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Complaints Filed Over Firms Seeking H1-B Holders
Vicissidude writes "Since May, the Programmers Guild has filed 100 complaints with the U.S. Department of Justice, accusing several companies of advertising that they specifically want H-1B workers, a violation of U.S. law. The U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act requires that U.S. jobs must be available to U.S. workers. The complaints stem from ads containing wording such as "We require candidates for H1B from India," and "We sponsor GC [green card] and we do prefer H1B holders," the Programmers Guild said. The Programmers Guild, looking for ads on major online job boards, has so far targeted only ads seeking computer programmers, the guild said. It plans to file 280 more complaints over the next six months."
InfoWorld has been running articles on this H-1B situation for a while. There's a special report on H-1B visas set up on the site.
Personally, one point that makes me skeptical is that I hear about this from the Programmer's Guild again and again. I'm not sure what the Programmer's Guild does, other than make a big stink about H-1B visas. Not that this is, in and of itself, necessarily a bad thing -- but if the H-1B situation was really as cut and dried, criminal and downright treasonous as the Programmer's Guild says, wouldn't there be some other parties chiming in on the issue?
Breakfast served all day!
Yes, this has completely gone out of hand. Call it 'domestic outsourcing' if you will - the end result is the same: hardworking and highly skilled American engineers have a tougher time finding a job. The H2B visa was never meant as a carde blanche for companies to replace native qualified workers with cheaper immigrant workers. It's time to nip this in the butt once and for all - surely the companies greatly enjoy this situation and it won't change or even get worse if we let 'the free market decide'.
Yeah, nothing provides jobs like the artificial inflation of wages.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
In the dot-com rush of the late 1990s, yes, we needed H1-B workers because there plain simply was not enough workers. Not today. Today, any job posting made public gets hundreds of resumes. Jobs are getting filled quickly; people who have jobs in the tech field are working long hours for a fraction of what they would have made in the hight of the dot-com bubble. More and more companies are laying off workers; Sun just recently laid off 5000 workers. The US job market is weak and the H1-B workers just make it harder.
I know that this "job-tailoring" is done frequently in the industry as a way of getting the exact person you know. Just that if it fits this shoe, it's quite certainly illegal... kind of like saying you want someone who is/not specific race/disabled/etc.
I, for one, hope that the hiring managers who put up such job descriptions get fired, as it's part and parcel of the corruption. Just wish we could fire them for other similar "job-tailoring" activities.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
The Programmer's Guild actually expects to force Congress and the Courts to obey the laws they've enacted? In what Perfect World is this?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Let them take the low paying and boring jobs. If you are an excellent programmer you WILL be in demand and you most likely wouldn't want the positions that advertise they want H1B's and GC holders. The people I do see this hurting is entry level candidates but even so if you can prove you are worth your salt you will find a nice job.
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.
They took err jeeerbs!! But seriously, the perception about H1-B holders being needed to supplement the supposed lack of American training is, to me, rather insulting. Maybe I have too high an estimation of myself and my peers, but it seems to me that the US is pretty rich with technical talent. Trying to dilute the marketplace with indentured servants certainly is not going to help us get paid our due, or motivate us to earn it.
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
They don't just want to pay less, they want a carte blanche to treat their employees like crap. An H1-B visa worker will put up with a lot more abuse from an employer since they depend on the employer to keep them in the country. This is the evolution of the idea of preferring people with families to single workers. The theory is, if they have a family, they also have a mortgage, car payments, college tuition, etc... to provide for their family, making it much less likely they will up and quit if the employer treats them unfairly.
The IEEE , Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO and researhers such as Norm Matloff speak up against the H-1B abuse.
Lots of folks speak up against it.
The hired gun lobbyist Harris Miller loses to Jim Webb. Miller ran an unaplogetic pro H-1B and pro-outsourcing campaign. Seems the voters in Virginia don't like Harris Miller's record.
Heck, even Milton Friedman calls it a subsidy.
Confiscate the assets of the businesses illegally lowering wages via violation of the law.
Seastead this.
I agree with you, but you said... "InfoWorld has been running articles on this H-1B situation for a while. [snip] if the H-1B situation was really as cut and dried, criminal and downright treasonous as the Programmer's Guild says, wouldn't there be some other parties chiming in on the issue?"
Other parties like, say, InfoWorld?
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
If a company can spend less to hire someone from India / Mexico / wherever, why on earth should we stop them? Why should they be forced to pay more money to hire someone from the US? This is utterly against the spirit of the free market.
In a completely free market, eventually wages for everybody doing a particular sort of job would end up about the same: as companies send work where it's cheapest, the local economy grows and thrives and the wages there will rise. Now, many things conspire to make markets non-free: sometimes things as simple and nigh unto insurmountable as Geography, sometimes things as ugly as petty politics.
Argue if you want that a free market is evil/bad/wrong. But recognize that any sort of visas and such are barriers to entry, and what you describe ("wages should be high because the skills are rare") is diametrically opposed to that: you are artificially limiting the supply by political machinations, almost exactly in the same way a monopolist can limit the supply of the product they can sell, in order to drive the price up so they can make the most profit.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I only care about the country I was born in. The rest of the world can die in nuclear fire as far as I care.
And there was I about to feel sorry for you....
Try NetBSD... safe,straightforward,useful.
I thought socialism-in-one-country was no longer in fashion amongst Marxists!
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Don't forget that they can also treat them nearly as slave labor, as an H1B visa holder cannot change jobs without a major hassle, and cannot seek any additional employment. If they quit or are fired, the visa is terminated and they have scant time to leave the country.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Even though future employers may get a slap on the wrist for the way in which they advertise positi0ons, it will not (and can not) change their hiring policies. All this is going to do is be a waste of time for companies (ie interviewing/processing applications from unwanted candidates) and for the individual applying for the job (writing letters, e-mails, phone calls etc to a company that has no intent of hiring you).
Yes it does suck and is discriminatory, however in the land of free enterprise what can you do? Mandate they hire Americans? Easy solution for the company, off shore the jobs.
Excuses Are Like Assholes - Everybody's Got One
If the US wants to open the doors to everyone of any skill set immigrating to the US that's one thing. But H1B's are basically a direct attack on specific segments of highly skill labor. I would be more than happy to let 5 million people a year enter the US as long as they are representative of the entire spectrum of economic life. However, when H1B's drive down programmer wages but doctors and lawyers are basicly left alone there is a problem.
No, I don't argue in any way against raising the wages in other countries. That's the natural consequence of globalization - everything reaches equilibrium. The investments that US companies make into (relatively) high-paying jobs in, for example, India, spread more money around that economy. A rising tide lifts all boats.
Unfortunately, we can't afford the 20-100 year indefinite timespan necessary for globalization to actually bring about equilibrium. After all, you can count yourself sure that the corporations which hire Indian workers and H-1B workers don't want a free market any more than labor does: they just want cheap labor to make very cheap products they can sell for high prices. Ideologues like you are the only ones who actually want free markets - most people actually participating in the market don't.
The trouble is H1B visa holders are at the mercey of the corporation that hires them whereas an American can pack up and leave at any time. That means the H1Bs effectively cost (much) less.
If you're going to attack me with emotional rhetoric, at least attack me or my beliefs. Setting up strawmen isn't a sign of masterful debate.
I don't attack the worker side, because I'm part of it. I simply understand how both sides work, so I know how to play my role to its maximum advantage. I don't make CEO salaries, but I don't have CEO responsibilities. Someday, I may. Then your attack will be sensible.
Also, I would be remiss if I didn't point out that anyone can become the owner of a company. It's not an elite club with massive barriers - it's open to all and sundry who are willing to take the risks. That's not to say it's not a shark tank, because it is fiercely competitive. That's the nature of the willing. Asking everyone to play nice so you can get what you feel you're owed goes against human nature and current economic reality.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
The government created a mechanism called "prevailing wage". If they actually made the prevailing wage something like 2x what a company could pay a citizen, the only time a company would hire a H1B is when the really couldn't find a citizen to work in that role. In my business - environmental chemistry - the "prevailing wage" is something around 2x what we can afford to pay a chemist. So we don't hire any H1B's. It is just too damn expensive. So if your average techie makes 80k a year, the government could make the prevailing wage $200k. Then the companies would have to choose between; a.) paying the person 2.5x what a citizen would make, b.) breaking federal laws which sends the VP's to jail for a good long time, or c.) not hiring H1B's. If there is a real talent shortage, a company would be willing (and able to pass along the cost) of an H1B. If there isn't a shortage, the government can make the economics so bad that it doesn't make sense to hire a non-citizen.
just my 2c.
Protectionism is bad idea, be it for good or jobs.
So you don't want Indian to come and take jobs in the US? Well think of the consequences:
- The company will outsource to India, and Indian worked cost far less when he Lives in India than in the US.
- If a worker offer a lower labor cost it's a gift to the american economy. The goods will be cheaper, the consumer will save money, invest in other sectors etc..
- If someone wishes a workvisa it means he intends to work, not live on welfare. The intent to work should be a plus for immigrants not a minus...
Protectionism is the most dangerous economic fallacy ever. Come on you're the US, you are liberals, don't fall for that old interventionnist trick.
\u262D = \u5350
Sounds like the same thing the tinfoil hat crowd said about the Japanese in the 80's. You must be too young to realize that you have nothing new to say.
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
In a truly free market, though, another company will gladly spring up doing the exact same thing, but NOT pay the CEOs a bunch of money, until the other company goes out of business (or changes).
...
Recognize that to economists, everything is a market unless it's coersion.
Unlike Marxist Hacker 42, who I don't think will be comfortable until there's blood in the streets, I'm not going to tell you I have no use for a free market. In fact, my goal would be for as many people as possible to make any rational trades they want, which is probably the outcome you're thinking of when you say "free market."
But you don't get there by removing all the rules. That Econ class should have taught you that all that happens when you remove all the rules is that people take advantage of disparities in bargaining power and information to coerce or fool other parties into non-rational transactions.
The CEO case is a perfect example. The CEOs hornswoggle or pay off the directors, who in turn do the same to the shareholders. Shareholders and employees are left holding the bag. Since there is no incentive for CEOs not to do this, as they profit much more handsomely than they could from simply doing good business, there is no incentive for a CEO to lead your "another company" into the picture.
Thus active public intervention is required to ensure a market where all parties who bargain and inform themselves to the best of their ability realize positive outcomes. The great failing of many people inclined toward a viewpoint informed by classical economics is that they fail to realize this -- effectively embracing a course which inevitably leads to feudalism, not free markets. In this specific situation, the public intervention needed is simply enforced regulation: if Americans won't take your job because you're offering a low salary at which they turn up their noses, that's fine, but actively excluding Americans in order to take advantage of the H-1Bs should be (and is) outlawed.
This is a case where the existing law makes sense and should be enforced, for the sake of a fair and free market.
The truth is that there aren't many good programmers out there and there is still a lot of demand for them.
You seem to be suggesting that companies be allowed to replace/substitute average citizen programmers with top-notch foreign guest workers. Regardless of whether this is "right" or not, it is not the premise that the H-1B program is supposed to be based on. Besides, how are average programmers going to get good with practice if all the jobs are given away to foreign workers? C-level citizens will be forever stuck at C-level because they are passed over for A-level foreign workers. Spot-shortages are necessary for people to transfer out of spot-gluts. This oppurtunity is taken away.
Another thing is that everybody has a different idea of what "best" is. Some companies value good factoring, others value fast copy-and-pasters, for example. A bigger pool allows them to pick people who fit their very specific, idiosyncratic views of what "good" is at the expense of citizens. It is like opening a new jewery store next to an existing one. Half the customers will go to the other store even if the average deals are the same.
Table-ized A.I.
I've worked in the industry for quite some time now. Since 1991.
And it is very common to have many positions open you simply cannot fill. In the late 1990s it was even more true.
I remember at that time, see that one department, which was triple the size of most others fit onto a half-floor just like all the other departments. I asked the pertinent people and found that they could fit in that space because 2/3rds of their positions were unfilled.
I was not a hiring manager at the time, but I can say now that it very likely goes like this. You open a position. You get a lot of candidates. You interview the candidates and find none are suitable. You don't even talk money seriously with a candidate until after they pass the interview anyway. And then, the hiring manager doesn't care much anyway becuase it's not like he's paying out of his own pocket.
So, you never rejected anyone due to salary, and yet you still can't find anyone. It's natural then to say "if only we had a larger pool of candidates to draw from". And being able to draw from foreigners can help with this.
It's tough being picky about your candidates, but not being picky creates more problems in the long run.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Why not restrict H1Bs to students graduating from US universities. There are thousands of them, and they're already familiar with the culture and have similar training as Americans. They're also unlikely to work for significantly lower pay. Currently many international students head back to their home countries right after graduation, so the US gets no benefit of their education.
It's a very common one among those who have studied what happened in the Pacific Northwest between 1830-1833
I really want to see where this is going, given the fact that I live in the PNW.
Then why have they been failing for 40 years? Why did they fail the Kalapayu 170 years ago?
Interesting, what are these Kalapayu you speak of?
Tell that to the Kalapayu, if you can find any. Oh yeah- most of them died off because their economic competitors brought Malaria to Oregon.
According to Google, they never existed. I'll just assume you mean the Kalapuya. By the way, most authoritative sources describe the disease that swept through the Kalapuya from 1830 to 1833 as a fever, not as malaria. Granted there are some that say malaria, but it is far from conclusive. Oh, and don't forget the smallpox of 1782 to 1783 while you're going there.
My people had the Salmon, the Hazelnut, the Wild Sunflower, Wapato and Camas, long before your "free market" ever existed. We should have protected it better. Now, we just have slavery.
If you're claiming to be one of the Kalapuya, you'd think you could spell it correctly. You've managed to screw it up twice. Now, I could see there being variances in spelling, but you'd think Google would have heard about your spelling.
Let them invent their own technology, create their own progress, just as we did.
Interesting. Now, maybe I'm misinterpreting your implications, but here goes: Above you are complaining that my people came and killed most of your people off. So who is this "we" you speak of? You didn't invent your own technology. My people brought your people the wheel, guns, and horseback riding, among other things.
Well, let's see- work 32 hours hunting and gathering vs 40-60 hours in a factory- which is more free?
Work 32 hours a week living in a hut that's too cold in the winter, too hot in the summer, buggy all year and lacks privacy, or work 40-60 hours a week and have my own insulated house, heater, air conditioning, a car, TV, etc. Gee, which one would I pick???
I'm for decentralization- no government, no money, no TRADE.
Exactly how will this lessen suffering and injustice? People die faster? What if I'm the only guy in town who knows about willow bark tea? How do you force me to give it to you? Would you expect it out of the goodness of my own heart? You still have trade, because I would expect you to supply me with what I needed out of the goodness of your heart.
There is *always* trade unless an individual can provide for everything he/she needs and never needs to ask someone else for help. If you really want to delve into it, all human relationships are an exercise in trade.
It's OK, you can feel sorry for him when his is the last country, and he realises that it no longer functions alone :)
Oh go sod yourself and your "top 20" university education in Economics. If you really want us to be impressed, link to your Google Scholar page and your peer reviews. Then we might be impressed. But your ranting and amazing felicity for calling everyone who disagrees with you a 'republican shill' makes me doubt your credentials.
Go somewhere random