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The H-1B Swindle
An anonymous reader writes "A new study shows that companies hire foreign workers for cheap labor, not skill." From the article:"When you look at computer job titles by state, California has one of the biggest differentials between OES salaries and H-1B salaries. The average salary for a programmer in California is $73,960, according to the OES. The average salary paid to an H-1B visa worker for the same job is $53,387; a difference of $20,573 ... H-1B visa workers were also concentrated at the bottom end of the wage scale, with the majority of H-1B visa workers in the 10-24 percentile range. 'That means the largest concentration of H-1B workers make less than [the] highest 75 percent of the U.S. wage earners,' the report notes. "
Well, Duh! Who'd imagine that?
Anyone who has been in the computer industry for more than a few months knows this. Its prevalent everywhere. Don't let them say "there aren't enough engineers to go around", thats pure horse hockey. HIB workers arre cheaper, plain and simple.
What's beneath it is probably some hideous unethical, if not illegal, practice of hiring only H-1B people into jobs.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Is anyone suprised by this? ..
My employeer scours the fourth world for masters degrees, sponsors thier visa, then pays them $10/hour and forces them into unpaid overtime. After all, if they complain, the company can just stop sponsoring thier work visa
Unethical? Yes.
Illigal? Not in this state.
-Annonymousguywhodoesntwanttogetfired
Has anyone considered the cost to aquire and hold H1-B1 papers for a overseas worker? What about when the contract is up? The company is responsible to return the worker, who pays for that?
WTF? Over?
A new study shows that companies hire foreign workers for cheap labor, not skill.
I'm curious, did anyone at all believe otherwise?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
And thats the real problem. Then again, i live in the middle of nowhere. Maybe i should start offering outsourcing for companies in CA who dont want to pay their programmers $80k+ a year
"Something's wrong with you...and I hope we never do meet again." - Deftones When Girls Telephone Boys
The cost of living in CA requires you to have to make on average: 73,961 dollars.
A new study shows that companies hire foreign workers for cheap labor, not skill.
Do Bears shit in the woods?
For all of the "ONLY AMERICA, AMERICA IS THE BEST" propoganda this country loves and imperalism it pursues, they continue to offshore jobs... I say we line up and shoot all of the CEO's and Politicians and take a flamethrower to them, I'm sure I'm not alone in this wish...
Cheers
LOL... nice theory...
Working since 2000 to bring you news of how badly programmers are treated!
Still, in reality, is this any different than Norm Matloff's reports saying exactly the same thing over the past 5 years? And does anybody REALLY have any doubt that guest worker programs are just ways to lower wages in a given industry?
The exact same method was used to break up the California Agriculture Worker's Union back in the 1970s- and will continue to be used.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
No kidding?? I am thoroughly shocked and appalled!! I had no idea that such incideous behavior was going on in this country.
Please hold while I call the president on the Bat Phone...
The situation is the same with so-called postdoctoral students. They work extremely hard to get good publications in the west so that they can get a tenure-track position in their home country soon.
One of the goals of the Reagan "Revolution" was to destroy the Unions. One of the tactics was to import compliant, cheap labor. This was supposed to bring us higher growth rates. The H1-B is the perfect worker for the "new world order": can't form a union, can't vote.
The sad thing is, the college educated Democrats are more focused on gay "marriage" than helping the American working man.
The average salary for a programmer in California is $73,960, according to the OES. The average salary paid to an H-1B visa worker for the same job is $53,387; a difference of $20,573
Employers note: You can save $20,573 per year per employee. How? Just lay off your citizen employees and replace them with low-cost H1B workers!
Why deal with citizens with full citizenship rights when you can $ave $ave $ave with an H1B!
illegal immigrants also get paid less than US citizens.
...corporations charge too much for their products.
I'm not sure how the assertion that these workers are less skilled is borne out here. This is just more globalization fallout. Apparently, programming skills are not as precious as we would all like to think; there are many workers in China and India that will work for less than half of what we make here; this is the same thing that has happened in other industries historically. The only way to save our skins is to continue to provide more value or agree to work for less. Programming that can be shifted overseas effectively is going to go there and no amount of complaining will do it. I say it's better to attract and hire these people here in America and let them build industries here than to push them out and artificially fix wages high here. Protectionism will not work.
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The Sky is Blue!
Water is Wet!
Companies are about making money!
It is Flaimbait!
...I'm a foreign national working on an H1B. I mean, at the pay I get versus what all the pundits, reports, studies, and "in the know" people say I should be getting, I must be.
Hey, wake up, pay sucks everywhere. Even for those born here. Consequence of the extended hangover from that double bubble burst...
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Film at 11. Also, stunning new evidence that bears crap in the woods.
Do you want those people paid 20k less here, where they will spend some of it on cars, food, etc, or do you want them paid 40k less in India/China? It sucks, but about the only thing that stops this race to the bottom is us being better.
We need to invest in schools and teach our kids skills (like how to reason). It's the only realistic way to prevent sliding into mediocrity.
I'd be very curious to see what these statistics would be if they included what might be termed "H-1B alumni" - people that originally came to the US under an H-1B but have since got a green card. I'd suspect that the results may be more even.
For many immigrants, particularly skilled immigrants, H-1B is merely a first step to getting a green card. As such, of course they are going to make less because they snapshot a group of people early in their career and compare their salaries against "home grown" IT workers as a whole.
Of course, this isn't to deny that the H-1B program needs fixing and that there havn't been abuses. Even if H-1B is this sort of first step in practice, that is not what the program was "intended" to do. But it is in the US's interest to keep on cherrypicking the best talent in the world, for there will eventually be a time when that will stop. Or worse, the brain drain that currently works in the US's favor may reverse course.
So? Supply and demand, they call it. For many, this is the only way they can legally migrate into this country. I am not any good at working with anything except my head. Where I come from, this wouldn't have provided me with anything except a deadest of the dead end research jobs (I'm a physicist by trade). When I was hired at my first software engineer position for the company which agreed to sponsor the adjustment from visitor visa to H1B, I was getting 25K (granted, it was more than 10 years ago), and I wasn't complaining.
I can assure you, the best way to get rid of dragons is to have one of your own.
i personally think that if there was some type of law that effectively required the salary of the worker + worker's visa sponsorship = salary of U.S. Citizen, it would force companies to choose their workers based on skill, giving skilled foreigners a chance for high paying work, and it would allow U.S. and foreign workers to compete on an equal level, so that could end the job "stealing".
on an offtopic note, to reduce outsourcing, the government could establish some type of tax on products made by American companies using foreign labor.
or maybe i'm just thinking too idealistically.
How much did John Miano get paid to do this study?
Other reports by John include: "The water is dry fallacy" and "The sky is red conspiracy".
I am currently in the US on an H1-B (married to a US citizen, so on track for a green card) and so a little about this process... albeit for a non-tech (university professor) job.
The H1-B rules state that an employer has to pay prevailing wages/salary for a position, precisely so that H1-B is not used as a way of undercutting the local job market. The application has to go by the State Employment Services Agency to verify the prevailing wage. Also, a company has to post notices regarding H1-B hires that mention salary details.
I don't think anyone reading slashdot is surprised by this. Companies use H-1B people as the closest legal thing to indentured servants.
The companies do generally pay the legal fees for said person to get a green card. So while the time as H-1B is "bad" compared to being a citizen or green carded, most of them feel it is worth it for the green card. After all the INS listens to high paid corporate lawyers much better than to the poor immigrant. (Or maybe the lawyers just know how to work the system better.)
Think Deeply.
I can rest assured now knowing that my job is safe-- I make less than a H1B visa employee.
Saying that these H-1B visas have no skill is a bit stretching it. Even for California 53K is a lot to pay for an unskilled worker.
I'll bet he doesn't have to pay any benifits to them at all.
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Is this really caused by the industry, or by the H1b workers themselves? I think many H1b workers are less aggressive in increasing their salaries than native Americans (not a reference to First Nations). Some of the impediments that kept H1b workers in their places afraid to lose their jobs were removed years ago. The main one of these being the ability to switch jobs immediately and then apply for a new H1b with the new employer. I've been an H1b and was earning more than the average in the TFA back in 2000 in Colorado. Part of the reason I had a good salary was due to a work colleagues going and demanding (without my knowledge) that I have a higher salary. My cultural background hadn't prepared me to fight for my salary in this way, which is required in the US. On top of that, I was much more forthcoming and stubborn about my salary than many of my other H1b work colleagues from other cultures.
Some might argue that the industry is taking advantage of H1b worker's cultures to keep their salaries low. I think it's more the other way around. This subject seems to garner quite a lot of hysteria and sensationalism and is a very good tool for politicians and certain media companies who claim to report news to further their own agendas.
BTW, I'm no longer an H1b. I moved to Canada, a country that is more accepting of immigrants.
Other issue is that it does not compare apples to apples: most H1b are non-managerial positions with relatively low experience, while national average includes middle managers. One need to compare H1B to the people in the same position.
And it looks like reducing numbers of H1Bs does wonders to the IT jobs retention in U.S. indeed. Not.
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
H1B is truly the new age slavetrade. These people are paid less than their peers, even though they have similar cost of living. They have to pay social security, even though the US govt. wants them to leave after few years of working. They can't change companies, and it is very normal for companies to overwork and overextend these employees. This is bonded labour. I know someone who left a good job in India, to work in the US on H1B. After almost 5-6 years, with a masters degree and good experience, he is still insecure beacuse of his status.
Anyone who steps foot on America is an American. If you are not willing to apply this definition, then the only Americans should be the native indians. The west europeans who colonized america initially, from which ALL of the present caucasian (white) americans descend, if they are americans, then so is the H1B visa holder who steps foot on america (and who isn't killing the natives) is an American, and deserves equal rights and protections.
Either do that or scrap this program altogether. H1B is still better for these people compared to their opportunities in India, but it is a glorified slavetrade.
Stuff like this makes me angry at the US.
Ask the H1Bs in the US how they feel about their jobs being taken away by the B and C list programmers back home in Bangalore. Imagine working your ass off to come over here for the opportunity only to have the guy from your CIS101 class who thought HTML was a programming language steal your job. Global economies are teh suck.
Speak truth to power.
A lot less than it used to- used to be $1600 just in filing fees, but that got slashed to $500 for FFY 2005. But it certainly doesn't account for a $13,000/year difference- especially when you figure that processing only comes around once every three years per worker.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
We think just because we are American that that entitles us to higher pay than the rest of the world. If we werent so arrogant we wouldnt see the outsourcing of jobs we do. Accept the fact that 53K is a good wage and anyone can live quite happily on that amount.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
No kidding it's a swindle. That's the whole thing that pisses me off about it! I have no problem in general with some American losing their tech job in favor of some non-American gaining a tech job. What I have a problem with is that what really happens is an American loses their well paying tech job, some non-American gains a usually well paying job by their standards but still vastly less than what it replaced, and then the executives give themselves phat bonuses for saving money.
:)
They have no incentive to pay them well. As always, they will pay only the absolute minimum necessary to get someone to do the job, and yes considerations like "quality" are fortunate if they are considered at all like all non-bean-countable aspects of business. The result is more money concentrated in the hands of the few, fewer well-paying jobs for skilled people in this country, and oh yeah a little bit different distribution of what wealth remains. Gutting the American middle class for fun and profit!
And if the ones getting those not-so-bad paying jobs in India think they aren't going to be next when the greedy whores realize that someone in China will work for a third of what the Indian does, well, they'd be exactly like we were not so long ago.
I wish there was some reasonable way to cap the salary of executives to, say, 20x what their average employee makes, including outsourced/contracted work (which is part of what makes this seem impractical to me). Cap their bonuses and other compensation similarly. Then you'd stop seeing employers struggling to pay their employees less and less, they'd have an incentive to pay them more. Since they'd be paying more for employees, you might see them caring more about quality that they're getting for their money no matter where they are hiring from.
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Since from the American's perspective, there are more foreigners than there are domestic workers (North Americans). Should we be protected under affirmative action? I'm tired of all the foreign workers keeping us domestic workers down!
Now, I'm not saying I'm willing to accept the same pay as those my job is going to, that's just crazy. They should pay me more because I'm a minority and I deserve it. Same pay for the same work only counts when it benefits me.
That H1-B employees might also be less productive than US nationals? After all, most likely English would not be their native language and communications skills are important to quality productivity. Of course, if you're a die-hard marxist, everyone should be paid the same anyway...
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
That means the largest concentration of H-1B workers make less than [the] highest 75 percent of the U.S. wage earners
Yet, the oppressed foreigners keep taking advantage of the visas. Shame on the evil corporations for taking advantage of these poor people. To think, they could be spending more on their own countrymen and supporting their grossly disproportionate wages.
Rather than say, "Hey, you're trying to pay less for programmers!" we should be saying "Hey, are we getting paid too much? Are we pricing ourselves out of positions?"
Don't get me wrong. I've been a programmer for quite some time and it sucks, but supply and demand concepts aren't limited to one country. The world is getting smaller and more connected. National economies are merging into a world economy. No amount of artificial propping-up by local governments is going to keep it from happening. Get used to it.
Yeah, send 'em home, where they'll make even LESS money! I bet they'll feel really great about that.
If we'd just stop sending people over there to put guns to their heads and force them to come work here, they'd be so much better off.
Giving somebody 75% of an American wage to leave their home country, where the average wage is something like 7.5% of here, is not exploiting them; it's a win for the employer and a win for the employee. They can work here for a year and make what they'd make in 10 years back home. Even if they have to spend a lot of it to live, they still clean up. Back home, they can use that to jumpstart a better life; plus, experience with an American company looks awesome on their resume back home, so they make more money THERE too.
The report does not accounts for the fact that the money that a company pays for a H1B worker to a staffing firm is exactly the same that it will pay to an employee.
Most of the H1B workers in USA are recruited though a staffing firm. The staffing firm does the visa for the worker and brings them over to USA. The staffing firm then sends the worker as a contractor/consultant to the companies where he actually works. The company pays the market rate to the staffing firm. However the staffing firm (bodyshopping firms) take a major cut from that money and that is why your H1B worker gets paid less.
If you really care about the state of the foreign workers on H1B, then come to terms with the fact that they are required for worker/skill shortage in your economy which does exceedingly well by trading globally. The worker shortage might not be reflected by the employment figures as there are many jobs (code coolie types like maintainence, porting etc) that American workers do not want to do. Who does them ? Your underpaid H1B worker. Why is he paid less ? He has been targetted and potrayed as low cost job foreign job snatcher, because of which companies are reluctant to recruit him directly. So if you want to talk about ethics, then stop this diatribe against the foreign H1B worker.
In other words, I strongly suspect that the data can partly be explained with the lower average experience (or time on the job, if you will) of H1-B holders. I certainly see that at my workplace.
I work for a quickly growing 600 employee company with a significant H-1B percentage. Part of my job is interviewing and recommending engineers. I have never been pressured to hire an H1-B candidate over a permanent resident or a citizen. Our one and only concern is qualification. I've also never seen a case where the hiring team's choice of a candidate was overruled on the basis of cost.
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*/
I'm sorry, but a 73k per year programmer is not exactly a sparkling gem amongst rubes.
The people I pay 73k per year are shall we say... competent production level programmers, who left to their own devices will write utterly pedestrian and might I say, rather bug-riddled code with no sense of architecure or design other than that already provided by others via a framework.
My heavy hitters, and the ones I rely upon to help compose, shape and craft and add to the product as a whole and who have innovative ideas get at least 110K per year.
And I don't think my approach is all that unique.
Get in a core team of 2-3 Senior people to design, architect, mentor and lead and a rag-tag horde of underlings to do the grunt work.
So if these "average" programmers on H1-B are paid 20K less per year on average...
Is it really a statement on skill, or the fact that there are extra costs associated with an H1-B? Take into account the cost to the company of the H1-B status itself as well as importing and housing the worker. And that's before you get into wage expectations, where a 73K per year job might be perfectly acceptable to most Americans, a person from India would look at 56k per year as a pile of riches. Would they haggle over any offer made to come work in the US which offered riches compared to what they got in India? Hell, I bet you could get people to come over for 30k per year if you wanted.
So no, it's not about skill.
It's about offsetting additional costs and India being an employers market for employees who have far less expectations (and greater niavity) than their American counterparts.
My company has been hiring a bunch of hungry college graduates. College 'new' hires easily get paid of those H1-B workers. Then again, new hires get paid peanuts. Noted, Californians get paid 10% more usually to compensate for the 10% income tax
This is my signature.
An American is either a native, naturally born citizen or a naturalized immigrant. The H-1b visa is a "non-immigrant" visa, not intended for use by immigrants.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Every single time this subject comes up on slashdot, there will be an outraged US worker who says something along the lines of "people higher H1Bs because there cheeper". My response to that is: you're not out of a job because of H1B workers, but because you can't write properly.
This "unbiased" study ignores a key factor. He's comparing salaries of non-visa employees - which includes senior folks with years of experience, with H1-B types. The H1-B folks are nearly all just out of college - the rest of the world (typically India) hasn't had enough of a software industry to have that many wizards with 20 years of experience.
So he's comparing mostly newly graduated hires against a group with, on average, a decade of experience.
Software is so critical to so many businesses, saving $20,000 a year means nothing, getting the SMART FOLKS means everything.
So folks who might be displaced by H1-B entrants are "also ran" programmers. I'm surprised to see so many of those
posting to slashdot.
The article summary would lead us to believe that companies are hiring foreign workers who are less skilled, for less money. If that's true, then it actually makes sense, and doesn't imply any kind of terrible unethical business practice.
However, I'm guessing that they're hiring foreign workers that ARE skilled, but paying them less money. That certainly does sound bad. But what if the jobs aren't disposable? If a person makes himself invaluable within an organization, I wonder if he couldn't demand proper compensation regardless of his nationality.
In my mind this is another issue of the American worker getting screwed. I'm sure that many people take it the same way. If something is done to even the score here, then it should be to benefit the American workforce, and not the foreigner who comes here by choice and is willing to work for lower pay. The outcome would likely be the same though no matter which side you approach it from.
Another thing to consider is that by hiring lower paid foreigners, companies may have more money to throw at US workers. Although that argument would probably work a little better if programmers were calling the shots and employers were scrambling to hire good people, like it was 6-10 years ago.
I'm not against foreign workers and I'm not a strict nationalist, but I do believe that a strong middle class is necessary to sustain our economy long term.
Make sure you lay the blame at the feet of those who deserve it: American CEOs.
American CEOs are sacrificing long-term viability for short-term profits. Sure, chasing the H-1B fad or offshore outsourcing work will save you money this quarter. But eventually, American software companies will fail because they did such a good job training their future competition.
I worked for a company that designs software for the retail industry -- point of sale and back office systems. There were many H-1B VISA workers there, and still are from what I know.
Some of us other workers weren't convinced it was what the company was paying them that was the big attraction in hiring them; rather, we thought it was the "advantage" of having a worker who, if he or she failed to "please" you for any reason, could be shipped back to whatever godforsaken country they came from.
I worked at this company up until about June of this year. Numerous american programmers had decided to jump ship, finding work at other companies, work with better pay and working conditions. The foreigners who were there on the H-1B didn't have this option, from my understanding.
I'm not saying it's not the money. What I am saying is H-1B -- aside from the money -- is the answer to the problem of "herding cats." No more "prima donna" programmers who have the temerity to say "take this job and shove it." Instead, you have workers who dread being shipped home.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
My Dad was a H1B worker until he got his greencard. The reason companies pay less, is because if they pay the same, they can get sued from the unions. Think of it this way, the unions believe it isn't fair to pay a man that isn't even an American citizen the same wages because that deprives a "real" American of a working job. Hence, companies must pay lower under the risk of a civil suit from the Union.
However, eventually, the company benefits the H1B worker with a Green Card, the first step to citizenship... (I'm getting my US citizenship in December...)
H1B expires after 6 years maximum, that's after renewals. Anyone working longer in the states will need some other form of work permit. The study doesn't seem to factor this in at all. Many H1Bs are terminated sooner.
If you looked at a comparison of salaries between 'all programmers' and 'programmers who have worked less than 6 years' I'm sure there's a similar disparity.
If we worked to promote comparable labor protections in other countries, it wouldn't be cheaper for companies to outsource jobs from the US. It also wouldn't be cost-effective to bring in visa holders.
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I don't know how prevalent it is, but I have known at least a few H1B folks who came to the US either for college or just after. They started in the work force, then after garnering some experiencing and saving up a bunch of money, they moved back to their home country where they could live in relative wealth and comfort. If there is a large enough number of people that do this, you effectively skew the average H1B salary lower, as they have relatively more entry level positions than experienced positions compared to native workers.
But, since the plural of anecdote isn't data, this may be unfounded. It would be interesting to see a comparison of H1B salaries compared to native salaries for a given level of experience. I'm betting it's still lower, but it may not be as drastic as the OP indicates.
My maid is from the Columbia and my programmer is from India.
... and I refute the implication that I'm treated like a 'slave' or 'indentured labourer.' Yes I might make less than a US-born programmer, but I make a hell of a lot more than I was getting in the UK. Plus, I get all the benefits of being in California (cool lifestyle, nice weather, affordable stuff, etc.). And as someone else said, it's better for you guys that I'm here spending my money and paying taxes here rather than remaining in the UK and doing outsourced work from there.
On a side note, I can't vote here despite paying my taxes to Uncle Sam, but I can vote in UK elections by mail.
The other down side is that if my job goes, my visa goes with it soon after and I'm on the next plane back. However it becomes a lot easier to go through the green card application process when you're based here.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
You can only hold an H1-B visa for 6 years (3 years plus 1 renewal). After that you either get a green card or go home. The "job titles" compared (e.g. Programmer/analyst) are sufficiently general that they seem to be comparing H1-B holders right out of school with little expereience, to more senior people. It makes sense that the less experienced people get paid less.
The sky is blue, the pope is catholic and engineers on H1-B's get paid less.
Are the H1 workers being forcibly loaded onto boats and hauled into the US to take these jobs?
Because I've gotta say, if they're doing this willingly, then it's the market economy at work.
Mod this -1, Capitalist Pig.
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I would still rather compete with them while they're paying an American cost-of-living than have to compete against them while they're paying an Indian or Chinese cost-of-living. Keep bringing those programmers over here. Keep the jobs here where at least I have a chance of getting one. And keep the costs at an American rate.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
I would be happy with that $53000 too. I get less than half of that!
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I call BS! ;-)
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
This applies completely to Micro$oft...look at the quality of their products, obviously it took little or no skill to produce them.
.... speak English, very often better than USians or even British people (gramatically speaking, the accent is a completely different matter, I know of people from different regions in the US that struggle to understand people from other US places, and don't ask a Londoner with strong Cockney leanings to try to understand a person from Glaswog).
I work with Polish, Chinese, Pakistanis, Indians, Spanish, Japanese, Italians and of course USians and British people, and frankly the language is a non issue in most circumstances.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
While it's popular opinion to bash H1B's, there are a number of factors that no-one considers or is probably even aware of unless you actually *are* a H1B holder.
Firstly H1B's pay EXACTLY the same income tax and Social Security as regular employees, and from this we can expect zero in return. My status means I am ineligible to claim against any of the deductible's I have contributed to for the last 6 years.
Plus given that the majority of States are 'at-will' employment, if I am made redundant for any reason, I have approximately 10 days to leave the country (thank you very much).
The other major point to consider, is that it is actually VERY difficult to find another employer that will hire a H1B (unless you're being brought in from India), so you can end up being stuck. I was lucky and did manage to change jobs, but not before I burned through a lot of telephone interviews where my first statement was indicating my H1B status, saving both of us from wasting our time.
Lastly not all H1B's are here as cheap labour (as my 6 figure salary will contest), and remember I'm contributing to your unemployment for free next time you go pick up that check.
While it is true that some companies out there are exploiting H1B for cheap labor, but not all companies do that. Most of them pay the H1B employees with the prevailing wage, and some of them even pay the H1B employees much higher than the prevailing wage.
Y 05.zip for Access file or http://www.flcdatacenter.com/download/H1B_efile_FY 05_text.zip for TXT file.
I would suggest if you don't believe me to check this website from DOL that shows which company hired H1B, for what position, and for how much at this http://www.flcdatacenter.com/download/H1B_efile_F
Companies hire H1Bs and Americans right out of college, both work for a couple of years for the starting salary. Both get promoted, etc. But then the H1B guy becomes a resident after 5-10 years and now his higher salary does not count towards the H1B average anymore... bingo: H1Bs are underpaid and exploited!
There are lies, damn lies and statistics.
2: If you want to solve the problem (as a nation) then abolish the abuse of the H1b (or working-visa, or whatever). If you can't effectively "indenture" foreign nationals by holding the visa-noose around their necks, they're in exactly the same position as any other US citizen. They're on equal ground, and nobody can complain that they're cheaper for any reason other than that they're choosing to work for less. They can make the same demands as everyone else. Then it's up to US programmers to be more competitive, if that's how it plays out.
Good ol' free-market economy again. After all, isn't that the corner-stone of the US economy and society? Can't get more patriotic than that...
Meta will eat itself
Just read the Slashdot blurb, but this sentence implies this is an Apples and Oranges comparison:
"The average salary for a programmer in California is $73,960, according to the OES. The average salary paid to an H-1B visa worker for the same job is $53,387; a difference of $20,573"
Apples : programmer in CA
Oranges: H-1B visa worker
Not all H-1B visa workers are programmers in CA. I've got plenty of non-programmer friends on H-1B visas - designers, bankers, advertizers, marketing people, etc.
Simpy
H1-B's are predominately hired into entry-level positions, and as such their salaries should be expected to be lower than the average. Most of them are college freshouts who just completed a degree in the US, and have exhausted their student visas. They are paid the same as other new hires that are college freshouts. Trying to say that H1B's make less money than the average engineer is like saying a newly hired freshout makes less money than the average engineer. Duh. If you've ever been involved in hiring an H1B visa person, you know that you must fill out government paperwork documenting the salaries of staff in equivalent positions. The starting salary of that H1B cannot be less than those workers. In the real world you get a stack of 300 resumes. You pick out the top 30. You bring them in for interviews. By law, you're not allowed to ask what kind of visa they might be on, only if they can legally work in the US. You send out job offers to the best candidates. You then find out your top 3 choices need H1B's. You either pursue them or settle for the lesser qualified candidates. If you have the budget (it costs me more to hire an H1B) and your company hasn't exhausted its H1B quota, you go for the more qualified H1B candidate. Otherwise you settle for a lesser candidate.
Hiring people on H1B visas gives people from all over the world an opportunity to come work in the United States of America (tm).
The deal is excellent: a chance to start at the bottom. And stay there.
...laura, more than a little pissed off today (no, nothing to do with visas)
Is there really anything wrong with that? Most large companies already outsource many jobs overseas. Since these people are not citizens, they may plan on making some money here, and spending it at home to improve their life there. There's nothing wrong with that morally of course, but that would be bad for the US economy. I don't know many foreign people that have worked in the US, but the few I have have eventually gone back to their native country. I might go to Japan someday and work. I wouldn't expect to get full pay as a foreigner though since it might not go back into their economy. Now if I was registered as a citizen and wasn't getting equal pay, then it might be something to bitch about.... But in typical working situations, people that get payed are expected to just put the money back into the economy, and that doesn't always happen w/ non-citizens.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
When two people negotiate an agreement, the only swindler is the government who forces itself between them.
Skills are skills!
Companies usually pay for "bodies", not "minds". Ability and overall outcome are stressed, instead of individuality and the unique gems that arise there.
If you *can do without* some skills, while *raising* the overall ability of your unit while saving money, it's managerial effectiveness.
It may sound sterotypical in this screwy, post-P.C., post-civil rights world, but face facts: People from different regions of the world show extraordinary aptitude in differing areas. Some exhibit above average physical ability, some excel at mathematics, some at procedural thinking, some at economics and accounting, some at mechanical engineering, and specialties within those fields that may be shared by other groups.
For millions of years now, Earthlings have been specializing in their own cultures. Some of these cultures have endured for eons and flowered many, many times over. The development of social, logical, critical, and mathematical skills are common in every culture.
The distillation of abilities that have utility in this global marketplace, and their desirability based on quality and intensity is the same in essence as the Old World spice markets, fine perfumes or wines.
That in and of itself is a beautiful thing. However, like many other beautuful and powerful things, it can be used for Good or Evil. Mix politics and/or profit in there, and it can be a sour experience.
If you're opposed to H1Bs ask yourself a question... Are you using anything that wasn't made in America? Think of all the American jobs lost because you weren't checking for "Made in the USA". So why is it that cheap foreign labor is just fine when it makes your shoes and electronics cheap but "immoral" if it happens to affect the industry that employs you? The American car industry tried that in the early 80s and it backfired. Import tarrifs were needed to keep prices equal with the Japanese which raised prices for CONSUMERS un-naturally. Nobody wanted to pay the inflated prices so sales tanked costing 50,000 jobs. Sure, Americans working at the Honda dealership lost their jobs but at least the Japanese couldn't embarass us with their amazing productivity right?
I do not want to pay more for my stuff because you can't compete with foreigners. The alternative is that we just offshore the work in which case they don't spend money in America which is even "worse" for the economy. Please read Bastiat's famous plea to ban sunlight for the benefit of candlemakers if you disagree. They were making fun of this type of logic in the 1800s.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
A study that lumps together people working in high-salary areas like Silicon Valley and people in areas that aren't as overhyped as the Valley is fundamentally flawed.
China is a slave labor state. The introduction of capitalism liberates the Chinese about as much as the slaves of Rome.
Until you can vote for the men who write your laws, Chinese labor will NEVER be able to effectively organize and raise their living standards.
All we are doing by trading with China is empowering the worlds new industrial plantation system. Cut'em off. Treat em like we did the Soviet Union (or benign Cuba).
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
John Miano's report compares salaries for job titles on H-1B disclosure forms with job titles from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
When they don't match up exactly (I would expect not too often), it seems he subjectively finds a match.
I'm not saying that H1 programmers make more or as much as natives, but I would suggest the methodology of this report is lacking. It probably doesn't mean anything. Especially when compared to the common sense knowledge we all have that if an employer can pay less for qualified employees, they will.
--Barry
To think, they could be spending more on their own countrymen and supporting their grossly disproportionate wages.
But that is exactly what they are doing with the H1-Bs: Spending more on their own countrymen (meaning members of their country club) and supporting their own grossly disproportionate wages. Disproportionate by any comparison: U.S. Executive to U.S. employee, U.S. executive to non-U.S. executive, U.S. executive/employee ratio to non-U.S. executive/employee ratio. Take your pick!
It's not the oppressed foreigner that takes advantage of the visas. They are just the smokescreen, the distraction intended to be the target of our ire. If we are the rich to the H1-B poor, then Robin Hood is actually King John and he's keeping 75% of what he takes. I doubt Robin Hood we be as famous for the description "He steals from the rich to make himself exceedingly rich, oh and to pay the poor a little".
The enemies of Democracy are
People start dragging out their same tired old positions on the topic of H1B visas and don't seem to be talking about the actual article. It's unsurprising. We have all decided our positions on the issue long ago. (Aren't we all just so Pavlovian?)
...anyway...
This article is about bringing to light some general evidence of illegal practices that are defrauding the U.S. Government. It's a serious crime that doesn't get punished often enough and it's pretty sad. I actually still believe in the whole free market drive. If programmers are available from somewhere else cheaper, then let it be. Maybe programmers are overpaid anyway. I don't know enough about it to really know if that's the truth or not. But when we're talking about defrauding the government in order to lower your businesses operating expenses, then I'd say someone needs to be held accountable and should be barred from holding office in a publically trade corporation.
Businesses that operate (and compete against others) using illegal activity should be shut down plain and simple. If the evidence offered by the article is skewed or incorrect then of course that should be discussed and wouldn't it be nice if we had evidence offered that would counter the article's assertion?
"Apparently, programming skills are not as precious as we would all like to think; there are many workers in China and India that will work for less than half of what we make here; this is the same thing that has happened in other industries historically."
Pfft! I can find an OSS programmer who will work for free.
That's just until we get the green card!
And just what programmer's union is going to sue a company for paying H1B workers too much?
There is no such programmer's union because programmers aren't unionized.
Get a grip.
From my acquaintences I've found this generally not to be the case. The IRS really doesn't exert any effort to MAKE them pay taxes.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
There are two things that you actually have the power to do to help yourself:
Complain if you like, but above all, act.
Mike (trying to practice what he preaches)
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
The H-1B visa laws are produced by Congressmembers. Everyone in the House is up for election in just 1 year: find your Reprepresentative and snail mail them a polite letter telling them they don't represent you when they pass and support laws like the visa program. Find your Senator and do the same, though only the one up for election next year, if any, is going to pay any real attention. These people work for us, when we make them - but not until then.
--
make install -not war
If the companies are using the H1B workers to pay them $20,000/yr less, do you think they'll give them large raises. What if they don't? The H1B code monkeys aren't going anywhere, they'll work for $30,000/yr, it is still better than what they get in their home country. Most of them will underestimate the living expenses and will think they are getting a killer deal. It is like me, when I tell my family in Russia what I make here in America, they are all "ooh"-ing and "aah"-ing like I am some kind of a millionare, they don't know that my car insurance is $200/month and utilites another $150/month and car payments, mortgage, school loans etc etc
(Disclaimer: I'm a dirty foreigner caught in red tape)
I've had to go through a number of processes and trust me, H1B's are hardly "easy ways to get cheap labor" for employers.
Maybe you're forgetting that the usual visa cost for one of these is $20,000? Or that the visa only lasts for, at most, 5-6 years?
What about the fact that most cases where "dirty foreigners" are needed are in skilled creative fields like games, which also (suprise suprise) end up having lower salaries?
Or maybe that you have to apply about a year in advance, and that makes ultra-skilled people gravitate towards visas like the L-1 and the O-1(that can be renewed indefinitely), thereby skewing salary surveys?
If employers want cheap labor, they'll outsource to India, not go through years of government red tape and tens of thousands of dollars per employee.
H1B's are getting paid less does not come as a surprise. H1B's are called here just because they are comparably skilled AND can be paid less. I know a company that would only hire H1B's and then keep them under constant pressure of losing their job. This way they would work with their head down and mouth shut. Not exactly what the H1B's have heard about America (land of free)...not their fault either that they landed in this trap. However, I also believe this kind of exploitation and outsourcing has its roots in capitalism. Earlier in the previous century when the world was not so much open...technology could be kept confined but in this age...it is hardly the case. With technology pervasive, more people get into it and we start to see the blurring of lines. Today India and China are emerging markets/powers with lot of talent but in few years we might see smaller African and other countries claiming the piece of the pie. It is just technological and capitalistic evolution.
Oh wait those dudes came from India. Bummer.
As been iterated many times in these replies, any IT worker in the USA knows that H1B workers were hired to cut payroll expenses (not fill positions that were lacking in personnel). When the H1B workers were first allowed, it was supposedly under the condition that they would make the prevailing wage for the position they were filling. If that were the case, why were existing IT workers training H1B workers, who then replaced their trainers (who were consequently let go).
How many companies were prosecuted for violating the original rules about H1B replacements? I don't think any were!
The H1B program was (and is) a shame perpetrated by our legislators at the urging of business management. It did nothing for the US workers in the IT industry.
I've seen articles in regards to US students about "Why Johnny can't program". The real answer is, "Why should he?". To train an H1B worker to replace him?
When the management and executive positions are also taken over by H1B folks (it would save a lot more money than replacing the workers), then perhaps those folks will also get it.
That is the biggest and perhaps only problem I have with the system. If it were trivial for an h1b to say "hey...these guys are screwin' me, I'm going to work Spacely Sprockets across the street", then we would have a fair system. As it is, they are essentially indentured servants.
By putting so many regulations and restrictions on how H1B's can work, they've created indentured servitude. And surprise surprise this lets companies underpay them, which in turn allows them to undercut American labor much more effectively. Because of their fear of fair competition, they've encouraged the exact behavior they were seeking to avoid.
I'm personally of the opinion that we should open the borders wide, and let all residents be legal aliens. Like it was before the xenophobia early last century. Like back when poor immigrants came over and built the country and economy we so love today. Yes, it'll be ugly for a bit, and some native born people would have to compete with foreign born people, but survival of the fittest, right?
Cheers.
What do you do that makes less than $53,000 a year? I'm assuming it isn't a skill based profession, but more a blue collar job of some sort?
Disclaimer: I'm a college freshman and made $6,000 last year
Sig: I stole this sig.
If you don't want to be a US citizen then why are you living here in the first place??? With the exception of working for a global company and being transfered over here as an expat you should live where you want to be a citizen. Want to come work in the US? Sweet, come on in! Just be ready to stay a while and welcome home. :)
;)
Oh and stay away from California! I want the cost of living there to go down so I can move there and afford more than a shoebox.
-Xen
Most H1B's are folks who've been in the workforce for a relatively shorter period of time. Most H1Bs are actually dual-status, which means they are applying for a Green Card while working as an H1B. Green Card processing typically takes 4-5 years. They are not classified as H1Bs once they get their Green Cards - which coincides with them acquiring additional experience and raises.
I make more money now than when I was an H1B and it has nothing to do with my visa status and everything to do with the fact that I have more experience doing what I do now than I did before.
Mmmm.. Donuts
And I suppose the H1-B fresh of the Bangalore express can write better???
Jeero + Jeero = chree
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Seastead this.
How is this bad? Companies want cheap labor, and we want to keep jobs in america. The US still gets tax money, the H1 employee still pays rent, car payments, groceries and generally keeps money in the US ecconomy. Sure they are going to take some american workers jobs, but hey, you know what? I work with several engineers who come from the middleast and asia, and they do a DAMN good job, and write damn good code. And, yes, maybe the do get a little less, but the ones I know plan on going back to their country some day (for the most part), and when they do, they're going to be very, very well off comparatively. No one is making them come to the US, they do it because it's a wonderful opportunity for them. If they really do write good code, they'll probably get raises.
/do/ have a problem with is if a H1 visa candidate was good enough to get a job in the US and was not fired (laid off, company goes out of business, etc) then they should have 1-2 years to find another sponsor. The company I work for was recently aquired and the H1 visa employees were basically put into the position of accept the job or you have 1 WEEK to get new employment before you're sent packing. That's not right. These are good men and women who work hard and should not be treated in such a disrespectful way. It's on thing for them to accept a job for 50k and come here to work, its another to say take this job or you go home.
The thing that I
Oh yeah
What happens when the Chinese and Indians finally figure out that they don't NEED those milionaire suits in New York???
What happens when the US runs out of financial reserves and Beijing decides to stop buying US Treasury bonds????
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
I bet people raging against the "unethical" hiring of H1B's for less all behave the same way in other areas of life. All these companies are doing is what we all do when we buy something - look for the best deal we can get. Is it "unethical" for me to buy a PC with IC's made in Taiwan, where wages are lower for the fab workers, because it is cheaper than one made all in the US? Some people would probably say so, but how many /. ers complaining about low H1B wages wrote their post on a Taiwanese computer while drinking coffee grown and picked in Brazil and wearing a shirt made in China? Unless you are ready to put your money where your mouth is and start buying 100 % Made In The USA products regardless of the quality or cost, don't criticize the companies for taking the best deal available for labor.
Stateside workers pay rent, buy food, have taxes withheld from their paycheck, and buy consumer goods. Although the pay is lower, the economic value of them working in the US has a strong multiplier effect.
Now, on the other hand, outsource the job entirely and the cost per engineer is much lower, and there is no multipler - no rent income, no food sales, no taxes, etc.
So as long as trained engineers are available at lower-cost, I'd rather seem them brought over stateside and at least get some leverage then completely outsourcing and getting no pull through.
The first time the issue of visas became controversial and the government started limiting the number of workers and not raising the limits, guess what happened?
Companies started outsourcing and finding out it was a LOT cheaper to just send to the work "over there" instead of bothering to bring the workers "over here" - and they don't forget! That was the start of the big outsourcing switch and it was caused by the strict limits on visas forcing companies to find another way. The visa limits backfired; they didn't make companies pay a higher wage or higher more US workers - it just encouraged them to move offshore faster.
Sure as an individual engineer it sucks to have this unfair competition, but in the macro-economics, it is better to have the pull-through than nothing at all.
My first reaction to this article has to be "Duh!". This should not be surprising to anyone who as been in the industry for any length of time. I find it incredible that companies can get away with complaining that they need H-1Bs to fill all of the positions that they have open when there are so many American workers looking for work. What they really mean is that they can't find any CHEAP labor to do the work. That our representatives in congress can't or won't see through this should not be a surprise since they rely on all of the companies that get the H-1Bs for their campaign contributions. Meanwhile, the average American worker gets screwed.
...would any company hire anyone BUT an H1-B? They seem to work much cheaper.
/. being 'swindled' in a different manner than the Infoworld article suggests?
Or is
I live in the southern part of Silicon Valley, where the median cost of a home is $750K. If I had a family with just one child I couldn't stay where I am on the $53K figure you mention, and forget about ever buying a house.
In most cases, wages are driven directly by the cost of living in an area not by employee greed. And the cost of living in California is very high. That's why these low wages for H1B workers are such a concern. They may set an artificially low ceiling on entry level jobs in the sector. So we won't get any local recruits for those positions, then in 5 years we won't have any mid-career programmers here because we hired temps from overseas. In 15 years all our senior engineers will be looking to retire and there won't be anyone to replace them, so all the work will have to be sent overseas and the US's strategic advantage in software will have been completely destroyed.
Of course, if you own enough stock you have no worries right?
Been there done that. In my experiance the cheap H1-B's reduce productivity not expand it. But to the bean counters quarterly spreadsheet it looks good.
There are a few H1-B's that I've known to be very sharp, but they are few and far between.
Hong Kong is not in China contrary to what you have heard . Hong Kong borders China and is not fully part of China until 2047. In 1997 the British started the hand over process to the Chinese, where the next 50 years the one country - two systems policy is being implemented. Hong Kong is designated SAR, which stands for Special Administrative Region. If you go to Hong Kong they will give you a free tourist visa at the airport and then if you try to cross over to China's border you'll probably need to buy a visa if you are American or citizen of several western countries due to diplomatic reciprocity fees. The American State Department also makes the distinction between China and Hong Kong SAR.
Rather than say, "Hey, you're trying to pay less for programmers!" we should be saying "Hey, are we getting paid too much? Are we pricing ourselves out of positions?"
No. Any cheap work that could be done overseas is already being done overseas. The work that's left in the US would stay in the US regardless of what pay programmers demand. So, companies can only reduce the amount they pay in wages by artifically increasing the workforce and reducing the demand for high-skilled workers.
This has nothing to do with "free" trade in labor and everything to do with market manipulation. These companies do not want to deal with the free market as it's currently structured. So, instead of dealing in the free market, they'd rather redefine the labor market in their terms.
These companies would rather have completely open borders in the US where everyone from everywhere could freely enter. We've already heard Bush say exactly that. Labor costs in the US would plummet. So would the standard of living, but companies and the current administration don't actually care. The only reason they don't push that through now is that they've been pounding security for the last four years. Also, the majority US citizens, both Democrats and Republicans, don't want any more foreigners entering the country to take away jobs. If anything, people want the foreigners to leave so we could actually get some work and decent pay raises around here.
Add to that the cost of importing me (over $20k just for moving expenses and a $10k signing bonus), exporting me if I'm let go, and other legal paperwork (as well as current LC and eventual LPR (green card) sponsorship), and I come at a fairly high price, compared to an American. I'd think my employer would have preferred to find such an American (and they constantly try -- the LC standard is that no American can be found to full the job after a national search), but failed.
No doubt there are employers that break the law and under-pay H1Bs, force them to pay their own immigration lawyers, etc. Perhaps if they were properly prosecuted the rest of us could stop looking over our shoulders.
Productivy growth DOES NOT EQUAL percapita real income growth.
Sorry, Nice try!
go look at growth from 1939-1971.
Back when unions where strong !!!! Before Nixon/Reagan/Bush regime.
Back when America was a determined, fiesty Republic, not a confused Empire.
My wife is an H1A nurse from the Philippines. Well, used to be, she's a citizen now. Anyway, she came over here long before I met her and worked for a company that "sponsored" her.
The company was a nursing home that was staffed almost entirely by foreign nurses that were being paid below the prevailing wage. Their problem wasn't in attracting nurses, it was simply that they wanted to pay less.
This same home had a fire a year or two ago that killed some patients, and it turned out that they didn't have sprinklers.
My observation of the medical industry is that facilities don't want to pay what nurses require, so they end up hiring foreign nurses if they're lucky. If they're not lucky, they end up paying twice what they'd pay a staff nurse to get someone from an agency.
Anyway, this is a two-sided issue. On one side, my wife started making more when she met me and I told her to simply ask for more money. She went to one place where they offered her $13/hour (with 7 or 8 years of experience at the time). Not surprisingly, she ended up working there through an agency for $35/hour at one point. God only knows what they were paying the agency for her time, probably more than $13/hour.
In the Filipino culture, it would be disrespectful to ask for more money of an employer, so they end up hurting over here. I mean this literally, the thought never crossed my wife's mind to ask for more money until she'd met me. Even then, it took a lot for her to get over it. The difference in pay is very significant.
Now, the other side. She was making PHP15K/month as a nurse when she left the Philippines. In US dollars, that's about $300. Actually, less now due to exchange rates. In terms of cost of living, that would be below the poverty line here. Even the $13/hour would be big bucks. It's all a matter of perspective.
Anyway, a lot of people are just happy to have a job, something we often lose site of here in the US. Still, there's no excuse for screwing people. And paying somebody less for the same work just because they won't complain is immoral.
It's also illegal. The Dept. of Labor has standards for H1A and H1B, and the workers are (by law) to be paid the same wages as an American. Of course, you can't legally hire them if an American is available to do the work, either.
I can't complain, I have a beautiful wife because of H1A.
Do you have ESP?
There should be only 1 visa type. People should not come in based on Job description. What we are doing is giving the store away. There are a lot of H1B's who come to learn then take it home. H1B's come not just as programmers but scientists as well. How do their countries feel about patents? The US corporations are selling out our country with H1B's, illegal immigrants and out-sourcing to make money. No one better complain when Iran has nukes, China and India has a bigger military , and business engine than us. In a couple years India, China, US, Europe will be fighting over oil. It will be too late but that's when the public will realize that the politicians and corporations sold us down the drain.
Supply and demand: In a free market, there is no such thing as a "shortage". A company willing to pay enough can hire as many programmers of whatever quality they wish. You only get a "shortage" if you try to hold something different to the market-clearing level. In this case, it seems that companies want to get programmers for below-market-clearing wages. What a shock.
For 53k a year I'lll work extra hours for free with out any doubt.
If you consider that the average salary for an IT profesional with certifications is 12660 a year in Colombia, you'll know why I'll work extra hours for free with that kind of salary.
they oughta tax the shit outta companies that hire H1-B over american employees.. .02
my
Well..H1B workers do pay taxes ( even social security.. which will never be useful to them as they can only work here for 6 years).
Some time ago there was a slash dot discussion about the "Worst place to work". One of the companies nominated was a company called [name deleted out of fear]. They were nominated on the basis of a remarkable letter that the president of the company has posted on the [name deleted] web site. The president basicly describes a job that requires a great deal of skill, long hours and low pay.
Who would take such a job? Especially because the company president seems like a maniac. Even he notes at the end of his infamous letter that he "might" sound like an "asshole".
The only answer I can come up with as to "who would work there" is H-1B visa holders from countries where what in the United States is considered an unpleasant working environment is more accepted. In fact the company makes a big deal of the fact that they will pay H-1B visa fees. As far as I can tell, most of the staff are H-1B visa holders.
So I'm an H1b. According to what the blurb says an average american programmer makes, I make more. One of my best buddies is another H1b, I know he makes close to six figures. We're both programmers. I've been here for about 2 years, this is my first job out of university. My buddy has been here for four years, he is on his second job in the US. Neither one of us would sell ourselves cheap.
In order to get an H1b for an employee, the employer has to show how much he is going to pay this employee and whatever authority it is that approves or denies H1b applications makes sure this is a valid pay for the job.
In order to get me over here, my employer also hired lawyers to navigate the INS minefield, paid $2000 extra for fast track processing (3 weeks, instead of six months) and bought me a ticket.
I pay taxes, I contribute to my company's profits, I did not cost a dime for the US to educate, I will most likely not be here when it's time to retire. In that sense, your country is getting a great deal. But I'm certainly not here because I'm cheaper than an american programmer.
I work in the silicon valley in a big tech company. I am under H1B, like most of the people in my team... Like in my previous company it is really really hard to find good people: american or not. I'm pretty sure the silicon valley couldn't exist or wouldn't be what it is now without people coming from abroad. As for the salaries... not sure where the guy who wrote the article got the numbers, certainly not at the companies I've been working at. As for the skills... The usa have an history based on immigration ever since its creation. Which generation are you? 2nd, third, ... would you have refused your grand parents on Ellis island?
I wrote my senior honors thesis in economics on this exact subject--the effect of H-1B visas on labor outcomes--and the results aren't nearly as clear cut as this guy is making them out to be. For one thing, there are no reliable data on H-1B entries or employment. You can get a database of LCA filings from the Department of Labor, but it is really noisy because there are hardly any rules for the employers who are filing. There's no guarantee the visa was ever issued, or the person ever took the job and immigrated. You can file one LCA for 4 people, or you can file 10 for the same guy. Because it's so easy to file many times, of course employers have an incentive to start low and work up when it comes to prevailing wage declarations. Also I remember someone at Labor telling me the entire LCA certification process is "a joke", so I'd be really hesitant to place a lot of faith in anything actually contained on them. Also, I can't find any link to the report on the Programmers' Guild website, but I'd be curious to know if those means were statistically different given all the variation I observed in the underlying data when I was looked at it.
/. and elsewhere.
Rather that examining what the LCAs were claiming, I took the different tack of treating them as simply a crude measure of demand for foreign workers. I built a panel dataset over MSAs and quarters and could not uncover any statistically significant partial effect of LCA filings on wages or employment, even when controlling for a bunch of other socioeconomic factors, endogeneity, and fixed effects.
A better economist could certainly do more with this, but my adviser and I ultimately agreed that there is essentially no empirical evidence to support the claim that "H1B=bad", so often repeated on
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Since when does spelling on a weblog validate the competence of American workers?
Bullshit. You see theres more to this world than flipping burgers and writing video games. Flipping burgers requires basal knowlege, writing video games requires a good background (college) if you want to do it right. But for more specialized work you might just need that extra knowlege that comes from a masters or Ph.D.
-everphilski-
By the time the H1-B's gain their experience they will get the green card and won't be counted for the statistics of H1-B. The average income of foreign nationals in USA in $88,000 per annum, while for americans its $51,000
Actually H1B workers have to make 95% of the Prevailing Wage by law. Their employer sends a list of their credentials to the Labor Dept. for that, and they have to pay at least 95% of what the Labor Dept. says an American worker would make for the same job. If there's a problem, it's because the Labor Dept. is lying (or just uninformed) as to how much the job is worth in the area, not because the employer is underpaying them. Or it is possible that the other programmers are all overpaid what they're worth :)
Nice study.
Would it be surprising to find that recent college graduates make less than programmers by average? Not really. So why is this study comparing H1B worker salaries to the industry average when it's commonly known a large majority of H1B workers are younger, and a lot of them recent college graduates, and with less experience than the industry average and would naturally make less money than the industry average?
They should've really hidden their bias a little better. But I'm sure this "study" will get widely quoted by blowhards like Lou Dobbs with no fact checking whatsoever. Infoworld appears to already have done so. Well done!
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
There is a mandate for each congressional committee to come up with some savings to compensate for such brilliant expenditures as Alaska's bridge to nowhere. So the Senate Judiciary Committe has recently passed a proposal that will make them some money while satisfying their corporate masters. Businesses will be able to buy hundreds of additional green cards and H-1B visas to keep their labor costs low http://www.numbersusa.com/hottopic/H1B.html.
by means of share-holder's resolution. Check out this article below.
o rporate_governance/MediaMen
http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/olin_center/c
tions/WSJ_Winning_Apr.11.2005.pdf
If ALL sharesholders demand this of their CEOs, then there would be no excuse about needing to pay up for talents.
There are plenty of home grown qualified workers in the United States to fill our high tech needs. Companies that say they need H1-B's are lying and paying off their congressmen to get more H1-B's every year.
I am under the impression that many H1B visas are awarded to people who have already studied at American universities, but who wish to stay in the US.
This seems like something that benefits the entire American society.
Taxpayers have already supported the R&D through grants, etc. The country has been fortunate to attract the world's best and brightest to these programs.
Why wouldn't we want them to stay in the US once they are even more valuable to the economy?
The more interesting question would be whether this brain drain is too damaging to the Third World to be continually losing their best minds to the US.
Luckily for those who are opposed to H1B's, many scientists and engineers are now staying away from the US as it has become less tolerant of other cultures.
The recent book, "The Flight of the Creative Class," details how the US is shooting itself in the foot with its rising xenophobia.
My advice to American technorati: become mobile yourself. The world is a big place and you might be needed elsewhere more than you are valued in the Homeland. Small money goes far in other countries.
No reason you can't vote with your feet.
One thing that this article doesn't mention is a major bit of leverage that H1-B employment gives to employers: If the worker loses their job, they don't just lose their job -- they lose their visa sponsor. That means they can't stay in the US anymore and have to give up their house, community, and friends. That's a pretty big stick to wield over someone.
Given articles such as this, and the evidence that
it presents, you would think that the powers that
be would put a halt to the H1-B program. But it
won't. What will happen is that various groups will
shout about the injustice that is being done to
these foreign workers who are brought here and
then *exploited* by working for wages signifcantly
below what U.S. citizens are paid. No, not one word
will be spoken about he U.S. citizens who have lost
not only a job, but essentially life as they knew it.
Hands will be wrung and tears will be shed for the
poor H1-B workers who have been exploited, but not a
second thought to the U.S. citizens whose lives were
thrown into termoil. So the cry and demand will go
forth to bring H1-B wages up to that of the levels
of workers who are U.S. citizens. And they will. So
now you're thinking that if H1-B people are being
paid the same as workers who are U.S. citizens then
there really is no need for a H1-B program at all
and we will be able to get things back to the way
the used to be (no H1-B program). That's logical. But
it isn't going to happen. Why? Because this IS NOT just
about cheap labor.Not by a LONG-SHOT.It all has very
much to do with the wonders of DIVERSITY. You see, up
until recently, the racial makeup of U.S. engineering
was 99.9% white. Uh-oh. You see, today, in the U.S.
EVERYTHING and I mean EVERTYTHING is scrutinized in
the light of diversity. Having any profession dominated
by that many whites is taboo. It is a violation of a
basic tenet of diversity and it must NOT be allowed
to happen. H1-Bs currently allow corporations (which
ARE diversity gonzo) the best of both worlds. They
can get cheap labor and they can make amends to the
gods of diversity by changing the racial makeup of
engineering and making it a *lot* less white. This
is their penance and salvation. Ah, you say, but how
can corporations continue the benefit of cheap labor
if they are going to have to pay H1-B workers more?
Very simple, after they have made amends for their
errors and given these workers raises you will see
almost no wage growth in the coming decades. An
endless stream of tech workers coming from the places
afar will see to it that wages are held down. In
the long run, the corporation wins.
I'm still wondering where the money in these post-boom years. I've a programmer in New England for the last 6 years... and I still have yet to break out of the 40's. I don't know if it's poor salary negotation skills or what, but there seems to be very limited opportunities as to what I can do and what pay is available for these things. I'm a pretty decent Java,C* and .Net developer- but not quite advanced enough to do EJB, Websphere,etc apps. It seems like the really big stuff, you can't get into anyway unless you've apprenticed in it already under a big company somewhere.
Blender And Linux Fan
I was living in San Jose in 1999 on annual equivalent of $50k, living in a comfortable 2 bedroom apartment (with a roomate) and I could make payments on my small car. I even saved money.
Could I support a family on that? No. If I had a live at home wife and 1 child, then yes, $90k would likely be a necessary salary.
-Stu
I have 8 years of tech experiences, including 6 as an IT administrator/help desk specialist. I left my job to join the Army, got hurt in basic training. When I returned, I could not find tech work anywhere. I did Monster.com, I did CareerBuilder, I sent my resume to everyone, civil service, you name it. I did this for almost a year, no results. In the meantime, I had to work at Staples for $8/hour. Of course, it took me over a month just to get this job. I was so desperate, I was applying at McDonald's, local supermarkets, you name it because I was getting literally no calls back for any tech work other than temp jobs. I have a wife and kid and I wanted a permanent position. Eventually, I was able to get a $34k job through a temp agency, which ended up being a permanent position, but it is in a call center as a compliance investigator for a pharmaceutical company. I was discharged from the Army in June 2004. I used to make $63k working for the federal government in IT before I left. Now my wife has to work full-time at Taco Bell for $7/hr plus do weekend work as a home health aide for $8/hr just so we can keep up with all the debt incurred during the 9 months I was stuck with no job or with Staples.
Don't tell me that H1B has no bearing on availability of jobs. I called the IT department at one place I used to work at to get a reference, and no one was still there from when I worked there (1997-1998). Every single name on the greeting was Russian or Chinese.
I'm very well qualified, but not hireable because why would someone pay me $60k-70k when they can get someone who doesn't have the experience, but might have a little more education and get them to work for $40k-50k? It's simple economics.
Think about this next time you vote Republican.
Either tax them at a rate to more than cover the salary difference for that particular job, or auction them off on a weekly basis, with a "use it or lose it" clause meaning you have to have a candidate in mind and the visa is ONLY good for that particular candidate.
After 3 years, make the company compete for a new auction and if they don't bid high enough the guy has to go home.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
You contribute nothing to this country. You take the money and leave and bring your experience and money back to Europe. Meanwhile, poor Joes like us have to struggle unemployed or underemployed trying to keep our families fed, bills paid, and a roof over our heads so that we can live here!
It really pains me to say this, since my wife is an immigrant from Angola. But I seriously think we need to close the borders. And we need to penalize (tax heavily) any company that has a presence abroad. Set high tariffs. Let's not subsidize the rest of the world anymore. They want us to consume, consume, consume. Well, two things here: A) If we don't have jobs, we won't have money to spend. B) If you want our money, then keep your business here, hire Americans, and contribute to our society rather than leeching from it. Do you think China would put up with this crap if they were in our position? Hell no! And we shouldn't either!
This is sort of related to how I see Bill Gates' recent tour of American colleges to promote CS degrees. He sees a shortage of CS workers and that we need more. How I see it, and it may be cynical but seems more realistic, is that he is trying to get IT workers who have American educations, American productivity levels, but at imported worker salary.
What?
I agree with you for the most part, but everybody makes mistakes.
On the spelling front, for example, you misspelled the word "pity".
On the grammar front you forgot an "a"; "I work with a couple of American". (Yes, that's with a capital "a", too.)
Lastly, your first sentence would be more proper if it would read "Spelling and Americans ? You must be kidding me!!!" or "Spelling and Americans - you must be kidding me". The form in which you've written it now seems to indicate that you are saying "you must be kidding me" to both Americans and a person who goes by the name of "Spelling".
--
That said - who cares ? I've seen similar errors in letters written directly by CEOs (not passing through their secretaries/etc.) and even in press releases. It *would* be nice to hold everybody to a high standard to help keep it up, but I think it's far too late.
Why would they need that capital when we're pouring money into China via cheap manufactured goods???
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
The Beatles had a thick British accent that virtually disappeared when they sung.
Likewise, I'm sure that the butchered grammar of oh so many Indian and Chinese programmers just melt away when they translate it into the printed word. And I suppose the simple ability to converse and be understood in English is also over-rated???
Jeerio!!!
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Especially nurses, there is hugh shortage of nurses.
Actually, I know the reason why. The medical field is controlled, IT is not.
Well, taxes don't work EXACTLY like that. There are all kinds of things you can do with a W-2 form.
Just remember, you do file those things called TAXES at the end of the year. If withholding took care of all of it, there would be no need for filing.
For all you know oh so many H1-B are claiming EXEMPT status. And why wouldn't the companies go along with it??? They wouldn't have to match payroll taxes. And if the H1-Bs aren't filing, the IRS aren't going after them!!!
But lets not mince words over H1-B taxation. Lets go wholesale for the LZ-1s that are more numerous for the simple fact that they are unlimited. LZ-1s aren't required to pay income taxes. So I don't know why any sane accountant would allow them to fill in a W-2 without making them check the EXEMPT box which would save the company even MORE money.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Of course, you're probably used to the idea that in a socialist country, your taxes actually go towards contributing to society. Here in America, your paying taxes does nothing but offset tax breaks given to the wealthy, incentives for companies to do business abroad, and pursue a foreign policy of domination and world hegemony. In the meantime, most of us are forced to take jobs that we are overqualified for and underpaid at just to get some kind of health insurance for our families. After all, the poverty level is set ridiculously low in this country. You have to be almost penniless to qualify for any kind of government assistance (or super-rich, then the government will gladly throw tax breaks and incentives your way). There are days when I have actually had to miss work because I couldn't afford gas to put in the car because I spent it on food. I miss qualifying for food stamps by something like $2000 a year income. Think about that. Between my wife and myself, we have three jobs, and still every last penny we earn goes to pay rent, utilities, gas, and food. I am three months behind paying bills because we had some emergency medical and dental bills come up, and we have insurance! Only in America! Honestly, look at it from my perspective. I'd love to get a job in Germany and have all the benefits a German citizen would have while I'm there. And I speak better German than most guest workers in the US speak English! But it would never happen... it doesn't work like that. We are entirely too accommodating to other peoples of the world without any sort of reciprocation. We are being taken advantage of, and we are the ones hurting from it. Forget Germany for a second. Do you think that Chinese companies are going to try to hire out-of-work American programmers? And do you think the Chinese government is going to provide all the benefits of society to the American guest worker, including equal protection under the law, that America provides to its guests? No!! It's about time that we started demanding an even playing field on the world labor stage. American workers have a right to the same standard of living as European workers. And we also have the same right as the Europeans to keep foreigners from taking our livelihoods away from us. Excuse me if you think I'm being a little harsh on foreign workers. I don't mean to be. My wife is a very recent immigrant from Africa. The problem is not the foreign workers. The problem is America. And the H1B program is just one more symptom of a larger problem of America selling out its own people so that the elite can amass greater fortune.
Local governments can easily stop globalization. They can even introduce central planning and economic autarchy. (Globalization has no effect on North Korea's economy, for instance.)
I work as a Case Manager in a business immigration law office. This article is, wittingly or not, promoting a kind of misinformation. Forgive a little dry explanation:
It is (I assume) true that the OES prevailing wage surveys referenced in this fellow's study indicate that wages are higher for U.S. workers. I haven't done the OES's study myself, so I can only take that for granted. However, the OES numbers are rarely used when businesses and their attorneys are preparing an H-1B petition to send to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
This is for the simple reason that more often than not, the OES numbers are inflated, due to their lack of specificity. The real question one needs to ask if you want to know whether foreign workers are being paid comparably to U.S. workers is how the data is gathered. As one poster pointed out, the OES numbers incorporate data from all over the professional spectrum, including ranges of titles, levels of managerial authority, job responsibilities, etc.
To illustrate how important this question is to the issue, consider a company (Company A) who is preparing an H-1B petition for (say) a programmer-type who will be working on creating web-based business software that interacts with a decent-sized customer database. That job has responsibilities much more specific than simply "Computer Programmer," which is the main OES classification for a job like that. The OES information might include data about programmer-types who have nothing even close to the H-1B job's responsibilities in this little thought experiment.
The way companies respond to situations like this is to not use the OES information, but to instead use what are called, "Alternate Prevailing Wage Surveys." These are wage surveys conducted by companies, individuals, etc. that also take data about a specific job in a specific geographic area. However, these surveys are often fine-tuned to gather data specific to a certain variable.
For example, Company A is going to use an alternate prevailing wage survey that is fine-tuned to deal only with jobs like its H-1B job. This gives a much more fine-grained and accurate picture of what people doing a job like that are actually paid. Thus, the wage information it uses is better-suited to the task, and the wage it pays its H-1B alien is going to be at least the prevailing wage for jobs like its H-1B job.
The bottom line is: this guy is concluding pretty heavy-handedly that there is widespread abuse of the H-1B program, and erroneously so. I'm not sure why that is - maybe he's a crypto-xenophobe. But suffice to say, he is not dealing with the data at the levels of detail that real businesses, real H-1B aliens, and real U.S. workers do. He's also got a great big megaphone that he is announcing his "findings" through, and that, my friends, is misinformation.
Anyone who has been in the computer industry for more than a few months knows this. Its prevalent everywhere. Don't let them say "there aren't enough engineers to go around", thats pure horse hockey. HIB workers arre cheaper, plain and simple.
H1-B workers also makes it easier to hire a few people with degrees from a handfull of ivy-league or otherwise exceptionally reputable (among suits) schools for core teams, people from India and the like for the bulk of the rest of the slots, and ignore anybody who's black, hispanic, female, and/or educated in a state college. (And claiming such are unqualified helps perpetuate the myth that there are no "qualified" applicants available, giving them an excuse to hire the cheaper H1-Bs.)
Helpful hints:
- Intelligence is not confined to people who were able to attend one of about three high-prestige schools, are male, and are white or oriental.
- Technical expertese - especially in computer-related subjects - is not developed solely in a set of schools you can count on one hand with fingers left over.
(For starters: the bulk of the actual rocket scientists have a southern or western accent.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I came here via a H1-B and I was *always* treated fairly and earned a salary that matched by skillset. Sometimes I made more than my (citizen) coworkers, sometimes I made less. And I definitely make way more than the cited $73k avg. I'm from Europe and caucasian, so maybe that makes a difference, and folks from India or China are exploited more frequently; and my one case is certainly not representative.
Newsflash: American companies may be hiring cheap labor when they think they can get away with it.
Ric Romero should be reporting this.......
The point is that some people are worth a little, some people are worth a lot, and an elite few people really are worth a complete and utter fortune on the market. There is little sense in pretending that this is not so, whatever you think of Robin Hood.
http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/archives/2005/10 /many_more_skill.html
(Gary Becker, 1992 Nobel laureate)
Otherwise why would employers go through the hassle? /.ers opposed to the program sound like a bunch of KKK Minutemen.
I feel a bit tired today, so I decided to pick on an easy troll to squash, for my personal amusement.
PhDs are granted for NOVEL research, dude/dudette. Someone with a PhD basically means he/she has knowledge in some (however esoteric) field that nobody else has.
Ah! That feels better. Now back to the salt mines.
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
Actually I've been posting on /. for years. I don't know why it took me this long to actually register. It never really bothered me being "Anonymous Coward". Actually, it's one of the things that drew me to /. because I always hate registering. :-)
But you make an interesting point about MCSA salary being on average $47k (in 2003). The problem is that no one seems to care that I have years of experience as a NetWare/UNIX administrator. Because I don't feel like spending a couple thousand dollars to get the all-holy certification that puts those magic letters "CNE" or "CSA" next to my name, my resume probably goes right into the round file. It used to kill me years ago when I would go on interviews and potential employers would ask me if I had MCSE certification for NT 4.0. And I would ask them why I should spend my hard-earned cash to have some instructor with probably 3 months experience with Windows NT certify me in an operating system I have been doing installations and maintenance of since Advanced Server 3.1.
I've been programming since 1981. I know just about every operating system that runs on an x86 processor inside and out (and quite a few that don't run on x86). The problem is that no one wants to hire a hacker. They want to hire alphabet soup!
God forbid you should actually know what you're doing. It's more important that you pay into the system and shell out big bucks to Microsoft, Novell, Sun, et al. I've been hacking on Linux since the .99 kernel for crying out loud. I remember the fscking SLS distribution and how Patrick Volkerding started Slackware as an improvement upon SLS, back when your choices of Linux distro were basically SLS and TAMU or hack your own. Why on earth should I have to pay Red Hat money to get certified when I've been on Linux since before there was a Red Hat?!
Actually, one of the things I probably had going for me at my government job was that they had an old VAX that everyone was afraid of that had been inherited from the previous administration. They seemed to like the fact that I actually knew my way around VMS. But I suppose that's probably a unique thing in the public sector. In the corporate world, they'd probably just shell out for a support contract from whoever Digital's successor is these days (Intel?) and have them deal with it rather than hiring someone in house to maintain it.
The US govt ought to stop all H1Bs until all the unemployed people from the hurricanes are employed.
I was 'laid-off' from a US job, and the company hired a chinese h1b to do the job. They never tried to fill the job with a US citizen, and my layoff to hire an h1b was illegal.
US companies are abusing the h1bs. they are indentured servants tied to the employer. We ought to stop all of them.
as they're both making 5 to 7x what i'm making i don't care.
I work at a top 100. We hire mostly H1's. The majority of which dont know even basic unix skills. Many have masters in non-IT fields and do mostly on the job training. Our hiring is done by mid-level managers or former H1s which need people to justify their existence. What amazes me is that it takes 2 years to do a project that when I worked in a telecom would take 4-6 months. But cost savings isnt a concern. THe company becomes more and more bloated by the day and the H1 by far out ways the skilled US worker(of any nationality).
I used to work for a very large telecom company on the east coast. Several years ago, I think in the early 90s, they introduced an "entry" level position which they called MTS1. Most of the new hires in that grade where H1B holders. They had the same qualifications and did the same job as the MTS's. But they were definitely paid less.
So, the major needs of life (housing, education, a car, fuel) are rising in cost faster than the inflation index says, while jobs are either vanishing or giving no raises. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that eventually you won't have any local/US purchasers of houses and products at the inflated costs they are now. So, it'll have to pop.
You know, you're right.
But it got me to thinking... everybody and everything but the *shareholders* are a liability. Everything from the actual product the company makes (or service) up to the CEO. It doesn't provide any increase in the value of the company's product.
So... how much did your company economize on the CEO position this year?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
For all the hot air from Bill Clinton about his massive H1-B quotas being good for u.s. and the hot air from current slashdotters about George Bush killing innovation by banning H1-B's, the simple explanation ended up the right one. H1-B's are for making money.
No-one increases H1-B quotas to help u.s. dominate technology. No-one buys technology from India to give us all promotions. No-one raises gas taxes to help the environment. These things are done to make money. That's the only reason they are done.
What about people who've grown up in the United States almost all of their life, but since they were not born here, get merely stuck after high school?
I have a friend like this. An F-1 visa, I think. Basically the way it was explained to me they must pay out-of-state tuition fees, can't work, and once out of college must get some fairly large corporation to sign off that they are needed or something like that. And this is a person who's lived here since they were like 5 or 6. I doubt they even remember their home country.
Do we really think it's fair to treat these non-citizens this way? Consider this: Immagration is a real thing. Almost every country has it. It is a way for people from other countries to move to ours. I don't know about the culture as it stands nationally, but at least here in California we tend to embrase diversity. Sure, opening up the business world to foreigners lowers the average pay, but one could argue on a global scale that this aids towards a globalization of an economy still quite disoriented.
And all that aside, think of the innocent lives of what I would argue American adults who grew up here but as they enter adulthood find their oppertunities shunted in the name of protecting our standards of living.
This is unethical and wrong and someone needs to make a stand for it.
http://pixelcort.com/
Here is the OES wage data for Alameda County (Bay Area), which is toward the higher end of the California salary scale for California. Nowhere is ther listed an "average". Level one is considered a BS and a little experience.
Check out the OES wage site and see how mych you are underpaid!
Online Wage Library - OES Wage Search Results
Tuesday, October 25, 2005 New Quick Search New Search Wizard
You selected the All Industries database for Calendar Year 2005. Your search returned the following:
Area Code: 5775
Area Title: Oakland, CA PMSA
OES/SOC Code: 15-1021
OES/SOC Title: Computer programmers
Level 1 Wage: $24.65 hour - $51,272 year
Level 2 Wage: $31.29 hour - $65,083 year
Level 3 Wage: $37.94 hour - $78,915 year
Level 4 Wage: $44.58 hour - $92,726 year
GeoLevel: 2
This wage applies to the following O*Net occupations:
15-1021.00 Computer Programmers
Convert project specifications and statements of problems and procedures to detailed logical flow charts for coding into computer language. Develop and write computer programs to store, locate, and retrieve specific documents, data, and information. May program web sites.
O*Net(TM) JobZone: 4 -- Education & Training Code: 5-Bachelor's degree
I have an internet connection because it costs $70 plus the cost of calls to have Verizon phone service. Or, I can get cable internet for $50 plus unlimited calling on VoIP for $20. Do the math. A telephone is a necessity. The problem is that no one wants to fix the educational system in this country. No one wants to be told that their kid isn't "good enough"/"smart enough" to study academics. So everyone goes to college, even the less intelligent who would be better off learning a manual trade. What this does is water down the academic environment and dumb it down so that the ones who probably ought to be pursuing higher studies don't bother. I have a 144 IQ and I became totally disillusioned with the whole idea of going to school when I realized that I was taking harder classes than other students in my school, but you know what? We would end up with the same grades and the same diploma in the end. I worked harder and probably had more talent, yet I don't get any advantage by that. The only thing that really acts as any sort of real qualifier for higher learning are standardized test scores because they are standardized. But now you have this whole movement trying to discredit the SAT and make it so that the playing field is more even. The problem is that not everyone has the same intellectual potential. But in America, "all men are created equal." A real problem. Not to mention that education is way too expensive. Too many high-priced private institutions and even the public institutions that are academically decent cost thousands of dollars to attend. If we had the same educational standards in place that are seen abroad, things would be much better for us here in the US.
The article didn't make mention of the recently passed H-1 (and L-1) reform act that went into effect this summer. It requires that such workers be paid the higher of two salaries: (a) OES published salaries, or (b) what the company pays others for such work. Not to say that this can't be abused, but the old system made salary abuse by the employer much easier.
No, George Washington discovered that it was not, in fact, more efficient to have slaves. That was one of the reasons he wanted to free his slaves. He found that they did poor work unless you had overseers (who had to be paid), They would do anything to get out of work, they had to be clothed and fed, and so forth. He had ethical reasons as well, but the economic reasons were very serious.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and Dan Quayle were in a little friendly spelling bee.
Guess who won?
Nope, it was Dan Quayle. The word was "harass."
Quayle was the only one who knew it was one word.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
1. there is a little known Federal law on the books that says that if you're not paying programmers at least 26 and change an hour (this was in 2002- it may be VERY SLIGHTLY more now) THEN they are entitled to time and a half overtime for every hour worked over 40 in a week. California (where I was) has its own law, which requires 45 plus an hour- the state law trumping the Federal law in this case. I guarantee and certify that this is absolutely true, I have read the law myself and consulted labor attorneys on the same subject (some of whom knew less than I did)
2.The prevailing wage provision of the H1B law poses no problem to employers who want to whittle the wages down over the course of , say three years, thatis, if they decide to pay any attention to the provision at all, which most do not.
Paying 90% of prevailing wage (whatever THAT is) will have the effect of LOWERING the prevailing wage by 10% a year over the course of, say, three years. In five years, your salsry has been cut in half. This is actaully happening.
Aside from this, there is no enforcement of the prevailing wage provision because we're not REALLY a nation of laws; we're a nation Have and Have Nots- the Haves buy whatever result they want and in the event they don't get exactly what they want, they ust break the law. I dont' believ I've ever worked fro an employer who wan't engaged in some illegal activity or practice- ever.
Only if an H1B decides he or she wants to get out of America and go back to whatever 3rd world hell hole they're from by actually complaining about their wages and or working conditions.
3 There is no requirement - what so EVER _ that employers look for an American or try to find an American for the position. None. Zero. Zip. Nada. Nothing. Zilch.
For more information try www.zazona.com
Your comment about "lack of skill" is complete horseshit. And if you're going to go on about paying your employees less, then don't whine when they spend less and you find your business in bankruptcy.
Consumer spending is 2/3 of the economy and lowering their wages has a direct and immediate effect on corporate profits, especially now that the bankruptcy laws have changed.
If you pay people less then where will they get the money to buy your products and services? Simple question, you should be able to answer it.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
blah blah blah!!
yadd yadda yadda!!
na na na na na!!!
Freaking xenophobic pigs.......!!
Given a level playing field non americans are better than americans..
Eat it or Leave it!
As a H1b I have always got the market rate....
I have worked better than others.
I have succeded because I did not keep looking into the gutters all the time.
I have paid taxes and have earned the RIGHT TO LIVE HERE if I WANT TO!!!!!
This is not about outsourcing. This is about bringing low wage workers into the U.S. to avoid paying the going wage in the U.S. By law, companies are required to pay H1B workers what they would pay a U.S. worker. Instead, the companies are paying the workers less and avoiding hiring U.S. IT workers.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Following that logic, why not just open the borders and let everybody in? Why flood *only* IT? Why should I have to pay protected doctor and protected auto-mechanic prices, yet get a non-protected IT salary? Either screw all or screw none.
Table-ized A.I.
it's supposed to find highly-skilled workers that can't be found on the local job market NOT fill up entry level positions with underpaid workers.
Further, efforts by some groups to electronicly publish H-1B requests on the web was rebuffed. If there was a "shortage", one should invite free job advertizing. Yet more evidence the lobbyists don't want citizens.
Table-ized A.I.
This means: DISCRIMINATION
Anyone with a resident consition should be able to get paid for his/her work according to the skills and not the visa type!
If anyone in whatever country ask me what kind of visa I have "before" giving me a job I'll spit his face.
This looks like a feature of US, shame on you!
Over the years I have learned that one has to protect his/her own political turf. Congress will NOT do what is right and fair on their own; something has to push them in the opposite direction of campaign contributions.
Learn from the BAR association or the NRA. They know how to protect what they want and have. If us geeks don't learn at least some of the same game, we will be the next agricultural workers.
Merit won't save you, only postpone the inevitable. Do you think the very best agricultural citizen worker is happy about what happened to agricultural work?
Table-ized A.I.
The truth is that when people from foriegn countries come here, they use freedoms and opportunities that they don't have elsewhere to create wealth and opportunities that never existed before. They don't just sit on their ass and leach ... they invest, they open businesses, they hire or lead to new hiring, they produce, they consume, and just add value to our overall society as immigrants have for over 500 years in the Americas.
While our standard of freedom has declined over the last few decades, it is still orders of magnatude greater than most of the real world. But lets make no mistake: our economic freedoms have declined because of our own taxes, regulations, debt, and most especially bad monitary policy. To blame any wealth or pay squeese (other than perhaps short term ones) on on foriegners coming here and using the increased freedom here to create success is totally unfair and niaeve.
As a white American programmer/sysadmin from a midwestern USA family, I am truely embarassed that my cluture is being so mean to the foriegners. In all truth, we should be begging for them to be here and thanking them profusely for hanging their hat in the USA and and choosing us as a place to create future wealth and opportunity. In all truth, we should pratically be kissing their feet in thatkfullness that they are willing to be productive in the USA for only a fraction of the cost that it would normally take. In stead we hate their guts and ignorantly slander that "they are stealing our jobs" like an ignorant mob on a whitch hunt.
All I can say is that if you are from a foriegn country seeing this, I beg in humiliation, please forgive us. Too many people just don't know what the hell they are talking about. Please, in behalf of my country, I really beg your forgiveness - I am at a loss for words, I cna't even begin to offer a justification.
I sincerely hope that the foriegners we have treated soo poorly are more forgiving, understanding, and tolerant than we are. If not, it will be a bad omen as in the next few years over a billion people will be comming online to the global economy. God help us.
I came here 5 years ago. Before coming on board I was asked for my salary wishes. I had no idea what a person with my skills should have asked for.
So I tried to figure salaries, taxes, costs of living etc. and arrived at a number that would give us (came with wife, who cannot work in the US, but did work back home) at least a comparable lifestyle that we had in our home country, and asked for that. And I got it, no questions asked. Now I know better, and think I could have asked for a bit more and gotten more (my initial salary was still good, it's just that it could have been better).
I migrated from the UK to live in California 10 years ago. I've been a permanent resident for over 5 years now.
I can tell you that when you go through H1-B or any type of employment based VISA the INS checks your salary falls within a range and will deny your application if you are not in band.
This report is bogus trolling, utter rubbish.
I can also tell you when I moved here I was making more than many of my American counterparts, experience counts baby !
An H1-B fresh out of Uni will definitely be paid less than an H1-B with 20 years experience, same goes for citizens.
Companies are also not this dumb. The INS WILL investigate your company and WILL cause a whole pant load of trouble if you do this.
However, I suspect H1's are not asking for signing bonuses, massive stock grants and obscene moving expenses.
In the UK I was blissfully unaware of all of those. I moved here by fedexing my most treasured possesions, sold the rest and showed up with a suitcase and re-bought everything I needed.
I think they reimbursed me for around a total of $500 - $600 and paid for the air ticket.
I've hired people moving from Seattle to the bay area that have presented me with $20k in moving expenses.
Doh !
But I guess you didn't see the huge hole in your argument.
Oh, those poor exploited H1-B visa workers.
Imagine this scenario:
Tomorrow, we in the west are contacted by the aliens of Planet UltraFirstWorld.
The aliens of UltraFirstWorld speak English. And they need lots and lots of robotics engineers, sysadmins, perl programmers, and customer support folks. Because they are a very wealthy society, they can pay $1 million / year for every techie who goes over there.
So, they set up a visa program whereby Earthlings can travel there, work for a year, and come back home.
Go for one year, and you can buy yourself a McMansion inside Rt 128, or a sweet loft in San Francisco, and all the stuff from ThinkGeek you could ever want.
Go for a few years, and you can come back and catapult your entire family into the upper class.
Oh...but wait, there is one hitch.
Alien techies from UltraFirstWorld earn $2 million / year, not the mere $1 million / year they're offering you.
It turns out that, in accordance with the fundamental laws of economics, you are only being offered the job because hiring more UltraFirstWorld alien techies would cost the firms $2 million or more a year. Doubling the size of all-alien tech staff would require giving bonuses to tempt alien lawyers and doctors into engineering...that might cost $3 million / year.
So, see, by paying you only $1 million / year, they're exploiting you.
What the software industry of planet UltraFirstWorld should *really* (a) raise wages for natives from $2 million to something higher; (b) tell you to stay home and keep earning $60 or 90 k on Earth.
Who benefits from such a proposal?
Not consumers. They end up paying more for products and services produced at $3 million / year, instead of $1 million.
Not Earthlings. We end up earning $80k instead of $1 million.
Not the UltraFirstWorld companies: they have to pay higher wages and work hard to recruit extra workers.
Only one group benefits: the semi-skilled and semi-employed aliens who would have been hired if the supply of workers was artificially constrained.
Why should this group be privileged over all of the other groups? What makes them so special?
So with all that in mind, does anyone know any good sites for searching for companies that don't mind applying for H1-B visas?
I'm British and wouldn't mind working in the U.S. for a while.
Thanks!
Many H1-Bs were stranded during the dot.com bust. However the state department suspended the requirement they return home, allowing them to stay if had applied for a green card. In earlier years they would have been requiredto return home if they hadnt found a new position in 12 months.
the higher your salary is. This is why salesmen get junkets, er, Team Bulding Strategy Meetings in Cancun, while the engineers can't get get money to cover the cost of driving to a nearby one-day convention.
Salesmen? They bring the business in, so they can say "Before I turn this contract over to you, what are you going to do for me?" Laywers? They help you hang on to money. At $200/hr. Engineers? They only make things. They're craftsmen. Dime a dozen. Italian stone cutters. Replacable parts. They don't manipulate wealth, they just generate it. Like plankton converts light into usable enery.
People are our greatest resource. And what do you do with resources? You exploit them. Woah! Leaning a little bit too far to the left, here. God Bless America! God Bless our President! God Bless our Inteligence Services. Did I miss anybody?
Bitter? Me, Bitter? Nah.
"If god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him" --Voltaire
I've been hiring H1Bs for 10 years, in Silicon Valley and now in New York. Trust me, if there is ANY discrepancy in what H1B holders get vs US engineers, they'll find out and let you know before they've unpacked their wife's sari! It's very simple: if the market is hot, as it was in the late 90's, they'll find another company willing to pay them more, the H1B transfer won't be an obstacle. Quickly the market will settle at the same level as US engineers: there's no reason why it would not. Now there may be some temporary market discrepancy in difficult times: H1B holders may hesitate to jump ship when jobs are scarce. But in that case you can rely on congress to endorse the appropriate demagogic rethoric and cut down on the number of visas!
I don't doubt that it's possible to abuse the system, but it's amazingly shortsighted. My company would be willing to spend *more* if we could get competent people. The value of a single great hire is multiple times their salary, and we know it. It's just hard to find good (not "meets minimum standards", but "good") US candidates, and that's the calibre of people we need. When you look at the pool of qualified candidates for entry-level semicustom ASIC design, it's about 80% foreigners, most of whom will need an H1-B or other visa to work for us. Usually they came to the US to go to grad school, so they are currently on a student visa. I think this also accounts (in my company) for the wage differential - H1-B holders are usually new hires. In 4-6 years they've gotten their green card, gotten married, bought a house, and been promoted at least once. They're becoming Americans, too, or their kids will be. I guess I'd like to hire more US citizens, in theory, but the quality just isn't there.
hey! thats still more cash than i earn each month at my IT post in a UK university :-(
You know, if less yahoos thought 53k was not enough money, they'd have more job security. koff koff.
Karma: Bad is the liberal way of saying this guy won't drink the kool aid here on slash dot. I wear my Karma with pride
I was paying more than $10k/year rent living in South Jamaica, Queens... $10k/year you can't even afford to live in one of the most crime-ridden, disgusting places in America!
You can't compare apples and oranges here. World per capita income may be $10k/year, but the cost of living, largely driven by taxation and greed, is much different in the US than in other places.
30 years ago there was no H1B.
H1B lying about their experience - nothing new there too. say hi to your daddy.
I don't know why you people disregard the fact that HIB are also skilled workers. This is very unfair to them. Companies hiring them don't just do it because they are cheap. They do it because they can still get the quality of work like most of you do yet they have to pay lower.
I don't know why you people disregard the fact that HIB are also skilled workers. This is very unfair to them. Companies hiring them don't just do it because they are cheap. They do it because they can still get the quality of work like most of you do yet they have to pay lower.
You have dodged the issue. The issue is whether employees are filing their income tax returns and whether the correct amounts are being with-held.
Our income tax system has been set into an "honor" system. The IRS now lacks it's once legendary ability to make your life a living hell if you fail to file.
I have heard more than one H1-B contracter laughing over their recalcitrance in paying their INCOME taxes (above and beyond whith-holding).
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Like this wasn't known from the start!
The quality of code produced by some of the people who've come in under H1B in almost every company I've worked at has been utterly abysmal.
G.
Except what you are describing is against the law. H-1B workers have to be paid the higher of the prevailing wage for their occupation and location or the wage based upon skills.
As for me, I make way the hell more than that, and I take a few months off every year. In fact, this year, I'm taking the rest of the year off because why the hell should I work November and December? I've only taken 6 weeks of vacation so far, so I think I've earned some time off. Yet I have "only" an undergraduate degree. From a state school. And not even a good one. My entire college education cost less than one year of law school. And I didn't have to kill myself studying for the bar.
By the way, I live in one of the most expensive cities in the US, and $70k is nothing. You can't rent a parking spot for $70k/yr, let alone an apartment. My points are:
Actually, I don't really see your point. If you want to work your ass off for $75k/yr, nobody's stopping you. But remember, at least in the states, you've got to go to three years of law school, which costs a ton of $US. And after you're done working your ass off in law school, you get to work your ass off for some partner in some law firm.
You know, I have to say it's kind of funny. You know when you're poor and you hear rich people say things like, "money isn't everything" and "money can't buy happiness," etc.? And you think to yourself, "That's something rich people say so poor people don't kill them." Well, I've been poor. And right now, I don't feel wealthy, but John Kerry says I'm wealthy and he really wanted to raise my taxes so I guess it must be true. Anyhow, I have to say, money isn't all it's cracked up to be. There are other infinitely more important things in life. My advice to you is to be happy with what you have. Spend time with your family. Go travel the world. That's what life's really about.
Anyhow, more money is useless if you have no time to spend it.
Good luck!
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
H1B visa holders are unfairly underpaid is another.
Salocin.com