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AFL-CIO Proposed Reforms for the H1B Program
Alien54 writes "[I first saw this link over on RFN]. The AFL-CIO has announced a series of proposed reforms for the H1B Program. The proposal is very thorough, and covers eight different problem areas of the H1B laws."
I work near Silicon Valley and have many friends working in and around SIlicon Valley in high tech jobs. Many have H1B visas. They all seem smart, often much smarter than the Americans around them, and this is reflected in the fact that they often become promoted fast within their companies. In fact many high tech companies (employing Americans) seem to be built on technology developed by immigrants. They all seem to be paid damn well to me. I frequently have to recruit workers on H1B visas because many US schools seem more interesting in boosting people's self esteem than teaching students anything useful. I wouldn't entertain, even for a second, the idea of paying them less than Americans.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Define economically sound. I left my last company in part because they were starting to ship a large portion of the development tasks to India. That left fewer positions in the US, and those positions were turned into "analysts" and "customer interaction specialists", in other words, requirements gatherers and writers of tedious documents.
I saw some of the work that came back from India, and frankly, it sucked. GUI design was non-existent, as were coding standards. There was a distinct lack of understanding of any non-M$ developement tool/language. Many of "sys-admins" had no idea what a port was, much less how it could get hijacked, broken into, etc. One of our US admins did a port scan on one of their main servers and found an unknown program listening on port 31337. Uh huh... good job guys.
Furthermore, we had significant communication issues with the Indian offices due to the 14 hour time differential. The requirements people in the US could interact with our customers on a given day, it would take until the next day for the overseas "developers" to get the requirements. Issues, misunderstandings, etc. took one or more days further to resolve, etc. Time wasted is money wasted.
My point is that, although Indian labor may be cheaper on an hourly basis, how many more man-hours does it take to get the job done? By the time I left, the amount of money saved through overseas development was little to none. All that had been accomplished was a 50% staff attrition through layoffs or people, like myself, who saw the impending doom and jumped ship before the axe fell.
The H-1B program is not limited to technology. Law is pretty rare since the law is specific to the United States (or even individual states). Only 0.5% of H-1B visas were law-related in 2001. But there were almost 24,000 visas for "Occupations in administrative specializations". Admittedly, that's still pretty small compared to the 191,100 for "Computer-related occupations.
See Report on Characteristics of Specialty Occupation
Workers (H-1B)
http://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/revie
Reference is to:
Alston, Richard M.; Kearl, J.R. and Vaughan, Michael B. "Is There a Consensus Among Economists in the 1990's?" American Economic Review, May 1992, 82(2), pp. 203-9.
It might sound unfair to say, "I want to continue living in better circumstances than 98% of the rest of the world, and I will therefore have my government pass laws which favor me and my country to do so", but to expect me to say otherwise is both self-centered and naive.
I may be naive, but I think you *should* say otherwise. I'm an American and I like my lifestyle, but I don't think that I should be entitled to it at the expense of the rest of the world (and, no, I'm not implying some sort of zero-sum game crap, and I don't believe that our wealth comes from exploiting the rest of the world, but I do think that we shouldn't artificially restrict their opportunities).
My attitude is pretty atypical, and I didn't always feel this way. It was during the two years I spent living in Mexico, when I met and became close friends with a great number of intelligent, educated, hardworking and severely disadvantaged people that I began to realize that I'm human *first* and American *second*. I don't believe in giving people handouts; experience shows that just makes the giver poorer without really helping the recipient and, in fact, it's not necessary -- if you just allow people the opportunity to compete, many of them will. That's the whole basis of the American Dream, in fact: let 'em in, let 'em work, let 'em fight their way up the ladder. Open, free, fair competition.
Not that the H1B program provides open, free, fair competition; I agree with that part of your post.
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Most of the ones I meet have the goal of saving money here and moving back to India so they can live like kings, and also because they don't like the culture here.
>Alright, if you're an American, with a 4-year degree from an
>American college, and some guy from India, overcoming all of the
>inherent obstacles in India, can do your job better than you do,
>he deserves your job. You started with all the advantages.
India has a government-paid technology training program, and I've just paid for 4 years of college. Who's *really* got the obstacles?
It may not have been designed as a method of immigration, but the fact of the matter is it is used as a transitional method for skilled workers to immigrate. I know, because that's what I'm doing. I have a current H1-B, and an almost-complete green card app.
I am a skilled, well educated, English-as-native-language IT worker, with both US and UK degrees. I want to live in the US. The fact of Green Card immigration is simple: unless you win the lottery, marry an American citizen, have $500,000 around to buy one (a green card, not a US citizen, although I hear senators are pretty cheap), or are a Nobel prize winner, you cannot just ask for a green card. H1-B is a necessary first step. I'd like that to change.
By the way; despite the fact that I'm a 'temporary worker', and can make no claim against Social Security or Medicare, I still must pay SS and Medicare taxes. I wouldn't mind paying if I could claim, or not paying if I couldn't, but the current model is precisely the worst solution. Very unfriendly, if you ask me. ;-)
People who aren't citizens don't get any of the rights a citizen gets.
The founding fathers of the United States disagree. Ever heard of the Alien and Sedition Acts? They were the cause of the first major constitutional crisis in this country and the crisis boiled down to exactly this question. The answer was: aliens have all of the same rights and privileges a citizen does. Of course, that only applied to people *in* the country, whether citizens or not, but that was because the US government only had the power to uphold (not grant!) or deny the rights of people within its borders, not because the philosophy was assumed to apply only to this geographic region.
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Another thing: Go to a electrical or computer engineering department in any US university and look at the percentage of Indian and Asian nationals studying graduate courses there. It is substantial. These students contribute a significant amount of effort to many research programs (some funded by NSF and defence depts). This research to some extent is responsible for the technological prowess of the US. There are'nt enough US citizens who want to spend a few more years after a bachelors degree pursuing a graduate research degree while earning a small stipend.
That would be nice. As it is, the INS takes 4 months to acknowledge receipt of paperwork. With the additional "security measures" now in place (my quotes reflect my skepticism that there is any useful security involved) processing times are getting longer and longer. After becoming a permanent resident aka green card holder, it is then necessary to wait 8 years before becoming eligible to apply for citizenship (at least, that is what I was told - it's so far off I haven't investigated further). In the meantime, an H1-B is the only option to work legally. The rules on renewals of H1-Bs have now been extended beyond the originally permitted 6 years precisely because so many immigrants were being forced to leave at the end of 6 years, still waiting for their GC application to be processed.
They stop getting counted in the statistics if they lose their phone service, though. The numbers are gathered through a phone survey. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has an summary that gives a better picture of the actual employment picture, but it still doesn't account for their systematic sampling errors.