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235,000 Software Engineers Can't Be Wrong, Right?
jgeelan writes "The Boston Globe has carried a report on how 235,000 engineers and computer scientistsl are calling on Congress to study the impact of the country's H1-B visa program, the recession, and the outsourcing of jobs overseas on the unemployment rate of engineers and other information technology professionals.
It's an issue that's bubbling on discussion sites all over America too, though in one case developers (Java developers in this instance) seem completely unable to agree on whether H1-B is really a contributing factor or not."
Why don't we just make sure the competent folks get/keep their jobs instead of worrying about someone's country of origin? Heaven knows there are enough incompentent American programmers who are still employed....
What is your Slash Rating?
How many are those are MCSE and Frontpage-weenies? To be honest, there are too many people who think they're competent but in reality don't know a lot about CS, heck I knew a guy who thinks you need a CS degree to code out websites, and he insists on using Adobe GoLive to do it.
And that doesn't apply to just the people from US, a lot of people I see just take CS and check out O'Reilly books to learn about the latest buzzword - HTML, PHP, Perl, Apache.
Yes, this comment is not insightful, it's just a troll.. mod away!!
I've perused the listings at monster and dice and most seem to be head hunters looking for somebody that is proficient in everything from ADA to VB or somebody with 3+ years of professional .NET experience or 10 years of Java. Could the problem be that the people doing the hiring don't even know what they want so they let positions go unfilled?
I don't think it's racism - I just think we need to reverse the trend of bringing in more and more people to do jobs that aren't there. Nobody is saying that we need to "throw anybody out", just limit the number of visas coming in. Remember when companies like Microsoft were bitching that there weren't enough tech workers in the U.S., so they had the number of visas increased?? Well, we don't need to keep that high number anymore. I didn't take that as a racist post at all.
Sorry, but that would be nationalism, not racism.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
... is not the competition, you have to just deal with that. The problem is for the HB1 workers... it's practically indentured servitude. It's difficult to leave the company you are supposed to work for. The company gains a level of control over the persons personal life that is anathema to the basic freedoms modern workers should expect.
-pyrrho
H1 visa holders are easy targets, but the fact is, the Dept. of Labor verifies that a H1 worker is not replacing the job of an US citizen before approving the visa.
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their inability to find work even when they hold advanced degrees and are skilled in Java or C++, the programming languages most in demand.
What about those foreigners who hold advanced degrees and are skilled in Java or C++ and can't get work because their own countries are poor and lack industry and they arn't allowed to work in the US? They have just as much right to work as anyone else and they and the companies who hire them shouldn't be punished by protectionist policies. This is the same mentality that lead to exorbiant tariffs on BC lumber (causing massive unemployment and immense damage to BC's economy). Protectionism just doesn't work and all the US will do is harm an already hurting tech industry.
I stole this Sig
I feel really sorry for you. A few skilled workers being imported into the country can NOT be doing you out of a job. No doubt you also blame career women who should be at home looking after children instead of taking a job you should have had.
If you have the skills you will be employed. If you have spent a year looking for work you either lack the skills for the job or the inter-personal skills that almost all jobs require. Based on your post I would surmise the latter.
The power to turn your life around is in your hands. Don't blame others - it won't help.
StrutterX
Like it or not, it's basic macroeconomics- free trade benefits the economies of both countries involved. The people it hurts are those who cannot remain economically competitive.
-bugg
Allowing a reasonable number of well trained foreigners into the US is a very smart idea. Just think about how much it costs the US government to educate a single citizen. People are a cost on society until they are at least 18. Via H1B programs you can get people that another country has paid for to come and contribute.
Foreigners have made considerable contributions to technology in the US. The Manhattan project team had large numbers of refugees in it. Important parts of the team that put man on the moon came from the German rocket program. Andy Grove and a number of other high tech pioneers came from outside the US. Bringing in foreigners is smart.
It probably does make some impact on salaries in the short term, but the benefit is that by getting bright people into the US it helps keep the US as the world's leading developer of technology. So I'd argue that the overall effect is positive on salaries. There are, of course, abuses, as there is in any scheme, but overall the program is a good idea.
It is interesting to note that a number of European countries, Germany especially, have picked up on the idea that H1B like visas are a good idea. I'm totally annoyed that my home country is notoriously difficult for educated people to emigrate to. Personally, it's one of the US's great strengths and more countries should behave in this way.
Finally, the US government even makes a profit on H1B processing. To get an H1B processed costs $1125. I've heard that the average processing time is in the order of fractions of an hour.
Perhaps its an order of magnitude better, but by American standards, they are treated like endentured servants. Just because they come from poorer areas, is it okay to treat them worse than regular Americans. I would say the choice is, feed our own, or take advantage of and mistreat (by American standards) foreigners.
If your having a hard time deciding, let me say that you could simply lease slaves from the Sudan, certainly, it would improve their lifestyle, but is being a slaveholder ever ethical? (that's an anology, not a great one, but applicable).
You either bring Adit over here on an H1B, or send the software to India to be written by his company in Bangalore.
Either way, it's supply and demand, chumpolas - the service economy runs on Mexicans and other south american immigrants, mostly illegal.
Why would software be any different?
It's a global market, folks - if you want to keep your jobs and their 80K salaries, you've got to be better at something than your international competition, just like a steel manufacturer or anybody else who competes in the global economy.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
So, who's being the racist here?
You paint these displaced american workers as the racists, but that's not accurate (in most cases). I do think that there's racism here, but it's on the part of large corporations who exploit foreign labor because they can get away with paying ridiculously low wages.
When I was a subcontractor for IBM, I worked on the same floor as IBM India. IBM sponsored provided H1B sponsorship so that the IBM India developers could work in the US. I was shocked to learn that while I was being billed out at $100/hour, my equally-trained, equally-capable counterparts were being billed out at $20/hour. Keep in mind that we were all taking home a *fraction* of what we were billed out for (I was getting around $25/hour, I shudder to think of what IBM India contractors were making). Sure, you could quit, but then you've lost your H1B visa and are deported. In essence, it was endentured servitude.
It all comes down to supply & demand. US Corporations are increasing the supply of IT professionals in order to drive down the wage they can commmand. However, they are doing this through questionable (if not downright unethical) means. You end up with one group of exploited developers, and another group of displaced developers.
The reality is, two years ago, you couldn't get enough US workers at even remotely sensible salaries, so H1Bs became a way to make US businesses viable in a global market. Now the recession's hit and companies can find US employees, the number of H1Bs are down 75% (160k-40k from the article). Those figures alone indicate that while there are some abuses (there will be in any system), by and large, H1Bs have worked as intended - to provide extra labour when labour is short.
The main problem with the IT industry is that a million and one idiots joined the industry on the promise of massive salaries. They didn't care about what they were doing, put relatively little effort in to getting more than the basic skills and just came for the money.
Once the economy tanked and layoffs started, some of them remained, filling the positions the "good" engineers should be taking. End result, a lot of "good" engineers can't find work because a lot of "bad" ones are still in the remaining jobs. This is settling out over time, but it's still an issue.
The same happens in whatever the boom industry is right before a recession. Look what happened to accountants and stock brokers at the end of the 80s. In time, it rights itself as the gold diggers leave in search of the next boom and the "good" people filter back in to the roles.
So, perhaps rather than go for the ultranationalistic, easy knee-jerk of "damn them immigrants!", which, granted, most societies tend to do during hard times, maybe looking closer to home makes more sense.
We still have MicroSkills and Laptop Training Solutions advertising all over the radio here (CA) about how IT is a growth industry and if you just do a six month course, you're entitled to a $60k job at the end of it. I'd imagine they're dumping vastly more than 20,000 extra workers in to an industry that they shouldn't be in.
And going back to the whole industries people shouldn't be in... It's been said by almost every expert on the dot.com economy that the recession was the best thing that could have happened as it's driving out those who shouldn't be in it. Yes, it's painful while those of us who should be in it wait for them to go and can't find work ourselves. Ultimately, though, the lean period's strengthening the industry, not harming it.
And, yes, I have been through it. Ten months out of work with a near dream resume behind me. Yet even after that, I still stand by the fact that the problems we're facing are a good thing. We were a bloated industry that needed to be forced to justify its existence. Blaming those sneaky foreigners really doesn't help things.
One final thought: Which would you prefer, "Half my office are foreigners on H1Bs rather than Americans" or "My office shut down and moved to India because we couldn't compete without a few H1Bs"?
What a moron.
First, as a H1-B visa I can tell you that I'm getting paid the same or better than my colleagues.
Second, even if I only got 60% of what they did it would be plenty. When my 6 years is up I'll go home and pay cash for a house and a couple of nice cars. I might work, but I might not have to.
Third, if those whining "engineers" were any good they would have jobs and wouldn't have to resort to asking the government to help out. Is there any more ruthless meritocracy than an engineering team?
To correct your closing statement, the foreigner is in fat city and the incompetent local can't get a job. As a strategy for achieving and maintaining a technolgical lead over other nations the H1-B program is pure genius. So thanks for all the money, yanks!
This type of activity is pretty clueless. Two years ago the US was screaming out for every engineer it go lay its hands on.
Pandering to populist pressure might sound good tactics to politicians but it is a pretty short term gain. The intended beneficiaries are not going to thank you for it and the naturalized citizens are going to hate you for it.
Making it harder to hire non-US workers will simply force US companies to be even more aggressive in outsourcing programing overseas. The IEEE group was also complaining about that but guess what? There is absolutely nothing Congress can do to stop it, unless they want to start a huge trade war.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Then stop wearing clothes manufactured in poorer countries, and stop free trade and globalization in general.
All of slashdot was for globalization and outsourcing until it hits home that YOU can be the next disposable profession to hit the trash can. Welcome to macro-ecomomic reality. You aren't economically viable anymore.
If you destroy this program, H-1 do you see more US companies willing to pay twice as much for the same amount of work, or do you see the company move their IT departments to another country all together? As long as their is competent, skilled, cheap labor outside of the country, why should people hire you? Sympathy?
Bye!
My point is that it isn't as simple as saying "If we kick out all the foreigners we will all have jobs again". That is a racist attitude. I am fortunate to come from a country with a similar - if not better standard of living to the US, however those that are advocating "kicking out" H1B workers should remember that they were invited here, and in many cases they will be forced to return to countries with extremely poor standards of living.
I am really saddened by the response to this story here, I honestly thought that the geek community was above this kind of bigotry.
I am and engineer. I hire and manage engineers. When I'm reviewing candidates, some of factors by which I differentiate between them are (in no particular order):
- skills
- education
- experience
- expected pay
- evidence of dedication
- etc.
Simply saying "I'm an American, I should have priority" doesn't work, and, unfortunately for you, the "import" and "export" of engineering jobs means that the willingess of foreing workers to work at a particular rate very much impacts your situation.I'm not saying "the economy sucks, live with it." Certainly, the government has some duty to look out for it's own, but in the post dot-pocalypse world, I still routinely come across engineers expecting their 1990s-era inflated salaries who cannot differentiate themselves from foreign nationals, willing to work for much less, other than by saying "I'm an American. I should be first."
As an aside, the most vocal opponents of illegial immigrant labor in the produce industry are the American produce workers. Unfortunately, if we were to simlply toss out all the illegal workers, produce costs would rise so much that the american laborers would be unable to afford to put food on the table.
I oppose H1Bs because they're less than you deserve.
You should just be able to come here and work. No deportations, no time limits, no bullshit.
Your company shouldn't be able to hold over you if you want something better when you're here. That should be your choice.
Of course, I'm a fan of totally open immigration as well...
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
... If you're *qualified* and are expecting an exhorbitant salary relative to your experience. Speaking from experience, I've interviewed many candidates who claimed C/C++ and/or Java knowledge and have failed to answer basic questions about said languages.
Now is *not* the time to fudge experience on resumes, because employers are actually spending time to verify claimed skills.
The US has a huge supply of computer hobbyists, but very few programmers who are: Degreed in CS, are willing to learn and apply design principles (rather than hacking crappy, unmaintainable solutions), and/or are willing to develop in 4-5 year old, proven technologies rather than cutting-edge, buggy, but 'sexy' buzz-world filled technologies.
Based on my 10 years of experience as a consultant (and for the first time now working in-house), of all the other programmers I've worked with, 1 or 2% are skilled enough to be worthy of developing a new system. All others are okay at maintenance, but barely that.
Maybe I don't hangout in the right circle of programming frieds but besides seeing an impossible number of years worth of experience in new technology, I see crazy mixes of skills. I see jobs where they want some Unix C/C++ guru and then they want the person to also have experience with Visual Basic. I don't know about anyone else but the people I've meet that were really good in Unix didn't have any interest in learning VB. Other jobs I see they a great deal of Win32 C++ development and also want the person to have experience with COBOL on mainframes. Again I've worked with a few good Windows developers but most of them were too young to ever had been around a and all their experience revolved around PCs.
Tony
The problem isn't that we, the technology industry, are actively seeking to fill jobs with people from other countries....Well, actually we are actively seeking people from other countries, but only because most American high school and college graduates can't tell the difference between geometry and calculus.
Science and mathematics are sorely lacking in this country's education system. We, as a nation, are more concerned with safe guarding "Under God" than making sure our children under the basic concepts of mathematics, biology, botany, chemistry, and physiology. We are more concerned with donating millions to erect a memorial for the 9/11 victims, but turn a deaf ear when our teachers and schools ask for money to buy books and supplies.
Sorry to say, but we should increase the visas; if only to ensure that our cable TV and Internet service won't be interrupted - that way we, as a nation, won't have to face the reality of our situation.
Great... let's kick out the intligent, hard-workiking, law-abiding H1B workers, and yet do NOTHING about the stupid, lazy and criminal types that we give 'asylum' or 'student visas' to.
Note: it wasen't H1B visa holders hijacking planes on the 11th, and I haven't seen a H1B holder at the food-bank or getting a welfare check.
What we need to allow, it the open selling of US citizenship rights by US citizens to anybody who wants it. Out H1B friends could buy the citizenship from a willing seller for cash - there whould be a bunch of crack-whores lined up to sell their citizenship for a few bucks.
We'd get rid of a pest, and gain a good citizen.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
I decided I liked it here so I decided to start the road to naturalization. First step was to trade the TN visa (1 year renewable forever) for an H1-B visa (6 year) since TN is not supposed to be used for people who want to immegrate.
And suddenly now I'm the evil one, bent on destroying the american economy or something. Man, I should have stayed on the TN...
BTW, it's not the H1-B that "locks" people into their company like a slave; it's the Labour Certification that you need for a green card. If you change jobs and your new job isn't exactly the same as your old one, you have to restart the LC process from scratch. Here in California, it looks like it will take 3-4 years to get my LC complete. That's in addition to the 3 years it takes to get the green card once you have the LC...
Just in case anyone isn't aware of the individual implications of being a visa worker in the US,
You pay FICA, Social Security & all the other taxes, but are not allowed to collect unemployment or medicare or welfare.
If you lose your job, you have 60 days (15 officially) to get your stuff together and get out of the country unless you find a new job. Kind of hard in today's anti-immegrant climate.
In many ways, illegal immegrants have more rights than legal ones do.
Finally, it's funny how you never see anyone railing about all the immegrants from central and south america who work on the farms to help bring you cheap groceries...
I'm fairly certain that the "explanation" is necessary.
I'll quote myself:
These same managers advertise for self-starters: highly intelligent, well-educated, motivated people with sparkling resumes, advanced degrees and years of huge achievements and experience who *once they are hired* are expected to shut up, sit down and do as they are told (just like Junior High School). If they open their mouths, they get fired.
People with all those achievements and education are rarely (if ever) people who don't have some fairly well-ingrained ideas of how things should be done. They wouldn't *have* those resumes if it were otherwise. Yet management expects them to just do as they are told and *refrain from offering any input or contribution* or pack up and leave.
Now, this has just shifted to the interview, where candidates are treated to cynical, skeptical and in some cases, outright hostile interviews by incompetent, greedy managers who want it all for free, and have no intention whatsoever of actually *managing* anyone, because that would require *effort* and it would take time away from the donuts and whiteboards. They don't care if a person is qualified. Either they have the supplicative, friendly, step-and-fetch personality required, or they don't get the job. Simple as that.
See, management is getting the most out of people. People are not perfect little drones who do everything right. People make mistakes. People sometimes have abrasive personalities, and usually for good reason: They are sick and tired of being stomped on by incompetent managers 60 hours a week.
Managing is getting spectacular results from the most abrasive personality on the team. Find out what motivates them. WHY do they feel that the project is a pile of crap. ASK THEM. TALK TO THEM. DON'T shut them down in meetings. LISTEN. LEARN SOMETHING.
Management wouldn't DREAM of doing something like this, because they can't admit to anyone that their employees know more than they do.
Yet, managers who don't do these things are INCOMPETENT by definition.
So they end up with a team of people who spend all day congratulating and agreeing with each other. Nothing gets done. Nothing is produced. Nothing is sold, and the company goes out of business. Happens all the time.
Incompetent management has made W-4 employment a farce. Being qualified is totally irrelevant to these people. I know this for a fact, because I've been passed over for hundreds of jobs for which, based on the job description, I was *perfectly* qualified.
They don't even believe resumes any more, and they assume you are lying in the interview anyway. And all this to get a job it is very likely will be downsized again in six months anyway? What was the point again?
Lemme guess, - you are the rogue programmer who can do it all, and the other guys on the team are a bunch of slackers who just don't get it. Am I right?
No, I'm a very competent and capable programmer who could do a lot, but I'm prevented from doing so by management who are concerned that my ideas are non-standard and that my offering so many alternatives makes them feel I'm not enough of a "team player." (Team Player: n. A phrase recently invented by corporate management which means "someone who will agree with us even when we are wrong.")
As to whether the other guys on the team are slackers: I'd ask them, but they've all been fired.
Do You drive an American made car?
Are you wearing American made clothing?
Do You look for the "Made in USA" Label before making a purchase?
Are You willing to pay more money for a product if it's made in America?
Are You willing to settle for a lower quality product if it means buying American?
If you answered "No" to any of these questions, then you are just as "guilty" of costing "Real Americans" their job as any company that hires an H1B, and the people that you "put out of work" don't have any reason to give a damn that you are now unemployed.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
I hate the fact that economic downturn really brings out the worst human emotions, including xenophobia. "They are stealing our jobs" is way too easy a slogan to market. It's been popular in Europe, I'd hate to see that becoming popular in USA.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
One of the main reasons for this [alleged Java skills shortage] is that developers experience an initial decreased level of productivity when migrating from other languages such as COBOL and RAD/4GL to Java. The leap, in many cases, is just too demanding. "Due to the steep learning curve, less than 50% of the job market demand for efficient Java developers will be satisfied by 2003," says Gartner.
This is because Java sucks, simple.
It has a steep learning curve because of all the bogus OO hype crap like the cute but unrealistic animal, shape, and device driver examples that PHB's fall for.
The API's are screwy and OO methodologies are highly inconsistent from practicioner to practicioner. (If you disagree, then show me the fricken pattern of same-ness instead of just modding me down.)
They want more H1B's because Java sucks? Ironic. I would like to see that testonomy in a congressional hearing. What a hoot.
oop.ismad.com
Table-ized A.I.
I would say there was a tech boom. I can't see where Dr. Matloff says there wasn't a tech boom. He just states that there wasn't a shortage of domestic workers (do to factors like rising CS enrolment in American universities).
I think that the H1-B visa program has a bad effect on the future of the US as a world technology leader.
While one can argue with that the effect of having qualified H1-B employees in the US is good for the economic strength of the nation, I feel that this is likely to be a short term effect. Other nations that currently export their best talent to the US are working hard to develop programs to keep this talent at home.
In the meantime the lack of economic incentive for homegrown US technical talent due to salaries being depressed by the availability of a large labor pool (supply/demand) is causing the best/brightest to pursue other opportuniites. This has an effect both on the current labor pool, and the future ability to develop homegrown technical talent because of the decay of the educational infrastructure that results when students are not interested in a field.
As talent exporting countries develop ways to provide opportunities at home, the H1-B pool will dry up, and the American educational system will NOT have the means to to provide the needed talent, while universities abroad that have been supplying the US with talent will now be fueling thier native economies, and the US will not have the trained talent to keep up.
Policy makers are doing the country a great disservice by bowing to business demands that are notoriously governed by quarterly profit statements, rather than considering the longer term need to educate its citizens to compete with the rest of the world.
Also, I look forward to working in Europe at some point in the next few years. If we make it difficult for their nationals to work here, then it will become more difficult for Americans to work abroad.
Been awhile since you studied economics, huh?
Raising minimum wage COSTS jobs, it does not create them. Sure, those "lucky" few at the bottom of the economic ladder that keep their jobs will earn a little more... but thousands or even millions will find themselves without work.
Raising minimum wage also tends to cause inflation. You are paying people more despite a lack of any increase in productivity. This tends to cause inflation in the economy.
So you have more people out of work in an economy pushing towards inflation. Yeah, good idea.
All workers should be of equal value, value should be based on the job done not the country you are from, you should get paid the same if you are in pakistan as you would if you were in the USA.
This will happen eventually. But it won't be because of any minimum wage laws. It will be because of FREE TRADE WORLDWIDE. When all trade barriers in the world are removed and no taxes are charged to import anything from anywhere, you will find the standard of living throughout the world becoming much more equal.
And this requires fewer laws (i.e. no tarrif laws), not more laws (i.e., not more minimum wage laws).
The world is getting full. Over a billion people have probably been born since you have. If you think you've seen racism and xenophobia, you aint seen nothing. Wait until we hit the 8, 9, and 10 billion marks. The more crowded we get, the worse it'll be.
I'm something of a radical in that I believe we should abolish passports and national borders. This puts me somewhere near "anarchist" on the conventional political scale... and that in itself says something about our society.
I do want to make a point, though, about your accusation against "the geek community." Coming here and calling us a bunch of bigots is pretty stupid. I mean, if you know the community, you've got to realize it's like any other, diverse, and actually unlike others in _how_ diverse it is. As a function of our relative level of education, there are going to be more intelligent views on the subject here than in other places.
I've got an observation for you, since you seem to be so quick to call people bigots. It's simple human nature for people to create an us/them dichotomy and to be protective and xenophobic. This is almost an animal instinct; its deeply ingrained social behavior and it has (or had) a distinct evolutionary function. You are guilty of thinking this way too. If you examine yourself very carefully, you'll realize I'm right. Maybe someday we'll solve this problem but in the meantime I bet acting shocked about it isn't productive. Call people stupid and they act stupid. Praise their intelligence and they get smarter, know what I mean?
I have a big hunch that that "similar - if not better standard of living" country you're from isn't taking any applications for citizenship. It's funny how Europeans in America criticize Americans for being xenophobic, when by comparison we practically have open borders.
(* Having or not having a tech job relies very much on whether you are qualified or not. If you are good at what you do, you will have no trouble finding a good job. *)
I don't think this is the case. Interviews and actual work are *not* the same thing. I don't interview very well because of my geeky personality, but do good work.
It is usually the BS-artists who get hiring priority in my observation.
Table-ized A.I.
The only reason companies outsource any labor is GREED. Why have a textile industry in America when can use children oversees?
You are wrong. The problem is that if I have a company and won't try to exploit children oversees then I'll go bankrupt. That is just the nature of capitalism. Thus, pretty much all what ACLU was fighting for goes under in this new global economy. In other words, if you are not already wealthy enough you better work damn hard and and be above average and don't complain about lost jobs and low wages.
BTW. I am on H1 myself.
Why not just give citizenship to anyone skilled enough to be remotely recruited!? Just let them be citizens if they like, they have already proven their value to the economy. Would you have a problem with that?
If the USA was really genuinely interested in adding these workers to the talent pool, then the proper thing to do would be to grant them citizenship at the same time. H1-B visas have a number of characteristics which unduely hurt the rights of the workers and for whatever reason, founded or not, cause problems when it's layoff time. To tell someone who's been in a country for 5 years - paying taxes, I might add - that they have 10 days to leave? That seems very extreme.
If the USA is not willing to grant these people citizenship, then it should be asked why. That will be more revealing than anything else, I think. North America is unique in that it's modern form is completely the work of relatively recent immigrants, in some way, shape, or form. The demographics in Canada and the USA will change drastically over the next few years as immigration is going to be needed to provide the next generation of consumers. People just aren't having kids the way they used to in Canada, and it plays out in the USA as well. Immigration is the only alternative.
That said, they do guarantee employers access to intellectual capital - people - at a market rate without relocating to another country. Many american corporations, particularly call-centers and the like, relocate to Canada because it much easier to get an affordable educated workforce, and the phone systems are largely integrated. Do not assume that by denying a H1-B a job, you necessarily provide one to an american worker at twice the rate of pay. At some point, it's cheaper to move operations. This doesn't mean some sweatshop in India either, as many people seem to assume. There is a signifigant advantage to relocating operations in Canada (very close, great exchange rate - chop salaries by 45%!, native english speakers, etc etc). Same can be said for Ireland, Scotland, England, etc.
The issue is complicated. I have a EE degree, and have never had a problem finding work if I was willing to accept the salary the market was willing to bear, and be willing to move where the jobs are. Anyone with a EE degree who can't find work has another superset of circumstances working against them, IMHO. Welcome to the new economy, (tm) (r) (c).
My $0.02 (cdn)
..don't panic
You have chosen to live in the United States, a beligerantly capitalist nation, for over 15 years...
You believe that workers, including foreign workers, ought to continue to work for what they are willing to accept, based on supply and demand...
You point out that laws can have devistating effects in spite of the best of intentions.
I agree with most of your points, but I'm not sure that Karl Marx would. You sound like a free-market capitalist to me.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Yes there is being a country and managed the flow of knowledge and jobs.
Let me give you a VERY CLEAR example of how this works. In the early 20th century the car industry was owned and dominated by the US. But then years passed. Now the car industry is owned by the Europeans, namely the German, French and Japanese. On a global and local level add up where the cars come from and about 66% of all cars will come from those countries. The Americans have only two car makers left Ford and GM and one of them looks very unhealthy indeed (GM).
Sure the car makers have car building plants in the US, but only if the conditions are good. If the conditions are not good then the car makers pick up and move production elsewhere. However, the one place where the car makers will always build cars is in their home country, which is Germany, France and Japan.
My point is that in this global world having backassed imigration policies hurts the country in the long run. And this is where the problem is. Immigration is a long term issue, but politics are short term based.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Matloff implicitly assumes that there is some fixed number of US jobs and that the US has some say in the matter who gets them. But those programming jobs don't belong to the US. The foreign programmers are not going to take up knitting if they can't work in the US. They will either work for the same company in a different country, or they will end up competing against the US company, having much lower salaries and overhead.
This is what the developing countries have been asking for. You want free movement of goods to dump your products in the whole world. How about free movement of labor? We in 3rd world have got trained manpower. Let us export that. This is what I call unfairness.
Hi!
First, let me apologize for leaping to the conclusion that you are young--very sorry about that. Second, perhaps you might disabuse me of another notion: my sense is that zillions of kids straight out of college got jobs writing CGI/Perl applications--and when the dot-com bust happened, they ended up on the street. Where, one might imagine, it is a buyer's market. It may well be that H-1Bs are part and parcel of the same crowd (he's a kid, and he's here on an H-1B visa). Are you competing in the job marketplace against H-1Bs--or the dot-com dropouts?
Another thought for you: I'm an independent. Sometimes I'll take a fixed-bid job; frequently I'll do a "fixed budget" job. If I'm onsite at the clients inevitably somebody will ask how in the world I can stand the stress of never knowing where my next job will come from. My reply is that the difference between a "permanent" employee and a temp is that the temp knows that he is only on the payroll for the next three months. I'm not just being glib--I've watched lots of people in permanent positions spend chunks of their careers working at the same version level of the same technology. A former client had a wonderful question: does he have five years of experience--or one year of experience five times? Think of the people you know who are maintaining a project they wrote three or four years ago, that are not using the current version of the technology.
My buddy Charlie (who posted a comment in this thread earlier) works for a Major Media Company--well known for its rodent mascot. Charlie has worked for a number of companies in New York City--and he's always been a permanent employee. He's pretty up front: he works with the current version of technology, or he's gone. (I'm about a hundred miles due west of New York City, and I find New Yorkers entertaining--they have this wonderfully blunt way of asserting that kind of thing.)
Even though Charlie's a permanent employee, he effectively approaches his job like a temp--he participates in beta tests, he develops code at home, he volunteers for the pilot projects, he is always looking to try something new. So if/when the bubble bursts and he has to look for a job, he can claim experience with .NET and SQL Server 2000 and Windows XP and all the rest--because he's made the effort to stay current. On the other hand, there's a guy down the hall from him who is still working in VB 3.0--16-bit VB. Who had better be on his knees every morning in fervent prayer that Mickey is still making money, because if he ever has to look for a new job, he is going to have a lousy looking resume.
My point:
Even if you're a "permanent" employee, you only have a job for the next three months. And in this day and age, when "corporate loyalty" means "we'll give you a t-shirt when we need you to attend a rally in 'support' of our executives, right before we fire you" you have to be looking out for your own interests. Which means looking forward to pick the technologies that will be in demand, and thinking about how you can develop those skills.
John
P.S. Moving your family from St. Louis to the New York area might be nuts--but just a thought: DB2 experience is a very valuable thing in the NY Metro area. JM