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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."
Totally off base here, if so, offtopic mod the hell out of me.
But instead of being so concerned about the number of jobs being grabbed in this country by foreign nationals...
I think more concern should be paid to the number of tech jobs being farmed out to foreign countries. Did you know the helpdesk for the State of Missouri is served from India?
Doesn't it seem like letting the employer and employee work out how much money the job will pay is a much better system than having some bureaucracy decide what the prevailing wage is and binding everyone to that? Or is there something about being born outside the borders of the United States that makes wage negotiations inherently evil?
The most basic understanding of economics suggests that the "need" for lawyers and managers is clearly much greater than the "need for technical workers" that drives the H1-B program that singles out engineers and scientists for increased worker supply. When are we going to see an H1-B program for lawyers and MBAs?
Of course it will never happen because those professions have enough sense not to cut their own throats. H1-B targets the people who may have high IQ scores but are too freaking stupid to organize, lobby or even realize what 100,000 people competing for their job does to their lives.
Actually, my position is this: immigration numbers should apply across the board. If I have to face competition from an infinite number of Chinese scientists, I should at least reap the cost savings from having that competition across the economy.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
If you were a company and had a lot of lower-paid foreign workers, and then the government stopped letting you hire such workers, what would you do? Hire more highly paid American workers? Or just farm the entire project/department out to a foreign country?
The latter would save the company money and result in fewer American jobs and less income tax revenue for the US. It would create more jobs for foreign companies and more income tax revenue for those countries. Probably not what the AFL-CIO wants to happen.
I think the whole H1-B program is flawed. The fact that the visa is tied to a specific company sponsor means that the employer has the implied threat of deportation to use in any wage negotiation. This has to be a big factor in the lower wages paid to H1-B workers. I would rather see increased numbers of immigrants on a permanent resident/citizenship track than a reformed guest worker program.
My problem is not that other people work cheaper than me, eventhough this threatens my job. My problem is that the savings is absorbed by the CEOs and shareholders, it never finds its way to the laborers.
Therefore, its typically fueled by greed and not economic needs.
Hi, I am on H1b and all the points in their proposed reforms are either in the current laws already in even stricter form or (the change of limit from 195 000 to 65 000) bound to happen as some extensions expire soon. From reading the article they have absolutely no clue about both the current environment and the current laws. The limits of H1b visa are not even reached and in the current market is almost impossible for a company to obtain a DOL certification for their recruitment on the position anyway. This is just someone trying to solve problem that does not exist.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Of course unions, etc have not been a traditional alliance for geeks. I can just imagine the flamewars over this.
The proposed reforms validate many if most of the concerns of IT workers, but I am not sure if these are the best solutions. I have seen suggestions that advocate the all out abolition of the H1B program. This might be the way to go, if the the thing H1B fixed did not in fact fix anything in the first place.
The last thing we need is the US to become the equivalent of Detroit with urban burnout across the whole country.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
So.. they all speak different languages natively.. SO WHAT? You said.. they all speak english in common. Isn't that the point?
I'm not saying it's great to have lots of foreign work.. but bringing up the fact that they don't natively speak english is kind of, well, bigotry.
Lest we want to happen to us what is now happening to Japan and Europe. Due to lowered levels of immigration those regions are experiencing an aging of the population. This busts the social security systems. With less people paying in, less money can be sent out.
We need more people. Not less. Immigrants add to the economy. They add workers, and consumers. What they bring to the economy more than outweighs what they take out via usage of social services.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
I was even willing to work for 7/hr like the Indians because I became so desperate and was ready to work at a McDonalds or retail store. I guess I was still viewed as too expensive or not dispensable enough. I ened up moving back in with my parents, selling all of most of my stuff in my apartment, lossing my girlfriend because she wanted a man with money, and working at a staples for 7/hr.
Infact go read this article here on how sun is under investigation for firing half of its staff and replacing them with Indians. Its disgusting and this really pisses me off! What the f*ck did we do to deserve to be treated like this? I advise most workers to work for a small bussiness who actually care about there workers. Big companies just want to rape us. I am back in tech working for a small consulting company outside of the big cities. I advise those who are looking for work in New York, Silcon Valley, or San Fransico to leave and move to a place like Phoenix, Las Vegas or Ohama where small bussinesses are rampant and rents are low.
http://saveie6.com/
Of course, for software developers, this whole arguement is moot: It's probably too late to save the jobs of most US software developers, anyhow. Their jobs are going to get shipped to a dozen different countries where the cost is a mere fraction of developing in the US, and I don't see how you can stop that short of having Congress pass some kinds of taxes on it (which they certainly won't do in the current pro-business climate).
Were I a mid-level developer in the US, I'd think that it's time to either (a) go back to school and get a specialized advanced degree or (b) figure out what other field I'd like to be in. The party's over.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Judge me by my merits, not by my nationality. If someone from India has more experience or skill than I do, then they should get the job.
Yes, the market is tight. But people with H1-B visas are people to. Reading the article made me envision "Attack of the Clones". Everyone is struggling for jobs, not just people here. Have a heart, have a brain, judge yourself and others by your merits, not nationality.
The reason many employers like H1-B workers is that they can treat them like shit, and there's nothing the worker can do about it. If they quit they stand to lose their H1-B status (or so I'm told) so they take it.
If the employers had to treat the H1-B workers with respect, they would hire fewer of them, and the problem would take care of itself. The H1-B workers would shop themselves around, salaries would equalize, the language barrier would be a significant downside, yet the good ones would still succeed.
Giving people more freedom is usually the right answer.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The thing most often passed over in this sort of arguement is the real-world fact that some people (Americans like myself) live in a first-world environment, and it's certainly in our own self-interest to perpetuate that.
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.
So, yeah. The US ought to discourage sending jobs overseas and tax companies that use foreign workers. The US ought to heavily discourage companies from hiring foreign workers who'll go back to their countries after X number of years (if they want to make money and stay in the US to spend it, that's something else, but that's not what H1B's are). The US should try to raid the best and brightest from other countries to improve the average IQ level in our own country.
But that's not what we're doing. Instead, we're acting in the next-quarter interests of specific companies, and that's a Bad Thing(tm) for everyone concerned.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Dear DPE,
I read with enthusiasm your proposals for H1-B reform. However I think many of the suggestions will be difficult to implement, and they only attack the problem indirectly.
The problem with the H1-B program is that foreign workers should be sponsored by American WORKERS, not American companies.
Each H1-B Visa should bear the signature of an American worker who was offered the job at his or her current pay level, and refused it.
Please see that the authors of your excellent proposal on H1-B reform are aware of this enforcement option.
Sincerely,
Unlike service sector jobs, or even manufacturing jobs, software and biotech jobs are highly mobile because they don't require a lot of equipment, all they require is skilled people. You might ask: if these jobs are so mobile, why do they all come to the US? That's probably mostly due to the preferences of the foreign workers themselves: people with a good education and skills tend to live well here. A US job is a perk for foreign workers. But if they can't get that perk because of visa restrictions, they are going to do the same job from overseas.
And think of it this way: do you really think that Europe, China, India, or Japan like it that their nationals come to the US to work here? Far from it. They call it the "brain drain" and are complaining bitterly about it. Some would dearly love to charge the US for the educational expenses of those who leave. The deal that the US has been getting out of the H-1B program is particularly sweet for the US because those are skilled workers, educated and raised at the expense of taxpayers of other nations. Europe, China, and Japan would love to see nothing more than to see the US H-1B programs restricted.
People complaining about the H1-B quota being so high mention that in today's badly bruised IT economy, so many American IT professionals are out of jobs, so the H1-B program should be scaled back to give these people jobs.
Bullshit.
I'm a Canadian on an H1-B visa and I've conducted recent interviews for software developer-style positions. The US talent is embarrassingly bad. I saw no less than five candidates who could not write a simple C routine to traverse a linked list. And this was one of the simpler questions.
This is why they can't find work, not because of foreign competition.
I'm tired of poorly-qualified or schooled native IT people complain that they ought to get the job because they're citizens or permanent residents. It doesn't work like that! If you don't know how to code, or explain the difference between an abstract base class and a regular class, then you don't deserve the job.
Stop blaming H1-B candidates and start brushing up on your skills, because it's your lack thereof holding you back.
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
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.
The intent of the H1B program is good, and I think the AFL-CIO is addressing what's wrong with it: They're not saying the program's goals are bad, they're just saying that if the workers coming over here are being paid less than the workers who are here, then by definition they are not doing a job H1B was designed to fill.
Thier position, and I agree, is that if a company is willing to pay the same wage to bring over a foreigner instead of hiring a US worker, then they probably need to hire a foreigner (otherwise they wouldn't bother.) If they're paying a sub-standard wage to bring over a foreigner, then they're just abusing the H1B system for a purpose it wasn't intended for, and THAT's what needs to stop.
H1B's good, abuse of H1B's bad, and wages paid is a good indication of whether H1B is being abused in a particular situation.
As for whether H1B is right or not - Open immigration. If immigrants can do your job for less, tough crap for you. If companies hire a bunch of immigrants to work for less and it turns out they can't do the jobs, tough crap for the company when it has a crap product and goes out of business.
Americans need to secure their employment by being the most qualified people to do the jobs, not by setting up a legislative barrier to simply block out people who are qualified.
paintball
--we HAD a huge common market. No visas required to travel, a common currency, the members traded with each other, and the money "made" inside this common market remained mostly inside, thereby getting spent and respent and respent and respenty. It created the worlds largest and most successful middle class. That was called the united States. A single blue collar job could pay for a family with several kids, a home, a car or two, and that worker had a good chance of having full benefits and a retirement pension. Ain't that way no mo. It was a success. 50 soverign states that traded with each other, a slew of differing languages spoken but one language as the default business/governmental language. It was large enough to do this. Neighbor helped make neighbor prosperous. We still had foreign trade but the sheer greed and stupidity hadn't taken over as bad as it is now. It was a system that "just worked" pretty much.
But no, couldn't keep doing that, had to have that one percent of the population that was already "rich" want to be "richer".
Here's just a basic law of economics, when you move a job away from your border, and the person who loses his job loses his spendable income, that money is lost to the tune of 7 to 1 roughly. If the replacement job-if it even exists-pays less, with less bennies, then it pays less with less bennies, that person and the economy is worse off, not better..
The US corporate "model" now is just destroying the already existing middle class to create a slightly larger and extremely wealthier upper class, and a much larger bottom tier class, like the model in most second and third world countries. As long as someone still has their own personal good paying job they won't hardly care, as they are enjoying the extremely temporary cheaper prices on their goods and services. The "other guy's" predicament is just a news blurb. As soon as they become a statistic instead of a spectator to the phenomena, they "won't get it". And I am not talking about "buggywhips" being phased out, I am talking about "jobs" that are still "being done and needed and useful".
This current globalization is a complete and total scam. IF it worked as advertuised and promulgated by the governmental and 'stock market expert" shills, we wouldn't have a 500 billion a year balance of trade deficit.
The US in two and half decades has gone from the world's largest creditor nation economically to the world's largest debtor nation, the exact same time span that massive globalization has been pushed at all high governmental/corporate levels. We wouldn't have personal bankruptcies at an almost 30 year high, we wouldn't have the percentages of unemployment we have, we wouldn't have home mortgage defaults at a 30 year high.
Now anyone might call this a mere "coincidence", or series of coincidences, but I call it a long range loose plan by certain international loyal to no one uber connected rich ones/cartels/groups with both a political and economic agenda that is going to be proven to be *not nice* in the near and medium future, let alone from a long range historical view..
This is IMO and I also see nothing to dissuade me from this opinion. I look at actual tangible and verifiable results, not rhetoric and large scale hucksterism.
Globalization for the united States middle classes, the true productive people in our society and the true "wealth creators", as opposed to the "wealth re-arrangers", is pure economic vaporware, it is only a "success" for the ones controlling the agenda.
Yes folks, I have realized, as an american citizen I stand NO chance of getting a tech job right now. So I put my plan into action.
/end satire
I'll renounce my american citizenship, fly to india, marry a native woman (to gain indian citizenship) and change my last name to Ha-beeb. Then, and only then will I apply for an american job under H1B visa laws. AND I'LL GET THE JOB WOOHOO!!! Oh and let's not forget, I'll need to bring 8k with me for that phony CS degree.
Boy will my bosses be surprised when they see toqer Ha-Beeb is really a white dude that speaks perfect english! They might even sponsor me to become an american citizen again!
Look around major tech companies and you will see people from all over the world holding various positions. Some are smart. Some aren't. By the same token, presuming that all American programmers are intelligent is equally inane. The fact that this gibberish was moderated up just shows you how ignorant and reflexive the users here are .