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Debugging Indian Computer Programmers
Life as an immigrant programmer is full of culture shocks both minor and major (would you know the first time around how to dress when flying from Bombay to Pittsburgh via Los Angeles, in winter?), and much of the book is devoted to outlining some of the shocks that Indian programmers face, even in immigrant-happy America. Buying a car to rely on for daily transport -- on American highways, no less -- is just one of the things many programmers like Sivakumar have to face shortly after arriving; he explains that one of the reasons certain makes of car (chiefly Japanese) are popular among newly arrived H1-B workers is that their expected resale value is high. When your employment is at the mercy of a short-term visa, and the cooperation of a sponsoring company, similar logic informs all kinds of decisions.
The "Did I steal your job?" in the title is the real question raised by this book: Sivakumar rallies evidence that the answer is a resounding No. Despite the vitriol raised by H1-B visa holders (and the H1-B program itself), he argues that the immigrant workers drawing ire from many Americans (who see the immigrants as encroaching unfairly on "their" jobs) not only contribute real money -- billions of dollars -- to the U.S. economy, but are one of the reasons that the U.S. high-tech industry is as successful as it is and has been.
He asks pointedly "[W]hy do some modern Americans (of course, a small percentage) want only those immigrant programmers and IT workers who came during recent times to go back home, yet tend to forget that their parents or grandparents were immigrants too?"Sivakumar's argument has three pillars. First, that high-tech immigrants (including H1-B holders) are one of the key ingredients in the continuing success of many American companies. These aren't foreign workers who simply happen to land jobs in the U.S.; each H1-B visa holder has at least 16 years (often more) of formal education, and an American company sponsoring his or her application. (That education usually comes "free" to U.S. taxpayers, he notes, not at the expense of public school budgets or student loan subsidies.) Sivakumar contrasts both the generous immigrant policies and world-leading software industry of the U.S. with the policies and software industries of Europe, which tend to be more restrictive and less successful, respectively.
The second part of his argument is that H1-B immigrants, though motivated by a desire to improve their own lives, end up contributing disproportionately to the U.S. economy -- something Americans should be happy about, not resentful. Indian programmers in particular end up spending much of their salary on necessary (and less necessary) material goods both for their personal use and as socially obligated gifts to family members, increasing the retail take of U.S. companies from AT&T to the local car dealer.
More significantly, H1-B workers, as legal immigrants to the U.S., have the dubious privilege of paying the same taxes as other Americans (and more than most), with a far smaller chance of reaping their benefits. Most are single, and send no children to the U.S. schools they help underwrite, and most will never collect on the Social Security system or medical-care systems their payroll taxes help prop up.
Third, Sivakumar points out that Indian immigrants are often among the inventive and entrepreneurial class which provides jobs in the first place, citing -- besides a litany of Indian company founders and inventors -- a Berkeley study showing that in the boom years of the 1990s, "ethnic Chinese and Indian immigrants started nearly 25% of the high-tech start-ups in [Silicon] Valley." That's nearly 3000 companies, employing on the order of 100,000 people. The market capitalization of Indian-founded or -run U.S.-based companies is nearly half a trillion dollars. Job creation is an economic complex that requires funding and expertise, and Indian and other immigrants contribute to -- not subtract from -- the creation of jobs for other Americans.
Sivakumar is polite, almost apologetic at times -- and more optimistic than some of the things he's experienced as a hired-gun programmer might lead you to expect. Though he maintains that the book is not an autobiography, many of the experiences in it are things he himself encountered; some of them are funny, others either frightening or simply sad. In particular, he makes note of one place that programmers and other tech workers are likely to run into "racially abusive" hostility -- namely, Internet message boards. As he puts it,
"You meet these people every day of your life, and they probably would smile at you at your workplace or even would greet you. They show their real face in those discussion forums. These online discussion forums are great tools for those who want to hide themselves from the public but would like to spew their venom."
Given the hostility faced online and (less often) in real life, sometimes Sivakumar's politeness goes what struck me as too far; I was surprised to read his conciliatory advice to Indians treated suspiciously on the basis of their skin color or accent in the panic-prone modern America to "please accept it," rather than to bristle. That might be pragmatic and sensible advice, but America will be a better place when it's unnecessary.
This book makes no pretense of being an authoritative work on cultural differences, but Sivakumar does delve into a few of the gaps between American and Indian aesthetics, habits, and mores. Sexually explicit entertainment is far more accessible in the U.S. than in much of the world, and in India in particular; he labels the usually short-lived exploration by some new immigrants of the seedier side of American entertainment "The X-Rated Movie Syndrome." On a different note, vegetarian food isn't easy to find in company cafeterias, which means for many Indian programmers one of many small barriers to acceptance by their coworkers, because they can't simply order off the menu at a company cafeteria.Even trivial aspects of daily life are sometimes imbued with cultural meaning: after being advised by a friend to "walk smart" (that is, confidently, not quietly or humbly) along company corridors, he writes "It sounded true to me, and I was prepared for my next American adventure. 'Alright, I am going to walk straight and smart as of tomorrow!' I tried recently only to have my colleagues comment that I walk like President Bush."
Despite a casual style and sometimes distracting use of jargon ("Dude" is funnier in the title than when it appears several times in the text), the content of Debugging is serious. Sivakumar and other immigrant programmers are not abstractions or hypotheticals: they're designing processors, programming systems of all scales, and bringing the results of high-end education worldwide to places like Palo Alto, New York and Austin. They're also facing an anti-immigrant backlash that ranges from merely spiteful (the usual) to actually violent (thankfully uncommon). Sivakumar's experience in the U.S. isn't wholly negative -- he's quick to point out otherwise -- but includes cavalier treatment from co-workers and landlords, and even harassment from a flag-waving driver gesturing obscenely (and blocking his car) on the streets of New Jersey. That's the sort of experience most light-skinned, native-born Americans are lucky not to face on a daily basis.
Losing friends and neighbors to the terror attacks of 2001 isn't something that happened only to American citizens, and Sivakumar was touched by both; five residents of his New Jersey apartment complex were killed by those attacks, along with the wife of a friend. In this and other aspects of life in America, he justifiably considers himself a part of the U.S. high-tech economy, not a mere visitor, and uses the second person when talking about the American software industry specifically. If you're an American by birth, realize that Sivakumar is an American by choice (even if he has ties and loyalties to both India and Sri Lanka besides), whatever his visa status says.
This is also a funny book, in parts -- in particular, Sivakumar's experiences ordering lunch in an American company cafeteria made me laugh. (Pronouncing "milk" with an emphasis on the "l" rather than the "i" is a matter of spoken convention, after all, not a rule of nature -- but a short "i" will get you a carton of milk faster in an American company cafeteria). The author's graceful levity is welcome, and it helps to defuse the natural anger I felt at some of the odious treatment he describes.
The writing is understandable throughout, but Sivakumar is clearly a programmer writing, rather than a writer who happens to also be a programmer; much of the text is awkwardly phrased, and dotted with avoidable errors in spelling or diction. (One that stuck out: in more than one place, the name of fellow H1-B immigrant Linus Torvalds is rendered "Linus Travolds.") The chronology of Sivakumar's own story is not always clear, either; he mentions offhandedly at one point early on that "[b]y the way, my wife had come from India and joined me by then"; a clearer timeline would help in unifying the anecdotes which make up much of the book.
Sivakumar is also guilty in places of wielding the same kind of broad brush he sees being used to paint Indian programmers; he provides cultural sketches of several other groups that may be meant merely as casual observations rather than any sort of final word, but end up doing the same disservice as any other stereotype. (Of his first trip through customs, he says "That was the first time I ever talked to an African American. I never understood their accent even in the movies." This kind of glib generalization doesn't advance the cause of the book; often "they" are hard to characterize so blithely, no matter which "they" is at issue.)
However, take these complaints with a grain of salt: it would be easy to concentrate on the less-than-smooth delivery -- it just wouldn't be smart. If you let the presentation distract you too much from the content, you'll miss what the book's about, which is that "there is another side to the H1-B factor." While the book has some distracting flaws, they don't subtract from its logical conclusion: immigrant programmers in the U.S. are simply human beings trying to better themselves in what's supposed to be a free society, and adding immensely to U.S. prosperity -- and they're doing so despite hostility on several fronts. If you want to understand the not-so-simple phenomenon of Indian programmers in America, don't overlook that message.
You can purchase Debugging Indian Computer Programmers: Dude, Did I Steal Your Job? directly from Divine Tree. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
> He asks pointedly "[W]hy do some modern Americans (of course, a small
> percentage) want only those immigrant programmers and IT workers who came
> during recent times to go back home, yet tend to forget that their parents or
> grandparents were immigrants too?"
Because nobody resents new immigrants like old immigrants.
Oh, there are exceptions of course but unfortunately they seem to prove the rule.
(my first first post posted)
I'm a programmer and I've often downloaded scripts and classes for PHP online. I've tried using code from a wide variety of spoken languages (all for PHP or C++), because sometimes these packages have the features I want. Every time I use these scripts it's a pain to try and understand what the parent coder had in mind, or what they meant by certain var names, and comments. Don't even bother trying to translate them using Babelfish or something, because it's like playing a guessing game. This usually happens after the code has already been integrated and needs an update.
So I've stayed away from that, and find that Google is helpful to an extent for looking for scripts in English (but not 100%).
The bottom line is that Indian programmers were thought of as an all-powerful way for corporations to combat wage hikes in North America. The fact that these same companies are feeling the backlash now due to the lack of scaling they are finding, triggers a bittersweet emotion...
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
...aren't most people compaining more about tech jobs being outsourced for $10/hr to programmers living in countries like India, rather than the Indian workers coming to the U.S. and earning a more typical salary?
There's a hell of a lot to know about India.
One detail that many Americans don't really understand, is that there are essentially three careers that are considered to be more desirable than all others: Doctor, Engineer, and Computer Programmer. In some circles, you are not successful if you are not, or don't have a son, in one of these professions. This concept is as foreign to Americans as the idea of arranged marriage (which is still very much alive among Indians, even those living and working in the US!).
There is a good reason India happens to be the place where the computer programming jobs go! In the US, it's looked at as something significantly less important than being one of the three top careers.
I don't think I need to after reading that review/essay
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
500 million+ or so North Indians are the "Indo"
in the phrase "Indo-European people and languages".
Even the nazis spoke Hindi on purpose for that
very reason. 'swastika', 'shubhtika', 'laltika'
'arya', 'varna' etc are all Hindo words and
Hinduism by definition is the Aryan religion (the
term is defined in the holy hindu book 'Rig Veda').
English itself is descended from the same language
tree as PIA (Proto Indo Aryan) i.e, Sanskrit/Hindi.
Not only is there no culture shock but the entire
"western" culture IS BASED ON indian culture
(latin and greek are both descended from Proto
Sanskrit). 'soma' and 'kama' (liquor and porn)
are Aryan religious concepts.
All Hindu temples (about a billion of them),
weddings, ceremonies, festivals and decorations
use the holy swastika. Buddhists and Jains do
so too (since both Gautum Buddha and the founder
of Jainism were Hindu).
I'm getting a little tired of the "stole my job" complaints. All jobs are determined by the same market forces as everything else. If your job isn't in demand, you can do one of two things:
1.) Work for less (not a promising prospect).
2.) Change your job.
Sure it sucks to do the second, especially if you put a lot of time and energy into it, but if you're smart you can mold your experience to a new occupation.
Take my current job: network administration. Fairly simple task. The more I've read and the more people I've talked to, these kind of jobs are next to be outsourced. IT is going to become a "utility".
So what do I do? I'm currently studying for an MBA. I'm talking to people: "What does it take to become an IT manager? How about a director?" All the "maintenance" jobs in the world can move overseas, but you still need people back at home making the decisions. I'll become one of those.
Get a life and stop blaming all your problems on H1B's and Indians! Losers.
Dude, Did I Steal Your Job?
Yes you did, you insensitive clod!
I thought I was pissed off because of the jobs that were -leaving- the US and being shipped off-shore.
Doh!
Given the usual level of Slashdot reviews, this one is actually surprisingly good. It's the first one in awhile that I've actually been able to read all the way trhough!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
That's what happens when you choose such a useless major like CS, then expect to get paid $100K a year.
I, for one, welcome our new alien overlords.
The argument of the book seems to be that H1-B's are good for the economy because they pay taxes and buy stuff.
What that argument misses entirely is that if we had an unemployed US citizen in that same job, they would ALSO pay the SAME taxes and buy stuff, and NOT send money to a foreign country. "Because the immigrant came to the US, they had to buy a car!" So? Because the immigrant stole an American's job, that American couldn't buy a car! There is no net gain (and perhaps a net loss) to US Citizens from employing an immigrant.
The better argument for allowing immigrants to work here, and one that also appears to be in this book, is that the economy works better if we have the people who are best at doing a job do those jobs. If we can take the best and the brightest from other countries and have them work in our companies and produce better product for us, we should steal every single one of them we can get. If this means that Americans who are less qualified for those jobs have to do something else (like sell cars to our better-qualified immigrants), that's fine. Trying to protect the jobs of people who are not as good at them from people who are better at them, but happen to have been born somewhere else, just means we're paying someone more to do less. That's a sure way to criple an economy.
paintball
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Did they help pay for the existing infrastructure that they get to take advantage of?
If you grew up in the US, then that means that for the first 18-22 years of your life (at least) you weren't helping to pay for the infrastructure you took advantage of, either -- and, since you probably went to public school, you were taking much more advantage of it than they are.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Back in the dot com days, I worked for an internet porn company that got the bright idea of outsourcing a bunch of work to Russia. Turned out that it didn't work to well but they still wrote a bunch of code for us. Now, for all you people who talk about Perl being difficult to read, try this: I had to debug Perl code written in Russian.
One detail that many Americans don't really understand, is that there are essentially three careers that are considered to be more desirable than all others: Doctor, Engineer, and Computer Programmer. In some circles, you are not successful if you are not, or don't have a son, in one of these professions.
Funny. Here in the West, if you are a computer programmer you'll never even get a girlfriend, let alone have a son someday. I didn't know the opposite was true once you passed the Prime Meridian. I guess it's like that summer-in-the-Northern-Hemisphere-winter-in-the-So uthern thing
First, Social Security is pretty much the biggest service that you get from federal tax dollars, and education is the biggest you get from local tax dollars. If they don't take advantage of these, then they are paying a disproportionate share of taxes. Second, and more importantly, pretty much everyone is paying a (favorably) disproportionate share of taxes. The "My tax money payed for all these services" argument is a bit stupid when you consider that the top 5% of Americans pay over 50% of all the taxes. Unless you make more than $200,000 a year, you're disproportionately benefiting from services paid for by other peoples' tax money.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
There are many, many available US programmers, if you don't know an unemployed programmer, you probably don't live in the US. The H1-B program is merely a tool used by greedy corporations to hire workers for well less than the prevailing wage. It is an outrage that this program even exist considering the rampant un-employment in our domestic IT industry. It seems that this current administration will stop at nothing to give every last US job to a foriegn national. When we have no indusry left at all, and the dollar collapses, and our econmomy is in shambles, we will have nothing to blame but idiotic greed driven policies like the H1-B program. M Mark
My experience is that the Hostility to the H1B program is not directed towards the visa holders but towards the corporations using the program. The H1B program is used by corporations the way they use scabs and outsourcing, to drive down wages and job security by using a desparate population. The worst aspect of the H1B program is that it is not an imigration program but nearly a form of indentured servitude. The visa holder is often at the mercy of the sponsor, not free to switch jobs easily, and facing deportation once his visa expires. This may be used by corporations to hold down wages and dissent.
I'm very happy to see immigration of skilled workers as citizens, but I'm not happy to see the exploitation of guest workers as H1Bs.
What about the curry?
As a light-skinned native-born American [and New Jersey native] let me just say that such driving and gesturing spans everyone!
[joking!]
I'm the parent AC, and i'm originally from that part of the world (Afghanistan), and I don't mean to imply that foreigners are dirty. The hindu culture promotes efficiency and conservation of precious things like water. Very noble in my opinion, however in an office environment, it's okay to wash your hands with soap and water. I witness this act(or lack of)all too often by same few suspects. Dude walks out of stall, and b-lines for the exit. Leaving the people at the sink in shock and awe. I had to investigate why. I was told by a punjabi friend of mine that it stems from this cultural belief, mixed in with a bit of laziness. Just my two cents.
Why should debugging Indian programmers be any different than the standard methods for any programmer?
My best advice to skilled inmigrants is not to worry much about how they are treated, and not try to put much effort in being culturally integrated into american society. Trying to change human behavior be it yours or others' is a waste of time. Despite all efforts there's always a bit of racism even in good meaning people, so you might as well ignore the whole thing and go about your business. Eventually you find people you like and you just hang around with them.
Unless your 200 years old, there's lots of it you didn't pay for either.
If you travel to a different city or state, and use facilities paid for by that city/state, do you feel guilty? They're happy to have you, spending money at local businesses.
Don't waste time... procrastinate now!
Immigration is the only chance for the USA to keep its leading position in the world in all domains including IT.
Dont complain... while immigrants take the jobs of some people now, this wont last for long, judging from the direction of the mental condition of americans.
(see the last couple of elections)
Fuck that.
Did you pay for the existing infrastructure you were born into? Bite me.
I am in the same situation as the author. And sometimes a few things get on my nerves like nothing else. America is not the friendliest of nations as far as social life goes, its not like India where you know all your neighbors, and your social life (and social life does not mean hanging out in bars) makes you never feel lonely. Every programmer that comes to the USA goes through days when he/she feels that it is a curse to be so good. If it wasnt so, if I wasnt good at this, I could have so easily stayed back home and worked in anything. Its a misconception to think India does not have non-outsourced jobs. I came here because I was interested in technology, and I wanted to learn. I wouldnt mind living on $ 10/hr as long as I could afford to. We come here and try to understand the customs and accents and various other things about Americans (I know, I came to your country, not the other way, so I have to do the extra work). I had a bus-driver asking me what kind of education I had and from which filthy country I came from, when I asked him about a bus stop, and found out that I was on the wrong bus, and he had to take the bus to the side and let me get out (this was 3 weeks into my US adventure). Now, he may have been tired (although it was early morning) or maybe he didnt get laid the earlier night.. but its still not cool. I must add that these things are isolated incidents, and dont generally represent America. The idea is to forget trying to blame someone else for taking anything away from you.. that person has had so much taken away from him as well.
The H1-B is a NON-IMMIGRANT VISA.
The law says that they're supposed to go home if they lose their job or at the end of their servitude.
H1-B is a "guest worker" programer. If you come over as and H1-B, you should go home later.
If you want to stay, apply for an immigrant visa.
No, he's right, because at that point, he's talking to the Indians. They can either accept it, resent it, or leave, because unfortunately, that's the way it is.
But the reviewer is also right. America will be a better place when racism is gone. Talking to the Americans, I say, "Racism is morally wrong. It is harmful both to recipient and to the racist. Knock that *%^&* off!"
Indian : Dude, did I steal your job? American : Yeah, but it sucked anyways.
Everytime the subject of jobs comes up, and people whine and complain about not being able to find a job, they leave out the fact that they can't find a job where they currently live. Then they get all defensive about wanting to keep living where they currently are, and go on moaning about the supposed "bad job market" in the US.
While it may be true that there aren't jobs in their area, there ARE jobs other places in the US, if they're really serious about jobs. And I'm not saying to move out to the middle of no-where to some one-horse town with no other tech in sight.... I'm saying look around there are a lot more jobs out there than people think.
My company has fired 66% (~60000 let go) of the staff, yet we have brought in Indian contractors to do the same work. They stay for a few months to learn the work and then go back to India where the corporate masters can get away with paying them much lower wages.
I don't resent them. I resent the assholes I work for. I expect eventually I too will be replaced. So it is hard to be cheerful while training my future replacements.
Ironically many of those permanent employees my company has laid off where Indian as well. So they had their jobs taken by their own countrymen.
I have no problem with immigrants coming to work at my company full time and being paid a competitive wage. But I do have issues with the outsourcing.
... don't need to. The fact of the matter is that with the job boom in India, they get on-the-job training on positions that have been outsourced. Once they reach a level of expertise, they come here to take the jobs that have yet to be outsourced.
These jobs could have been filled by US citizens, but the fact of the matter is that employers don't want to spend the money to train them. What you end up with is a large group of unemployed CS grads with a lot of theoretical knowledge but no practical experience, and that will put you on the fast track for a manager's position at McDonalds.
I used to be a headhunter until recently (long story... graduated during the tech bust), and I can tell you with absolute certainty that the inclusion of H1s in this marketplace has lowered the standards of production and has lowered the wages and rates that American citizens can expect. Many managers have complained to me about the poorly documented crap that they have gotten from H1 shops, only to balk when they hear what the going rates are for American labor.
...or am I missing something?
Just read Yahoo newsgroups once in a while. Its mostly teenage punks who think crass racial jokes are funny to mix with current events.
And neo-nazis became popular when working class people started losing their job. Blame another race.
Nice thing about Slashdot is there is sane moderation. In yahoo, the majority of posters are crass and moderate up drivel, especially politically motivated posters. Sane moderation leads positive conversations. Insane moderation means you need to trod through each of the 10,000 messages individually to see if anyone has something good to say. Of course, when most people are saying,"Bush is retarded" or just posting obscenities, it gets old.
Slashdot isn't the best forum system that could be created, but its what we got now, and I'm thankful for it.
God spoke to me.
> Because nobody resents new immigrants like old immigrants.
Repeat after me; H1-B != immigration
- sigs are for wimps.
just my two cents, but what the heck is wrong with people?
Humans are Humans! We are almost all exactly the same! in fact, the "races" of human don't even fit the biological definition of race! It's a social contstruct.
Culture, well, that's different. Cultures are macro and micro - and at times it seems that there are larger cultural gulfs between city blocks then country borders.
Guess my "race", please.
After all, you slashdotters all look the same to me.
Mostly like ASCII.
Immigrants != foreign workers
I have worked with HB1s that desire to be Americans and I have worked with immigrants that don't. Both may send money out of the country, but from a financial standpoint, the ones America should keep are the ones that want to stay and contribute to our society. The rest are just foreign workers.
Immigration of people who can support themselves is an inherently good thing for all western countries considering the demographic bomb we are sitting on. Most western countries including the US, even though Europes situation is considerably worse have birthrates that will barely sustain the current population without immigration, this leads to an "inverted" demographical pyramid were very few young people will have to support very many old people out of the workforce. That is, if we dont get immigrants that can help even out the numbers! Consider the following, what happens when: * large portions of the population starts to take money out of the markets through their retirement funds to actually live on the money? Markets will plumet and capital for both mature companies and startups will be harder to raise. * What happens when there are more retired people who pay no or very little in tax, instead of many young people who pay taxes? How do you support basic infrastructure in that case? I could go on.. The point being: western countries should embrace and welcome every immigrant that wants to come to their country to work and make a life, its probably the only thing that will save our economies 30 years from now..
If you have an H1-B visa you don't have to go home to get a green card. You can apply for permanent residency while in the US. To make sure you are successful just hire a good immigration lawyer and spend a lot of money on legal fees ($7000-to $10000 maybe even more)
For people living in the Bay Area I recommend Berry, Appleman and Leiden from San Francisco (www.usabal.com). Expensive, but the best. Their fees for one person start at $9000. A consultation costs $250.
An immagrant goes to a new country and makes it their home. They plan to stay there the rest of their lives and hope to improve themselves. They may also plan to send money back to their old home to help their family. Somebody working here on H1-B is a guest, here for a short term. They're not expecting to make a new life here, but to grab the money while the getting is good, then go back home and have a better life there. A worthy ambition, but not one to make them well liked by their hosts. I think this is why people resent H1-B workers. They're working for less than a local would and the idea that they're not even planning to stick around just makes it easier to resent them.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
As a former H1-B worker who returned home 2 years ago, I think the resentment has a lot to do with skin colour and being Indian.
How can I tell? Well, I never once faced any resentment at all, despite all the vitriol pointed at Indian immigrants.
But then again, I don't have dark skin and most people think I'm American until I speak. You see it all the time in Slashdot - it seems like it's OK to be racist towards Indians for "taking our jobs".
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We need doctors, lawyers, policemen, teachers, firemen, etc. Why not "special" immigration programs for them?
H1-B is not a "temporary" visa. It's good for 6 years. H1-B is a "guest worker" visa where the visa is held by the employer. The employer calls the shots.
It's not "American xenophbia". There you go! Labeling advocates of fair immigration policy with a slur! You'll probably get modded up as "+5 insightful". The first person yelling "Xenophobia" usually gets some pretty good bonus points around here.
It is, in fact, "American common sense" to get a hold of the situation and regulate in-migration on a fair basis and at moderate levels. Open borders, "guest worker" programs, illegal immigration, too high quotas, "picking winners" economic management and so on is a cause for anger among many Americans. That does not mean they are "Xenophobic" or "Racist" or "America-Firsters" or whatever you want to call them. It's just moderate folks wanting to fix a bad policy.
Ask Slashdot:
/. reader. You name it, I'll do it, just as long as it can be done with a keyboard. The reason I ask this here is I very much qualify for H1-B visa, except I don't want to leave my country, which for me is very unneccesary in the age of Internet.
It has occured to me in a rather painful manner that I run out of money just before Christmas, so I won't be able to buy any presents, have you guys have any ideas on how to make some extra bucks in a couple of days (aside from sexual services, theft etc.)?
My skills are you know typical of
immigrant programmers in the U.S. are simply human beings trying to better themselves in what's supposed to be a free society
And that's their first mistake. The United States is not currently a free society and hasn't been since the Civil War. H-1b visas (which are for employees and wage slaves, that's why they are called NON-immigrant visas) are a symptom of this: Much as he'd like to be, the author and Linus are NOT immigrants- they are guest workers, here to be used and abused by the corporations and thrown away when their 6 years are up.
In other words, the "people trying to better themselves" aren't the problem- the sytem that treats guest workers and other employees more like slaves than free people is the problem. That's why I dislike H-1b VISAS- H-1b visa holders are usually much more likeable.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
What infrastructure are they using that they're not paying for? If they drive on the roads, they pay gas tax. If they work they pay federal tax which also pays for roads. If they go to a hospital, they have to pay in cash, or their insurance (which they or their employer has to pay) pays for it. They won't use welfare, etc., but they will pay for it.
Yet they bring an education into the country. They have to pay high taxes. They contribute much more than they take. Compare this to the perennial welfare family.
I'm a bit sore about this - I'm a Canadian who lives in Canada and works in the U.S. I get challenged with this same logic all the time in the U.S., and it's crap. I use next to NO infrastructure here (don't live in the U.S.) but I pay full state and federal taxes and get absolutely no deductions, so I pay way more than the usual amount.
The real scam I pull is that I don't pay much Canadian tax at all, but I DO use the infrastructure there, including the big one: health care (even though I have U.S. health insurance through my employer - pays to have some when I'm on this side of the border). All Canada gets is the money I convert injected into the economy. But alas, both countries signed the tax treaty that way...
They are indeed paying more than their share.
So are the incredibly wealthy. Think about it. They are taxed *far* more than they take advantage of.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Sure, the successfull people get MBA's, like, in the 80's it was the rage to get a law degree..but, for those of us who are total nerd basket cases, all that business/management/law degree stuff is simply too boring, even though it can pay substantially more, I would be bored silly...like when I had to take an accounting course, I would rather read a technical publication on programming or electronics or science. However, a microcomputer resseller company I worked for in the past, the owner had a genetics degree plus an MBA too, he was rich, I just worked as a tech, but I feel, I had more fun, but I did make next to nothing, that's the trade-offs you are stuck with in life!
Unfortunately lot of people forget the amount of contribution made by immigrants to american society in terms of scientific advancement. Were Albert Einstein, Ernico fermi, Neils bohr, Von neuman, Wernher von Braun....americans?
Yes, you stole my job. You also stole my book contract.
"He asks pointedly "[W]hy do some modern Americans (of course, a small percentage) want only those immigrant programmers and IT workers who came during recent times to go back home, yet tend to forget that their parents or grandparents were immigrants too?"
Because they are working for less than minimum wage -- through a system that allows them to do so.
A SoCal employer of Quall-ity Comm-unication software is employing Indian programmers right now to upgrade the browser on their partners p-o--. They are being paid $150 a month.
The review reads: "More significantly, H1-B workers, as legal immigrants to the U.S., have the dubious privilege of paying the same taxes as other Americans (and more than most), with a far smaller chance of reaping their benefits." Not sure whether this is a verbatum quote from the book, or just the review's take, but its completely inaccurate. Yes, H1 holders pay income taxes. But no, they don't pay social security or medicare taxes, the rationale being precisely that they are not meant to benefit to reap the awards of these programs (that neither is anyone else under 40 due to the impending collapse of the entire social security system is besides the point for the IRS). This is quite a factual distortion. Also a nice chunck of change! Makes a big difference. Also, from personal experience, most U.S companies with the funds and resources to sponsor H1 visa holders are large enough to have fairly transparent compensation structures. So... I am an actuary, one of the few fields to seriously compete with IT in terms of hiring H1 immigrants. And my cube mate, hired at same time as I was, is earning the same base pay, but ends up with a significantly higher paycheck, due to the decresed tax burden. Fair? Furthermore... I don't know about Indian programmers, but i DO know about chinese actuaries: they have 0 intention or necessity to ever return to China. After 10 yrs or so of H1, they get sponsored by firms for green cards, and get them. And proceed to collect the social secuirty and medicare benefits they did not pay for, but I did. Yes, we desperately need immigrants to fill technical positions that we have the capital, but not the human resources to handle. Somehow along the way, careers in sciences and math lost all appeal to U.S college students. The primary education institutions routinely fail to prepare students for these fields, anyway. So college fills the gaps of High School, and graduate programs are populated by student visa holders from abroad who go on to H1 visas. I like immigrants. I don't like H1. We need these people, there is nothing wrong with having a policy preference for letting in people with certain degrees and ambitions. But let's be honest: give them green cards, let them pay taxes just like everyone else.
Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so.
... I have to say that I largely agree with the culture shock that comes with moving to another country. Even for me, it was more different than I thought it would be. For one thing, I could never figure out how people knew I was Canadian simply when I talked (which I did eventually find out and for which I actually talk more in an American accent now). Things like auto and life insurance can be complicated because of the lack of insurance experience and medical history, respectively. It sucks to have to pay higher rates if you're from overseas because you have no insurance driving record.
Having worked mostly in Silicon Valley, I would say that the cultural environment is more conducive to immigrants there than other places. One Chinese fellow I knew, for example, never truly felt welcome when he worked in Texas but did say that the people there were generally nice. If you're from India or China, there are tons of resources and tons of community and social opportunities for you. YMMV in other places but big cities around big tech centers aren't typically a problem.
Probably the biggest problem that I had when I was in the United States is getting your green card. For those not in the know, the green card process requires that you remain with the same employer in the same type of position and move no further than 50 miles away from where your H-1B was approved. Then you wait and wait. You wait for state and federal labor certification, and then you actually apply for your green card after your priority date comes up (a date which is used to gate applications from countries with high immigrant volumes but from which Canadians are exempted). If you're laid off, fired, moved to another job function, or move, you have to start the process all over again. It takes 2-4 years, and in some cases people have their paperwork lost by the INS/BCIS and you are screwed at the end of your term and have to leave. Immediately. No wait periods.
To me, that's the biggest problem with the system. If you want people, have them stay. Facing a constant end game hurts folks economically, socially, mentally and otherwise. Stories of people leaving their leased cars at SFO and SJC and going back because they had no choice were very sad. Even worse, what does one do with the money they earned? In my case, because of the huge run-up in the Canadian dollar, all my money is "trapped" down there. Do I wait for the US dollar to rise back up to regular levels, or do I bring it back and hope it doesn't come back? That money could've also been spent in the United States, but gets spent outside. Not that beneficial for the US economy if you ask me.
Most of these issues would be addressed if people were simply granted conditional green cards at the time of their entry. A certified criminal background check and health check prior to border entry would allow them to stay without having to worry about the employer doing whatever they want to the employee and throwing them out at the end. That's not technically done today, and it would be smart for security and other reasons. The other aspect is to have the system funded by the immigrants themselves, i.e. you come in and you pay for the BCIS to process your application for $5k or $10k, rather than rely on tax money to fund a severely underfunded immigration processing system. If you're that important to be given a special visa to come in, then come in. Stay. Don't throw the person out later on. If these suggestions are ever implemented, you will see a big difference in the way that immigrant employees are treated and in the way they approach their work. Remove the threat and stress of leaving, and you'll have productive members of society, IT/Engineering workers or otherwise.
I have taken over several projects from Indian companies and have done my part to point out to the employers what crap it was. Yes, they got the job done - but I have never seen so many short cuts used. All the comments were not in english, nor were the variables/functions. Even the English content was horribly written. I would expect a generic high school student to write better content. I, as a programmer, do not fear the Indians, either in their own country or my own. I refuse to utilize companies that I know use Indian labor (ie, HP or Dell), and if I am ever transferred to an Indian on the phone, I refuse to speak with them. I demand to be transferred to someone who speaks English natively in an accent I can readily understand. I encourage my friends & family to do the same - nothing against the Indian workers at all. It's not racism - its a small attempt to punish the company for using outside labor. There is no reason. I yearn for the day that we get a President & Congress that attempts to halt such things, or at least tax the corporations to the point where it would be more in their favor to hire true Americans.
From my own experience, what I have seen is not what this article promises. I'm sure some are well educated and can do their jobs just fine. I've seen this, but the majority of what I've seen leaves much to be desired. That said, I've been to India (Mumbai), for my employer, to train and work with one of the companies we use for outsourcing. We also have a bunch of employees here in the office, on visas. For the most part, I would say the people we end up with in the office can do their job reasonably well. However, these are not the people who end up doing the bulk of the work. These are the star pupils of whatever company we are currently dealing with. Those sent to make the company look good. When it comes down to doing the work, it is done by the cheapest person they can get their hands on in India. The description above makes it sound as though the companies are all out there to better the US market, what better intrest could they have? Well, money in the pockets of the owners is really what it comes down to. I've yet to see an exception to that rule, whether companies here or there. While in India, several of the people who I trained had quit before I even left. Originally we were not even told about this. It wasn't until I started noticing faces missing that we got an answer. Within a week of returning to the states, most of the rest of the group had left. The turnover is crazy, it's a market of paying the lowest you can hoping the person won't get a better offer and leave. What this all results is in really crappy coding. There wasn't much point in my trip to India since just about everybody left. Our software is incredibly complicated, so the new people coming on don't really have the expertise needed to do the job right. Lesson learned there at least (on my part and hopefully my employers). While they may have a lot of years of education, from my personal experience, they don't know how to apply it. Now that is going to be true regardless of whether the person is fresh out of school here or there. But instead of investing the time to train up our local workforce, we spend the time to train up a workforce that is only here to temporarily help us. Where is the long term benefit in that? I'm not secretly venemous like the article implies is a situation that abounds. However, I'm not greatly pleased to see half my company is now staffed with foreign workers who may be gone tomorrow. Even if they are doing an excellent job, that knowledge leaves our hands in an instant. The jobs we mostly hire for in the office (from overseas anyway) are designers. They don't do the coding. That gets shipped back to the inexperienced office in Mumbai. My job has been basically reduced to Newbie Coder Hand Holder. And when I'm finally getting some people to the point where they understand what I expect from their coding they might suddenly disappear, to be replaced by another fresh out of school no experienc employee. This must be great for India, I'm training their workforce. I don't hold it against the Indians I've met. They are trying to earn a living like everybody else. It's my employer that wants to take advantage of the cheap labor and is convinced it can be done just as well as we could do in house (that is one thing I don't believe will ever be true). Also I blame the companies in India who are out to make a quick buck and don't care so much about the result. I definitely feel that many of the programmers I've seen are somewhat exploited in their low pay and it shows by the lack of company loyalty (the turnover). It is unfortunate that those Indians employed in the US have to face what they do at times. When it happens, I don't think it is right, but they must also understand the environment they are coming into. They ARE the most visible result of some disturbing changes. This whole shift to outsourcing has caused me nothing but more work. Perhaps if it worked as advertised (less work in house, better results, cost savings) people might not be so resentful of it.
Constantly blaming everything on "racism" is morally wrong.
American labor has a right to defend itself and your liberal lecturing on "race" is condescending.
American progammers are the target of the H1-B legislation which is paid for and sponsored by the wealthiest Americans. This is an unfair trade practice. Employers saying the "Indians are the best program" is the real racism. Naturally if employers pick one "master race" to be imported as "guest workers", then there's going to be some tension.
Picking on the Americans who lost their jobs to to the guest workers and counciling the unemployed to accept the situation with a big hug for the scabs who replaced them is just fucking naive.
(shakes head).
Once they become leads or managers they favor other Indian programmers. If you're under lead who also has a couple Indian reports, in 80% of the cases it's time for you to move on, because your career growth is over.
It's cultural, and it's unfortunate.
Articles like Has Software Development Become a Commodity? is stripping the skill and art of programming out of the bussines.
,oblivious, in there little rose colored world.
Many companies don't understand that a short program is better then a long one and requires more skill to do so.
Many companies don't understand that a good design and experianced programmers can make smaller/better/faster/easier/bugfree programs in less time.
Many companies just don't appreciate or aren't willing to pay for 10, 20 or more years of software development experience. They don't understand that an expert is much faster and cheaper in the long run then hiring the novice, they just see the price tag.
There is a reason people buy high end products and are willing to pay more, and the same holds true for hiring developers. Higher quality, better results and often lower cost in the long run.
These companies study management theory, and make there Gant charts and UML layouts, and pigeon hole it's employies and expect then to churn out code like cows give milk. Developers are then become interchangable and expendable and it's just a matter of thowing "bodies" at the project at the lowest cost possible. (think COBOL development at a bank)
Nothing cutting edge, innovative or creative has ever come from these endeavors.
And Yet they keep expecting it to. Sure it's gets the job done, but it actualy cost them more in the long run, and they don't even know it. They just keep going along
This is why most software sucks, bloatware, 1000's of bugs is considered acceptable and viruses and malware run free across the Internet.
Not hiring cheap developers and not experts has put many companies out of bussiness!
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
No, the wealthy are taxed far less than they take advantage of. Try to imagine how long they'd hold on to their wealth without police protections. Guess at the wealth they save when their home is saved by firefighters vs a family renting an apartment. The wealthy get a far better deal from taxation than the poor.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
You should set a target: the US graduates 200,000 more engineers and scientists in six years than it did this year, or every member of congress is executed. Hanged. Badly. Slowly.
Now don't get me wrong, I had a whale of a time in the US. I was treated very well, well paid (none of this $70K shit), and generally had a productive, exciting time; but most of my productive co-workers were Chinese and Indian guys, smart and genuinely enthused about what we were making and who our product would help. Crappy english, sure, some of them - and some of them, particularly the Indians, better english speakers than native me (or is that I?). All the time I, and all these smart foreigners worked in the US, Slashdot, Congress and other crapass "thinkers" (ahem) slandered us. They said we were dumb, they said we were uneducated, or spoke bad english, they said we'd work for slave labo[u]r rates, they said (frankly) we were inferior. And all the time the US trade gap grew and grew, more and more skilled jobs moved to India and China, more and more the US economy slipped into a whole from which it seems determined never to emerge.
Let's face it. The average H1B worker moved away from his family, from everything he knew to work in the US, to maintain an ecomomy whose own managers seemed determined to outsource it, to be slandered and deprecated by third-rate journalists and racist politicians. Sure, he made more money than he'd make in Bangalore or Shanghai, but the difference is less and less (particularly compared with the cost of living in the Research Triangle or the Silicon Valley) each year. Now that the tech recession has come for everyone he's probably moved back to Shanghai or Bangalore (unwelcome, filthy terrist foreigned slanty-eyed bastard that he is, in the US). Whose economy do you thing he's helping? Into whose business do his smarts flow?
The US economy (and to a marginally lesser extent the EU economy too) holds a gun to its own head. Both have squandered the promise of the new economy. Foreign workers are one less, not one more, bullet in the revolver.
With engineering and science, at it highest levels, moved east - what do the US and Europe actually _make_? Can you really expect to run two of the world's largest economic blocks on missles, movies, and life insurance?
Did you pay for the existing infrastructure you were born into? Bite me.
Here's some stuff to chew over;
*No-one* chose to be born into a particular culture; no-one *chose* to be born full-stop. The responsibility for that lies with the parents, and it is their contribution (and that of the extended family and their associates) to the infrastructure that should be considered.
Of course, when someone moves to another country, they (or those responsible for them, or associated with them) have not made a sustained investment in that country. It is unreasonable to expect that because a person paid taxes in a particular country for 6 months that they should be entitled to all the benefits. Similarly, it is unreasonable to criticise someone for not "paying for" the infrastructure of the society they were born into.
Of course, there comes a point where treating someone as a second-class citizen- even when they have more than paid their dues for many years- could rightly be considered discriminatory; but it's *not* unreasonable to expect a newcomer to invest in the pot for some time before they can take from it.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
> Because nobody resents new immigrants like old immigrants.
Because, if the Nth generation of an immigrant has assimilated, their self-image is native. I'm a choy-suey of northern European ancestors several generations removed. For someone to tell me that I'm the son of immigrants is on the one hand meanless to me, since if things don't work out in the US, there's no "home" to go back to. Same goes for my southern African-descendant neighbors. While it can also give me hope that the sons and daughters of those now crowding in will make a similar transition, past results are not always indicative of future performance.
I'm not worried about being homeless, but house-less. This is my home.
Luke, help me take this mask off
OMG! Jobs is being held by thousands of non-Americans in Silicon Valley...
What will we do? Aaaah
They must be working for those fucking RIAA/MPAA terrorists...
Does it cost more to save their house than somebody elses? If I'm not mistaken, the amount of "burden" the wealthy put on society is much lower than the poor. Yet the amount of money they put in is much much higher.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Now that ~is~ an odd misspelling.
But you know, every day in North America someone either mispronounces or misspells Linus Travolta.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
What they say they need is not what they really want.They want Chinese slave labor prices. There is no pride in hiring American anymore. Where is Lou Dobbs(cnn) and his list of outsourcers ?
How much is all of this about increasing stock value ?
An non-Indian non-H1B non-immigrant tried to steal post 11111111.
I'm not a coward by any name.
However, a microcomputer resseller company I worked for in the past, the owner had a genetics degree plus an MBA too, he was rich, I just worked as a tech, but I feel, I had more fun, but I did make next to nothing, that's the trade-offs you are stuck with in life!
You should be "working to live", *not* "living to work".
Get through the days, enjoy work as much as possible. Then use the $$$ you make to have your true fun after work.
Ian
Some people are like slinkies--basically useless but they bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs.
I never experienced any resentment. I am white, Irish, and as I acquire accents quickly, many people thought I was North American.
Humans are humans people! The place you happened to be born does not give you more of a moral entitlement to wealth or employment than someone who may have been born somewhere else.
But he didn't succeed...
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
He asks pointedly "[W]hy do some modern Americans (of course, a small percentage) want only those immigrant programmers and IT workers who came during recent times to go back home, yet tend to forget that their parents or grandparents were immigrants too?"
:) If you are from another country, please remember, American have made huge sacrices to their own lives to let our country offer them what they can get.
I grew up in Washington State, and am the 5th generation live here in my family. Before that, there were more generations who lived on the East Coast. When people ask me what nationality I am, I don't say "Swedish" or "Dutch" or "French", all which are in my bloodline, I tell them I am American. At some point you'be been where you are long enough to say that's where you came from.
No, I haven't forgotten where my parents and grandparents... and great grandparents, are from. They are from right here in the good old USA. And while there are many whose families have not been here as long as mine, that make up this great nation, it is not because of the morals that people bring with them from other countires that make America great, it is the things they gave up, and agreements they made with eachother here in America, to get along despite their different opinions, that makes this a great nation.
I don't have a problem with people coming here from other countries, or people working temporarily in our country, in fact I am honored to be able to allow people from other counties to come here and work and take something home to their family. I know not everyone in America thinks this way, but that's OK with me, I don't like the way everyone thinks
My own problem with the H1-B program isn't that it allows foreign competition into the U.S. labor market; the problem is that software engineers have been singled out among other professions. Additionally, the program is not reciprocal. Do the countries that H1-B's come from have similarly generous guest worker programs? Not that I know of. Also, by depressing salaries in the American software industry and making jobs more competitive to get, fewer Americans are going into the software field.
Again, the problem isn't that competition from foreign workers is inherently unfair; the problem is that a particular profession has essentially been targeted for an across the board salary cut through legislation.
Hello, I must be going. I'm here to say I cannot stay, I must be going.
jobs which are seemingly difficult to fill from the American labor pool for a variety of reasons, and which are eagerly filled by employers who find that qualified, talented people come from countries all over the world
You know it is bullshit. There are American programmers going without jobs while this crap goes on! American companies do not hire American programmers when they can get get foreign programmers cheaper!
It is not seemingly difficult to fill from the American labor pool. It is, instead, difficult to hire American workers at the slave labor rates that American companies want to pay!
Flame me down if you must, BUT why do American companies still insist on H1B visas when America is going through a recession? Not because they can't hire American programmers, only because they can't hire American programmers at the same price that H1B's will accept!
Recent immigration to the US is statistically correlated with economic deterioration.
Let me correct just a FEW of the errors and exagurations in the review (and probably in the book.)
>> "Why do some modern Americans (of course, a small percentage) want only those immigrant programmers and IT workers who came during recent times to go back home, yet tend to forget that their parents or grandparents were immigrants too?"
Because we're talking NOT talking about immigrants here, we're talking about "guest workers." I'm a second generation American on both my maternal and fraternal side. When MY grandparents came over here, it wasn't to stay a few months or years and work at a fraction of the prevailing wage and then leave. They came to STAY! And my money (or at least actions) is where my mouth is - as far as the Indian programmers I know who are REAL immigrants - they come over with wife and kids and buy a house and are here to stay - well, while there are still some of those "willing to work for less" issues, I welcome them sincerely. Far better than the backward's baseball cap trash that are such a fine example of American youth these days.
>> about half a million at the moment) to hold jobs in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the U.S. -- jobs which are seemingly difficult to fill from the American labor pool for a variety of reasons, and which are eagerly filled by employers who find that qualify
I don't think I have to translate this one out for any Slashdotter - "seemingly difficult to fill " is management speak for "seemingly difficult to fill at the slave wages we'd like to pay."
The wealthiest 5 percent have 59% of the wealth and pay 38.4 percent of federal taxes. (from the internet, look it up).
The same people who lobbied for the H1-B program.
The issues raised are at best, I think, naive. First, the so-called "hostile" american individual thinks of him/herself first and of the state of the american economy and innovation second (if ever) -- which kinda makes sense to me. Second, racism in the U.S. and Europe is not something new, so welcome to the Free World! and Third, why would any country offer "presents" to people from other countries? When you apply for a H1-B visa it's your responsability to understand what it entails and what to expect. Apparently, the system is designed so that H1-B holders develop a strong desire to leave the States after a few years. I have lived in several countries and I am convinced that the percentage of creative, intelligent people is roughly the same everywhere. Whether or not an individual engages in a creative process, or decides to start up a business, or pursues a career in technology or research depends on many factors and the 16+ years of education are a consequence of such a decision rather than some kind of inherited asset. One final note: I'm not American, nor do I live in the U.S., nor I wish to work or live there. :)
Does it cost more to save their house than somebody elses?
For the original Apartment Vs. Mansion comparison- YES. The cost of saving an Apartment House is the same, but the cost of saving a single apartment is devided by the number of apartments in the apartment house.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
No, it doesn't cost more, but the value they receive is much greater, that's the point.
The burden of the wealthy is in proportion to the capital they sequester. The more any one person has in disproportion to the average, the greater their burden to the average.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
The purpose of the H1B program is to lower wages and to put Americans out of work. American capitalists have always shown they hate American workers for whatever reason. The fact is, for those who care to listen, that hundreds of thousands of Americans have been forced out of the computer industry, despite our having created it. I refer you to www.zazona.com.
1. How many of your coworkers knew you were here on H1-B?
2. Are enough of your countrymen coming over to America to significantly affect (or apparently affect) the hiring rate for American programmers?
It isn't a light-versus-dark thing, it's an us-versus-them thing.
Clear, Dark Skies
"H1-B is a "guest worker" programer. If you come over as and H1-B, you should go home later"
Many of them are scientists, cooks, helicopter pilots, medical doctors, psychologists, etc. Any skilled worker can get an H1-B, not only programers
let's all laugh at the americans complaining about capitalism at work.
If that guy can barely feed his family, and is willing to do good work (on par with yours) for 1/3 of the price, why isn't it fair that the money goes to him? Sure, Americans are much richer than Indians on average, but are you trying to argue that they deserve to be so much richer? Shouldn't people who oppose wealth disparities be happy when more jobs flow away from the US to India?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"Again, the problem isn't that competition from foreign workers is inherently unfair; the problem is that a particular profession has essentially been targeted for an across the board salary cut through legislation."
Amen.
-- Jason
Let's keep it going. Feels good now, no harm in the long run.
Is it at all possible that ny state has some special agreement with Feds about this? I mean... this chick SWEARS she doesn't pay Medicare/ SSI.... And she DOES have an H1!
How strange. I suppose being unable to find actual evidence besides cube mate's adamant insistence... I retract..
Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so.
Let's face it folks, the crazy days of "dot.com" when you got a fat sign-on bonus and a sportscar and insane benefits/packages were not a sustainable real world. They were not the norm. They were a fantasy that was sure to dry up. To get a job with a huge pay then was just too easy. I know a lot of very stupid people and bad programmers that got far more than they deserved.
This fantasy existence could not last and we got "dot.bomb". Hype fed jobs went first, but a lot of good programmers got hurt too. In essence this was an over correction.
Now things are seeming to come on track again with realistic remuneration and a desire for good programmers. Some jobs will stay in the US and some will go offshore and a balance will be found. This is good for the industry in the long run.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
He raises a lot of fair questions, but you know, there are answers.
He asks pointedly "[W]hy do some modern Americans (of course, a small percentage) want only those immigrant programmers and IT workers who came during recent times to go back home, yet tend to forget that their parents or grandparents were immigrants too?"
Well what happened back then was a bit different. The problem I and a lot of people have with the visa program is:
1. It targets a very narrow kind of vocation. Do you think 100 years ago native steelworkers wouldn't complain if immigrants were allowed in--but only steelworkers? Targeting IT only is unfair in that people in the workforce outside IT don't have to face the problems it causes.
2. It's predicated on what is quite simply, a lie. Companies are supposed to be able to pick visa candidates when they can't find domestic workers with that skill. We all know they don't. There is no skillset that you can find in a foreign worker that you won't find domestically. Whether you agree or disagree on the matter, I think most people will agree they don't enjoy watching others break the law.
3. It's predicated on an insulting lie. Simply put, they say that you American coders and sysadmins and DB admins reading this just aren't good enough to fill the jobs.
4. The author's claim that the visa workers spend their salaries on the economy as an advantage doesn't fly. A domestic worker will almost always spend a higher percentage of their salary in the local economy. A visa worker sending money back to their country is from an economic standpoint, very harmful to us, for reasons any economist will be able to tell you.
5. The idea that down the road we'll benefit kind of misses the whole point. We don't all compromise an immortal hivemind. The guy who just lost his job to a visa holder can't eat or pay rent with his future hopes.
If the program was run honestly, across various career fields, and only used when there truly was a need, people would have a lot fewer troubles with it.
No, that would be articles posted by Michael that are pure flamebait, with his snippy little trollish comments stuck at the end.
American companies hire H1B's because there are distinct advantages:
1. They do pay less. All studies report that H1B's work for less than their American counterparts.
2. Companies have an iron hold over them. H1B's are allowed in thsi country only as long as they work for the company that sponsored them. Voice any concerns over work conditions and, guess what?, they get exported back to their country of origin.
3. Those same companies, taking advantage of H1B's, will soon be crying that they cannot compete against foreign companies who only hired those very same employees that companies hired, then exported back to their home countries when their usefulness expired. This only leads to lucrative government subsidies.
Fuck 'em! Fuck 'em all!
According to this page, there are "undertakings, enforceable by heavy civil and criminal penalties," among which are:
# To pay the H1B worker at least the higher of the wage paid to similar workers in the same company or the "prevailing wage" (usually determined by the relevant State Employment Services Agency) for the occupation in the area the worker will be employed;
# That the recruitment of the H1B worker(s) will not adversely affect the conditions of the employer's US-resident employees in similar jobs;
Now.. if this is truly the case, if H1B visa workers really are being paid less then their US-resident counterparts, then that is a clear cut violation is it not? Has anybody tried to enforce these rules?
There are no real Europeans of Asians or Australians, either. Everybody immigrated from Africa.
Although I am a Caucasian,I have to admit , we are all 'brothers'
As someone who likes public transportation, I'd have to say a lot of the stigma is deserved. In every US city I've been in, the bus does not ever come on time, or even close to on time. You're lucky if the damn thing comes within 45 minutes of the scheduled time, and even luckier if it comes on time and actually bothers to stop for you.
Trains are run more automatically, so are a lot more reliable. Not up to Japanese standards, where pretty much a computer runs everything, but better than the damn bus.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
It seems as if the thrust of the book is about the treatment of individual immigrants and their experiences. It addresses, what sounds to me like, the standard xenophobic and racist reactions you get from (for lack of a better term) assholes. While this is certainly interesting, what I am more interested in is the debate over policy WRT immigration. I have never held against anyone who was trying to better themselves, immigrated to this country or took what opportunity came along. I have always maintained that I'd do the same thing if I was in their shoes.
That being said, there is a larger issue here. At what rate can this country absorb immigrants of various economic and educational levels? I realize that some people like to believe that since we have always been a nation of immigrants, we should not restrict new immigration, as it is unfair to those who want to come now.
That's fine and dandy, but there is a practical limitation on immigration. First of all, if the US can get educated workers while India foots the bill for their education, what incentive is there in US society to create an educated domestic workforce? If this country does not have the educated workforce needed to innovate, how will these industries remain competitive as places like India and China increase the capabilities of their domestic infrastructure?
This nation isn't some social darwinist's or anarcho-capitalist's wet dream of an experiment, it's a nation built on a set of principles regarding the defense of rights and the freedom to exercise those rights. The defense of rights requires wealth, in other words, democracy and freedom are expensive. The best way to insure optimum levels of freedom and the ability of citizens to defend their rights is through good-paying jobs. Much as a recent study showed that the most effective (and largest dollar amount) foreign aid was foreign workers who sent money home, the best way to maintain the principles of this country is to insure that anyone willing to work can find a good-paying job. And I better not see those utterly rediculous unemployment numbers, job growth isn't anywhere near handling the issue of underemployment in the US.
While I wouldn't hold the author in any sense accountable for taking someone else's job (wouldn't you do the same?), I do hold our political leaders accountable for creating a system that puts US citizens in line behind another country's citizens. That is what happens if visa programs are too open or if wage arbitration through outsourcing is allowed to happen. You can claim that it's simply a matter of economics, that we must compete with people who don't pay for the same defense of rights that we do in the US, but that's illogical. I don't hold an idea that we should simply subsidize uncompetitive workforces or business practices, but the rapid changes in our modern economy can easily produce income volatility for the average family that was unheard of 50 years ago. Communities and families don't handle change nearly as easily as multi-national corporations. So what are the choices? Do we create a welfare state that "smoothes out" the rough edges of a global economy? Do we export only the tools to create wealth and severely restrict the import of people?
Take the same set of arguments and apply them to illegal immigration. Wouldn't a more expensive labor force for menial tasks provide a larger incentive to automate those tasks? Wouldn't that automation and innovation also help to create good-paying jobs? Isn't automation the most sustainable growth? The largest danger I see from guest worker programs, visa programs and illegal immigration is the creation of second-class citizens. That is a danger to the principles and long-term stability of this nation.
I might pose this question to the author: What would he do if he still resided in India and saw that the Indian government was putting the interests of US citizens ahead of Indian citizens and the bulk of any benefit from the arrangement was going to the wealthiest of Indians?
After all, won't the offspring of anyone immigrating to this country face these same problems as any native US citizen would?
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
I've recently moved from Atlanta, GA to New York. Back in Atlanta, it wasn't uncommon to have an office with a few Indian developers, but they were a very small minority.
The small consulting company I work at now is owned by a British ex-pat and the office is about 75% foreign born. Working with a diverse crowd is a great learning experience. Not only are you exposed to interesting cultures, but also some different ways of doing things. Plus, I've recently been to some of the best Indian restaurants I would have never found on my own.
For those rednecks out there that act like idiots to our guests, you are rude and stupid. We are a nation of immigrants. My great grandfathers came from Spain and Croatia in the 19th century. They had a dream of making a better life for my family and succeeded. The diversity of our nation fuels innovation. Compare the motivation of most immigrants to many 3rd, 4th, or more generation Americans, they are excited to have an opportunity... I find it inspirational. Fact of the matter is, America needs to remain competitive.
Don't blame someone else for your own lazy self. The world has changed, go change with it.
If you grew up in the US, then that means that for the first 18-22 years of your life (at least) you weren't helping to pay for the infrastructure you took advantage of, either -- and, since you probably went to public school, you were taking much more advantage of it than they are.
Nice try, but unfortunately you didn't have much of a say in that did you. You didn't ask to be born and you didn't ask to be brought up the way you were.
...of doing the migrants work for them, even though they were hired to do a bunch of other people's jobs cheaply. More than just a little tired actually.
It wouldn't hurt so much if they exhibited a modicum of ability, but they are uniformly hopeless: no practical experience, no core competency; just a few bits of paper from a foreign college, and the willingness to work long hours for low pay.
When I think of the good staff who were laid off because of these migrant workers I get angry...especially since I, as one of the last remaining capable employees, am working much, much harder than I should have to, cleaning up the mess and fighting the fires caused by this only-just-barely-able cheap labor.
From my experience H1Bs at the companies I have worked for are used for graduate degree students. Most american students who go to college tend to leave after getting their BS, especially in technical areas. 50% of PhDs & 33% of Masters degrees in engineering and CS are earned by foreign students (1997 numbers, though things probably haven't changed much, or are worse looking at the trend).
When companies say they can't find qualified individuals in the US it may be true if they are specificly looking for advanced degrees. Remember the HR drones are looking for paper, so it might be coupled with high expectations, and lack of understanding of the importance of experience in some fields. I wonder how much it costs to hire somebody through H1B program. They are limited, so I'm sure there are alot of legal costs associated with securing and maintaining the H1B visa. As well as legal costs of ensuring compliance with the program, providing and maintaining documentation in case somebody audits you. It may be more expensive because of legal costs to get an H1B worker but if you must have the graduate degree it may be the only way to fill to spot.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Likewise, the top 0.1% of Americans probably pay no tax at all.
What?!?! Are you serious about that? Me having more money is a burden to you? How in the world do you justify that?
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
the worst lot I've ever dealt with. They frequently don't know the technology very well. They are best described as "code monkeys" in the sense that they just turn out code, and that code almost invariably well and truly sucks.
Just my opinion, from experience.
I have always wondered why people who have higher than average understanding (the typical slashdot crowd) still blame the H1Bs for their job losses. This as has been explored before is an offshoot of globalization. What I don't understand is how people do not seem to mind the immigrants (Mexicans, et al) who take up the lowliest jobs, do nothing to improve the surroundings, who in fact lower the standard of living all around their communities and who live off the largess of the US and give absolutely nothing back.
Contrast this with the skilled H1B workers who not only (almost always) have advanced degrees, who do a competent job and who give back to the community in a big way (maintaining their affluence - causing improvement in the living areas, etc) and also in more tangible terms, by opening their own companies and providing employment to a number of others. A distinction is to be made between such immigrants who should be welcomed and the other kind.
Consider what is happening here today. Illegal immigrants (those who end up doing menial jobs) get away scot free (in some cases also getting citizenships) and basically get to enjoy the frutis of working in the US whereas the technically oriented crowd always has to worry about being in status, gets heckled even in big cities and basically live in mortal fear of the INS or their companies. Doesn't this seem to be kind of unfair? American should wake up and with a clear head decide which kind of immigrant is a better prospect.
The real lie throughout this entire H1B issue is that the H1B workers are immigrants.
....
They come over here for a SHORT TIME and then go back home outside the USA.
Immigrants come here and stay, have children, grandchildren
Contrary to what you say, the H1B program is far from indentured servitude. Yes, its true that H1B holders cannot switch jobs as easily as citizens, but remember that the point of the program is to allow skilled workers the chance to work in their field of expertise, and be compensated accordingly.
It's true that an individual on an H1B has to be sponsored by a company, but the decision to recruit H1Bs is about a lot more than cutting wages.
For one thing, an immigrant on a two-year gig will be more willing to put in more hours, and spend those hours more productively. A temporary immigrant has no family in the US he/she needs to spend time with, and is here for the sole purpose of making money and gaining experience. Plus he/she will not spend company time farting around on the internet looking for better jobs.
For another, an H1B is only going to be at a position for a limited time. Once the visa is up, that person may return to their home country (or not), but is very likely to remain in the same field. If I run a software house and can build up a network of people I know -- people who have worked for me -- who are going to be running their own software houses in Mumbai (or Madras, or Bangkok, or Beijing, or Chicago, etc), it will make it much easier for me to open up business opportunities there.
The J1 program, on the other hand, is for seasonal work, and a participant has to be enrolled at a university. These are usually three-month positions paid at or below minimum wage. Nominally, they are at least minimum wage, but employers often find ways of getting the money back.
Last summer I met a whole bunch of Polish, Czech, and Slovak J1s at a hotel in central Virginia. They were living at the hotel and making, nominally, $8.00/hour.
However, $2.50/hour went from their paycheck to the agency that recruited them (which was owned by the same group that owned the hotel); they lived four-to-a-room (standard motel room with 2 double beds), for which they paid around $90/week each, and another $10/day for food (2 meals, extremely small -- breakfast was generally an orange, a single-size cereal box, and a half-pint of milk, lunch was maybe 60g of mystery meat and a scoop of mashed potatoes -- enough for a child, maybe). They had to pay for the food whether or not they actually ate it.
The funny thing is what these kids complained most about was that they were being limited to 35 hours/week of work, presumably so the employer would not be required to give them full-time benefits. They would gladly have worked twice that amount.
As it was, they netted less than $50/week of work, after paying more than $1000 (agency fees, plane tickets, insurance, etc) for the privilege.
I've known lots of J1s and this was the worst situation I had ever seen, but it is far from uncommon. I also know quite a few H1Bs, and none of them have any horror stories like this.
"How does an idiot become a detective?"
Cluseau: "He just needs to apply!"
BTW: Very few people keep a 30-year mortgage for 30 years...
So does everyone really know why an Asian worker is that much cheaper? Really?
You buy that Honda in the US for x dollars. The money goes back to Japan and is converted into x*105 yen. Here is the trick. If they keep the money in Japan then the yen would get more expensive. The yen would not convert at 105 it might be 20 or 10 or 1. Japanese workers would then get more expensive and less competitive. So, the Japanese just reinvest it back into the US to keep the dollar more expensive. They buy US bonds. ( its like giving an IOU back to the US government ) Or if the yen gets more expensive they just print more yen! More yen means cheaper yen.
China takes a similiar approach. China just outright, with no freemarket, fix their currency at 1/8 a dollar. They reinvest also into US treasuries to make the dollar more expensive.
All this money comes back to the US. And you see it where? Ah, credit cards. Home loans. Car loans. Loans up the behind. etc. Money you have to pay interest for.
None of this has to do anything with the skill level of the workers or their cultural tendencies.
Unfortunately, when its really over, which is soon, the foreign investors will stop investing. The US will have a chunk of debt but the dollar will lower in value. So, Bush just says: well if your going to manipulate the currencies like this we'll just spend our asses off to make the dollar cheaper. When the dollar drops, debts get smaller and all the bonds you people bought to make the dollar expensive are going to loose value. When its all over then the playing field will be more level. I say the crap hits the fan next year. Especially, since corporations are going to have to expense stock options. There will be pain but hopefully the global imbalance will be rectified.
"First, Social Security is pretty much the biggest service that you get from federal tax dollars"
Rich people pay proportionally on Social Security, one of the biggest taxes the fed govt takes in. Your argument stinks.
The arguments I have read here are just a regurgitation of the manufacturing arguments of days past. Textiles is a good example.
Americans will be at least somewhat mollified to learn that outsourcing is not confined to the USA. Your story really struck a note with me, as the process you describe exactly matches what is happening to a friend of mine, a young man with a young family, trying to get a house built. So its important to remember that the cost of outsourcing is not just in terms of economy, it can have a heavy social and cultural cost also.
Ireland is one of the world's largest exporters of software, due to the large tax cuts our government offers to American corporations that make their base here (MS European HQ is in Ireland), but the benefits of lower tax rates is quickly being outweighed by simple lower salaries that poorer countries offer. This trend is not particularily new, I was hit by the same thing back in 2000 - thanks Nortel - but it is only now that it is becoming the rule rather than the exeption.
Corporations have long since grasped the idea that I first saw in the movie The Edge (I think)... What one man can do, another can do. So what can you do? Well what I did was I started my own business, and before hiring anyone, I looked into the global job market, and found several areas where I could get top quality web designers at a wage which in my country would be ludicrously low. Once you get over the dependability and communications risks, not only does it make sense, it offers a small business (with neither capital nor government aid, and precious little money - realistically, I only had a couple of computers and a laptop I had to go into hock to buy) the only chance to survive and prosper in an extremely densely populated market.
Maybe that sounds like I am going back on my earlier statements, but the crucial difference here is that I never hired local programmers and designers in the first place. The few jobs lost to the local economy make an insignificant impact as opposed to the expansion to the businesses of my customers, who have more business, and thus employ more people, something I am not in a position to do.
Is it exploitation? Cerainly not, the countries where I employ people have cripplingly poor economies, and jobs of any sort are hard to come by. Due to a very favourable exchange rate, what I pay them here comes out for them as a very good salary (think house, car and family of four fed and educated), so everyone wins. If you can't beat them, join them, with reservations.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
As somebody on the H1-B going to get his green card tomorrow morning, I feel like I should throw my $.02 Canadian in.
Others in this thread posted that H1-B != immigrant, and they're right to say so. But the H1-B visa lets you have "dual intent," which is when you're here not as an immigrant but allowed to pursue immigrant status. That's the main reason I switched from the NAFTA TN-1 visa, which doesn't allow this. So while technically your status says you aren't an immigrant, you can still have every intention of immigrating under the H1-B program.
I don't send the money I make out of the country, not unless you count me paying off my old car in Canada, now thankfully done, or making payments on my student loans. Other than that what I make stays in this country: paying others, investing, etc. I think I have to pay all the same fees a "normal" person does: Social Security, Medicare, income tax, and all that good stuff. Even when I bought a retirement present for the old man, it was from an American retailer and shipped back to the old country.
I like to think I contribute something to the country and the people that have been so good to me over the past 5+ years I've been here. I've had more than a couple of offers to go back home, some more lucrative than what I have here, but here I feel like I'm doing some good.
Anyway that's enough out of me. To any and all Americans reading, let me just add...thanks for the opportunity. Nice place you have here. :)
Most Indian H1B Visa holders get jobs through "consultants". Consultants are almost always other Indians who have got contacts for projects from companies and have been in the US long enough to deal with the paperwork.
These guys will recruit Indian MS grad* students and give them garunteed jobs. In return they will take anything from 25-50% of the salary.
Sounds innocent enough except for the gouging??
Well get this: they will garuntee anyone a job by making fake resumes ! If you have zero expereince they will put in 6 yrs and delete your MS degree! And believe it or not, you can be from any field... I've seen Mech, Chem, Civil guys who know jack shit get decent jobs. If you know crap about C# (or whatever) they will "train" you for a month or two. In some places, you'll also be trained about your ficticious earlier job and learn to dodge questions.
What if you screw up in the job? Well the company can fire you, but sometimes the contract makes that difficult and in any case the consultant always gets money.
How do I know all this ? I've see this happen RIGHT BEFORE MY EYES in the past one year that I've been in the US. I dont know how much of the job market belongs to consultants, but in my East coast Univ, 99% of the 50 odd Indian students will get a job like this.(Again, regardless wether they have knowledge of computers or are from other fields). Same thing in my neighbouring Univs.. even Upenn, PHL.
when you consider that the top 5% of Americans pay over 50% of all the taxes
Isn't that because the top 5% of Americans hold 90% of the country's wealth?
That is true for income and property taxes, but sales taxes (a big part of state budgets, not to mention a major tax source in big cities) cut across class, and Social Security winds up being basically regressive (i.e. hits the poor harder, proportionally). Since Social Security post-Reagan is used to shore up the federal budget, taxation isn't nearly as progressive as most people think. In any case income taxes hit "wealthy wage earners" much harder pound for pound than those who, e.g., earn their cash off of stocks and get to write off 18 holes at Pebble Beach as a 'business expense' ...
It's simple math. If you have more than the average, then your share minus the average, divided by the number of people, is an amount that I could have if your wealth above the average were redistributed. Therefore, I'd be better off if you (and everyone else above the average) weren't above the average. (Assuming we start with me below the average).
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I don't mean to be hostile at all in this comment but I must mention that I don't think this article is fair to american programmers either. For one it is true that almost everyone's relatives at some point were immigrants but remember they came over and did things that didn't require higher level education. I think people are irritated because they spend years of their time learning this stuff and paying for it to be replaced by someone outside the country. They fail to see why immigrants have to come over to the US if they have training in their own country for high level learning. Why is India and other countries training people to send them over here? That is something that boggles my mind. I don't see the reason to waste money on training people to send to another country. Its not the US policies that are out of wack in my mind. I think that maybe these countries lack some pride or something. I wouldn't move to halfway across the world for a better job and then renounce my citizenchip. Remember when you come across the world into another country and take a job that someone else wanted from that country you should expect them to be upset. You went out of your way to get their job... I'm not trying to be an asshole here but there is always going to be two perspectives and I can see both of them. This problem is reoccuring throughout history and is the same argument everytime. So I don't think complaining on either side is going to solve it. I think people just need to accept that anyone can take their job and maybe people need to also consider having a bit more respect for their own country.
> Unless your 200 years old...
My 200-year-old what? Dick? I wish I could live to that age...
Look at the other way.
If we killed off 100million native born US citizens - yeah that would technically mean that there is more left for everybody else, but I think most people would still agree that it would be a overwhelming loss none the less.
Well the same is true the other way. If a 100M people come to the US, they will get jobs, buy things, invest, open businesses, and take advantage of the liberties they likely didn't have in other places. Unless they get on welfare or are supported by the taxpayer - it is a major net gain no matter how you look at it.
Almost every Indian programmer who has ever worked for me or with me has basically lacked any sense of architecture/reusability and basic object oriented methodology.
Most of the ones I've worked with could be classified as "code monkeys" and yes this includes those with advanced degrees from Indian based Universities.
I am thoroughly convinced that most of these universities don't teach any in-depth computer science courses or if they do, they are not of very high quality.
I am not being prejudiced. I am simply stating what I am seeing by way of observation.
Later.
hahaha! I can't believe this got modded 'troll,' that South Park ep was one of the best satires of American anti-immigrant politics to come out in the past few years (not quite as good as the Simpsons' 'Much Apu About Nothing,' though).
Immigrants didn't have a say in where they were born either, and they definitely weren't taking advantage of the US's infrastructure at a young age. Your point makes no sense.
If you are moving to this country to LIVE, that is great!
It's the ones taking the jobs over here on a TEMPORARY basis that I have a problem with.
When you live here, you share the same set of circumstances. The same housing costs. The same medical costs. The same everything.
If you are just here to work for a few years and then go home and retire in a country with 1/10th the cost of living, that's a problem.
the top 5% of Americans pay over 50% of all the taxes.
From those to whom much is given, much is expected.
You know, if a US company hired and gave an Indian an H1B visa because this person is talented, professional, I think it is a really good thing. The fact of the matter though, the more smart people being brought to the US, the better the economy will be.
But for me personally, my biggest concern involving H1B and Indian is the fact that there are a LOT of Indian Consultancy Group here in the US that keep exploiting H1B loophole, and wasting the H1B visa for those who are not qualified to get job. Remember that only 65,000 H1B visa can be granted per year.
This is the real story that I could gather and correlate from some of my Indian friends:
First, nowadays it is quite hard to get H1B if you are not graduated from a university in the US, and already in the US when you are looking for job. This is because the job market is still saturated.
So, many of the Indians are going to graduate schools in the US, in order to look for job here.
After they graduate, many of them usually can't find any job at all, either because they are lacking of experience, or just because they don't have any skill at all.
Theoritically, they must go back to India, because they can only stay in the US for 1 year after they graduated with the OPT (Optional Practical Training), but many of them don't want to go back to India because in order for them to come to the US in the first time, they need to create student loan in India, because they don't have enough money to come here. If they were to go back directly to India, it may take years for them to re-pay this loan. So somehow or another, they must be able to find job here. And here is where H1B exploitation starts.
Remember that there are 65,000 limit of how many H1B visa can be issued here, and H1B can only be issued by the company they worked at. And there is also a timeframe when an H1B visa can be processed. Now what they do? Because they don't have any job at all now, and they must go back to India if they can't find any, or if they found one but the H1B period has been over?
What they do though, and I'm saying MANY of them, they are joining Indian Consultancy Group (ICG).
ICG is basically a fake company which is in the business of IT contractor. And now how it works.
Say, Kumar wants to stay in the US to get some money, and Kumar doesn't now anything about networking, application development, etc. because his major was Electrical Engineering and his concentration was Digital Signal Processing. So, in order to be able to stay in the US with the work (H1B) visa, he joins an ICG. At ICG, Kumar needs to fill an application, and agreement that Kumar will stay with this ICG for 3 years, or else if he breaks the contract, he needs to reimburse the ICG $20,000 for the "training cost". As soon as Kumar signed the application (contract), his H1B will be processed by this company. And cha-ching the H1B quota is decreased by 1.
After that he will be given some basic training about Oracle for roughly 1 month, and also lodging during that time. After Kumar completed his "training" which basically teaches him almost nothing, his resume will be place in the market. This ICG will put in Kumar resume that he has 5 (five) - 6 (six) years of work experience with Oracle development with company ABC, company XYZ, which they basically are just another fake company. For Kumar previous boss, this ICG will put 3 names and phone numbers at his resume, which those names are basically Kumar's roommate. The idea though, if a company wants to hire Kumar, and does some checking, this company at least will hear good things about Kumar which will enhance the possibility that he will get hired.
Now suppose a company contacts this ICG looking for an oracle developer. This ICG will give Kumar's resume and tell this company that Kumar is the best Oracle application developer that they have. Also the ICG will say that they are charging $150,000 a year for Kumar's works. And now suppose that Kumar got the interview, now Kumar must be able to lie about his
You need to pay into the US Social Security system for 10 years before you can get a dime back in retirement benefits. An H1 visa is for 6 years. Anyone who stays on an H1 visa will therefore pay lots of money into the social security system, and see nothing back. How does this not meet your criteria?
You need to pay into the US Social Security system for 10 years before you can get a dime back in retirement benefits. An H1 visa is for 6 years. Anyone who stays on an H1 visa will therefore pay lots of money into the social security system, and see nothing back. How does this not meet your criteria?
Where the HELL did I say it didn't?
I was drawing a general case (about as general as I could make it) about people moving from one society to another.
I certainly didn't claim this justified (or otherwise) the US H1 system.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
That is also not sustainable. A stable population is a GOOD Thing. We need to live with it. the Population can not grow forever. Importing people that will retire, than bring in even more to support them in 50 years. Long term if earths population does not level off an decrese slightly. The future will not be "free trade". If people can not retire early, oh well. Countries that have exploding populations can not just export the excess population forever either. If aother countries are force to acceppt to many the results tend to be very bad.
The current state of economic affairs in regards to this subject can largely be attributed to the lack of innovation and creation of NEW technology. Sounds insane. But I think there is a grain of truth. If you look at things from a pure code perspective, how much has been created that is completely new in the last five years? Now when I say new, I mean new from the ground up. Lots of new ideas being developed using established methods. Tons. Packaged as new technology. Ok sure. Is it though? Not really. You can make XYZ app in C/C++/Perl/whatever. Well everybody else knows how to do that too now. Until something big and new is created, this problem will continue to surface. The question now is, who will create it? Will it be India? Will it be America? Perhaps the Chinese? The information age and the new all to equal playing field. My fellow intelligent Americans, I urge you to get up and use your brilliant minds and be the leaders. It is the only way we can secure a economy of any value in this country. Is to create those products the world needs. Your advantage is your mind. Use it.
That is how we got here today. It is the only way we can get there tomorrow. If you want people in the United States to have good jobs, create the products that create those jobs. Do so and start your own corporations. Keep your company in America. Hire Americans (be they people who have moved to our country and renounced their prior citizenship, or natives in the current sense). This is not a question of race. It is a question of supporting our nation regardless of race. Matter of fact, if you truly oppose racism, you will hire Americans. Because we are the nation that has all races. How many other countries can say that to the degree that is true in America?
Screw the India, China, and other countries that set false exchange rates. Why should a bowl of rice cost less dollars in India that it does in the U.S.
Only Nazi Fascist Murdering Thugs support government controlled economies.
Why should I have to work harder for the same buying power?
Why should an Indian Computer Scientist make 22k and be able to have maids, nice house, and acres of land while a U.S. Computer Scientist can't even get a decent job developing software?
So I say screw the government price setting Nazi scum bags.
I am a college student who came to USA 6 years ago. I am unfamiliar about the situation in computer field, as I am a biology major. However, I can tell that about a lot of the PH.D students and post-doctor researchers are either H-1 or J-1 in my university. Many of my professors come from other part of the world as well. I have also worked in a research insituation during summer and 50% of researchers are H-1 holder. It is my understand that they get about same amount of pay as their US counterpart. Therefore, it is very clear that there is actual shorten of talented people in certain fields. These people help US achieve great science breakthrough, which allow our society advanced as a whole. I have no doubt that some of them directly compete with us directly for jobs. However, there are field that have actually shorten of talented people.
"I'm getting a little tired of the "stole my job" complaints. "
How about we "illegally downloaded" your job?
"If your job isn't in demand, you can do one of two things:
1.) Work for less (not a promising prospect).
2.) Change your job."
3) Not be born (not a promising prospect)
4) Off yourself, and write the working class in your will.
I suspect that in twenty five years time make people will look at countries like India and China with the same sort of surprised expressions that many people did in the 1980s when it became clear that Japan was a major economic power.
India's a nation that's going places, and a big part of that is a fair number of their large population do good work for not very much money. That's what being competitive is all about, good luck to them.
How can people still use the tired "Work for less if you want to keep your job..." argument.
For jobs that are outsourced to India, the people there work for less BECAUSE THEY CAN WORK FOR LESS. We cannot, not because we're not willing, but because our cost of living is MUCH HIGHER.
"In any case income taxes hit "wealthy wage earners" much harder pound for pound than those who, e.g., earn their cash off of stocks and get to write off 18 holes at Pebble Beach as a 'business expense' ..."
Wealthy wage earners can avail themselves of tax havens, and other financial dodges, just as well.
the fact is that your job is no more safe than the programmers who might work under you. it won't be very long before those who own the company decide that indian managers can do as good a job as you can, for a fraction of the price. it's not like the USA has a monopoly on brains, or ability to make business decisions and follow/give orders.
but you'll find this out soon enough.
"there's an interesting legend behind that on the Kwakiutal side of things from the Jowadaino tribe, about the dangers of technology"
Why am I suddenly picturing an ancient petroglyph that appears to combine the symbols "IE" and "0wned"? :-)
---
Cthulhu holiday songs, for the gift that keeps on loathing.
The problem with the H1B program has nothing to do with immigration. The problem is that because the foreign workers are dependent on the sponsoring company, the foreign workers can be exploited by the sponsors. This is bad for the foreign workers, and bad for all the Americans whose jobs are being taken by those foreign workers. Why? Because it drives down the market rate artificially.
It's terrific, of course, for the "shareholders" -- and before you start saying that "we're all shareholders", please realize that the concentration of wealth in this country does not bear that out. Some of us are more shareholders than others.
It would be one thing if the foreign workers were free to work for whomever they choose, at whatever rate they are willing to accept. But that's not how the H1B program works.
The stated intent of the H1B program is to fill jobs that could not otherwise be filled. The actual intent of the H1B program is to provide a pool of docile workers who are willing to accept much less than an American would for the same job -- because it's still preferable to working for even less money in their native countries.
It may not be fair, but it shouldn't surprise anyone that this causes a lot of resentment on the part of the American workers who are being replaced.
To top it off, we've trained a whole lot of these folks, who have now returned home and are taking the jobs with them when they leave.
"harassment from a flag-waving driver gesturing obscenely (and blocking his car) on the streets of New Jersey"
Um, dude that happens to me all the time. And I'm an old white guy with grey hair. Hell, somebody in the bar wanted me deported the other day because I suggested we watch the BBC news. But he was from Scranton, where he says the "real" people live. (I'm thinking the good people of Scranton kicked his ass out.)
I don't care what your deal is, it's still like, New Jersey, y'know?
The revolution will NOT be televised.
So are the incredibly wealthy. Think about it. They are taxed *far* more than they take advantage of.
One of the major causes of revolution is having a huge disparity between the living conditions of the poor and those with money. Simply put, the wealthy are taxed higher in order to protect their wealth.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
I am a Masters student in Electrical Engineering in America and in my 2 years 75% and up students in all my classes were Indians/Chinese. I also hear complaints from many ./'ers that Indians are taking their job away. Well at least you cant complain in Electrical Engineering that Foreigners are taking the job away.
Darn if you want the job come and study Engineering like I did.
Another facet is you don't study what you like always. I'd love to study Music if that could get me job. On the same note if I study music and dont get a job I wont blame an Indian on not getting a job.
They dug a trench from one end of the city to the other, and the buses run every two minutes through it during the day, and blast along at 60 or 70 mph. The connecting buses also are very good, and you can get pretty much anywhere in the core of the city very easily. They have double length buses that are articulated in the middle, which is also cool. The bus system in Ottawa is great - I was really happy without a car when I lived there.
It isn't quite that bad, though it is a figure higher than 50%. Additionally, the top 5% of Americans earn more than 50% of income generated in this country (not much more, but it is more). The latter figure is not to be confused with TAXABLE income, of which the top 5% earn less than 50% of.
So, try this with me. I'm Russian by origin, and I have lived in the US for the past 10 years. I look like your average white American, I speak with no accent, and largely as a direct result of that I experience no discrimination in my daily life.
That breaks whenever I have to deal with the authorities with regards to my H1-B and related paperwork, because I am very quickly and rudely reminded that I am apparently a "second-rate human" simply by virtue of having been born in a different country. I have to stand in long lines in order to be able to get a visa simply to re-enter the country after I've visited my aging parents, I have to go through humiliating "look straight into the camera" and "place your thumb squarely on the glass" procedures upon arriving in the US, and if a promotion opportunity comes up, I have to turn it down since it's too much of a pain in the ass to modify my job status. If I'm ever arrested for whatever reason, even if I just happened to be at a wrong place at the wrong time, I do not qualify for a free lawyer (even though I pay all the same taxes), and it's a crime for me to be in posession of a firearm even if I live in a neighborhood where armed robbery is routine. Oh, and I can be deported if I do not carry my passport with me at all times, or if I fail to notify the authorities of a change of address when I change apartments.
This makes me wonder -- we all get indignant when a government somewhere discriminates based on race or religion. Apartheid was boycotted for discriminating against blacks, and when some country somewhere makes Christianity illegal, everyone goes running for the nearest soapbox. However, everyone expects their government to discriminate against someone who just happens to have been born outside the imaginary political borders of their fiefdom, unless they go through the meaningless procedure of raising a hand and reciting the pledge after finding a desperate enough partner for a quick green-card marriage.
What's the moral justification in that? Why is it wrong to discriminate based on the color of skin, but perfectly fine based on the birthplace? I realize that there are political reasons to do this, but it amazes me that so few people have any moral trouble denying the same rights that they have to someone who happened to grow up in a different geographical spot than they did.
Think about it.
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
If you've been outsourced, fired, laid off, underemployed, etc., welcome to the new economy. There are some empty seats on your left, please sit down.
Getting laid off was the best thing to happen to me.
I was punted from one job as a contractor after 3 months because the manufacturing moved to China. I was punted from another job after 6 months because the firmware and manufacturer moved to China and India.
So I joined up with a small company as a consultant, and I'm working a job for both of my previous employers, making 1.5x what I was before! Our company does some defense work, so we only employ US citizens and (so far, thank God) don't employ any women. I get to make my own hours, as well as switch gears totally when I feel stuck. In my opinion, we got to ship out all of the boring work so people in the US could concentrate on the creative side of things.
This job is way more academic and research-oriented, and because I'm a consultant, I don't have to worry about conforming to "the way things have always been done". I'm only 25, and I have one patent with my name on it, and another on the way.
Seriously, start your own business and work for yourself, or someone else as a 1099. I've never been happier at work!
'Be always mindful, even when ditch-digging.' --D. T. Suzuki
I'm just plain surprised at how ignorant so many people here are. If they knew anything about the world in general they'd know, a few IT jobs nonwithstanding, immigration is an absolute boon for the United States. Many parts of the world are suffering from what's called "brain drain". Their best and most educated workers leave the country to work elsewhere. Since the United States is a popular destination, we benefit from their loss.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that highly educated workers coming to our country is a good thing. The global market is competitive, and we have an incredible advantage because we are able to attract the best and brightest from around the world to work for us.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
So, we should just throw up our arms and let all of the immigrants move here?
If only other countries were so giving!
The one thing that really irks me about all the 'they steal our jobs' arguments is the people who make them always seem to assume no American ever goes to work in another country. I work in a company in New Zealand that has over 150 American Employees here so if anybody from New Zealand comes over to 'steal a job' in the USA there is more than likely somebody from the USA coming to work here so it all balances out for 1st world countries atleast so I wish American's would stop giving us such a hard time too.
Does that really make a difference? If you send your children to a school largely paid for by someone else's tax dollars, and drive to work on roads paid for by someone else's tax dollars, can you really criticize a recent immigrant for doing the same, just because their parents didn't help pay for that infrastructure?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
You with a $200 four-year degree, Us stuck with indentured servantude of 8 YEARS from our damned banks and colleges? You don't expect hostility that you take our work away from us?
We don't give a shit, Mr. Oh-So-Humble in front of boss until you get enough of your "hard working" "smart" (e.g. lazy whining fakers) cousins together to backstab the boss themself.
Go home then!
Today, many companies won't consider applicants who do not live in the same city as where the job is located. So even if you don't care about moving wherever the job is you're screwed because they'll throw your resume into the trash as soon as they see that your address is not near them.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
Your argument makes no sense. Yes, the rich pay proportionally on Social Security. However, they don't collection proportionally. As with other taxes, the disproportionate contributions of the rich subsidize everyone else. However, what does that have to do with social security as a service? If you've got two people making $50,000 a year, both are paying a (favorably) disproportionate share of the taxes. If, however, one collects social security and the other doesn't, then the latter is paying taxes disproportionately compared with the first person.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
That seems odd---if you're going to have a dedicated right of way anyway, and one below street level at that, why not just put in some rails and make it a train? Aren't most of the expenses in putting in trains getting the right of way purchased and set up in such a way that the trains can run below/above the streets?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
> All the Indian programmers I have worked with have been above average (and some spectacularly so). I totally agree with this book's author that they contribute more than they take away - but H1-B visas ARE the first step to immigration.
I'm a naturalized US citizen, an immigrant. H1-B visas are not immigration visas, and corporations don't look forward to help their H1-B's become citizens.
I have no problem with immigration, but I do have problem when companies use these visas for temporary work that could be done here. H1-B's are not generating many US citizens, which if they did, they'd be great. I'm all for brain draining other countries.
> All the Indian programmers I have worked with have been above average (and some spectacularly so).
They're human being, like most people, there are great ones and there are extremely crappy ones. I haven't found any Computer Science "gene" yet that says what nationality can come up with an algorithm best.
- sigs are for wimps.
My eperience is those who have a problem with Indian programmers are usually incompetent programmers.
I find that the 2 people I work with who complain the most don't even deserve to be called programmers.
They're scared because they know they suck and they don't want competition.
The competent American programmers I work with don't seem to have problems with Indian programmers.
I know that's a popular thing to believe, but it isn't true. The 400 richest Americans paid 1.58% of total income taxes last year. The top 1% paid 35% of all taxes. Do the rich use fancy accountants to get out of some taxes? Sure. But the tax reciepts are part of the public record --- they paid a whole lot of taxes, there is no doubt about that.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Unfortunately, the only way one of them wouldn't collect is if they died. The SocSecAdmin will disburse money to you, if you paid into it, even if you don't want or need it. You can't opt out of the system in any way, shape, form or fashion. Unless you run away or die, and even then your heirs may get it.
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
Except those people aren't given that money --- they earn it. You might not ike how they earn it, or you might not think they deserve it, but they did earn that money in the free market.
I'm a progressive liberal. I believe the rich *do* have a duty to use their greater resources for the overall good of society. However, I think the villification of the rich is getting silly.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Take a look at NumbersUSA. More people results in more pollution, more urban sprawl, more destruction of the environment, reduced quality of life, less freedom for all, and nothing much that's good. It doesn't matter where the current group of people came from, the fact is that more people is going to make everything worse.
The population of the U.S. has doubled since I was born and increased nearly 40% since I graduated from high school (210M to 293M). Traffic which used to only happen on Labor Day weekends is now the normal daily commuting traffic. The quality of life in the U.S. is not improving. Yes, we have all sorts of new gadgets and live a little longer but unless you're over 45 you really have very little idea as to the things we have lost in the meantime.
Listen to people in your area talk about the "insane growth". It is happening not just in your area, your area is not unique. It is happening nearly everywhere in the U.S. (I believe the Dakotas are an exception?). The U.S. is rapidly turning into one giant zit of a strip mall.
This country is going to hell and there is nothing I can do about it.
" xenophobia is increasingly common "
please provide scientific proof that it is more common.
I'm posting this as AC since part of what I will say will be very controversial.
I am aware that there are plenty of talented workers in other countries. And, yes, there are plenty of talented immigrant and H1-B visa workers in this country, and even here in Silicon Valley. However, I have seen the dark side of H1-B and even minority hiring.
I worked for two companies that had no problems with hiring people with expired H1-B visas or people here just plain illegally. Each time, they worked for less than market. Each time, they displaced an American worker. And each time, in the case of H1-B (it was expired, but for the sake of argument), the person was hired into a management role. And that wasn't even in Silicon Valley.
In Silicon Valley, it's racist and "ageist". Sure, you'd think a white male would have an easy time getting a job, but I have two things going against me: I'm not college age, and I'm not a minority (Indian). I'm not even talking about Blacks and Hispanics here, because the Indians discriminate against them too. If you're going for a job that is owned by Indians, run by Indians, or there's an Indian manager doing the hiring, invariably he will hire an Indian over you.
In today's economy, even if you do get a job, you're not going to get even close to the pay you *need*. But the H1-B visa workers and immigrants get around this very easily. They're willing to work for lower than market, and they're willing to live in a shithole. And if the area isn't a shithole, you can damn well bet they're crowding 3-4 times the amount of people per bedroom into a house or apartment.
So as a (non-single) white male in Silicon Valley, I'm screwed. I'm not a minority of any sort, so I don't get any special treatment. Nor do I have a support group to turn to -- an all-white support group would be deemed racist and run out of town, while it's perfectly acceptable to have the reverse (even though "white" is not actually in the majority here). And with my age (I'm not college age), no one wants to take a chance on me. Companies would rather hire someone with zero experience who is willing to work for peanuts, than someone like me who knows the biz (or even with blue-collar, can learn on the spot).
I won't apologize to any shocked readers, nor will I to Sivakumar who has and will continue to get more chances than me at a decent living. When you're a "minority" you don't realize how easy it really is for you now -- people back off at the slightest whiff of racism. But if I call reverse-racism, I'm laughed at, or simply called racist. How dare I point out that the minorities (in particular the Indians) have taken advantage of and shit on the system with their outright discriminatory hiring practices, all while claiming they are the ones who are the victims.
And there's nothing I can do about it, except write anonymously on Slashdot. Sivakumar's book is a joke. And it's ridiculous that people fall into his trap.
For the U.S. citizens who are reading this: write your Congressperson and Senator and tell them to permananently ban H1-B and any other program like it, tell them to beef up immigration and racial enforcement and toughen penalties against the offending companies, and tell them to punish companies who outsource. Write your cities and counties and tell them not to do business with the companies that abuse the labor force and shut-out American workers.
I am not against immigration, or minorities, I just am against racial and age discrimination and company policies to shut out capable U.S. workers from decent jobs. I know I'll get modded to -1 flamebait or troll, or even ignored here (likely most won't even read this far), but I felt I needed to add my voice of experience. If you've gotten to the end, thank you for reading.
and, since you probably went to public school, you were taking much more advantage of it than they are.
Oh you mean the $22.50 a day they (e.g. edu system) pay schools just to fill seats and NOT teach...
Note that H1-B Social Security payments are refunded when/if they leave to go back to India. This applies to the engineer. I don't know about the company half of the contribution, but I assume that is refunded back to the company when the H1-B holder returns as well.
This simply isn't so. H1-Bs are often, if not usually, straight out of the university. Oftentimes it's a U.S. university; our own government has financed the education of workers who later supplant U.S. citizens at a lower wage.
Not so. Studies have shown that the U.S. would do fine with no immigration whatsoever. U.S. citizens would move into the job slots provided and wages would move only slightly higher. This is true both at the high-end (Ph.D.s and MDs) and at the low end (immigrant laborers). And the U.S. worker would contribute as much or more to the economy through taxation and purchasing.
What is actually occurring here is pure and simple job displacement: U.S. citizens are losing jobs to cheaper H1-Bs.
<RANT>
The lunacy of all this is that it arises from the desire of U.S. universities and schools in the last several decades to enlist cheap graduate students from abroad (and consequently garner federal funds - you might be surprised to find that the U.S. government subsidizes not only PhD and MD graduates, but also such strategically important careers as hair stylist and cosmetic shop technicians). When their studies ended, these students either went back to their native country and began competing with U.S. firms from abroad or chose to stay in the U.S. and supplanted U.S. citizens.
To their credit many of the latter chose to become U.S. citizens. But many did not: I personally know of several immigrants who declined U.S. citizenship for decades, only to become U.S. citizens once green card fees fees began to rise. Such is their patriotism that they can lay an exact price on it in U.S. dollars.
</RANT>
Social security benefits are reduced for retirees with high income from other sources (usually investment income from their retirement savings).
A legparnasom tele van angolnaval.
If you grew up in the US, then that means that for the first 18-22 years of your life (at least) you weren't helping to pay for the infrastructure you took advantage of, either -- and, since you probably went to public school, you were taking much more advantage of it than they are.
True, but on the other hand my parents did. And their parents. And their parents. And their parents. And they all wanted a better life for their children. So while I agree that I haven't put in my time yet (and I'm 28), I someday will. I live in the Twin Cities, MN area and I'm met several Somolis who are working and saving up money so in a few years they can go back to Somolia and live like kings. Perhaps the norm, I doubt it. The pendulum swings both ways. In other words, it's a SHITTY WORLD and you'd better start dealing with it.
Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach him to fish and he'll wipe out the species.
Putting the DOT in DOT COM ;)
Open up your job markets to US citizens or shut the fuck up.
Yes, I like the love thy neighbor even if they take the food off your plate slant..
The legend of the "superior" H1-B worker is largely a myth.
... don't expect any useful input from Mr NEP.
... except Mr. NEP. He nodded his head and wrote down all of the action items that were assigned to him, (and his penmanship is excellent, BTW!) but doesn't seem to understand what any of them actually mean.
... 2 days later you'll find out from HR that he has filed a formal complaint because none of his American team members will show him where the bud or turkeys are located. (email on file, I assure you)
... seemingly never having heard of CPAN. If there is a possibly better language or tool to use than Perl, you'll never hear of it from him - the formal specifications (that you had to waste someone's time writing just for him) say "Perl", and that is holy writ to him never to be challenged or even thought about.
;)
MY EXPERIENCE:
IF you give the typical near-Eastern programmer (NEP) PRECISE requirements (so precise that you have actually already detailed the program logic and much of the actual code) you'll get back working code (sorta working anyway) from them in record time.
IF you sit down in a meeting with the typical (NEP) and have a discussion with your team about what the program is supposed to do, what pitfalls might be encountered, what languages or other tools might be used to best approach the project
He'll sit there smiling quietly and saying nothing. He doesn't ask any questions or participate in any decisions or raise any issues. Everyone leaves the meaning pretty much clear about what part of the project is theirs and what they are supposed to do
Y'see -- he didn't get a formal, precise and comprehensive set of "spec-see-fee-cay-shoons" and therefore has no clue. Despite what might appear to be excellent written and verbal English skills, he doesn't seem to really understand much of the language except when used in precise, formal constructions.
You'll assign him a bug list and ask him to "nip these in the bud" or "kill these turkeys"
IF your team thought Perl was the way to go, he'll keep slogging through writing Perl code, but he has no idea where to find any Perl mods that aren't already installed
Mr NEP will always be polite, he will never be late, he will always be appropriately dressed and you will never have to ask him to remove THAT from his cubicle wall. He never tells bad jokes, dirty jokes, politically incorrect jokes -- well never ANY jokes for that matter, but laughs at everyone else's at the right time. He never comes to work with a hangover. If he had open-heart surgery yesterday, he'll be to work on time today.
Sadly - when a full analysis is performed - he just doesn't accomplish much in the same way that his American and Eurp counterparts do. He's paid about half of what his US/Euro buddy is, and overall is worth about one fourth.
Just MY opinion of course
H1-Bs are not immigrants. They can't collect social security bcause they don't live here permanently. If they do decide to live here permanently, they have to become a US Citizen, and at that point, they are equal to everyone else anyway.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
"By most accounts that shortage no longer exists."
Exactly. It is just one prong of a multipronged fork being used to drive down labor costs in the U.S. It is part of class warfare, and I know half of the readers just freaked when I used those two dirty words, but the fact is class warfare exists, it is happening and the class that is winning the war is doing such a good job most American's refuse to believe there even is such a thing.
The multiple prongs of class warfare:
- Offshoring jobs to China, India or any other place that with cheap labor and no regulation
- Allow a flood of illegal immigrants across the border to take all the menial jobs
- H1B visas to allow a flood of legal immigrants for all the skilled jobs. H1B visa workers lead the way in racking up huge quantities of uncompensated overtime that helps insure everyone else has to do the same.
- Bust unions at every opportunity and strive to drain them of their power and relevance. If you can't bust them, close all the unionized factories and ship the jobs offshore.
The fact is U.S. labor is overpriced and of declining quality(badly educated, badly motivated, etc) so in a globalized economy all of these hammers are seen as necessary by the class that is winning class warfare. Of course the irony is any one were to look closely at the wealthy who are winning class warfare you realize they are badly educated, have bad judgement, are often crooks(think Enron etc.), and are devoid of morales and scuples. They are just as much to blame for America's decline, but since they are rich and powerful they don't get to suffer for it while everyone in the working class does.
@de_machina
Actually, H-1B visa are not only available to programmers. Famous fashion models, (building) architects, certain types of technical consultants and many more positions can apply for a H-1B visa.
we should have fought to keep them here.
New technologies is one thing (buggy whips, etc), but there is NO REASON for labor arbitrage. And that is what it really is when you ship jobs overseas because of lower labor costs. Same thing for H1b.
And if you ship overseas because of lower manufacturing costs caused by lower worker and environmental protections, then that is environment arbitrage.
That has nothing to do with "free trade". It's theft. And our politicians should be tried in courts of law for their crimes in this area.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
"That said, I don't know how someone could form an opinion that we're a bunch of nice people. We can hardly stand ourselves, let alone people who are legitimately outsiders."
Well I guess that explains why we eat our young.
I'm a hiring manager/former top developer (former like as in last year). I interview about 6-9 people a week. As a group, the indian programmers are no better than the american programmers.
Of course, I've lost jobs to cheaper, less qualified developers of all nationalities too.
Largely because employers are penny wise and pound foolish. Headcount, that's what matters, not net brain power.
I object to a cut rate one
please provide scientific proof that it is more common.
Here you go.
Have fun.
If you are really concerned about the guest workers, let them make their own choices. What you consider "exploitation" they obviously consider a good idea. You wouldn't be doing them any favors by taking away the choice.
So you're preaching socialism. Redistribution of wealth. Tell me, what happens when nobody is "above the average?"
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Maybe if you could explain how owning land makes one native you'd have something substantial to base your claims on. You are not native.
I can understand the arguements set forth. But their are some holes in the logic. The amount of money spent sponsoring an immigrant can be utilized sponsoring a native born citizen through scholorships and grants. Companies sponsoring locals could even tailor their education to suit the specialized needs of the company. In the old days, their was an emphasis on a general education and then the individual was trained on the job. The author asserts that their paychecks are spent on the local economy. Fact is, so would a local-born immigrant (ie native). Then the author asserts buying foreign automobiles, because of resale value. Any vehicle that is desireable would have a high resale value ... Harley Davidsons for example. Which is interesting as cheap motorcycles are the norm in Asia (along with three-wheeled Tuk-tuks).
The bottom line I see, is that we are burning the candle at both ends. The eagerness of companies to focus on the short-term will not build long-term viability. How can underpriviledged natives compete in a one-sided universe? Of course, my view is tainted by unemployment.
My 2
we have been and will be a huge military economy. The Neocons have an answer to the AC's questions, and its more callous and cynical than you imagine. What can we actually make? Armeggedon.
I found this all very difficult to read. Let me explain. I went to school, obtained a B.S. degree in order to be a computer programmer, and for the last three years have been working for a little above min. wage in a retail job. All of my money goes to paying off my school debt, and I find myself wondering whats going to happen when my parents whom I'm living off of die. Looking at the resale value of a car when purchasing one... Gee it would be nice to afford a car, food, an apartment. I invested a bundle of money that wasn't mine in my dream and ended up right where I could have been out of high school and now I have to pay back for my gamble.
In going through school I watched a visa holder whom knew absolutely nothing about computers or how to use them flourish due to her strong mathematics and physics background in europe. She is now in the industry, and I am stuck in a retail job because of our lack of educational standards in our public schoolsystems.
I feel sorry that our prejudice has come out to haunt the h1b visa holder, but I still think it would be better if your home country had a good enough software industry to employ you so you could make your own economy stronger. Maybe a little competition would spur our country into bucking up and learning how to refine our youth instead of churning them out on the chopping block.
Maybe if our companies did poorly, our companies would decide that because we aren't making as much money that the salary of their programmers needs to be lowered, I would be willing to work for a little above minimum wage plus food and an apartment, as long as I could create for a living.
Ok heck with the apartment, ramen, tuna, vitamins, and a closet...
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, I'm going to continue learning in my free time and being creative at work, as if I don't I'll go nuts in my repetetive doldrum job. I move around large sacks of grains for a living currently... It's good honest work, and at least I won't become fat.. I hear a large percentage of immigrants become obese when they come to the US.
Not only that but the callous on my arm from sitting in front of a computer for all those years of education has started healing. . . So it's not all bad for us afterall.
And we live in america, even bums have it better then people in third world countries. If only that could change.... *tap tap tap* CHANGE ALREADY! Then maybe I can go to your country and work.
Whyaduck writes:
Do the countries that H1-B's come from have similarly generous guest worker programs?
India (for instance) is much poorer than the US. If you're a US worker who wants to move to India and get a job at Indian wages then I doubt anyone's going to stop you.
In economic terms, the capital and the labour are more productive together than apart. One mechanism to bring them together (not the only one, obviously) is to move the labour to where the capital is, and that's what H-1B and its ilk try to do. There's no corresponding flow of labour from the US to India because the capital imbalance is pulling the other direction.
Caveat: my spelling of "labour" probably gives away that I am (in some sense) a foreigner myself.
H1B WORKERS: go home. Leave the United States and return to your home countries. Build up your local high-tech industries. Corporations will send the jobs to you, and the USA will slide into oblivion.
It's maddening to read countries complaining about the all-to-real "brain drain" of their best and brightest talent to the USA, and to also read people in the USA complaining about receiving that talent.
I say this as someone who is going back home to New Zealand after 3 years of H1B-hood, to do my bit to reverse the brain drain. Fortunately my job is portable and I'm taking it home with me.
They tuhkkk arr jobs!
*crowd* took rrr job!
How they've fallen, oh the mighty Things are looking more sober Because your skills aren't valued as highly The nineteen nineties are over. You will have to make more with less There isn't much there you can do. This might mean taking second best You might want to start dating fat chicks too. It's not fair, when you have to compete, Things will start to get tight It's not going to 'scale,' it looks like you're beat you can't win that fight you can't win that fight you can't win that fight you can't win that fight no, you can't win that fight.
Yeah but the people who like to trot the 5/50 numbers out forget that to first order the family trying to eat, sleep (e.g. have a bed), and keep the lights on while earning 20k/yr don't have 1/10 the fixed expenses as the family at 200k. There's a reason the tax code should be progressive; living is regressive. Republican scrooge bastard single issue voters don't give a rat's ass about people less fortunate than themselves.
It's weird, the media misses the following point. There are three voting blocks: working poor, working mid-income and working wealthy. The wealthy to a large extent got wealthy on the backs of others -- their entire goal in life is the accumulation and maintenance of money hoards. The middle group is the group that isn't filthy rich, but making enough to get by and making enough to afford to have a social consicence while being able to understand that they are financially lucky. The working poor are desparate for anyone to throw them a dream to work toward. This is why the mean incomes of democratic supporters in Florida was relatively high -- the dems are the ones that can afford to have a social conscience and support a party which does also.
Different than being an early British immigrant to the New World when the odds of dying in the first year were 25%.
The rest of the subject is a similarly shallow treatment of the way pioneering technologists are left without anything to show for what they gave to the world -- not even children.
Seastead this.
So in addition to taking programming jobs, they're also stealing jobs away from book authors...
Clearly, something must be done.
Yes but those grown up immigrants that have not used the benefits of the US infrastructure make a choice to go to the US and start working.
Someone who was born in the US, and uses the infrastructure generally didn't have a choice in that matter. Their parents made that decision for them.
In that light, you cannot throw the "You had all the benefits the US provides" card, in the face of someone who was born there.
H1-B's aren't real immigrants. They are scab laborers that are at the mercy of those that sponsor their work visas. This allows/asks for labor practices abuses that WILL ultimately affect the rest of us.
An Indian H1-B is contributing to a situation that's much more than just a matter of increasing the supply of labor.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
IAACWIUBIHBPMGC (I am another Canadian working in USA but I haven't been pursuing my green card).
I work under TN-1 status (trade professional under NAFTA) instead of H1-B which allows me to renew as many times as I want for up to a year each time. With this kind of status, there is little incentive to pursue a green card, especially if I plan to eventually return to the promised land.
The biggest challenge is actually social. I don't have a home any more. I live in USA but I am a foreigner - I do something eccentric or make a mistake and hear "Is that how Canadians do it?" That doesn't bather me because usually it's in jest. The more troublesome part is when I go back to Canada to visit family.
Even in my own extended family I have become one of those Americans in their eyes. These are people that have known me since I wore diapers, but now they see me differently. They vent on me for everything that pisses them off about USA. The don't necessarily treat me as if I am complicite, but I still seem to be a target of their ventilation.
In Canada I am an American, in USA I am Canadian. The funny thing is, Canadians don't want to be considered foreign to USA, and I definately don't want to be considered foreign in Canada - that's my country!
Parent Poster: do you have family in Canada? do you go back to visit? What province (or territory)? I wonder if people from the three cities or southern lattitudes (I'm from near Edmonton and my family is Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Northwest Territories) have a similar experience as me?
Thomas;
___ This sig is in boldface to emphasize its importance!
"jobs which are seemingly difficult to fill from the American labor pool for a variety of reasons,"
Such as not being fluent in Swahili, Cantonese, or Aramaic.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
Long post. Sorry.
:P), will you be able to apply for this. When this gets approved, you buy your boss a big cake and send him a thank you note and call up all the people that helped along the way. You are finally here. You have arrived. You can stay here and be a part of the American life.
A lot of people want to come to the US.
Some get to.
Some that come here want to stay here.
Some that come here don't really want to stay here
Some that didn't wanna stay change their mind.
Some that wanted to stay change their mind.
Some end up here by mere chance.
Some try their best everyday and never get to.
----------------------
H1-B says "Temporary Worker Visa". If you actually look at an H1-B petition approval, it says "Temporary Worker Visa".
Filing for a permanent residency (Green Card) is a separate process. It can be initiated in parallel. It can be initiated for a number of different reasons based on the rules of the BCIS or the USCIS or whatever other acronym the entity-formerly-known-as-INS is calling itself these days.
If you file for a permanent residency based on a job offer, it is for a future position. This is carried out in 3 distinct phases.
Phase I - Labor Certification Approval. This is sub-divided into two parts - state level and federal level. The state workforce reviews the case and if approved forwards it to the Department of Labor. If the Department of Labor approves the case you have an Labor Certification Approval.
Phase II - Permanent Residency Petition. This is the actual petition to be allowed to become a permanent resident in the US as a skilled worker. The LCA is shown as proof that for whatever it is that you're good at, no certified, qualified, or skilled American workers could be found. If your case passes, you take a deep breath and move on to the next phase.
Phase III - Adjustment of status. This is where you adjust your status from whatever it was (H1-B/outside the country/whatever) to a permanent resident. This is also the stage at which you must assume you employee role at the organization that has sponsored you. You must begin employment at the position around which the entire case was built. Only after you assume your duties (or should I say dooties
While all this commotion is going on in the different phases of your application, you are free to do whatever you want. That is until Phase III. Until then you could wait in Germany, India, Japan, or get a temporary worker visa and work here. Hey you could even get a temporary worker visa sponsored by the company sponsoring you for the permanent residence application and just work there.
In real life, its almost the opposite. You get a temp work visa and start working. After 6 months of so if they like your performance, they agree to sponsor you for a permanent residence application.
Phase I - generally takes 1-1.5 years these days.
Phase II - Is actually I think going to be available online pretty soon. Currently it takes about 1 year or slightly more.
Phase III - This for one of my co-workers has taken, I think, about 2+ years.
All in all, some have received the plastic in the hand and start to end it takes 2.5 years and there are others that have waited for almost 6+ years. It depends on the company you work for, on the American economy around the time you application hits the LCA stage especially and on a bunch of other things.
In america you outsource IT
In India IT outsource you.
Foreign or not!
Try to imagine how long anyone would hold onto wealth without police protection.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
you know, I've been quiet, and patient, trying to let all of this 'foreign dudes stealing my job' crap wash over me, and forget about it. I have been laid off, and many I know have had their jobs directly outsourced (or insourced to cheap non-citizen labor) and I'm just tired of it. Here are some notes to the 'immigrants' stealing our jobs.
1. You are not an immigrant! you have not immigrated, you are not a citizen, nor are you working toward being one. There are plenty of Americans that were born in other countries, that have worked very hard to become American citizens. Do no cheapen their struggle by calling yourself an immigrant. You are in face an alien, although not illegal (because of which ever corporate sponsored visa you have).
2. You are here because of corporate greed. it's not because you are better, or even good. American corporate greed has long been the bane of the American economy and it will either eventually die, or collapse.
if you are over here, working on you citizenship, and working toward becoming an American I support you fully, you have gone through the process of all of our forefathers, and we welcome you and appreciate your struggle.
if you are over here on an H1-B visa or (even worse) an L1-B visa. if you were a farmer, would you let others in your field to steal your produce. You wait for us to build the strongest technological market on the planet, and you come take our money, our education. You are nothing but a thief. Count the days, it will soon be over, we will win. We will take our jobs back.
well i guess this article turned out to be flamebait, but damnit, it's how I feel. our fields are being raped, and not even by our neighbors, not even for helping our own community, but sending our resources to thieves.
YOU WERN'T OVER HERE ACTUALLY TAKING OUR JOBS. You have no desire to actually become a citizen, but you don't have a problem with coming to another nation and skimming the cream off the top. I don't hate you because of your race, but because you are a theif.
"There would be more Americans taking up jobs in engineering and programming if there were good paying job prospects."
And then the market would be filled with "doing it for the money" instead of "doing it for the love" like those guys at EA. Generating resentment from all the established workers*, who then post on Slashdot, how the incoming workers are taking the jobs they deserve.
*Funny we never hear the same from the McJob contingent. Don't they love their jobs?
you were taking much more advantage of it than they are.
What? My parent's property taxes?
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
From the article:
Sivakumar is also guilty in places of wielding the same kind of broad brush he sees being used to paint Indian programmers; he provides cultural sketches of several other groups that may be meant merely as casual observations rather than any sort of final word, but end up doing the same disservice as any other stereotype. (Of his first trip through customs, he says "That was the first time I ever talked to an African American. I never understood their accent even in the movies." This kind of glib generalization doesn't advance the cause of the book; often "they" are hard to characterize so blithely, no matter which "they" is at issue.)
I imagine this has something to do with growing up in a largely monoculture society. Yes I know India isn't strictly one large monolith, but on the whole their internal differences aren't nearly as great as "immigrant nations" like the United States and Canada.
I've noticed anecdotaly that some immigrants from racially homogenous countries sometimes have racist views of black Americans. Not blacks in general, but black Americans specifically. Which at first seems odd since they've most likely never met one prior to coming to America. I believe the reason is how blacks are depicted in American popular media. Predominately blacks are depicted as dumb, lazy, and criminal. All all play basketball. All black men are oversexed, and all black women are prone to loud violent outbursts. None of this is true, but this is how they're protrayed. Sadly, "black media" often reinforces these streotypes.
I don't have a problem with immigrants that come here and compete on a level playing field with American workers. But I also have had friends and coworkers who were H1-B workers. Consistantly, they were not paid market rates for their talents and as a result, they were more experienced labor that was "forced" to work for a lower salary -- this is a resource that hurts Americans at the _same_ skill level who would have been earning more.
One coworker got an immediate promotion after attaining his green-card. He'd been at the company I was at for about 1.5 years, me, maybe 5. I'd been in management training, done project releases that were on time and well run and did project releases under unrealistic circumstances that left all members burnt out and with myself having no power to reward them w/time off or bonuses. But my manager was quite frank about my coworker's "promotion" into a higher pay grade than I -- even though he knew less about the work we were doing than I did. He felt/knew that my coworker was feeling restless as our company floundered and wasn't able to work on projects that tapped his abilities to their fullest extent. In his area of expertise, I knew less, but it wasn't the job or group he was in at SGI, he landed in the group because the group he had been in was dissolved and he was good at what he had been doing, so when layoffs came, he was relocated to a different group that wasn't as good a match for his skills. My manager also felt that because he wasn't able to use his talents in the best way, his salary was depressed compared to his peers and "merit" increases were limited to an average of 2.7% in the given review period. The only way to give him a large jump in salary to keep him from "jumping ship" to another company was to promote him. He was an H1-B worker from the UK.
Another friend of mine (who described herself as being from Persia so as to avoid negative connotations -- and this was almost 15 years ago) had required overtime hours (unpaid) at about 80-90% average pay for her job description (in SiliVal). She wanted to quit but could not because she would have to leave the country if she wasn't immediately swooped up by a new company. She was trapped for some long time until she found another position that was willing to take a risk and handle the extra paperwork of transfering her over -- and for a while may have been here "illegally" until H1-B visa rules were relaxed with respect to how long workers could stay in the country before having to leave after leaving their sponsoring country.
So it is the H1-B Visa process and the fact that those worker's are not free agents in the economy -- it is exploiting "trapped" labor and make American citizens or those with Green Cards less attractive as employees. So -- Yes, I do resent H1-B workers as representative of an exploitive system.
-eol-
If you have the skills and have a good credit history (feds look at that) no criminal back ground then you can get in with companies doing Govt contracting, not the govt itself. Lockeed-Martin is an example. I work at the FAA areonautics center. My salary is ALMOST as good as private sector and I have gurarnteed 5 year contract. I'm in line to get a secret clearance and we do alot work with the Army ( go figure). the Beauty is if my company loses the contract in 5 years, then the new co. will have hire me if I don't want to leave, since I helped write the software in question. Then they will have a 5 year contract etc.... Granted the Pay is a bit less than private sector, not much though. They will never outsource this stuff because of all the clearances required. So it's perfect.
I would highly recommend it. I will never work in the strictly private sector again. Because of all the Tech demands, the demand in Govt jobs is soaring.
The down side is you may have to move somewhere you might not otherwise want to live, but a job is a job nowadays. Good Luck!
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
It's simple math.
No, it's a simpleton's envy.
Your "simple math" completely disregards the question of who creates the wealth that you want to distribute.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I'm part Irish, Scottish, Danish, French, and German. My great-grandfather on my mother's side was an illegal immigrant from England. My great-grandmother on my father's side was a full-blooded Cherokee. Which country, exactly am I supposed to say I'm from if not the US?
I was born in the US. I've lived here my whole life. Both of my parents were born in the US and lived here their whole lives. They both served in the US Army. All of my grandparents were born and lived in the US. Both of my grandfathers served in the military, one in WW2 and the other in the Korean War.
As far as I'm concerned, my family and I have earned the right to call ourselves Americans. I may have mixed roots, but what we've done in the last 100 years has earned us a place here. And, there is no other country we can now call home. That is more than I can say about anyone now illegally crossing the border or legally getting off a boat and taking our jobs. They need to spend some time and blood here before getting that priviledge.
As American citizens, we have the right to dictate how and why people may visit our country. This attempt to question our lineages as Americans is merely to conceal this fundamental truth. If we do not want illegal immigrants flooding our country, then as Americans we can choose otherwise. If we do not want cheap, foreign, H1-B labor flooding our country, then we can also choose otherwise.
We should not be made ashamed because our distant ancestors were immigrants. We are not immigrants and we never were. We were born American and we will die American. And thus we have a right to say what will happen in America.
If you're wondering, yes, my mama wore combat boots!
Hey Indians inventend "Kamasutra" wait till they export that here ....
I know I know this is a geek place so may be I should shut up !
- People who believe other people have no right to live, got no right to live ...
From the writeup:
"[W]hy do some modern Americans (of course, a small percentage) want only those immigrant programmers and IT workers who came during recent times to go back home, yet tend to forget that their parents or grandparents were immigrants too?"
They were IMMIGRANTS. They came here to share the benefits and burdens of living in this country and make their lives here. H1B workers aren't immigrants. They come here for a few years and work for wages that no one who is planning to buy a house, raise a family, and send his kids to college in America could afford to work for. Then they go home to a country where their dollars buy 10 times as much, and where the wealthy are able to exploit the labor of a giant, peasant underclass with a standard of living close to that of European peasants 120 years ago.
These aren't foreign workers who simply happen to land jobs in the U.S.; each H1-B visa holder has at least 16 years (often more) of formal education, and an American company sponsoring his or her application. (That education usually comes "free" to U.S. taxpayers, he notes, not at the expense of public school budgets or student loan subsidies.)
Great! So American corporations get an educated workforce without having to invest anything in the people at home, without having to create stable career paths for their workers. Why train and promote your junior programmers? It's so much easier to hire a kid in his 20s, work him like a dog for a few years, then lay him off when his salary demands are too high and plug in an experienced worker from overseas who doesn't need to earn enough to support a middle-class lifestyle in America. That's a great system if you're part of the 5 percent of the population that makes most of its money from investments. If you have to work for a living, it's a lousy deal. It's also a lousy deal for the countries that paid for their education, only to see the benefit go to corporations overseas.
I don't resent Indian programmers trying to make a living. In their place, I would do the same thing. But we need to recognize that we didn't build a middle class in this country by following the rules of laissez faire capitalism. We set limits on immigration to constrict the labor supply, organized workers into unions, and intervened in the economy to create rules that favored the creation of a middle class. Capitalism, as its name suggests, overwhelming rigs the game in favor of those who own capital. In recognition of this, we have to demand that the main beneficiaries of this system give something back so that those who don't own capital can also have decent lives.
So sad to read your story.,
Is Canada and USA really so different?I thought since they are both from North America,Look similar in appearance (sure not dark skinned - could look as 'whites'),are developed countries,speak english as native language(mostly at least),there is so much resentment against each other?
iam surprised. As a Indian who has never been to US,I say this though.
Why does yahoo do this
Of Indian superiority complex.
Wake up Indians, you are not the world. You're a 3rd world and yet you braggy credit-stealing people feel that you're the center of the universe.
Well, if you want the least you could do is take proper hygiene.
Otherwise I really wish you're country would be nuked.
I would have absolutely no problem with H1Bs coming to the United States, if they were actually immigrants. Like the author said, that's how most Americans got to be here in the first place. I proudly welcome any and all Indian programmers as US citizens -- more talent and initiative benefits us in the long run, even if I have to compete harder for a job.
However, the flood of overseas workers are on sponsored visas, which means it's uncertain they'll actually get permanent residency status in the long run. Much of the money they receive tends to go to nest eggs or remittances, to be spent on making a life for themselves or their families back in the home country. Fifteen years later, they're running an outsourcing business and the US economy is left with squat.
Call me an imperialist, but I believe that if you want to benefit from the American economy, you should become an American (with all of the rights and responsibilities that entails). We should get rid of the H1B program and replace it with a more streamlined immigration process, a la Canada.
For Economist.com readers, there was a great article last July with some stats about the rising tide of remittances, and the degree to which many developing countries' economies are becoming dependant upon them.
While this may get downgraded, I must agree. There were many opinions / interpretations in the review that are, by themselves, capable of inciting anger and hostility in 1 of every 10 slashdot readers (a hypothetical guess). Together, these inflammatory opinions will likely offend all but those who benefit from the subject of the review.
...jobs which are seemingly difficult to fill from the American labor pool for a variety of reasons, and which are eagerly filled by employers who find that qualified, talented people come from countries all over the world.
FOR EXAMPLE:
In my opinion, this is implying that American workers as a whole are incapable of filling these jobs which I believe all of us can agree are in short supply. In addition, the statement suggests that the Mecca of talent comes from a location other than the US (India is implied).
[W]hy do some modern Americans (of course, a small percentage) want only those immigrant programmers and IT workers who came during recent times to go back home, yet tend to forget that their parents or grandparents were immigrants too?
Again implying that those who resent competition in a tight job market aren't considering the reason they are here. How many U.S. born citizens really have ancestors who came to this country with a starting salary in the top 20% (a rough guess for someone making $60,000). I imagine that my ancestors came to America from Europe during hard times and worked in a factory, mill, mine, or field somewhere for earnings that were below what was needed to live comfortably. I doubt very much that they came over and instantly became shop keepers, bankers, farmers, etc..
Anyway, I'm ranting now. My whole point was that this review seems to be more propaganda then review. I work with plenty of people who have ties to India and I do not resent them. However, I resent these programs because I hear stories of THOUSANDS of resumes being sent for a position and HR (who knows nothing of technology) weeds them down and gives them to our director who weeds them down further. It's not a lack of talent in this country, it's an overabundance of fake/insufficient talent which obscures the good talent. An employer might say they get thousands of resumes that stink, but in reality there were probably 200 decent resumes and 50 excellent resumes in that pile of 1000. The only problem is that they rarely get seen. Bringing people in who are assumed to be better than the thousand resumes is not the solution IMO.
Have you ever considered that maybe those foreign workers are simply *better*?
No, I have not considered Indian workers better. India is a country where the average salary is $450 per year. (I'm guessing the median is actually less.) That means that the average family cannot afford a computer. So, when an Indian student gets to college, they have to learn how to use a computer while also taking CS classes. I seriously question any CS program that has to teach basic computer usage along with programming knowledge.
On the other hand, an American student has grown up with computers since before the time they can remember. They've grown up as their family's technical support. They've taken programming classes in high school or even middle school. They may have even contributed professionally to open source groups. So, by the time an American gets to college, they can seriously study the material. US colleges then spend their time weeding out one to two-thirds of the lesser candidates. By the time a US student graduates, they can make that computer do anything including sitting up, barking, rolling over, and fetching the newspaper!
It's well known that companies are looking for cheaper, not necessarily better. Why pay one American programmer when for the same price you can get five Indian programmers?... Even still, I'd place my money on the American.
I am the anti-H1-B visa worker worker.
I am an American who has decided to leave his homeland to work for substandard wages in a foreign country under tenuous at best visa status.
Here's what I have learned (from the prospective of the person in who's country I work):
- Visa workers are brought in because they will work for less money than you.
- Visa workers are brought in because middle men will make half of what they charge the compnay actually employing their skills.
- Visa workers are brought in becuase they work harder, smarter, faster and better than you (on average).
- Visa workers are brought in so that local, state and federal governments can take extreme advantage of their tax situation (think +50% taxation).
- Visa wokers are used to keep your salery down. They are a negotiation tool. A source of fear, uncertanty and doubt to be applied to the labor pool.
- Yes, Dude, I stole your job... hell, I probably stole two or three of them... but don't worry too much; I'll be gone when I become too politically inconvient.
So, there you have it: The company wants Visa workers. Your fellow countrymen who are in the employment business want visa wokers. The very representitive government you have elected wants visa workers... and most importantly, visa workers want to come and work in your country. It's an unstoppable reality. A fact of life. Something that you simply can't control witout looking like the lunitic fringe supremacist bigot that you actually are (don't be ashamed, it's a common human failing that the majority of people harbor, but few would be willing to admit is a part of their character).
I have done Defence work before as a contractor, and fortunately most of the more interesting stuff happens in Adelaide, where I live (we Australians aren't as fond of moving as Americans seem to be). Working as a government employee is another matter entirely. On the other hand, private sector work is as likely as not to be an exciting insurance application, or something of the sort, so that's not very appealing either.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
I don't mean to be offensive or anything, but its virtually a fact that Indians carry some major B.O, all you Patels out there, can u explain this to me? cuz damn, get some old spice, or perhaps try something called soap.
The democracy of this country belongs to it's people. Understand? This is how democracy works.
And, if enough people get tired of the situation they are in, that top 1% won't stand a chance. At that point, capitalism and ownership will be moot points. So, do us a favor, and drop the condescending rhetoric, because you aren't holding all the cards. Your "job" stays your job only as long as society agrees that this is the best way to run things.
So, either deal with it or move to a non-democratic country.
There is usually a non-payment period of 1 year. Also, some countries have a treaty with the US. So if she is paying in her home country, she's exempt here until she gets her Green Card, or until a certain number of years pass, YMMV.
did I just RTFB?
H1B is not for labor competition. It is only issued for labor shortage that requires that a local labor shortage and that the company requesting it has made serious effor to find local labor. Maybe it is being abused, I don't know.
H1Bs are required to be paid as much as an American would. So, in truth, a foreign programmer in his/her own country would be labor competition as outsourcing, the H1Bs in the US would not be as they are filling up seats that could not be filled.
H1B covers anything techical - all the professors in science, math, etc who are from a foreign country are on H1B (unless they have been sponsored and have a green card).
I think you have some pretty standard misconceptions about H1Bs. I'm just stating the facts and philosophies.
Have you ever considered that maybe those foreign workers are simply *better*?
If you accept that the inherent genetic traits for making an excellent programmer are distributed equally among all humans, regardless of culture and national origin, then yes the foreign programmers who make it to the USA are generally better than American-born programmers.
There is a bell-curve of programming skills for every country. India has 900 million people, the USA has 250 million. That means of the best 0.1% of the population, there are going to be almost four times as many brilliant Indian programmers than American.
If your corporation wants to hire the best programmers available AND there are few restrictions for hiring the best people from anywhere in the world, then yes there are going to be more Indian and Chinese programmers working in the best American corporate IT positions in the USA. This will remain so as long as the best programmers in the world are ready, willing, and eager to relocate to the USA.
By the way, consider the enormous hassle that it is to learn a completely different language. And be glad that it is the Chinese programmers who must master English to get the IT job in global corporation instead of you having to master Chinese language to get the IT job in the global corporation.
...than see entire teams get RIFed and have the projects sent overseas.
I code, I'm darn good at it, but guess what? Without a team around, how long would my job exist? The team I work on is a great cross section, and I think it's a better team because of it.
Not only that, when working with people locally, it takes far less time to teach them that (guess what) formatting *does* matter, that naked pointers with one character names are a *bad* idea, that it really *is* a good idea to write manageable code that you'll be able to read and modify in two years (not like a lot of the junk coming back from a lot of the overseas stuff - a lot of that stuff would keep lint output scrolling past for days).
It's unfortunate there are so many people who don't look past the color of someone's skin. I just want to work with people who are self-motivated, want to constantly learn, and who aren't just clocking in from 9-5 because they had Java in college and think that makes them hot stuff. Or worse, PhDs who's eyes glaze over whenever the phrase "type safety" is muttered.
> cat ~/.signature | grep -v bullshit
>
ABCD stands for American Born confused Desi (desi means indian) IBCA stands for Indian Born confused American.
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."--Howard Zinn
Who's the racist clod that modded this comment Insightful? It's exactly as bad as saying "Niggers stink".
First, H1B != Immigrant. They are invited guest workers here nominally because their skills are in short supply. I have worked with a couple H1B programmers, and they are good enough, but not *that* good, and not in short supply at that skill level domestically.
:-)
My opinion? They seem to be here because corporations wanted cheap labor, and lobbied their congressperson. Whence their capitalistic ideals? The market was determining wage levels, but they didnt like it, so they did what they could to drive wages down.
And now, I will call your bluff. First thing tomorrow, go in and tell your boss you want less money. And start working harder.
emt 377 emt 4
I would be more accepting of the H1B programs IF there really were legitimate shortages. But, my personal observations tell otherwise. Many companies like H1B's because they can pay them slightly less and abuse them more. The H1B's don't really have much recourse if they are abused. Besides, it is still good money to them after they translate it into Indian currency, so they are less willing to rock the boat when the companies abuse them.
Typically large companies subcontract H1B's through small companies. The small companies play dirty tricks like delaying paychecks, not paying the last paycheck, etc. Thus, the big company does not have to expose itself to the risks of questionable legality that the small company is willing to take. The small company is often owned by Indians also so that if they are pressured by legal problems, they simply fold up shop in the US and move back to India to do business.
The business lobbyists will do and say anything to cheapify programming. That is their job. We must create counter lobbying groups to compete. We have to take care of ourselves, not rely on Congress or the government to "play fair".
Why isn't India flooding the US with cheap laywers? Answer: because lawyers limit the BAR to citizens. If lawyers are allowed to protect their ass and keep their rates high, why can't we? Why should only they be immune from overseas competion? Share the anti-wealth you laywers you. Equal opportunity 3rd-world spanking.
Table-ized A.I.
This (the talk of H1-B workers not taking American jobs) is all rhetoric nonsense without sound statistical analysis.
The fact is, Americans are feeling the employment pinch, and H1-B permanent immigrants (because they more frequently than not try and get their citizenship here) continue to arrive here in fairly high numbers. There's a fairly real discrepency there, I think.
That is, unless most of the unemployed IT folks are like the majority of the IT folks I know. The lot of them are posessing lackluster intelligence, are unwilling to learn new things outside a clickable GUI wizard, lazy (not the good kind of lazy, either), and just fairly useless all around. In that case, I'm glad these Indians are getting jobs here and becoming citizens.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
"Say it with me:"
"I'm a citizen of the country that companies exists in. I have granted companies the privilege of a charter. I have loaned lenders of capital the product of my brow. I have created a stable government, and legal structure that companies exist within. I have fought and died on battlefields for the continued existence of the country whom companies exist within. I have carved mountains, and leveled hills, channeling the waters so that companies may not want for their mills, and processes. I have inspire and perspire so that companies may have an intellectual, and cultural pool to draw upon. I have battled for a clean environment for companies to thrive in. I have strained and stressed, bringing fourth descendants so that companies need never hunger for workers. I have fill their hearts and minds so that companies need not wander from the path of success, nor antagonize the society they lie within."
A company may not owe me a job, but neither should companies forget the great debt they owe the society they live among. For on the shoulders of society. Companies stand tall. And as we fall, so shall they. The foundations of capitalism have spoken.
That's odd... The jackass-types you describe, are people I only see in movies.
For some reason, almost every American I have met, both abroad and in the U.S., have been remarkably friendly, polite, welcoming and well mannered.
Of course you have your share of idiots over there, but they don't stick out (Fox channel excluded)
OK, I'm a rather pale Norwegian, so the rage of the drunken irish might not reach me, but blacks, hispanics and asians have been just as welcoming and friendly when I have met them.
If you want to stereotype your own people, feel free to do so, but really . . . if we just for one minute forget invasions, bombings and Guantanamo Bay . . . you are actually quite a charming bunch.
( ... of course, I have never been to New York..)
-- somewhat_distant
"Nobody has a right to a job. "
And no one's arguing your strawman. What people are arguing for is a fair playing field. That's not the same as arguing for a "right" to a job.
yeah right. Like, Some English woman asked the an Indian leader why his english was so much better than hers. His answer : Yes, I studied the language. You merely picked it up.
got it? probably not.
In India the best of the best try to become Computer Engineers and this is because (whether you like the fact or not) they can become fabulously rich by being in this field. On the other hand in the US the brainiacs go to medicine ,law or management as there is where the money is. Sure lot of people have computers in their houses when they are kids. That doesnt automatically make them better computer Engineers just like having Television in your house as a kid does not automatically make you Oscar material. Basic intelligence is what matters- the rest is just skills which can be picked up by training. One unfair advantage that Indians do have is they always sacrifice family for the job while its the other way round for Americans. This is why even an Indian fresh out of Engineering college picks up the necessary skils in ayear to be better than someone tinkering about for years. This someone might be great hacker, s guru on some obscure library and run a shitload of freeware projects but from the compant's point of view the fresh kid is giving higher output, will probably work weekends and can be shipped off to India when the company hits a bad patch simply by not renewing his visa. You want a level playing field ? THan lobby your employer to ensure that the Indian kids are given Greencards immediately . That way even they will stop working weekends and start bitching abt the job as they will not have so much to lose.
**Life is too short to be serious**
a) "Do the countries that H1-B's come from have similarly generous guest worker programs?"
If you want to get a $5/hr programmer job in Bombay, I'm sure I can get you one. Something tells me you wouldn't want it too bad. Please don't complain about problems that you don't want solved.
b) "The H1-B program was created specifically to address what was, at one time, a shortage of talent"
If a C++ programmer gets paid $5/hr in India, and $30/hr in the US, it seems to me that there IS infact a shortage of skilled programmers in the US.
c)"the problem is that software engineers have been singled out among other professions"
No regulation says H1-B visas are for "software engineers". I know a lot of doctors and lawyers who're here on an H1. Let me guess: you're a software engineer yourself.
d) " different market forces dependent on the political clout that an industry has relative to labor in the industry"
I'd say UAW has a lot of political clout. And yet, I bet your car wasn't made in Detroit. Not all of it, anyway.
Its not about political clout of the labor force, its about an open world economy: per hour, skilled labor costs a LOT in the US. It makes economic sense to look elsewhere.
In an open global market, where equally skilled people in India are paid one-tenth of their American counterparts, something's bound to give. Its just that you're on the losing side, unfortunately. Maybe it isn't fair on you, but then, c'est la vie (...such is life)
When discussing proportional USE of tax dollars, it would matter only if the top 5% of Americans used 50% of all tax dollars. Your statement sounds compelling but is utterly irrelevant.
biggest minority of them all. Do not call me racist or bigoted or sexist. The truth is that it is more difficult to hire a white male today, hell my sister is a manager and she was told to only hire women because they have too many men.
The people who don't think the indian HB1 programmers are getting the advantage they are wrong. Companies want HB1's because they work cheaper and will work longer and harder than Americans will because we are from here and understand labor laws.
More qualified you say, you indian chaps always seem to think that you are somehow smarter or better than everyone else, well guess what indians are no smarter or dumber than Americans, Brits or europeans. Indians will work harder for lower pay though, and the mindset of the average indian is so problematic that it is no surprise India is such a hell hole for 99% of the population.
The caste system is nothing short of ridiculous and yet indians somehow try to export it with themselves the the US. I have even witnessed managers try to use it on the job. I know many indians and how shall I say this, Indians who came over as adults are very annoying and do not fit in well in the US and people who came over as children or were born here seem far enough removed from the crazy system over there.
It is the failure of American society/government to foster a home grown IT environment that is both educated and sustainable which is the main issue, not that companies higher out to India. The outsourcing is only a reaction to the problem within.
It sounds like the author admits there are cultural differences between indians and americans. Obviously, these aren't genetic differences, but cultural ones.
In general, I've never met a more pleasant set of people, but there is this problem I have with the class structure of Indians.
One Indian told me "You know, the untouchables are inferior because otherwise they would no longer be untouchable." Now, I'm sure there are a lot of Americans that feel that way to their favorite racial group too, but I've noticed a lot of class structure in Indians.
A lot of the so called elite class, such as Brahmans, feel they are vastly more capable than they really are. One Brahman I know told me when he was twelve he was giving religious ceremonies to people 5 times his age. If that won't give you an inflated self-confidence, I don't know what will.
In addition, I've seen a lot of Indians "roll over," agreeing to things they never should. Now, I know a lot of Americans that do these things too, so it isn't unusual, but the number that are willing to is so high that it changes the workplace. Bosses that listen to a bunch of people always agreeing with them, when they are wrong, actually weakens the work environment and removes individuality, freedom, and to some extent the ability to compete. True, it has the advantage of getting the wood behind one arrow, but I can't stand anyone cleaning up anyone else's shit.
That having been said, I can't really generate anything but a great respect for almost all of these people. I can sense what a wonderful place it must be to live in India, where you can walk into your neighbor's home not being concerned about intruding, but just to sit down and have a cup of coffee or something. These people are certainly more socially adept and understanding than I am, and I respect them for it.
Ed Barbar, President and General Manager, Furnit USA
"Allow a flood of illegal immigrants across the border to take all the menial jobs"
Somehow, the words "allow" and "illegal" don't seem right in the same sentence. The fact that these people are "illegal immigrants" means someone wrote a law saying they shouldn't be here.
Everything that happens in your life doesn't need to be a cosmic conspiracy. Or a result of "class wars".It might just be for good old 'love of money'.
(I hate flaming, but just this once. Forgive me God for I have sinned)
Let me guess: you voted for President Bush and supported the Iraq war. And you believe in Area-51, Apollo 11 being a hoax, and regularly read SOLLOG's posts.
Not even America.
But then, you just wiped out the Red Indians.
Sure, but the answer to the question doesn't help your point.
It isn't stockholders who create wealth. All surpluses arise out of labour.
They do, in fact, use 50% of tax dollars. Those tax dollars support the socioeconomic system which raised them to the top 5%, and without which most of them would either a) never have reached that level or b) had their throats cut.
What the hell does that mean?
You didn't help bake the bread any more than they did. The fact that you were born near the loaf is irrelevant.
Neither one of you is more or less entitled.
Silly?
Maybe you should try and get rich and see what it takes. Or maybe you are rich but don't realize how you got your money.
You don't get rich without really screwing other people. The poor people!
Business is the science of exploitation.
Wake up!
"That was the first time I ever talked to an African American. I never understood their accent even in the movies."
Hey, at least he didn't call them "black".
All surpluses arise out of labour.
Marx's labor theory of value is tripe. If you dig a hole and fill it in again, you've performed labor, but you haven't created any value.
Creating wealth requires *thought*, coupled with work. Capital is one of the resources that may or may not be required to create wealth in any particular case.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Who were the Barbary Pirates, and which nation disenfranchised them?
Because we are not stupid.
Some people have a documented history of arriving to a certain land or territory before anybody else.
Native people in the different countries have documental evidence they were first there.
If you really want to know how far and where from your ancestry goes nowadays your DNA has all the clues, it is just a matter of willing to pay the price of the study tacing your ancestry back.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The company I work for has many H1b people. They're great people. Smart, educated and competent. However, we cheated to hire most of them. What happens is Jim, Manager of Software(as an example) wants to hire Bob the code jockey from China, so he tells HR that.
... but nobody will ever see it. We're not a big company, nobody ever looks at that part of our web site. It might also appear in a local newspaper or something. I'm not sure.
HR runs it past the immigration lawyer and they write up a job description which specifies exactly Bob's years of education, exactly Bob's project experience and probably Bob's shoe color and zodiac sign. They then post that job description at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the leopard". Oh. They also post it on our web site
Some time later, they regrettably couldn't fill the job with anyone local, so they hire Bob. No, this isn't speculation. I've seen it happen a dozen times in the past few years. It's a science now. It's not just Bob from China, either. There are assorted European countries we hit up too and one place in the Middle East.
Again, I like most of the people we hire this way, but it's a mockery of the process...and I strongly suspect a lot of companies do it the same way. Find H1b candidate first, fail to fill position with existing worker second, click the 'import' button.
"If words like "carrers", "inherient" and "priviledge" appear in a resume, it will be dumped in the trash."
If only because of the appalling spelling.
That is why you can be out-compited in price (i.e. salary).
Most US of A people eat too much, drive too much, use cars that use too much petrol, don't care about energy efficency and buy stuff like there is no tomorrow (did you check your trade deficit?).
Many Indians in relatively well off positions don't mind to ride crowded public transport, certainly eat more sensibly and certainly do not have the same attitude to extreme weather (USians have this habit of having the aircon or heating 24x7 to freezing or boling temperatures in badly isolated houses).
The above is the tip of the iceberg, I mantain that workers in rich countries could change their habits, keep a very decent standard of life and become more competitive price-wise in a ferocious international job market (if you think Indians are bad news wait for Vietnamese, Cambodians and Filipinos, who are all highly entreprenurial and talented people willing to work for even less. When one has walked the slums of Ho Chi Minh City or Manila one understands why western workers are becoming an overpriced luxury).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
How can you get "they're" right, but use the wrong your?
They are = They're
You are = You're
I think it's important to realize that there are actually legitimate uses of the H1-B visa program. More often than not, the bad press you hear about the H1-B is caused by certain companies criminally manipulating the system with the specific purpose of circumventing immigration law.
Also, it is not like the H1-B visas that are granted are never scrutinized. Without getting into the gory details, I will just say that the government makes it very expensive from a legal standpoint to hire H1-B's because of the constant headache of having to deal with the INS. My fiancee is constantly hassled by the INS about her visa - just for her to go home to Colombia for Christmas takes $2k at the lawyer's office and 6 months of filling out forms and waiting - just because if there is one little mistake on some obscure form somewhere, her visa will be cancelled. This happened to her last year and it took almost $10k in legal fees (which really just amount to bribing the INS since immigration lawyers and administrative law judges all get together and play golf on weekends anyway) to get her back to the US. Her employer is also constantly harassed about whether or not they have her job posted, whether they have interviewed any Americans for her job, and so on.
Believe me, whatever money the company has saved by sponsoring someone's H1-B is spent threefold more on legal hassles. Once we're married, I too will have to cough up INS bribes for three years until she can naturalize...
I think a far greater injustics is the L-1 visa, which never ever gets any press. The L-1 is FAR more dangerous to American jobs than the H1-B. The L-1 allows multinationals to bring in foreigners from overseas offices without any scrutiny whatsoever - and there are no quotas. Larger companies can also get a "blanket L-1" which allows them to bring foreigners over without even filing a petition to the INS.
Oooh! Anger & media exposure! Gosh, what a drag. Were their churches firebombed*? No. Were others of their ilk physically attacked because of their religion? Not much backlash, but you're comparing it with murder & assault. You're whining about what a bad deal us white guys get, and it's pathetic and embarrassing.
Do you really confuse cults with non-traditional religions? Are you ignorant or dishonest? Cult has a well recognized definition that works pretty well. Most traditional religions, turn out not to be cults. Paranoia about outsiders and particular types of manipulation are some indicators. For example, pagans are about as non-traditional as you can get, but they don't get described as a cult.
I knew someone who spent some time undercover, and had personal knowledge that the militias have significant crossover with the cross burners in white sheets & pointy hats.
Are you saying that there aren't dozens of compounds of armed cultists led by religious zealots? If you think it's only dozens, and only the backwoods you're not looking around. We only hear about the ones who are so completely screwed up that they can't keep their psychotic paranoia to themselves.
Rajneesh's followers had plenty of weapons confiscated, full auto stuff you don't get to own without a license. They also experimented with food poisoning in restaurants around the town that was hostile to them. The U.S. doesn't have a monopoly, and neither does the backwoods. Aum Shinrikyo (a religious cult) poisoned the subway in Tokyo with sarin during rush hour. Then there were all those geeks in Rancho Santa Fe (expensive San Diego suburb) who confused space travel and suicide.
* Waco was awful, but unless you're prepared to defend child molestation as religion, you can't call that religious persecution.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
who described herself as being from Persia so as to avoid negative connotations -- and this was almost 15 years ago
in other words, iran.
1989.
during the height of iran-contra and just after the iran-iraq war had ended.
If it's hard to find Americans to do the job, then exactly from whom is he stealing the job?
Shouldn't the proud American-born citizens that are raising voices against H1-B's worry about the fall of Higher Education industry, if the H1-B visas are removed? They need to worry because the students who pay exorbitant amount of fees to get higher education here (and thus fuel the US economy) would be better off staying in their country or in a less expensive place such as Australia or Singapore, which means American economy may again go into recession.
On a similar note, the above mentioned category of Americans should also know that the jobs in academia(University Professors) or research labs have higher percentage representation of H1B or immigrants (green card holders/citizens by choice )? How are they gonna send these geeks back to their countries?
Perhaps, they are yet to realize that it is the highly competetive market they are up against...and not immigrants.
At the company that I worked for previously we outsourced one aspect of our computer development to india only to find that the code that came back was never commented it may have been good code but when there is no commenting its trying to save your own job when it comes to debug. because of the nature of the business we worked in (defense) we had to audit every line of code. It took months longer than what it should have because we needed to send the code back to be commented as a part of the requirements. The communications between the different groups / teams often became the biggest problem. Many where ultra educated with clearly no experience and would only write text book code.
Got a question about UNIX ask it here : Unix/xBSD Forum
-1, Explaining the joke
I am not sure what the big deal is. Americans despise immigrants in general (and yes, they being immigrants themselves doesn't make a difference). In fact, it is human nature.
;) I can't blame him, he seems to think that everyone in the world wants to live there no matter what, and kept saying, "there's got to be more to it than this" when I said, well, my visa was for study and I finished my study, why would I stay?
I am US educated (I went and paid and paid and paid for my bachelor degree).. once I graduated I left to come back to where my parents lived. No, not back home, cause I never lived in my home country. I wasn't an immigrant in the US, I was a student. I've seen the typical 'racism' that goes around.. and BELIEVE ME, Americans are faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar less racist than many many other countries. Take it from me, I've lived in quite a few countries.
Currently, I live in Dubai where I work in the IT industry.. and while I personally don't face racism or such, I see others who do (largely Indians and people from that part of the world). Here, you have no rights. You can never become an immigrant and you are always a guest who will have to leave at the end of the day (regardless of whether you have been contributing to this country for 2 months or 20 years).
I recently attempted to go back to school and change my career (seeing that the job market for the IT world is switching to cheap labor, something I did not want to be a part of). Unfortunately the US Consular Officer thought that the fact that I left the US as soon as I graduated was suspecious and denied my student visa application
For people like me (and there are a few), who come from war-torn countries and no industry in their own country to support their talent and skills, we become global nomads, jumping from one country to the next, never wanting to settle anywhere..
To Americans, don't take it so hard, you are a friendly bunch (despite the being cut-throat capitalists, etc. -- I've seen far worse).. To Indians, the problem is not so much that you are taking up jobs other American citizens would want.. it is that you are willing to work for cheap.. for very very cheap because of the misconception that life in the US is worth all the trouble, soon to find out it's not.
And it's not only in the US. Even here, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.. Indians account for a very large part of the tech industry.. and it is very hard to convince an employer that he should pay me fairly when he can hire an Indian for 1/3 of the salary I ask for.
Let me get this straight. You're saying that immigrants to the US should wait 50-100 years before getting a job? Buddy, are you on drugs? Or just plain out of your freaking mind? When your illegal immigrant great-grandfather came to the US, he took a job. Be thankful for it. Where do you think you would be if he hadn't? Probably wouldn't have even been born.
Being born in the United States does not give you the right to dictate who should or should not be able to work. Rather than feeling ashamed of your immigrant heritage, you should be ashamed of turning your back on it, even if you can't point to a single place of "origin"; in fact, even more so because of it.
In fact, if you're having trouble finding a job, have you considered emmigration? There's a lot of potential for honest people who are willing to work in Europe and Japan...
Worst thing is, most Americans don't think like that. But the few idiots who do spoil the image of the entire people in the eyes of foreigners.
I know one place that prefers H1B employee's to Americans. Let's call this mythical place "Sterling Computer Consultants" in the never-never land of Troy Michigan.
To meet the requirements of the H1B program, they had to "publically" post the job for a couple of weeks. That they did - their public posting was on the wall above the garbage can in the "break area". The job posting was a rehash of the resume of the H1B they wanted to hire. Hmmm, how many of you have exactly 5 years experience in Powerbase, 4 years experience in Java, 7 years in Visual Basic, etc, etc...
Of course, they got no response from any American (because no American knew the job posting existed) except for the "trusted few" who already worked there. Damn, there must be a shortage of skilled workers so let's hire an H1B. Hey, how about this for luck, he is already sitting in the office ready to start work. Wow!
So nobody really abuses the H1B program. They are following the "LETTER" of the law.
The review (and perhaps the book--I haven't read it yet) completely misses the point of opposition to H1-B visas. Doubtless there's bigotry against immigrant workers, but H1-B visas are still a very bad thing for immigrants as well as native workers.
A person who comes to the U.S. on an H1-B visa is an indentured servant, allowed to be here for only a limited time. They must work for the company that hired them. They are paid less than the native workers they replace, laws to the contrary notwithstanding, and they do drive down wages for everyone. H1-B visa holders have almost no negotiating leverage, they are frequently mistreated, and they cannot stay in the U.S. to build businesses, raise families. or become part of the community over the long term unless they're lucky enough to get their visa status changed. The U.S. does get a lot of benefit from foreign workers, but only if they can stay here to become part of the community, not if they're forced to leave after a few years of toiling away in a cubicle.
Guest worker status has to be eliminated. It's unfair to the new immigrants and its unfair to permanent residents and citizens. If industry and the government really cared about filling skills gaps as they claimed, rather than just driving down the cost of labor, the solution is simple: replace H1-B, L1, H2 and all similar guest worker visas with green cards. Once a person is allowed into the U.S. to work, let them do so, just like any citizen, without any restrictions. They can take any job they want. They can quit at any time to go to a better job or no job at all. They can start their own businesses. Give immigrants the same rights native-born workers get, and the mistreatment of immigrant workers would vanish overnight, at least in high-tech, and it would be significantly reduced in lower-skill jobs like farm labor. The negative pressure on wages would be reduced too. Finally, immigrants would be allowed to really contribute to building the future of the country and their local communities over the long term. This helps the native workers. It helps the immigrant workers. The only ones that it hurts are the corporations that would have to pay a fair market price for labor instead of purchasing indentured servants at auction.
.... welcom to the club.
That is exactly what happens to millions of Mexicans: not liked but needed in the US, distrusted back home in Mexico.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
After reading through most of the comments and having worked all my life here in the US, but I've traveled to nearly 60 foreign countries. I ask this: Why, is it now that so many workers from abroad want to come to the US now for work? It seems the salaries are nearly equal or close depending on cost of living and the US workers treat you terribly. So why come? On the flip side of this question. Why stay? Why should people like me stay? A US born citizen in this US economy, on the decline with all the negative posts on the US above and posts on "how good it is" elsewhere. With many H1-B's returning home, why stay here? Why not seek jobs oversees?
Many other countries ease many of the restrictions you face once you have probed you are not a liability. In many situations the only thing you can't do a a non citizen is vote, which is fair enough since one does not want to become a citizen,
Countries with a sense of moral values will even give you many entitlements for which one as immigrant hs not paid a penny (healthcare, education).
Discrimination based on citizenship is racism with another name, at least some constitutions have the good sense to extend their guarantees to anybody being in a given country.
Citizenship should be chosen freely by an individual as an acto of commitment, not convenience and there should be no cohercion of any kind, otherwise the act of assuming a new nationality becomes meaningless.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... there is no wonder that US companies prefer foreigners to sorry ignorant sods like yourself.
As anybody half acquited with this issue knows (and for bunnies sakes, if you did not read it on this thread then you have more educational problems than I thought) foreign workers brought to the US under the visa scheme under discussion have to earn at least the average salary for the profession.
This is so exactly with the purpose of making US workers with similar experience and skills competitive where they are the least competitive: cost.
But still the bloddy slashbot with wet dreams of cheap labour and slave workers keep blabbing about this cheap worker nonsense.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I've worked both with teams outsourced to India and with H1-B visa holders, and I believe one reason that roles like programming seem to be disproportionately filled, is that the bulk of the work is in a different language - meaning the programming language itself. The perception by companies benefiting from these immigration laws is that broken English is less of an issue in this line of work.
That is, generally, until the company expects documentation, or would like the software design to match business rules...
can some one tell me? I have always wondered this
local slang for Indians is "dot people" but I really don't know what the dot is, why it is, what it is made of, who wears it, etc.
Saying they are simply better is just ignorant as saying they're worse. I have absolutely no problem with them coming over here and working here if they are qualified. The only thing that really gets on my nerves is when nobody bothers to check if they can speak English. Apparently it's so un-"politically correct" to not hire someone if they speak really poor English and they're foreign, but it's ok to throw out an American's resume if they misspell a word. If the person has such a thick accent and such a poor grasp of the language, it really makes it difficult to work with the person. You will spend a lot of time repeating yourself or having to correct what they do because they misunderstand you or vice versa due to the language barrier. If they are skilled and they can speak English that's great, but I don't see why companies act like it's some sin to deny a person a job when nobody can communicate effectively with them.
So, is "capitalism" more important than "democracy"? Man, do you realize what you've stated? Is the point of the US to make the most money, or to advance the rights and liberties of it's citizens?
/* Dang, I can't type that well. */
>
The fact is U.S. labor is overpriced and of declining quality
Are you sure that you're not still living in the dot-com era? I have seven years of college, degree in math, business, and computer science, and 25 years of experience; I'm working for $16/hour. An earlier poster is doing serious web-developement work for $10 hour.
Oh yeah, I can't wait to make the down payment on that new BMW.
Even larger proportion of immigrants than the US, and the population firmly believes that immigration is beneficial rather than worrying about "all-Canadian" jobs. I've never heard a single person complaining about immigrants stealing jobs.
The economy is doing well? Hardly - the economy is in terrible shape:
The programmers taking American jobs do spell doom for the American economy. Our technology, our skills, are being transferred to citizens of foreign nations. We're giving away intellectual capital. We're telling American workers not to fight for their wages, to just accept what the landed gentry will give them. Capitalism functions best as a balance between labor and the capitalist, not as a one-sided affair.
/* Dang, I can't type that well. */
If they don't; then the parant poster's theory that "Immigration will save the economy" is completely shot to hell.
You forget whos pocket all of their money is comming out of...
Hint: has nothing to do with the tooth fairy!
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
1) Apply for legal (citizenship) immigration.
2) Expect to make a living wage and don't except less
The reason they are bringing is all the H1B visas is not to fill a shortage. It's to screw the over by paying them $24k - $35k and the minimum health coverage required by law for 16 years of education. They then can fire (layoff) there current workers.
If you grew up in the US, then that means that for the first 18-22 years of your life (at least) you weren't helping to pay for the infrastructure you took advantage of, either
Where are you getting this? I grew up in the US, and I have been paying for the infrastructure I take advantage of at least since the age of 14.
I'm not a smorgasbord.
I used to not be so crazy about H1-B's, but I realized that I would rather have H1-B's in the country paying US taxes than having the money go to other countries via outsourcing.
P.S. I realize that an immigrant may send a good bit of money back to their homeland, but at least they are still contributing to the US economy.
here were the mobs running around threatening white males of Christian background?
They are still around to this day. They are called by many names, Liberals, Democrats, ACLU members, etc.
Seriously, your probably the first one to cry race when you don't get your way or it is to your advantage. Here, let me cry a bit for you. Bla ha ha ha hhah hhahhhah cough...snort ha ha ha ha ha
If your not then my appologies. Personally I'm conservative (liberals seem very stupid to me... maybe it just seems that way), and I see no difference between the races. It is only when they choose to make a distinction without a difference. "I didn't get the job because I'm black." No, you weren't qualified or some other reason. "There are more blacks incarcerated as a percentage so there must be discrimination/profiling." No, they comitted the crimes. Don't do the crime and stay out of jail. You will get caught, if not sooner than later.
I worked with a guy from Barhead, and he was always the first to crack a Canadian joke, or make fun of the way we talked. (I say Java, you say Jahva, let's call the whole thing off.) I didn't have the greatest introduction to him, because he was the cheap replacement for a friend who had just been laid off, but we became friends.
I think a lot of Americans don't understand Canada. Some think of it as the 51st state, whereas others wonder whether Canadians speak English. I was surprised by how critical my colleague was of French Canadians. (Apparently, the feeling is mutual.)
I don't know why so many people complain about companies hiring H1Bs over American workers. I'm a current H1B holder (the only one in the company I work for) and I've been looking for a new job for a good while. I've received many calls from recruiters for jobs where I would be a perfect fit (bilingual English/Spanish, technical knowledge, Comp Sci degree from an American Univ) but as soon as they find out that I need H1B sponsorship they tell me "Sorry, we won't do it!, good luck!". 90 - 95% of the jobs I see in sites like monster, dice, etc require to have the American citizenship or pocess a green card. To the ones that are saying that companies are hiring H1Bs, please send me a list of companies, because sure enough, I might doing something wrong and looking in only those companies that don't sponsor.
"compounds of armed cultists led by psychotic religious zealots" are we refering to the the white house?
it's the outsourcing I hate.
Although I would advise against immagrating to the US- esp in these times.
click me
The problem is when I have to compete with some guy in Bungalore who can work for 17 rupees a day and live like a king. I can't even buy my lunch for 17 rupees, but the look on the face of the guy behind the counter would be priceless if I tried to offer 17 rupees in exchange for some lunch.
I say let them come over here and compete with me. I can take it. At least then there is a level playing field.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
I was surprised to read his conciliatory advice to Indians treated suspiciously on the basis of their skin color or accent in the panic-prone modern America to "please accept it," rather than to bristle. That might be pragmatic and sensible advice, but America will be a better place when it's unnecessary.
I basically agree with what both the author and the reviewer are saying; there isn't much that H1-B's can do about American's attitudes and bristling just makes people edgier. It's the "native" American's attitudes that need to change.
And for the record, I'm a white, 3rd or 4th generation American who has uneasy feelings about losing my job to outsourcing.
"You will soon be more aware of your growing awareness." - My first recursive fortune cookie!
The problems start to materialze when you bring in Java codemonkeys from Kozhikode who just got their certifications. There are plenty of American Java codemonkeys. Our universities graduate hundreds of them annually. These H1-Bs are not here because they are needed. They are here because they can be exploited.
And exploited they are. A friend of mine is on H1-B and he works so hard he actually sleeps at the office on his boss's couch. He hasn't gotten a raise ever or a bonus ever or even a "thank you" for all the hard work. The worse are the Indian managers who already have their green cards. They know that they have the H1-Bs by the balls and they treat them like shit. When I first started out I was at the same rank as the H1-Bs and I watched as the Indian managers would berate and force to work my peers. But they would never have dreamed of treating me that way. Nobody ever yelled at me or demanded I work weekends like they did to the H1-Bs. They knew I could tell them to take my job and shove it up their ass and that would just make the project even later.
If we Americans want get outraged about the H1-B program, we need to get outraged over the mistreatment of H1-B holders by their companies. I'm sure your gf is treated fine because she and her company are using the program as it was intended. But there are too many cases of abuse. I've seen them, and it's sickening.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
"[W]hy do some modern Americans (of course, a small percentage) want only those immigrant programmers and IT workers who came during recent times to go back home, yet tend to forget that their parents or grandparents were immigrants too?" Because the visa is temporary. They are not people who are committed to the US, they are not here to assimilate, they are only here to make money and go home. I think they H1-B program is awfull and should be done away with and replaced with a system to get people permanent residency after the first year on the way to integrating them as new citizens. H1-B's aren't immigrants; they are guest workers, and that is the problem.
When you hire H1-Bs, you get the pick from the best of the best that India (or China or whatever) have to offer and pay them like a US greenbeen straight out of school. You get to work them 80 hours per week. Once they get their green card, they resign and you just repeat the process.
That is how H1-B worked at my old employer. And, yes, I felt sorry for the H1-B visa holders.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
IANAA (American) but Canada has similar immigrant issues, except...
As I understand it, the 1B people are NOT immigrants. They are indetured slaves, in the country at the whim of various employers, some of whom take advantage of that leverage. 1B visitors with limited negotiating positions DO end up making less and consequently displacing potential local employees.
If they were true landed immigrants, they might accept a lower pay for a job only until they were comfortable with the new country and their own intrinsic worth.
And, true immigrants with longer-term security would instead be making more permanent purchases (i.e. houses?) instead of worrying about resale values.
Temporary worker permits are an escape clause for corporations who want the benefits of overseas outsourcing without the hassles of actually managing a remote business.
When I created each of my 3 companies, not once was I asked if I was a citizen, resident, or even a human being. As long as you pay the fees and/or taxes, congrats! You're incorporated.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Not a troll -- MOD PARENT UP --
The argument isn't that developer X from a foreign country is given the opportunity to take developer Y's job in the US -- it is that Corporation Z lies about the inability to find skilled laborers in the US in order to hire a skilled foreigner at a much lower wage than a domestic laborer.
Having worked in several companies with hundreds of H1-B visa holders, I can say there has been zero evidence of greater skill or training than I see in the unemployed domestic laborers. In many cases, companies are hiring foreign laborers right out of school with zero work experience. The company then pays to train them because it is so much cheaper than hiring someone qualified for the position, whether foreign or domestic. This is where things go to shit.
It is the corporate abuse of power that pisses people off, not the H1-B visa holders or the base purpose of the program.
Maybe it's just me, but I don't care where you're from or what you're paid -- when I'm dealing with you it's because we're here to do a job. I don't like dealing with stupid people, whether foreign or domestic. The abuse of this program has only added an international aspect the the real problem in the IT industry -- having to work with people who don't know how to do their jobs. The dot-bomb at least cleaned out part of that group, yet here we are again -- fueled by corporate greed and the abuse of cheap labor. That's great for the H1-B's who come over and have a better standard of living compared to what they had before, but it's crap for the people who have the skills and experience who simply aren't hired because the government sponsors importing a low-cost high-tech sweatshop.
Get over yourselves. The need to import skilled laborers is mostly bullshit. The corporate need to import a cheap workforce is reality... and here we are.
Before you go boo-hoo-ing over the "plight" of immigrant IT workers in America and thinking we're all just racist pigs ... try being an American IT worker, in another country and see what racism really looks like. Most countries have no compunction about using the N! word to your face.
It's not just America, it's people everywhere that are a littler reticent (even xenophobic) when it comes to imported labor.
Ong AC noi la:
>But racism ? Sorry. Western world has a sole
>claim on that.
For reals? What's the average Indian's opinion of Kafirs...?
Besides, you can take it from me that the chinese have plenty of blatant racism against blacks--and last I checked, the chinese were not considered a region of the "Western world."
The wealth I want to distribute is mostly created by natural processes that go on without the help of people. What little people actually create winds up largely concentrated in a few hands through exploitation, not hard work.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
'nuff said!
There is only one reason H1-B Visas should be denied. The state of our economy.
It is easy to feel compassion for immigrants trying to make it in the world, given that our country was started by immigrants, but we must also protect the economy that supports us all.
If we are employing outside IT workers, while US IT workers are unemployed, then we have made an error in the way we are handling immigration. Immigration should be balanced with the concerns of full US citizen employment.
Remember what happened when Europeans came over and started consuming the resources of the indiginous population unregulated and unrestrained. those people are now living in reservations with their very existance regulated by the foreign insurgent government.
It's not that I think Indian programmers, and other immigrants, are out to take over our country. The point I make with that statement is that unregulated immigration can be devastating to the current population and resources of an established nation.
We need checks and balances to protect what we intend to share with new arrivals and established citizens, to make sure it is there to partake of in the first place.
The Native American's ancestors came here from other places too, when the continents were closer together and there were land bridges they could cross. The argument that we should not balance the use of our resources because we are all decended from immigrants doesn't really make much sense when you think about things like that.
The only people who can really say there ancestors were born where they live, are Africans, who live where human life began. An established nation must balance the use of it's resources to make sure it will always have something to offer, to immigrants as well as it's own citizenry.
People decide together when to invest in infrastructure for the greater good, rather than having top down direction decided by one person or a cabal who may no have the group's best interests at heart but rather his/their own?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I don't think it is attitudes per se, that are the same, afterall, the attitude towards those listed in your own post *has* changed.
It's the ignorance that stays the same.
Fear of the unknown and a hostile reflex against it rather than curiosity and exploratory outreach. It's a shame, since so much of this country is based fundamentally on exploration of the unknown.
What a sad place this would be if we had no Mexican, Chinese, Indian, Italian, you name it, restaurants for lunch!
Life would be boring without the unknown. Unfortunately, a large fraction of the population wants just that, a stable, secure, reliable, routine, unchanging, unchallenging, boring life.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
There are people who create wealth. Whether or not it is fair for them to keep wealth, and how much wealth the society which protects them and allows them to create that wealth should allow them to keep is a matter for debate and group decision. Whether they who have created wealth should be the ones to decide which business ventures to try next is likewise a matter for group decision.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
We should not allow immigrants from any country that does not share our basic culture.
You are comparing the wrong populations: less than 200 million of the Chinese population live in or near a city where they could be gainfully employed in such activities as programming. And literacy rates in China continue to be a problem (90% in men, 80% in women). So although China has a larger pool of workers than the U.S., it has a smaller pool of available knowledge workers than does the U.S.
If the entire network is overseas and run from there, there's no point in having the IT manager in the US when there's an equally qualified Indian IT Director in the network center. Why would they need you? They can just make the decisions there. You should be using your MBA to start your own business. Stop working on someone else's dream and start working on yours. -Nazz
We all know that the above is not true: neither are competitive wages paid to H1-Bs nor are the H1-B rules enforced.
I work at a Fortune 500 company who has about 350 H1-B and L1 workers from Indian (out of a total of 800 total IT workers). Most of these guys are straight out of a bachelor degree program and in their mid-20's. So, immediately, I give no credence to what this author says because it's a lie.
What he also fails to tell is that L1 workers DO NOT PAY TAXES. Companies abuse L1 visas and keep these guys around here for 2-3 years (and maybe longer) and all the while the money that's paid to them goes straight to India.
Furthermore, there's a misperception that Indian programmers are superior to American programmers. This is completely untrue. Some of them are better and many are worse. What would you expect from someone straight out of college with no experience, limited communication skills, and severe cultural differences. One of the biggest problems we have with Indian programmers is that they do EXACTLY what they are told by project managers. They don't push back when they are asked to do something stupid or impractical whereas American workers (and even Indian and other foreign workers that have been here for several years) will interact with management to tell them what is possible and what isn't possible.
Outsourcing and foreign workers aren't necessarily bad for America, though. Sometimes bringing over someone who'll work for less to do entry level jobs opens more opportunities for those of us with a more advanced skill set.
I'm not angry with anyone who comes to the US in search of a better life. If those opportunities are available to them, that's great. What I have a problem with is that many of my friends who are willing to work for less, and have better skills, are left collecting unemployment.
Take care of US citizens first, and then worry about non-citizens... hell, that's what most other countries do so why aren't we doing it.
Taking pride in something assumes you have a legitimate reason to take some of the credit for making it happen.
Who said I was proud to be an American? Now you're just putting words in my mouth. I dislike the polices of our president and I am ashamed to call myself an American with him as our figurehead. Bush has lied to us and the rest of the world for policies that put his rich, crony friends ahead of everyone else. Where's Kenneth Starr when you need him? The republicans got all high and mighty regarding Clinton lying about getting a BJ in office. That lie didn't kill any Americans, unlike Bush's lies.
So, what did you do to become an American? (not your family, not your ancestors, but YOU)
Uh... I was born here. By American law, that alone makes me an American citizen. Other than that, I was raised here. And I have lived here my entire adult life. That is what I've done.
However, you seem to have missed my point. My ancestors came from Ireland, Scotland, England, Germany, France, and more. The latest ancestor I have that came off the boat was my great grandfather who immigrated illegally from England. My earliest ancestor that came to America walked the land bridge from Asia along with the rest of the native Americans.
If the US is not my home, which country would accept me as their citizen? The answer is none. After Bush came into office, I checked. No country that my ancestors came from will accept a third generation descendent as one of their citizens. The fact of the matter is: I am an American and nothing else.
AFAIK H1-B is a guest worker program. When I think immigrant I think "resident alien" (i.e. green card).
That sure hasn't been my experience. In over ten years of consulting with, well it was the Big Six, when I started, many of the project teams I've worked on have had a majority of immigrant and H1B consultants.
I've never been on a project where one of the top performers was an H1B, or even an immigrant. And of the handful of consultants I've had to remove from projects, all of them were immigrants who somebody thought would be good consultants because they had advanced computer science degrees.
Obviously, that's a very small sample, but it certainly creates an impression.
"We have nothing in common, your attitude annoys me, and your political views are appalling."
Because of the characteristics of the job, now it is the leading example of a global economy's labor market distribution. It makes sense to pay the lowest overall cost, including long-term economic costs wherever that resource may happen to be. Why do I say it's like a 7-11 job? Because supply outstrips demand and the costs of resources are so low. If you want an example, look at the cost of custom software at www.rentacoder.com. The TOP programmer (by their metrics of course) average project cost is $467.03! A custom portal site with e-commerce bells and whistles goes for $1500. And of course, these guys are based in India. As a immigrant I came here, got an education (BS and Masters in Comp. Sci.) and programmed for 10 years as tech lead. I saw the light and realized that programming is a dead end as a money-making career. Sure, it's fun, but the avg. programmer will not be able to make a living in the US, it's too easy to rent someone elsewhere. I don't think this is necessarily bad, in the end we simply will reach standard of living equality with other countries. So, what to do? I'm in law school now. I figured the next tech wave is going to be in intellectual property. Job prospects are good and the money is even better.
Let me get this straight. You're saying that immigrants to the US should wait 50-100 years before getting a job? Buddy, are you on drugs?
No, I am not on drugs. And no, I did not say immigrants should wait 50 years until they get a job. I was saying I am an American because my family has been here so long that we are nothing else. Recent immigrants, legal or otherwise, always have somewhere they can return to. I do not.
Being born in the United States does not give you the right to dictate who should or should not be able to work.
Being born in the US makes me a US citizen. Considering that the US is a republic, then I do have input on the laws of the US. My fellow Americans and I do have the right to dictate the laws of this country. Those laws do cover businesses and who they may employ.
In fact, if you're having trouble finding a job, have you considered emmigration?
Yes, actually I have. Although the reason was shame over who we elected president. I even looked at the requirements of becoming a citizen of my ancestors' countries. None of them will accept a third generation citizen as one of their own.
Seriously, you make no sense.
Which is it, smart guy? Make up your mind. Why did you get your education? Did you even think about cheap foreign labor when you were deciding which college to go to? Personally, that was the farthest thing from my mind. Go back and reread The Wealth of Nations to figure out why you make no sense. This phenomenon has been well understood since the 1700's. And to think I always thought it was through an educated and enlightened populace. Also, go read some Ricardo with your Smith if you want to learn about "good-paying jobs". Seriously, where have you been the last 300 years? It's a good thing that's not true. Otherwise, our democracy would have never come to fruition. We didn't exactly start out the richest country on earth, you know. Cute. Spend a significant amount of time in a third-world country and you'll realize how utterly stupid that question was. For many immigrants, the biggest reason they make the sacrifice to come here is for the benefit of their children."Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
I stand corrected. Communism then. It doesn't work (at least not in anything larger than a small group). Nice idea though. Not terribly realistic.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Do the countries that H1-B's come from have similarly generous guest worker programs? Not that I know of.
In my opinion, visa programs for the U.S. aren't all that generous, and visas tend to be grudgingly given. I thought my experience getting a visa for a European country (even though I am a U.S. citizen) was difficult until I talked to some people in the U.S. who described their experience trying to get a visa for the U.S.
As for other countries being generous to Americans, I think it varies from country to country. I know that it's a piece of cake to go work in India: far, far easier than it is to work in the U.S. I did some research, and found out that all you need to work in India is a job offer. That's it.
In Afghanistan, all you need to do is find transportation to the country.
Obviously, you haven't lived in New Jersey.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
XML Tools for Mac OS X
...you have never been to France. They make unfriendliness into an artform, as they will proudly attest to.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
You are mad at H1B visa holders. These guys came here legally. They are earning wages legally. Would you rather prefer guys like those involved in 9/11 or the illegal immigrants whom our government is considering giving citizenship to? The crime rate amongst the H1B holder is almost zero. Lets accept the fact that they are better for the US society.
I know the world exists because I exist.
When you have hundreds of demographic variables correlated against economic deterioration, and the variable with the highest correlation of them all is immigration, you are going to have a hard time coming up with a variable that will have a higher correlation.
Practice of this type is known as science.
Seastead this.
H1B visa workers lead the way in racking up huge quantities of uncompensated overtime that helps insure everyone else has to do the same.
Tsk. Tsk. I am an H1 visa holder and believe me if somebody wants me to stay overtime then they pay for it. The same rule applies to all the other H1 contractors that I know. Oh wait, are you talking about salaried workers. Hey, tough. That's one of the main reasons I became a contractor. Unpaid overtime is the same for citizens and us stinking foreigners.
All the talk about the grand benefits of "freed trade" and visa workers has a big logical hole:
What if everyone's job was flooded by cheaper third-world labor? (Note that even the act of introducing more bodies reduces wages.) Programmers are currently targeted for visa labor mostly because big companies have the lobbying power to "justify" them. But car mechanics, doctors, plumbers, lawyers and a host of other service providers could be made less expensive by visa workers also if allowed. But they are mostly not allowed because consumers generally don't have/give lobbying power or organizations self-limit who gets certified (such as lawyers).
If having some foreigners makes all this magic "free trade" money flow in, then does it extrapolate to every job? If so, who would be able to buy stuff? The foreigners would work for peanuts because either it goes further back at their home country due to exchange rates or because they are used to peanuts. Most of the citizens would be flooded out of jobs. The only people who would be making money would be owners and the foriegners.
Sure, free trade may benefit those two groups, but what about the rest of us? Where is the tipping point? Is some good but all bad? Free trade may perhaps increase total money and trade, but that increase may not come to you and me. Not surprisingly, the benefits usually go to those lobbying for cheaper labor.
Table-ized A.I.
Where is your proof. Most of them live off of corporate expense accounts (the corp pays the taxes), they brag regularly that they can put a big fat 0 in the wages column of their tax forms. I know this because I have worked with many of the ultra rich in this country. They really dont pay taxes.
Previous poster is (presumably) a US citizen, has enough in common with the Anglo-American culture to post an intelligable message on Slashdot, and (again, presumably) has no detectable links to the lands of his/her ancestors. Not Native enough to live on a rez without marriage into a recognized tribe, but Native enough to count as standard-issue American.
Hell, I'm feeding the trolls. Slap me.
Luke, help me take this mask off
> when you consider that the top 5% of Americans pay over 50% of all the taxes
Isn't that because the top 5% of Americans hold 90% of the country's wealth?
But do they get 90% of the benifits?
The top 5% don't collect social security benifits for sure..
Well, soviet style communism doesn't work. Many capitalist democracies have failed too. The long term viability of capitalist democracy as implemented in america is open to question as well.
Maybe socialism is a better model. Let's see how socialist europe holds up over the next couple of hundred years.
The problem with all of these experiments, is that the outcomes are significantly confounded by geography and other factors not related to the government structure.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I'm refering to salaried employees. Watch out when a high tech company, or any company makes you salaried, because it means you are being setup to work tons of uncompensated overtime.
Never been paid overtime for any high tech company I've ever worked for as a salaried employee. Only carrot they dangle in front of you is stock options or bonuses but those tend to be at the whim of your management chain, only coming if the project was a huge success and if there are any left after they take theirs which tend to be vastly larger than the working people get.
Contractors are different you are getting paid hourly so they do have to pay you for overtime. Of course they can also throw you away like used tissue if they don't need or want you unless your contract says otherwise.
@de_machina
I do it all the time. I usually catch it, but if you can't make a spelling mistake on Slashdot, where can you make it?
I also realized a few months back that I've been spelling tommorow incorrectly most of my life.
"Somehow, the words "allow" and "illegal" don't seem right in the same sentence."
Well tough, because the U.S. does in fact allow illegal immigration. In fact its a feature that workers are illegal because it makes them much easier for employers to underpay and exploit because they can't complain to anyone.
Obviously the U.S. government allows it there are millions and milllions of them and they are swelling America's population at a very high rate. American agriculture is completely and totally dependent on illegals to do field work, because most Americans wont touch this low paying very hard work. Most janitors and maids are illegal. Obviously you've never driven through farm country in California or stayed in a motel or you would have noticed the obvious.
Most places local police are precluded from arresting illegal immigrants(they don't want illegals to be afraid of police when other crimes occur), only the INS can and they are grossly understaffed for the tidal wave of immigrants in this country. There are employers across the nation employing them openly, and its quite rare for employers to get punished for hiring illegals though there are laws on the books.
There is a steady push in a lot of states to give illegal immigrants drivers licenses, children of illegal's are welcomed with open arms in schools and they are given free medical care.
Fact is the U.S. makes a token effort to try to stop them at the border, just to keep it from turning in to a tidal wave, but once they are in chances they will get deported are very, very low and they have will have NO PROBLEM finding employment as long as they work cheap, keep their mouth shut and stay out of trouble.
"(I hate flaming, but just this once. Forgive me God for I have sinned)"
Well you obviously have no fucking clue what you are talking about on this particular subject so you picked a bad time to start.
You also must not have read enough of my posts or my sig:
Voted for President Bush - No
Supported the Iraq War - No
Believe in Area 51 - Yea, its in Nevada, probably has nothing to do with Aliens, the extraterrestrial kind
- Apollo 11, obviously note though the manned space program since has been a cruel hoax
- Read SOLLOG, don't even know what that is and am not goggling it.
To quote Twirlip, you are a dumbass.
@de_machina
Immigrants OK, I can live with that;
Guest workers NO;
send earnings out of the country, then leave, take valuable skills and knowledge back to home, carry on the job there with outsourcing. This country left with nothing out of the deal except some corporation has a higer profit statement somewhere on a spread sheet. As this country goes down the tubes, they have the illusion they have "profitted".
I'm from Edmonton, actually! Went down in '99 and came back in mid '03. I now work in Southern Ontario not because of the money but for personal and professional reasons (i.e. more women than Silicon Valley, progression in my career, company in one of the few markets that is actually growing). The sales tax in Ontario is utterly ridiculous so I won't be buying a new car here for the foreseeable future, but I have ways of avoiding the sales tax to an extent (read: Buffalo, NY and annual trips back to Edmonton to visit family).
In reality, I do have problems up here. I've found that food service up here is abhorrent - I've walked out of six restaurants after talking to the manager about awful service. Another problem with people up here is with my American accent. Once I tell people I'm from Edmonton they tell me "oh, ok!" as if being an American is a problem. The reality is that this bigotry against Americans up here is really very non-Canadian in my book. As you're probably aware, not all Americans are stupid or arrogant or any of the standard things that too many Canadians like to say, but there are those types of people both in the US and in Canada too.
My conclusion is this: do not make an absolute judgment on anything regarding what a particular place is like until you've actually lived there. Not vacationed there, not stayed temporarily there, but actually lived there. For that, I feel blessed.
Watch out when a high tech company, or any company makes you salaried, because it means you are being setup to work tons of uncompensated overtime.
They have tried to dangle that "carrot" from time to time. I have not felt motivated to take them up on it.
Contractors are different you are getting paid hourly so they do have to pay you for overtime. Of course they can also throw you away like used tissue if they don't need or want you unless your contract says otherwise.
You mean like the 170+ sods at my place with "permanent" jobs that just got kicked in the butt when their jobs went off to India last week?
It sounds so cliched saying that but their jobs really did get offshored just last week. For a change they are not IT guys. They are the finance guys. Us IT people hung onto our jobs.
"You mean like the 170+ sods at my place with "permanent" jobs that just got kicked in the butt when their jobs went off to India last week?"
Yes like those. Being a salaried employee at places like IBM used to mean something. There was mutual loyalty between employer and employee and it was less common to discard employees at a whim. As long as you kept your nose clean and worked hard you could stay in one place for life and have a good retirement.
Some say its necessary for efficiency and it obviously coerces productivity if you work at a company with annual layoffs which seems to be most places these. But it also leads to employees who have no motivation to do a good job or build a strong company. It cheapens everyone and America is increasingly a cheapened, careless place. And of course when the market is hot employees have zero loyalty too and job shop far more than is healthy for them or their employers.
Today being salaried seems to have no up side and a lot of downside, until and unless you cross the great divide in to upper management.
@de_machina
Marx's labor theory of value is tripe. If you dig a hole and fill it in again, you've performed labor, but you haven't created any value.
That's a red herring.
What Marx said was that if you have a shovel, you won't produce value without someone to dig with it. Marx's conclusion was that since the shovel alone produces nothing, the profits enjoyed by shovel owners must derive from the value overwhelmingly created by the shovellers who put the shovels to work. He questions, then, why a shovel owner deserves such a disproportionate share of the reward, with his comparatively minor contribution.
Capitalists, of all stripes, don't really dispute the mechanics of what Marx described. Instead, they variously justify their rewards as incentive for taking risk: maybe shovelling won't pan out so well, so one should be rewarded for making such an iffy upfront investment in shovels.
Creating wealth requires *thought*, coupled with work. Capital is one of the resources that may or may not be required to create wealth in any particular case.
Sure, it does. You're absolutely right. Capital, labour, planning and cojones all contribute.
But where's the connect between thought or work contributed and the present distribution of wealth in the first world?
The great majority of the wealthiest people contributed much of neither.
He refers to making a "claim to the land" in the first paragraph. fucktard. "It's all in the past now" is an easy pill to swallow. One day your descendants might look back on it shamefully, even if you would rather pretend that it was all irrelevant pretense to your current situation.
Indian people smell funny.
H-1B is a visa rating for Indian immigrants:
Hindu, -1, Buggy.
I'd rather debug Windows than an Indian, at least with Windows you know you can change something, but try changing an Indian and you'll realize it's better to start from scratch and build a better Indian.
Incorporating is the easy part. Sponsoring an H1-B takes luck (you have to win a slot in the lottery), and a lot of lawyers. You need to have a real position that you are trying to fill and you need to advertize it and try to fill it with a US worker. There are a bunch of other requirements.
Basically, if you want to immigrate to the US, this is not the path of least resistance.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
I couldn't agree more with the GP. Where is the error?
/choose/ to be something, and make a success of it, then you have some basis for being proud of it.
If you
If you are in a situation as result of circumstance, then I see no logic in being proud of it.
I work with many contractors from India in my company and, frankly, I welcome their presence. Where else can I find a person that has a REAL IT degree and can not only perform expert analysis but also deliver work on time? I don't see that in my compatriates here in the States. What saddens me the most is that management doesn't see that its not that their FTE's are overworked, its that those FTEs, in general, have no idea what they are doing.
Living in desirable (and therefore expensive) areas isn't a basic human right. I can't afford to live in SF, so I don't.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
So move -- I did.
Honestly, I can't argue (and am not arguing) against globalization -- I'm a libertarian, and am quite certain that the free market will balance everything out (including the market rates at which folks can afford to sell/rent land, food, etc. in the Bay Area), given some time.
Things'll be a bit uncomfortable in the process, though -- because, as I was pointing out, the current cost of living in South Bay isn't something that could be sustained without the inflated payscales there.
dirtbag
but oddly enough my English friend who did the same thing to keep his job in America is not some stereotypical "American hating foreigner".
Its funny, he realizes that all americans are american hating foreigners, after all, we got NAZI's in america, and as an american, I sure as fuck hate them
If they choose to feel shame, it's their choice. I can't know what'll drive them any more than I can know what previous generations were thinking when they plowed through Amerindians. In the meantime, 290 million transplants and their spawn aren't right or wrong, they just are. They, I, can try to make amends to the survivors of past onslaughts, but there's no fixing it, and to argue the right of the newcomers to stand where they are, in the larger sense, is pointless.
Luke, help me take this mask off
"About 50% of all folks that ever get an H-1b visa eventually get a green card. I'd guess the value of an H-1b visa to be between" No, the real value is $0, and therefore it is not corporate welfare. You can't place an arbitrary dollar value on the freedom to seek the best job, just like you can't place on on a freedom of the press, freedom of religion, right to a fair trial, etc. "Immigration can dilute the value of citizenship if it isn't managed correctly" Or it can increase it, as has usually been the case. Any time an immigrant comes to this country to do work, they help build the country. They add value to it. As an American descended from immigrants, I recognize the real value. Oh wait. You won't find a single American who is not also descended from immigrants (except for actual immigrants who ARE immigrants, not descended from them). The main problem with the H1B program is that there has to be a special program. This should be scrapped in favor of a policy to let in anyone who wants to come here work (along with, of course, much more stringent security screening).
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The "My tax money payed for all these services" argument is a bit stupid when you consider that the top 5% of Americans pay over 50% of all the taxes.
It's not stupid at all when you consider that the top 5% of Americans own (or profit from) the 99% of the organizations which receive 90% of the federal funding.
So... if they're getting 90% back, but only paying 50% in, guess what the profit margin is like even after they pay for the smokescreen of actually providing public services with the money they received. You are familiar with money laundering, aren't you?
Unless you make more than $200,000 a year, you're disproportionately benefiting from services paid for by other peoples' tax money.
You're assuming that 100% of the tax money actually gets turned into a real service provided to the public. That's childishly naive. Most organizations, even nonprofit ones, run overhead costs which are around 3x actual operating costs. You do the math.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
B1 is a visitor's visa, with no possiblity of conversion to a green card. They are good for a maximum of 1 year, but usually only good for 6 months. B1 will not allow the holder to be gainfully employed.
So, no, it is not a free ticket to a green card to just incorporate a business in the US and then get yourself a B1. I stand by my original comment: "Basically, if you want to immigrate to the US, [incorporating a US business] is not the path of least resistance."
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
And anyway, that still doesn't solve the green card issue. The whole point was not getting your ass kicked out of the country in 6 months' time, which is what you and your B1 are going to get.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
The poll is misleading in its simplicity, and due to the complexity of the issue, it is pretty much invalid. Besides, the results are roughly 50-50 again (opposed vs supported/don't-care). Polls where the two sides each measure up to between 40% and 50% never indicate a mandate on anything.
Why is it invalid? There is so much involved in "reducing the flow". As I have said before, I believe that much more screening should be done to keep the terrorists and "bad guys" out. Based on this, I could very well have voted "Decreased" on this poll. Also, there is the racial aspect. So much of opposition to immigration is based in racism. Did you realize that Europeans coming through the northeast are a huge % of illegal immigration? Probably not. Most think it is all those "evil lazy shiftless dirty" Mexicans. You would see a huge variation in the poll if you had two polls about keeping Irish out vs keeping Mexicans out.
I strongly suspect that if the question were changed from "what should be done with the flow of legal immigration" to "what should be done with the flow of legal immigration of good citizens who are hard workers", the 'decrease' poll vote would go from 55% to 40%.
Based on what you have written about H1B visas, it seems pretty clear that you want the "good guys" kept out (the hard-working good citizen types).
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I looked. It contains a classic example of the causation fallacy (believing that if A and B both happen, A causes B).
Specifically, the parts saying that immigration wrecked California's bond rating. You also use as support a Pat Buchanan article that says that having too much ethnic diversity wrecks the economy. I suggest checking this link about California's improving bond rating. Guess what? It is improving because of budget policies of the new administration. It is not improving because of a crackdown on immigration or on ethnic diversity. There has been no crackdown.
The "problem" of immigration still plagues California, and the bond rating is improving. Ironically, it is improving under the administration of an immigrant governor.. Blaming the "outsider" for problems they have nothing to do with is older than civilization. Look at Salem, Mass. to see what this can lead to.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
"You with a $200 four-year degree"
Is it the realization that education shouldn't be as expensive as it is here? And btw, that $200 degree actually did cost almost what it costs here. Just that there (india, china, where-ever), the government bears the burden.
Damn socialists!