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US Senators Question Indian Firms Over H-1Bs
xzvf sends us a link to a BusinessWeek report on the campaign of two US senators to get answers to how H-1B work visas are actually being used. Yesterday Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Richard Durbin (D-IL) sent a letter (PDF) to nine Indian outsourcing firms that, among them, snapped up 30% of the H-1B visas issued last year. The senators want to know, among other things, whether the H-1B program is being used to enable the offshoring of American jobs. "Critics say outsourcing firms, including Infosys Technologies and Wipro, are using the visas to replace US employees with foreign workers, often cycling overseas staff through US training programs before sending them back into jobs at home."
Every time I've seen a company get a H-1B worker, someone else got the pink slip.
H-1B visas are a boon for employers. They not just have the power of a job, but the power to send people packing back to their homeland, so of course, H-1B people end up very docile shills, as they have a lot to lose.
The solution to keeping jobs in the USA is to keep the best of the foreign talent here in the USA. We should be pinning a green card to anybody with an engineering, medical, or CS degree and encouraging them to stay, and bring their families, and start many JOB GENERATING BUSINESSES *here*. Reduce the incentives to go home. Reduce incentives to hire offshore (like onerous medical insurance costs, ahem), and in 10 years, you'll have a nice technopoly in the USA instead of India, China, Russia, etc.
I don't have anything against India or its citizens, but I do so hate having to call some place up with a problem only to struggle to communicate with some guy because; a) He probably doesn't speak English very well and can't truly understand a lot of what I say. b) Everything he knows comes from a script. c) His accent is so fucking thick that I can't understand a lot of what he says. I'd rather speak with a machine in most cases, so long as it's not voice activated...
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
I wonder if these firms are bringing in people who are capable of properly scanning in or otherwise rectifying the 'upside-down' aspect of 1/3 of the pages in that PDF.
It helps when questioning whether we really need to import skilled technology workers, if you can make certain that you actually have some working for you to begin with.
How about the government make good on its claim that the H1B program is supposed to benefit the USA by only permitting US companies to hire H1Bs? Even if it can't stop the issue of American outsourcing companies hiring H1Bs for training, at least the American companies will be paying taxes, and may even encourage companies to stop hiding in Moldova or the Cayman Islands.
Even better, how about understanding how this brain drain thing is supposed to work, and replace H1B's for skilled workers with permanent residencies, rather than shipping trained people back to their home?
Look, I did a 2'nd round of BSCS in 1992-1993 (had a BS microbio already). At that time, I was mature enough that I was number 1 in all my classes. But right behind me were Indian's and Chinese. Why was that? Because they worked at it. When I was studying, so were they. I routinely saw American's cheating at their exams (one is now a high up manager in a mapping company). What did it say about Americans vs. other foreigners? That the foreigners wanted their degree while Americans treat it as a given. While you might be pissed that jobs are being taken away and sent to uneducated ppl in other nations (and that is the case), to denigrate those that came here (or to canada) and work their ass off is plain wrong. I have been impressed by the Indian and Chinese culture.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Unfortunately due to the H1-B quota being hit on the first day, only two of our three H1-B applications were accepted. This doesn't help anyone, it means that the remaining person has to work remotely for at least a year (and therefore their taxes go to a foreign government), and its a PITA for us and them. Who wins here?
Frankly, any US software engineer that is having trouble finding a job in this economic environment should look in the mirror to see what their likely problem is, rather than trying to blame the H1-B visa program.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
It's easy to bitch when you're losing out, but look at the bugger picture. Why should highly paid tech workers feel they should have protection yet are willing to let factory workers get screwed so that they can enjoy low-cost products?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I agree.
On a positive note though, over 100,000 visa holders are going home this year, and another 100,000+ in each of the next two years.
There were 190,000 visas issued in each of the years 2001, 2002, 2003, before the limit went back down to 65,000. THIS is the single reason why all of the H1-B visas were used up in one single day.
300,000+ H1-Bs is a VERY significant number of the IT unemployed. So this might look good, unless Congress changes things.
Unfortunately, Congress is debating RIGHT NOW on increasing this limit. The current proposals are to bump the number back up to 195,000; either directly, or indirectly through a new quota system.
If you don't want to repeat the years after the dot-com bust, you need to fax or write (preferrably not email) your representatives in Congress RIGHT NOW. That means this week. Otherwise, there's a very good chance that this limit will change upwards, as there's a lot of money driving the issue.
Also, the people driving the lobbying efforts have stated that if they don't get this passed this year, it won't get changed next year, as that's a major election year.
I was talking with a recruiter the other week who worked in as a recruiter in the area I was moving too for a couple of years. About 3 years companies started demanding Java programming skills, however there were not a lot of Java programmers in the area, and the ones that were there only had 1 or 2 years of experience. The companies said, "not enough experience" so those potential Java programmers moved out of the area.
Fast forward to today, the recruiter said there is a huge demand for, you guessed it, Java programmers with 3 to 5 years of experience. He could not find anyone to fill these positions. Why? Because these same companies were unwilling to hire anyone with little experience and let them grow into a position.
I hate it when companies complain that they cannot find anyone. Somehow they expect IT people to appear out of thin air with 3 to 5 years of experience. If there is a shortage of technical workers and skill sets how about these companies,
It boils down to money with companies being too cheap. Is it any real surprise that they cannot get effective IT?
Unless you're an American Indian, the 300 million+ inhabitants of the U.S. are immigrants or had immigrant parents. It's the country of immigrants and they came because they were freer to make a life in the U.S. than the countries they left. Anybody who's driven across the U.S. knows that it's still relatively empty. True statistic: if half of the entire population of the rest of the world immigrated to the U.S., the population density would still be less than England (which itself still has a lot of countryside.) Anti-immigration policy is massively stupid and leads directly to outsourcing; it helps to keep out the best minds, who will boost some other country's economy, while doing little to stop the influx of the least educated from Mexico. (They too should be able to become citizens, but not at the expense of programmers and PhDs in the hard sciences.)
The problem with your pet little theory is that engineers aren't stupid. Engineer might be cool but it's also hard and demanding. The same mental acuity which translates into a $80,000 a year job in a declining job market like computer engineering can be transfered to say, pre-med or pre-law where it's more difficult to outsource. The only "incentives" we need is for American businesses to continue to hire American employees. Whats the point of government giving incentives to American students for jobs that aren't going to be there when they graduate?
There's the "We got to the moon first, so we must be better" argument. But that ignores the fact that 99.9% of engineers in the USA had nothing to do with that.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
yes, but how do you define a "prevailing wage".. and why should the employee get the money...
why not just charge... lets say... something like... 25-50k/year/person for a H1B "license" from the government... companies could get all the foreign workers they need (the only cap is their wallet. not some arbitrary 65,000 number) and US workers are gauranteed that it won't be abused... the funds would help close the federal deficit, or could even be earmarked for job re-training programs for displaced workers.
This is insightful.
This isn't.
I work at an IT consultancy firm (not Indian; it is headquartered in Seattle, if you're tracking all this), and am based out of Singapore. I am required to, at times, fly in and out of some neighbouring countries at a very short notice. Now travelling in South East Asia (even for Indian passport-holders) is outrageously simple; you pack your bags, show up at the airport, fly in to, say, Bangkok or Hong Kong, and... that's it. All visas are processed on-arrival, you can stay for a month, and then fly out. It's a similar thing in Europe as well; the Schengen area covers some 17-odd countries, and it's very very easy to travel across countries in these globalized times.
For a variety of reasons (911, huge immigration numbers etc), US is not one of those countries where you can slip in and out quickly. While Wipro etc applying for H1-B's en masse is definitely a loophole, I'd still argue that they're doing it for a very valid reason; it is important for professionals to travel across the world without too much hassle.
This isn't really a problem with IT alone; any profession where you charge by the hour ('man-hours') suffers from the same problem. Consultant work is more time-bound, than delivery-based, for very good reasons.
I think you've had a bit of an expectations mismatch. IT consultancy was never about using the best and brightest technology out there; it's about understanding a customer's requirements, both said and unsaid, and about thinking what's the best thing the customers shouldn't do. In that sense, contemporary IT consultancy is closer to M&O from, say, 1980's, than it is to, say, implementing AJAX in that intranet application for that big-shot bank. You really shouldn't be expecting an Accenture or an IBM Global Services or HP Consulting to be in the forefront of technology development, because that is not their job.
Yes, Bangalore isn't a 'valley'; it's a plateau that's 1000m above sea-level, so calling it a Silicon Valley isn't really correct. Besides, very few of the companies in Bangalore use silicon chips the way the first wave of tech companies in the San Jose- Sunnyvale area did. So in that sense, you're right; extremely misleading to call Bangalore a valley, much less a silicon valley at that.
However, don't, for a moment, presume that there is no product-development (as opposed to project development, which is what TCS/Wipro/etc specialize in) going on in India. As I see it, that's the next big wave in Indian IT, and for the same reason that starting-up in the (real) Silicon Valley makes sense; proximity to potential customers, closer cultural ties and so on. In any case, Bangalore, I think, is in a much better position than of the other cities in the East are, both in terms of access to talent and markets. Much worse than starting-up in Fresno, if you will, but despite increasing land-prices and a rickety infrastructure, still better than Manila or Ho Chi Minh City.
Now, it would definitely have helped if our universities had that startup-ambience that American universities have, and for sure, it'd have been greatly beneficial if we were able to retain at least _some_ of that graduate population leaving the shores, but yeah, we're getting there.
More than mere navel gazing.
...or at a low enough salary.it seems to me that new generation i.t. workers in the u.s. have expected the initially skyrocketing pay rates of the early 70s and 80s to be valid for their own generations too, DESPITE the increasing supply of i.t. workers from WITHIN the united states. hence, their wage expectancy have remained high, instead of adjusting to the high supply situation, disproportionate with their qualifications.
hence when an american company seeks someone for a position from within the u.s., they find candidates that demand much in contrast of their qualification and position in question. hence, they try to import someone from abroad who would accept more reasonable payrate for that position, leading to complaints that "not enough skilled workers" and "employers not willing to pay enough" complaints at the same time.
lets face it - we are not in 70s, or 80s anymore, and even not in 90s.
whence do i know - we are having EXACTLY the same issue here in turkey, but in ALL fields of engineering, sciences and such.
at early 80s, and 90s, there was a huge need for people in any technical field. countless new universities, technical schools and the like were founded at all levels, and the capacities of the existing ones were increased.
people who enrolled in these thought that the wave would ride the same years later. it has not came to pass like that - now there are zillions of qualified workers in all fields, but there are not enough jobs to give them. hence, we have an inflation of skilled workers here, which leads to drastic drops in wages and still high unemployment.
downside is, in a free market, one shouldnt decide on past. one should envision future - hence when enrolling in a program one should think how is it gonna be 10 years later, not how it is today. noone gave guarantees to those enrolling in colleges that they would be guaranteed the wages and positions they wanted, and noone has to do it either. in a free market, you invest and get your ROI or do not get it.
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Maddox has something to say about illegal aliens. Specifically:
Get some balls people. If you're too chicken shit and you can't cut it, then maybe it's you who doesn't deserve to live in America.
I think I agree. There'd be fewer illegal aliens if the US would just let the people work here legally. It's not really so bad that they're stealing someone's shitty wal-mart job away from them, and at some point, they'll quickly see that $6 an hour goes nowhere and want more money anyways. Unlike people born here, they don't suck the life out of the country for 18 years while they get "edumacated" for free. They come here with hands ready to work right now.
Think of this: All those factory jobs the US lost to Mexico, China, etc might have stayed if you let more immigrants in. If those factories stayed you'd have a lot more people in the US with better jobs, because you can't have unskilled labour throughout the factory, quite a few skilled trades people, managers, marketers, salesmen, etc have to exist there as well. Those are good, solid, well paying jobs you let another country steal from you in the name of slowing the tide of immigration.
Nuts, I say, absolutely nuts.
Thank God I live in Canada where almost everyone is an immigrant. Immigrants are what made Canada the great country it is. And we have a lot more services for these people to "leech" from than the US, including such modern wonders as free health care and real, honest to god, welfare.