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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.'"
Bill Gates has been testifying for years, yet little has been done to increase H1-B limits. It's hardly as if anyone is acting under his control...
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!
Or maybe, instead of "Looks like when Bill Gates says 'Jump,' the government asks 'How high?'", it's actually "When Bill Gates identifies a real problem, the government actually considers it."
Yes, they have access to government. No, there is no magic.
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.
Wow, if you read all the articles linked, you'd know that it was not just Bill Gates, but others as well who testified on this subject. Secondly, a lot of companies support this, Google included. Finally, people from both parties support this.
The majority of the people who are on OPT are folks who're in the US to go to graduate school. Rather than send them back, they are trying to extend the amount of time that they can stay in the country. How is this a bad thing?
If anything, the number of native US candidates going to graduate school is much lesser than the number of foreign nationals coming to the US for graduate school. How is trying to retain folks who get advanced degrees a bad thing in any way?
Finally, a lot of people with graduate degrees (i.e. majority of folks on OPT) are by no means cheap - so, the old excuse that they are being exploited etc. does not quite work here.
Enough of the bullshit, already. A lot of folks petitioned about extending the OPT status for international students who go to graduate school in the US, and have to return because of visa policies (the H1B cap was met within a few hours last year). So, the government considered what the companies wanted and agreed to do this.
show me some proof that hb-1 visa's have resulted in pay cuts, because i keep hearing people running their mouths about it but when i look at http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm all i see are rising wages.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Seriously, when?
We're always hearing the employers claim that there's less H1-B Visas than jobs they want filled... how about letting supply and demand of the American workforce take over giving pay raises to nearly all of us IT workers.
They're going to do the same programming and science work, whether they are here or in India/Romania/Singapore/etc. We can get them to pay US taxes and buy other goods and services in the US, or we can just ship our money overseas and let other countries take a lead in high-tech. Smart students exist overseas; the question is whether we can get them to come here and benefit us, or let them work elsewhere and allow the US to decline.
That's completely unreasonable. I've worked with many excellent Indian programmers. The ones who've been H1B and working here in the US have shown the same range of skill as US-native employees.
This implies it's a factor of the company's hiring processes, not anything to do with their national or educational origin.
Outsource teams have their own common issues, but they have a lot more to do with the distance and management issues than with ethnicity or culture.
They're changing because the H-1B cap is being reached now. An international student who graduates in the US no longer has a clear path to stick around and work. There's no point spending four years training someone only to kick them out when they want to stay. With 29 months, they can at least make a couple of attempts at the annual H-1B lottery.
As an Indian, I have never, never, found caste being a problem, except when you want to marry a girl - and when a guy wants to bail out of some situation and invokes this card. Your hyperbole about "authority" and "cultural difference" is nothing but rotting xenophobia. That, or you are just pain trolling.
GP was dead on point when it stated that most Indians are taught programming in the companies - they completely lack any interest in over the top performance - they know they are cheap workers, and they know their job is laborious. So much for the motivation.O RLY? So you don't know anything about "over there" and want to make sweeping uninformed statements... I wonder why you are not preferred.I doubt GP had taken India culture as a course, or spent years in India. What you understand from what you see is a product of your mind. Until the Indians have personally told you how they are not taught to innovate(?), it is xenophobia - a complete lack of interest in people who are taking your jobs.
Your link is a single snapshot in time which does not say anything to your claim regarding "rising wages." Further, I fail to see how rising wages would imply that H1-B has little effect on wages.
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.
Granted, Microsoft is far from alone when it comes to relying on the Visa Crutch. But it was Bill Gates whose pleas were singled out by DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff as he rationalized the need for 'emergency' action.
The students would rather have an easier path to green cards, and eventually citizenship, but it's not the most popular idea among most Americans.
We all know that most people's problem with illegal immigration and H1-Bs has nothing to do with the illegals being illegal or the H1-Bs lowering wages: It's plain old racism. Increasing the green card quotas would just bring more people with strange accents into the country, and that's not something that middle america wants.
I for one find it ridiculous, but I see the racism every day.
The GP's allude to how bad Indian programmers are perceived in the US. I was merely stating my observations from working with them in the business over several years. No, I don't know much about Indian culture, never been there, never had much need to learn it, but, from what little I do know or have read about, that was what I was basing my guess on as to the reasons behind my observations.
Just because you observe something, and it happens to be another race, culture or whatever, doesn't make you racist or xenophobic. I hate to think stating what you have experience with others, even if it is negative is the latest thing in the new 'PC' world that you can no longer state or discuss.
Sorry if what I and others have observed working with Indians, but, I cannot believe that all of us are making it up independantly. There must be some truth to it for these things to be stated so prevalently....sorry, but grow some thicker skin. If it doesn't apply to you, then don't worry about it.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
So somewhere on the BLS webpage you see evidence that "real" wages are rising? 'Cause I don't see it in the real world. Did you adjust those figures for inflation?
In the 50's and 60's American dads put in 40 hours a week in a factory with just a high school diploma and families lived pretty well. Moms stayed home with the kids. Now with college degrees, Moms and Dads put in 80-Plus, and can't even achieve the same living standards they had as children. (Or worse, they are another generation removed, and have no recollection of better times.) The median American wage earner has been losing ground for decades. More immigrant labor (legal and illegal) and "free trade" agreements are the threats used by the have-mores to get the have-nots to produce more and expect less.
Question: The 40-hour work week became a standard in the early 20th century. With all of the improvements in productivity that have come about since then, why are we not now on a standard 32-hour workweek? We should have been there 20 years ago. The answer is in the failure of economics professors to teach students to think critically about supply-side economic theories.
I'm not whining (or "whinging"). I'm pointing out that we are being skillfully played against one another and our lives could be better if we get smart enough to recognize it.
Oh, and by the way here's the proof you asked for:
http://www.usw.org/usw/program/content/3060.php
Don't believe these types of posts represent the attitudes of most slashdot readers. I suspect most of us have Indian friends and co-workers we respect professionally. I read posts like "they write inferior code" or "they aren't innovative", think the poster is a jerk, and move on. Unfortunately the few people who agree with the poster feel compelled to reply with "that's true, it's because of their [culture|genetic makeup|political system]". Anyone that's worked in the software industry long enough knows from personal experience it's BS.
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.
Let's see... American's are loud mouths who want nothing more to do than make war with other countries.
As you said...
>Just because you observe something, and it happens to be another race, culture or whatever, doesn't make you racist or xenophobic.
And you said...
> Sorry if what I and others have observed working with [Americans], but, I cannot believe that all of us are making it up independantly. There must be some truth to it for these things to be stated so prevalently....sorry, but grow some thicker skin. If it doesn't apply to you, then don't worry about it.
BTW I live in Switzerland and I have met Americans like this, and thus they must like this, no?
Putting this into a REAL context. I have lived in North America (Canada, and the US) and Europe and did work in India. The reality is that you have idiots everywhere, and you have smart folks everywhere.
The problem with your comments is that they are not PC based, but slander. Many folks confuse slander with PC, but they are two separate things. PC is to use the term person instead of man.
Slander is when you make comments like the following:
"I think many of the complaints against them and skills....are due to culture. It is so different than in the US with the caste system, etc"
You freely admit:
"No, I don't know much about Indian culture, never been there, never had much need to learn it, but, from what little I do know or have read about, that was what I was basing my guess on as to the reasons behind my observations"
In other words you are talking out of your butt, which by legal terms is called SLANDER!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
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"
"Did you see HOW those people lived back then?"
Yes. I saw it first hand.
Did you?
"Because, if you worked 32 hours, I would still work 40, so I could get a raise. If you work 40, I'll work 48, because I want my son to have more. This is America, competition matters, and if you want to have more, work more."
And if you work 48, I'll work 56 etc. And someone will have more as a result of it. But I doubt if it will ultimately be either of us. Where in this endless competition to work more do our lives actually improve? It won't until we choose cooperation over competition.
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.
You, like many other people that bring out the "racism" crap in an effort to neuter any meaningful discussion about immigration, keep losing sight of an important issue: assimilation. And if you want to talk about racism as applied to immigration policy, the United States and its people make a poor example. We allow thousands upon thousands of people from every country on Earth to emigrate here every year, and to try to become citizens if they so wish. Calling us racist demonstrates a remarkable degree of ignorance on this subject. Try emigrating to Japan, for example: unless you can show that you are as Japanese as humanly possible you will never be a citizen. That's a far more "racist" approach to immigration than U.S. policy has ever been, but you know what? It's their country, and it's their right to decide who they want to live there. Allow us the same privilege before you call us racist: contrary to what you may believe, you do not have any intrinsic right to come here. We get to decide that, not you.
... you want to know that the people you are allowing in to your country understand your culture, accept your culture, and are willing to give their allegiance to it. That takes time, often lots of it, and has nothing whatsoever to do with your technical skills and knowledge, or whether you're willing to work for half of a domestic worker's pay. It has to do with who you are, what you believe in. If you don't believe in America, don't believe in the Constitution, don't believe in us ... we don't want or need you. You're a liability.
Put it this way: no matter what country you hail from, granting citizenship to all comers is a mistake that few nations make. That's not to say that illegal immigration isn't just as big a problem for other countries as it is for America, but so far as legal immigration is concerned, the citizens of any nation have a stake in who is granted citizenship. The process of assimilation doesn't happen overnight, and just because someone is a "best and brightest" absolutely does not automatically qualify them as an asset, someone of benefit to our society. Bill Gates and his ilk would like you to believe otherwise, but only because they are insulated from the effects of their manipulations, and by their past actions have shown they don't care one whit about this country and its people. Their opinions in this matter are not to be taken seriously.
Citizenship should be earned, not handed out willy-nilly. Whether you're English, French, German, Venezualan, Russian, Chinese
My fiancee is a naturalized U.S. citizen who spent many years in this country before she was sworn in. She's proud of the fact that she worked hard, proved her worth, and is now a citizen of this great nation. However, she bitterly resents the fact that thousands of other foreign-born individuals (not to mention tens of millions of illegal Mexican immigrants) are being given rights and privileges that they have not earned and do not deserve.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
None of this is going to push down US wages below the bizzare situations like cafe workers surviving from the charity of strangers (the "tip" system) and the construction of an illegal underclass that has to accept very low wages or get exposed and deported.
Citizenship should be earned, not handed out willy-nilly.
That's funny. I was born in the U.S., and they just gave me a citizenship for being born. Boy did I have to work hard at that! You don't even have to grow up in the U.S., just being born here is good enough. If that's not willy-nilly, what is?
When people born here have to work as hard for their citizenship as your fiance did, then the system might be considered fair. As it is, I don't see the unfairness in giving rights and privileges to foreign-born individuals who didn't earn it, but rather, I see it as unfair that your fiance (and many others) had to work hard for what IS given out willy-nilly, on the basis of birth, like some aristocratic title. So, yes, it is unfair that others are getting for free what your fiance had to work for, but perhaps you should look first to those never had to do anything at all.
The U.S. never quite gave out citizenships to all comers, but it was once much freer in allowing immigration. It should be noted that that period of freer immigration was also when we rose from being a third-rate backwoods nation to the most powerful nation on earth.