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How-Not-to-Hire-U.S.-Workers Law Firm Fires Back
theodp writes "Congress is now calling for a Dept. of Labor investigation into a Pittsburgh law firm after a video showing its attorneys advising employers how to game the immigration system was posted on YouTube. Cohen & Grigsby, the firm in question, issued a statement insisting their statements were commandeered and misused, but would not allow CBS to view the original video in its entirety. Cohen & Grigsby has also been advising employers since 2002 that they have nothing to fear if they keep employees in the dark about the existence of DOL-required H-1B Public Access Files."
has the tag line 'progressive law' all over the place. I would suggest replacing the word 'progressive' with 'breakin' the'
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
Bad Law firm, bad bad. Timeout for you.
--- I was far from home, and the spell of the Eastern sea was upon me. -Lovecraft-
If the dollar continues to fall as it has over the last few years.
Deleted
If you are going to evade the spirit of the law, don't be surprised when the lawmakers take note.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
they should be forced to give their jobs to low paid H1B workers.
Monstar L
This entire system is broken and should be scrapped. The government simply cannot enforce the restrictions in place. The H-1B is supposed to be a temp visa for positions that can't be filled domestically, but I see very few people using it that way. The sponsoring companies are using it as a means to keep labor costs down, and the visa holders seem to mostly be using it as a stepping stone to citizenship(the ones I know are). You should just accept this and roll the visa into a citizen-track visa, make it easy for visa holders to bring their families, make it easy for them to switch jobs, and then they won't have to worry about getting booted out of the country if they lose their job.
open borders and a welfare state are mutually exclusive.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I wish the courts had the power to force a man to work a minimum wage job when he is found doing such unethical work. The only way this would work would be if the courts were to take all of the mans other income as a fine as well. I want these people to see the life they are damning the rest of the country to.
The Generation
I'd say something witty here, but I'm not that bright.
Talk to ANYBODY who has got a green card thru their company (assuming they were reasonably cognisent of the process) and you will discover the same thing - this is standard operating procedure, and not just an abuse by this specific law firm.
The way the system is set up, how can it be any other way... if a company has decided they want to get someone a green card, then of course they do whatever they can to achieve that. If they instead wanted to replace the person with a US worker then they'd be doing an honest job search, and NOT pursing a green card. Duh! The law says you have to advertize the job, so you put an ad for the job in the most obscure paper possible, with the job requirements so custom tailored to the person you are trying to get a green card for that no one else can qualify. I'm sure it works better than ever in recent years now that most people expect to find job openings online rather than in the local paper.
What's lame here is Congress pretending to give a crap (presumably just because this particular story/video has hit the press) and wanting to investigate this particular law firm. One has to wonder are they being investigated for breaking the law, or rather just for making Congress look bad by openly flaunting the law? If Congress really gave a crap they'd fix the broken system rather than go after a law firm doing nothing different than every other law firm hired to assist in this process.
I would sue that employee frontwards and backwards.
And if someone from the US illegally enters your country, how exactly is that handled?
I really doubt you have an open border policy.
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
Tell me USians, how are you more entitled to a job than the rest of the world?
I can't tell if you are just being sarcastic or actually the dumbest person alive.
Is this the equivalent of a sex tape for a law firm?
We came,we saw, we kicked it's ass!
First, let's outsource all the lawyers.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
While I don't agree with "oh imagine how the immigrants feel" attitude and especially not with the A//E bullshit website the AC posted, I do agree I don't have a problem with this. They are finding someone to do the same job cheaper than we are willing to. We don't have a divine right to jobs just because we are Americans. Let 'em in. If they do the job just as well at half the price then the whole country will be better off.
Remember on the Simpsons when Monty Burns got on the top of some building and showered the citizens below with free dollars?
Too bad they were dollar *ouch* coins.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Second issue: Do "illegals" really want to stay in this country? Here in Washington State, that's not the case. Many "illegals" make reasonably good money here for hard work, and send it home, where they will eventually retire, in a place where money is worth more than it is here. Not all "illegals" intend to stay, and very, very, very few take any jobs away from "Americans". When people talk about "immigration problems", most are not talking about High Tech jobs.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I want these guys around to advise my competition! In fact, I hope every company I might ever
compete with, goes out and hires these guys to help them hire as many "low-bid" workers as they can.
Meanwhile, I'll focus on hiring the best workers possible, regardless of where they are from, and eventually run
these other guys out of business anyway.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
One of the earliest discussions of this video was on dice.com, and several people downloaded it before it got pulled. And they made certain that it was sent to the Programmer's Guild as well as Loub Dobbs, and other media outlets.
However, dice.com has initiated a censorship campaign against certain posters and postings against H1-B visas. It's not clear if this is approved by management, or it's the random act of a few moderators. What is clear is that requests for this to stop, and for clarification of Dice's censorship policy have been deleted as well.
Add to this Dice's postings of standard pro-H1B visa propaganda, and it's very clear that Dice is in full support of the H1-B visa program.
This is odd for a job board which seeks the best talent in the U.S., but I guess it's the H1-B shops which are paying Dice's bills.
So until this censorship and propaganda campaign ends, I am taking by business elsewhere. I urge others who seek new jobs to do the same.
Ask yourself why the US has so many high paying jobs compared to Mexico. It is maybe because over many years the actions of the government and the various freedoms protected by the government have made the US more powerful and wealthier than Mexico? No maybe you don't agree with the way the US got it's wealth and power but don't be so deliberately ignorant to deny that the wealth and power is here by design. That design is created and implimented by the US government.
We are all just people.
America is now a country of middle managers, having outsourced so much of the actual work to other countries. At some point they will realize how little they need you and cut their ties. You'll notice the massive tumble the dollar has taken in the last 6 years. The corporatiosn are bribing your government to legislate yourselves into insignifigance.
This obssesive focus on short term gains that your culture and stock set up encourages will ultimately be severely detrimental to America. Someone should wise up before you out source, down size, and Quarterly report yourselves into a minor historic foot note.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
First fruit picking robots, then this. I suggest companies start developing robots to take over the lawyer's jobs. Then the robot lawyers could start telling employees how to cheat the system into somehow unethically profiting off their robotic workers (pirated software on them, maybe?). Then, seeing how corrupt employees are, replace them with robots, leaving us humans to enjoy life.
Give Kashyyyk back to the Wookies
I say good luck and godspeed to this law firm; I hope they beat the DoJ on this one.
Do you feel the same way about all laws, or just some?
Do people you feel sorry for get to violate the laws you dis-like?
Do people you don't like deserve to have different treatment than the people you like?
In the US, we have this little thing call the Constitution that guarantees all people equal treatment under the law. The Government is required to enforce all the laws.
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
My guess is that many in the Senate seem to be up for sale....campaign contributions and maybe a nice consulting job when we have had enough and bounce them from office.
If I was deep this is would be profound, if smart then wise, if a poet then verse. Here it is, you judge!
And for those of you bitching about how us Americans don't have any more right to a job than anybody else, suck it. Every country has a responsibility to give first priority to the employment and prosperity of its own TAX PAYING citizens. America is no exception. Any company, from any country, found acting in bad faith with the government and its citizens, should be dealt with very harshly.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
I have no reason to doubt that these lawyers keep their clients within the law, however much they might "game the system." That, after all, is why you hire a lawyer.
The job of the lawyer is to know the law inside out so that they can assist their client. The job of the legislator is to draft laws and regulations that have as few loopholes and weaknesses as possible.
If blame is to be assigned, it goes to the lawmakers.
Honestly though I suspect that most companies paying for this kind of advice are probably fooling themselves. Between the falling U.S. dollar, legal costs, and the inefficiencies associated with training and replacing short term or contract employees they likely aren't saving enough money to make it worthwhile.
Just because it looks cheap doesn't mean it really saves you money.
Three Squirrels
I'd agree with you except that's a lot (and I do mean a lot) of US workers getting screwed. You can't possibly hire them all.
There was a comment in one of the articles about this where the lawyer said he didn't know how common this was. Considering that three past employers of mine did it (who knows how many I didn't know about), I'd say it is pretty darn common. There is a lot of work that US workers aren't even given a chance to apply for because the company has already decided to fill it with an H1-B. They hire the H1-B because it is cheaper, when the visa runs out, they game the system to get the green card. It's a crock from beginning to end.
"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs." -- Switchfoot, Ode to Chin
Yeah. I'm sure the wrist-slapping will be unparalleled in human history.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
The companies I have worked for have looked for the best educated and qualified applicants. They post on mailing lists, network, and find people through word of mouth. People send in their resumes, some get invited for interviews, and the best get offers. At no point does nationality or salary play a role, either way.
Only once the companies have already decided who they want to hire do silly US regulations, like posting to "Sunday newspapers". Geez, who gets hired based on responding to a Sunday newspaper ad anymore? Day laborers? So, yes, people who are saying that these ads are a sham are absolutely right, they're just wrong about why people are posting these ads.
Don't kid yourself: if you can't get a job as a software engineer now, you won't get one even if no foreign labor gets admitted to the US. The consequence of restricting H1b visas is simply that the jobs themselves move overseas.
Ask yourself why the US has so many high paying jobs compared to Mexico. It is maybe because over many years the actions of the government and the various freedoms protected by the government have made the US more powerful and wealthier than Mexico? No maybe you don't agree with the way the US got it's wealth and power but don't be so deliberately ignorant to deny that the wealth and power is here by design. That design is created and implimented by the US government.
Thats hard to say. It's partly culture (protastant work ethic) partly abundance of resources, partly the immigration of exceptional people (einstien, Telsa etc..), the availability of capital, strong property laws, a strong and numerous middle class. The current admin is hedging the immigration of exceptional people in favor of the immigration fo marginal people and they are hurting the middle class. The culture has shifted and the protestant work ethic is not as pervasive. Resources and capital you still have in abundance though.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Fair enough. Except of course that in this case, the "price" of the immigrant laborer is artificially low, as they were allowed in under the assumption that there were no qualified Americans. In other words, Congress lowered the entry requirements (and hence the cost) for a reason that turns out this company is trying to compromise. It sounds a little like fraud to me.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
open borders and a welfare state are mutually exclusive.
Well... the EU? Each state is basically open to eahc other. Most are welfare states.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
> In the US, we have this little thing call the Constitution > that guarantees all people equal treatment under the law. > The Government is required to enforce all the laws. Are you referring to Amendment XV? Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Having the power to make laws and being required to enforce them are not the same thing. Plus the amendment forbids preferential treatment, which many minority rights and immigration job laws encourage.
What the lawyer is talking about is a green card application, usually for someone who has already worked many years at a company and lived and paid taxes in the US. There is a formal requirement that the company post a job ad. Of course, companies don't want any applicants for that job ad: they already have someone for that job that they have invested a lot of time and money in. Do you seriously think they are going to send that guy home based on someone who sends in a resume? And companies are likely paying that guy competitively because once they get the green card, he could leave immediately.
I've seen these requirements for formal job postings in non-immigration contexts as well, and they never work. If finding qualified, good applicants were as simple as posting a job ad and collecting resumes, headhunters and hiring bounties would be such a booming business.
Capitalism is only a Good Thing (tm) when it benefits me at the cost of everyone else. Jeez, what's so hard to understand about that? Democracy works that way too, since you're apparently out of the loop.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Well, it works fine if you're open to other nations with similar standards.
Kind of like most forms of insurance in the US. If you have insurance and want to switch providers, generally they can't exclude you for pre-existing conditions if the coverages are comparable. On the other hand, if you have no insurance and want to buy life insurance the day after you're diagnosed with cancer that is likely to be terminal in two months, then nobody has to sell it to you. The goal is to foster competition between companies, without defeating the whole purpose of insurance (where you pay in without knowing whether you will actually need it).
If highly-socialized nations had completely open borders with anybody, then anybody in the world with an expensive medical condition would just move there, until the tax base completely erodes.
On the other hand, highly-socialized nations have no issues opening borders with each other for the most part - nobody has a real incentive to immigrate en-masse with expensive conditions, and any immigration is likely to be bilateral.
There are economic requirements for entering the EU.
Actually, right now the UK is having a major problem with people sneaking in.
Geez, think about what you're saying. The seminar is about the process of getting green cards for H1b workers. Why would companies get their supposedly "low paid" H1b workers green cards, if those workers could just pack up and leave as soon as the green card comes through? The fact that a company is trying to get a green card for one of their workers tells you that they are competitively paid.
So, why don't they want any applicants in response to the job postings? Because most of these companies are constantly recruiting anyway; they aren't going to get any additional good applicants through newspaper ads. Any response they get to those ads is potentially only going to mess up the green card application for the guy that's already been working at the company for several years.
Meanwhile, I'll focus on hiring the best workers possible, regardless of where they are from, and eventually run
these other guys out of business anyway.
What if that 'best worker possible' is a foreigner? You'd still need to do what this law firm did: show that no Joe Blow with a C+ average and VB.net 'experience' is able to do the job.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
It amazes me that we have laws about "Dumping" of Goods into the United States, but the Dumping of "Services" is totally ignored.
If this is not a blatant application of Discrimination based on who a person is, then I do not what it could be. If ever there was a reason for ACLU to exist, this violation of the law is it.
But there is going to be a smile if Grim Irony on me if this story is shown on 60 Minutes.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
If they are on a citizenship track, and unable to be booted out of the country if they report their employer for something or switch to a better job, then they will be able to demand more pay. That will reduce the number of them while increasing the quality.
Slaves are not good for the future of our country.
Last refuge of the American tech worker. (We'll see how long that lasts.)
The rest of the world wonders why America has suddenly taken to blowing up small nations... when many of the only moderately secure jobs in the US are in the defense sector.
Sigh.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Going through the motions of satisfying some bureaucratic requirement in order to get a result you want? Everyone I know that has ever gotten unemployment checks does the same thing. Performing bogus job searches in order to keep the unemployment checks coming. Most people view it as a 12-18 month paid vacation.
I don't understand the public outcry -- the immigration laws are ridiculous, antiquidated, and totally disassociated from reality. Of -course- corporations are going to side-step them whenever possible.
When we're searching for a worker, we search for the best possible applicant -- finding a good applicant is hard enough without mandating citizenship. This isn't a question of 'stealing' US jobs, either: Highly skilled foreign workers are not cheaper than American counterparts, and immigration lawyers aren't cheap!
AFTER we've spent significant time and money finding an applicant, we're required to jump through arcane legal hoops to advertise the job again (eg, newspaper ads, state job boards, etc). We must then review every unqualified applicant's resume, and provide justification for not hiring them -- this is time consuming and expensive, and explains why companies try so hard to discourage more applications at this stage. If you've already performed an exhaustive job search and found a great applicant, why repeat the process? Even worse is when we try to change an employee's immigration status -- eg, get them a green card. I can't believe anyone would seriously suggest that we should abandon our investment in an existing employee just to find a US-citizen.
We're interested in finding the best possible person -- period. An employee will pay taxes, live in the neighborhood, and become an active, involved contributor to our society, regardless of where he/she was born. Why shouldn't we encourage the immigration of highly skilled foreign workers to our country?
Employers are only doing this so that they can get lower cost labor.
The lawyer is talking about getting green cards for foreign workers.
The easist way to fix it is to require them to pay equal pay to all workers and not pay someone lower just because they do not have a green card.
The easy way to fix this is to RTFA. These "fake ads" are being posted as part of the green card application process; the companies are trying to get their H1b workers green cards!
So, why don't they want any real applicants? Because high tech companies already know that they aren't going to find qualified workers through newspaper ads. Any application that comes in in response to one of these ads is only going to hold up the green card application and cause lots of extra work.
I would like to request followers for my goal of becoming Supreme Ruler. In my first 30 days as ruler it will load all lawyers and illegal immigrants onto giant catapults and sent them all flying over the boarder ensuring that all jobs here are only for the citizens here. This will also end numerous problems with the RIAA and MPAA. I will also build a giant prison in Antartica where I will sent all capital offenders. There they will mine the ice and send it to Mars for teraforming.
Windows is as solid as quicksand.
You need to find a more honest crowd of people to hang out with.
These lawyers are talking about job ads as part of the green card application process. That is, the goal of the process is to get a current or future employee a green card. As soon as the employee gets the green card, they can quit and work somewhere else if they aren't being paid competitively.
So, why don't companies want responses to these ads? Because they already know that they aren't going to get any good responses to a newspaper ad. How do they know that? Because they are already running lots of ads all over the place. Any response they are going to get is just going to hold up the green card application unnecessarily.
These companies are trying to do the right thing--getting their foreign employees green cards. They don't deserve to be dragged through the mud for it.
That is a good point.
With this sort of practice highlighted in the article, there will be a lot more of what you are pointing out going on.....
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
What the H-1B worker gets you is someone that can't switch jobs.
That used to be true but isn't anymore. H1b workers can switch jobs quite easily.
But you're missing something more basic: the lawyer in the video isn't talking about H1b applications, he's talking about green card applications.
This has little to do with wages and everything to do with worker "loyalty."
In principle, the argument that enforced loyalty can lead to depressed wages is correct; the problem with the argument is simply that most legal foreign labor in the US actually has high mobility.
The "best qualified" workers are probably the guys looking for green cards - otherwise, why would HR go through all this rigmarole to keep them hired? It's not even like they're paying these immigrant employees less, because if that was the case they could just post ads openly and know that no American would be willing to work for the advertised salary.
IANAL, but it sounds like the law requires them to hire any American applicant who is QUALIFIED, not preferable. So these companies are afraid they're going to have to fire Amir, the extremely talented programmer who designed half their system and knows its vagaries inside and out, and replace him with Jim, the lazy American guy who isn't really that great, but looks good enough on paper that the law considers him "qualified" to take Amir's job.
Our university had a group of engineering management students do a project on the feasibility of making robotic lawyers. First, they had to determine if a computer program to pass the bar exam. They came up with a bunch of prior art. As long as the exam is multiple choice, there were no problems. Next, they figured the robot would need to be really good at arguing. They made a model computer program, and you can make a computer argue really well. Finally, they checked into billing. Writing computer programs to mindlessly send out large invoices is easy. The key technical challenges were solved: passing the bar, arguing, and generating eye-popping bills.
When presenting the results of the project, a professor in the examining committee asked: "Surely lawyers do more than pass exams, argue, and bill clients?" The students thought for a bit, and then one piped up: "Well actually the lawyer's secretaries bill the clients."
The students got an A.
... but how open are they with, hmm, Turkey? (And anti-immigrant sentiment hits Eastern Europeans all the time, too. What was that called, the Polish plumber problem?)
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
f a company has decided they want to get someone a green card, then of course they do whatever they can to achieve that. If they instead wanted to replace the person with a US worker then they'd be doing an honest job search, and NOT pursing a green card.
And what's wrong with that? When the green card process is over, the company has a US worker. The only reason for going through the extra expense and delay of the green card process is because they think that the person they are sponsoring for a green card is genuinely better than any of the US workers that have applied for the job in the past.
One has to wonder are they being investigated for breaking the law,
Which law have they broken? Not only do they post the jobs, they look at the resumes that come in; they have to. And if they find a good applicant among those resumes, you can bet they are going to hire them.
No, the reason why they don't want a lot of applications in response to these job ads is because they already know that the applications they are going to get are going to be crap because almost nobody worth their salt applies in response to a newspaper ad.
Unless you're going to make an appeal to racism, there's no reason to believe the immigrant employee isn't more qualified, especially since the employer is willing to go to so much trouble to hire them.
Looks like conventional plagiarism rules don't always apply at Pitt's Katz Graduate School of Business, where the law firm of Cohen & Grigsby is paid to 'draft appropriate letters of support' for H-1B seeking MBA grads as part of the Pitt-funded Katzport Program. The school boasts that the program - which can cost Pitt upwards of $4,000 per student - 'levels the playing field' to 'facilitate the employment of international MBA graduates.'
So first you say Government can't create wealth, but then you turn around and say "The people of Mexico have been historically generally impoverished precisely because of either the brutal excesses and mismanagement by their domestic government" So which is gonna be? Good governments provide and protect an environment where the people of that nation can prosper. Part of that providing and protecting is establishing rules, one of which here in this still prosperous country is a rule (law) about who you can and can't hire.
We are all just people.
Forcing lawyers to do honest work is prohibited by the clause in the Constitution that prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
OK, it's time for some people near the big users of H1B visas, but not employees of them, to ask to see those H1B files available for public access. Bring your laptop and scanner and let's get those on line. Bring two people, one with a camcorder, so if you're turned down for access, there's video of that.
Meanwhile, I'll focus on hiring the best workers possible, regardless of where they are from, and eventually run
these other guys out of business anyway.
Yes, and how does that work? You do a long job search, with networking, Internet postings, etc. and recruit all over the world. You look at resumes and interview people. So, let's say, Xi Jiang from China is the best applicant. She comes with stellar academic credentials and has worked for Google China and Microsoft China.
Now you need a work visa for her. Because you're a good employer, you even try to get a green card for her. As part of the green card process, you need to make a job posting in a newspaper. Do you want a lot of responses to that? No, because you're unlikely to get a better applicant from a newspaper than from your extensive job search, and you don't want to spend another three months interviewing people. Besides, Xi Jiang probably has other offers as well. But every resume you get back in response to your newspaper ad is going to have to be reviewed and may delay getting a visa for Xi Jiang.
So there you have it: that's why companies post fake job postings when they are going through the green card process. By the time it gets to that point, you simply don't want a lot of responses. If you wanted to hire the best applicants, you would too.
> So. Keep up youy Anti American rhetoric... but don't cry in your beer to us when you come to work, notice a stench of curry in the air, and find some coolie sitting at your desk.
I think you can make your point, without resorting to racial slurs.
Woe be on to them, all who rise against poor people, shall perish in a the end. Buju Banton
That's why you should make one of the requirements "motivation".
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
Lawyers have wrists?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
> The free market uses the most valuable labour. Now USians are probably
> too stupid to notice this, but the most skilled labour with the least
> costs most certainly isn't coming from USians.
>
> If for no other reason than the MASSIVE health care costs the, uh,
> "oversized" average USian places on the system.
"[...] what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things
I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were
you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought.
Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award
you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."
but would not allow CBS to view the original video in its entirety.
Not that I agree with the lawyers, but this shouldn't be used against them. They probably get paid big bucks for the conferences and wouldn't want it just given away to the public for free.
Why wouldn't we want skilled, educated, hard-working, people from other countries to come here and become citizens? Doesn't that improve the value of our republic? They pay taxes, do honest work, raise families...how are they any different from our Grandfathers, Great Grandmothers, or even farther back who came to the US looking for a better life? Do we have more a right to happiness than they, just because they weren't born here?
However, foreign workers who intend to go back and send the majority of their money back with them contribute much less to the American economy, since they are less likely to spend their wages in the US.
As a US worker, we already have several advantages over the foreign competition (language fluency, cultural understanding, better education (generally)); why do we need to further tilt the scales further in our favor?
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
H1-Bs are not slaves. H1-Bs can change jobs, there is more paperwork involved with making the change and registering it with INS. I think the biggest hassle with an H1-B making a job change is not the INS restrictions, but the hassle in finding a new sponsored job. Part of this is due to the obtuse language and opaque policy of the INS and DOL, compared with the short hiring cycle of most US companies.
Woe be on to them, all who rise against poor people, shall perish in a the end. Buju Banton
It's common practice in any place where "competition" for jobs is required, in most countries. The truth is, the "job market" really isn't a market at all. There's no openness, little honesty, and many employers are apt to advertise fake positions to collect resumes so they can cherry-pick later for the real positions.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I believe that the law says more then that. The employer must make a good faith effort to fill the job with an American citizen.
In real-life high-tech recruiting, you first post the jobs everywhere, then you select all the applicants that meet your standards regardless of where they come from, and then you apply for a green card for those that need it. The formal job posting requirement in the green card application process is just out of step with how recruiting works in a tight labor market. In fact, companies that post these fake job ads to which they don't want any responses usually have real job ads running at the same time to which they do want responses; it's just that the real ads don't count for the green card.
The problem here isn't "bad faith" by anybody, it's government regulations that are out of step with the real world.
just for making Congress look bad by openly flaunting the law
You mean flouting, not flaunting.
Yeah, that's right. No IT for you! But, there's always some asshole that's willing to dance with the devil.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
But, as was said, governments can destroy wealth. I can't make glucose. I can only destroy it. Plants make glucose. ...more or less, anyway.
Insightful? "Funny" if you interpret this comment as irony. "Hopelessly naive" otherwise.
Lawyers' raison d'etre is to evade the spirit of the law.
Most people don't even think inside the box.
That would only make any sense if other countries had open borders, and didn't mind giving jobs to immigrants. I can't think of any developed countries that do not try to protect internal jobs somewhat, and many EU members are very protective. France had riots over this very issue, both by jobless immigrants, and the French youth who wanted highly protected jobs to be maitained.
That said, what this law firm is doing is legal, though perhaps not very ethical. However, taking every advantage of loopholes is what you would expect from a lawyer, or for that matter a tax-man or politician. Politicians regularly skirt every law and regulation about campaign funding, yet that seems to be ok with them. The only talk is of reforming the campaign laws to change the boundaries. So, if you want this law firm to act differently, try writing better laws.
A point lost on most lawyers and businessment is that just because something evades the spirit of the law or isn't covered by existing law doesn't make it the Right Thing To Do.
Sham job ads exploit unemployed people. They're one of the most frustrating things about finding work, itself a dismal business. The fact that they go through the motions without even considering the possiblility that by fortuitous accident they might find someone better than the individual they want to get through the greencard process is counterproductive, stupid, dismissive and discriminatory. It's hateful. No decent person would go through with such a thing. If you're reading this and you've done it: you disgust me. I hope you get immigrants that seek to exploit you by conducting industrial espionage for your competitors. That's the moral equivalent or what you're doing and you deserve to reap what you sow.
I want to know who paid these creeps for this content, and what they did with it. Anybody who follows this plan should be run out of business.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
It seems like I'm one of the few people here who has no problem with the video.
Sponsoring someone for a job isn't a trivial matter, and this firm is helping them comply with the law and do something that the company, for whatever reason, has decided that they want to do.
I'd actually like to see it a bit easier for companies to sponsor people and allow them to come in legally. Why have so many hoops for legal entry for people who will have confirmed jobs when they get to the US?
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
Hmmm...
This would explain all those job adds with ridiculous requirements, and how I could never find work when I lived in Pittsburgh. Then again perhaps it was just the economy at the time.
lawyers.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
Sneaking across the border into Canada.
What's this? Another weblog? On transit?
Bad land shark, no cocaine for you!
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Americans! Quit your whining and fscking compete! That's what makes this country the best.
Why would I as a manager go through all that H1B hassle if I could get the best right here at home? You know why they're going overseas for talent? They're better* and cheaper. Trust me, if you're good enough, they'll bend over backwards for you too. If they wouldn't, they're on their way to failure and you don't want to work there anyway.
* - Companies that just go for cheaper w/o the better are worse. Don't work there.
You don't need to get the best worker possible. You just need to get someone who is "good enough".
It's like the principle of the "cost of perfect information". A company could mount a tremendous effort for every job they hire and truly find the best person possible. But that would be very expensive to do and the return from hiring that better person probably wouldn't be enough to offset that additional cost in hiring.
H1-B's exacerbate this by lowering the overall cost of the employee.
At my company, every job gets thousands of applicants from all over the world. They use an automated system as the first screening - if you don't score high enough on that initial screening, no human will ever see your application. It's infuriating because I know that as I applied for a lot of these jobs, I was qualified... but because of my score no human ever evaluated my application.
We are the fire that lights our world.. and we are the fire that consumes it.
There is a rather simple solution to the great immigration and guest worker debate. I spent 10 years
of my life in the US military. There are 10's of thousands of other troops on the front lines
in Iraq fighting insurgents. These brave men are putting their lives on the line every day so that we here in the states can maintain what freedoms we still have and assisting in securing our national interests.
If you want to immigrate to the US then fine you spend 4 years active duty in my country's military and earn your green card. Everyone able bodied and of qualified military age should have to serve
4 years in our military to earn a green card. After those 4 years if someone want's to deny you
a green card, I will be the first to help you kick their ass.
Our troops ain't over there right now risking their lives just so they can come home and be
denied jobs because of crap like this!
Now tell me I am wrong!
Got Code?
From Norm Matloff's discussion about these unethical practices he quotes Jennifer Pack of Cohen and Grisgby:
You can also advertise in local and ethnic newspapers, such as the Pittsburgh Courier.
The Courier is a newspaper that caters to blacks. Good thing they don't know about computers, right Jennifer?
There can be many reasons.
I am in this position as well; not a US citizen, but have lived here $LONG_TIME and married a citizen $LONG_AGO. I have a green card, so I can work where I want, and (with certain provisos) enter and leave at my pleasure.
As it happens, I pay taxes, just as much as a US citizen. I was, when young enough, eligible for military conscription as much as any US citizen. The only major regular duty of a citizen which, to my knowledge, does not apply to me, is jury duty. I don't get to vote, but I honestly don't count my one voice among tens of millions as being worth a lot.
To get the green card, I essentially had to prove that the marriage was genuine (MUCH harder than that makes it sound) and that I wasn't some undesirable (a ton of paperwork, multiple health checks, you name it), and I more or less had to undertake to play nicely. So far, so good. Annoying, but livable.
To get citizenship, I would have to go through a whole new set of hoops, including civics tests (ironically, I know a lot more about US history and government than a whole lot of citizens with whom I've spoken) and make a pledge of dubious logical coherence:
I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God. (Copied from Wikipedia, because I'm lazy)
I would also, as an added bonus of fun-filled excitement, automatically lose my prior citizenship to $NONE_OF_YOUR_BEESWAX thus complicating contact with my family and various other aspects of my life.
So, I can get to take an oath which doesn't work for me, screw my life with more paperwork, after having had to work for the privilege, mess around with contact with my family (such as it is), and the primary immediate change would be eligibility for jury duty. I can't imagine what's holding me back from this wonderful life-changing experience, can you, mister Bush?
Go for the sarcastic. This isn't digg.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If you are going to evade the spirit of the law, don't be surprised when the lawmakers take note.
Microsoft has been breaking the "spirit of the law" for a long time. It's been known that they reject roughly 9 out of 10 resumes they receive, and also reject older workers, yet keep lobbying congress for more visa workers. The lawmakers only take note when it enters into the public conscience. They don't otherwise look for suspicious leads, especially when being funded by such corporations.
Table-ized A.I.
The H1B program freed up really innovative people to go do startups like YouTube while the grunt work could be done by someone else. It also enabled USA to keep in country the large numbers of foreigners graduating from its Computer Science programs who would otherwise have left due to the stupid backlogs in the GC program. Huge numbers of the new startups including Google, Yahoo, Ebay, Amazon have been built on the contributions of these American educated H1B workers. Without H1B you would still be browsing text based web on Lynx on a dial up line. And of course no slashdot either. Would you prefer that?
**Life is too short to be serious**
H1B employess pay all the taxes American citizens pay but take back much less as they are not eligible for social security , free retraining and a host of other tax deductions (e.g. they cant claim child tax credit on their foreign born kids). Also the government did not have to spend money on their education via subsidized loans or instate tuition as either they got educated in their own countries or paid full out of state tuitions to study in American universities. So if the governments real priority was to get more TAX PAYING workers they would actively discourage hiring of American by saying you have to advertise for H1Bs before you hire an American . Obviously the government doesnt do that so the government actually does care more for American citizens even if they are financial drains so boasting about paying taxes is not going to win this argument for you. Besides if America can demand other countries open up their markets to American exports which result in closing of local factories and huge unemployment its kind of hypocritical when these now unemployed workers (and their children) retrain in IT and want to work in America. Free movement of goods without free movement of people is colonialism by another name. I am sure Americans dont want their country to be a colonial empire building state as such states generally dont treat their own citizens with a lot more respect than they treat their colonial subjects.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Governments can provide the framework for wealth even if they don't produce the wealth themselves. It's that simple. Roads don't get people to work by themselves, but they certainly facilitate it. Do you really think corporations would be better off if there was not a functioning court system? Should we just let Microsoft grow into a big tech thug who's OS could purposely crash Firefox etc?
Table-ized A.I.
Indeed. There are two entire continents that are "The Americas." However, as continents generally don't have a government policy on immigration, it's fairly obvious we're discussing a country here. Now, the country I live in is called the United States of America. Calling citizens of my country "USians" might make sense if there wasn't another group of states that are also united directly to our south. Maybe "USains" is appropriate when talking about continental policy, except there is no continental policy for anything in North America, and if there was, the word would be North American.
Jenny's got a new number! 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Cohen? That's a jewish name. This is not surprising; jews are amongst the worst people when it comes to employee treatment. Their niggardlyness is legendary; they will go to great lenghts to avoid paying a fair price for anything.
And the same is the case with most other countries, probably even including yours!.
I'm here on an H1-B. My company was bought by a large company over here on the West Coast - we used to do asset-management within the film industry and had (hardware) patents on our process - patents that I'll defend as completely justified, even though I loathe software patents. I know of precisely one other company in the world that did what we did (in a difference sphere - they did broadcast, we did film), and they've been bought by the same company that bought us.
:-)
One of our clients was ILM (Star Wars 4, or part-1 if you prefer). I engineered the distributed database that ingested 40 TB of data per day for a solid 6 months, shared video previews across the world to the godforsaken deserts where the directors were filming, overlaying rough-cuts of special-effects and cross-matching with the story-board. We tracked everything from (physical) props (so the model of the lights-saber in the spin-offf game matched the real prop used), through digital assets, camera frames (HD frames at that), intermediate results (motion-tracks for example), audio (sound effects and dialogue), etc. etc. etc.
Anyway, I reckon there are maybe a half-dozen people on this planet that have the relevant experience to do this. I know them all, and none of them are Americans. I've no intention of becoming a citizen, but I may go for a green-card. I quite like California and Californians, and I'm enjoying myself working here
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Where I live (Europe) we also have the M3 out of control, that's why the EU central bank is raising the interest rates. I agree with your argument, the money supply is too much high, which is similar to a money devaluation if not backed by real goods. Because most of the liquidity is *artificial*, very distant from the physical money emission (M0), a major part of that volatile liquidity could collapse if housing "negative equity" cases began to became a problem (I expect recession for Spain in Q3-2008, as the housing bubble is bursting *now* and will shock the economy (~18% GDP), and we can not devaluate the currency, as the Spain central bank has no currency control anymore).
I work for a big company. We need some specific skills, and can't find them in the marketplace. We had a job posted on Monster, the local major newspaper and the corporate website for MONTHS with no qualified candidates save an H1B candidate.
We hired him, and are sponsoring him for a green card. We have to advertise for the position, and of course we need to make sure that the ad lists qualifications he can prove. We already advertised a position broadly and found NO QUALIFIED CANDIDATES eligible to work in the US. Now we're advertising to the letter of the law. If we found the right citizen or otherwise eligible to work in the US person, we would have hired that person.
Is the law stupid? Perhaps. Is there a dearth of candidates with the skills we need? Yes. What would you have us do?
For what it's worth, we just had someone leave, and are now looking broadly for someone eligible to work in the US. We just launched the "honest job search" process this past week. We'll see if we end up hiring another H1-B.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Maybe he thinks "America" is something that stretches form Terra Fuego in the south to the frozen wastes of Canada in the North?We are geeks: We need precise term and the popular definition of American as someone from the United States is not that.
Also, he has a point: Employers shopping for workforce in cheap countries is no different from a consumer choosing to buy cheap products at a mall store than a more expensive and smaller local store.
The dumbest persons alive are the people who think that "hire American" will work any better than the car industry "buy American" did.
So if you live in Smallville, Indiana but do all your shopping in cheap Bigmall outside town instead of more expensive local stores, should you be chased out of town for not buying local as well?
American consumers get cheap goods because they are manufactured in China. Should production be moved back to the States the prices would go up, which consumers might not like. "Buy American" is a slogan for a minoritybecause it means "buy expensive".
I'll give it a stab.
.10 like indians instead of for $5.35. We would be able to reimport those $2.49 movies and pay maybe $3.00 instead of $19.99. We wouldn't be competing against chinese child and prison slave labor. If you want real capitalism- I'm for it. Outsourcing bothers me- on the basis above. It is an end run around our labor laws that corporations get to make while they continue to charge full retail for their products allowing me to gloriously subsidize large parts of the rest of the world.
If my cornfield has plentiful heads of corn because I practiced wise field practices, watered and weeded regularly, should I have more rights to the corn than random people driving down the highway who decide they want some of my corn now that it is ripe?
If my city engages in good policy so that we have a good economy should I not have more rights to employment in my city than strangers who had no part in building but merely snuck in at night after we had done the hard work?
If my country engages in an economic and political system which over the course of 40 years causes my country to have surplus and the country next door (say a religious quasi dictator plutocracy with rampant corruption) reduces itself to ruin over 40 years, should non-citizens be able to come in, break the law (w/regard to housing, driving, paying taxes, forged documents, etc. etc.), and have more right to a job than citizens?
---
However as far as capitalism goes- with real capitalism, we would be able to buy our drugs for
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
You're right, there is more to it.
The very rich are energy sources, in a way. How their energy "plume" is spread is very much like the first and second law... it will go to where it is most "effective".
But they are a strange energy source, that doesn't deplete itself (making money with money). so you got me, the analogy falls apart there. In fact, the only way to deplete that energy source is by the very rich's own collossal stupidity, or violence... or the energy (money) itself getting deprived of its power (inflation). I guess you'd call leglislation violence as well.
But then, the fate of the ultra rich is pretty much beyond any particular countries' actions at this point... they can just move. no?
What makes you think I haven't seen this video? That's where I was watching and realised the inflation/debt issue.
The way I see it, the only real way out of this hole is to get governments to issue fiat currency without hiding behind banks to do it, as you said.
It's been a long time.
Who says we feel entitled to anything !USian? I think it sucks that some !USian has to live on sub-human wages in MY country because his employer knows he has no choice but to accept it. In MY country, some !USian is being threatened with deportation if he gets out of line with his boss. In MY country, some low life USian who employees this !USian is evading payroll taxes. All of this is made possible by the work visa.
I say get rid of work visa entirely. If your skills are needed in MY country, MY country should have the decency to accept you as one of US. Here's your citizenship. Bring your family! That's how it became MY country... I may have been born here, but I'm not a full blood native American. I don't know anyone who is.
Full citizens can't be threatened with deportation, and therefore won't work for subhuman wages. They'll pay taxes just like everyone else, because they aren't afraid of being discovered and deported. They'll work hard to provide for their family, because their family is HERE and receiving the best America has to offer. They will pay into *and save* a social security system that is currently doomed to failure because the US population is aging and very top heavy.
Of course, that will kinda defeat the point of gaming the H1-B visa system entirely. If we do that, companies will have two options. Hire an American or hire an American. Even playing field for all employees. Social security is saved without new taxation. America acquires some of the brightest and hardest working people from around the globe. Problem solved. I'm all for it. I think the only loser is the tax cheating, slave wage paying employers out there. So, when can we start?
Ohhhhhhh, you're one of the tax cheating, slave wage paying employers just trying to maintain the status quo with your bullshit! That's why you posted AC.
Well hooray for Argentina. That's one country out of hundreds. I think the parent was asking you to prove this was the *rule*, not the *exception*.
ERROR 144 - REBOOT ?
Please do not mix illegal immigrants up with H-1B workers. The former do depress wages, while the latter are required by law to be paid at least as much as their American counterparts. Of course, I do not expect that such inconvenient facts will be considered, given the foul mood that the entire country is in.
"...four out of five jobs under the H1-B program are level one jobs, not level four. i.e. low skill jobs, not high skill jobs." Lou Dobbs That means foreign workers are being paid as much as other Americans... in entry level positions... while meeting requirements for high level employment. Sure, that's fair.
I have a better idea. Full citizenship to anyone who qualifies for an H1-B. Then you can save social security for an aging, top heavy US population and force employers to pay fair wages all at once! Two birds with one stone :)
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
How are Americans more entitled to an American job from an American company that gets American tax breaks and largely serves the American consumer-base? Hmm.. Gee, I don't know. And don't you dare act like every other country isn't extremely protectionist of their jobs and workforce.
Further, capitalism is fine. However, while the average corporation can seek out labor all over the planet and simply put up an office or hire workers from the cheapest areas, the American citizen does not have such a pool to choose from - neither in terms of employment or cost of living.
A corporation can pick from the entire planet and decide to invest in an area where they can pay experienced professionals as much in salary as the average American citizen pays in rent. While the corporation and the American citizen may be based in America, the corporation is not constrained by the dynamics, labor supply and financial situation of this country. The worker, however, is. We don't have a choice. Milk is about $3.85 per gallon. Period. I can't go somewhere and buy it for a nickel a gallon. And if you want to live close enough to these corporations to work for them, you're usually looking at more expensive living. You will pay $800 or $1,000 or $2,000 for a one bedroom apartment or half a million bucks for a small house. Period. Unless you plan on commuting 1500 miles from some hill in the midwest out to the west coast every morning.
Then, to add insult to injury, this shoddy form of sham-capitalism isn't enough for them. They want to compound it by telling us that Americans are not plentiful enough or educated enough. Now, if there is a shortage of milk or gas, I have to pay more money for it. If there is a shortage of experienced labor in this country, corporations simply artificially adjust the value of these workers by lobbying government to let them bring in more employees from overseas or to simply move a chunk of their own operations overseas.
People try to suggest that Americans are racist or xenophobic when all they are doing is showing concern for their well-being and their careers. They have a right to do so. Especially when - on top of the imbalanced system - we have underhanded corporations and services as in this article working to drill us even further into the ground.
Actually, it is. The employee safety standards, training practices, and most especially *union* policies of foreign employees often differ vastly. While US workers in technology are often more skilled and more creative and more productive, for example, they're more expensive and more demanding of their managers. They're also more likely to say "this is a really, really stupid idea" or to blow the whistle on criminal activity than foreign workers on H1-B visas.
I've seen this in practice, where the US contractors immediately went to the company management and said "we are in violation of our contracts with this customer, and in violation of US law: here's what we have to do to fix it" where the foreign workers continued merrily breaking basic US law. (Including the GPL: I had a long talk with some of their US engineers about software that I'd contributed heavily to under the GPL, and its implications for what they were doing. They resigned from the company and are employed elsewhere now, and the project eventually cost that company a big loss when their clients noticed the contract violations.)
I actually bought a sandwich from such a Brazilian while traveling overseas last year. He sold me the sandwich, but I won't be going back to the shop the next time I'm in that city because he copped such an attitude about it.
The argument, though, is that since the law states the employer must make a "good faith effort" to find a qualified US worker that they ARE breaking the letter of the law. When the whole objective of the process is to go through the motions with the end goal of not finding a qualified US worker (i.e. "we're going to make it look like you're looking for qualified applicants even though you have absolutely no plan of hiring a US worker"), it seems to me any rational person would not consider this a good faith effort.
Frankly, we would be better off if we didn't get cheap junk from China and other places. Americans are trained to think that they need way more stuff than they actually do. Our obsession with "keeping up with the Joneses" is why so many Americans are in debt. Americans buy too much stuff, and the only way to do that is to go cheap. If we only had access to more expensive, American made merchandise, we would have no choice but to buy less. Currently, our economy is based nearly solely on consumption, not on production. This isn't a sustainable system, and the sooner we get back to providing for ourselves the better off we will be. This doesn't mean that we should ignore the rest of the world. Globalization is the way the world is headed and we would not be doing ourselves any favors by being left behind. We have, however, become too dependent on foreign produced goods, and in doing so are rendering ourselves obsolete.
Genius can write on the back of old envelopes but mere talent requires the finest stationary available. -D. Parker
Things like "purposely crash(es) Firefox" would be the least of your worries. Try working for a company that will have your family killed if you protest your low wages or try to go work for the competition. That's the kind of things we would face with MegaCorps and no government whatsoever.
We are all just people.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Yes, but some believe that companies are mostly nice. Thus, I tried to use a geek analogy.
Table-ized A.I.
Because do you understand that your troops are not there to "maintain what freedoms we still have and assisting in securing our national interests." They are overseas because that's the way the US got powerfull and rich, and that's the way you keep it that way.
Don't you understand? YOU are keeping 3rd world countries into the 3rd world, through unethical military, politic and economic practices, and then YOU benefit from those countries in many ways, between others, by outsourcing and by hiring cheap inmigrant labor. You create the conditions that make this people leave their countries, then you hire them for cheap.
The US got rich and powerfull because of just one reason: SLAVES. Since now you can't just bring slaves from Africa, you are creating a legal way to get slaves, and the best part is: You talk about this as if it were a problem for you, so nobody sees what really is going on. Come on!, over the last century the USA has been involved in allmost every conflict in some way, and has been playing with the political situation of 3rd world countries. What is better than slaves?, well, VOLUNTARY, TAX-PAYING Slaves.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
That doesn't mean the law is right. The fact of the matter is that if there are two people that can perform a job, and one can perform it cheaper, it makes sense for the economy to have the job done cheaper. I ask you, why is it the law that a person that happened to be born within arbitrarily drawn lines in the sand deserve to charge more for the same job than someone born outside that line?
"Knowledge makes us accountable." - Che Guevara
If a cornfield that you own is plentiful then you have all the rights in the world to reap the benefits of that.
If your city engages in good policy that builds up a good economy. And some stranger can provide production for that economy at a lower cost than you can, benefiting all the citizens of the city, then why should the city pay more to subsidize your inability to produce at that price.
The fact of the matter is the US had quite a few advantages in terms of resources. Also, all of these H1B workers are living here in the United States, so the cost of living argument cannot be used, if it costs you $x for milk, it costs the H1B worker the exact same amount. Finally, I don't know if the argument that these H1B workers are underpaid is completely true. I personally am a Canadian that got an offer from Microsoft to work on an H1B after graduation for an annual salary of $90k/year. I didn't end up taking the offer, but I know a lot of other friends that did, and they certainly don't feel that they're underpaid. Microsoft simply wants to hire top talent, and they just want access to all the talent they can, worldwide, including Americans.
"Knowledge makes us accountable." - Che Guevara
OK. So pinch the suckers closed on their tentacles, instead?
we might be going down, but it won't happen in your lifetime. May as well get used to it.
And these days there is no real number one any more. Since the Roman Empire fell, being #1 has meant less and less. America is the last true Numero Uno.... and we have always had a close contender. The next lead will have a pack of runners up who are in the 98th percentile.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
The laws passed by that social contract call that only Citizens and legal aliens may secure employment. To cater to the whims of the economy would be doing otherwise, and calls for a modification of the laws.
The Citizens will never make that happen, because with labour, you're not dealing with merchandise or a service, but with human beings (Citizen or not).
You are going to need somewhere (quite a lot) more than half of job seekers in your boycott before dice will notice much, assuming that there are more people than jobs anyway.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Yeah, or it could be that they know that they can keep paying Amir a lot less money than they would have to pay an American to do the job, so it's worth it to them to put forth the fairly small amount of extra effort to make sure that they can disqualify any American that applies for the job. Who the fuck are you calling lazy anyway? Americans work more than people in most first-world countries. Yeah, we don't work like sweatshop laborers, which is why companies want to replace us, but I don't consider working sweatshop hours to be something that should be expected in a civilized country. Especially when it's just so those people in the top 1% financially can work on increasing their share of the total wealth (already somewhere north of 40%).
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
First, make sure you tell us when someone is hired for your job solely because he or she is cheaper than you. I also guarantee you that it has nothing to do with their skills. I see it in my work, where they are replacing someone with 15 years of experience with some having 1.5 years just because they are cheaper. And asking the experienced employee to train the new one.
Second, I want to make sure the scope is narrowed correctly: this is about jobs inside the United States. Now that we have that set up, this is why us US citizens:
1. Citizens of this country pay taxes to fund the military, police, fire, ambulance, and other services that ensure the safety of the companies that are based here.
2. Citizens of this country serve in the military, and have their sons and daughters serve in the military to protect this country, providing a safe place for companies here to work without fear of having their stuff taken.
3. We fund a government that follows and enforce laws so that all companies know what rules apply to them, with the expectation that the same laws apply to all companies in the same way. This allows companies to focus on producing whatever products and services they wish, without worrying about having the rules change next week.
4. Cities in the US constantly defer taxes to attract businesses so that businesses will contribute to the local environment.
This stability comes at price: You cannot get this stability without paying employees so that they can pay taxes. If companies no longer hire the people in the cities they want to build, there will be no reason for cities to offer incentives. Since the US spends so much money on the military, reduced taxes result in a reduced military, which results in risks to the companies - if you don't think that will cause problems wait until there are 6 different Navies patrolling different parts of the ocean, rather than one Navy ensuring safe navigation, you'll have a bribe at each boundary. And then go to a country where the government doesn't enforce laws like bribery and extortion. And then there is the fact that we cost this much because companies like it when we buy their stuff because we want it. Everyone has to buy bread, but it's the big screen TVs being sold that boost the economy.
You're right, there is more to it.
The very rich are energy sources, in a way. How their energy "plume" is spread is very much like the first and second law... it will go to where it is most "effective".
But they are a strange energy source, that doesn't deplete itself (making money with money). so you got me, the analogy falls apart there. In fact, the only way to deplete that energy source is by the very rich's own collossal stupidity, or violence... or the energy (money) itself getting deprived of its power (inflation). I guess you'd call leglislation violence as well.
But then, the fate of the ultra rich is pretty much beyond any particular countries' actions at this point... they can just move. no?
The rich create the empires. Their children squander it away. It diffuses with each successive generation.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
If it actually was an employee I imagine they would covered under some type of whistleblower clause. Do work for this law firm or something? Is this really the first question that came to your mind? Fuck those people. How do they sleep at night? How ironic it would be if one of their kids was an aspiring engineer/techy.
Unless they start printing money like crazy.
Then the benefits will be worthless.
So it's moot anyhow.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
If there is a huge demand for programmers, and the supply is SO limited that we need to import foreign workers, why the hell have salaries for programmers risen so little over the past five or six years? It's been a while since I've had an economics course but this argument would seem to break a law or two. I mean seriously, this alone should tell you that something is not right. It seems to me much more likely that corporations just don't like the idea of paying six figures for engineers, whether the market demands it or not. Maybe they think you should need to have an MBA to earn that kinda money. After all, everyone knows MBAs do most of the work at tech companies.
So, if you really need programmers, but you really really don't want to pay them what they're worth, importing cheap labor sounds like a pretty good idea. Of course, H1-B workers are supposed to be paid the prevailing wage but this just doesn't happen. Talk to anyone who works in an IT shop that uses them and they'll tell you that they make less money. Hell, just ask the people who are there on H1-Bs, they know they're getting ripped off.
What I really love is when companies that do this say, "well, we advertised that programming position and nobody responded for 2 months, so we had no other choice". Most of the time, this is bullshit. I used to work for a company that would advertise $85k for all senior level Java positions, even though the local average was around $100k for someone at that level. And then the managers at the company would feign dismay over the fact that they weren't getting any resumes. A couple of times I suggested that they just raise the salary to match the average market rate. Of course, each time I was told that "that's not in the budget".
It basically comes down to just that. A lot of US corporations have simply decided that cheap foreign labor is "in the budget", a fair wage for US workers is not.
Actually, I'm a non-citizen with permanent residency (a 'Green Card' which is neither green....but that's another story) who pays State and Federal taxes; my withholdings also include Social Security and Medicare, despite the fact that I will never see a cent in benefits from those programs, but just like Joe Citizen I pay for the aforementioned Institutions.
A little background: when I worked for an Immense Business Conglomerate (between 1969 and 1997) they would bring me to this country, have me work alongside equally-qualified US-citizen employees, and pay me between 15% and 25% less than them. Now, I didn't leave my degrees at the border - they were mine and no-one could take them away, so I find it rather ironic that in the current outsourcing environment, outrage can be generated by this story.
Nothing to see here, please move along.
Enlightenment? It's just a flush in the pan.
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
Companies that make brain-dead, shortsighted, "can't see past the end of my nose" decisions will be beaten in the end by companies that take a more long-term, holistic view.
That statement makes me think of the quote, "The meek shall inherit the earth. In the meantime, the strong will make a damn good living."
The problem with just assuming this issue will correct itself is that it's *extremely* detrimental to the domestic labor pool for those skills - who is going to want to assume $50K of debt for college to learn a skill in an industry where companies have driven wages down to levels more appropriate to semi-skilled labor? By the time the market "corrects itself", it will quite possibly have driven a large proportion of skilled domestic workers out of the field completely and discouraged a large number of potential workers from entering it in the first place.
The really annoying thing is that the ridiculous number of H-1Bs issued for IT positions is largely due to shills such as the ITAA that have out-and-out lied to Congress about a "shortage" of qualified workers in these fields that demonstrably does not exist. I've been a professional software developer for 18 years, and I've seen *plenty* of situations where resumes of completely qualified domestics were presented to the HR manager and the company ended up hiring an H-1B instead.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
open borders and a welfare state are mutually exclusive.
Excellent point. This is the crux of the issue, isn't it?
They are finding someone to do the same job cheaper than we are willing to. We don't have a divine right to jobs just because we are Americans.
Excellent. But why just limit it to highly skilled workers competing for my job? Why not import unskilled workers to compete for your job, too? Lets let anybody who can get a job stay. Does that work for you?
1) Economists and bankers who work for a non-profit organization and can't appreciably improve their lot in life by manipulating the money supply.
2) Elected officials who can "buy" an election by causing an artificial boom or hide a poorly balanced budget by printing piles of worthless currency.
I'm throwing my lot in with (1). The history of (2) is not a pretty one.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
It's a valid POV. A lot of the arguments against H1-Bs seem to be centered around the notion that Americans should have first priority in certain jobs even if there are more qualified people from elsewhere that could do the same work for less money. I'm always amazed at how the people who shout loudest about protecting US jobs are the same people who purport to support the free market.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
"This has little to do with wages and everything to do with worker "loyalty.""
Well, it's a bit of both.
The idea is that the loyalty of the H1-B is enforced by the the U.S. Government. If you're not loyal, you get thrown out of the country. That probably makes you pretty loyal.
But the purpose of forcing such loyalty is that it allows the employer to pay less money. If the prevailing wage $60K per year, I'm guessing you can get by with $35K per year for the H1B, plus they're technically temps, so you don't have the additional expenses you would for a permanent employee.
Now that said, I think the H1B people coming over are good for the country, and really good for IT workers. If smart people want to come to the country and work, I think that's great. Imagine the best minds in the world coming to your country. Not only smart people, but people with the initiative to leave their country and move to another! I welcome anyone like that (and I work in IT). So with that in mind, I propose a solution. H1Bs after 6 months of employment with a company get their green card.
Boom. I've solved the problem. We get the pool of labor. Smart, talented, hard working labor. And they'd be paid at market rates. The companies would have to do that. Otherwise the H1B's they just spent 6 months training would go someplace else. The only people who could possibly object to this are people who have a vested interest in making sure H1B's are cheap. And that ultimately is not good for anybody.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
The internally posted jobs of my employer, Alcatel-Lucent, are often rediculously specific. It's obvious to everyone that those job post are pro-forma and a specific individual is already locked in. I don't read job ads in the local newspaper so I don't know what's happening there. If that's not an abuse of the job posting process I don't know what is.
Well, the real question is why some illegal alien operating under the cover of an H-1B thinks that he/she is entitled to a job in another country? We don't need more foreign scabs coming in here, stealing our jobs because they don't like the conditions in their own country.
For instance, we are currently seeing a drop in college enrollments into science and technology programs. Surveys of incoming college freshmen indicate that there is a lot of concern about going into fields like Computer Science because of rampant off shoring.
So, ask yourself, is it good for the country to be driving our young people away from these types of careers? What do you think the overall economic impact will be of a sharp decline in the number of home-grown engineers? This is a helluva lot different than shipping some low-skilled factory job to China.
We are talking about people whose work often spawns entire industries.
I think we are now letting a handful of large corporations do serious long term damage to our economy so they can reap some very short-term gains.
What the H-1B visa does is UNFAIRLY and PREJUCIALLY change the hiring field to make it better to hire illegal alien H-1B scabs. That's not fair to legit Americans.
Oops, your ignorance is showing, an accurate comparison would be:
1) A privately-owned corporation that exists to create the most profit for its member banks (which profit enormously from monetary manipulation) with virtually no accountability to the American public.
2) A group of legislators put into place by you and me who can be held accountable for their actions.
Under system #2, between 1800 and 1900 the dollar actually gained value (!), between 1913 and 2007 under system #1, the dollar has lost 95% of its value, a dollar in 1913 is actually worth about 5 cents now.
The history of treasury-issued money is looking pretty good.
Is this a news report or a trailer for a motion picture?
Thanks for posting that link. I wasn't aware of this group before.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
Speaking of ignorance, are you sure you understand the corporate and management structure of the Fed? The Fed is technically privately owned, but it's not operated for profit and the FOMC is dominated by government appointees. The stock ownership scheme is not the same as a typical private corporation.
As for banks profiting enormously from "money manipulation" the claim just doesn't make sense. They profit from the fact that they're banks and can earn interest on loans. They'd do so whether the currency was inflating or deflating. Of course, if you want to do away with fractional reserve banking we could always just go all the way and start trading big stone wheels back and forth in trucks. The fact is, the Fed rebates most of its interest earnings back to the Treasury and banks get rich because they have a lot of money, not because the Fed is manipulating money for them. Banks do well in just about any monetary scheme you can think of.
The time between elections is far longer than the time it takes an incompetent government to throw a nation's currency into absolute chaos. These are the same people who thought the Iraq war was the best thing since sliced bread and "Freedom Fries" was actually worth putting on the agenda. It takes just minutes to come up with a list of countries whose economies were hosed thanks to bad monetary policy (and the US during the Great Depression is one of them). Monetary policy isn't an easy thing, and given that the government has very strong incentives to just run the printing presses, I'd rather keep it out of their hands.
Well, no. From 1800 to 1900 we just traded gold. That's why the dollar gained value, and that's not necessarily a good thing (it certainly wasn't for the average guy at the end of the 1800s). If the economy grows and you don't find any gold while it happens, your currency deflates. If you were a farmer who borrowed money from a bank, you got fucked. The rhetoric against the bankers back then with respect to deflating currency was basically the same as the rhetoric now bitching about inflating currency. Given a choice between predictable inflation and unpredictable bouts of inflation and deflation, most people choose predictable inflation. That's one of the main reasons we're not tying our currency to how good our miners are at digging stuff out of the ground anymore.
I know it's easy to assume that money becoming more valuable is necessarily a good thing, but any time the value of your currency shifts relative to what you're doing with it, there are costs associated with it. It's not just a matter of "Yay! My money is worth more!" like some people think it is. Your perspective changes depending on whether you're a borrower or a lender, whether you own a business or work for one, how quickly your wages adjust to changes in average price level, etc. In an ideal world we'd see 0% inflation and price levels would always be completely predictable, but that's just not possible, so the system we've constructed is one that tries to keep the relevant variables controlled as best we can.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
I have lots of misgivings about how effective a partial boycott is going to be. Personally, I'm not terribly bothered by H1-B's. As far as I can tell, you shouldn't be, as you don't think you are competing with them anyway. I'm applying for jobs on dice.com right now(I should be applying for more jobs than I do, such is the way of things, perhaps today will be a good start; the impetus to look there was separate from this conversation), so I would be hard pressed to make an argument that I don't find it acceptable.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
First, let's outsource all the lawyers.
The lawyers can't be outsourced, because they formed a union. Or precisely, they have 50 unions. They call them state bar associations. And no one can be a lawyer in any state without the approval of the union. Doctors do the same thing. So while other professionals get their jobs shipped out of the country, you can rest secure knowing the lawyers and doctors are laughing at you.
The us's primary benefit was a set of founding fathers who were uniquely incorruptable.
George Washington had complete dictatorial power and gave it back up. Further-- after two terms he retired and said all presidents should retire setting a precedent that wasn't even questioned for over 150 years.
Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin-- even quasi royalists like Alexander Hamilton (and many others too numerous to list) were all real human beings with real human failings who were at the same time extremely principled and resisted temptations to corruption which people all over the rest of the world (and in the US today) can't seem to resist.
Many countries around the world have abundant natural resources and yet they can't seem to get rulers who are principled and can't get governments that are resistant to abuse.
We are losing in the US lately (Allowing private developers to take property was another huge loss of our founding rights in the last couple years) but for a very long time, the work done by the founding fathers stood the test of time for a long time.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
interesting observation... thanks, I think it's helpful to me.
This isn't a court of law, it's the court of public opinion. We're not sending someone to jail, so we can use whatever burden of proof we choose.
Most of us have seen enough evidence to know that this sort of thing has been going on for quite a while, and now we have a law firm who has basically confessed. We've got all the evidence we need.
You still haven't provided any reason as to why the law is right. You simply state that "catering to the whims of the economy would be doing otherwise, and calls for a modification of the laws." People don't choose the country in which they're born, and thus I don't believe the country has any obligation to protect them from labour abroad. If another person is willing to follow all the other laws of the country, and paying all the taxes, and not doing anything illegal, they have as much right to the job as someone else that happened to be born in that country. Many (if not all) of the components of the computer you typed this message on were probably made in China or somewhere else where labour is cheaper. The direct benefit of cheaper labour has allowed computers to be much more accessible to a larger part of the population than if they were only built by Americans in American companies.
Another point I'd like to make is that the economy is not some abstract entity, it is the aggregated wishes of the society. If the economy has a high demand for something, that means there are real people that are making this demand. Also, I think most citizens would prefer paying a lower price for a product, and if someone is willing to provide it at a lower product than why does American citizen feel they deserve to be paid more. This is the part I never understood. If I build widgets that cost $10, and someone else builds them for $5, he deserves every penny of it, and my widget-making skills are now only worth $5, and not $10.
"Knowledge makes us accountable." - Che Guevara
I think many of these points are debatable. While I may not necessarily I agree, there have been arguments made about slavery making the United States much richer than many other countries. Also, if you look at Canada, which developed into a nation much differently from the United States, where standards of living are comparable to the United States, I would again attribute that to the abundant resources.
While I certainly have a great deal of respect for the premises and beliefs the United States was founded upon, I do not agree that it was the most significant factor in making the US as well off as it is now.
"Knowledge makes us accountable." - Che Guevara
Period.
I agree with you on that point.
/. frustrates me. There's a perception that all employees are "corporate drones" or "wage slaves" and we simply do the evil bidding of the "corporate overlords" who are the moral equivalent of the sith.
The "corporations are evil" meme that permeates
My point is that there are legitimate reasons for companies to advertise for a position in a way which seems evil.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
No, the laws do not necessarily reflect what the people want. It is more likely to represent what the special interests groups that make the biggest campaign contributions want. The economy is a much better representation of what people want.
"Knowledge makes us accountable." - Che Guevara
American consumers get cheap goods because they are manufactured in China. Should production be moved back to the States the prices would go up, which consumers might not like.
First, there are far too many examples (starting with the famous Nikes' example) of corporations who have offshored all those manufacturing - and now IT, medical, services, etc., jobs - and have kept prics exacly the same while giving far higher salaries and perks to their senior executive staff.
The best thing to do is to follow India's example and not legally allow any chains, such as Wal-Mart, to exist in their country. (You also ignore fundamental economics, and imply economics is an arrow as opposed to a loop structure, take too long to instruct you on these matters - suffice it to say, only the upper classes can any longer afford to purchase ANY products, which is why the Nordstroms and other high-end retailers have been doing so well the last few years.....)
Today in America, we have the end result of MK-Ultra "perception management" research: absolutely contradictory brainwashing - all too quickly accepted by the masses.
We American workers are told we don't have enough educated people - so Americans should be laid off after training the less-educated and less-skilled foreign replacements. We Americans are told we don't have enough high school dropouts - so Americans should be replaced with illegal immigrants who can't read nor write and are lacking in at least a high school education. We Americans are told there are many Americans who refuse to do some jobs - so Americans are laid off by the corporations (Arkansas, Minnesota, Washington, et al.) and completely replaced by illegal/undocumented immigrants. We are told Americans refuse to apply for certain jobs - after lines and lines of Americans appear to be applying for those very same jobs. We have these phoney stealth books by Bugliosi on the Kennedy assassination (far too many ommissions, far too many errors) and Rossi's book on who "really runs America" extolling the Council on Foreign Relations, the Cato Institute and illegal immigrants and the falsehoods - as written by corporations - on the H1-B and other visa programs.
Many years ago, while awaiting being shipped off to combat in Vietnam, I read several books written by Taylor Caldwell and Upton Sinclair detailing exactly what is happening today - and they even completely nailed the exact time it would take place. They had attended these social get-togethers at a place I'd never heard of having to do with some group called the "Bilderburgers" - unfotunately, at that time, I thought they'd drank too much "conspiracy Kool Ade" - but it turns out they were just writing the truth......
Eff'ing A, dood, open up those borders completely (although they almost are completely open now, thanks to sock puppet Bushie failing to secure the borders) --- let everyone come in and overrun your town. And all that trash and litter and crime that's generated - whoopee frigging deal. And all those people camping out on your doorstep, since even Americans can no longer find affordable places to live, whoopee friggin deal. And if your momma gets gangraped by 20 of the criminals who come in with the rest, whoopee frigging deal. Seriously, are you putting everyone on or are you really that frigging stupid and that frigging ignorant and simpleminded????? Just wondering.....
Your wires appear to be crossed.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.