your butt on the way out.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
So, there is no contractual agreement. Any immigrant that comes to the US relies on the good will of Americans and the word and promises of the US government. They start building their lives here because they have an expectation that if they behave well and are successful, they will be treated fairly. In the past, that has been good enough.
Saying "you should have gotten it in writing" is therefore meaningless. There is nothing to get in writing, and hiding behind a legalistic phrase like that would not restore the good will that people lose when this sort of thing happens to them.
"They often make less than half the rate/salary of a US citizen or green card holder"
....), and then expect the non-immigrant to work 40 hrs/wk. In this case the non-immigrant should stand up to them (and unfortunately risk their job). Personally, I wouldn't be happy working for a company that treated my fellow co-workers like that. I have a couple of very good American friends who helped out several non-immigrants being abused by their employer in such a situation by telling the employer that they wouldn't stand for it either.
That's either a problem that should be rectified in the Labor Dept., or with your employer. Before an H1 petition can be filed, the job application must be approved by the state Labor Dept to ensure that it meets the prevailing wage. This is to ensure that non-immigrants are not cheap labour taking jobs from US citizens. Perhaps the prevailing wage is set too low? On the other hand, an inscruplous (sp?) employer could possibly word the job offering in a way that seems legal (e.g. we're offering a job for 30.23 hours / week @
The problem is not that H1-Bs are temporary and people expected them to suddenly turn permanent by themselves. The problem is that when people came here on H1-B visas, it was with the expectation (and, in many cases, the assurance by the company) that they would adjust to a green card (permanent residency). This used to take about six months to a year at most.
Now, with INS' bureaucratic bungling, that delay has grown to four years plus, and many people are finding that they are out of luck. It wasn't something they bargained for, and quite frankly it is not very fair for them to have to uproot their lives simply because "the paperwork didn't get done in time". Note that the majority of these people were not denied their green cards. They are being processed and in all likelihood will end up getting their green cards. However, until they come through these people are up the creek.
Actually, if he's a Sikh (I dunno), Canada (Surrey, BC) has the largest ethnic Sikh population outside of India. He might be right at home, depending on where he goes.
But it could easily have been slave conditions. My H1B visa allowed me to work for this one specific company in the U.S., and no other. If they fired me, I had to leave the country within ten days. Ten days! Sell my car, arrange to move all my possessions internationally, deal with ending my rental lease, blah blah f***ing blah, all within ten days!
And eventually, this is what did happen. The company, as high-tech startups are wont to do, went belly-up, leaving me stranded. I applied to get a tourist visa. This is trivially easy to do from outside the country; but impossible from inside, due to the beauracracy. Basically, this is one of the many parts of the INS which has ground to a complete halt. While this was going on, I applied for a job with the local library system. It was a job they'd advertised a bunch of times before, but not been able to fill, as they hadn't been able to find anyone with the right skillset. I, however, matched perfectly. This is what H1B's are about -- no American qualified to fill the job, so give it to a foreigner. They were all set to pay me US$45K to US$61K, when we found out how hard the immgration stuff was going to be. It would take 3 to 4 months to process my visa, and this processing had to be completed before I could do any work at all for my new prospective employer. Understandably, they turned down the opportunity to hire me.
And that 3 to 4 months was at the good end of the year! A month later, visas ran out, meaning that there would be a six month wait for the new year (with a new visa allotment) to start, and then 3 to 4 months on top of that! Outside the Silicon Valley firms which are specifically geared up to import tech workers, what organisation has any idea of what its high-tech employee requirements are going to be three to ten months ahead?
There are more visas for this coming "year" (which starts in October), which means that there won't be the six month wait, but with the same number of beauracrats to process way more visas, guess what? That's right, that 3 to 4 month wait is going to blow way out.
So I had to leave the US, leaving behind all my friends. I should mention that my experience was in the area aerved by the California branch of the INS. It is the one completely snowed by the influx to Silicon Valley; and I understand that other regional INS's are more on top of things.
It is my opinion that these massive delays have been allowed to creep in by three things: first, of course, the rapid increase in influx of workers; second in the US immigration law's attitude that America is the greatest country in the world and that if we didn't have these laws everybody in the world, all six bilion of them, would be on our doorstep tomorrow; and third in the fact that the people the INS serves generally aren't voters.
Unfortunately, over the last two years, INS processing has slowed down more than tenfold (!). As a result, people who had an expectation of being able to get their green card in time now face deportation because the INS didn't finish processing their green card application before their H1B ran out.
So, the problem isn't that people knew that their visa was temporary, but that the INS fails to process green card applications in a timely manner. This caught everybody by surprise: visa holders, consulates, and immigration attorneys.
But I agree to this degree: while in the past, H1B visa holders could expect a fairly painless transition to a green card, that is clearly not the case anymore. People who are considering coming to the US now should expect that the situation with the INS will further deteriorate. I think that makes the US considerably less attractive to skilled immigrants.
yup.
but then most companies are doing the same damn thing with residents too - when was the last time you saw a company with a 1/6th turnover rate? hell even IBM doesn't have that good a rate in a LOT of labs; pittsburgh was at a 33% burn rate the last I heard. naw, the sleazy vending companies (keane, ciber) are using the H1B angle and hanging over people's heads; but everyone else is just as anxious to get rid of folks in the "uppity-type skilled employees" category... the folks that start meetings with questions like "will management ever pull it's collective head out of it's ass long enough to make a decent decision?"
It's pretty sad really... I've worked with a few folks on H1Bs, about half of them were/are top notch talent we were/would be screwed to lose. The other half are about as clueless as the locally produced community college kid with a associates degree in CIS (Q:"Do you have any experience?" A:"I know how to work Word and Excell" Q:"You realize you're applying for an engineering position, not a secretarrial, right?") Unfortunately we can't keep the former and can't get rid of the latter.
You don't belong to a corner, by any chance?
In the silicon valley IT IS incredibly hard to find decent people!!! Where I work we have been trying to hire e-commerce support people starting at high 60s, low 70k range (standard salary in this huge company) and it is nearly impossible!!!! Either they only know some basic NT stuff or they have so many offers that we get passed over. This is not a job where you have to work 80 or 90 hours a week either.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Of course, if I were going for the malace thing, I'd put forth the hypothesis that the guys who've been here 6 years know the ropes and know how to squeeze the employer for a fair shake. Meanwhile the new guys coming in don't yet know the ropes and so employers can get away with paying them 1/2 to 2/3rds what their American counterparts make for a few years until they learn the ropes.
Of course, I'm hopelessly paranoid, too.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Actually, from what I've read, it's the opposite. FedEx has always been griping that they can't attract enough competent tech talent into the area and that the local schools can't produce enough. I'm certain that they probably don't want to pay what they do in CA or other places. so recent grads thinking that they are going to land a $60-80K job are in for a shock. Memphis also isn't known for having a lot of high-tech companies either. Most of the hi-tech people that I know work at a handful of big corps and that's it. It has been said that FedEx built their new tech center in Collierville to get away from Memphis' 'problems' in order to help it recruit people. That being said, when I moved here 5 years ago, I got in on a Saturday, looked through the Sunday paper, interviewed with a contracting company on Monday, and was working on Wednesday. I was hired by the company I worked at a few months later and I've been there ever since. For a period of time it seemed that the company would go through periods where a lot of tech people would quit for better paying jobs across town or other places in the country. They have since re-evaluated the compensation scheme to shore up the turnover rate =) (I really like my job, especially when they keep giving me raises. However, given what I know about the Memphis area now, I wouldn't have moved here, even though I'm making 2.5x what I used to before).
Yes the H1B people are a lot cheaper. Why would any company go through the trouble of importing people and put up with the communication problems if they weren't cheaper. My manager would like to hire more permanent US employees, but due to budget reasons, he has to get Indians.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Doesn't a company have to meet certain restrictions anyway, like have at least 30 employers and/or a certain amount of annual revenue?
Nearly half a million highly educated immigrants from around the world have been stabbed in the back by our industry and government. We owe them more than a kick in the guts.
Well, before the stock give-aways, he rented housing and drove a Pontiac. He now owns a house in SV and drives a BMW Z3. Sure, he may not be stinking rich like the Yahoo founders, but he's certainly well off, much more so than the typical H1B visa recipient.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
As a foreign (Australian) high-tech worker reaching the end of my tenure on an American work permit, where do I go next?
I certainly don't want to go back to Australia. I've been here in the US for 12 years - I've become accustomed to a safe, stable economy, especially a high tech one - where bandwidth is plentiful, and the means to purchase it is within the reach of a competent technologist (I can function in sysadmin and system programming capacities).
So where do I go next? I can get a 2 year work permit for Japan, which I'm seriously considering, or I can try my luck at Finland. I'm mobile - I don't *have* to stay rooted to US soil if it doesn't want me (and it doesnt look like it does) - as long as the bandwidth is there.
Any suggestions for markets and economies that can support a geek culture would be greatly appreciated. I've got Japan and Finland on my list, but I don't know if there are better places to go - perhaps I should let my resume free in distant lands and see where it takes me.
Because, sure enough, if the US doesn't want my talent and skill, I have no reason to live here, that's for sure...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Rather than depriving America of her lifeblood of immigration, and to avoid overcrowding, we really ought to deport the useless people and offer the geeks the citizenship formerly held by the non-producers.
We can export the lazy, native-born Americans to Europe, where they'll fit right in with the prohibitions against ambition and hard work--and who will notice a few more unworthies on the dole? Hey, I know, let's empty the prisions of the potheads, and export THEM to Amsterdam.
Add a few salesmen (the Internet is making them obsolete), lawyers (parasitic net negative producers), and politicians (ditto), and we'd have a wonderful exchange!
Immigrants make the best Americans; they care, they believe in this nation, and they're always willing to work their butts off to find the dream. Unions, racists, and bluebloods hate them for various reasons. Big business just wants to use them while keeping them in their place.
You're wrong when you say "nobody forces these people to live here and work here"...
The fact is, economies being what they are, the average Indian programmer would much rather move from the Indian culture and Indian economy, and all of its liabilities, to an American one.
And this desire is *exploited* by American corporations. They take advantage of the fact that the Indian situation is worse than the American one (or so it would seem), and based on the Indian programmer desire to leave it, they offer them less wages, thinking that the conditions of American existence *make up for* the loss in wages - since the demand is there on the part of the Indian programmer, companies factor in this 'living standard' as part of the deal.
This 'living standard' is a fact of life for US-born residents. Thus, this is exploitation on the part of the Indian-programmer-hiring corporation - something that is a *right* for anyone else in the country, is being used as a reason for reduced payroll, just because the foreigner has a demand for that standard of living.
That's the exploitation...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Posted by polar_bear:
We have to import workers because there's a limited percentage of people in this country who are inclined to technical careers. It's not just a matter of going to school to learn to code - you have to have a desire to do that type of work. Money is not a sufficient motivator to induce everyone to pursue a career they're not suited to. Plus, do we really want people who are just in it for the money? For the most part they're likely to be mediocre techies at best.
I agree that whenever Congress gets involved it usually makes a mess, but that doesn't mean that people who want to live in the US should suffer because of it. It's really disturbing to see so many people espousing a "us" and "them" mentality.
Naturalization is not allowed while on an H1-B visa. Permanent residence status ("green card") must be obtained first. Almost any H1-B visa holder would love to get permanent residence, but it's not that easy. Applications take years to process and have a high chance of refusal.
...here's my two bits:
Admittedly, the US is definitely a better place to settle (live, work, raise kids, etc.) than my own country. I worked in the US for two years, having been sponsored by my company (clue: we recently split from an accounting firm) under an L-1. In my situation, we were responsible for training American counterparts.
I honestly think everyone got a fair deal out of it: they were able to acquire our "knowledge capital" while we had a slice of the pie for two years. Did I come to US hoping to get an H1B along the way? Admittedly, yes. When I did get my H1B, would I have wanted to eventually settle in the US? Again, yes. Did I see a shortage of skilled IT workers in the Valley? IMHO, definitely. The people I trained were raw college grads who were going into a field (telecoms/mainframe dev't) working with a software package that had few experts. We stayed in California for two years, and I personally trained over twenty people. More than half quit after a year to go to start-ups.
You know the funny thing: after those two years, they decided to move the project offshore, to my country. The American office didn't want any part of it because it was not eRelated, and were afraid they were going to lose more consultants to start-ups if they staffed people on the same project.
What's the point of the story? Just this, there is a niche for H1B holders, and there are fields where they should be allowed to transition to holding green cards. Either that, or we're going to stay in our own respective countries and start taking over your work from offshore.
Am I still thinking of getting an H1B? I don't know...I'm starting to like working in a tropical paradise...
Aren't TN visa only available under NAFTA to other North Americans?
I can't figure out what's unfair about this.
I agree that it's unethical for employers to pay people less just because they can. I also agree that it's not very cool of the United States to send these people home. But what's unfair about it?
These people agreed to the terms of the work permits, or they wouldn't have come in the first place. Nobody forces them to take any job, they agree to take the jobs. When the work permit runs out, they have to go home. Nobody should EVER operate under the assumption that their contract won't be enforced just because it hasn't been in the past, or other people aren't having theirs enforced.
The US government and companies do a lot of unethical things, but it also takes two to tango. Something feels really wrong about people willfully and knowingly entering into contracts such as employment and visas, and then getting upset when the terms of those contracts that they agreed to suddenly aren't 100% in their favor.
Again, ethically, some of this isn't all that cool. But where is it unfair?
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Had you read the article, you'd realize that the government changed the wording on the H1B to imply that it was a path to a green card and then citizenship. To quote from the article:
Not to be overly critical of your company, but that just doesn't jibe. Firstly, I don't care where in the USA you are, but decent people cannot be had for $75K unless they have absolutely no idea about their market value (e.g., they've worked for you with blinders on since you snapped them up out of college). Given the high cost of living in CA/Silicon Valley, $75K is a joke to anyone with skill; I wouldn't consider a job there for less than $125K without some *major* perks. So it is not at all surprising that your company gets "passed over", since it sounds like an average company with average jobs for average people. If you want to attract "non-standard" (read: talented) people, you have to give them non-standard incentives. That doesn't necessarily mean money, either. Talented people just don't like cookie-cutter positions, plain and simple.
My company (a high-tech company in the Silicon Forest) placed one ad (one day!)for one helpdesk analyst position. The result? Nearly 100 applicants, many of them former database administrators, network administrators, and programmers.
What did they all have in common? For the most part, they were all in their 30's and 40's, had been laid off from local large tech companies, and most were paid much better in their previous jobs.
My roommate has been searching for a job for 18 months in the midst of this "shortage".
I find the pattern easy to see. Experienced american high-tech workers are looking to finally get compensated for the hard work they have put in during the tech boom. And how are they rewarded? By being cut back, to be replaced by H1B visa holders and kids fresh out of college, more than willing to be burned out for low pay, to be replaced by the next batch of H1B visa holders and college grads.
If I hear "shortage of high tech workers" one more time I'll throw up. It's just not the reality of the situation.
The US was founded on the idea that people from all over the world and become patriated if they offered value to the country. If we deport all of these highly skilled workers, not only will we be hamstringing our Internet economy, but we will be going against some of the basic priciples of our country.
Deven Phillips, CISSP
Network Architect
Viata Online, Inc.
Wherever you go, there I am...
H1B visas were therefore used for many years as a temporary visa while the green card application was being processed by the INS. The current problem with H1B visas running out and deportations is that the INS isn't processing the green card applications in a timely manner anymore. What used to take months now takes years. Furthermore, that change came very suddenly and unexpectedly, so that a lot of people whose applications were on schedule were completely taken by surprise.
Many of the people facing deportation are currently employed with excellent, high-paying jobs and fall into the top skill-based immigration categories. There is no question that most of them would get a green card if the INS got around processing the application.
The expectation of skilled immigrants that they could come on an H1B visa and convert to a green card was rational. And while the US certainly doesn't have a legal commitment, if this avenue is closed, it will seriously damage the ability of the US to attract skilled immigrants.
Okay, the subject's only half joking. But it's a good question - I'm not sure on the details of our (and by 'our', I'm referring to the Kernel developers, of which I am not a member) benevolent dictator's immigration status except that it was excruciatingly difficult to get him into the US. If he's on one of these sort of visas, we here in the states will have to bid him farewell in a few years.
Something tells me that neither Transmeta, nor Linus himself, will be pleased at this. I can imagine the sudden rash of letters to congressmen this might provoke. And it'd work, too, because the slashdotters have managed to get all sorts of things done by writing to their congresspeople, right?
Right?
Okay, plan B: Someone put Linus on Freenet -- and get 2600 to link to him, while we're at it!
-Denor
While I am going to miss some people, they were obviously aware of the terms of their stay. You're in a foreign country under limited conditions, you'd be an idiot not to try to find out more about these conditions.
Why all the fuss?
I suppose it's easy for me to rant because I stand no chance of being sent back to a country that very well might be terrible, but I will stand by it. Please inform me otherwise if there's something I'm not understanding.
I have always wondered what was the idea behind those temporary work cards. I mean, if the person is skilled in a domain that your country badly needs, why would you not want to try to keep that person for as long as possible?
;)
It should be the opposite: immigrants who have specific in-demand skills should have benefits to encourage them to work in your country, not disadvantages over an unskilled worker.
Oh, wait, you US dudes have this weird thing called National Security, which is probably best protected by not keeping "strangers" in your country for too long
"I remember Y1K, every abacus had to get another bead"
So, yes, in principle, people who lie on their application should lose their citizenship. If the INS was perfect at determining this fact, there would be no problem with letting them bring charges like that until the end of time. But the INS is anything but perfect, and they are subject to political pressures.
By restricting the ability of the INS to bring charges indefinitely, potential abuses by the INS and the executive branch are limited. I think that if the INS hasn't discovered lying on an application for 10 years (the old statute of limitations), the presumption should be in favor of the applicant, just like it is in many other areas of law.
But clearly, your simplistic view has resonated with Congress. Apparently, limitations of government powers are a good idea for natural born citizens, but naturalized citizens don't quite deserve the same treatment.
This is absurd. We should be raising the number of H1B Visas. How is America supposed to compete in the 'Global Economy' with countries with billions of citizens, if we don't steal their best and brightest?
signature smigmature
- James
If you just gave them green cards, they'd not have to leave after a fixed interval and they'd be able to get a market rate instead of a sub-market rate. This would eliminate the incentive to import "coolies" to code in the US. It's better for everyone except the companies trying to hold wages down (which means it probably doesn't have a chance in hell of coming about).
--
Build a man a fire, and he's warm for a day.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
The last two visa'ed tech workers I've worked with (one from Enzed, one from Australia (not at the same time)), both told me the same thing: They want to work here (SF Bay area) for a few years, because after that, they can go wherever they want in the world as a hot commodity.
Everyone here things we're deporting people to abject poverty and war zones, but these people have huge stars on their resumes that will let them get top jobs wherever they go. That's exactly the reason most people I know on visas came in the first place.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
The same side of this same coin has rendered some older information workers unemployable: they have sufficient breadth of experience and seniority that makes them too expensive to hire. Or retrain.
We need to make sure that imported labor does not leave our citizens/green card holders out in the cold by making sure that the H1-Bs are paid a competitive and fair salary.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
This is a case of the American government doing what they do best, screw things up. Yes, illegal immigrants living on welfare is bad. No, visa holders who give needed skills, and help to add to the country are not bad. It is very simple, where the problem is, and it is not here. If the people have a good job, are comfortable, let them stay.
(Had to state the obvious, flame away)
-- the computer doesn't want any beer, no matter how much you think it does. NEVER, EVER feed your computer beer.
Therefore, the deal has always been that immigrants come here relying on the word and good will of the US. If the US cannot fulfill the expectations created in people who came here on H1B visas, there is no legal problem, but it certainly harms the reputation of the US as being trustworthy and welcoming to foreigners.
I'm amazed at the number of people who didn't seem to read the article before commenting on it (but I probably shouldn't be).
First, the article is very clear that most H1B's expect their stay to be permanent: get an H1B, start working in the US, get a green card...
The reasons that so many of them have to leave are (which would have been very difficult for them to anticipate in 1994):
(a) The INS cannot process their green card applications fast enough.
(b) There are caps on the number of green cards that can be awarded in a given year and there are further caps on what percentage of that number can be awarded to citizens of a particular country, and, as I recall, these caps are frequently treated as a political football.
I'm also surprised that no one has commented on the detail in the article that I found most startling: The couple in the article has a child, that, as far as I can tell (and, to be fair, the article was not clear here), was born while they were living in the US. Unless there has been a Constitutional amendment after the 14th that I don't know about, that child is automatically an American citizen. I really don't see what business the INS has deporting the parents of an American citizen. I thought one of the principles of immigration law was to keep families together.
The shortage of high-tech employees is a myth. There IS a shortage of low-paid slave laborers, so the computer industry wants imported wage slaves. Companies are too cheap to pay for experienced programmers, they claim that anyone over 25 years old is obsolete, retraining time is too long, they want too much pay due to seniority, etc etc.
Send them all home and let them work in IT industries in their home countries. Force the US IT industry to start hiring its own citizens at decent wages. End graylisting, end age discrimination. If the industry doesn't get its act together, the government will come in and regulate them. And EVERYONE will just love THAT.
The H1B long-term temporaries also allow management to avoid hiring blacks, hispanics, and women for high-tech positions.
Take a look at the composition of most engineering shops: Tech positions full of male and some female east Indians and Orientals, along with a few male WASPs, with a bias toward the young. Maybe an older male WASP or two in an architectural or technical lead position.
It's not because of a shortage of technically competent blacks, hispanics, or women.
In the case of women in the Bay Area, for example, the experiment has been done: More than one post-operative transexual who was also a talented engineer has found that the most painful part of the operation was the amputation of about 2/5ths of the salary. Behavior that was seen as dynamic and productive as a male was seen as bitchy, uppity, and conforntational as a female. HR people actually told one that the salary being offered was in the top x% of the salaries offered by the company to "any female".
Just as older workers often find themselves training immigrants to do thier work, then are laid off, women often find themselves training far less senior and less qualified men for positions with identical job responsibilities, starting salaries tens of thousands of dollars above their own, and very slightly differet job titles (so the disparity doesn't show in the paperwork).
Companies will, for instance, hire women and minorities with several college degrees and extensive job experience for lower-paid and lower-ranking jobs, and hire young, undegreed, and inexperienced WASPS for the higher-paid and higher-ranking jobs. Degreed H1Bs can fill higher-ranking positions without the higher pay, and fill the lower-ranking slots whenever the women and/or minorities get fed up with the situation and take a hike, or push for a raise or a promotion and end up laid off.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
No, folks, I'm not one of the postoperative transexuals referred to in the post. B-)
The only "Rod" I've had slashed off (so far, at least, knock wood) is the one on my former slashdot handle.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
No, their communication skills were/are pretty good and while they had an accent it was certainly not bad and certainly not bad enough to make the phrase 'are the lights on?' that garbled.
I would also agree with the point about the Asian complaining about spelling & English skills of some Americans. It wasn't difficult to spot the foreign students that went through British-styled prep schools because they had a much better grasp of the English language than many American students (givent the state of education in some areas, that's not a difficult feat, unfortunately.).
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Under NAFTA, all you need is a job offer in the US, a diploma from a University, and some simple paperwork is completed at the border (or airport, whatever). The same holds true for Americans coming to Canada, by the way.
That's what you think. The NAFTA only says bachelor's degree, but the Immigration Canada manual specifies that the degree must be in a ``related field,'' where deciding what is and what is not related is left up to the immigration officer reviewing a particular case.
And so continues the "special" relationship...
As rocky as ever....
I'm guessing most of the slashdot readers are fairly tolerant people with liberal outlooks. Very few people would be in favor of state run racial discrimination, or inequal treatment for men and women, or any other system that divides people up into groups. So why then am I seeing so many people saying "H1-B workers are taking our jobs"?
Yes, more immigrants means more workers means slightly lower pay. I'll tell you something else, though -- I'd be in much greater demand if, for example, the government were to deport all non-citizens, or everyone whose ancestors aren't from Europe. But I don't sit here saying "throw the foreigners out", because I'm not into asking people to do things for me at gunpoint that I can't do for myself without force.
If we accept the notion that being born with a different color skin, or being born a certain sex, or being born into a family with a certain religion shouldn't affect your legal standing with respect to what you are allowed to do, why do we still cling to the antiquated idea that where on the planet you happen to be born should?
Personally, I don't like temporary work permits like H1-B, because it's such a waste to have people set up a life here, work for a while, then go back. I'd much prefer outright open immigration -- "Come on down, you're the next contestent on the American Dream". That's part of why I vote for the only US political party that isn't xenophobic.
If you're one of those that would be displaced by more immigrants, tough. The same argument that says we shouldn't bother to build labor intensive consumer goods in the United States (comparative advantage) says that we shouldn't be scraping the bottom of the barrel for tech workers when there's millions better qualified who will work cheaper.
This isn't a real issue. The effect on the economy is not even a question: completely free immigration helps the economy, no matter what other countries do. The only issue is whether special interest groups (like "current US permanent residents") can muddy the waters and make people think that this hurts the economy. It helps the US economy, it helps the world economy, and it helps the immigrants. The only people it doesn't help are those who lose their jobs because they wanted more money than they are worth. Extremely simple.
If there is such a shortage, then why don't they hire people who do not have the exact/i> skills advertised. I have seen companies in 1988 ask for people with 10 years of IBM/MS-DOS programming experience.
Take a look at the programmers guild.
Fight Spammers!
I took the easy route from H1B to Green Card - I married an American[1]. However, the immigration lawyers who worked on my H1B petition said that permanent status was obtainable, so long as you started the process at the first renewal (3 years).
/.
If someone is in their 6th year of an H1B and has just started to think about permanent residency, they're SOL. The INS moves at a pace that makes continental drift look like Cerenkov radiation.
[1] There are times deportation seems like a better option, and I say this safe in the knowledge that she would never, ever, read
--
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E_NOSIG
Posted this a while back, but it bears repeating, IMHO
---------
I was drawing upon experiences watching a foreign couple go through this. There existed an exit barrier for her, since the company was doing the immigration mambo for her immediate family. They were Chinese (and this was several years ago), so leaving the job (and returning to China, if I understand correctly) would have been problematic. She implied that moving companies meant rebooting the immigration process, at which they'd been working for a while.
I suggest that part of her compensation was the possibility of US citizenship, which creates noise in the job market for the domestic workforce. Let's assume she and I have identical skillsets, experience, etc. If her compensation function was:
money + benefits + US citizenship
while mine was:
money + benefits + having a life
The hiring company is at a great advantage, since moving towards US citizenship is significantly valuable to her. The company can outsource the immigration stuff to lawyers (who, BTW, aren't likely to get pushed to finish) at lowest cost possible. If they have a number of such workers, economies of scale (re: the lawyers) kicks in, and the company reaps even more benefit.
Meanwhile, she percieves that she's making $X, and will work that hard, when financially, she's getting $X - value of potential US Citizenship.
The company is thrilled, so long as her value of potential US citizenship is less than marginal lawyer's fees. Note that an incentive exists to start the process quickly, get to an advanced stage, then actually MINIMIZE the legal talent and effort put forth, both financially, and from an HR standpoint.
I think that covers it. No trickery, no ethical wrangling, but a significant advantage for the company. Of course, not everyone's from mainland China...
ceci n'est pas un sig.
P for penguin.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Even for U.S. citizens, there is no statute of limitations for murder in most states. There is no statute of limitations for federal prosecution of capital crimes.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I know that the current atmosphere in America is touchy-feely, but still... These people entered into the H1-B visa program knowing full well it was a temporary thing.
Now the time is up, and people are whining/complaining that it's unfair, when these people knew what the deal was, and that they couldn't count on being allowed to stay. I refuse to feel sorry for these people, who knew what they were getting into.
The MSNBC piece is full of implied's, suppose's, and the like. No where in the article does it say anything like "The Congress told these people they could stay".. Instead it says
"The time limit was left in place, but made to seem irrelevant. Applicants no longer had to prove they intended to return home, and the visa was dubbed "transitional," implying: next stop, green card."
So, if these people believed something that wasn't in writing, they needed more education into America. As anyone knows, you can't cound on anything, unless it's in writing, and sometimes not even then.
Here's an idea to solve the problem of deporting people who's lives are now rooted here: allow unrestricted immigration. There's no reason that the government should restrict peoples' ability to make a better life from themselves here. The same opportunity was afforded to the ancestors of almost everyone else in this country.
A few months later a co-worker in his 40s set me straight and explained that it had long been a tradition in the engineering field to fire anyone approaching 40 and replace them with new hires fresh out of school. The reason? They came out of school having learned the newest technologies and as new hires they would work for cheap. The next decade proved him to be completely right as I watched everyone who had been a new hire in 1980 get canned.
My response to this was to think "People need to be warned" and to write my first book, The Programmer's Survival Guide which was reincarnated this year in a brand new form as Computer Job Survival Guide.
The problem is that sharp young people who come into the field (like say 99% of the folks reading this board) always assume that older people who are fired or otherwise replaced must be "dead wood" and that, because they themselves are so obviously brilliant and willing to learn it will NEVER happen to them.
Well, guess what. It does and it will. The moment your salary gets up to the level where someone with cost cutting responsibility notices it, your career as a salaryman is in jeopardy. The importation of H-IB is one solution. Eventually they'll find others.
That is why it is SO important that anyone working with technology, no matter how brilliant they might think they are have a back-up plan for what they will do when they are no longer young, enthusiastic and cheap.
Ironically the H-IBs who are finding themselves being tossed out are generally those who have been here long enough to figure out the way things work here and get into a position where they can ask a market rate for their services. In doing this they lose all their appeal to those who brought them in and are of course replaced by newbies working under serf conditions.
This will only end when the people who work in the computer field realize that they have to unite, stop arguing tech nits for a moment, and act together politically to do what the large companies and other interest groups do: buy legislation.
But given the personalities of the folks attracted to our profession, I'm not holding my breath.
I don't know if I'd call having the foreign workers stay a corporate manager's dream or not. As it is now the foreign workers are cheap labor because they're bound to the company that pays for them to be here. If they were allowed and encouraged to stay on their own, then the price of their services might go up which would be good for everyone. As it is now they're little more than slaves. Its kind of hard for a free man to compete with a slave for work you know.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
... from personal XP, I can tell you ...
It seems to me that you are the "troll" here ...
AZspot
Well, I was a foreign student. And I was a TA with a thick accent. The message above is more painful than anything. No, not about the stupid trick of teasing the TA, but the pain behind it.
Want to know what I had to go through? Well, 30% of the time, I was home sick. Everything was different. The people were mostly indifferent, sometimes hostile. Another 30% of the time, I was lonely like hell. Nobody to talk to. There were very nice people who would talk to me, but they had no clue what I was going through, and they did not understand a person from a different cultural background. The other 40%? Studying and learning like crazy to make sure I could survive in Canada.
I had no English when I came to Canada. But I was the exception. Most of us have very good English. Academic English. The language in the books, not the English you use day-in and day-out. In other words, text books? No problem. Conversations? Big problem. You know how painful that is? You think I did not want to speak fluent English? You think I did not agonize over the fact that my spoken English was not good enough? Can you imagine that every day that I had to TA, I had to psych myself up to handle a hostile class?
I know of many people resented the fact that they were resented simply because they were different. The next time you hear an anti-American or anti-Western person on TV speaking in good English with faintly American or British accent, you know how they got the resentment, and how they got the accent. Many of my friends went home right after graduation. After four years, they had enough. You know, not everybody wants to stay, if they have a decent country to go back to.
Me? I love Canada. I took the opportunity Canada gave me and ran. I have not looked back since.
Still, I remember the pain, the loneliness, the humiliation, the home-sickness. Autumn is my favourite season; but it is also the tough season for me. I came to Canada in the beginning of September, and I received the first letter from home in the middle of October. That wait was excruciating.
Sure, your friends' TA does not understand spoken English well. Maybe the guy is not qualified to be a TA. Still, I can't believe your friends are that cruel. And I can't believe the message is considered funny.
... but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Actually I'd say its cultural bias, not racism. I work in a university where 90% of our student workers are from every damned place on this earth other than the USA. Some of them can communicate quite well. Others can't. The problem isn't that they don't understand english, they can't speak it. The TOEFL test tests WRITTEN english skills, not one'a ability to pronounce it so that native speakers of the language can understand. By now I'm used to having to ask them to repeat themselves, usually more than once. At first it was quite irritating, but I've gotten used to it.
Being from the south, I know all about racism. I grew up in an environment of intense institutionalized racism. The comments made here bear little resemblance to that.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Given the high cost of living in CA/Silicon Valley, $75K is a joke to anyone with skill; I wouldn't consider a job there for less than $125K without some *major* perks.
I don't live in California, so I don't know what the market rates are. $125k seems like a lot. What kind of experience and skills would a programmer need to make that much in the Bay Area?
Do you know where I can find info about market rates for programmers for different regions in the US?
thanks..
cpeterso
Did you actually read the whole article?
Part of the issue was the wording change in the H1-B visas. They no longer make it explicit that the visas are temporary in that you only stay for six years. Instead, the general impression they give is that the visas are temporary in that you will get a green card eventually.
So what if they're not citizens? Any immigrants start out as visitors. But if they love the country enough - and few will dispute that these immigrants provide a valuable service to our country - let them stay!
Groan. ;>
You've obviously never been to North Dakota.
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E_NOSIG
Foremostly consider Canada. They have a very geek friendly immigration programme (you don't even have to have a job arragned to apply) and the processing times are getting better (6 to 9 months for most IT people).
Avoid Europe like a plague! I mean it. I spent seven years in Britain fighting the home office (with the help of my employer) to keep me in the country on the neverending stream of work permit extensions. Because I don't want to return to my home country for social rather than economic reasons (economically my fatherland is v. prosperous) it was a tear-jerking moment when the Canadian landing papers dropped through the letterbox. This one country actually WANTS ME to become a resident and later a citizen. Call me sentimental but to me this means a lot more than a pile of stock options from some phoney Silicon Valley dotcom. I don't care if US workers get 15% more dosh for their work. I don't care whether Canada will be as properous in ten years as it is now (who knows if the US will be anyway). All I care is that they are the the only state apart from Oz and New Zealand with civilised immigration laws that aren't hostile to those who want to settle.
Choose Japan or ANY EU country and you're back in the US H1B style hell! All things added I recon the Canadian PR is a far better deal for me. Don't trust the EU politicians whinging about IT skills shortage. The shortage may be severe but they won't grant you the permanent stay in any of their states regardless. Don't believe in hollow promises. Just like myself you'll be granted endless extensions of uncertainty.
Wish you luck. Find out more about the Canadian PR visas at http://www.cic.gc.ca and the misc.immigration.canada newsgroup where i post sometimes.
;-)
(I'm sure someone will correct my bugs.. just like at work!)
int Bits(char b)
{
int c = 0;
int i;
for (i = 0; i < sizeof(b); ++i)
{
int mask = 1 << i;
if ((b & mask)) ++c;
}
ASSERT(c >= 0 && c <= sizeof(b));
return c;
}
cpeterso
I have seen people brought here by the truckload, not because of their experience or expertise, but just brains to be sold to someone to make 45 dollars per hour for the employer and to be paid measly 45-55k per year.
Measly? OK, H1-B workers are underpaid, nobody's arguing with that. But 45-55k isn't "measly". You can live quite comfortably on that much just about anywhere in the US, and only slightly less comfortably in San Francisco or Manhattan.
I guess the current state of the IT field is just spoiling everyone. When the next recession/depression comes the high-tech companies are going to be hit pretty hard; 45k won't seem so bad then.
--
I highly recommend you come to someplace like San Francisco which has many neighborhoods where English is the minority.
I've met quite a few people from Bangalore and other parts of India who have better grasp of the English language than most people I meet when visiting rural areas of America. They may speak with an accent, they may have misspeaks sometimes, but their general grasp of the nuances of the English Language and its formative literary history is much better than the average graduate of the average U.S. high school.
While I'm reading all these comments about "oh, the poor H1-B workers are mistreated", I'm reminded of all the american manufacturing workers who speak out so loudly against the "third world sweatshops" asking everyone to boycott their competitors.
At least you could be honest and admit that the reason you want the H1-B workers to get better benefits (or, better yet, not be let in at all), is so that you have a better job market.
Oh, oh, me please! I want to sell my soul to the government for a few perks. Please! I'll even pretend I don't notice when you screw me over in some other way next year.
An important thing to remember is that these people often come from poor, impoverished countries that could use their skills to make some improvement in their societies. Problem is for various reasons, once they come to the US, they dont want to go back. I live in a college town and see many students who come to the US on a student visa, and then have to be dragged kicking and screaming back to their country once they graduate. I notice it especially with female students, who once they experience a society in which women hold a much higher stature than in their home country, dont ever want to go back. So whats to do? Go with whats best for the person, and let them stay, or go with whats best for their country, and send them back and hope they can help their country out of economic woes, and enact some social change? Its not an easy decision, and one I wouldn't want to make.
"My head hurts, My feet stink, and I dont love Jesus." -Jimmy Buffett
Don't you think you've suffered enough?
Yes, and shame on you, Taco!
I doubt whether this posting would be read by anyone at all, since the amount of posts before me are sheer huge, but anyway I decide to make my point since I believe these are the facts. I currently hold an H1-B and work for a EBusiness Solutions firm(previously a Staff augmentation firm - also known as a Body shopper :)).
:) . I dont think its wrong, but it goes to show that we are just not capable to think alound and make a decision on our own. The irony is I own a Honda myself).
I have been given an opportunity to work here and I am thankful for it. And I do my job to the best of my abilities. I have seen and heard and experienced a lot of wrong committed H1-B holders in this country and the saddest part is that these wrongs are mostly committed by people from the same community, most of the times Indians. I am yet to hear an American milking his employees by not giving him a fair salary, but I could be wrong. But what I have seen and experienced is the following. I have seen people brought here by the truckload, not because of their experience or expertise, but just brains to be sold to someone to make 45 dollars per hour for the employer and to be paid measly 45-55k per year.
I am proud to belong to the indian community, and I must say that 70% of the H1-B holders who come to US are qualified academically or make up for it in terms of their expertise or experience. However, no matter how funny it may sound, I have also heard that people whom havent even touched a keyboard were also brought here in the pretext of being a software engg and made to work on making systems Y2K compliant. I have seen people getting threatened by their employers and being made to work more than 12 hours per day for no over time. Well I have seen cases where in which the employer sweet talks their employees in to doing over time for their own cause without the employees getting benefited.
I dont believe the people who have the guts to speak up, or to start looking for something on their own have to fear anything. A majority of the people here on H1-B are still consultants and not permanent employees of any firms. They need to wake up and realise that they have been kept under a dark cloud of uncertainty and fear, and decide to stand their ground. I dont think its hard to get a permanent job here for anyone with decent communication skills and relevant expertise. I have around 3 to 3.5 years of experience and I have been offered jobs that range from 110k to 130k per annum and I dont believe thats a bad salary to start with. Its just that these people have been kept so long in the dark that they are not willing or able to start looking something on their own. Most of them tend to follow the others (reason why we see so many Hondas and Toyotas being driven by Indians
We need to stand up and demand fair rights and better pay rate. And as mentioned in a post prior to this, once they start paying their employees better, all this shortage would go away.
Rapid Nirvana
I don't think it takes a degree or whatever certification you might have to be able to say "Damn, I really can't understand this person". In fact, since language is a "living thing" the best judges of comprehensiblity (sp) ARE the average citizens (perhaps averaged over groups or something to remove bad samples).
If you don't mind me asking, why are you so all over this topic? I mean, was someone you know once in this situation or something? Seems like it's hitting a mighty sorespot...
willis/
there is no thing
what else could you want?
I don't know anything about it given that I've never worked there. The people that I know there haven't said anything about it other than 'Oh, that's with Company/Division X, and I'm in Division Y, so you know as much as I do.'
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Good for you. I don't know the specific dollar amount, just that I was told that they are much less expensive salary-wise. Most web pages on the subject also more or less say the same thing. Given that changing jobs is supposedly much more difficult and the companies hold that over the person's head, that sounds pretty shady to me.
People didn't want to go there because the place gets winter? Where the hell is that and who are the idiots that are turning it away? I could care less about walking on the beach at any time of the year. Actually, I prefer cold winters (-15 or -20F or less). At least in those areas, people don't freak out over a few snowflakes and mob the stores to buy groceries.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Why the heck would they have programmers working at the hub? That doesn't make a damn bit of sense.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
I've worked as a C++ programmer for three years and I have a BS and an MS in Computer Science.
Does that even matter to employers these days?
cpeterso
The way the job market is (I was on an H1 in Denver), I doubled my salary in 1.5 years. Everytime a review came along, I threatened to quit and forced concessions out of my employer.
I was under the impression that the trap that gets most H1B employees is the green-card application. Employers eagerly sponsor those applications because then, if the employee quits, their green-card application is screwed up (even if the employee is moving to a better job), and, especially given the insane bureaucracy that is the INS, their chances of staying in the US are pretty much blown. As I understand it, this gives many employees on H1B visas a strong incentive to keep quiet about low salaries, poor working conditions and the like.
Is this true, and, if so, how did you deal with it? Obviously you weren't afraid to antagonize your employer, but did you just not apply for a green card, were you confident you'd never have to carry out your threat to quit, or did you do something else?
For some enlightening reading, check out Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage, UCDavis' Dr. Matloff's testimony to the House Judiciary Committee.
Some salient quotes,
and...
The article is long, and just about every screenful is just as enlightening. It's not just about H1B's, but about age discrimination (at age 35!), race targetting, and common HR tactics to weed out the overexperienced.
Sobering.
[
int CountBitsInByte()
{
return 8;
}
Let's see. Educated, employed, good salary, pays taxes....
Sounds like it's exactly the sort of foreigner the U.S. doesn't want.
It's geographic racism. Nothing more. No one objects to the Canadian or British programmers coming over.
Rich
When CEOs go around complaining that they are "desparate" to find good programmers, what they mean is they are desparate to find cheap programmers who are willing to work 80 to 90 hours a week for a below-industry-average salary. That's like me going around saying, "I have been looking all over for a brand-new Ferrari for under $25,000 -- I'm desparate to find one!"
Of course, I'm not saying anything new. People who actually know what's going on in the computer industry have been saying this for years.
Free Hans!
yeah, I feel sorry for these people, but as someone already pointed out, they took the risks of not being able to stay past 6 years. In addition to which, all that money they should have been saving will take them a looonnngggg way in a 3rd world country where it is a damn sight cheaper to live. And the practical education they got here, too, will help them.
as for hiring domestic workers, I wish someone would hire me, give me a chance. I have a BS in CS but only make $35k/yr doing tech support. I would take less $$ for a job where I can learn a hell of a lot more (like programming). I've been doing tech support for the last 5 years, been a sys admin, have a load of practical experience, am currently back in school brushing up on programming so I can get ahead, but I still lack that opportunity.....a programming job where I can learn something. I can pick up things fast since my job requires it and it is something I have skill at, but, again, no opportunity. I don't want to listen to "What's a protocol?" for the rest of my life.
you tell me? what am I supposed to do?
I'm good with numbers -
Please don't get me wrong and think this is anti-foreigner or even anti-immigration. If there had been a promise of citizenship eligibility at the beginning that would be completely different. It's just a matter of playing by the rules when the rules are pretty fair. If I were a guest worker in, let's say Germany (Please? Anyone need a C/PHP developer anywhere near Munich?), I'd go home when the time was up and be grateful for the hospitality.
And from another point of view, it would be crummy of the US to continue to drain the best talent out of third world countries that can use all the bright people they can get.
--
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
There is no shortage of tech workers. There simply isn't a surplus. Companies with positions to fill don't want to pay any more than they have to for qualified people. Tech workers are in high demand, meaning wages will be high. But if you can bring someone in from somewhere else who is equally as qualified, and pay him less, well wages just went down. Personally I think we should encourage intelligent educated people to emigrate to the US. We should accept them with open arms. Why? Because they will be the basis of our future, both economic and politcal. In the future human know how will be the most precious resource. If most of the people with above average minds live here in the US, what would that do for our position in world affairs? When our people can literally out-think people from other countries what will that do for our ability to compete with those countries? America is a nation of emigrants and children of emigrants. Right now we are the dominant nation on this earth. But that can change. Once upon a time the British Empire covered 3/4 of the world. Today Britian is simply another country in europe. So the question becomes, what can we do to help maintain and improve our position in a world which is increasingly hostile towards us? I'd say draining our future competitor's most precious resource is one damned good way to do it. Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
I guess I should have been more specific: Chinese & a few Koreans. The TA in question was Chinese.
There's nothing racist about being mad that you have to meet a certain requirement only to see that another group of people who are supposed to meet the same requirement, obviously don't. Nor do I believe it is racist to expect people that are going to school or working in a country to learn the predominant language of that country. If I were to live in Germany, Brazil, or Japan. I would work my ass off to become fluent in the languages of those countries. It's in my best interest to do so and of course out of respect for the people living there. The TAs in question could never really help anyone because they couldn't really understand the students and the students couldn't understand them. It really pissed me off when people start crying racism over stupid things that aren't.
So do Filipinos speak better English than the English too? =) Seriously, I'm not surprised that Filipinos are fluent in English. The country was a US possession for quite a long time and the home to major US military bases.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
It wasn't language or accent (he did have an accent, but that wasn't the issue). His ability to communicate was lacking. He'd show the steps of a mathematical problem all out of order. Shows how to do a step in the middle, then says but first you do this, etc. He was just going all over the place. Just couldn't communicate clearly.
Universities should make sure their profs and TAs can communicate the concepts clearly to their students. That is the main issue.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Before everyone spouts their opinion, here are some background facts which may help you understand this better.
/. posts).
First, green cards. These are a Kafkaesque nightmare.
* An employer can sponsor a green card (permanent residency) which takes about 3-6 years. An employee may quit, but this stops his green card processing and he has to start from scratch at the next company. (In case you're wondering, most employers are eager to sponsor. Guess why...)
* If the H1B expires at the end of 6 years, the green card process can be continued overseas (Consular Processing). OTOH, if the process is at the final stage, the employee may file for an "Adjustment of Status" (AoS) and continue to work in the US (for the same employer) until he/she obtains the green card - generally 3 more years.
During this time, US law prohibits the person from leaving & re-entering the country unless he obtains INS permission after stating the cause, even for short trips. (Land of liberty!) They are literally treated as prisoners in some sense - the word the INS uses to describe a software engineer allowed to go visit his home country is advanced parole (this is a DOJ site) Violating this is extremely serious.
Some people forget this rule and visit canada for a holiday, which pretty much fucks up their weekend and much of their life.
* Green card processing time varies dramatically from state to state, sometimes by years. So a PhD in California might take longer to get it than an agricultural worker in Washington. In short, if you are planning to get one, spend some heavy research poring over tables of figures on avg. timelines.
H1Bs
-----
* H1B is a non-immigrant visa, so those who hold it are "non-immigrants" (if you can imagine that); green card folks are "applicants for immigrant status".
* An H1B takes about 3 months to obtain. You are not obliged to work for one employer, and can change.
* An employer can't "send them back". This is a HUGE misconception. Even if the company fires someone, he is legally present with a valid work permit, which normally doesn't expire until a yr or two. So long as the programmer has another company apply for a new work permit, he can continue to stay in the US (but cannot work until he gets the new visa.)
* You can start > 1 H1B visa applications. For instance, a programmer agrees to join companies X and Y, both of which apply for visas. X gets it first, and the programmers says bye to Y. This happens sometimes (see above scenario) - I know more than one person who's done it, it's a tough world - and companies can't do anything about it (can't have much sympathy for them, really).
* Big slashdot error - H1B people are NOT being deported. The article does not mention it. Deportation is a legal action taken by the INS against unlawful aliens, which is fought out in the courts. In this case, what they are describing is a case of programmers voluntarily leaving BEFORE their visa expires.
* H1B law allows an unlimited number of employers, but a max cap of 6 yrs in the US. After 6 years, the person must spend 1 yr outside the US, at which time the counter is ROLLED BACK. He can then come to the US for another 6 yrs.
* Inspite of the mass hysteria, employers can't pay anything they want - they have to legally state how much they pay and this has to be approved by the DoL (dept. of labor) BEFORE they grant it.
* H1B folks can apply for a green card at any time during their employment. From the frying pan into the fire.
* They can also apply for Canadian permanent residency while in the US. This takes about 6 months and you need not have to be in Canada for even a day. They have enough trouble keeping their own people.
* H1B law is equally ruthless to all nationalities - it takes several weeks for everyone. Equal opportunity rocks.
* One consequence of a 3 month processing time for H1B is that companies are unwilling to hire people to start so far into the future, instead of a 15 day period.
* When H1Bs took 15 days to process (they used to some yrs ago) there was little disparity between conditions for citizens and visa workers, since people had to give a 2 week notice anyway, during which the visa was processed. This whole fuckup began due to overloading of under-budgeted INS offices.
In short, immigrant programmers face enormous hurdles - inspite of having legal status, they are trapped between the govt., corporations, and a xenophobic population (read some
I've noticed a regrettable trend. Many Americans tend to take out their anger against immigration policy on their H1B co-workers or anyone who looks like one (visa status isn't exactly stamped on people's foreheads), which creates an unpleasant, racially hostile situation in many offices. Oddly enough, they tend to discard this attitude when they themselves have to go thru a bureaucratic nightmare to work in Europe or australia or Asia.
Party on.
w/m
Sorry kid. I think you got most of it wrong. There are valid reasons for the poor bastards to bitch. So let's see what is actually happening:
Most of the H1B and other slavery status visas that come to the US are nothing, but poor bastards that believe in the bullshit usually known as "american dream". It has been successfully sold by holliwood to the rest of the world for the last 95 years. They believe that they can succeed and their incredible "talent" will blossom only in the US. They believe that everything will be good at the end. Just like in an american movie (show me a one without a happy ending).
So they come and see reality which sucks for most of them. Real life does not get even close to the movies. And so they bitch. And they are right to. They have been cheated in every single of their dreams and good intentions.
P.S. As an interesting sideline the Australians have started marketing special movies oriented to the potential emigrants (Pakistani, Middle East, Indonesia, etc). They depict the actual beaties of some parts of Australia like big whites, crocodiles, poisonous spiders and other lovelies.
So maybe financing Holliwood to start making movies about American reality is the solution. There is plenty of space for that in Quins and upper Manhattan.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Not to be overly cynical here, but sounds like these guys just want to get rid of the current crop of uppity-type skilled employees, in hopes of getting some more possibly naive recruits from countries that may not need them/can't keep them.
Dave
'Round the firewall,
Out the modem,
Through the router,
Down the wire,
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
even though it won't be easy for those involved.
Here in the United States there are people who will simply refuse to work for minimum wage. People living below the 'poverty level' have a microwave and cable TV. Some of the contries these workers come from are not so fortunate. Working is not a luxury. Some of them are borderline third world. So what's happening?
We're sending back people who've worked for some of the most cutting edge companies in the world. They've had the opportunity to work with some of the smartest people in the world. It's been stated many times, but the Internet knows no bounds. There's no reason a startup in Silicon Valley couldn't operate out of India.
Hopefully, these people being deported (although I imagine they will experience hard times) will be able to do good things for countries that are not as fortuante as the US. They will be able to start businesses. They will be able to teach at Universities. They will be able to have a serious and fundimental effect on the infrastructure of their countries and help bring them into the 'new economy'. They will be able to raise the standard of living in thier own countries bringing the average person one step closer to what the average US citizen takes for granted.
Trolls throughout history:
Jonathan Swift
I have several good friends and have known many co-workers (note the spelling) who were over here on H1B visas. They were all 'trapped' by their H1B sponsors and were paid below-average salaries. Many of them were/are extremly talented and could have taken any spot that they desired, except that they were locked in with their H1B sponsors.
so, what did they do? they played the game, jumped thru the hoops, waited in lines and finally got their green cards. Every last one of them.
Yes, it was work--and a PITA, I helped several of them and couldn't believe all of the hoops that they had to go thru, but they now work for who they want, and command premium salaries.
So, I wonder about those who's visas are expiring? When did they start the process of applying for their green card?
---
Interested in the Colorado Lottery?
Interested in the Colorado Lottery or Powerball games?
check out http://colotto.com
Sounds to me like this is something that could have been brought up, oh... about six years ago.
Look. If you come into the country on a six-year visa, you know when you get it that you're going back after six years.
When I get a one year subscription from Newsweek, I dont write them and complain after 13 months that they are now depriving me of some basic human right because one year of reading their magazine has turned it into an invaluable part of my life.
There is a generally acknowledged (or perhaps, generally alleged) shortage of programmers and other tech workers in the U.S.
Pah! So think nothing of leeching these workers away from other countries -- most of which are economically depressed to the point that they already have plenty of problems in trying to build an Internet infrastructure in order to keep up with a rapidly advancing first world.
It sounds to me like the six years of experience our H1Bs gained in the US is going to help their countries demonstrably when they go back -- which, I bet, was a big part of the original point:
The federal government is presently [trying to increase] the number of H1B workers... while simultaneously sending currently-employed workers home.
...which still supports that assertion. I mean, doesn't it make you think? Why would the government, citing a skilled labor shortage, not be lobbying for extension of the visas of existing H1Bs? Wouldn't that be a lot easier than trying to increase the current influx? It would certainly save the costs of sending the current ones back!
The point is the work visa program -- any work visa program -- is not solely for US benefit, so dont make it sound like it is. If some of them, they came here under a false hope that they would be given some sort of permanent tenure at the end of their six years, that's their own foolish fault.
--
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
What the hell? First, I'm not at all criticizing or hating these people. Not at all. I have absolutely no issue with them being here whatsoever.
Second, I'm not American in the first place. And where my parents or grandparents came from is not relevant.
My point was one of immigration policy, and not directed at any 'race' or whatever. THe point is, a country should do everything it can to educate and get the help it needs from WITHIN before abandoning it's own people and getting help from WITHOUT.
I realize I'm starting to sound like a KKK member or something.. please uderstand I'm not talking about some kind of totalitarian idea here.. nothing like 'fuck the immigrants, bring back our country' or anything.
Just simple policy: jobs for locals before jobs for outsiders.
My point was that
This does make Native American claims of eternal ownership of "tribal lands" to be a crock. If they got pushed off by another "tribe" with superior numbers or technology, it's no worse than what they did to get "their" land in the first place.
--
Build a man a fire, and he's warm for a day.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
There is no reason you can't take most software projects for which you import teams of H1B workers and do them more economically as a rapid-fire series of converging incentivized contracts performed overseas.
You might need some laison H1B folks to assist in communications, but the bulk of the domestic work on most software systems should be done by broadly experienced architects who can write the acceptance tests. With the acceptance tests written, there should be _two_ independent teams hired overseas, preferably in differnt countries, to design and implement systems to pass the tests. With the money you save on salaries and other expenses, it is easy enough to afford two teams and multiple go-arounds. The way software is typically developed, admitting you will need multiple go-arounds is a healthy step in a 12 step program to free yourself of the addiction to armies of H1B slaves.
Seastead this.
>> In case you're not aware of the current situation, hot programmers can still freelance for well over $100/hour. The only people who really have to worry about foreign workers brought in on H1B visas (or any other way, including companies opening divisions in other countries) are the ones who aren't particularly skilled and are still extracting a premium salary. I don't care where they come from or what color their skin is, if someone can do a job better than an American for less money, they should get the job, even if it was my job
What bullshit ... if foreign workers were granted full rights and citizenship and thus full negotiating power, that would be one issue (which I would not be against ...) ... but to artificially "flood" the market and drum up the FUD alert of "labor shortage" is bogus ... the shortage is for cheap captive labor ... as an older programmer, I have seen many of my friends and colleagues choose other lines of work as they were displaced by H-1B Visa Indians imported ... what a flagrant violation of the law by U.S. companies ... if the public ever realizes the fraud being perpetrauted, there will be real outrage ...
And then we wonder why our best and brightest opt for medical school or law school ... wake the fuck up ... pay for programmers is a fraction of what it was 20 years ago, measured in real dollars ... programmers in the 60s made 100K+ per year ...
AZspot
What is the problem, though?
I mean, I sympathize with people.. but..
If you are granted a 'Temporary' Visa.. how does that equate to you deserving permanent status? They knew it was temporary.... and the fact that they can be denied renewal later is the REASON they are temporary.
Yes.. these people have lives and such, families, communities... but I can't help but wonder that they didn't take the 'temporary' stuff seriously.
People in the U.S. (well some people in the U.S.) fight the system with lawyers. It's an accepted and expected way for people to fight for themselves.
In other countries, such as India, the government is corrupt and static; there is no way to change what's being done to you without paying someone off. As there's no way to pay off someone in the U.S. directly (except for campaign financing, illegal here!), there's really no choice left for people coming from that culture.
Say it with me: PEOPLE FROM DIFFERENT PLACES LIVE DIFFERENTLY. Like why we don't show nudity on TV here, yet the rest of the world could care less. It really doesn't hurt anybody, but this is a big issue in the states. Somehow here the natural state of the human being is polluting to the child's mind.
--
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
My dad, for example, came here with the clothes on his back and now, 30 years later, enjoys a much better life than he ever would have had in his native country.
The fact that he was able to multiply his net worth by a factor of 50,000 just by being in America for 20 years speaks a lot about this country. He didn't have some brilliant idea. He didn't have a scam. He worked hard. Damned hard. But he still did the sensible thing, and his wife all 4 of his kids are much better off because of it. I could not imagine what my life would be like if my dad never came here. This is a completely different world, which most people can never appreciate.
Now, I'm sure people have also been thoroughly fucked in coming here. That sucks. I'm sorry. But I'm not going to accept that America is definitively bad for immigrants. I'm a direct result of America being good for immigrants. Sure, there's lots of room for improvement. We jail way too many people. We are a nation largely of racist idiots, but I could think of much worse places to be.
YMMV - I'm an American and proud of it.
They wouldn't be able to afford to buy anything made in America. That's for sure! Thus there would be nobody to sell anything to and so nobody to compete with.
Besides, if all the good IT workers were centered in one part of the world, wouldn't it eventually create a narrow, in-bred culture? Ideas could get one-sided, boring, and centered on what the USA thinks it wants instead of what it discovers it can use and adapt from other places.
To use a similar example, if other contries didn't have their own TV production, half of the top rating U.S. shows wouldn't exist. (Which isn't to say they're worth watching.)
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It seems like Indians are getting knocked pretty hard in this thread. Unfortunately, there's good reason for it. My experience with H1B people is that they were all Indians with decent - but not outstanding - skill sets, who came on board and wrote mediocre code. They all lived like hermits - at best in a bare efficiency, at worst four to a one-bedroom apartment - and sent all their money home to their families. And the code they produced was terrible, because they didn't have to care about it - it's not like they were going to be there in a couple of years maintaining the stuff.
The problem I have with this situation is that it takes jobs away from domestic programmers and exploits the financial situation the Indians face at home. Over there, the salary they make in the US is a fortune; over here, the salary they get is far less than what their employers would have to pay an American programmer. The corp wins, and in a way the Indians win, but the rest of us get shafted -- and in the final analysis we're exporting money and getting bad code in return. Not a great deal.
Loosen immigration restrictions and let more people come in, people who will stay here and work here and contribute to our economy, people who actually have a stake in what they do. But the current situation is really no different than exporting software work abroad, with all the consequences that brings. I say, good riddance to H1B.
To prove their point, one of them would periodically ask the lab TA if the lights were on. The TA would usually respond with a different answer
:)
/. crowd revels in amusement from clever remarks about the Hitchhiker's guide and the babelfish. Very wise and understanding about the tapestry of human culture and thought - all that makes us what we are, and how we live together. But when it comes to the real world, and people traveling and working in different countries and speaking with a different accent, there is so much veiled hostility and underlying scorn towards "them".
This doesn't prove anything. Maybe this happened because *their* communication skills were just as bad.
It is largely a matter of accent. Once an American complained to me about the English not being able to speak properly. The irony of this was a bit too much for me. I've also had Asians complain about Americans not being able to spell or master rudimentary English.
Once I saw an American tourist ask an Australian at an airport to repeat himself because she couldn't understand him. Naturally, you'd think - thick Aussie accent. Imagine if you'd seen her do the same to a Chinese person - would your opinion of his communication skills differ a lot from that of the Australian? Think about it...
There's no reason why an American or European accent is the "correct" or default way to pronounce English.
I find it strange how the
w/m
And please, explain me, what do you think, I owe you? "Opportunity" to work for you? I was paid for my hard work, company made good profit, government got taxes from both, and if anyone still owes something it's definitely not me. Oh, BTW, I am one of those people who are waiting for their immigration papers after H1B expired, and I will get a green card even if you don't like it.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
A naturalized US citizen is still subject to US laws, so if their past crimes are serious enough not to have statutes of limitations under US law, they can still be punished under US laws.
People shouldn't lose any sleep over it (a lot worse things can happen to someone in the US justice system than getting denaturalized). But I still think that the removal of a statute of limitations on denaturalization by Congress was indicative of a negative attitude towards immigrants.