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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."
Legitimate H1B - not from the contractor sweat shops are not taking any jobs aways. Tried hiring anybody decent recently?
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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
This is not completely accurate. Indian students who graduate from US universities also work on H1-B when they join American companies and they are certainly not paid lower than their American counterparts. So you would still need something like H1-B to use foreign (as in those who dont have a right to work without a permit) students from US univs.
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.
However let's consider the other options we might have instead of outsourcing? IBM moving all their employees out of America? Why have a company in America when you can get cheaper work in India?
Because there are advantages to hiring developers from the same culture as the intended customer market. Because intellectual property laws in third world countries are a joke. Because for some work, particularly defense work, it is actually illegal to use foreign developers. Because even though managers are happy hiring workers from overseas, those same managers don't want to move to the third world themselves, and there are certain advantages to having your development staff close to management and marketing instead of half a world away.
Most of the work that could go overseas is already overseas because it is so much cheaper. The jobs that are now left in the US is work that is harder or impossible to ship overseas. We can decide to fill those positions with US workers or foreign workers. If we decide to fill the jobs with foreign workers, then we are training our future foreign competition while telling US college students not to enter CS or IT. If we decide to fill the jobs with US workers, then we are going to keep high-paying jobs here in the US while telling US college students that they will have a bright future in either CS or IT.
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.
Simple- don't allow companies to move.
It's not nearly as "simple" as you might think. It's fairly trivial to start sending business to a foreign subsidiary. So, we ban that. What's to stop the company from then having an "affiliate" company that gets 95% royalties on whatever they sell. Ok, ban that too. Companies can then "license" their technology to a foreign company cheaply, and operate the other company instead. Or, they can enter into business deals with the foreign company that cost a great deal of money, allowing them to funnel the money in the company to the foreign one. Finally, they have the option of just closing up shop, and when approached about business, say "we're not in business; however, we recommend the services of [foreign company] instead".
Legislating away all the ways one can move overseas would require such stringent legislation that nobody would want to do business here at all. It would take laws regulating (among other things) who you could do business with, require certain profit margins on all deals, impose requirements regarding ownership of multiple companies (remember that stocks convey ownership), regulate who you could recommend for services, and a number of other things which would greatly increase the size of government, decrease freedom for individuals and companies, cost a lot of money, and make the US a (even more) difficult place to do business.
I run a business in the United States, and I would like to continue to do so. We have a Hungarian engineer, not because he's cheap (he's not - he makes more than me), but because there isn't anyone better at what he does that we know of. We outsource to India on occasion because of the simple fact that for some jobs, we cannot compete at American wages. Which is better for America - an American company, paying American taxes, and hiring a few Indians as needed, or an Indian Company, paying Indian taxes, hiring only Indians?
If America started to take the steps to make it impossible to (effectively) move business overseas, regardless of the collateral damage, I would move. America is no longer the "shining beacon of liberty" it once was - we willingly, gladly trade real liberty for imagined security. Don't believe me? How is a Metal Detector going to stop a suicide bomber with some dynamite, a fuse, and a book of matches? George Bush has done more harm to this country's freedoms than any other person in history, congress and the police ignore the constitution at every occasion, we're turning into a police state, and we lose more life waiting in the airport security line every year than was lost on 9/11.
We squander money like it's going out of style, and our economy is doomed. Housing prices are way overinflated, we have no savings, and the FDIC doesn't have enough cash to make more than a token gesture at fixing things when the inevitable crash happens.
So, if this country is so bad, why don't I leave? Well, it's (at the moment) a favorable environment for business, and I have family here. I also think that it may be possible to save our freedoms, and that an economic crash may help wake people up, and will be good in the long run (affordable housing, smaller government from lack of funding, etc.). So I stay, run my business, and work to make the country a better place. Take away my business, or threaten it, and I will lose much of my reason for staying. Companies aren't the only ones who can move.
I think you miss how the whole deal works and why the parent makes such a bold claim. If you're willing to pay people what they are worth finding good people is not hard to do. That is the problem, they don't want to spend the money to make money so they take whatever shortcut they can despite the problems it brings. Especially in IT its very important not to have a lot of turnover as implementations are usually company specific. I've never seen two companies deploy their infrastructures in the same way. That means even talented people will take at least a little time to become familiar enough to properly take over a network. Turnover is a huge problem. The higher ups at my company used to just burn out every IT guy they came across until they met me, then they decide it was best to give me more money, open the wallet to get some quality equipment and now things are running smooth in a high redundant environment administered by myself.
I learn more and more about the business the longer I'm here and the more I learn the more I can do to help. I've more than made up my salary and equipment costs in other cost savings. That's the way at least in my opinion IT should work in a company. I got lucky of course as it was a combination of timing as well as skill.
Regardless, I've hired help that was inexperienced, we pay them competitively and teach them the environment and now I don't have to worry about help-desk work. It's simple, keep them around, problems will go away assuming you didn't hire an idiot which has happened to me in the past as well.
Their should definitely be more protections for H1B workers though, they should not have to live in fear anymore than an American should. Perhaps a complaint system could be created that would be government controller ensuring that the companies they work for would not know. If enough complaints are filed an investigation could then be triggered. This is much the same way sexual harassment works for ADP. Employees of member companies can file a complaint to them and they will start a 3rd party independent investigation. It prevents a lot of abuses of power.
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.)
so you can demand far harsher conditions of work from them than any American (outside of undocumented workers) would take
There is no such thing as an "undocumented worker." We already have a phrase for that, and it's "illegal alien." These people are, by definition, not Americans. They are breaking the law, and as such, deserve capture, deportation, and probably they deserve some form of punishment to discourage future criminal activity. I have many friends and colleagues who are foreign-born or foreign-nationals who are here legally, and they endure a certain degree of expense and trouble to maintain their legal status because the benefits are worthwhile. Illegal aliens do not deserve your respect, protection or support. The mechanisms to permit a legal presence are easy to understand and readily available. There is no excuse.
To one degree or another, I agree with almost everything else you have posted. H1B has essentially destroyed an entire job market.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
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.
The law is littered with unintended outcomes:
- The income tax deduction for interest paid on home mortgages actually drives up the rate the market will bear, making it more expensive for non-itemizers to borrow than it otherwise would be. The mortgage interest deduction was intended to promote home ownership by making it cheaper, but for the majority of people (who do not itemize) it makes it more expensive.
- It's illegal to hire undocumented workers. These laws are intended to protect domestic workers, but they actually create a black market of undocumented labor that can't negotiate fair wages for fear of being deported, which undercuts the prices domestic labor would theoretically command.
- Making drugs illegal was intended, in theory, to marginalize their use by making them too expensive or risky. Instead, pot is our #1 cash crop and the funding source of choice for organized crime.
- We subsidize farmers to make food plentiful and cheap. They then sell their (cheap) crops on the world market, putting farmers around the world out of work. The farmers go to cities to compete for manufacturing jobs, producing cheap manufactured goods for import back into the US at rates cheaper than US workers can compete with, putting US manufacturers out of work.
- We also subsidize farmers to protect their way of life. This attracts corporations who compete for the tax subsidies and benefits available to farmers, crowding family farmers out of the business.
I might go so far as to speculate that the ratio of unintended consequences to intended ones for any given law is postive. Doubly so if the law tries to thwart economic reality.If there's one thing I won't stand for, it's intolerance.
There is no such thing as an "undocumented worker." We already have a phrase for that, and it's "illegal alien."
m l
That's like calling a drug dealer an Unlicensed Pharmacist
All sillyness aside, take a look at this:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0420/p03s01-usec.ht
about programmer Michael Emmons, who worked for Siemens ICN in Florida.
The company imported Indian workers to sit at the fired American's former desks, and do their jobs.
Not as employees, but as contract employees hired through an Indian agency.
The agency paid their salaries back in India, they made no money in the US, but were paid "expenses" which were then tax free.
So here you have people living here in the US, using our roads, sewage system, police services, etc.
Paying no taxes whatsoever since they made no money here. The company had to pay no social security or medicare taxes as they did for their American workers. They saved a bundle, even if the salary were the same (but I'm sure it's not).
That's a distortion of the way the system is supposed to work. Outrageous.
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