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."

Comments

Re:H1B's are GOOD for America

[ronfar]

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.

This is true, I'm completely in favor of allowing in new immigrants. However, H1Bs are not immigrants. H1Bs are sojourners, as you will find out when your H1B period ends.

The correct way to handle H1B visas is to make them into real greencards and eliminate them as sojourner visas. Hey, I don't want my cousin-in-law to be forced to go back to Thailand when her H1B visa ends.

Your other quote just points out another problem with the H1B process:

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.

This will actually distort the process, since government officials tend not to want to eliminate revenue whatever the source. (However, I wouldn't object to it as much if H1Bs were brought in as real immigrants and not sojourners.)

One last thing, your quote:

There are, of course, abuses, as there is in any scheme, but overall the program is a good idea.

We shouldn't just accept abuses, we should take care of them however we can. One way would be to fast track H1Bs to real greencards. In this way, we would eliminate certain deficiencies in the program that allow for abuses.