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."

Comments

Re:Yes...

[Axe]

The same can be said about outsourced project - both domestic and overseas.

Legitimate H1B - not from the contractor sweat shops are not taking any jobs aways. Tried hiring anybody decent recently?

The non-intuitive solution

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:The non-intuitive solution

[damista]

Well, this is kind of how the system was intended isn't it?

Instead of complaining that foreigners take American jobs, you (not you personally but "you" as in the US) got to ask yourself, where the US would be today, if it wasn't for the immigrants. Not every foreigner is an idiot, just like not every American is the best choice for a certain job. Some immigrants will fail miserably and others will succeed and maybe even start their own, successful business and create new, American jobs. Those who fail will be replaced, be it by Americans or new immigrants.

Btw. US companies exploit workers from other countries as well and take jobs from others. I don't want to know how many companies have been bought by US based businesses and then closed down, since the only interest the US companies had, were the product portfolios and the customer base. So why should Indian companies care about US jobs, if the US couldn't care less about other peoples jobs?

What the US must never forget is that they need the rest of the world just as much as the rest of the world needs the US.

Re:The non-intuitive solution

[ecuador_gr]

Exactly my feeling and situation. After an MS in CS at a decent US University (my European BS is in Physics), I started working as an H1-b at a US firm. After two years, I am one of the most valuable members of my group and my employer definitely wants to keep me here in NY, however my fiancee is from Europe and cannot work legally here (even if I marry her). It is kind of harder for her to get an H1-b visa (her BA is in Classics, plus H1-b's are snatched instantly). The company lawyer told me that it is highly unlikely for me to get a Green card in the foreseeable future, no matter how indispensable my employer thinks I am, since according to the rules, I cannot use my experience in the current company as part of my qualifications to justify the Green card. And of course the fact that you might be exceptionally good does not matter in the application for a Green Card (unless you have made headlines - there is provision for Nobel price winners etc). So, I am kind of thinking of heading back home, of course I do make enough for a family here but my fiancee hates not being able to work and I can't blame her...
You don't have to say the US will loose if I myself leave (you don't know me to judge if it is the case), but I am sure there are many talented people out there in such a situation.

Re:Yes...

[amitabh_bachhan]

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.

Why this years visas were filled in one day

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Yes...

[h2_plus_O]

It's not nearly as "simple" as you might think.

Yes, it is.

In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they often are not. Law and code have a shared characteristic: unintended consequences can make a good idea (in theory) into an unmitigated disaster (in practice).

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.