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Australian IT Workers Concerned About Migrants
sien writes "In Australia it is being asserted that Australia's intake of migrants skilled in IT is taking jobs and lowering wages for Australian citizens. It appears that in all developed countries, not just the US, the case that immigrants are lowering wages for IT workers is being made. Would programmers in the developed world be better off without immigration that favors IT or is there an overall benefit for the industry with skilled workers going to the developed world and thus making the industry larger?"
Let me get this straight. TFA's asserting that the Australian Govt lets in "too many" immigrants with IT skillz, and you see this as evidence of inherent Australian immigration policy racism.
Uh-huh.
Or are you just doing your usual (since you've apparently "said it before") knee-jerk reaction to anything involving the words "foreign" and "immigrants" ?
(More racist than Japan? Yup. Sure. You need to get out more, and login less.)
Amused Caucasian
Perhaps they should stop blaming others and increase the standard of what is being taught at Universities and the last few years of secondary/high school. The Australian IT industry is a shame compared to other countries.
He also said the Australian Computer Society, which accredits the IT qualifications of applicants for permanent residency, should introduce tougher English tests and insist that overseas students spend three years studying IT in Australia, rather than two.
The Australian Computer Society? Oh, these are the same guys who think IT 'pros' should be certified just like doctors and nurses. When its illegal to be an uncertified IT guy in Australia, please tell me because I will happily show the door to anything trying to enforce it.
Funny,
I have worked for close to 30 years, and I have found lately that the bottom line is king .
A lot of the reason ppl are being hired from overseas is cost, not quality .
Don't get me wrong, some are quality ppl, I met some good and some bad while at cisco systems .
There is a perception that americans are fat and lazy, and I have met them too, but then again
I have met ppl that were awesome, but were paid very little because they were young .
I also see that older ppl are generally not accepted into the tech sector as being
considered unable to embrace new things and stuck in their ways .
Some old school telecom ppl got screwed on this HR techno-babble mental mindwash .
They need to just test the ppl, and have technical interviews in addition to the
personality assessment done by HR .
I have seen ppl hired at cisco that were pathethic , and they stayed even after the
DOT bust and ppl that stayed and left were both utterly amazed by it .
For the big corporations the accountants are driving them now, and 3dfx is a good
example of what happens when accountants and marketing droids take over .
Like I said, don't get me wrong, good ppl on both sides of the ocean, but some of the
most experienced ppl in the tech sector are being driven away by new visa workers
just for the cost savings .
As an american you can go apply at some of the foreign IT head hunter shops and no
matter your credentials you won't even get an interview .
They want ppl they can leverage with fear of being sent back home as well, knowing
it is the difference between a 3rd world job or being here making more than they would
in their resident country by far .
The flaw I see in this is that if money is made here, but most of it sent out of the country
to support their family back home, then money that would go into the economy here ends up
being sent out and deflating our economy .
They cry about a trade deficit, but they themselves employ foreign workers who send a great
deal of money home . "Just" sent via Western Union, "just" to mexico $6 billion USD .
http://www.businessweek.com/1997/19/b3526155.htm
I don't know how many ppl from other countries work here, but I know the figure is in the
millions, and I know it is from MANY nations . I also know generally the mexicans make
the least as well . So with that in mind, you can guesstimate the math .
When the corporations whine about the trade deficit, they can keep this in mind .
As for the government puppets protecting US jobs, that is a bunch of BS , and they should
all be flown to hollywood to pick up their oscar awards .
Peace,
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
I'm sorry, what has this got to do with "whites"? I do believe you views on racism cloud your mind from rational thought. Especially since you appear racist against whites. Where I work, we employ people from Thailand and India. We fly some of them over to work here in Australia. They get paid terribly in comparison to what the roles should be paid here. This is the "business" trend for bulk labour, regardless of industry. If its cheaper, business will do it. This is where businesses save money. They develop an "easy" to follow process, and then labour becomes cheap. Unfortunatly most of the time (that I've witnessed) it comes at the cost of quality. IT work should always be about quality. The contracts/positions are no longer financially feasable for someone with the required experience locally. Business can make huge savings in wages by employing someone from overseas. IMHO, we would be better off paying more for quality resources. I don't mind offshoring work. Importing workers is bad for the wealth of our local industry. If someone could be flown to Australia from a country less fortunate, to replace my role for a half of the cost, then thats REALLY bad for me. My value in the workplace diminishes, not because of my knowledge, or my experience, but because of imported labour. Imagine if whatever industry you're in started paying half wage. Also, different cultures can have different work ethics which are hard to work around. These aren't so easy to measure, and I think businesses quite often ignore the issues. For example, from Thailand we have some issues because the culture says "if you ask questions, you were to stupid to understand the first time". I've had a team of 3 "senior software engineers" each tell me that they understood a project (after reading a tech spec, func spec and a week of meetings), and had no questions. A week later, this was clearly not the case (even after verbal status updates "Yes its very good"). The one employee that did understand it all was a junior who asked plenty of questions (and she rocks at what she does, and I have a lot of respect for her).
To me it makes sense that a country should try and maintain a certain level of native competancy in skills, not that I have any idea what that level would be.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
You try to offer a 100k+ package for a specialist position in sydney and see what kind of crap will apply. You find a good ossie, good for ya.
We usually pay relocation for someone from either europe or the us in order to get someone with decent technical skills.
This is NOT cheap but what other options are there when you just can not hire locally?
Close to 50% of our hires over the last few years has been 100k+ package plus full relocation from europe/us but what other options are there?
An asymptotical narrowing of wealth disparity between the countries
/ sha020404.htm
With close to 3 billion ppl living in poverty by US/EU standards, to "equalize"
the pay scale, property values will plumment, and the currency will be devalued
to levels that deflation will cripple the US/EU .
I cannot say it enough, any job can be done by someone else from another country
for less, and they are more than eager to do it .
If every job in your country was systematically done by a corporate owned visa worker,
none of the citizens would have jobs .
How the hell would anyone pay their bills ???
I am not talking about one EU member working in a sister "state"
I am talking about corporate slums like in the bradford riots .
Like what this women is talking about .
http://wwwa.house.gov/international_relations/108
If you still try to sell this, then your just on the cash cow and
sucking away at the udder til the tit runs dry .
The US, the place everyone loves to hate, and wants to work !
Hypocrisy !
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
I'm moving to Australia from the UK next month and I don't remember seeing any IT jobs on the Skilled List. At the moment, the Skilled Occupations List is made up of medical jobs or else such things as panel beaters, electricans, chefs, welders etc - i.e. skilled, but not automatically professional, occupations. We've got a permanent visa through my wife who is a nurse.
As far as I am aware, only an obscure or very specific IT speciality will get you a work visa for Australia at the moment.
As for all of these overseas students graduating and getting work visas, is it not safe to argue that a large number of them will be making a beeline for the U.S. anyway ?
Interestingly I heard someone talking about this on the radio news on the way home today. The reasoning they gave for decreasing 'importing' people was that a lowering in wages was decreasing the desirability of IT courses to Australians (compared to other courses) and therefore Australia is producing fewer IT workers now. So, according to him at least, the "importing" of foreign IT workers was a cause of under producing native workers and getting more would in fact make the problem worse, as sort of a vicious circle.
...
This is so totally dead on .
Enrollment in IT related fields in the US by citizens is staggering low, so low in fact that the
majority of students are not citizens in those classes .
In fact a professor here commented he had one class that had zero citizens in it, and asked the
question "Are we paying taxes to fund schools to train our replacements ???"
I think it is a pretty interesting question
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
You do realize that the US as a whole has grown wealthier, not poorer, right?
2 35-2004Sep19.html
0 4.wallace-wells.html
s es_of_the_Great_Depression
...Ad naseum .
/ sha020404.htm
The Ultra-rich have accumulated more wealth, yes, this is true .
News stories have been done on the vanishing middle class :
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34
The Stock Market correction of 2000 and then 9-11, was more massive then I think you
can imagine, it bankrupted most of the major airlines in the US .
Just now we have risen to the point we were at before 9-11, aka
the same spot we were at after the DOT COM crash .
Lay offs were literally in the millions .
Do you understand " MILLIONS "
They like to make like it has "recovered", but all that has really happened is
a shell game . It's all bullshit, just like Enron, Global Crossing, MCI, Ad naseum .
Greenspan knows this, thus his warning on a housing bubble .
Excerpt: ( 4 paragraphs up from the last )
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/04
That job fell to Greenspan: Finally, on Feb. 24, testifying before the Senate Banking Committee, he came clean about the risks of the housing market, in a speech reminiscent of his 1996 warning about "irrational exuberance" in the stock market. In his familiar, glum posture, his bald head slouching low over the table, he warned that the GSEs weren't just unstable, but also posed a "systemic risk" to the economy of the United States. He suggested debt caps, to reduce Fannie and Freddie's role in the market, and urged stricter regulation.
These EXACT tactics have played out before, but we refuse to look back to 1929 .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_depression#Cau
They want to maximize the profit, raise the stock price, lower overhead
I go back to the simplicity method .
If anyone can do any job here for less, then no citizen will be doing the job if the
bottomline is all to consider .
corporate funded slums to house the visa workers, because they aren't even paid enough to
afford the housing that the citizens have to pay for .
Read this woman's story :
http://wwwa.house.gov/international_relations/108
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
"Are we paying taxes to fund schools to train our replacements ???"
No, as far as I know no government funds foriegn students with taxpayers money, foriegn students are self funded. Here in Australia there are still plenty of jobs for someone with a computer science degree. I myself have had no trouble taking home more than the average wage for the past 15yrs.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Rubbish. For the first you need 100 points of ID (for the non-natives, a passport and birth certificate are worth about 50 or so each, drivers license about 30, credit card about 10). For the second you need 100 points of ID and the last few months worth of paychecks. The third I can't comment on.
It's been *ridiculously* easy to get a mortgage in Australia for the last 5 - 8 years (something that has the potential to come back and bite the banks _hard_ if the economy goes south). Heck, there are places who'll give you a mortgate if you just tell them you're self-employed and earning enough.
To rent a place, you need to give the past 2 or 3 addresses you've been.
Maybe if you're an unemployed nineteen year old who looks like he just walked out of a hippy commune. I moved to Sydney about 3 years ago and knew no-one, but since I had a letter from my employer stating I was starting full time work the following week and dressed neatly when I went looking, I was moving into a new place in a matter of days - and I'd never rented before in my life.
Finally, examine the tax situation before you move in any case!
This is good advice. Taxation here is relatively high, even taking into accounts the services benefits it delivers. OTOH, outside the rat-race insanity of Sydney or Melbourne, it's a really nice, laid-back place to live.
I'm an American who set up an offshore unit for my former employer. I can tell you this:
1. Not all IT workers from developed nations are skilled.
2. Not all IT workers from underdeveloped nations are unskilled.
3. Skilled IT workers are worth their weight in gold, regardless of origin.
The only IT workers that need fear losing their jobs are the unskilled; and rightfully so, as they don't really belong in our industry anyway.