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Bill Gates's Wish Is Homeland Security's Command
theodp writes "PC World reports that DHS has extended the time foreign graduates of US colleges can stay in the country and work to almost two-and-a-half years, an 'emergency' change that drew kudos from Microsoft and other H-1B visa stakeholders. Looks like when Bill Gates says 'Jump,' the government asks 'How high?' Bill Gates's Congressional Testimony, March 12, 2008: 'Extending OPT from 12 to 29 months would help to alleviate the crisis employers are facing due to the current H-1B visa shortage. This only requires action by the Executive Branch, and Congress and this Committee should strongly urge the Department of Homeland Security to take such action immediately.' DHS Press Release, April 4, 2008: 'The US Department of Homeland Security released today an interim final rule extending the period of Optional Practical Training (OPT) from 12 to 29 months for qualified F-1 non-immigrant students.'"
Thanks for the very opinionated analysis on how apparently Bill Gates is now ordering the US government but the fact of the matter is this request was good for both parties, good for science, and good for the industry.
Now get off my lawn!
Microsoft does not use L1 visas, because they don't import cheap outsourced labor like IBM does. They are trying to bring in valuable, qualified college graduates to this country to fill higher-level positions that cannot be filled with US-based engineers because at that level, there truly is a shortage.
But hey, this is Slashdot so we can happily spin this so that it seems Bill Gates is manipulating US immigration policies for his own benefit. That way we get another "Microsoft is teh evil" bullet point for the "advocacy" folks, and Slashdot sells more ads. Everybody wins.
Immigration is probably the only thing keeping your job here in the US. I wouldn't complain. Think about it from a corporations point of view. You have an international corporation that simply wants the work done and are truly indifferent to where it is done. When deciding where to do the bulk of their programming, the US is not exactly the most inviting place. We have some of the highest corporate taxes in the world, we have the highest wages in the world, and in general there is a very high cost of doing business here.
There are good reasons to do work in the US. If the work is the for the US market, it doesn't hurt to have it done in the US to save time in cleaning it up make it presentable to the consumer and you have cleaner communication lines with the US marketers and business folks.
What the immigration does is make the choice a little easier for corporations to pick the US over India. Sure, immigration does, to some small extent push down US wages. Know what pushes down US wages even more though? When they say "fuck it" and simply have the entire thing done in India for a fraction of the cost.
So, you can either swallow that people from India (and elsewhere) come here for high wages while at the same time knocking your wages down a little, or simply have corporations throw their hands up at the high cost of doing business and simply farm it all out to India.
Take your pick.
Stringent immigration policies NEVER result in great economic booms that nationalist promise. Immigration has never hurt the US. The US has a long time of kicking ass and taking in the economics and academics BECAUSE it has such a liberal immigration policy. Taking in skilled workers from elsewhere is a good thing for the US and keeps jobs here. If anyone has anything to bitch about, it is India. The US is the one stealing away their skilled workers, adding them to our economy, and leaving them high and dry.
That's why I don't get some people's claims that we're suckling at the American tit. We pay taxes, pay rent / buy property, buy products and services locally, etc.
I think the larger question is...why when we in the US have PLENTY of citizens
Well we have PLENTY of citizens, but they do not like to do computer programming. Last time I checked, the only people that came here to the USA involuntarily were African Americans. The rest of us are ancestors of some "driving down the wages to citizens and giving them to foreigners that are just sending home is not helping matters..."
This ridiculous, xenophobic crap has polluted the American discource since the Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam bitched about the new British arrivals in what would eventually be renamed New York. Yet, despite these waves of low wage immigrants, the United States has managed to become the riches single nation on the planet earth. I've got 13 aircraft carriers, a man on the moon, a kick ass freeway system and gasoline that even today is cheaper than any of our allies to say that a policy of open ended immigration works and works stunningly well.
My grandmother, as did many grandparents, sent money overseas back to Europe to their families when they had it. Family is an AMERICAN value. Remember?
I too, work with a lot of immigrants in Computer Programming, and for the most part I have found these people, whereever they come from, be it Malaysia, Viet Nam, China, India, Japan, Ireland, Scotland, England, Germany, and Switzerland, to be hardworking, decent, law abiding, industrious, imaginative, family oriented, and in short the sort of people that the USA should be proud to have. These people want to work, value family, and want to be Americans. I think that, rather than making these people jump through hoops like dogs, we should be recruiting these people from around the world, agressively, and we should be honored to make them citizens of our country, and not the other way around.
By the way too, my uncle in law did THREE combat tours in Viet Nam, earning a silver star, a couple of purple hearts. He's not a computer programmer, but he got his degree at Khe Sahn. But hey, he's just a stinking Mexican... so now you can take that stereotype about lazy hispanic people and blow that out your ass too, while you were at it.
This is my sig.
>When they do that, the job and money stays IN OUR economy. We're talking here about H1-B visa workers...temporary workers that have no intention on staying here and becoming US citizens.
I call BS... The reason why there are so many H1-B visas is because America does not let anything else in.
I am quite serious here, as my wife and I were confronted with this situation. If you look at the visas of America there are no "skilled labor" immigrations like there is in Canada or Australia. In fact America is actually one of the few countries that focuses on family based immigration.
Look at your government statistics and you will see that per capita there is very little immigration to America. Per capita America has 25% of the immigration that Australia and Canada have. And of that immigration about 60%+ is family based. In Australia and Canada it is in reverse.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
The link you cite is again bogus as this reflects the cost to employers rather than salary, which is the original poster's issue.
Mean computer programmer salary:
$67,400 in May 2005
$69,500 in May 2006
This is an annual increase of 3.11%, which is lower than inflation of 3.39% in 2005 and 3.24% in 2006. So in some meaningless sense wages did rise, but in the meaningful sense of buying anything, wages went down.
You still have not addressed my question regarding the relevance of rising wages to the visa.
That said, I agree with the sentiment of your original comment.