H-1B Foes Challenge Bush Administration In Court

theodp writes "Computerworld reports that the Bush administration's recent decision to extend the amount of time foreign nationals can work in the U.S. on student visas is being challenged in a federal lawsuit by H-1B visa opponents. The suit, filed in US District Court by the Immigration Reform Law Institute and joined by The Programmers Guild and other groups, charges that the administration — acting through the Department of Homeland Security — exceeded its legal authority with a no-notice-no-comments 'emergency' rule change that extended the Optional Practical Training work period from one year to 29 months. Critics say this is little more than an effort to skirt around the H-1B cap limit. Because extended stays are limited to those whose degrees are in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) fields, educators are speculating that the rule change will drive international students away from non-STEM majors."

Comments

Weak

[negRo_slim]

The fact of the matter we need to increase educational spending so we lessen the need for things like H-1B's. Let alone bickering about a supposed increased cap.

Re:Weak

[jcr]

The fact of the matter we need to increase educational spending

Bullshit.

The USA outspends many countries that get far better results from their schools. The NEA has been beating that "more funding" drum for decades while they fight tooth and nail against anything that might possibly bring any accountability to our public schooling cartel.

-jcr

Re:Weak

[Trailer Trash]

My kids go to a private school for about $4000/year each. Right now, the public schools in this area are spending $8500/kid/year, and claiming that they need more money to bring the schools up to par (our schools are among the worst in the state). I probably don't have to tell you that the private school kids test far above the public schools, even though the school also accepts a number of "at risk" kids each year through a scholarship program.

If money were the answer, our public school system here would be turning out einsteins.

Re:Weak

[xaxa]

We brought accountability to the UK school system a while back. Children were tested (nationally) more often (age 7, 11 and 14, as well as the exams at 16). Schools were rated based on the children's results, and "bad" schools told to improve Or Else.

It hasn't worked (well, the government's agency sets the exams, and makes them slightly easier every year, so they say it's worked. But university professors get angry because they now have to teach science undergraduates maths that used to be taught in school).

Teachers were (of course) worried that the children wouldn't pass the exams, so they concentrated their efforts on teaching how to pass the maths exam, rather than teaching maths. Only maths, English and science are examined (at 7, 11 and 14) so less time was spent on all other subjects to make time for exam preparation.
This results in children enjoying school less -- partly because of the reduced curriculum, but mostly because of the increased pressure.

The ranking of schools isn't useful anyway -- schools in poor areas do worse, schools in rich areas do better, it's extremely difficult to do anything about that. The government's solution is to close two nearby bad schools, build a new "superschool", and then say "there were N bad schools, now there are only N/2!"

Wales decided they didn't like all the testing, so they got rid of the tests (the 7, 11 and I think the 14). The Welsh government person in charge of education says it's brilliant, which didn't go down well with her equivalent in London. Especially as they're both in the Labour party -- the London (i.e. setting policy for England) minister strongly supports the testing.

Overall, keeping politics out of education seems the best idea. Some independent schools are starting to offer the IB instead of A-levels.

Re:Weak

[debatem1]

Any helpful suggestions? And don't say private schools.

Re:Weak

[Kopiok]

One of the problems is that a lot of these tests have nothing to do with whether you pass the course or not. If it has no impact on the grade of the student, they're more likely to goof off on it. There were a lot of smart people that I knew who did not take their standardized tests seriously and turned their bubble sheet into little pictures.

Re:Weak

[SideshowBob]

Do you know how poorly teachers are paid? I do, I'm married to one. They make peanuts compared to what they could make in virtually any other field with the same level of education. So when the NEA talks about a funding problem, they're talking about teacher compensation. How can you attract the best talent when you don't pay competitive salaries?

The only structural problem with schools are the bloated administrations (which are not unionized.) But that doesn't even begin to explain why the schools are failing. The real problem is our culture. Parents treat the schools as (at best) a baby-sitting service. Too many of them simply don't care how well their children do academically. Failure and success begins with the parents.

Private schools generally pay their teachers *less*, so the teachers in them are no more talented. To the extent that private schools do better, it's because they cherry-pick the best students. You will fail if you simply try to privatize the schools on a large scale. That would just be shifting all the current problems into the private sector where it will be compounded by profit motives and shady accounting (seen the prison system lately?)

I get so sick of hearing that libertarian BS from people that don't even know the first thing about the real problem.

Re:Weak

[jcr]

And don't say private schools.

Most private (and parochial) schools get far better results at a lower cost per student. Why do you think that is?

-jcr

Re:Weak

[jcr]

Do you know how poorly teachers are paid?

Yep. That's part of the problem.

So when the NEA talks about a funding problem, they're talking about teacher compensation.

The NEA, like most labor unions, serves the interest of its management ahead of its members, and the public. It's the teachers' union that makes it damn near impossible to fire a teacher in NYC, for instance.

-jcr

Re:Weak

[xaxa]

I don't think seven-year-old children have figured that out yet. (For a start, they don't get a grade at the end of the year [except the test grade], they get a written report from the teacher which is sent to their parents. I wouldn't have wanted a bad report when I was seven, nowadays it seems there are more parents that don't care if their children aren't putting any effort into their school.)

Re:Weak

[jcr]

You will fail if you simply try to privatize the schools on a large scale.

The key is to restore competition to schooling at the elementary and high school level. We have world-class colleges, including the public ones, because colleges have to compete for customers.

-jcr

Re:Weak

[SideshowBob]

You didn't even address the issues, you just want to rant about the union. Fire half the teachers in NYC and it won't fix anything.

Re:Weak

[Waffle Iron]

And don't say private schools. Most private (and parochial) schools get far better results at a lower cost per student. Why do you think that is?

Because they can pick and choose their students.

If you don't have to bother with problematic students, of course you're going to get better results at a lower cost.

Re:Weak

[Anonymous Coward]

I grew up in India. There were nine exams in total every year - six mid terms, and three term exams - quarterly, half-yearly and annual. If you fail the annual exam, you have to repeat that year. You do not advance to the next grade. They failed students as early as in third grade (age 7). Granted, I went to a private school. But many government schools did the same too. All schools have exams and make students repeat the year from grade 6 onwards if they fail the annual exam. I finished high school about 12 years ago, but the system still remains the same. The negative aspects of this system was that this encouraged rote memorization and discouraged sports and other extracurricular activities.

Re:Weak

[SideshowBob]

Barely more than half of college enrollees finish a bachelor's degree after 6 years.* You're just proving my point about cherry picking. And talk about throwing money at the problem, it costs over $17k in tuition per student per year for a 4-year public university.**

* http://www.higheredinfo.org/dbrowser/index.php?level=nation&mode=graph&state=0&submeasure=27
** http://www.usnews.com/articles/business/paying-for-college/2008/04/10/how-much-does-college-cost.html

Re:Weak

[agrippa_cash]

My own public vs. private school experience suggests that bad private school teachers are fired, while bad public school teachers stay around for ever. However private schools are populated by students with 1) relatively affluent/educated parents 2) who give a shit. The bad teachers who teach in public schools require more work from the parents least willing and able to educate their children. This exaggerates the difference in outcome.

Re:Weak

[Duhavid]

It couldn't be because ( on average ) the people wealthy enough to send their kids to private and parochial schools have more time to spend with their kids, and reinforce what the school is trying to do?
( I.E. more leisure time, more likely to have one parent not working )

And related to that, parents that understand how much their educated led to their wealth, providing additional motivation to push/pull the kids in education?

Smaller class sizes in private schools?

More ability to apply technical assistance to leverage the instructors/instruction?

And if we go with all private schools, I cant help but think that the already large gap between the wealthy and the not wealthy will grow larger, I would argue to the detriment of both groups ( if the "have-nots" have less, where is the market that the "haves" will sell to? )

Re:Weak

[marxmarv]

You call bullshit, I call shenanigans.

The USA outspends many countries that get far better results from their schools. Schools have too much responsibility these days. See below.

The NEA has been beating that "more funding" drum for decades Many teachers in public K-12 institutions pay out of pocket for student supplies. The NEA is a teachers' union, is it not? So why shouldn't they advocate to not have to buy things for classes that schools cannot or will not buy?

while they fight tooth and nail against anything that might possibly bring any accountability to our public schooling cartel. Like the right-wing religious nuts that push the responsibility of religious education onto the schools and then sue whenever their kid hears something the parents don't like? Not that the left-wing nuts that push the responsibility of social behavior training onto the schools and then sue whenever their rabid dog-child has to be physically removed from the kid he's biting are better and might possibly be worse.

As I said in another recent post outside this thread, there's little middle ground between warehouses and madrasas given current public school structure, and neither is particularly good at ACTIVATING young minds in productive ways.

Re:Weak

[marxmarv]

I agree. There should be a LOT more private, secular K-12 schools than there are.

Re:Weak

[ShinmaWa]

Children were tested (nationally) more often (age 7, 11 and 14, as well as the exams at 16). Schools were rated based on the children's results, and "bad" schools told to improve Or Else The United States has a similar system called No Child Left Behind. Not too surprisingly, the exact same things that happened with the UK's version is currently happening in the US: testing fraud, teaching to the test, and even the encouragement by schools for less able students to drop out to help bring up the average school test scores. Of course, the overall effect is an actual reduction in the quality of education in the United States.

It's always amazing to me how a demonstrably bad idea gets mimicked over and over again.

Re:Weak

[rossifer]

Most private (and parochial) schools get far better results at a lower cost per student. Why do you think that is?

There's no mystery there.

1. because private schools can discriminate based on their admission, performance, and behavior criteria (they don't have to take everyone)
2. because private schools have lower student:teacher ratios
3. because private schools are almost never NEA (union), which allows them to fire poor performing teachers much more quickly.
4. because the parents who choose to send their children to private schools tend to value education more than your average parent, which correlates with higher expectations and more support from home

Those four reasons lead to a less toxic environment in the classroom, which leads to better motivated teachers (even with the pay cut most private school teachers take), better motivated students, and: far better results.

Re:Weak

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't exactly unheard of when i was seven.

Re:Weak

[epee1221]

Aside from your claim about results, which has already been discussed, you should note that the reason private schools cost less on average is that most are subsidized by churches. Private schools without such support cost slightly more per student than public eduction.
http://www.capenet.org/facts.html
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/education/010125.html

Re:Weak

[thomasw_lrd]

I tend to agree with your points. I have two daughters in elementary, different schools same district. And my older one hasn't learned anything in the last month because of the standardized testing that was going on at the end of the school. I think they are pointless.

Re:Weak

[jcr]

Barely more than half of college enrollees finish a bachelor's degree after 6 years.

So what? Some people go to college and find out that it's not for them. Our colleges are still world-class.

-jcr

Re:Weak

[jcr]

The union doesn't breed bad teachers.

It keeps them on the payroll, costing money that could otherwise be spent on higher salaries for teachers who are good enough to keep around. Can you imagine trying to run any business without the ability to fire an underperforming employee?

-jcr

Re:Weak

[debatem1]

Because everything that works on a small scale works on a large scale, right? And I'll bet all those nice Jesuit schools are going to be really, really happy about taking on the huddled masses.
Get real.

Re:Weak

[Anonymous Coward]

We brought accountability to the UK school system a while back. Children were tested (nationally) more often (age 7, 11 and 14, as well as the exams at 16). Schools were rated based on the children's results, and "bad" schools told to improve Or Else.

It hasn't worked (well, the government's agency sets the exams, and makes them slightly easier every year, so they say it's worked. But university professors get angry because they now have to teach science undergraduates maths that used to be taught in school).

Teachers were (of course) worried that the children wouldn't pass the exams, so they concentrated their efforts on teaching how to pass the maths exam, rather than teaching maths. Only maths, English and science are examined (at 7, 11 and 14) so less time was spent on all other subjects to make time for exam preparation.
This results in children enjoying school less -- partly because of the reduced curriculum, but mostly because of the increased pressure.

The ranking of schools isn't useful anyway -- schools in poor areas do worse, schools in rich areas do better, it's extremely difficult to do anything about that. The government's solution is to close two nearby bad schools, build a new "superschool", and then say "there were N bad schools, now there are only N/2!" ...

The reason why it didn't work there is the same reason it's not working in the US: "Or Else" turns out to mean, "Nothing Much." Both systems established a mechanism for holding failing schools accountable, and even shifting students to "better" schools by one mechanism or another. There are some big problems with this:

1) None of the mechanisms for giving students better schools work. In the UK, as you pointed out, two small crappy schools get replaced with one big crappy school. In the US, we simply have tons of students on waiting lists to get out of their crappy schools because the teachers' unions won't allow suitable alternative schools to be opened.

2) When you really think about it, you can't hold a school accountable, you have to hold individuals accountable. Unfortunately, the teacher's unions will never in a million years allow any sort of system that actually requires teachers to earn (gasp!) their paychecks. Certainly, most teachers probably deserve more than they are paid, but there are way too many teachers out there that should be fired because they do a lousy job of teaching. I would propose the following:

Step 1: Get rid of rules that allow individual students to transfer out of bad schools--if it's too crappy for one student, it's too crappy for all of them.

Step 2: If a school is doing poorly, don't give the school less money (as they currently do), give it more. How are they supposed to fix the problem if you cut out their legs from underneath them? I would give some money to the principal to spend as he sees fit, and then direct the rest towards incentive pay for teachers who perform well. However, this extra money needs to come with some big-time strings. I would phase in these conditions/consequences over time, to give that extra money some chance to do some good:

1 year after increased funding: any individual teachers performing below a certain level are automatically fired. Extra funding is provided to increase pay for remaining teachers (the increased salaries would also help attract better replacements for the fired teachers). Repeat this process EVERY YEAR.

3 years after increased funding: if the school is still not improving as a whole, FIRE THE PRINCIPAL (as well as all six of his over-paid "vice principals"). Bring in a new principal with higher pay than the old.

5 years after increased funding: if the school is still not improving, SHUT IT DOWN at the beginning of the summer. Fire EVERYONE. Bring in yet another new principal from a successful school (and give him a big-time bonus for making the switch). Have him interview to hire the entire fac

Re:Weak

[Z34107]

I've always marvelled at how poorly teachers are paid. Then again, they only work 9 months out of the year, have weekends and holidays off, and in the districts where I live, great benefits and tenured positions.

If your wife really could be making more money in "virtually any other field" - why is she a teacher? Why is anyone a teacher? Either all the warm and fuzzy non-material "benefits" of working with screaming children 8 hours a day really make up for the pay, or that conjecture is incorrect.

The "real" problem is crappy teachers. There are a lot of them, and in my experiences they dwarf the good ones. We could offer more money to try to attract better ones, but as you say, you would have to offer enough to compete with the private sector. How much money does someone with, say, a math degree go for?

But, say we pay teachers adequately. Enough to bribe them away from other fields. The flip side is firing the crappy educators; unions, tenure, and our nation's teacher-worship make this impossible.

In my opinion, you are absolutely right about salaries being too low and parental apathy being causes of crappy schools. But, we need higher turnover - attracting better teachers doesn't matter if you hold on to the deadwood. And, in the districts I went to, there is a lot of deadwood.

Re:Weak

[lena_10326]

If you don't have to bother with problematic students, of course you're going to get better results at a lower cost.

Kids become problematic when they discover that no matter what they do, they cannot be expelled. They exploit this eagerly. The problem doesn't start with bad kids being inherently bad. The problem starts with allowing kids to become bad.

Re:Weak

[xaxa]

(I wish this reply box could be made bigger.)

1) None of the mechanisms for giving students better schools work. In the UK, as you pointed out, two small crappy schools get replaced with one big crappy school. In the US, we simply have tons of students on waiting lists to get out of their crappy schools because the teachers' unions won't allow suitable alternative schools to be opened. In the UK, the government made it so that parents could choose schools (from those nearby). Result: all the parents who care choose the best school in their area, which is then vastly oversubscribed; bad schools look even worse because the children of the motivated parents aren't there pulling up the average any more. There's also been scandals over how the selection happens -- for instance, religion isn't allowed to matter for a state-funded school, but some schools have been accused of favouring Christian (well, UK Christian, i.e. does Easter and Christmas) children.
(Some parents will move house to get into the right area for a certain school. My parents considered moving to the next county so I could go to a better school, but they couldn't afford it, richer people had the same plans.)

2) When you really think about it, you can't hold a school accountable, you have to hold individuals accountable.
[...] I don't know enough to respond to this.

Step 1: Get rid of rules that allow individual students to transfer out of bad schools--if it's too crappy for one student, it's too crappy for all of them. Exactly. You end up with increased segregation between "nice" areas and "poor" areas.

Step 2: If a school is doing poorly, don't give the school less money (as they currently do), give it more. Ah, we have this one in the UK. Schools in poorer areas do get more money.

How are they supposed to fix the problem if you cut out their legs from underneath them? I would give some money to the principal to spend as he sees fit, and then direct the rest towards incentive pay for teachers who perform well. The problem is measuring how well a teacher performs. You can't just take exam results -- some children just can't learn, some refuse to, and some have parents etc that will do everything they can to help a child learn no matter what the teacher is like.

Re:Weak

[xaxa]

The union doesn't breed bad teachers.

It keeps them on the payroll, costing money that could otherwise be spent on higher salaries for teachers who are good enough to keep around. Well, a different teacher. A better teacher can't teach more children at once.

Can you imagine trying to run any business without the ability to fire an underperforming employee? How are teaching unions special here?

Re:Weak

[Waffle Iron]

So just what do you propose to do with kids once you've expelled them from public schools?

Re:Weak

[lena_10326]

So just what do you propose to do with kids once you've expelled them from public schools?

Then they get a job at McDonald's or learn the fine art of picking tomatoes in a field.

Everyone is responsible for the decisions they make and everyone needs to be held accountable for them. No government bailout is going to fix those who refuse to learn that lesson.

Re:Weak

[Anonymous Coward]

Private schools generally pay their teachers *less*, so the teachers in them are no more talented. To the extent that private schools do better, it's because they cherry-pick the best students.
This may be one factor. Please don't take my word for it, but a large factor to successful education is small classroom sizes. Private schools usually have smaller sizes.

Re:Weak

[im_thatoneguy]

I went to private school school too. It was run by the Seventh Day Adventist Church. The expectations were higher. They expelled failing students and sent them back to public school and graded much much harder than a public school. It also cost about what you're paying.

But the only reason they could grade more severely is because they could afford to fail kids out of their system without fear of consequence. The only reason they could charge $4,000 a year is because they were subsidized by the church and private donations. I think I saw a statistic where something like 60-70% of my tuition was from private donation.

Going further: compared to my local public school we had less computers, older computers, less scientific equipment for physics and chemistry, less athletic equipment, a smaller library, no free instruments (I own a $3,000 cello), no Audio Video equipment, extremely limited arts equipment and space, limited wood working and shop space/equipment and unsubsidized hot lunches which raised the cost of food in building from about $40-50 a month for hot lunch to around $100-$125. Also our school provided no transportation so you had to pay for your own public bus service or drive a car to school yourself.

Ask your school's principle how much the ACTUAL cost for a student attending your child's school is and how their resources per child compare. Then add in food and transportation.

Re:Weak

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes and no. There was other factors at work here. First, private schools have entrance exams in order to get into them. Parents sending their children to private school clearly care for the education of their children and probably push them more to get homework and other school work done. Lets not forget the class size is smaller. The teachers at private schools also get paid less than public schools counterparts which would tell me their are in it more for the students and not the money.

I am a product of private school. There were no special needs classes in it, just regular, honors and IB (similar to AP).

Re:Weak

[MBC1977]

I have to disagree with your last argument. Just because a parent does not choose to send their children to private schools does not mean they value education any less. Some parents cannot afford to send their child to private schools (even with vouchers and / or grants). Additionally, not all public schools are bad (either through untrained teachers, or unwilling to learn students).

Re:Weak

[Waffle Iron]

If they're kicked out of grade school they're not even going to be able to get a job at McDonald's. (And we'd have to kick out a good 10% of the population to get the demographics of public schools to match private ones.) What would millions of uneducated people running around without a viable means of earning a living going to do? More likely they'd end up committing crimes against people like you than picking tomatoes.

You don't seem to have had an education good enough to enable you to think through the consequences of your proposal.

BTW, a lot of children that private schools refuse to admit (or don't have the resources to help) are special needs kids who do not deserve to be "held accountable" for their situations. They still drag down public school test statistics vs. private, though. Maybe your answer is to just kick them out, too.

Re:Weak

[Kopiok]

The test is also taken at 11, 14, and 16.

Re:Weak

[SideshowBob]

It was your suggestion that we follow the post-secondary model for primary and secondary education. To do that we would have to accept both higher costs per pupil and a 45% failure rate.

Re:Weak

[Sanat]

3rd grade was the best three years of my life.

Re:Weak

[lena_10326]

Ahh.. so now come the personal insults and attacks. Nice.

Anyway, kids in China walk up to 10 miles through hills and forests to get the privilege to pay to attend school 4 hours a day, and I guarantee you they out perform any American HS student. I watch documentaries on it.

Your millions of children roaming the streets figure was totally bogus and made up. You know it. I know it.

When school is a privilege it is cherished. When it is free it is unappreciated. When there are no consequences to disrupting classrooms, bullying and beating up other kids, or causing general mayhem, schools cannot function. My child should not be robbed of an education just because your child ruins the classroom. You learn to take responsibility for your kid. When he gets expelled, YOU DEAL WITH IT because I won't let my kid suffer from bad decisions your kid made.

By the way, go cry a river.

Re:Weak

[Anonymous Coward]

My kids go to a private school for about $4000/year each.
Which church covers the rest of the cost?

Re:Weak

[hackingbear]

Teachers were (of course) worried that the children wouldn't pass the exams, so they concentrated their efforts on teaching how to pass the maths exam, rather than teaching maths. Schools across China, India, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore have been practicing these exam-driven for decades (or even centuries.) On one hand, this way of education does nothing but to remove the creativity and incentive for 99% of the students. On the other hand, they have produced large number of engineers and PhDs. So I don't know if this is good or bad.

It hasn't worked (well, the government's agency sets the exams, and makes them slightly easier every year, so they say it's worked.) This has not been the problem for the above mentioned countries with the same system. Maybe UK's officials have a lower ethical standard or just try to look good so they can get re-elected? (but the officials in those other countries will have to look good to please their superiors as well.)

The ranking of schools isn't useful anyway -- schools in poor areas do worse, schools in rich areas do better, it's extremely difficult to do anything about that.

So is everywhere else in the world! In US, good schools are now a benchmark of good neighborhood (and vice versa.) House prices in good school district is at premium and holds stead even in this time of sub-prime market bubble. Bad schools is synonymous to bad neighborhood with higher crimes.

Mass education needs to be scalable and measurable mechanically but good education can never be scaled nor measured mechanically. That's just another truth that people don't want to face.

Re:Weak

[Waffle Iron]

Parents of many or most of these kids aren't going to DEAL WITH IT. There would indeed be literally millions of children and/or uneducated adults roaming the streets. (How could you possibly conclude otherwise?). Now what?

Re:Weak

[MightyYar]

I don't think he/she was implying that all public school parents don't care about education. I think he was just stating the obvious - that private schools will tend to be full of kids who's parents DO care about education. On average, this confers an advantage over public schools where parents who don't care about education are also sending their kids.

Re:Weak

[lena_10326]

Parents of many or most of these kids aren't going to DEAL WITH IT.

Bull.

Quit the entitlement mentality. You'll be far better off.

Re:Weak

[Anonymous Coward]

. They make peanuts compared to what they could make in virtually any other field with the same level of education.

I call Bullshit.

They work 9 months and aren't required to work 40 hours in most jurisdictions. Some care and do spend out of classroom time that ends up at 40 or more, but many do not. They are, at their discretion, part time employees.

They are required to get a 2 year degree and a certificate. Not every jurisdiction requires more than that; mine does not.

They get full benefits, and pretty much have to rape a student to get fired. Their contracts demand annual raises based on years of service, not performance.

So, you have someone with an associates degree working part time, getting full benefits and 15 weeks off. For this they get $50,000/year. That is NOT peanuts and it is actually far better than most other part time jobs.

Stop with the NEA 'we're underpaid' line. Your complaints might have been founded 10 or 20 years ago, but it hasn't been the case in several years.

Re:Weak

[Anonymous Coward]

Yassuh, massah, I like not havin' the money to pay for schoolin' sir.

You're an idiot.

Re:Weak

[Eli Gottlieb]

OK, I know people disagree with this guy, but what's with the moderation? "+1, Troll"?

Re:Weak

[MightyYar]

Do you know how poorly teachers are paid? I do, I'm married to one. I think this must depend on region. My brother and his wife both teach in New Jersey, and they are paid very well considering the short working year. Both take jobs during the summer which significantly supplement their income.

How can you attract the best talent when you don't pay competitive salaries? With all due respect to your wife, you don't need "the best talent". You need someone who likes children and is smart enough to teach fairly basic concepts to them. Sending Albert Einstein to go teach a pile of 6th (or even 12th) grade science students is really just a waste of talent.

The real problem is our culture. Parents treat the schools as (at best) a baby-sitting service. Too many of them simply don't care how well their children do academically. Failure and success begins with the parents. You really hit the nail on the head, here. There is little that a school can do to fix bad parenting. That said, some things work better than others. In particularly bad schools they are having more success with looping, where the kids stay with one teacher (or set of teachers) for multiple years. So I don't think we should throw up our hands... there certainly seem to be ways to educate the poorly parented kids better than is done today.

Private schools generally pay their teachers *less*, so the teachers in them are no more talented. That isn't necessarily true. Private schools have an easier time dismissing teachers. Also, salary isn't everything... private schools often have a much better working environment and so attract better teachers.

But you are right, simply privatizing schools won't solve our problems. You'd still have the big pile of kids that need special attention: kids with disabilities, kids with behavior problems, kids with bad parents, etc. There are too many of them to simply bury, and our society would get sick really fast if we stopped trying to educate them.

Anyway, money isn't the real problem - we spend far more than most any other country on education.

Re:Weak

[phantomfive]

Sounds horrible. However, there does need to be some accountability. In California, we instituted an exit exam from High School. You have to pass it to graduate.

At first, I was worried that it would cause problems like those you've mentioned, but the test is so easy that an eighth grader should reasonably be able to pass it (pre-algebra, write a two and a half page essay). Realistically there has to be a base level of quality coming out of the schools. The key is don't make it so hard that teachers have to spend 80% of their time on it so the kids will pass, make it easy such that if any teacher is already doing their job, the students will pass with no problem.

Re:Weak

[MightyYar]

How are teaching unions special here? They aren't really. But when the union keeps a slacker on the assembly line in Michigan, you get a Pontiac with a squeaky door. When the union keeps a bad teacher in a class, you fail to teach wave after wave of human beings that pass through their class. So, it's just a matter of severity.

Re:Weak

[Eli Gottlieb]

It's not a matter of "good teacher" or "bad teacher". Administrations make a lot of difference. About 4-5 years ago, back in high school, I had the most enthusiastic and awesome math teacher ever. Today he's walking around looking downcast all the time; his spirit is utterly broken. Why? The local administration is plain, old-fashioned, Darth Vader evil!

Re:Weak

[Eli Gottlieb]

Of course there's a middle ground between warehouses and madrasas! They're called yeshivot ;-).

Re:Weak

[$0.02]

Why would the work at McDonald's or on tomato fields when they can sell drugs, steal, panhandle? The society kicked the me off. Why would they feel they need to return back?

Re:Weak

[lena_10326]

Why would the work at McDonald's or on tomato fields when they can sell drugs, steal, panhandle? The society kicked the me off. Why would they feel they need to return back?

School is free and disruptive kids are welcomed in our schools, yet there are still drug dealers, thieves, and panhandlers. Why in the world would you assume those would be caused by expelling bad kids when we don't do that? It's an illogical argument that arrives at a conclusion that blames the cause of something (crime) on something else that has not happened (expulsion). I blame the cause on something that has happened: tolerance of bullies and disruptive children.

Re:Weak

[Anonymous Coward]

Private school endowments make up the difference maybe?

Re:Weak

[Ex-MislTech]

Whoever modded this redundant is prolly some shill
working for public education.

jcr is right, most private schools do better.

Re:Weak

[j79zlr]

Bullshit. Teachers are paid very well considering they only work 75% of the year, once tenured have basically no fear of getting fired, they have good benefits and a substantial pension. I know alot of teachers in the Chicago area and once you've got experience plenty are in the six figure salary range. Maybe it is different elsewhere, but here in Illinois teachers are over compensated.

Re:Weak

[locketine]

So the educated Chinese citizens are smarter than the average American. Is that your argument? That's weak. The US has a much more highly educated populace than China, and I severely doubt a Chinese child would beat any American child. Most? Sure. All of them? Not a chance. Every human being is entitled for a good chance at life and that requires a few things: food, shelter and education. If this were the 1200's you might be right but in current day society education is a requirement of life.

Re:Weak

[Ex-MislTech]

The kids that are special needs need to be taught separately.

The normal kids that coexist peacefully need their own school.

The brilliant kids need their own schools because they are
our best hope of fixing most of the gigantic messes we have made.

The hell raising violent drug dealing bastards need a boot camp
type school that can get them to pull their collective
heads out of their asses.

The Three strikes rule would work well here.

3 strikes you go to the hell raisers school, 3 strikes in their
and you are out.

3 strikes on crime on the outside they are sent to labor camps
or can volunteer for EXILE and leave this country FOREVER.

I am tired of paying for ppl to sit in jail and watch cable TV
and eat food and not work and I get to pay for it all.

If they go to jail at a minimum they work a farm to feed all
the prisoners.

If they don't want that they can leave the US for all time.

Society is about working together, not anarchy.

If they want to be a jack ass that is fine, but not here.

Re:Weak

[Ex-MislTech]

Some home school kids have done well even in poor homes.

Mostly it is an issue of the IQ of the child and the parents.

If the parents not too sharp, and the kids not too sharp,
odds are they are not going to be the next Einstein.

If the parents are fairly sharp, and setup a good self study
environment for their kid their kid can use free online
learning tools to do VERY well.

Neighborhood organized home schools could stomp the dogshit
out of public education system if it was well organized by
the brightest ppl in the community.

Re:Weak

[Ex-MislTech]

This is true.

That is why I believe in 4 schools.

#1 for the special needs kids
#2 for the average but well behaved kids
#3 for the brilliant kids
#4 for the jack asses

As for teacher pay we pay more than any other civilized nation
but we are not even in the top 10 academically world wide.

Like congress, throwing money at a problem is not ALWAYS
the solution.

Re:Weak

[Duhavid]

"Some home school kids have done well even in poor homes."

And I suspect that some kids in private school with lots of parental attention have done poorly. Comparing the average to outliers in this way is probably not useful here.

I suspect that it is not purely IQ, but more motivation, both with the child and with the parents.

"Neighborhood organized home schools could stomp the dogshit
out of public education system if it was well organized by
the brightest ppl in the community"

That may well be ( or might not be, it might fall prey to the same bureaucratic silliness public schools do, with time ). But that is apples to oranges comparisons. I am for it, if it works, but where are you going to find the people to make this scale?

Re:Weak

[ya really]

We brought accountability to the UK school system a while back. Children were tested (nationally) more often (age 7, 11 and 14, as well as the exams at 16). Schools were rated based on the children's results, and "bad" schools told to improve Or Else.

They do this here in the states as well with what they call proficiency testing. In ohio, if you don't pass certain ones, such as the 9th grade before your 12th grade year, you don't graduate high school. I remember there were weeks in school where all the teachers did was drum on about these worthless tests and telling us we needed to review for questions such as pointing where Washington DC was located. Thankfully, I had my Ti-86 to program on and kill time. On top of that, if you passed the test, there were weeks where you wouldn't have to show up to school until halfway through the day because they considered it "unfair" to those who didn't pass it to take it during non-school hours or to make up the work they missed.

Yeah, my school district sucked. Oh yeah, they also had computers that were running windows 2.1 and made in 1987 in 1997! This was also one of the top 10 largest districts in the state. You can pretty much gather I didn't learn anything about computers directly from pre-college public education

It hasn't worked (well, the government's agency sets the exams, and makes them slightly easier every year, so they say it's worked. But university professors get angry because they now have to teach science undergraduates maths that used to be taught in school).

Same here, many universities end up placing kids in pre 100 series classes just to bring them up to pace

Re:Weak

[ya really]

Do you know how poorly teachers are paid? I do, I'm married to one. They make peanuts compared to what they could make in virtually any other field with the same level of education.

Teachers also get 3+ straight months out of the year off, plus other vacations that the students take. They also get sick days, plus "personal days." I don't believe there are many other jobs out there where you can just take paid for days for personal reasons.

Teachers also get awesome health benefits, much better than most employers offer and a great pension system. I'm not saying they don't deserve it, but I do indeed get tired of hearing how much they are entitled.

Take a look at these stats on teacher's salaries for my area. Starting out at 34k for a liberal arts degree (more than likely) is pretty good. How many other jobs out there for someone with a history or an English major are going to pay that well plus the great benefits? One cannot say that a teacher should make as much if not more than an engineer or programmer when the later group has a far more difficult road to take as an undergraduate.

Although I know it borders on a troll to say, but if you don't like what the job pays, don't bother going into it. There's plenty of people out there who only take a job knowing they like the pay but not so much the job, while there are other who take a job knowing it may not pay quite so well but they enjoy it. It's just sort of a tradeoff that one must decide.

Re:Weak

[Trailer Trash]

The school receives no outside funding - it is fully self-sufficient. I'm not sure why food should be added in since both public and private schools charge more for it. As for transportation, that's an added expense, but surely not $4500/year/kid.

We have some pretty good computers that have been donated by various companies. Plus they run Linux, so that helps.

You are correct that some of the other things are missing, but again, it can't make up the 2:1 difference.

Re:Weak

[Trailer Trash]

The school is self-sufficient - no outside subsidation.

Re:Weak

[PitaBred]

Me too. But they work 9 months a year, yet pull a salary commensurate with someone who gets 2 weeks of vacation a year. There are always opportunities like tutoring and such available to teachers, too.

Many teachers bitch about low pay, but never bat an eye about the great benefits they enjoy with being unionized and spending only 3/4ths of the time working that the rest of us do.

Re:Weak

[superpulpsicle]

It is true that in the US a good neighborhood is coupled with a good school system. This is beneficial for families with kids. The problem is for people with NO KIDS, they often have to buy into that good neighborhood even when they don't use the school system. The idea is to resale the house in the future with that "good school neighborhood" as a value leverage.

Re:Weak

[m167a1]

Nice try,

Those who can do, those who can't teach.. If you want a raise do your job and quick blaiming everyone else. At least NCLB was a real try at reforming the system, all you losers do is whine for more money.

Yes I have a kid and she is in a private school.

Re:Weak

[clampolo]

The real problem is that people think that all people are equal. It just isn't true. Some people are just dumb and/or lazy. They can't learn anything. Keeping them in school is the worst possible thing you can do. They are enraged at how they repeatedly fail, so they just disrupt the school. The best option is just to chuck them out as soon as possible

And there is nothing wrong with standardized tests. "teaching to the test" is a pretty silly cliche. These standardized tests have questions about BASIC math and BASIC reading. If a school isn't teaching this, then what in the hell ARE they teaching? If a school can't get their students to pass these simple tests then 1) the students are idiots 2) the teachers are idiots 3) both of the above

Re:Weak

[iocat]

Sorry, I've been away. Can someone bring me up to speed on Slashdot's immigration orthodoxy?

We're against H1Bs because they bring dirty foreigners into our country. But we're for making illegal immigrants legal, as long as they have shitty. non-IT jobs "that Americans won't do." (Which begs the question, who will do those jobs once those people are Americans?) Is that it? If you're smart, stay out, but if you're uneducated, have at it? It seems kind of elitist, but who am I to judge...

Re:Weak

[Boronx]

The Three strikes rule would work well here.

Three strikes rules are great, because the system is infallible and finding the guilty party, and if there's one thing we need it's a lot of people in prison for life for minor offenses.

3 strikes on crime on the outside they are sent to labor camps

Another good idea: give the government an economic incentive to throw your ass in jail.

or can volunteer for EXILE and leave this country FOREVER.

What are you going to do, dump them in international waters?

I am tired of paying for ppl to sit in jail and watch cable TV
and eat food and not work and I get to pay for it all.

The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Is that because we're just really bad people?

Re:Weak

[jandersen]

No, the real problem is that people think that equality is about everybody being exactly the same - which I personally think is a distortion manufactured for the purpose of disparaging all serious discussion about inequality.

Equality means 'all men (and in these modern times women too) are born equal under the law' - ie that the same law applies t oeverybody, no matter whether you are rich or poor, clever or stupid. Nobody in their right mind has ever imagined that all people are exactly equal when it comes to talent, intelligence etc.

The problem with standardised tests isn't the idea of testing students' skills, but the sad fact that once you have the tests, that is all you strive for. If there were no tests, the schools would ideally strive to simply provide the best they can, whereas when you have the tests, you strive to score as much as possible. It's like intelligence testing - if you are tested unprepared, the test may show something about how intelligent you are, but if you are allowed to study the test and prepare for it, you can suddenly demonstrate an huge intelligence, except of course that the result is now worthless.

I am all for testing and making the quality of schools comparable, so the parents have a better chance of choosing the right school for their children, but the standardised tests are simply bogus - a bad attempt at solving some problems, or even a tool for deceiving the parents and the public.

Re:Weak

[blahplusplus]

"The real problem is that people think that all people are equal."

It goes deeper then that though it's north american insitutional and business culture that is the problem. See here:

See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG3HPX0D2mU

Listen to the comments of "calficication" of kids in the school system and adults in the workplace. It makes a lot of good points about self management and responsibility.

The idea that the average person thinks everyone is equal is a farce, equal BEFORE THE LAW maybe but no one in their right mind thinks they're equal in ability, looks, etc.

"Some people are just dumb and/or lazy. They can't learn anything. Keeping them in school is the worst possible thing you can do"

I agree that some people are dumb, but I don't agree that some people are just "lazy", they are disengaged because most of the time we don't allow their curiousity to blossom by killing it early through 'school'.

The other problem is that we don't have a place for certain kinds of people in the job market that will pay decent wages. That is the REAL problem, technological displacement.

Modern schools are often harmful and disengaging enviornments, for many it's positively toxic to someones development. No amount of accountability will deal with forced schedules and irrelevant curriculum, the lack of alignment of student curiousity and interest with what they want to learn vs the boring pablum clueless teachers, businesses and government elites, pushing their pablum as 'education'. Many slashdotters can no doubt attest to the low quality of the curriculum and their teachers and school simply not being relevant to what they are interested in, so they 'carve their own path'.

I think something is to be said by not killing childrens motivation and curiousity, which we do very young.

Re:Weak

[xaxa]

That's not too bad a proposal, except where do the exiled people go and live? No other country would take them (even UK/Sweden!).

Re:Weak

[xaxa]

Both my parents are teachers, and they work more than 9 months of weekdays a year ;-).

Many weekends (and evenings) are spent marking work. Often, the shorter holidays are spent marking work too -- my dad generally does official marking (projects for exams) in these, since they take longer to grade than small pieces of work; my mum spends most of it doing pointless paperwork that the government demands. My dad spent a week of the previous holiday abroad on a school trip, that's also work (you can't relax when you're responsible for a group of teenagers away from home).

The summer break is long, I only remember my parents spending a few weeks working in those.

Granted, these are good teachers. I'm not sure how much free time bad teachers have.

Re:Weak

[dangitman]

When school is a privilege it is cherished. When it is free it is unappreciated.

Well, firstly, going to school is never free. But I certainly appreciate that it is cheap and widely accepted. Otherwise we'd be even more fucked than we are now, a real world of morons, not just a world with about 30-50% morons like we have today. It wouldn't be pretty.

Re:Weak

[dangitman]

The kids that are special needs need to be taught separately. The normal kids that coexist peacefully need their own school. The brilliant kids need their own schools

So total segregation is the answer, huh? I'd love to see the fucked up world that would produce. Kids need to socialize with different kinds of people, not get isolated in places where everybody is the same. This would just lead to societal civil war or class warfare.

Re:Weak

[xaxa]

Wow! Is that all the money they get, or are there private donations, a church etc?

My private school charges £9000 a year now (a second child at the school pays 5% less). Other schools I could reasonably have attended (without having to move house) cost £10000 (similar to my school), £12000 (Catholic school), £8500 (girl's school, but hey). These are all current prices from the websites, all accept some pupils for free/reduced costs.

State schools get about £4000/year per pupil. I'm now not so sure what my private school spent it on -- some facilities were better, but not all of them. The teachers are paid more than at state schools though, that's probably where most of the money goes.

Re:Weak

[stewbee]

I can think of one good example of teaching on how to take the test.

Suppose you were told on the test to solve two linear equations simultaneously. If you were taught the normal way, you might solve for x in one equation, substitute this for x in the second equation and solve for y. Since you know y, you can now solve for x. Simple! This is the standard algorithm on how to solve a two equation linear system.

However, on a standardized test it is multiple choice so x and y are given already as the answer. All the student would have to do is plug in the values of x and y in both equations and see if they equal what they say they equal.

To summarize, the first method will teach good algebra practices, thereby teaching you how to solve any set of equations. The second gives you the answer already and is simple 'plug and chug'; if given a real application of simultaneous equations where the answers are not provided, this person would not know how to do it.

This is just one example that I can think of. I am sure there are others.

Re:Weak

[sjames]

Teachers are often blamed for the abysmal performance of schools, but honestly, we need to look higher in the system.

The reason we see teachers that seem to just go through the motions is because that's exactly what's encouraged and rewarded from above. Teachers who don't want to get caught up in the politics (truly a tempest in a teapot) or end up scapegoated when some parent complains about any old absurd thing will just go through the motions, hit all the points on the official curriculum (which is designed around the standardized tests) and call it a day.

Because of that, the unions push for strong protection of all teachers.

They oppose incentive programs because they see them as the road to hell. Who gets the incentive? The teachers who play ball and so get a good review from the political monster above? The teacher who dutifully crams in exactly what the students need to do well on the standardized test without regard for their ability to apply the material (or even remember most of it a week after the test)? Any chance the science teacher who refuses to mis-inform her students that ID is a viable scientific theory will get the incentive? (dream on!) Will the English teacher that praises the insightful, beautifully crafted, but borderline obscene essay over the one which is technically perfect but empty end up on the 'good teachers' list any time in the foreseeable future? (good luck with that)

There are far too many school systems where being a "good employee" and being a good teacher are mutually exclusive goals. If merit pay is allowed into such a system, it'll quickly go from too many teachers just going through the motions to all teachers just going through the motions.

As for incentives that don't cut anyone else's pay, those work about as well as lottery money earmarked for education only. That is, it starts out that way, but as the years go on, smaller raises start to be justified based on 'tight budgets' and average pay being 'adequate' due to the incentives. Before you know it, the incentives have all but replaced any other concept of raises. Anyone not on the 'good employee' list does effectively end up with a pay cut because of the incentive program. It just takes a few years for that to happen.

Re:Weak

[phlinn]

"They make peanuts compared to what they could make in virtually any other field with the same level of education." That depends. A bachelor's in engineering is NOT the same level of education as a bachelor's in education. There is a much larger supply of people able to teach than there are able to act as any sort of engineer, even factoring in union efforts to reduce the supply of teachers. You do not need a degree to teach kindergarten succesfully, but the union says you do. An english education degree is not as difficult as a math-education degree, but the unions treat them the same. Math-education is much simpler than a full math degree. I would contend that a fair number of teachers are either not capable of getting one of the more valuable degrees or don't think it's worth the effort.

When calculating pay, have you already factored in the summers they aren't working? When you look at hourly wages per actual hour worked, in at least my local area, teachers are well paid compared to the average employee, but not as much as one of the more difficult, specialized degrees. We still have a surplus of individuals getting education degrees at my local college.

Re:Weak

[rossifer]

As the other responder stated, I did not say that because a kid goes to public school that their parents don't care.

If a kid goes to private school, it's a near certainty that their parents do care, a lot.
If a kid goes to public school, their parents may or may not care. Mine cared enormously.

Here's the kicker: it only takes one or two attention-seeking kids to completely occupy a teacher's time, to the detriment of everyone else in the classroom.

Additionally, not all public schools are bad (either through untrained teachers, or unwilling to learn students).

This conversation, and my posting specifically, are about why, as a category, public schools would perform worse than private schools, as a category. The public high school that I went to had excellent academics and frequently beat Magnet schools and private schools in academic competitions. But that one anecdote doesn't alter the fact that in Ohio, public schools perform worse than private schools.

Re:Weak

[raddan]

Standardized tests are a terrible idea. You contradict yourself when you mention differing abilities of students and then commend standardized testing. Teachers must teach to the development level of the class-- when standardized tests become the sole measure of the performance of a school, teachers really do "teach to the test". It's not a cliche. Teachers are under enormous pressure, and when that pressure is overwhelmingly in the form of "your students must succeed on this test", that's how they define their curricula.

It's been clear for at least 80 years now (read Piaget, Dewey, Vygotsky, Leontiev) that learning must happen within a zone of proximal development, that is, the area which the student can be reasonably expected to move to the next area of cognitive development with some assistance of an adult. Standardized testing forces teachers to ignore this customization of the curricula so that the material may be covered, regardless of whether the student has actually achieved mastery of the subject or not. As a result, classrooms where students are lagging behind the ZPD for a curriculum for a standardized test may do worse on the test than had they otherwise spent the time on developing the preliminary ideas. Classrooms that are "behind" tend to be in areas where school funding is poor, where students are not motivated due to personal, family, and financial problems, where schools are in poor repair and serve as distractions, and where teachers are simply not good at their jobs. You typically find these problems in poorer neighborhoods. Standardized testing, in essence, makes bad schools worse, and does nothing to help the good schools.

There are plenty of criticisms of standardized tests. You should read about them before you dismiss the critics outright.

Re:Weak

[Kartoffel]

A family that's engaged in a child's development to the point that they voluntarily choose private school, is probably also a family that has raised a smart, well-balanced kid.

Had a few friends in (public) high school who transferred in starting in 9th grade, having previously attended a K-8 parochial school. They were way ahead of the average public school kid, though nuns are not inherently better teachers. It had to do with smaller class sizes and more motivation to learn.

Am strongly considering Montessori type grade school for my future children.

Re:Weak

[labmonkey09]

I agree but I think you weren't complete enough in your response. In many cases the US turns out more engineers and scientists per capita than the numbers suggest (India, for instance, includes a huge number of jobs we do not class as engineers in the engineering numbers). Secondly, most foreign schools value 'book learning' vs experience, and valuing test scores vs true knowledge is misleading in regards to capability to deliver (the Chinese actually admit to this and consider it a strategic liability). US Engineers despite their supposed problems are highly competative world-wide and this (the US) is where people come to get their degrees. Case in point: Over the last ~10 years I have bounced maybe as many as two dozen IIT (India Institute of Technology, their MIT) graduates from interviews for not being able to do much more than regurgitate specs. I never met an MIT grad I didn't like.

Re:Weak

[jcr]

Yassuh, massah, I like not havin' the money to pay for schoolin' sir.

How do you like being compelled to pay for schooling that's ineffective? Don't kid yourself: tax money comes from you.

You're an idiot.

Right back at you, sunshine.

-jcr

Re:Weak

[sjames]

Not all problematic kids are behavioural problems. Some are excluded from private schools because they fail to meet academic standards. That MIGHT be an attitude problem, or it might be a learning disability. It might be parents who don't give a damn. It might be parents who DO give a damn, but also have 2 jobs each because they also give a damn about providing food, clothing, and shelter.

Perhaps they're bright and willing but "differently abled". They look good on the stats but cost more to accommodate.

Whatever the causes, there are plenty of kids who would never be expelled for cause who will never be in a private school. The only admissions standards public schools are permitted is in the right age range and residing in the district.

Public school expulsion is an extraordinary measure that is expected to be kept to a minimum. Even if it might be justified, it may be preferable to instead send the student to a "special" school for discipline problems. Otherwise the costs are simply being transferred from the school budget to the juvenile corrections system. Even that might not get them off of the school system's budget, juvenile detainees are expected to be given an education as well.

Private schools are held to less onerous standards. They may well (and often do) choose (and often do) to expel a student for considerably less serious infractions. After all, students don't have a RIGHT to be educated there.

The result is that the deck gets stacked. It's easy to have good stats when you can just clip the bottom percentiles off and make them someone else's problem or even just skim off the top percentiles. It's not even necessarily unjustifiable, but it needs to be taken into account.

Re:Weak

[Billly Gates]

They have them in California.

Unfortunately the school district is a money making business and do not want to fork the bill to pay for private school for these punks.

So what they do is force their school psychologists to say they are fine in order to cut costs. They fire psychologist all the time and even try to mainstream retarded children with I.Q.s under 65 into mainstream classes in order to save pennies by not having a special ed teacher.

Now if they only tested non abusive and special needs children like most other countries the school districts will change. American schools are not that bad. Its just the bad apples and special needs gets lower the testing average by a very large margin which with no child left behind cuts funding for teh school.

Re:Weak

[Billly Gates]

I am for that.

Employers will treat H.S. diplomas more seriously as they now can now they will show up for work and can read, write, listen to directions, and do basic math.

Today they are nothing compared to the 1950's when discipline was enforced.

These punks will be out of work and more than likely will grow up maturity wise and get their G.E.D. at a community college when they are ready.

They have not learned their lesson yet.

Life has consequences and what can of lesson are we teaching them when we tell them to disrupt and not show up or show up late is acceptable in society? These kids will see alot of pink slips quickly after H.S. and school supposed to teach these things. If everyone gets a H.S. diploma then we have a situation like now where even custodians need a 1 -2 year certificate at a college to push a broom.

I kid you not on that as I just saw a custodian job require this on monsterboard.com this weekend. In other countries they kick these kids right out on the street and fine their parents. Its a great idea.

Re:Weak

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the real problem is people who think that equality of opportunity is the same as equality of results - which I personally think is a distortion manufactured for the purpose of disparaging all serious discussion about inequality.

Everyone gets a shot. Some people waste it or aren't capable of making use of it. Tough titties. Not everyone gets to be an astronaut. The world needs more people driving trucks than it does orbiting the Earth.

Ever since "learning disabilities" started getting diagnosed, everyone's stupid little brat is a "genius" with learning disabilities. Hate to burst your bubble, folks. Some people are still just stupid or lazy. Sure there are people who genuinely have a problem. That's fine, those people can be helped with tailored programs and allowances that enable them to compete fairly. But let's not pretend that everyone is a genius just waiting to be allowed to blossom.

Re:Weak

[Billly Gates]

Actually the smartest CHinese outgrow America's entire population!

This is a problem as many employers want these smarter cheaper workers overseas.

Re:Weak

[randyest]

Wrong. The US outspends all other countries on education.

Re:Weak

[fuzzlost]

John Taylor Gatto wrote an excellent essay on the topic, entitled "The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher" ( http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html )American schools no longer teach material. The actual content of the lesson means nothing, students (especially high school students) aren't given enough time to absorb what is actually being taught. Then there is standardized testing. The problem with standardized testing is that the tests are written to the lowest skill level. In Illinois, in high school, there was nothing in English, Grammar, or Reading Comprehension that wasn't taught in grade school (and this was a sophomore level test). The maths are trivially easy for anyone in the advanced classes (AP or college-level). The only thing that standardized tests reflect is the ability to take standardized tests.

Re:Weak

[coolmoose25]

Classic simplistic thinking. How about an opinion from a Board of Education member for 7 years? Well, that's me. I've had the private/public school debate over and over again for years... Let's take a look at the per pupil expenses you quote. Is your private school a parochial school perhaps? If so, your per pupil expense is higher than 4k... the churches subsidize your school. But I'll grant its still lower. Why? Parochial school teachers need not be certified... I say again - THEY DON'T HAVE TO BE TEACHERS!!! In general, they are college grads, and some are certified and waiting for that higher paying public school job to open up. Others are on a religious mission - part of their pay is their dedication to faith, instead of money. And that is just the parochial side of the equation. Seriously disabled physically, emotionally, or mentally? Not welcome in the parochial schools ("Sorry, we just don't have the resources...") So they go to public school. It ROUTINELY costs $50k or more to educate one of these students. That's figured into the public school AVERAGE per pupil cost. Testing is next - public schools have to comply with NCLB - that means costly testing and test prep. And I haven't even talked about misbehavior issues... what about the public school student who is a nuisance in class. Nope, the public school kid can't just be kicked out. Unless they do something violently dangerous like bring a weapon to school. And when they do, we expel them, and then PAY A TUTOR to teach them 10 hours per week in their homes. Parochial schools? No way they pay for that. I've heard all these arguments before and I'm sure I'll continue to. But at the end of the day if the National Dept. of Education is ultimately dismantled by these voucher people, we'll have 2 kinds of schools - ones where kids learn, and a dumping ground for the rest. Draw the line where you want, but you WILL be leaving kids behind in such a system. Public schools BUILT the middle class in America. Now people want to dismantle them. But those of you who lust for such an outcome, just remember that the "pay it forward" model of public education will be lost forever. And probably the middle class with it.

Re:Weak

[Anonymous Coward]

Great idea! Repeat offenders doing forced labor or forced to leave. I like it!

Re:Weak

[entropiccanuck]

There are exceptions, but as a population, parents of private school children do value education more than public schools. I've worked in a public school for 5 years know, and have teacher friends at a couple private schools in town. The private schools get higher participation in parent/teacher conferences, get more response to phone calls/emails about the students, and are more supportive in school activities.
The public schools in richer areas of town do better than my school, which does better than the poor schools, so there's some other factors here, primarily income, and since income level correlates to education level, the parental level of education is important too.

Re:Weak

[arjay-tea]

They should just publish the school test results, and let parents decide which school to send their kids to. (Imagine that, free choice!)

Also establish a time limit: say 5 years for high school: 5 years and out, either pass (graduate), or fail (just out). No more "forcing" success.

Re:Weak

[entropiccanuck]

1. because private schools can discriminate based on their admission, performance, and behavior criteria (they don't have to take everyone)

This is one of the biggest ... Special Ed teachers and support make up about 1/3rd of my school's staff and deal with ~1/8th of the school population. Some students require a full time assistant, ranging from an ASL interpreter for the deaf kids to someone who will change diapers or push wheelchairs for the severely developmentally disabled kids or TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) kids.
Paying for educating everyone is expensive, and is something to keep in mind when comparing the cost of education figures between countries or types of schools, as many don't deal with the high needs students.
Thanks for your list.

Re:Weak

[entropiccanuck]

Some unions are the problem. For example, the New York teachers union makes it very hard to fire teachers, to the extent that More than 700 school employees, mostly teachers, are now assigned to centers known as "rubber rooms," after having been removed from the classroom"
As for how you rate a teacher, you do it for demonstrated improvement. If your students come in at a grade 3 level and at the end of the year you've moved them up to grade 4, then you've done your job. If they're moved more than 1 years worth in the year, then the teacher should get a bonus. It shouldn't matter from the teacher's performance perspective if they were supposed to be in grade 3 or grade 10 to start, they moved up a year.
Now, measuring and quantifying that is a non-trivial task that I don't know the solution for.

Re:Weak

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the real problem is that people think that equality is about everybody being exactly the same - which I personally think is a distortion manufactured for the purpose of disparaging all serious discussion about inequality.

Yup. Meet the manufacturer.

Re:Weak

[locketine]

Actually the smartest CHinese outgrow America's entire population! ugh, that's not a counter argument. I'll translate what both you and the video are saying. "1/4 of the Chinese population is greater than the entire north American population". The the fact that they are the smartest Chinese has no bearing on that statistic. I must admit I almost fell for it though.

Re:Weak

[rossifer]

My wife was a public elementary school teacher for three years and is now an Education Professor, so that list came from her experiences along with a number of discussions about what we're going to do with our kids when they get old enough.

I'm glad you appreciated the list. Trying to simplify a complex issue down to a few bullet points is fairly difficult.

Re:Weak

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple, let natural selection take care of the fucktards who can't be or refuse to be educated.

Re:Weak

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you have good colleges because the shit students dont bother applying. They also end up in community colleges and other crapholes that have to sink to their level. Not to mention they only end up disrupting class and causing other problems (gangs, drugs, etc)

The problem isnt more libertarian BS, its a culture that demands everyone go to college to get ahead. We should just start funding and promoting trade school for the 10-15% of people who bring everyone down. We already do this with the military.

Re:Weak

[Anonymous Coward]

Canada

Re:Weak

[clampolo]

ou contradict yourself when you mention differing abilities of students and then commend standardized testing.

No I don't. I said that if someone can't keep up, then you get rid of them: why waste good money trying to turn a natural-born ditch-digger into a scientist..it will never happen. I didn't mention it in my original post but I'd also move the top students away from the majority..they are too valuable to be held back by the majority.

So in summary, the left end of the bell curve get thrown out of school since schooling them is pointless. The right side of the curve go to gifted schools. And the middle section go to average schools.

And quit with all the bullcrap that a student can't learn anything unless they are showered with money, the best schools, the latest computers, etc. I went to Caltech and didn't grow up with any silver spoon in my mouth. Every toilet in my school was clogged with stuff that would make any sane person puke to look at. The walls had holes in them, etc. However, I could easily go to the library and get all the education I needed for free. I knew another guy at Caltech that was so poor his family lived out of a car. He was by far the smartest guy I ever met.

Re:Weak

[Trailer Trash]

Okay, for the hundredth time (next time, read the replies before making an ass of yourself here):

Is your private school a parochial school perhaps? If so, your per pupil expense is higher than 4k... the churches subsidize your school.

While that might be the case in some, or most, this school receives no money from the church. Really, it can't, as there are now about twice as many students as there are Sunday attenders at the church. If anything, the school is subsidizing the church by helping pay for the building.

I know this isn't the only case like this. I am familiar with a school where the church has 8 people on Sunday morning but the school has a hundred students - the church would close if it weren't for the school.

Parochial school teachers need not be certified... I say again - THEY DON'T HAVE TO BE TEACHERS!!!

This school requires certification, it's not uncommon.

eriously disabled physically, emotionally, or mentally? Not welcome in the parochial schools ("Sorry, we just don't have the resources...") So they go to public school.

Yeah, and they're stuck in the "special ed" classes, which after federal grants are a money-maker for some schools. I remember a story in Newsweek years ago about the Catholic schools in Chicago, and the interesting thing about it was that they had *more* "at risk" children than the public schools, and still tested higher. Completely turns your little argument on its head.

As for testing - the kids here all have to pass year-end state-mandated tests, same as public schools.

You and I probably agree on the voucher issue, although for different reasons. I would simply like a tax break for the tuition; I realize that vouchers would simply cause the cost of private schools to rise in the same way that subsidies for college education has been a wash.

I don't want to dismantle public schools at all. I went to public schools, and despite the quality of some of the teachers (which is why I laugh out loud when you talk about "certifications" and all that) I turned out okay.

But I'm not going to get involved in your pathetic fantasy world (and NEA dream) where the only thing stopping the public schools from delivering quality education is even more money. Money isn't the issue.

Re:Weak

[Copid]

Teachers also get 3+ straight months out of the year off, plus other vacations that the students take.

There are two ways of looking at this. The first is that they get 3 months of vacation. The second is that they're essentially skilled laborers who are laid off for 1/4 of the year. You can't simply take the annual salary and do some division to get the normalized rate. The fact of the matter is that generally, they can't work the summer at a pay rate commensurate with what they would earn during the normal year, so it's essentially forced unemployment. It might work out OK on an hourly basis, but given the choice between 75% of my salary for 75% of the work and 100% of my salary for 100% of the work, I'd choose the 100% option.

Although I know it borders on a troll to say, but if you don't like what the job pays, don't bother going into it.

That's one way of approaching the problem, and it appears to be the way we approach it. The problem, as you've sort of hit on, is that there are going to be two groups of candidates for that salary range: (1) The people who are good at what they do and are willing to do it for less than they might make elsewhere. (2) The people who are just looking for a job and don't have very good employment prospects elsewhere. Cranking up the salary offering would likely increase the signal to noise ratio. This holds especially true once you get to the high school level and need people to teach classes like math, science, economics, etc. There are simply too many good employment opportunities elsewhere for people skilled in those fields for them to teach for anything other than the love of it.

Your other option would be to figure out some really clever way of distinguishing those two classes before hiring them, but it seems to me that it might be easier to make the target bigger than to get better at hitting a small target.

Re:Weak

[Anonymous Coward]

That would just be shifting all the current problems into the private sector where it will be compounded by profit motives and shady accounting (seen the prison system lately?)

You mean kicking the kids out of school so that the parents have to take care of them instead of seeing it as a babysitting service? Maybe then these absentee parents will see that they need to engage their own child in school.

So when the NEA talks about a funding problem, they're talking about teacher compensation

No, when the NEA talks about a funding problem they are talking about their own funding -- for their administrators and "elected" officials. It just so happens that some of the money goes to the teachers.

Re:Weak

[coolmoose25]

I'm a politician - making an ass of myself is an occupational hazard! But seriously, to your points... In my town, the same thing can be said of parishoners and students... But you've left out the fact that there are a LOT of people who don't go to church, but still support it financially, and you've left out the diocese support etc. At any rate - paying for your building is wonderful for you... But in the public school case, that ends up in the per pupil expense. Transportation for parochial schools is in the public schools per pupil expense, as we are mandated to provide it. Same for nursing, free and reduced lunch, social services, etc. All of that ends up in the public school per pupil expense and not in the parochial school's one. It's great your school requires certified teachers. The ones in my town don't. Some still have nuns as teachers or principals. They don't have teaching degrees. And they aren't paid anything like a market rate for their labor given their vow of poverty. As for the at risk kids, facts are facts. Severely handicapped kids are not served by parochial schools in my town. They don't begin to have the money for that. My district pays tens of thousands, in some cases far above $50k - we only get reimbursed by the state when we break that 50k barrier. There are NO handicapped kids that we make a "profit" on. This notion is fantasy. With regard to testing, parochial schools in my town do not get measured by our state in any way. They do the Iowa standardized tests. The public schools have to administer the state NCLB tests - they are harder and more comprehensive. We also have to report out on much more than just that - we cut everything by race, ethnicity, free and reduced lunch, and special needs. We report out on suspensions and expulsions by all the same items. We get regulated to death. Our parochial schools labor under no such restrictions. I agree that money doesn't fix things, and that throwing money at the problem doesn't work. But I could run one hell of a school system if I didn't have to adhere to all the state and federal mandates. But because I do, the comparison between parochial and public schools is apples and turnips. We'd have to have radical mandate changes on the public side just to bring it to apples and oranges!

Re:Weak

[Trailer Trash]

Well, here are some differences, then. This is in TN, where the state mandates the same testing everywhere. Furthermore, it's connected to a protestant church, so the teachers actually have to be paid market wages or something similar (no vows of poverty) and the church receives no outside financial support beyond what they get on Sunday morning. Same with the other church I mentioned.

The bottom line is that they have figured out how to provide a very high quality education for less than half of what the local school system spends per child. You are correct that there are a few other expenses that the public schools have, but those really aren't that big, and don't include everything that you mentioned.

There are plenty of great private schools around here that aren't attached to churches that charge about the same, so it's not the case that this has anything to do with the church secretly funding the school. As I said, it really is working the other way around since the school uses the church facilities and helps with maintenance. Given that the school has twice as many kids as the church has attendees, you can figure that most of us don't even go to church there, so there's little reason for the church to support a school that other people attend.

Regardless of all that, our public school system here sucks, royally, it's no secret, and everybody wants to fix it. The NEA, of course, thinks more money will fix it. It won't, or it would already be fixed.

Re:Weak

[coolmoose25]

I'm with you on the whole NEA thing... I'm in CT and in my town, it is parochial schools that are the big private institutions. Big is a misnomer though, in general, in CT, we have a pretty good public school educational system. My sister used to live in KY, and back in those days, the issue was that people who could afford private school sent their kids there because the public schools were so bad. It created a two-tier educational system - one that was for the haves and one for the have-nots. Poor folks were guaranteed a bad public education, middle class and upper class kids went to private school and got a good education. Since the middle and upper class didn't use public education, it was no surprise that it wasn't funded properly. This is a recipe for disaster, with endemic poor populations stuck in poverty and the whole cycle built to feed on itself. That's what I'm fighting against. In my own town, the financing authority is controlled by a new majority - 5 people, 4 of whom do not have children, and the other who has kids in private school. The result? The lowest increase in 20 years to our budget. We have at least another year of this. They have no qualms about cutting our budget, because it doesn't affect them. Our town demographics support their political decision - the town is full of older, fixed income folks who don't want to spend a nickel on education. And since we are in an inner ring suburb, the urban poor are streaming into our town, bringing their kids with them, and the middle class that used to live here is either leaving or don't use the public education system. So it's inevitable we face funding issues and we will in the future. For me, with kids in the system, my choice was to stay and fight for public education, or boogie too, moving to one of the outer ring suburbs where public education is supported more freely. I have roots in my town, so I chose to fight. Perhaps its a lost cause. But that's the only one worth fighting for.

Re:Weak

[sumdumass]

If your daughter was to graduate and not be able to read her diploma, would you still think it is a waist of time? That is something of a real example that led to these things being put in place. It may not have been happening at your kid's schools but it was/is happening at some of the schools. One of the NCLB's programs was certifying the teachers ability in the subject they were teaching. You would be startled to find that a certain number of teachers, for whatever reason, had a degree in English education but was assigned a position of teaching math or geography or history or what ever and in turn was no more qualified to teach that subject then you where. Some teachers, in the same light as the illiterate graduate, wasn't even able to answer elementary questions about their subject of proficiency. As a tax payer who is forced to provide a public education for your children, why am I not getting anything better in some cases then you sitting around the house attempting to school your own children at home?

So what the NCLB is supposed to do, is weed out these problems where under qualified teachers are present. Where teachers find their pets and ignore your kid so that student might graduate without being able to comprehending the words in her diploma. Sure, some schools, schools that know they are part of the problem, have found ways to exploit the system so they don't have to do what is asked of them. You have to ask yourself, how do you gage the quality of a state's education system, the answer is by the state requirements for the subjects being taught. How do you see if the community's education system is measuring up to that? But looking to see how the student's measure up to the states requirements for the subjects. I could give every student in the class an A for every grade in the year because I don't want to hurt their feelings or draw attention to my incompetence. The grades don't measure anything, so we test the students themselves to see if they are learning what the state says they should be.

That is the point, to better find the problems that the schools control causing your kids to get a sub par education. Often these problems are some of the teachers themselves which is why teachers and teacher unions aren't happy with it.

Re:Weak

[sumdumass]

The problem with standardised tests isn't the idea of testing students' skills, but the sad fact that once you have the tests, that is all you strive for. If there were no tests, the schools would ideally strive to simply provide the best they can, whereas when you have the tests, you strive to score as much as possible. It's like intelligence testing - if you are tested unprepared, the test may show something about how intelligent you are, but if you are allowed to study the test and prepare for it, you can suddenly demonstrate an huge intelligence, except of course that the result is now worthless.

One of the problems is some misconception that a school will ever go above a state certified limit. Your contract with the schools through paying taxes are to teach to a certain level of competence dictated by state requirement's. You can't expect it to go past that unless your willing to let some student be left behind. The standardized tests check to see if the students are at the state levels (the only level they are obligated to teach to). If they aren't, then a certain amount of improvement is expected until all students are at that level. If your child is gifted or able to go past that, and you want to exploit those abilities, then you need to take steps to push the child beyond the state requirements yourself. Expecting the public schools to do this for you at the expense of other student's educations, is a little greedy and misguided. IT id great that a child can excell in a certain area and all. But if that causes them to lapse in another area like science or math, you still have a dumb kid that might be able to spell Mississippi. You already have a limitation to the ideal you set up. If the school can achieve that goal without ignoring student's great, if they can't, then they shouldn't.

am all for testing and making the quality of schools comparable, so the parents have a better chance of choosing the right school for their children, but the standardized tests are simply bogus - a bad attempt at solving some problems, or even a tool for deceiving the parents and the public.

You can't have a comparable rating system without some sort of standardization on the tests. I could place questions like what does 2+2 equal to see if my fifth graders are performing. Another person might ask the same grade at a different school what is PI or what is a triangle with a 90 degree angle on at least one side. If both schools averaged an A+ for the overall grade of the tests, how do you know which one is performing at an appropriate grade level? If the school with the easy questions performed better then the school with the harder questions, how do you know the lower scoring school is actually the better school? IF the answer is that you set requirements for what questions should be asked to what students depending on their grade level, you have just standardized the tests.

Re:Weak

[Hognoxious]

Testing, measurement, balanced scorecards, key competency acquisition standards - call 'em what you like, people will always game the system. Rate helpdesk guys by calls answered per minute and they'll get rid of the caller as quick as they can. Usually without solving the problem, so when the user has to call back again, the stat's are even better. Bonusarama!

Then there's the fact that measuring doesn't, by itself, necessarily improve something. No matter how many times you measure his height, Danny Devito isn't going to make the NBA.

Re:Weak

[edittard]

If your daughter was to graduate and not be able to read her diploma, would you still think it is a waist of time?

I'd consider it a bust. But then I am quite hip...

Re:Weak

[Ex-MislTech]

Set up a colony in shark infested waters in the south pacific
and surround it with mines.

Much like Devil's island of old.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil's_Island

Re:Weak

[Ex-MislTech]

So total segregation is the answer, huh? I'd love to see the fucked up world that would produce. Kids need to socialize with different kinds of people, not get isolated in places where everybody is the same. This would just lead to societal civil war or class warfare.

Well in case you have just been spending your time watching TV
you might realize the wealthy have taken their kids out of public
schools and put them in private schools.

What I am saying is already taking place in many states with
schools for the gifted, ie. very intelligent.

They already segregate the special needs kids, ie. The Short Bus.

So we are already headed down the road, might as well do it right,
and I see no reason to subject the good kids to the whims of
a few brats that want to sell drugs and do violence on the
good ppl of the world.

If you have an issue with that then I ask what is your personal
bias to continue exposing the well mannered kids to violence
and drug dealers ?

Re:Weak

[Ex-MislTech]

Now if they only tested non abusive and special needs children like most other countries the school districts will change. American schools are not that bad. Its just the bad apples and special needs gets lower the testing average by a very large margin which with no child left behind cuts funding for teh school.

This is my point exactly, give 3 chances to join the well mannered ppl or you are out of the school system and can go get a job or play gang banger.

If you are picked up 3 times for drug dealing or violence off you go
to a work camp, or you can chose exile.

I have old ladies being raped in my neighborhood by these thugs,
we have them hanging out at the high school after they have graduated
scaring the young girls and handing out free samples to get them
hooked so they can ruin their lives.

It needs to end...and until a better solution can be designed
this will work better than the bullshit we have right now.

Re:Weak

[Ex-MislTech]

I am for it, if it works, but where are you going to find the people to make this scale?

The parents are already begging for vouchers to get their kids
out of the public school system.

Take the vouchers and setup a community based online school
with some in person classroom work for things like lab work
for sciences, etc etc.

Some classes do just fine online, like math, and some will
need some person to person interaction and lab work.

It is doable though.

In the linux realm ppl all over the world are already using
moodle for this now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moodle

Re:Weak

[Hognoxious]

No, the real problem is people who think that equality of opportunity is the same as equality of results

Which is easier to measure? That's a failing of a lot of QA systems I've seen.

I should like invent a law or something. If only I could work out where to put the goddam apostrophe.

Re:Weak

[dangitman]

Well in case you have just been spending your time watching TV you might realize the wealthy have taken their kids out of public schools and put them in private schools.

What does that have to do with segregating the most intelligent kids? Wealthy kids are just as likely to fuck up as anybody else. They're just as likely to be stupid as anybody else.

If you have an issue with that then I ask what is your personal bias to continue exposing the well mannered kids to violence and drug dealers ?

Well, I would ask what your bias is towards stupidity. Firstly, just because a kid is "well mannered" does not mean that s/he is intelligent. Secondly, there are many highly intelligent kids who use and sell drugs. Thirdly, people can be in all of these categories at different points in their lives.

If you think children can be neatly segregated into such clear-cut categories, then you are either delusional or ignorant.

H1b scam.

[lazy_nihilist]

H1b scheme as it is and the lottery system is a huge scam. The best way out of it is to auction the available H1b visas and let those who truly need the talent get it.

Re:H1b scam.

[Anonymous Coward]

By "need", did you mean: "afford"? The lottery system makes sure that the biggest companies aren't favored in a way that would only allow them to profit further on the backs of labor that is un-duly committed to staying with them.

Re:H1b scam.

[Opportunist]

The lottery system you refer to isn't the only way to get an H1B. That "game" was invented as a way to increase the diversity of people immigrating. My guess is that the US has similar problems a lot of other "first world" countries have: They are the primary goal of people from certain countries. France has its Maghreb (i.e. northern Africa), Germany has Turkey and the US have Mexico. People from those areas and countries emigrate primarily to a certain country.

What all those "target" countries fear is a strong, united "foreign block" that may abuse the democratic system to muscle for more say and more cultural influence. You can already notice it how candidates start wooing those immigrants by offering them something that is not necessarily in the interest of the rest of the people who are not from those areas.

That's what this immigration lottery is about. When you look carefully, you'll see that certain countries may not participate. Why do you think is it that way?

Re:H1b scam.

[skofz]

You're confusing the green card diversity lottery with the H-1B lottery.

There are 65,000 H-1B's available for the year (20,000 of them reserved for "advanced degree" holders), and there were over 163,000 applications within the first five days of the filing period. This year, all H-1Bs, even the 20,000 in the advanced degree block, are being assigned by lottery.

There is no other way to get one.

Re:H1b scam.

[Anonymous Coward]

I immigrated via H1B route (and unsuccessfully participated in Diversity Visa Lottery.) You are mixing together two different things - Diversity Visa Lottery, that existed for many years and H1B lottery. The latter one was introduced year or two ago when H1B visa quota was exhausted on the very first application day. Prior to that H1B was allocated on first come - first serve basis with a certain cut off date. Obviously, that does not work anymore if all applications are received on the same day.

However, I agree that current situation with H1B is scam - on the part of very few (like 5) big Indian consultancies. When I immigrated H1B used to be visa that assumed certain immigration intent (as per INS (or DHS CIS as they are called now.) People used to work for some year for an employer while avaiting their employment-based green card.
Now these consultancies are using the program to constantly rotate their employees through US washing out business knowledge without any immigration intent. What makes it scam is that they file many more applications than visas thus starving all other smaller firms. Practical training and exemption from quota for graduates of US schools now is the only reasonable way to hire people on H1B.

Re:H1b scam.

[xtracto]

Unless you are a Mexican (or Canadian) and you get one of those NAFTA special visas. I know, I might consider apply for one... if only I liked the USA system a bit :P

Of course, I know you are better without a bean eater Mexican (for all the trolls out there... that is the typical answer I get in slashdot when posting something like that :)

Re:H1b scam.

[anup_at_mac]

There are 65,000 H-1B's available for the year (20,000 of them reserved for "advanced degree" holders)... No, the 20,000 reserved for "advanced degree" holders is over and above the 65,000 H1-Bs, so the total is 85,000. PS: I'm an H1B holder and I know what I'm talking about.

Re:H1b scam.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I don't want the US to turn into Mexico so this is ok by me....

Re:H1b scam.

[Copid]

This year, all H-1Bs, even the 20,000 in the advanced degree block, are being assigned by lottery.

This makes no sense to me. If the whole point is to get the most valuable skilled labor to fill in positions for which we're deficient, why make the decision by lottery? Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to auction them off to employers? As I see it, that would have a few positive things going for it:

1) It essentially guarantees that nobody will be bitching about depressed wages as it would almost guarantee that any difference in market wage rates would be built into the visa price.
2) It would enable us to get the most valuable (in the economic sense) workers. If there's a brilliant worker an employer would gladly spend an extra few hundred thousand dollars to get, would it make sense to send him home in favor of somebody else simply because he didn't get picked in some lottery?
3) It would provide a lot of interesting information about labor rates, what there's demand for, and what the spread is between our capabilities and foreign capabilities. High visa prices indicate a serious deficiency while low visa prices indicate a market with enough labor. It's the sort of data collection we'd normally pay a lot of money for.

The downside to this is that we'd have to be careful to make sure that manipulating the number of available visas doesn't become a revenue generating device.

Anyway, I'm all for stealing the best and the brightest and bringing them over here to work for us. That just makes sense from a policy angle. I don't think that assigning them based partially on random variables seems like a smart way to do it, though.

Land of immigrants

[nicolastheadept]

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Re:Land of immigrants

[causality]

Why do people keep implying that insisting that immigrants come here legally (and in this case, discussing what that will mean) is the same thing as insisting that they are unwelcome? Do you not see the dishonesty of that?

Saying that this is a "land of immigrants", while true, is also irrelevant since no one is trying to prove that it isn't. The issue being settled is the duration of a visa. The argument is how much time is needed to realize the stated purpose of the visa. You first have to have immigrants (more like visitors, in this case) who are welcome here before there is a question of how long they may stay.

Re:Land of immigrants

[Dionysus]

"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Note that there are no mention of non-poor, well-educated people :-)

I left the US, and now work for a company in a country which gives me 5 weeks vacation each year, with pay comparable to what I would have gotten in the Bay Area. And I don't have to worry about the visa crap or whether I will get a green card.

Re:Land of immigrants

[GodKingAmit]

what country?

Re:Land of immigrants

[Anonymous Coward]

This applies to a truly free land, i.e. small government, no (corporate or personal) welfare state - indeed, no compulsory taxation at all.

The USA is nowhere near that today. We're a lot closer to the protectionist, statist Europe, but leaning more to corporate than personal welfare, and with a much stronger military presence. Not judging whether that's right or wrong, just pointing out that the quote's irrelevant to today's America.

Re:Land of immigrants

[AuMatar]

What language, and are they hiring?

Re:Land of immigrants

[Dionysus]

Norway.

BTW, I did love living in the Bay Area. Love the energy of the area. Norway doesn't have a tech area like the Bay Area. Oslo is more finance than tech (but most tech jobs seem to be in the Oslo area).

The reason for the extension of the OPT is that Congress wouldn't increase the H1b quota. The problem then is that the quota is filled the first day it is available (April 1st), which is before anyone studying in the US has graduated. And you can't apply for an H1b (or your job can't if you can get one) before you have graduated.

Re:Land of immigrants

[K. S. Kyosuke]

"what country?"

AFAIK, almost any West European or North European country would fit that description.

Re:Land of immigrants

[Dionysus]

Norwegian, although all business functions (documentation, coding) is in English.

Unfortunately, Norway doesn't have H1b/Green Card program, so unless your country is an EU member (or part of the Schengen deal), you're out of luck

Re:Land of immigrants

[DaveV1.0]

Because they are simple-minded and that doesn't fit with their skewed world view.

Or, it could be that they are just malicious and assume everyone is the same as they are.

Or, they are arrogant and self-righteous, so any opinion that does not agree with theirs is automatically evil.

The possibilities are almost endless

Re:Land of immigrants

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of commie bullshit is that?

Re:Land of immigrants

[DimGeo]

Is it possible to do with English only? I'm thinking of going back to Norway, I liked it as a grad student, I spent 6 months there. My country is in the EU now, so at least that's fixed for me.

Re:Land of immigrants

[91degrees]

I think the view is that it should be easier for immigrants to come to the US legally.

Re:Land of immigrants

[Dionysus]

Yes, in fact we have a British guy working for us (although he's learning English because his fiancee is Norwegian). Most people who finished University levels have a pretty good grasp of English (for no other reason than that we spend the 5 weeks of vacation time traveling to warmer places).

Re:Land of immigrants

[RCL]

You cannot "immigrate illegally". Why do you, the freedom-loving Americans, deny the people the basic right of moving anywhere they want to?

It's unnatural, unfair and counterproductive to criminalize people for just coming to your country. Why not go further and impose Soviet-like registration of citizens, penalizing them for moving from state to state or even from city to city "illegally"? It's the same way of thinking.

Re:Land of immigrants

[Opportunist]

May I point out that it's a BIG difference whether you immigrate in the US in, say, 1800 and today? Back then, it was a country of hardship. Going to the US meant you had to fight for your survival.

Today, it's a country of surplus. It's the promised lands for people who come from countries where they have to struggle to survive. And the US are not the only country like this. Take Europe after WW2, it was a pile of rubbles. Immigrating there meant you had to work for your living and behold, almost nobody tried unless he had a very good reason (like, having relatives there or being deported from other areas where he was considered "not wanted" anymore). Nobody in his sane mind picked, say, Germany, France or Austria as an immigration country just to get out of his. Today, you have a very different situation.

Now, I'm not against immigration. I am actually for free choice of your workplace and your place to live. But, and here's the catch, I am not really fond of the idea to pay for the wellfare of someone whose only achivement was to come here. And you have that sentiment amongst a lot of people who go to those countries for this only reason: I'm here, so gimme. That's not how it works.

Re:Land of immigrants

[Anonymous Coward]

Norway is not in the EU.

Re:Land of immigrants

[Opportunist]

That's the reason I won't work in the US. I always get a giggle fit when the guy at INS asks me whether I plan to work there (having a travel visa when you're on the visa waiver list sure raises some brows, I tell you...).

Let's see, I get 5 weeks of paid vacation, free health care, free retirement insurance, free accident and handicap insurance, free and limitless unemployment insurance, secured workplace even when I'm sick for 2 months (they can't lay me off just because I'm sick), cheap housing and more money than in the US (especially with the current USD:EUR rate). Care to tell me again why I should want to work in the US?

Re:Land of immigrants

[techno-vampire]

The argument is how much time is needed to realize the stated purpose of the visa. You first have to have immigrants (more like visitors, in this case) who are welcome here before there is a question of how long they may stay.

Immigrants are people who go to a new country to live permanently. People who are here on a visa are expecting (or, at least expected) to be here for a limited time, then go back to their home country. Not quite the same thing, although some of the people here on visas would love to change their status from visitor to immigrant.

Re:Land of immigrants

[xaxa]

It's in the EEA though, so it's still an advantage to be an EU citizen.

Re:Land of immigrants

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not go further and impose Soviet-like registration of citizens

When is the last time you read the news? Check out the Real-Id Act, etc.

Re:Land of immigrants

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it possible to do with English only? On the job? Maybe, depending on where you'll want to work, although your choices will be more limited that way.

For everything else? Not a chance.

Re:Land of immigrants

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, if you are not American.
Americans don't know how to code or to write, the only thing they had was the might dollar, and this is not so might anymore.
So, YANKEES GO HOME! The whole world hate you! Go cry at your bankrupt and crime-ridden streets, and fight with the Chicanos for a job flipping burgers on some shack-like McDonald's where we can go to spend OUR POWERFUL EUROS!!!!

Re:Land of immigrants

[Duhavid]

"Care to tell me again why I should want to work in the US?"

Come on, tell the truth. You miss the boot on the face. The hobnails. The twisting, blood-squirting fun of it all!

Re:Land of immigrants

[Duhavid]

"Back then, it was a country of hardship. Going to the US meant you had to fight for your survival."

It may have been hardship compared to today, but it was opportunity ( read: less hardship ) for those emigrating compared to where they were coming from.

Re:Land of immigrants

[Anonymous Coward]

"land of immigrants"

Yes, but not "land of H1-B visas"! H1-B Visa's allow impoverished foreign workers come to the US as non-citizens and undermine the "land of immigrants" workforce.

Re:Land of immigrants

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, we like the fact you effete snobs don't like us. We always have. There's a reason we fought a war to be free of you. Now every thirty years or so you come knocking on our door needing help because you're a bunch of unmanly pussies. Only the liberal left, who are a bunch of Euro-weenie morons too, give two shits what you think.

Now, when the Arab invasion totally fucks up your country, get out of our way and we'll fix it for you like we always do. How many cars were burned in France by "youths"? How about those rapidly-more-common honor killings?

It's just too damn bad we supplied the paratroopers with rubbers in WW2. Your women might have born some decent offspring. As it stands you're full of a bunch of people descendant from pussies too afraid to get on a boat and come enjoy freedom.

Re:Land of immigrants

[p0tat03]

I think the complaint is that skilled students who would like to immigrate her legally (i.e. change their student visa to a valid work visa) do not have enough support to do so. The complaint is that we're sending scores of highly talented, highly trained (we trained 'em!) individuals home, when they could be doing more for the American bottom line if they stayed.

I agree with the extension of the visa. The country needs not just any immigrants, but the type that is highly educated and highly trained - allowing students an extended period of working time will only expand the high-education talent pool of the USA. The first step here I think is realizing that for *many* students, the "stated purpose" of their student visa is in fact not just purely studying, but also the opportunity to demonstrate their worthiness for immigration.

Maybe we need to officially recognize these as dual-intent visas.

Re:Land of immigrants

[darth dickinson]

So, if "[y]ou cannot 'immigrate illegally'" then what do you call people who do not follow the proper immigration laws and somehow end up in America? Also, for reference, most every modern industrialized country has immigration laws. Try to sneak into Australia, or overstay their analog to our Visa, and see what happens.

Re:Land of immigrants

[debatem1]

I insist that our immigration laws are contrary to the basic concepts of human equality, dignity, and merit because they are the only laws we tolerate that treat people differently based not on who they are, but rather where they come from.
All day long, I hear businesspeople rail against people who work just as hard as they do, who know just as much as they do, and say that the system under which they prosper need not extend to a man akin to them in all respects but the place of their birth.
I hear preachers, forgetful of the cardinal rule of their faith- that there, but for the grace of God, go I- announcing with hateful intent that the obligations of mercy, of kindness, of generosity, do not transcend the obligations of law and their mandate of discrimination.
I will not pretend to understand these sentiments. I do not see what there is to fear from letting a man's merit speak louder than his origins, or why a nation as great as ours should suffer that fear to overcome our mercy and our decency.
I have a feeling that I'm about to hear why any number of supposedly intelligent people believe we should, though, and that scares me.

Re:Land of immigrants

[Anonymous Coward]

Because, it is likely the latter which is the reason for the former -- i.e. insisting that people pay poll taxes or pass literacy tests to before being allowed to vote, although it mentions race nowhere, had the effect of disenfranchising black voters.

In a similar situation today, the current immigration laws exist to prevent immigrants from entering into the country -- quotas and work visa programs provide a convenient legal structure, but the fact that they are "The Law" is not a justification for insisting that people follow them.

In other words, if there are good justifications for (the laws) limiting immigration, then argue with those justifications. Do not argue with the results of the justifications (the laws themselves).

Re:Land of immigrants

[Anonymous Coward]

We do want them to go back home. The only way to stop the flood of illegal immigration from Latin America is to improve the standard of living in those countries. Stop the brain drain.

Re:Land of immigrants

[dave1791]

Indeed. I am from the US and have worked in Europe for many years. I loved living in Europe, I loved having 6 weeks of vacation per year and being paid in Euros is a nice perk these days.

There is a downside to all that nicety however. Unemployment tends to be high. Try finding a job in southern Germany, even with the qualifications. Be prepared for a long and painful job search. I saw a friend - an engineer - search for a job for two years so that the could live in the same city as his wife. Why? Companies are reluctant to hire people because they can't fire them so easily. Try starting a company in Europe. Try getting VC. Better yet, start a company and fail at the first go. In the US, that would be shrugged off as a learning experience. In Europe, it makes you a lepper.

I'm in India right now and I see something different. I see a place where new tech parks are rising like crabgrass and replacing shacks. I see people equally as intelligent as their counterparts in Europe and the US willing to work much harder (already in school).

Re:Land of immigrants

[Jorgandar]

Do you think that's sustainable? If you can do it, there must be millions in line right after you. In a few years you might be training your replacement, at half-price.

And PS i work for in the US for an american company and we get 5 weeks a year as well. It's not that special.

Re:Land of immigrants

[couchslug]

That was during the Industrial Revolution.

Now we don't need the message (or the bronze bitch in the harbor) to lure people who want to make money. The "wretched refuse" aren't useful anymore, and in the case of Muslims want to make MY country like their own theocratic hellholes.

Re:Land of immigrants

[Eli Gottlieb]

Are you trolling, or do you seriously believe that people have a right to move wherever in the world they want to? I mean, if you seriously believe that, I don't have a bridge to sell you, but I do have some blackhat friends you should meet. That is, if you're willing to exercise the same God-given right as them and move to the West Bank.

Oh, and since we have the right to move wherever we like, I'm sending an invasion force of immigrants to Japan. Once there they'll vote themselves a roughly Anglo-European system of government, but they've got a right to go there and swamp the aging population.

Re:Land of immigrants

[Eli Gottlieb]

Latin Americans aren't using American student or H1-B visas to come; they're sneaking over the border. Indians and Chinese are using the visas.

Re:Land of immigrants

[Eli Gottlieb]

It's called "market economics". In this age of cheap transportation if you throw the doors wide open, not only will you deal with immigrants flooding in faster than your culture can assimilate them, but those floods of immigrants will depress the value of labor to such a low that nobody - not immigrants, not natives, nobody - will be able to make a living that supports a family anymore.

Re:Land of immigrants

[Eli Gottlieb]

I'm in India right now and I see something different. I see a place where new tech parks are rising like crabgrass and replacing shacks. I see people equally as intelligent as their counterparts in Europe and the US willing to work much harder (already in school). Just noting out of ethnic pride, but ditto on certain areas of the Middle East.

Re:Land of immigrants

[debatem1]

You're deliberately confounding cultural and economic prerogatives. We live in the age you mention; every effort we have exerted to stop immigration has failed miserably, and yet we face no such economic collapse.

Re:Land of immigrants

[Eli Gottlieb]

No, every effort to stop illegal immigration over the Mexican border has failed because the politicians don't want to actually effectively attack the problem by throwing the heads of any company that hires illegals in jail. The oceans on either side of us and First-World Canada in the north do in fact present barriers to immigration. It's *hard* to sneak an illegal immigrant through customs at an American international airport.

But if you think there's been no economic collapse, look at salaries in programming (where H1-B labor gets used to keep wages low) or crop-picking (where illegal labor is used for the same purpose). The wages are so low that few to no Americans want to enter these professions anymore, and the wages are so low because companies use immigrants to keep them that way. Where non-selective-for-skill immigrant labor is employed, wages collapse. Workers in such fields are now forced to live like students at best, though students usually expect such a standard of living from part-time rather than full-time work.

Mind you, I'm not anti-immigration. I'm anti-stupid-immigration. Being selective enough (and having good enough living again... *sigh*) to brain-drain the rest of the world again sounds like a great idea to me!

Re:Land of immigrants

[flyingfsck]

"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me (Except Cubans and Mexicans), I lift my lamp beside the golden door! "

There, fixed it for you...

Re:Land of immigrants

[debatem1]

I live in a raid county. Trust me, if human suffering is a solution to this problem, I don't think putting immigrants on the rack would bring this to a close any more quickly. The idea of punishing the heads of corporations is a step in the right direction, but it still doesn't address the fundamental human rights concerns I have about the system. What seems to me to be a fair system is to go ahead and make all the "illegals" citizens and use existing labor practice laws to ensure that everybody A) competes for the same wages and B) pays the same taxes.
As for the "economic collapse", ask any economist: it just isn't there. Popular perception is that it is, but in real numbers there isn't any evidence, and if you want wages in fruit picking to, pardon the pun, pick up, then enforce the minimum wage laws for everybody so that citizens of this country aren't competing against people who have no legal protection from dollar-a-day wages.
My basic premise here is that we have both a humanitarian and an economic interest in ensuring that Americans have a level field to play upon, and that American businesses have a vested interest in getting the workers, both skilled and unskilled, that they need and that we do not provide. We can meet both these needs, and in so doing boost our competitiveness vis a vis the rest of the world.

Re:Land of immigrants

[RCL]

I think that people should be allowed to freely choose where they want to live. It would also help the economics - labour force would be extremely mobile and you wouldn't have to outsource anything to China/India because you'd be able to hire the same Chineese/Indians right on the place.

And I don't think that US would be flooded: once living standards drop because of too much cheap labour force, people will stop coming in.

In current globalized world, anti-immigration laws are very much like Soviet registration system that bound people to the places where they were born.

Re:Land of immigrants

[RCL]

And about the countries that don't allow (or make it extremely difficult) to immigrate into them: sure, right now the most of countries are like that. But shouldn't we learn the lesson from history, that the more "open" for immigration the country was (vide USA), the more competitive society it developed?

People are the most valuable asset - if whole Earth's population decided to move to your country, you'd be in control of the whole planet (okay, that's the extreme case, but it's just to show that countries stripped off their 'brainware' cease to exist, because it's people who define what the country is, not its laws/land/traditions/etc).

Re:Land of immigrants

[molarmass192]

It's unnatural, unfair and counterproductive to criminalize people for just coming to your country.

You think it's only the US that has barriers to immigration? Try immigrating to ANY of the EU countries. Compares to that, immigrating to the US is about as easy as immigration gets.

Re:Land of immigrants

[alan_dershowitz]

Why should immigration, which is done by non-citizens, be the ONE SINGLE THING in the entire United States that is totally unregulated? We already lost the battle to keep government out of every aspect of our lives, I sure as hell am not going to legally exempt people living in this country that aren't even citizens.

You cannot "immigrate illegally". Obviously, you can. It's against the law unless you follow the process.

Why not go further and impose Soviet-like registration of citizens, penalizing them for moving from state to state or even from city to city "illegally"? It's the same way of thinking. No it's not, because that's movement inside the only administrative body that defines United States "citizenship." I don't see what the problem is, if you want to go to an amusement park, you buy a ticket. The rides aren't free.

Re:Land of immigrants

[gclef]

Why do you, the freedom-loving Americans, deny the people the basic right of moving anywhere they want to?

If you have no control over the membership of a group, you are subject to all sorts of problems when people join your group that intend to undermine it...and no, I'm not talking about terrorists. If you allow completely free movement, how do you deal with spies and competing country's saboteurs? Free movement of peoples leaves you completely open to active attack by hostile nations.

It'd be nice for there to be completely free movement. Until people stop being tribal jerks to one another, it's not going to happen.

Re:Land of immigrants

[randyest]

You don't get free healthcare or insurance. You just pay for with your taxes. It's an important point.

Re:Land of immigrants

[Luscious868]

Get a clue. If an immigrant comes here with no money and no education guess who foots the bill for all of the public assistance they qualify for? Those of us who pay taxes. Given that, we have every right to control who comes here.

Re:Land of immigrants

[kilian.cavalotti]

AFAIK, almost any West European or North European country would fit that description. Well, on the vacation side, very likely, yes. On the salary side, certainly not.

Being a French citizen who currently lives in the Bay Area, I can tell you that, even with the dollar's depreciation lately, my American pay check is still three times worth my French one. For the exact same IT job (sysadmin in an academic environment).

Money is still the number one motive which drives foreign people to come study or work in the US. And quality of life is probably the number one motive which brings them back home.

Re:Land of immigrants

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do people keep implying that insisting that immigrants come here legally (and in this case, discussing what that will mean) is the same thing as insisting that they are unwelcome? Do you not see the dishonesty of that?

The problem there is that most of those insisting on legality are in fact anti-immigration (or in many cases on Slashdot, anti-competition), but are trying to cloak that fact behind the rule-of-law issue involved in obeying the law as it is.

They are easy to spot; they are the ones still focussing on legality when the discussion has logically moved on to the question of what the immigration law should be, if any.

Of course, forcing them to address that question is like pulling teeth, because it would force them to put their *real* position on the table.

Re:Land of immigrants

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't get free healthcare or insurance. You just pay for with your taxes. It's an important point. Sure beats paying for a war ;-).
</flamebait>

It's a fairer system IMO. Administration costs are reduced too.

Re:Land of immigrants

[entropiccanuck]

Or, try Mexico, if you're coming from anywhere south of it.

Re:Land of immigrants

[randyest]

You say that like they are interchangeable options. Of course they're not, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the cost difference. The total Iraq war cost is measured in billions of dollars; US healthcare costs are measured in trillions.

Fair is subjective.

Re:Land of immigrants

[ahabswhale]

I see people equally as intelligent as their counterparts in Europe and the US willing to work much harder (already in school) Harder but not smarter. I've seen their code and it's horrid, poor quality garbage. I'm sure there's exceptions to that but overall, that's the experience in most of the companies that exist in my location (twin cities MN). When they get smart, let me know. Until then, their IQ is not being utilized.

Re:Land of immigrants

[Opportunist]

Yes and no. In total, I pay about 30% of my income for tax and insurance. But that's because I earn quite a bit of money, if you're closer to the minimum wage area, you get away with about 10% for the same deal.

On the other hand, I get 14 instead of 12 salaries a year ("vacation money" and "christmas money" which are one additional salary each. And mandatory as well). So in total I somehow feel I get the better deal.

Re:Land of immigrants

[dave1791]

Give them time to acquire experience. I worked with them in scientific research and they are as good as anyone in the west.

Re:Land of immigrants

[paulgrant]

go back, come when you have a job. I forget the part where studying here means you have a right to apply to a government program when you want. and no offense, its a *skilled* worker job - means wet-behind-the-ears students shouldn't bother applying. US students are being turned away from those same jobs you're applying for on account of their lack of experience, why should that same job then go to you because you're willing to work for less? A little fairness. Incidentally, if you want to whack the H1-B crunch (the forced slavitude) there is a provision on the books for a dual-company h1-b; you can work part-time for one company and even if you get booted from the full-time h1-b sponser, you're still in status. /me coughs - talk to some of your american friends about starting a company and putting in a sponsorship request. there's even a youtube lecture by lawyers on how *not* to hire americans when all u're really looking for is slave labor.

Re:Land of immigrants

[randyest]

Actually, just plain old 'yes.' Unless you force your healthcare workers to provide services for free, then someone pays for them. I guess if you manage to get someone else to pay for you, then, well bully for you, but they're not free.

(BTW, I assume you mean "vacation days" instead of "salaries." I don't know who gets 12, maybe that's average? Personally, I get 6 paid holidays and 8 weeks personal time off every year. But I've been here 10 years; it's only 3 weeks to start off.)

Re:Land of immigrants

[Opportunist]

No, I mean salaries. Instead of 12 paychecks, I get 14. I.e. double the money in June and November. Plus 4-5 weeks off per year (paid vacation), depending on how long you've been working at the place (in other words, get used to having 4).

And yes, of course someone has to pay for it. Basically half of it is paid by the employer, the other half comes from you. It's one of the reasons why our employers think twice before hiring someone (the other reason is that it's not that easy to get rid of a worker).

Unions have been quite strong here, if you can't tell...

ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[MilesNaismith]

H1B has turned into a huge scam for corporate slavery. Employers know they can get cheap labor and throw them away when done. Most visas go to giant corporations like MicroSoft. If we want to "welcome the tired and huddle masses" then re-open Ellis Island and take them in and give them Green Cards or Citizenship papers and let them walk into a free country and decide what to do. This equine excrement that ties them to the sponsoring employer should be viewed for what it is which is a disposable cheap worker program.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[Dionysus]

Most visas go to giant corporations like MicroSoft.

I was under the impression most visa went to outsourcing companies like InfoSys.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep the program, but make sure the vast majority are hired by companies who are serious about keeping their H1Bs here long term, with preference to bona fide US companies.

Why keep the program? Because the US is competing against every other country in the world, including those in Europe, Latin America, and Japan. One of our biggest competitive weapons is that we're more open to foreigners, relatively speaking. If we don't let foreign engineering students in, someone else will.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[nasor]

In New Zealand they have an elegant solution; the minimum salary for a foreign worker who is there on their equivalent of the H-1B program is $55,000. That ensures that companies are only likely to bring in foreign workers if there is a genuine shortage of people with their particular skills. Your salary is usually a pretty direct measure of how scarce people with your abilities/training are and how much demand there is, so anyone who is coming into the county to fill a shortage in a particular field should almost by definition be getting a relatively high salary.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[Dionysus]

According to Wikipedia, the top 2 H1B companies are Indian outsourcing companies, InfoSys and WiPro. Of the top 10, 7 are Indian.
(Microsoft, IBM and Sun are the Americans)

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[Anonymous Coward]

Are there significant numbers of H-1Bers making less than that?

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[Anonymous Coward]

If we don't let foreign engineering students in, someone else will.

So what?

Seriously, most of the companies that hire H1Bs are profit-only driven scum that have no notion of national interest or pride anyway. Regardless of how high we make the H1B quota they always push for more or threaten to go off-shore. Let them. Good riddance.

It's time to get rid of the corporate propaganda that we are somehow losing the next Einstein. Sure, there are a handful of these people, literally, but the vast majority are very average VB and ASP people working for Infosys et. al. anyway. We might take a short-term hit but those jobs could be filled easily within a couple of years domestically if people saw they paid well enough to learn.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[Duhavid]

"that we are somehow losing the next Einstein."

I have worked with a number of H1B's, all good people, good workers, but not one of them ( to be blunt ) were as good as I am as a coder. They were not awful or anything like that, but no Einsteins in the lot.

I think the hit we would take is that wages for developers would go up. People would be drawn ( again ) to the career to participate in that, the number of non-H1B workers would rise.

It is all about wages, keeping them down.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[p0tat03]

It's time to get rid of the corporate propaganda that we are somehow losing the next Einstein. Sure, there are a handful of these people, literally, but the vast majority are very average VB and ASP people working for Infosys et. al. anyway.

So why don't we police the implementation of the H1B system, make sure that people that are being brought in are legitimate, long-term workers, who are as skilled as the best of America, and are *actually* at the top of their respective fields? As opposed to, as you say, VB/ASP monkeys.

Believe me, you're not the only one frustrated that a large chunk of the H1B quota is taken up by talentless, cheap labor, while the rest of us educated types who would love to work in the US are sitting on huge waiting lists.

I don't think anyone's ever claimed that the H1B program's purpose is to attract the next Einstein. There are *tens of thousands* of highly educated people who are graduating from universities around the world every year. Loss of these people means giving the leg up to some other country out there, one that may not be as friendly to the USA as we want. We're not talking about Einsteins, we're talking about generic, but nonetheless talented people.

Seriously, most of the companies that hire H1Bs are profit-only driven scum that have no notion of national interest or pride anyway.

Even Microsoft, Sun, and IBM? Take it from someone in a Canadian college who's been actively courted by all of these companies. For one thing, their pay offers were on par with any American graduate. In fact, I know for a fact that many were offering as much as they do for MIT graduates. The certainly aren't out for cheap labor. Not to mention H1B's aren't free, and are in fact quite expensive to get. The total cost of these tech companies hiring someone from across the border is actually *higher* than hiring someone locally.

Secondly, it was made clear that they were only interested in the cream of the crop. Interviews were rigorous and highly competitive, and they *definitely* weren't looking for VB/ASP joe blows. All the people that I know who received offers were among the top in their respective classes, and all have huge extracurricular experience under their belt.

IMHO the H1B issue is lumped into two sides - the "legitimate" companies like Microsoft, Oracle, etc, who are trying to bring in as much talent as they can, and the outsourcers like InfoSys. IMHO one side needs to be fixed, the other needs to be supported.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[canuck57]

Most visas go to giant corporations like MicroSoft.

I was under the impression most visa went to outsourcing companies like InfoSys.

Not necessarily. I was on a H1-B when in the states and after trying to get INS to let this person in, I gave up and returned home. Before the dollar drop of course. I would still be in the great USA if I got that GC. Problem was they want you on the hook like a fish. But this is another story.

I worked for a company of about $2B market cap, and 2 private companies under $50M each. None of the companies had people with competence to fill the jobs locally. Not all H1-Bs go to "big" companies.

The system does suck. In essence, work cheap, can't travel (9/11), can't switch jobs....pay was better than back home though. I am from the north shore.

The real problem is cultural, but not a popular thing to say. North Americans spend plenty on schools. But the kids go there as if it is a glorified baby siting service. Parents do not lead and pressure kids into mathematics and English. Parents in Canada and American cultures need to put more emphasis on teaching their kids a thirst of learning. Put on the history or science channel, and forget the rich kid crap which is hidden advertisement of discontentment.

For example, our nephew is 16, wants a car, can't hold a job for more than 2 weeks, been in trouble already for vandalism, kicked out of school... asking each relative in turn for a car, even has a new one picked out for us to buy. The gall. The lack of discipline, understanding of life -- his parents failed him pure and simple. When at 22 I am going to put him into a datacenter? He can't read let alone write code. Get real, be lucky if he can sweep the parking lot.

Me, I would like to grab the punk, knock some sense into him, teach, forcibly if needed some common social skills and a work ethic to succeed. But I would go to jail for that. So I quietly say no and move on. Write it off as mass apathy by both society and the parents.

The real problem is parenting, the microwave parents rarely raise children properly. Only how to nuke food. Most can't even cook if they were starving to death. A Kraft dinner is too much to do right. If they can read the directions.

You should have a license to raise children requiring parents do a few hundred hours of learning. Then more children will go to school to learn and the shortages will fix themselves in 20 years or so. Until then, you will need H1-Bs.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not about finding Einstein or even Ken Thompson/Dennis Ritchie, rather it is having the strongest possible pools of educated, skilled workers available in many metropolitan areas (SV, Seattle, Boston, Wash. DC, Austin, Chapel Hill, etc.) so that our tech companies can flourish.

Now it may not absolutely necessary that we get foreign talent, but it's a competitive advantage that could go to other countries that are more forward looking and less xenophobic.

As an analogy, New York City is one of the top, if not the top, cities in the world for finance, advertising, and media. Is that because it knows how to grow its own talent? That might be a factor, but more importantly, talent flocks to NYC and has for generations. What would happen if they decided it was time to make sure the local HS grads landed the lion's share of plum jobs? That would be the beginning of the end.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[Anonymous Coward]

IMHO one side needs to be fixed, the other needs to be supported.

An extremely sensible post that takes a position most Americans (or any other country in a similar position) would support. No doubt this was the original intent of the visas. Sadly we live in a country where the large corporations and their lobbyists wield far too much influence so the government has largely become a proxy for corporate interests rather than national interest. That works against everyone's interests except those of the corps.

Good luck with your efforts. You sound like someone I would like to work beside.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[Tablizer]

the minimum salary for a foreign worker who is there on their equivalent of the H-1B program is $55,000. That ensures that companies are only likely to bring in foreign workers if there is a genuine shortage of people

I don't know what the cost of living is in New Zealand, but that is too low for the US for the following reason: temporary positions traditionally pay more than "perm". A "migrant" IT worker should get a bit extra to compensate for the instability of the position, such as down-time between gigs. The wage tables they use compare mostly to perm positions. There are also regional cost-of-living differences.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[Anonymous Coward]

I have dealt with at least a hundred software engineers' salaries over the last 15 years. I don't know of a single H1-B worker that was paid less than an equally-skilled local worker. Wages go up and down and that is uniform across all workers, imported or local. If the H1-B visa had not been around, the salaries for local software engineers would have gone sky high and the outsourcing would have accelerated. That H1-B workers are getting paid less is a myth. There is a much bigger supply and that only keeps the salaries under control. Unregulated supply will drive down the salary, but the fact, as many CEOs reiterate, the demand is (or was) much greater than the supply even with all of these H1-B workers. It is important to get a constant supply of skills both to complete the work at hand and also to keep the salaries under control. Just take a look at India. The salaries of Indian software engineers is off the map. Indian companies are importing engineers from South East asia and China to fill their positions and to keep salaries under control. Salaries for software engineers have gone up over the years despite the higher limits on H1-B visa allocations.

The trouble is this and is with contract companies: The contract companies get paid a BIG chunk. A lion's share. The worker gets paid considerably less than what the parent company actually spends. Take-home gross salary of a H1-B worker that comes through a contractor (like Infosys or some other smaller contract company) is very less compared to the take-home salary of a 'regular' H1-B worker or a local worker.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[Anonymous Coward]

rather it is having the strongest possible pools of educated, skilled workers available in many metropolitan areas...so that our tech companies can flourish.

And no one would argue with that if it was true, but it isn't. No one would question the H1B program if somehow it screened "the best" 25k people available. But it doesn't. It is a mess of a process that allows a handful of corporations to bring in masses of mediocre people to keep wagers down. I am sorry but the stats are indisputable.

but it's a competitive advantage that could go to other countries that are more forward looking and less xenophobic.

There is nothing xenophobic about it and frankly it takes a lot of balls to apply that claim to the US, of all places. It may not be perfect but on the whole the US has been and continues to be a very welcoming place. But people don't like to be played for fools by greedy capitalists who import low wage labor for their own profit and disregard or reject any notion that they have obligations to the host country.

What would happen if they decided it was time to make sure the local HS grads landed the lion's share of plum jobs? That would be the beginning of the end.

Or it could be the beginning of another golden age. It is easy to sneer at high school grads but it was those grads who got an education from the GI Bill that ushered in the greatest era of prosperity in this country. If this society showed people that it paid to value education they would. As opposed to now where they see that the jobs they enter may not even pay off their loans before the corps figure out how to undercut the wages of the emerging professions.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[Tablizer]

Parents do not lead and pressure kids into mathematics and English.

Why if they are going to just be outsourced to foreign workers and lands? Wouldn't it be logical to find a less replaceable career like law or sales?

None of the companies had people with competence to fill the jobs locally.

In other words, they paid shit and wanted to keep it that way.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[MilesNaismith]

In essence, work cheap, can't travel (9/11), can't switch jobs.... Exactly my point. My WIFE came here through H1B but even she says it's idiotic. She jumped through all kinds of hoops trying to satisfy her employer to get a Green Card and they always kept the carrot further out than she could reach. When I married her the issue became moot, otherwise she would have been booted out of the country by now when her employer discarded her. Now that she is free of tyranny of H1B employer she got a good job in California. The H1B program is all about government-facilitated enrichment of businesses through indentured servitude. That is what it is, and all the bleating from the corporations about what a service they are doing by combing the world for the best talent is just BS. They want obedient disposable servants not citizens.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[Sparky9292]

Absolutely great idea. It makes sense too. A company should have to basically pay "back taxes" for the benefit of that foreign person to work in the USA. Another way to is to heavily garnish the H1-B visa person's salary.

It doesn't block them, it just makes companies look at hiring locally before they go outside.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[bsdewhurst]

I can out this into a bit of prospective for you, the average wage in New Zealand is currently about $47,000 so you would be earning above the average wage and remember that $55,000 is the minimum that they can pay you on the visa. Secondly the visa is slightly different in that it is not meant as a "temporary" visa like the H-1B, the correct name for this is the "Work to Residence" visa, so after two years in New Zealand, if you still have a job and you haven't broken any laws you can apply to stay in the country permanently.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[clampolo]

The US became the world leader in technology long before we let any h1b in. We don't need them. They aren't very good anyway, if they were, why do they need to come here for training?

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[clampolo]

Even Microsoft

Yeah, all those H1B sure did a tremendous job on Vista. Thank God for all those highly skilled H1B developers or the technological wonder that is Vista might not have been produced

There are *tens of thousands* of highly educated people who are graduating from universities around the world every year. Loss of these people means giving the leg up to some other country out there,

Yeah, I just loved the way I used to sit in Bay Area traffic for 1 hour (this is not a lie) to go 5 miles. And I love having all these gazillions of people moving into my area increasing the pollution levels, causing housing shortages, causing water shortages, power shortages, gasoline shortages, food shortages, etc. There are enough people in the US. We dont want to become a swelling heap of humanity like China or India.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[megaditto]

GTFO of my country, "dude."

No really, I too am tired of sitting in traffic for one hour each day.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[stewbee]

You must live in bizzarro world if $55k is not enough to live in the US. There are plenty of people living in the US on much less than $55k,and later quoted to be equivalent $47k in US dollars,(think McDonalds employees for example). Are they living like kings? No. But to say that they can't live here is just a lie.

I love this idea though. Unfortunately, since our congress is bought and sold already to corporate interests, this will never get implemented. It has something to do with 'let the market decide, but only if it benefits us. Otherwise we will pass legislation to only aid our corporate interests through our bought congressmen'.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[BVis]

In my part of the US (Boston area) $55k NZD (at current rates $42,157.50) is practically poverty level. Bear in mind that a lot of the jobs that companies would want to hire H1B visa holders for are in high-cost-of-living areas.

Then again, our minimum wage here is $8/hr, which gives you an idea of how little employees are valued here. Hell, they don't even have to give you a reason when they fire you here without notice or severance. It's hard enough to be a citizen employee, let alone having the threat of deportation should you stand up for your legally guaranteed rights (sane working conditions, comparable wages to citizen workers, and so forth.)

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[Anonymous Coward]

In the US we have the corresponding Prevailing Wage, which is I think the median salary for the region. The trick is that these people are having a hard time changing jobs so the market forces are not in place (not to mention they're often much better than average).
Think - since when does the government know how to set prices/salaries?

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[Bobzibub]

H1-b people are good enough for other countries to try to "poach" them.
http://www.canadavisa.com/in-the-us-on-an-h1b-Alberta-pnp-has-a-new-option-for-you.html

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[Tablizer]

You must live in bizzarro world if $55k is not enough to live in the US.

Mere subsistence was not the issue, was it? The stated goal of H1B's is to fill "shortages", not replace high-paying jobs with those desperate enough to be happy to invent computers and cure cancer for peanuts.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[Kartoffel]

Yep. A year and half ago, I interviewed with a Boston-area company. They offered $65K for an coding & program management position to me, a prospective employee with 8 years experience and two masters degrees. I suggested that the cost of living is rather high in Boston, so then they firmly emphasized that all their employees must be local to Boston, so I passed up the job. Too little offered for too big of a hellhole.

Of course companies have the urge to set up business in a growing area like Greater Boston, the SF Bay Area, etc. On the other hand, those places are already freakin' full. To make matters worse, they're full of way too many crappy bankrupt startups. In the US, businesses can get away with all sorts of mischief while individuals are considered expendable. Maybe I'm too jaded, but it actually makes sense to hire H1B's in high cost of living areas. The guest workers are typically from poor crowded countries already, accustomed to the squalor, and plus as non-citizens they're less likely to travel to other parts of the US that don't suffer from such conditions.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[stewbee]

I live in Chicago, which is also an expensive city to live in. I will grant you that it may not be as bad as Boston, but it still is not cheap! However, there are plenty of people who work at or slightly above minimum wage. My wife, before we were married (not even two years ago), lived in the city making only $25k as a grad student in a studio apartment. While this is not an ideal living situation, she was certainly able to make do.

I think we can both agree that housing is the primary expense of any household. To help people who cannot afford their housing, Cook County (or maybe the state) has something called section 8 housing, which states that landlords are required to make some apartments available for people who are in poverty. The lease ends up being less than what the landlord would charge other tenants. The landlord will be compensated by the state for the difference that the landlord is losing due to renting to this person.

Again I will state that $42k is not a great salary, you can certainly live off of it.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[stewbee]

If you can follow the posting chain, I was trying to call shenanigans on the OP. I believe any worker should be compensated justly for the jobs that they are to perform. One of the OP's positions was that the money given to these people put them near poverty, in which I said bull s&*#. Earning $42k is not poverty! If the OP is going to support H1Bs earning near poverty, then he better represent it properly.

That said, if these jobs performed by H1B are earning $55k on average, then pay the H1Bs the average rate. This would make it such that companies could not abuse the visa system (or working "for peanuts" as you put it).

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, so businesses don't get taxbreaks for h-1b's yeah, right..

do some research there genius...

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[CompMD]

No doubt in my mind it is for nothing but cheap workers. The company I work at (a small yet world renowned aerospace consulting firm located in the United States) has eliminated its American workforce over the past three years, replacing them with H1-B workers. I'm the last one, and I'm on the way out. I gave my heart and soul to the company and helped them see successes and achieve accomplishments thought previously impossible. In return I never saw a pay raise, received practically no benefits, and had to take a second job to pay the bills (and no, I don't live that extravagantly). With the downturn in the economy, the last American consulting engineer quit because he was forced to work on too many projects and stay late without overtime. I finally started getting hit with this and I said to hell with it, for everything I do I deserve better treatment. I received a conditional job offer from a large aerospace and defense OEM. I told the president of our company about this so he would have time to find a replacement for me. Within a week, he offered my job to a foreign student, who accepted.

Today I began training my replacement, who is on OPT. By the time I leave, the company will consist of a president (on green card), vice president/marketing director (US citizen that the president married and who shows up when she feels like it or gets bored with shopping or working out), two consulting engineers (H1-B visa holders), one R&D/instrumentation engineer (on OPT (my replacement)), and the secretary (US citizen). Yes, the only hard working American employee will be the secretary. Now, some might say that the the foreign engineers are just as high quality as their American counterparts. No. One of them has a BS in Mechanical Engineering and an MS in Aerospace engineering, and when I asked for a #2 Phillips screwdriver, he stared at me blankly and stared at the screwdriver set not knowing what it was. Also, all of the novel and creative R&D concepts came from the American engineers that worked here. We designed and invented things while the H1-B workers slaved away at analyzing work someone else had done or churning out numbers from a test I developed and ran.

Why keep the foreign workers? Because they are happy not having lives. They are happy living in indentured servitude to The Company. Even the Indian H1-B worker doesn't mind not seeing his wife. These are the employees they hold onto, those that do nothing but work and sleep. They don't care that they aren't getting paid nearly what their education should be worth. They'd have nothing to save for or spend it on anyway. No need to ever buy a house and own property. No desire to have a complete family. Their dream is to work, and they can't see anything beyond that; they are the perfect workers. If that is the new "American Dream," then I am disgusted at what it has become.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked with a programmer from PRC (China) with a 1HB visa who ended up committing suicide because of bad treatment by Sony Pictures ImageWorks. He had been there about a year and he saw another 1HB programmer get laid off 6 months before he would have been eligible to apply for a green card. Sony thought it was politically bad policy to sponsor green cards. The Chinese guy left and went to Canada, where he had gone to grad school. He knew that he could apply for Canadian citizenship and be able to stay. If he tried to stay in the US Sony would eventually screw him like they did to the Indian 1HB programmer. Even so, he became so depressed that he killed himself by jumping out of a window. As far as I'm concerned, he was killed by Sony because of corporate greed. When you call the 1HB program slavery you are right. Like any system that denies basic rights to workers, it destroys peoples live, including killing them.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[Repton]

You can't buy a house on NZ$55k (well, not in the cities), and supporting a family would require careful budgeting, but if you're single you can live pretty comfortably and put away some savings too.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[Anonymous Coward]

cough.. except for fruit pickers from Thailand, right. Bet they don't earn $55,000 while on their temporary workers visa in NZ.

PS - As a former victim I can confirm that H1-B is modern day slavery. Land of the Free, my arse.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[Tablizer]

The pay is only part of the problem. I've known an H1B worker who was paid only once every six months. And sometimes they are not paid if the body shop cannot find clients. They don't complain because it would mean being shipped back home.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[Anonymous Coward]

From the standpoint of end consumers H1B workers are by no means cheap. I did some analysis on this based on my current and past exposure to the outsourcing / contracting world and realized that we pay way more for H1B contractors than we do citizens. In many the H1B worker ends up costing more than what other employees are paid.

It's the contracting firms that make the money. Very often, they pay the H1B contractors a pittance but charge their clients a huge hourly rate for the services of these contractors. Case in point - myself. When I briefly did contracting, I was paid around $55 / hr, but the clients (of the contractor firm I was with) was charged anywhere between $125 / hr - $200 / hr.

Let's do the math here. Even at $125/hr the annual expense to the clients I was deployed at was $240,000 - which is WAY more than what it would cost to hire an American to do the job. In fact, the market rate for my skill profile (Sr. Project Manager) was way below $150,000. So why were my clients willing to pay as much as they did for my services? The answer is really a lack of supply. I know that that re are a lot of people who will dispute this, but it really is as simple as that.

I have also made similar observations with other skills like developers on .NET. Java, etc. There have been several instances where I have had to hire people and HAD to use the contracting route because the skills that my projects required were either not available, or not available in the timeframe that I required them. The net result was that I ended up having to work with H1B workers who we paid a lot for but who were paid mediocre wages by their employers.

I am no longer a contractor. My brief tryst with being one ended when I saw through the greed of contracting firms and realized that I didnâ(TM)t want to live like a nomad (contractors get moved around all the time) In my current role in a Fortune 100 compant, I am being paid wages that I negotiated. From what I was given to understand, the 'competition' that I had was significantly cheaper than what I cost the company that I work for.

What is really 'cheap' is offshore labor, which has nothing to do with H1B's.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you know that H1B already has a pay cap similar to New Zealand law. The minimum salary that must be offered to a H1B worker is USD60,000 per annum. and most H1B's get much much more than that.

You will be surprised to know that most H1B's from the STEM program routinely get salaries well above 80K

Please stop mistaking H1B for cheap labor. They are far far away from it. They are hired because they bring unique skills which you don't just pick up by going to any random college for a couple of years.

Does anybody debate their claims?

[im_thatoneguy]

I thought the Bush Administration was very upfront about the motivation for this 'emergency' rule (To get around the H-1B stalemate). Summary sounds like it's breeding controversy where none exists.

Now whether or not we NEED more H1Bs... that's a point of debate.

Don't worry, it's just jobs Americans don't want

[0xdeadbeef]

If they really cared about filling jobs, they'd ease the restrictions on immigration. But you'll never see that, because then workers would no longer be beholden to the sponsoring corporation. They could shop the market and earn the market rate.

And besides, why is "Homeland Security" making economic decisions, anyway? Are foreign students suddenly less a "threat"? What changed?

Nah. If you want a free trade Republican to show his true colors, just ask him, why should money and goods cross borders freely, but not people?

One overlooked benefit ...

[tomhudson]

Because extended stays are limited to those whose degrees are in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) fields, educators are speculating that the rule change will drive international students away from non-STEM majors.

Anything that reduces the number of lawyers is good, right? Except, of course, since this means that fewer will go into law, existing lawyers will have less competition, so more opportunity to a$$rape their clients. So this is bad, right?

Re:One overlooked benefit ...

[DaveV1.0]

No, because that means more international students taking up spots in STEM programs, which reduces the number of American STEM students in America, which further reduces American competitiveness and increases our reliance on foreign brain trusts.

Not to mention that it also lowers wages in the U.S. and also means more American students becoming leaches, I mean lawyers.

Re:One overlooked benefit ...

[hibiki_r]

Having those same people compete with you from their home countries, where the employment costs are so much lower, does not lower wages in the US, right?

It's better to have people compete with you on your own turn than on theirs.

Re:One overlooked benefit ...

[RCL]

I think that the most of international students in the US are planning to settle there sooner or later. So "reduces number of American students" argument is invalid - those students will eventually become Americans, too.

Lowering wages? Well... The golden billion of human population finally starts to feel the globalization effects.

Re:One overlooked benefit ...

[Opportunist]

Fewer lawyers could also mean that they all can make a living and don't have to resort to make-money-fast schemes like sending cease and desist notices about.

Re:One overlooked benefit ...

[DaveV1.0]

Actually, that has not been the case for a while now.

The big trend has been to come to the U.S., get an education, save up some money, go home and buy some land and live well.

Re:One overlooked benefit ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Having those same people compete with you from their home countries, where the employment costs are so much lower, does not lower wages in the US, right?

Correct, it doesn't. Not even close to the same degree. It is MUCH harder to manage those relationships from afar and most companies have learned there isn't that much to gain from the arrangement.

Re:One overlooked benefit ...

[metlin]

That was ages ago.

These days, people would rather come to the US, and stay in the US. The cost of living in the home countries (e.g. India) has risen with the times, and it is just as easy to settle down here than go back.

Re:One overlooked benefit ...

[DaveV1.0]

That is not what I am seeing now, especially with H1B visa workers and college students. I work with many Indians and that is what almost all of them have planned. Work in the US for a few years, then move back to India.

Re:One overlooked benefit ...

[RCL]

Well, I'm Russian citizen and there's no one among my friends (programmers like me) who are going to return to Russia once they get into US. They take every possibility to stay there.

Don't know anything about Indians though, but I can't imaigine that someone could "buy land and live well" in a backward country once you are accustomed to living in the first-world one. You would have to not only buy land, but also change laws in your homeland, change habits of your fellow countrymen, etc etc that's just too much work for a single person.

P.S. I'm not in US myself, but I'm also working abroad - and I'm doing my best not to return to Russia.

Re:One overlooked benefit ...

[metlin]

I'm from India, and what I see is the exact opposite - those that do go back do so because of reasons beyond their control (family pressure, layoffs, lack of visa etc).

I'm yet to meet someone who's in the US to work and go back and settle down in India.

If you're in IT or technology, your major options are a handful of cities (e.g. Bangalore or Madras), all of which are large metropolitan ones with extremely high costs of living. If you're in finance or marketing, your only option is Mumbai/Bombay, which is probably just as expensive as Manhattan, if not more. It's a lot easier to work in the US and settle down here (especially if you've lived here for a few years) than go back.

no-notice-no-comments 'emergency' rule change

[iminplaya]

That's how we do things now. It's much more efficient than actually obeying all those silly laws that regular folks have to. Can I use this to end the prohibition against marijuana? That would be cool.

Programmers without borders

Re:no-notice-no-comments 'emergency' rule change

[jez9999]

prohibition against marijuana

Don't you mean illegal prohibition against marijuana?

Re:no-notice-no-comments 'emergency' rule change

[DaveV1.0]

Ok. Please explain in detail how the prohibition against marijuana is illegal.

Re:no-notice-no-comments 'emergency' rule change

[jez9999]

The constitution grants the Federal government no right to enact such legislation.

Re:no-notice-no-comments 'emergency' rule change

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that in 1919 the 18th amendment was required to achieve the same effect with alcohol.

Re:no-notice-no-comments 'emergency' rule change

[DaveV1.0]

Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution of the United States of America:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; ...

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings; And

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

The Congress is empowered to make laws concerning the general welfare of the nation, and the control of certain substances is in the interests of the general welfare of the nation.

You fail.

Re:no-notice-no-comments 'emergency' rule change

[DaveV1.0]

Note that you are incorrect. The same effect with alcohol was achieved with the Volstead act, which made illegal the "manufacture, sell, barter, transport, import, export, deliver, furnish or possess any intoxicating liquor except as authorized by this act", before the 18th Amendment went into force.

Also, the Volstead act defined "intoxicating liquor" something the 18th Amendment does not do.

Re:no-notice-no-comments 'emergency' rule change

[phlinn]

The list of powers immediately following the first line, which you skipped in your summary, were intended to consist of the whole list of powers granted to congress. If 'general welfare' could be used the way you are reading it, the enumeration of specific powers is meaningless, as is the 10th amendment.

More importantly, it applies only to taxes and expenditures, as it is part of that specific enumerated power. It does not provide congress with a blank check to enact any regulation it wants, but it can lay taxes to provide for the common defence and general welfare.

It is possible for congress to regulate interstate commerce involving drugs, and the USC has said in Raich and Wickard that even if something is manufactured or grown without the intent to transport it across state lines it is part of interstate commerce. I would argue that just because the USC says something doesn't make it so, but that is a much better argument for the drug laws being constitutional than the general welfare clause.

We already spend more than enough on education

[Shivetya]

We need to start looking at reducing administration costs of the school systems and using the money on teachers and student needs. Look at most major cities, their cost per student can be double what outlying areas have and the majority of it can be traced to anything but teachers and students. What good is throwing money at public schools if the money isn't going to improve our children? Too many city schools are jobs programs for friends of the political powers. Dumping grounds for cronies. If that county school can graduate more students at a higher GPA and their students do better in higher education all the while costing the local taxpayers less how is the city's problem money related?

I would prefer more options for parents to send their children to schools of their choice. This means the dreaded "voucher". Make it so the money follows the child and not the school. This might be the only kick in the pants some school systems will understand. We have great teachers. We spend more than enough to educate the children we have, we just spend it wrong.

The easy solution is to "throw money at the problem" but that is used as an excuse to rid ourselves of the responsibility for making the hard choices. All we get with this thrown money is more cronies. I read my local "paper" to see schools with trailers and look at the changes that go on the system. What do I notice most after capital improvements? How many more people in non teaching positions crop up. Suddenly there are committees paid out of school funds to do work already done elsewhere or not needed. More money means more government employees, not necessarily teachers.

Sorry, no more money. Account for what they have. They owe to the children. We owe it the children.

Education here is not the reason we have H1 visas. We have those because politicians put more value on the money of corporations than the people who elect them. Do any of the three current candidates support scrapping this?

Re:We already spend more than enough on education

[Billly Gates]

The issue is illegal immigrants crowding the city schools. A single bad student or one with limited english can drop the whole class average by a large margin.

In california where I work for a school district I am seeing this problem. Thanks to No child left behind we are seeing funding cuts as well and 1 out of 4 students are illegal or there parents are illegal in my district and no its not inner city either.

In rural areas they do not suffer from this problem so a single student who scores only 15% at grade level can not bring down the whole average.

But your assessment is correct. School administrators receive free BMW's and Mercedes and they just cut 300 teachers from their payroll at the same time. Also one administrator has ties to board of directors at Gateway computers so we keep upgrading on computers we dont need and she gets a payback from it too.

Re:We already spend more than enough on education

[debatem1]

I went to a private school. Trust me, private schools are not the solution.

Re:We already spend more than enough on education

[tsm_sf]

It's interesting to note that only when people discuss education does the phrase "throw money at the problem" come up.

Re:We already spend more than enough on education

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because spending money on educating the future entrepreneurs and leaders of our country is a waste, while spending it on gas or killing people whose country we invaded is just plain American.

Re:We already spend more than enough on education

[lattyware]

I thought that phrase came up whenever an American discussed a problem?

Re:We already spend more than enough on education

[NuclearError]

I disagree, simply because this would increase competition if vouchers were given. If a private school produces far more students that get into top 30 universities, either public schools will have to direct efforts to educating their students or face a loss of funding as parents use a voucher to put their child in a private school.

Re:We already spend more than enough on education

[Anonymous Coward]

The issue is illegal immigrants crowding the city schools. A single bad student or one with limited english can drop the whole class average by a large margin.

You could always call immigration and get the family deported. It might be distasteful for you, but they are harming the other students and should be removed from the school. It might not be their fault, but that's life. Now, if they are LEGAL immigrants, then the system should get them all the help they need to get them up to speed.

I'm not against immigration - I am against illegal immigration.

Re:We already spend more than enough on education

[debatem1]

Private schools have limited capacity. You would be helping the students already at those schools, but not doing any favors for the huddled masses, most of whom won't have anywhere to go even if the cash suddenly becomes available.
Private schools also don't generally have the resources to provide low-cost lunches, gifted and challenged programs, or many of the "extras" that come with a public school education. Busing is a popular complaint- few private schools have the resources to bus students in- as are the lack of speech therapy and student counselors. All of these are more commonly used by low-income students than those from wealthier families, ie, those these proposals are meant to help.
It is my experience that the lawmakers that push these laws know all of this, and use it to prevent the private (and especially parochial) schools from opposing such measures. It's enough to make me question whether their enthusiasm has more to do with feeding the golden goose than it does with starving the beast.

Re:We already spend more than enough on education

[Free the Cowards]

The issue is illegal immigrants crowding the city schools. A single bad student or one with limited english can drop the whole class average by a large margin. I fail to understand why these two sentences are adjacent. Legal residents can be bad students or have limited English too.

Re:We already spend more than enough on education

[xtracto]

No, the phrase you are looking for is "throw weapons at the problem"

Re:We already spend more than enough on education

[stormguard2099]

I went to a private school. Trust me, private schools are not the solution.
Come on mods, why is this user's opinion "informative" with the only information being that they attended private school? this person listed almost no justification for their opinion and is in no way informative! I would love to be able to discuss this with you but you didn't say anything other than your opinion!
I also went to private school but I think that they are a good thing for the education system, i doubt they are a silver bullet that will solve all problems if we only had vouchers but that doesn't mean they are useless.
I enjoyed my school because of a more intimate environment, the majority (not all) of the students were more academically minded and while my school was far from the best by any means it was still leaps and bounds upon the public school which was in an intense competition with the neighboring county over which was the worst public highschool in the state.
If for no other reason I think the slashdot community can see the advantage in private schools so that those who shun science and demand to be taught creation can go to a private institution and leave the public schools to teach evolution in peace.

Re:We already spend more than enough on education

[madia]

Yes, privatizing the utilities has really helped us in the middle class do well. So lets do that with schools too. I once was a big voucher fan except think about it. There is now a plethora of electric, cable, and telephone, 3rd party companies all making excessive profits on the management level - yup for those of you old enough to remember the days gone by this has been a real move upward for us. I wont even go into the oil debacle - but allowing speculation and gambling on it sure has helped - the oil companies.... Teaching: I have a son with a masters degree in teaching and he's making less than most of you with a BS writing code. Also have two friends who are teachers all in the public school and frankly here's their take: "If you are so down on PS teachers get off your derriÃre and go try teach a PS classroom for a week or two" especially an urban school - then get up here on this board and tell everyone how overpaid teachers are. I also graduated from a private school where two teachers were fired for sexual incidents with students, there was a complete breakdown in discipline and this was over 35 years ago - I'm sure the only thing that has improved since is the salaries of the administration. ANd for the Union bashers out there - just remember - if it wasn't for the unions you would work 7 days a week - no sick days - no vacations and still be underpaid. http://www.madnamerica.com/

Re:We already spend more than enough on education

[Billly Gates]

Then we lose teachers as student population drops.

Two kids in my wife's class have already been deported back to Mexico.

Re:We already spend more than enough on education

[Bugs42]

It IS a waste when throwing money at the school system accomplishes nothing. For proof, look at the Los Angeles Unified School District in California. The district's ranked somewhere damn close to the very bottom of the nation in student proficiency for reading, math, and everything else that's measured. Despite this, they still con the voters out of more and more money every year.

Re:We already spend more than enough on education

[jhol13]

I went to public school, in Finland:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PISA#Results

It is very hard for me to believe private school (check UK on the list) will solve the problems.

No, I do not know why we are on top.

Re:We already spend more than enough on education

[PawNtheSandman]

The problem is not money, but the parents. Many parents, especially in lower economic situations, do not support or encourage their children's education, and tend to help reverse skills they learn in school, such as proper speech and grammar.

Re:We already spend more than enough on education

[entropiccanuck]

The school system I work for claims they have 12000 employees, of which 6000 are teachers and 2000 are "para professionals." I'm not sure what "para professionals" are specifically, but it seems ludicrous to me that only half of a school system's employees are teachers.

Re:We already spend more than enough on education

[lattyware]

Yeah, generally the weapons first, then the bullets later when they turn with the weapons.

Re:We already spend more than enough on education

[debatem1]

I have no idea why that was informative to so many people either, actually, since you're right- it's just my opinion and supporting evidence.

My opposition to the private-schools-for-all proposals is based on the experience of going to a rapidly growing parochial school, and seeing how the much-vaunted small teacher-student and peer-peer relationships suffered under that growth.

It is always dangerous to expand personal experience into broader trends. My experience taught me that while the private schools are well-equipped to handle small numbers of students with significant access to outside resources, they are not ready to become public schools themselves- that their success is not independent of their scale, and that the success of students in a given environment has as much to do with the students themselves as with the building in which they are taught. Your mileage may vary.

To my mind, it seems reasonable that one of three scenarios will transpire if/when school vouchers become the norm.
Firstly, that the vouchers cause a mass exodus from underperforming schools to private schools, exceeding the absorbative capacity of those institutions, while simultaneously destroying the intimacy of the student community and forcing the schools to either lower the rigorous academic standards that brought them to such a perilous position, or fail the new crop of students ill-prepared for such a transition.

The second scenario is that vouchers create a flood of new applicants to private schools, but that the private schools accept only a small portion of those students, effectively preserving the status quo in the limited number of private institutions, but doing little more than creating a brain drain in the public system, while simultaneously reducing its ability to respond effectively by leveraging capital- remember that government allocations occur on the fiscal calendar, while per-student allocations cannot be released until enrollment is finished.

The third scenario is the true status quo scenario: that vouchers are insufficient to overcome the difficulties posed by the lack of private school busing systems, gifted and challenged programs, needs-based lunch discounts, speech therapy, or counseling. That nothing changes except the introduction of another layer of bureaucratic waste and delay in the allocation of government money. In this scenario, the rich, though already possessing the resources to afford an alternative education, are afforded the luxury of having that decision subsidized, while the poor continue to attend the same underperforming schools that have fostered generation after generation of dropouts.

I don't like the idea that the quality of a child's education, that the scope of their horizons, should depend on the thickness of their daddy's wallet. Some people, apparently including yourself, feel differently; some disagree with my assessment of the workability of the voucher plans, and I can respect that even as I disagree with it.

Re:We already spend more than enough on education

[stormguard2099]

afforded the luxury of having that decision subsidized I believe they are paying for it through their taxes. Stop me if I am wrong here.


  ok, so let's look at your third scenario. The rich don't have to pay for their education twice. That does mean less money for the public school systems which I assume (others on /. claim that money isn't the issue) we can agree is a bad thing. Ok, I agree with you on this.


  What I think the part you miss is there must be a fair amount of people who would be able to send their children to the school of their choice (whether for religious reasons, specialization in the arts, whatever) who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford this without a voucher. These are the people that the voucher is meant for, not the people like yourself and I whose parents can already afford it. This group also includes those who don't need special consideration that private schools can't accomodate as you pointed out that public schools offer.


  Finally you claim that the poor continue to attend the same schools as they did before, so wouldn't this leave them the same as before? You can say that a massive lack of funding will cause the schools to deteriorate even further but if these difficulties in private schools that you say are insurmountable by vouchers are seriously a problem then the majority of people wouldn't leave keeping the funding at about the same level. I think the idea is that the schools would ideally loose the same amount of money they would put into them if they had the student to teach so the net of vouchers is even.
  finally, thanks for the personal jab at the end.

Re:We already spend more than enough on education

[debatem1]

First off, let me say that I'm not sure what the personal jab you mention is; I assure you my intent is not to offend.

The question about people getting what their taxes go for is one that I've heard a lot, and I understand both sides of the issue, having argued much the same thing on different issues at different times in my life. It seems to me, though, that when we pay our taxes, we do it on the presumption that they go for the betterment of the community, rather than just ourselves. We do not make every road a toll road because some people don't drive, or make people who file charges pay the prosecutor's salary. You might reasonably argue that since you didn't need those services, that you shouldn't have to pay for them, or less reasonably protest that you should have the option of spending that money on a private road system or alternative system of justice. But we don't allow that because we recognize that the system doesn't function if it doesn't know where its next paycheck comes from, and that even if you don't use those facilities, they still benefit you indirectly. It seems to me that the school system falls into that category.

The question of less money for the public schools is a big one, because nobody really agrees on how much less money there will be, and where or when that will have an impact is essentially unknowable. What we do know is that requiring more finely grained accounting of per-student funds changes the allocation schedule, which gives the school less time to spend the same amount of money. That increases the opportunity cost per student, reduces the school's ability to capitalize on their liquid assets and trims another degree of flexibility from an already rigid purchasing system. Even if the total amount of money the school has on hand in a given calendar year remains the same, the method of allocation changes the game in a big way.

About the children/parents who need/want an alternative education- I understand. Bob Jones University is right up the street from me as I type this, and some of my close friends and neighbors from years past have attended it on the principle that no cost was too great to spare their child from the Godless classroom. Some of them were not wealthy people, and labored mightily to make ends meet, and for those people, school vouchers would represent kindness in a great degree.
However, much as my sympathy lies with those people whose convictions drove them to seek what they felt was a more appropriate education for their children, I feel a greater share of compassion for the child whose parents don't give a damn where or if they attend school. The kid who takes the bus every day to a broken down inner city school in the hope of finding truth in the promise of our country- that with hard work, a little luck, and the perseverance common to all successful men, anyone can carve for themselves a better life than the one they were born into. And sadly, this is the child that gets hurt by these plans. That's the million or ten million children whose futures we shortchange in headlong homage to the questionable virtue of an education in diversity.

The question about the relative position of the poor is a reasonable one, but one which does not take into account 1) the issue of opportunity cost, 2) the fact that children are extremely nonliquid commodities (much though toddlers sometimes seem to be an exception), or 3) the limits of institutional flexibility, especially with regard to absorbative capacity. It really isn't possible for a child to be shunted between schools as one star rises and another falls, and certainly isn't desirable for either public or private schools, since the major expenditures of both of those organizations do not scale linearly with the number of students. Between these factors and the smaller cash pool, public schools will be forced to do more with less, while simultaneously being hamstrung by the new accounting requirements.

I'd like to reiterate that I know where you're coming from on this.

Re:We already spend more than enough on education

[tsm_sf]

So you're saying a failing school district is evidence that they're getting too much money.

I'm not sure why people always have such a keen eye for waste in edu budgets, but the diligence sure seems to be working, doesn't it?

President Bill Gates

[Anonymous Coward]

Just one more reminder of how the United States is a corporate dictatorship, not a democracy or even a government any more. Bill Gates wants H-1B visa limits to go away, and *poof* it was so. With less trouble than the rest of us have to go to to register a car.

forget the fluff, focus on the true issue

[gadabyte]

regardless of what you think of immigration, education, H1B's, and DHS, why are so many comments about immigration, employers, etc - and not governmental abuse of power?

if anyone would like to explain how using emergency powers in a non-emergency setting isn't abuse, please, step up to the plate.

Re:forget the fluff, focus on the true issue

[DaveV1.0]

Last I checked we were in a war, which is a state of emergency. I bet if we actually checked, we would see that the U.S. has been in a state of emergency for decades.

Re:forget the fluff, focus on the true issue

[plantman-the-womb-st]

Major combat operations were announced as over some time ago. So, if a war is now in a state of non-major combat operations, is it actually an emergency?

Re:forget the fluff, focus on the true issue

[gadabyte]

Last I checked we were in a war, which is a state of emergency. I bet if we actually checked, we would see that the U.S. has been in a state of emergency for decades. i was thinking more of an applicable emergency, not a semantic one. i doubt you're right about the US being in a state of emergency for decades, but given the fact that my faith in government has completely eroded (since i became a federal employee, no less), i wouldn't be too surprised.

and those extended student visas will really put the screws on al qaeda. iirc, weren't some of the 9/11 hijackers here on student visas?

Re:forget the fluff, focus on the true issue

[DaveV1.0]

i was thinking more of an applicable emergency, not a semantic one. See, you are thinking like a normal person instead of a politician. I know it hurts, but you have to think like a politician.

And, IIRC, they had over-stayed their student visas.

Re:forget the fluff, focus on the true issue

[DaveV1.0]

I point you to the other thread about who gets to say what constitutes an emergency.

Re:forget the fluff, focus on the true issue

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all in the name of fighting the terr'ists, of course. By establishing the administration in a perpetual state of war, they have been able to push all the arguments John Yoo and David Addington cooked up that made the President an unquestioned authority as Commander-in-Chief. And if a policy is illogical, unethical, or otherwise questionable, they'll pursue it anyway and flip everyone who complains or is victimized the bird. The administration's policies post-9/11 are only now begun to be recognized as a blatant power grab in the general public, due to Scott McClellan slowly peeling the delusion from his brain*.

The result of this foolish obsession with unlimited executive power (which Cheney desperately wanted after Congress essentially castrated Ford after Nixon left in disgrace), is a party so blind and void of true leadership, that they turn on the first person within their ranks who dares to tell the truth, rather than lie with loyalty.

* Whatever his motivations, if he truly believed that Bush was well-intentioned, he had to fight himself in light of the evidence. This makes the Republican attack all the more reprehensible, because they have decided a priori that any evidence against them is automatically false.

Candidates and courts

[grizdog]

The Bush administration is in court on a lot of controversial issues right now, and at this point, most of them, including this one, will not be resolved when the Bush administration leaves office.

Some of those things, like most or all of the claims of executive privilege, will probably be dropped by a new Democratic administration, and some may even be dropped by a new Republican administration. It seems to me that it's a reasonable question for candidates as to what they would do with a case like this. But I haven't seen much discussion of these sorts of things.

Practically, it's all in the hands of the next administration. It's something to ask about if we get the chance.

Re:Candidates and courts

[Dionysus]

Some of those things, like most or all of the claims of executive privilege, will probably be dropped by a new Democratic administration, and some may even be dropped by a new Republican administration.

You really think anyone, whether Democratic or Republican, will voluntarily drop power? Especially since the current administration has shown that the they can get away with it?

Unless an administration is smacked down for abuse of power, the power is being kept, no matter the mascot of the incoming president.

DHS = Get Out of Jail Free card

[RyoShin]

Until the Bush administration, through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, made the change earlier this year, foreign national students typically worked for one year after graduation on their student visa while their employers filed for an H-1B visa. Tech industry groups, however, had sought the extension because of the backlog for H-1B visas.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. You ever have one of those friends who, when asked why, would say "because"? The Department of Homeland Security now seems to be "because".

What possible twisted snake-oil scenario would give the DHS authority to extend the stay of foreign workers? I can see a very extreme scenario where they could decrease the time because of some reported imminent threat or something, but them being able to extend it makes little sense to me. It's like the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms selling off the wireless spectrum.

Or am I missing something? I admit that I'm not familiar with the intricacies of federal bureaus and who is under what secretary and given which powers. If someone can explain to me why this isn't just a pure abuse of the system by saying the word "terrist", please do so. A quick search of the previous Slashdot post and related articles isn't helping much. Do they control all of immigration? I thought that was someone else.

If this is truly a complete abuse of the department, I wonder if the public would react if the media groups picked up the story as administration abuse (hahaha... sure).

Re:DHS = Get Out of Jail Free card

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Essentially, Homeland Security is now in charge of all immigration issues. State, which properly oversees such matters, has been reduced to a hollow shell (and not just on immigration; the Bush administration has basically been waging war on the entire department since the run-up to the Iraq war.) DHS is a hydra which has taken on many formerly well-defined functions of other departments and handles none of them well.

Re:DHS = Get Out of Jail Free card

[Anonymous Coward]

Because DHS is the umbrella organization above USCIS (the old INS).

Re:DHS = Get Out of Jail Free card

[Zarf]

DHS controls ICE see: http://www.ice.gov/about/faq.htm my ICD and API docs come with a nice big seal from DHS. So yes, the number of issued visas is under the DHS purview. The particulars of how a visa is granted, why, and to whom are not under direct control of DHS... merely the number, adjudication, and tracking.

Prior to 2003 these authorities were held by the DoJ but they shifted to DHS.

Who is inside the country is a data point that DHS is decidedly interested in. This is a reality I work with every single day as I develop software that tracks the whereabouts of visa holders.

Re:DHS = Get Out of Jail Free card

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they control all of immigration? I thought that was someone else. Homeland Security has been handling immigration for a while.

Re:Don't worry, it's just jobs Americans don't wan

[sethstorm]

And besides, why is "Homeland Security" making economic decisions, anyway?
Economic Security.

Are foreign students suddenly less a "threat"? What changed?
The status of the citizen is what changed. Citizenship is made to be a penalty, not a benefit.

Implying (class|race) (warfare|exploitation)?

[zooblethorpe]

Nah. If you want a free trade Republican to show his true colors, just ask him, why should money and goods cross borders freely, but not people?

Let me guess:

I want your money, and I want your goods, but you can keep your sorry non-white ass out of my country.

Is this roughly what you're hinting at?

It might appear that I'm trolling, but I'm very much not -- I'm honestly interested if this is what 0xdeadbeef means.

Cheers,

Re:Implying (class|race) (warfare|exploitation)?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the free-trade Republicans I know only care about money. So they want money & goods to flow freely (no taxes), but don't want people to flow freely (because they think they're poor, dumb jobless immigrants who just want welfare checks).

So yeah, what you said is pretty much the rationale, even if they won't put it in terms like that. They'll put it in terms of money, and they don't want to pay a single cent.

Re:Implying (class|race) (warfare|exploitation)?

[alan_dershowitz]

What the hell are you two talking about? Every free-trade Republican I know also wants (relatively) unrestricted immigration. It's the so-called "paleo-conservatives" that are against immigration, largely on cultural grounds.

What is this "state of emergency" anyway?

[zooblethorpe]

Last I checked we were in a war, which is a state of emergency. I bet if we actually checked, we would see that the U.S. has been in a state of emergency for decades.

Which brings up the broader issue, how do we define "state of emergency", and how do we put saner limits on who gets to say?

Cheers,

Re:What is this "state of emergency" anyway?

[DaveV1.0]

Well, the government gets to say if something is an emergency, so it is a matter of the fox guarding the hen house.

And, remember, your favorite congresscritter can declare just about anything a matter of national security and thus classified. That is how a lot of stuff is kept secret in DC.

Re:What is this "state of emergency" anyway?

[zooblethorpe]

Well, the government gets to say if something is an emergency,

Yes, but at what level? I'm a bit fuzzy on the details. Is this a congressional designation, or something the president pulls out of his hat? I seem to recall governors declaring states of emergency after disasters like Katrina or bad tornado storms, making me think this designation is an executive function?

so it is a matter of the fox guarding the hen house.

Very much so. Which leads me back to my second question, how do we put saner limits on who institutes a "state of emergency", and also on what exactly constitutes one?

And as a PS, I'm baffled as to why your initial post was modded flamebait -- it sure seems more like normal "question authority" and "examined life" commentary than anything inflammatory. Besides which, I bet if we actually checked, we would see that the U.S. has been in a state of emergency for decades might be slightly hyperbolic, but it is not that far from the way things have actually been functioning for some time now.

Cheers,

Re:What is this "state of emergency" anyway?

[DaveV1.0]

I think both the President and Congress have the ability to declare emergencies, though I believe Congress can override a Presidential declaration while the opposite is not true.

Re:Don't worry, it's just jobs Americans don't wan

[thermian]

Are foreign students suddenly less a "threat"? What changed?

It may have something to do with hundreds of millions per annum being lost because all those now 'suspect' chinese students that used to go to university in the states have started to go to Europe instead.

Its been great for England, my gosh yes, the extra revenue was seriously needed, but not so great for the US. Last I heard some US Universities were having serious problems trying to make up for the loss of that money.

Oddly enough European society has completely failed to collapse, and we haven't found ourselves dealing with hordes of evil Chinese people plotting to take over our countries.

Personally it helped me learn how to make some really good Chinese meals.

IBM says Americans aren't good enough

[Hankapobe]

What bugs me is when corps say that they can't get exceptional IT staff from America (IBM HR person in the Wall Street Journal)

Certain skills still are in strong demand, says Ms. Chota, adding that the company can't find enough qualified graduates with degrees in computer science and those who have knowledge of both business and IT. "In the U.S., unfortunately, there are not enough great computer-science graduates," Ms. Chota says.""

Um excuse me? So, Americans are not good enough for IBM. Even though they go to the same great American universities just like the smarter foreigners.

So, which is it?!?

Re:IBM says Americans aren't good enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, Americans are stupid. I know. I am won.

Re:IBM says Americans aren't good enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. You americans suck.

Re:IBM says Americans aren't good enough

[ps2os2]

First off I am not an IBM fan. This is not going be an anti IBM entry. I believe that IBM would like to hire american students but why should they when they can get foreign nationals at say 50 percent. IBM *USED* to be a great place to work for but in the early 1990's that all changed. IBM employees had to sue to get overtime. IBM has screwed over the retirees by eliminating the health plan. They shed the great employees in the 1990's and IBM will never be the same. We used to be able to trust IBM to look out for us (customers) not anymore. At one time IBM had a 1 person rep for each company and that rep made sure that the other IBMers were in top form and working on helping the company. Not anymore it is a 1-800 call to order almost anything. The mainframes were the mainstay of IBM and those cost several million dollars. The "sales man" was the go getter for the team. Now its lucky you see any IBM types in weeks (sometimes more). Our IBMer (now retired) always got the biggest orders in his region as he worked the real people who did the ordering. Not anymore you call the 1-800 number sigh. If you need IBM help on software issues you either call 1-800 or create a PMR online. IBM is (and has been) shedding people to the take care of customers. The IBMers no longer service the customers they serve themselves.

Re:IBM says Americans aren't good enough

[xtracto]

That does not surprise me at all. I heard somewhere that the Barclays CEO (or manager or whatever is the name of the chief) say that Barclays (a UK bank) preferred non-UK PhD graduates because PhDs from the UK where very immature and lacked several skills compared to PhDs from other countries.

Re:IBM says Americans aren't good enough

[dave1791]

Would you prefer to have people in the US on H1B visas, or would you prefer them to be working for the same company in Bangalore? Either way, you already are competing with them in the global job market.

Those people have to spend their money somewhere and that reverberates through the economy. I'm sure the state of California prefers they spend it at Target, just as Baden Wurttemberg prefers they spend it at Familia and Karnataka prefers they spend it in Big Bazaar.

Re:IBM says Americans aren't good enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually;
What she really meant to say was that; "In the U.S., unfortunately, there are not enough great computer-science graduates, who are willing to work for $12 an hour. So we must go outside the country to those who have workers willing to work this cheap . Those of us in upper management at IBM, can still reap in the big money doing it this way and we don't really want to change."

It's not money. It's distribution that fails.

[Opportunist]

It's not a lack of money, it's a failure of system.

Instead of encouraging the gifted, the money is pumped into classes for those that are either unwilling or unable to learn. It sounds hard, but some people are just plain dumb. So be it. That money goes poof because you can't make a horse drink, no matter how much water you drown it in.

Second, schools dumb down tests to meet the requirements to get more money. Now, how does that improve learning? Sure, all your students get straight As, wonderful, but that doesn't give them anything in the long run when this A just means that he can do basic math because advanced subjects are brushed aside since teaching (and testing) them would lower the all precious average score.

I had the chance to look at the math of an average, non-private high school final class. Personally, I was appalled. The things this test asked for are fitting for junior high at best, when you compare it to Europe. Basic trignometry was the most complex subject, the whole thing was completely devoid of any integration/differentiation, probability calculation or systems of equation with more than two variables. It was completely spoonfed, not a single question dealt with creating your own equations from a text instruction.

Now how does this prepare you for anything advanced, or any real life applications? Which is, IMO, the primary goal of high school education.

I can't talk about other subjects, but in math at least the US school system fails miserably.

Re:It's not money. It's distribution that fails.

[xaxa]

Is high school final age 18 or 16? I think even the UK's students at 16 have an exam with probability and basic trig, but not the others. (The UK is probably the worst of these wonderful European exams.)

See for yourself: this and this are the GCSE (age 16) maths specimen papers. They're "higher tier", which means you can get grade A*-D (do worse and you fail). "Foundation tier" papers are graded C-G.

Has anyone got a link to the maths exam American 16 year olds would take?

Re:It's not money. It's distribution that fails.

[xaxa]

For completeness, here are the maths exams taken by 18-year-olds in England and Wales (if they choose to take maths at all, since it's optional after age 16! They can also choose to only take it for one year, in which case they do the first two papers in that PDF at age 17).

Re:It's not money. It's distribution that fails.

[entropiccanuck]

It was completely spoonfed, not a single question dealt with creating your own equations from a text instruction. I'm starting next year as a math teacher, and was recently given a math book used by high school freshmen (~13 yrs old.) All the word problems were of the form: "Some situation is modeled by the equation y = 2x + b. If x = 10 and b is 2, what is the value of y?"
Your word, "appalled," is fitting.

Re:It's not money. It's distribution that fails.

[entropiccanuck]

Just to clarify, the equations differed, but were always explicitly given.

Re:It's not money. It's distribution that fails.

[Opportunist]

Now what kind of text problem is that? But yes, that was pretty much what I meant.

Now, I wouldn't complain if this was an example to show how to approach the problem. But this actually is the problem offered. How does this prepare you for any kind of real life problem? No matter whether you plan to study or have to apply it. When you go into bricklaying and the instruction tells you to mix x parts of whatever with y parts of whatever else and z parts of water and you need 10 pounds of mortar, that's already a real life example of a problem that a bricklayer (note: Nobody that has to go into high sophisticated math, a real life person working with his own hands) has.

But then again, I'm fairly sure they don't even need to know that anymore. You have standardized bags of premade mortar mix where you have to add a specific amount of water and you go. Our whole life has been dumbed down to a point where you are not even required anymore to have the basic skills that used to make up your profession in the past.

But with a lack of knowledge comes dependency. If you are no longer able to mix your own mortar from sand, cement and water, you have to buy that premade mix. And basically that's what corporations want. If you could do the basic things yourself, they couldn't sell them to you for a lot of money, more money than their product is worth.

So our kids are kept artificially dumb. Because the best consumer is a dumb consumer. If you don't know how to make your own ringtones, you have to buy them. If you don't know how to write your own software, you have to buy it. If you don't know how to grind meat, you have to buy the trash meat hamburger patties. If you're kept dumb, you literally have to accept being offered shit and buy it, since you have no option to just do it yourself.

Hey, Taco!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Preview button is very erratic.

Americans are good enough.. just not CHEAP enough.

[plasmacutter]

The CS program attendance plummeted at the same time salaries and job security in the field plummeted.

The talent is there, they don't want to work in a field where companies don't want to reward them.

They can't get americans to buy their crappy pay, benefits, and job security, so they want to farm out slave labor they can have deported at their whim.

YR Online section?

[xaxa]

How is this online? (Section: YRO.) Shouldn't it be in Politics?

Re:YR Online section?

[BCSWowbagger]

Was about to ask the same thing. What's more: how is this News For Nerds? Or even Stuff That Matters?

Re:YR Online section?

[felipekk]

Just because you don't agree, it doesn't mean it isn't. As you can see by the number of comments and tone of them (few "Funny"), this is relevant news for most of the crowd here.

Exactly!

[Hankapobe]

The CS program attendance plummeted at the same time salaries and job security in the field plummeted.

Even then, IBM can't find enough great IT folks out of the bunch left? I mean, now the folks attending are going to be the ones that really want to be there: they're not chasing the $$$. So, they'd be even better!

Note the weasel words she uses - there are not enough great computer-science graduates,...

She never defines "enough" or "great", only that IBM has to go overseas for "enough great" IT folks.

People like her really piss me off. Just wait. IBM will figure out that they need to outsource their HR folks so that they can recruit the locals.

Working for 3 months in tourist visa

[Anonymous Coward]

The newest trick for offshore companies: person get a 3 months USA tourist visa, travel to USA, work 3 months, transfer the knowledge, continue working from offshore.

Just another way of taking the job of americans...

Re:Working for 3 months in tourist visa

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't work on a tourist visa. Tourist visa is for... tourists!

The War on the American Middle Class continues una

[guerillaontologist]

The War on the American Middle Class continues unabated.

A Travesty! Our beliefs are being diluted!

[GISGEOLOGYGEEK]

I'm pretty shocked by this.

First in how the US government actually wants to keep highly skilled and educated people in the USA where it's just going to dilute the pervasive ignorance and fear that have made Americans the dangerous fools they are today.

Second i'm shocked that any highly skilled and educated people are even going to the USA, It's certainly far fewer than the huge numbers that are leaving the USA to escape the repression of the 'patriot' act and the destruction of the US Constitution.

I think this is all just a desparate attempt to lure a few more of these important people to the USA that would have otherwise moved to enlightened / non-fundamentalist / Constitution respecting / un-feared countries ... countries where we don't allow banks to intentionally commit trillion dollar bank frauds for short term gains, where we don't invade countries over WMD's that we know damn well don't exist, where we question our leaders instead of blindly waving our flag he tells the world 'youre either with us, or against us'.

Do I have to say it? ... yes, countries like Canada.

Re:A Travesty! Our beliefs are being diluted!

[Eli Gottlieb]

Second i'm shocked that any highly skilled and educated people are even going to the USA, It's certainly far fewer than the huge numbers that are leaving the USA to escape the repression of the 'patriot' act and the destruction of the US Constitution. Can you show any evidence of a large-scale emigration or expatriation from the United States in the past 8-10 years?

Re:A Travesty! Our beliefs are being diluted!

[GISGEOLOGYGEEK]

Can you re-read my post?

I'm talking about highly skilled and educated people, you won't see their movements in the large-scale movement of uneducated labourers ... but while you get your lawn cut for cheap by some illegal alien, you might not notice the scientists at your local university leaving after having their tenures threatened for daring to excersize free speech, or for reading the wrong books from the university library ... as tracked by your 'patriot' act.

I personally know of professors from educational institutions in California that left for Canada due to such repression.

The problem is even worse

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a shortage of H1Bs in the first place because a lot of Indian consulting companies (bodyshoppers) get a majority of the H1B quota and the students with OPTs are left in the lurch (aka an OPT is pretty much worthless now).

How do these companies get away with it? This is how it works. You are:

1. Married to an H1B holder and can legally work. The bodyshopper gets you an H1B visa and tells the INS that *you* are employed by this consultant but you do not get any pay till the consultant gets a contract from some company and you start earning money. Yes, this is illegal but 99% of the consulting companies in the US do this. The employee bears it since this is the only way to get valid status.

2. Are outside the US and want to come in to work but do not have a job. However there is this Indian consulting firm and read the rest of point 1 above

3. In the US but have been laid off and you cannot have a job without a visa and vice-versa. Read rest of point 1 above

4. Are a student about to graduate with an OPT which is worthless (1 year duration) since the consulting companies with their "fake jobs" have gobbled up all the visas.

OPT with it's 1 year duration used to mean something but with these blood-sucking consulting companies in the US, the students either hope to get a job in a good company out of school and pray the company processes H1 after the OPT duration is up. Prolonging the OPT is a fix for the students who come to the US and rough it out unlike the body-shopper import employees.

Although I said Indian consulting companies, the evil trend isn't restricted to Indian companies. Volt Computer Services (largest supplier of contractors to Microsoft, most companies in Bellevue/Seattle, etc etc) does this. I myself was a victim of Volt hiring me during my OPT period, using me for the duration of my OPT (MS paid Volt 60$ per hour and Volt paid me 20$ per hour) and then when my OPT was up, they said "Adios amigo". They contacted INS and said I was no longer their employee, gave me a ticket voucher for 1000$ and said buhbye. I had to find an Indian consultant willing to take me in so he could suck more blood from me.

It's all a fucking dirty business. I have to post this anonymously since uhhh one of employers still gets contractors from Volt. I however got into my current company through another consulting company which will remain unnamed; however Volt made sure they became the near exclusive supplier of contractors.

Re:The problem is even worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed:

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=570415&cid=23623009

idiocy

[nguy]

The most hurt by this will be Americans. These graduates won't disappear from the face of the earth, they'll just be working for Microsoft, IBM, Google, etc. in Europe, India, and China, make their inventions there, start startups there, and pay their taxes there. No US job will be saved by this action; to the contrary, as more and more R&D moves overseas, the supporting jobs will move with them.

Of course, if the H-1b foes persist in this, it also completely screws people who have lived in the US for many years. But they aren't Americans, so who cares, right?

Re:idiocy

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

How f*cking hard is it to understand? I just to [u]contribute to the local economy[/u]!!!
Another thing to consider : My research is being funded by the NSF. Who funds them? ;)

Re:idiocy

[Tablizer]

These graduates won't disappear from the face of the earth, they'll just be working for Microsoft, IBM, Google, etc. in Europe, India, and China, make their inventions there, start startups there, and pay their taxes there. No US job will be saved by this action; to the contrary, as more and more R&D moves overseas, the supporting jobs will move with them.

No, because most managers and customers are more comfortable seeing the workers face-to-face. They are not like us techies who can do fine via email and remote collaboration tools such as wiki's; they are used to faces, and pay a premium for that.

Re:idiocy

[nguy]

No, because most managers and customers are more comfortable seeing the workers face-to-face.

There are many more customers outside the US than inside, so as far as customers are concerned, these jobs already should be moving out of the US.

As for R&D, R&D labs are usually run by people at the VP level. They do get face time with all the people under them--in the country where they live and where the lab is located. The lab managers themselves do a lot of traveling to report to top management. It really works, and works well. Companies have been doing it for decades.

The real reason these companies try to get US visas for prospective employees is because it's a perk: people still like to come to the US, and companies like to accommodate them in a competitive market. But if they can only hire Amraj in their Bangalore R&D center because the US government refuses to give him a visa, Amraj may be unhappy, but the company doesn't care that much.

Re:idiocy

[Tablizer]

There are many more customers outside the US than inside, so as far as customers are concerned, these jobs already should be moving out of the US.

Yes, but the US is more automated than most 3rd world countries. Labor is cheap enough there that many automated processes are done by hand in the 3rd world, and they don't have the infrastructure in place to use lots of the higher-end software thats used in the US.

Re:idiocy

[nguy]

Yes, but the US is more automated than most 3rd world countries. Labor is cheap enough there that many automated processes are done by hand in the 3rd world

What does any of that have to do with hiring R&D staff on H-1b visas?

and they don't have the infrastructure in place to use lots of the higher-end software thats used in the US.

You really don't know much about software or the rest of the world, do you?

Re:idiocy

[Tablizer]

What does any of that have to do with hiring R&D staff on H-1b visas?

The need for software is smaller "back home" (for reasons already given) such that your argument that they can be closer to local customers by going back home does not hold up. Local projects are less likely to use the services of US-centric companies anyhow such that they wouldn't otherwise be likely to go to the US on a visa.

You really don't know much about software or the rest of the world, do you?

Is this suppose to be your counter argument? If so, its damned rude.

Re:idiocy

[megaditto]

This might be news to Microsoft since 3/4th of their sales are to foreign customers.

Re:idiocy

[Tablizer]

This might be news to Microsoft since 3/4th of their sales are to foreign customers.

Yes, but the US is only about 6% of the world population. Thus, if we consume 25% of their software, then there is clearly a higher density of usage in the US, which reinforces my point.

Re:idiocy

[megaditto]

Would you still insist that Microsoft hire 100% American, given that 96% of smart people and 75% of their customers are foreign-born?

Re:idiocy

[nguy]

The need for software is smaller "back home" (for reasons already given) such that your argument that they can be closer to local customers by going back home does not hold up.

Not only is the US less automated than many other developed nations, automation is only a tiny part of the software market.

Is this suppose to be your counter argument? If so, its damned rude.

Not as rude as wrecking people's lives by arguing against sensible immigration policies with bad data and uninformed pseudo-arguments, like you do.

Re:idiocy

[Tablizer]

Would you still insist that Microsoft hire 100% American, given that 96% of smart people and 75% of their customers are foreign-born?

No. But I personally know that Microsoft lies about their reasons for H1B's and is mostly interested in finding ways to be picky about talent on the cheap.

American Citizens can go here

[guerillaontologist]

American Citizens can go here Use Pro H1-B resources to fight against the H1-B Just get rid of the standard title and boiler plate and replace it with the truth - that American Companies should hire Americans and that the H1-B visa is CRAP!

Doesn't matter - few companies signed up for this

[kaptain80]

So... my girlfriend was here on the one-year OPT (Optional Practical Training) extension to the F-1 student visa. When the announcement was made about extending it from 12 months to 29 months, I was ecstatic.

However.

It turns out, after she consulted her company's HR -- who subsequently consulted her company's corporate lawyers -- her company refused to sign up for the free eVerify system that was required for the extension. As I understand it, this extension is available only to STEM students whose host companies sign up for this eVerify system, not just to all of them. Apparently, her corporate lawyers noticed that if they sign up for eVerify, they were also signing up for DHS to come into their facilities any time they wanted to without notice and audit them. Corporate lawyers said "pass."

I'm sure I have the story slightly mangled, but I think the gist of it is solid: the OPT extension was a farce. Her old university's international programs coordinator said that less than 1% of the students eligible for this would get it 'cos their companies wouldn't sign up for eVerify. Surely a fictitious statistic, 1%, but the point is that it's absurdly low.

And yes, before you ask, she is hot.

About time

[kilodelta]

I'm happy this is finally happening. Why the hell should we educate them and then let them work for less money and displace others of us who deserve those positions. Put it this way, I know Oracle loves the H1B program. When the courts in RI put everything under SCT Banner the entire implementation staff was from India and here on H1B visas.

Re:About time

[nguy]

I'm happy this is finally happening. Why the hell should we educate them and then let them work for less money and displace others of us who deserve those positions.

You know, that remark is so stupid that I'm not sure you can even be serious, but I suppose there must be a reason you have trouble finding a good job. So, let's walk through this.

Why do you think the US (usually foundations and universities) are investing $500k in the education of these students? It's because they can't find Americans willing and capable of getting educated in these areas. So, after all that money is invested, you just want to send them away. What do you think they are going to do with their $500k education in India or China or Europe or Canada? Plant rice? Perform folk dances for American tourists? Work as bartenders?

I'll tell you what they'll do: they'll work for Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, Google, whatever. Or they'll start their own startups and compete with US companies.

You won't get a job out of this. If Oracle doesn't want you now, refusing an H-1b visa to the candidate they want won't make them hire you. Instead, they'll just move that job and all the required support staff to countries where they can hire the candidates they want to hire.

Re:About time

[cats2ndlife]

Fact:
H1-B workers in this country get paid the same as US-citizens. Companies pay by merit, not country of origin.

Re:About time

[joocemann]

I agree. As a student in a public university, I find it APPALLING that the concept of public funding is set aside for the ease of cash flow; by this I mean that schools like UC Berkeley will accept a foreign student over a California Citizen for any number of reasons, while failing to acknowledge that every single person in California deserves the right to admittance and education before ANY FOREIGN student. Why? Public funding, public establishment, public duty. Our seats in educational facilities are limited, and many are sold to high-paying foreigners when our own citizens cannot get in. THIS IS WRONG. Private institutions can do what they wish, thats their right. But public institutions need a slap in the face so they can be reminded of what duties they *ought* serve as product of American public resources. We need more engineers and doctors in America, so why is it that over 50% of our engineering or physics graduate students are not citizens? This is sick, and so is this concept of allowing these foreign citizens to work for short periods. They aren't American; and if they want to, they can stand in line and swear in like all the other legal immigrants we now call FELLOW CITIZENS.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

First you say this:
What do you think they are going to do with their $500k education in India or China or Europe or Canada? Plant rice? Perform folk dances for American tourists? Work as bartenders?

Then you say this:
Or they'll start their own startups and compete with US companies.

So it appears that what you're saying is that India, China, etc. are such pathetic failures that their best and brightest (bartenders?) want to abandon their home country as quickly as possible ? Or are you saying that you are terrified of competition from foreign (non-US) companies ?

Re:About time

[joocemann]

Not true. There are thousands of Americans who would love the opportunity to learn and develop skills; more than there are foreign students of your example. If you're American, don't forget which hand raised and fed you, and if you're not, then please don't speak of things you don't know. If you have some form of evidence to back your 'can't find.... willing and capable', please do, but as an American who is willing, capable, and succeeding, I have seen PLENTY of my fellow citizens who are willing and capable, but not admitted.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

Fact:
H1-B workers in this country get paid the same as US-citizens. Companies pay by merit, not country of origin.

Bwahahahahahahah!

Oh man.. good one. You must work at one of those weird companies, that is probably imaginary, where the employer doesn't seek to get the cheapest employee with a reasonable skill set.

Working at ImaginarySoft must be nice. How are the company hovercars? Good gas mileage?

H1B visas legally require that you pay a prevailing wage, and of course there is no enforcement of this whatsoever, and I speak from experience. I know several H1Bs that make nowhere close to the prevailing wage for a S/W engineer. ICE might check if the immigrant in question raises a stink or tries to apply for a green card when their H1B is reviewed. Otherwise they don't give a shit. Companies know they aren't going to be caught, and individual managers know who is going to be kicked out of the country (in theory anyways) if they are fired.

Re:About time

[Eli Gottlieb]

schools like UC Berkeley will accept a foreign student over a California Citizen for any number of reasons, while failing to acknowledge that every single person in California deserves the right to admittance and education before ANY FOREIGN student. And I find it absolutely appalling that UC Berkeley in particular, one of the top research institutions in the country, so restricts its admissions to California citizens. I'm not a foreigner, I'm born-and-bred American. I just wasn't "fortunate" enough to graduate high school in California, so if I wanted to attend the cheapest of the #1 institutions in my field (Computer Science,), I wouldn't just have to pay some of the highest out-of-state tuition in the country, I would have to jump through a circus's worth of fucking hoops just to win acceptance.

People claim not enough students are taking certain subjects, well maybe it would help if I had an equal chance of getting into the best schools regardless of where in the country I happen to live.

We need more engineers and doctors in America, so why is it that over 50% of our engineering or physics graduate students are not citizens? Honestly? Because since even before all those foreigners were brought in, an American career scientist has been underpaid, overworked, and overly indebted compared to an American just as intelligent and hard-working who went into another profession. At this point, only immigrants go to grad school because grad school only makes economic sense for immigrants. The few Americans in grad school for science are the ones who so love their field that they'll kill their own career for it.

Re:About time

[joocemann]

You've made 2 very good points. Imagine if all the chinese and japanese students at Berkeley were ousted, I think there might be an american out there that would take it (you, for example?). And you're right. Unless they are engineering weapons, our country doesn't put any value in the fields of technology and science; at least nothing relatively impressive compared to all the wasteful spending on killing crap. The appreciation and pay for these fields are weak and the lawlessness of corporate America only exacerbates the divide.

Re:About time

[Eli Gottlieb]

First of all, I'd gladly take a transfer to Berkeley. The sole reason I ended up not applying to Berkeley and/or Stanford as reach schools last year (I'm a rising college sophomore in CS) is that they have larger applications than other schools (including CMU, MIT and Cornell) that needed to be completed a month or two earlier than those for other schools. East Coast schools took the Common Application with an early-January deadline. Berkeley and Stanford take custom, extended applications with, respectively, November and early December deadlines.

I dare say that, just besides booting all the foreigners from Berkeley, the whole UC system is designed to keep non-Californians out. Should I actually win transfer admission (should I put Berkeley on my transfer-application list*), I'd have to pay tuition comparable to that at Harvard or MIT, but without the Harvard or MIT endowments to sponsor scholarships. Being an Ashkenazi Jewish male doesn't help me win scholarships to any subject other than Jewish Studies, either (because we count as white and male to anyone other than a Judaic Studies department, useless bastards).

The whole thing's kind of stupid. Back East we don't expect public schools to be the best, but out on the West Coast they generally are the oldest and most prestigious universities.

* -- I probably won't apply to Berkeley, and not just because of the Californian government's xenophobia. My current school (UMass Amherst) isn't actually at all that bad (it was great considering my shit performance in freshman and sophomore years of high school), but I've had an itch to live somewhere genuinely urban for years now. So I'm just going to apply for transfer to any university ranked higher than UMass for its CS research (UMass is #20 at the moment) and located in a real city. So the current list includes: MIT (Cambridge-Boston), UWashington (Seattle), UTexas at Austin (Austin), and Princeton (if Princeton, NJ has train/bus access to NYC).

Now that I think of it, would you describe Berkeley as a Real City? This kind of thing doesn't just matter for amusement purposes, it's a lot easier to find co-ops and internships when you're in a city that the company can actually send recruiters/interviewers to, ideally from a local office.

Unless they are engineering weapons, our country doesn't put any value in the fields of technology and science; at least nothing relatively impressive compared to all the wasteful spending on killing crap. The appreciation and pay for these fields are weak and the lawlessness of corporate America only exacerbates the divide. This is so incredibly true that my current plan for starting a good career after college (especially since I *WANT* to work in academic research or corporate R&D) is to make aliyah and work in the Israeli tech sector.

Hello American brain-drain! Hello collapse of American civilization!

Re:About time

[nguy]

Not true. There are thousands of Americans who would love the opportunity to learn and develop skills; more than there are foreign students of your example.

Evidently, not in computer science, because computer science enrollment has dropped to half what it was a decade ago, across all colleges. And without foreign students in computer science, the situation would be even more dire.

No, what these people want is the high paying jobs without putting in the 10-15 years of study and training necessary to get them.

If you're American, don't forget which hand raised and fed you

My parents raised and fed me, and they paid for my college.

As for the foreign students who came here, foreign governments usually paid for their high school and college education before US colleges came along cherry-picking the best and brightest. Foreign governments, in fact, have good cause to complain about this. As far as India, China, and Europe are concerned, limiting H-1b programs is the best thing for their economies the US can do.

and if you're not, then please don't speak of things you don't know.

Well, you obviously do "speak of things you don't know".

Re:About time

[nguy]

So it appears that what you're saying is that India, China, etc. are such pathetic failures that their best and brightest (bartenders?) want to abandon their home country as quickly as possible ?

You seem to have trouble with reading comprehension, so let me spell it out in straightforward terms for you: these people are good, and they are going to work in high tech no matter whether they are going to be admitted to the US or not. They are going to compete with you for a job whether or not they get an H-1b (and by the looks of it, they're going to win). If they do so from overseas, all the better for them: their costs are going to be lower. They want to come to the US because they like it here, not because it's the only way to get a job.

Or are you saying that you are terrified of competition from foreign (non-US) companies ?

I'm not "terrified". I work for a global company. It makes little difference to the company where they hire me or any of my co-workers. We apply for H-1b visas for people because they want to work at a US location. But evidently, you are terrified, because you want to keep these people out of the US in order to increase your chances of landing a job. Well, it won't work.

Re:About time

[metlin]

I have seen PLENTY of my fellow citizens who are willing and capable, but not admitted.

You know, I remember sitting in a graduate class in physics, and there were all of 2 Americans in the class - the rest of the class was European (mostly East; a couple of Germans), Asian or Indian. In a class of 21 students, 19 were non-Americans.

Similarly, my roommate (he was Spanish) was doing his PhD (in CS with graphics specialization, no less). I could not help notice that there was ONE American doing a PhD, while everyone from the professors, to the research scientists, to the students, were predominantly non-Americans.

Please do not tell me that this is discrimination against Americans because it is harder for non-Americans than for Americans to make it. The percentage of people who are willing to stick it through graduate school, or who are willing to get a good education, seems rather low in the US. And it is not funding, either. There were plenty of research assistantships available; just not enough takers.

If anything, a lot of them were from the NSF and were for American nationals only, and yet, there were little to no takers.

So, please stop blaming it on lack of opportunity. There is plenty available, for those that truly want it, and are willing to do what it takes.

Re:About time

[Kartoffel]

This is so incredibly true that my current plan for starting a good career after college (especially since I *WANT* to work in academic research or corporate R&D) is to make aliyah and work in the Israeli tech sector.

That might actually work out very well. Play to your strengths! E.g. if you're Californian, you may as well apply at Berkeley. If you're $FOO, don't be too proud to accept a $FOO scholarship. Heck, my Irish-American freshman year roommate had a Puerto Rican scholarship simply because his parents happened to on vacation there when he was born.

Not sure what your particular field is, but I remember seeing lots of Israeli representation at the last couple AUVSI conventions. For you as a new Israeli, though, you'd probably be limited to employment in a non-defense related jobs at first. When it comes to unmanned robotic systems, most anything that's not bolted to a factory floor is a military application.

Re:About time

[joocemann]

Your parents didn't build the roads, the parks, the defense, the firestations, the communications infrastructure, etc, did they? Furthermore, foreign-persons did not PUT IN what a citizen has. Example? Did these foreign people pick up random litter here through their lives? Or help their American peers understand difficult concepts while growing up? Did they join the boyscouts and do fundraisers? Did they hold the door open for elderly people? Did they get a job at 16 and pay taxes while developing as a person here? No They didn't. They showed up at the age of 20 (or so) and started sucking off the fruits of American public efforts. It isn't taxes, or your where you were born that makes you an american. And when i say "raised and fed", it is not such a literal term of your parents obligations, but rather something so greatly important as your community and culture; yet you obviously fail to respect where you come from. Open your eyes, without America, you would not be where you are, and without serving America at a citizen, one does not deserve to block a Citizens opportunity by stealing his seat in school.

Re:About time

[SiChemist]

The REASON that computer science enrollment has dropped is that students can see that wages and job security in that field have dropped precipitously. They choose another, more lucrative field to study. The depression of wages and job security is due to the glut of H1B holders who are willing to work below fair market value. H1B is the CAUSE of the problem, not the cure.

Re:About time

[Eli Gottlieb]

Lots of other conferences have more and more Israeli attendance nowadays. I remember seeing a poster in our CS department detailing a conference to which more Israelis were going than people from our (American) department. You could tell because two people from HUJ and one from Technion were on the steering committee.

Though while I'm in college, I haven't actually found any $FOO scholarships for $FOO == "Jewish in a technological field", or even just $FOO == "Jewish in general". It's a really stupid thing that probably drives thousands of young American Jews away from being "actively" Jewish, but apparently as far as organized American Jewishness is concerned, the only kind of Jew that deserves a scholarship is the kind in Judaic Studies or Yeshivah. The notion that we might have to emphasize science if we want to maintain our overrepresentation in All Good Things apparently hasn't occurred to these people.

Re:About time

[nguy]

Furthermore, foreign-persons did not PUT IN what a citizen has.

They also didn't TAKE OUT what a citizen has taken out. In then end, if someone works in the US for five years and pays their taxes, they have paid their fair share.

And if the US hires the best and brightest after those people were educated abroad, the US is getting than its fair share. Ask Europe, Canada, or developing nations: they would very much prefer if the US got rid of the H-1b visas and skilled green cards, because it is robbing them of the elite they need to become more competitive.

Open your eyes, without America, you would not be where you are, and without serving America at a citizen, one does not deserve to block a Citizens opportunity by stealing his seat in school.

Your mistake is that you think that America owns those "seats", either in schools or corporations. But these opportunities aren't created by the US, these opportunities are created by a mobile elite of technologists and business people. Look at who worked on the Manhattan project, who started the space program, who has been building Silicon Valley; a large part of that has been foreigners.

If the US pisses off those people enough, they are going to move somewhere else. And these days, there are plenty of other nice places around the world, places with good school systems, stable currencies, and far fewer enemies than the US.

H-1b's are a raw deal... for everybody other than the US. And people like you want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Re:About time

[/dev/trash]

So everyone of us that have been affected by a company hiring an H1B applicant are just lazy no good idiots who are pissed off because mega corps are in no way getting a cheaper employee out of the deal? We're just all bitter? Is that it?

Re:About time

[joocemann]

Nothing you said makes any sense in the context of foreign people building America other than them costing less to pay. All that you said can and still would have been done, but merely at a higher cost reinvesting into our local persons, aka citizens. H1-B visas are a way for big business to shaft the very people that made their business possible and profitable in exchange for, for lack of a better term, CHEAP LABOR. The American Standard of living and cost is much higher, and thus true citizens require larger pay and benefits; in contrast, a korean student, funded by his government, can come here, learn in a seat paid for by US Citizen tax dollars (Public Universities), and accept a job for US-relative LOW PAY, funneling cash back to his homeland. Now, please, with all due respect, go home and make your own greatness; stop pillaging the exploits of our corrupt government that allows big business to sell out our popular body.

Re:About time

[nguy]

All that you said can and still would have been done, but merely at a higher cost reinvesting into our local persons, aka citizens.

If people didn't major in science or engineering in college and grad school, you can't turn them into scientists or engineers anymore by investing in them.

shaft the very people that made their business possible

What made their business possible is that they could hire the people they need to get the job done, and you want to deny them that.

in contrast, a korean student, funded by his government, can come here, learn in a seat paid for by US Citizen tax dollars (Public Universities), and accept a job for US-relative LOW PAY, funneling cash back to his homeland.

Even if that Korean student were paid lower (he likely isn't), he could go back to Korea and be paid even lower to do the same work for the same companies.

stop pillaging the exploits of our corrupt government that allows big business to sell out our popular body.

"Pillaging the exploits"? Do you even know what those words mean? Just based on your writing sample (and attitude), I don't think a company like IBM or Microsoft would hire you into any kind of technical position.

In any case, if you send the people to Korea, you're sending the companies with them. The US can become the Delaware of the world: a place where companies register but where no real work is done. Is that what you want?

Re:About time

[joocemann]

We have plenty of American students registering and studying in science and engineering; I am one of them. But what we do have, as well, is a good amount of willing persons being denied seats in those universities so that foreign students can get in; if it were a private university I would not be concerned, but these are public universities, emplaced and funded by our citizens. An American can get the job done just as well, but would require fair pay; something a foreign student is willing to sacrifice in exchange for the ability to make more money here relative to his/her homeland. Thanks for attacking my writing sample instead of my argument about corporations and foreign persons pillaging our political exploits. The point still stands, and so does the corruption within our government that allows such activity. And no, I don't want to be hired by IBM or Microsoft, I'm a pre-med student. I don't care if the companies go to Korea, that would be fine by me. It isn't my interest how these companies need to establish themselves, nor is their profitability my interest. What is of interest is the disassociation of obligation to that which is nationally funded and produced, the destruction of the national values that gave us our greatness, and the ability of big-money to subvert our political processes and establish methods like these for capital interests. What you are failing to see is that a public entity of the US is directly obliged to serve US Citizens; that is what public means. When publicly owned and developed entities, such as universities, are pushed (via corruption) to allow businesses to sell-out the american workforce and student body for cheap imports, it raises concern.

lies and more lies

[nguy]

H1B has turned into a huge scam for corporate slavery. Employers know they can get cheap labor and throw them away when done.

That's a big stinking lie because H-1b visas have been portable for several years now; H-1b employees can simply change jobs.

take them in and give them Green Cards or

That's a nice theory, except that immigration foes have already made that impossible; the green card process has become so lengthy and involved that the way to get an employment based green card is to come in on an H-1b, immediately apply for a green card, and hope everything works out in time.

Re:lies and more lies

[PacoSuarez]

H1B has turned into a huge scam for corporate slavery. Employers know they can get cheap labor and throw them away when done. That's a big stinking lie because H-1b visas have been portable for several years now; H-1b employees can simply change jobs. When you have an H-1B you can't "simply" change jobs. You have to find another company that is willing to sponsor you. Besides, if you decide to leave your current job, you have one month to find another employer that sponsors you or you have to leave the country.

Re:lies and more lies

[nguy]

When you have an H-1B you can't "simply" change jobs. You have to find another company that is willing to sponsor you.

That "sponsorship" consists of filing a form. There's no obligation or financial risk to the company. BFD. Stop scaring people with such misleading language.

Besides, if you decide to leave your current job, you have one month to find another employer that sponsors you or you have to leave the country.

You don't leave your current job until you've found another one, otherwise, you're unemployed, and that's bad news even for US citizens with mortgages or children.

Once you're unemployed, you're obviously not a corporate slave anymore. If you're unemployed for too long, you have to leave the country (seems reasonable to me). In real life, the period ends up being much longer than one month.

Re:lies and more lies

[Anonymous Coward]

Believe it or not, many H1B holders do not that their Visa is portable.

Those who do know are simply afraid of changing their jobs. There are several reasons for that. Many are Indians who come to the US with very little savings to fall back on. Add to that the fear of the unknown and a cultural attitude that "this is good enough". For may people, a $45-50K salary is a big jump from what they made in India.

Another BIG reason is that Indian and other small companies make them sign a multiple year "Bond" (more binding than a non-compete, literally a Slave agreement). Many people I have met simply do not know that such a Bond is completely useless in the US (though a regular non-compete may be valid) Due to various combination's of above reasons, they are simply afraid to switch employers.

It is NEVER the Employer who is making money off the H1 holder. It is the recruiting companies, contracting and sub-contracting companies and maybe some individuals in the HR department who mint money.

If the final Employer is paying 100$/hour for the employee, I have seen cases where the H1 holder gets 25$, while the brokers milk 75$.

To give an analogy, imagine your Real Estate agent taking a big chunk of the rent/mortgage every month for as long as you stay in the house.

Re:lies and more lies

[rachit]

That's a big stinking lie because H-1b visas have been portable for several years now; H-1b employees can simply change jobs. Not very simple, *especially* if you are in the middle of the process of getting a green card, then you are really tied to the employer until you are at your final stages. In general, most people don't want to mess with their employment, because god knows what mess ups can happen with the INS.

Re:lies and more lies

[baggins2001]

How does this fit into your scenario. H-1B visa holder looks for another job? Current employer finds out and fires him immediately. This is reality.

Re:lies and more lies

[magus_melchior]

It's especially true with the INS under DHS under the Bush administration. There is a hard-to-find clause in recent immigration law that grants the INS broad authority to kick a non-citizen out. If a green card candidate is disqualified for a questionable reason (e.g., the candidate was recently married to a citizen, but is now widowed) and fights them, the INS can invoke this trump card, even if a court orders them to let the candidate stay. There is no recourse, no appeal, and no oversight. Because of the rather obvious potential for blatant abuse, the INS so far only uses this when all other avenues are exhausted, and as such has gone unnoticed with the possible exception of public radio.

Re:lies and more lies

[nguy]

How does this fit into your scenario. H-1B visa holder looks for another job? Current employer finds out and fires him immediately. This is reality.


Guy with mortgage looks for another job. Current employer finds out and fires him immediately. This is reality, too.

Guy with family and college kids looks for another job. Current employer finds out and fires him immediately. This is reality, too.

So, an H-1b makes you no more of a slave than the average American worker. Which is the point.

Re:lies and more lies

[baggins2001]

The H-!B visa holder has 30 days to find a job here.
The others supposedly get to stay here.

Re:lies and more lies

[Anonymous Coward]

The H-!B visa holder has 30 days to find a job here. The others supposedly get to stay here.

You know, you're really grasping at straws here.

You are trying to argue that H-1b workers are slave labor because sometimes (rarely) the employer accidentally learns that their employee has been looking for a new job and fires them.

That just makes no sense whatsoever. Why would the employer fire a supposedly ultra-cheap H-1b employee when getting a new one is going to cost them lots of money, time, and retraining? Any week or month they can squeeze out of that cheap employee is money saved.

And how is having to leave the country any worse than having your home life wrecked or losing your home?

With reasoning skills like yours, it's no wonder H-1b workers are eating your lunch.

Re:lies and more lies

[baggins2001]

You are trying to argue that H-1b workers are slave labor because sometimes (rarely) the employer accidentally learns that their employee has been looking for a new job and fires them.

Sorry, I never equated H-1B with slave labor.

That just makes no sense whatsoever. Why would the employer fire a supposedly ultra-cheap H-1b employee when getting a new one is going to cost them lots of money, time, and retraining? Any week or month they can squeeze out of that cheap employee is money saved.

Makes no sense to you, but it apparently made sense to them.
But since you started out with the false assumption that I had equated H-1B with slave labor...........

And how is having to leave the country any worse than having your home life wrecked or losing your home?
This has to be one of the most sophical statements I have ever seen. No wonder you posted anonymously.
If losing job = life wrecked and/or losing home.
Then wouldn't it be worse
(losing job) and having the added burden of packing up to leave the country.
(life wrecked and/or losing home) and having the added burden of packing up to leave the country.

With reasoning skills like yours, it's no wonder H-1b workers are eating your lunch.

After reading your post, you've convinced me. There might be room for at least one more H-1B visa holder.

Re:Americans are good enough.. just not CHEAP enou

[p0tat03]

How is this insightful? I know plenty of fellow graduates (Canadians) who are making $100K+ fresh out of college. That's not "crappy pay" by any measure I think (these are undergrad degrees, not masters or PhD). Their benefits are also among the best - I know plenty of H1B people at MS who are probably getting *better* medical insurance than they had in Canada! Their vacation and stock plans aren't too shabby either.

I have observed first-hand the shortage of tech workers. We're talking top-tier tech workers, not VB script monkeys. There are PLENTY of great grads coming out of American schools - but it is *not enough* to fuel what I see is a surging demand for skilled coders.

So stop twisting IBM's words. It's absolutely true - there are plenty of talented students coming out of American schools - but not enough. Just because there aren't enough MIT grads to go around doesn't mean IBM needs to start hiring community college code monkeys.

Re:Don't worry, it's just jobs Americans don't wan

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to troll but after seeing Chinese students protesting against the Lama in Univ Washington and picking up fights in other countries against the local students... I think I'll be happy to miss out on some of those brainwashed chinese kids.

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[account_deleted]

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Good summary - Now what about the 12 Rs?

[Peter (Professor) Fo]

1. Reading
2. Riting
3. Rithmetic
4. Relationships
5. Reviewing
6. Responsibility
7. Reflecting
8. Researching
9. Reporting
10. Reasoning
11. Retention
12. Resolve

If I want to employ somebody at any level I need every single one of these.

By the way: Now you know the objectives you can ask how they are/should be achieved. For example you can't develop Responsibility without trust...And you have to reward it. So Do you ever see that on TV? Do parents or teachers know how to do it? - - - Discuss.

Re:Good summary - Now what about the 12 Rs?

[Ex-MislTech]

1. Reading
      2. Riting
      3. Rithmetic
      4. Relationships
      5. Reviewing
      6. Responsibility
      7. Reflecting
      8. Researching
      9. Reporting
    10. Reasoning
    11. Retention
    12. Resolve


#11 is a 2 way street in regards to the fact that we live in
a money motivated society and if ppl can do better by leaving
then it is a likely they will.

Alot of these moron HR types think that because the person
has a degree they will stick around at least a few years,
guess again.

Across the IT industry the average stay is 18 months for
various reasons.

Right now an IT job is deemed a BAD career choice by most
US citizens starting college.

End of story.

Re:Good summary - Now what about the 12 Rs?

[Peter (Professor) Fo]

Retention == Remembering Sorry for confusion

Make Them Become Americans

[Doc Ruby]

America supposedly needs these people's skills, not just their willingness to work cheap (cheapness subsidized by living in a foreign country with a low cost of living because they don't invest in labor, environmental or other protections there). So make those H-1B visas come with a price. Let those people live in the US for 10 years, spending only 4 weeks abroad each year at most. If they break the deal, make their employers pay ten years of the median salary of that job description into a fund that retrains US citizens to do those jobs.

Or they can just try their luck turning their own countries into places as good to work in as is the US.

Re:Make Them Become Americans

[atari2600]

You aren't far from the truth mate. Most people on H1Bs (who graduate from schools in the US) stay outside the US for less than 3 weeks a year for almost 9-10 years (considering 2.5 years in graduate school and the rest of the time in H1B status till they get a green card, if they choose to get one). They spend the 2-3 weeks of vacation visiting folks back home.

Re:Make Them Become Americans

[Doc Ruby]

You have some citations to back that up? Because I know the Indian and Chinese guys who used to work with me used to go home for at least a month a year. And they'd go home between gigs, usually to direct the building of a house they paid for with what they made while in the US. They'd get another gig over the Net, or through their network of friends they made while in the US. Sure the high pay while here kept them here more, but they also did miss their families, built those houses, and took their downtime (while not working the 60+ weekly hours that crazy Americans find normal in IT) seriously.

I don't begrudge them on some kind of nationalism. But the economics mean that they're not paying their way to keep this money machine going that they're cashing in on. But I am paying, because I live in this country full time, and helped invest (with taxes and work over 30 years) in the industries they're getting the benefit of.

Re:Make Them Become Americans

[Anonymous Coward]

Make them spend only 4 weeks in their home country or elsewhere, and the rest of the time working away in USA? there's another word for this you know.

Dude, looks like once you taste the fruits of slave labour you cannot turn back. Looking at your 'solution', that 's all I can say.

Re:Make Them Become Americans

[Doc Ruby]

What kind of "slave" is bound only by the terms of their contract to either continue working for any legal employer they choose, or forfeit a fine corresponding to the benefit they had for the privilege of entering into that contract in the first place. Entering the US when you're not a citizen is a privilege, you realize. And if you break the contract that allowed you to stay longer than a brief guest, then you have to pay the penalty that you voluntarily accepted when you entered.

I guess having to pay rent and for food is "slavery", too.

You really ought to look into this "slavery" thing you're talking about. It involves wholesale kidnapping of millions of people over the years, letting at least 1/3 those kidnapped for sale in North America of them die in transit, and treatment as property with no rights or privileges, worked to death. With no choice in anything, including the forcing of slaves' descendents into perpetual slavery. And in some places, the slavery was released in name only, with no choice or rights protected, and life little different.

You'll find it's a whole different world from a monetary fine of the H-1B visa holder who doesn't stay in the US long enough to justify the country having welcomed them with fat jobs, and all the choices in the world, including breaking the deal.

Re:Make Them Become Americans

[atari2600]

I am an Indian and I have been in this country for 9 years and I fall in the category I mentioned. I have a healthy number of Indian acquaintances and some of them are friends and none of us have a green card and all of us have been paying social security knowing fully well that we cannot claim it anytime soon (nor could we ever claim it). As for the high pay, some of my friends at MS can claim high pay (I can't).

None of us that I know of get more than 4 weeks of vacation a year and most of us use it all up to go home to visit our old folks (aka we can't use our vacation to visit Hawaii or Bahamas or ).

To be fair and honest, I have heard a couple of stories about Indians with green cards who had real estate businesses on the side and have companies here but do employ Americans for that job (smart and natural thing to do). Also a good number of Indians do what you mention (send money home to build homes back in India).

The group I am talking about is not a big one (a couple dozen max) but 3 couples in that group have their own home in the US. They buy from Costco and other US stores, send their kids to US schools and try to fit into the US way of life they best they can. I guess my point is not every Indian fits into your stereotype :). We don't begrudge on paying social security knowing fully well that we can never claim unemployment on our visas.

Re:Make Them Become Americans

[Doc Ruby]

FWIW, Social Security is not unemployment insurance. I don't know whether H-1B visas don't entitle it's holders to claiming benefits at retirement age, despite requiring those holders to pay the insurance withholding, but I'll take your word for it. That is wrong, and shouldn't happen.

Your other expenses here are of course proper (and appreciated) of any resident in our economy. But there is still a matter of the economic balance these H-1Bs represent. Do you really believe that your contribution at your job could not be obtained from a US citizen? Or perhaps just not at your salary, which you mention is low - which could be the same situation as your friends at Microsoft, just scaled up into Microsoft's definition of "high/low" pay.

What our different experiences show is that the economics of these visas is pretty complex. For example, the US economy didn't invest in preparing you to do your job, but if you don't stay longer than some relatively short time (say under 20 years, compared to the average American career of something like 40 years), your overall contribution to the economy, the return on the economy's investment in you, is also lower than an American who cost more to prepare. And of course while we are also interested in your participating in the America that goes beyond our economy (running the "liberty experiment", sharing compassion, enlightening us and the world with diverse intelligence and soul with an "American" brand on it, etc), if you stay less than an American's average domestic lifetime, we're shortchanged on that, too.

What I'm trying to do is to get foreigners who bring better skills than Americans to stay long enough that it's worth displacing Americans where they do so displace us. Indeed, I'm looking for America to get a better deal for Americans (not just for a few employers) out of the foreigners who want to come here than America gets out of the Americans they displace. Not an extremely better deal, like, say, slavery (though of course that net deal was abominable for everyone involved, except those few "employers" for a while). But in fact a better deal for America than even for the visiting labor, which should still give the visitors enough that they will come and feel it's fair (even if it's fairer to America). Because America has what the visitors want, and has the advantage of playing the buyer in a buyer's labor market. When the labor market is a seller's labor market, like when the visitor has skills unobtainable (or prohibitively expensive) in the US, of course I won't be surprised when the visitor can set the terms to their benefit - though I'd still like to see the US use its advantage to the benefit of Americans.

Re:Make Them Become Americans

[atari2600]

I don't disagree with you (and you're civil) I see just two different perspectives. What I meant to say was we don't qualify for either SS benefits or unemployment with our visas. SS might kick in with a green card but:

1. Not everyone stays/gets a green card and
2. Green card holders pretty much settle down in the US for good (some become citizens)
3. Green card holders have to work for atleast 10 years before retiring (after they get a green card I believe) to qualify

I've continued to live in the US since :

1. A simple here is a luxury compared to where I come from
2. I appreciate the aspects of the culture that discourages reservations (affirmative action which is very heavy back home), inequality and there is no caste crap in here.
3. I love online shopping/shipping!

Seriously though, I came here as a student (aka $$ come in when we pay tuition here - not everyone gets scholarships or assistantships, many do but many also do not) and you hit the nail on the head when you said the US economy didn't bear the cost of training us (They call it brain-drain back home but it's less severe now than it used to be). This is why I try to differentiate between students who come here to study (BS,MS, Phd: we do this because US has some of the best institutions in the world and more importantly has enough) and the H1B imports who are just brought in by those LLCs.

Atleast for the kids who come here to study and try to establish a career here, I do not believe it's all about better skills (compared to Americans). It's just the skills they have and can market to get a job here so they can settle down here. For them to do that, the only way is to go through an H1B. If there's another way out, that would be great.

For example, I wouldn't be against a law that dictates the pre-req for an H1B (or for a job) be an US degree. It would be harsh but it wasn't easy for us either (getting through school, paying the bills, blah blah). This would filter out a lot of the bodyshopping and H1B imports (possibly underqualified, certainly underpaid and totally unfair on many levels).

The system as it is now, isn't totally fair to a lot of H1B holders and Americans. The employers know that ultimately the H1B holders are at their mercy (although you won't hear complaining for obvious reasons). The system is also exploited by a number of LLCs (both Indian and American). You can get the basic idea here. That link will give you the reason why thousands of H1B visas are claimed on day one. Or Google for Indian consultants suck or evil desi consultants. I could give you a few American consultants who do the same job too (with a better accent) but I'll have to do it as AC.

Re:Make Them Become Americans

[Doc Ruby]

My interest in domestic labor market protection is purely nationalistic, as an economic exercise, not on any intrinsic value superiority of either American genes or even necessarily culture. Except that it is superior in value to me, simply because it's mine. I always try to maximize value returned to me, even if it's not fair. The only case of coercion/violence I approve of is the enforcement of the border, because that's reciprocal.

What I'd really prefer is that foreigners made their own home countries better places to live and to work, rather than braindraining to the US all the time. That would make them better competitors to the US, so it would seem against my interests, but since they'd have to pay the same costs to protect people and the environment as the US does, it would be fair competition, and I bet I would still be a big winner (even if many Americans would be big losers, as so many foreigners have been).

I'm not interested in "fairness" per se, but only the fairness that makes my world better - including better opportunities, more sharing of foreign good stuff with me, and for my kids. Why shouldn't they have the option of getting a fat job that pays a lot more in some exotic foreign capital, instead of the foreigners getting the only chances to do that?

Re:Make Them Become Americans

[atari2600]

I get your point. I was trying to stay on topic (H1B Foes Challenge...) and was offering insight as to what really happens behind the scenes and the reason why OPT in its current form is almost worthless.

  Your line about foreigners making their home countries better to live reminded me of Geriatrix from the comic Asterix: "I have nothing against foreigners as long as they live in their own country".

We are contributing to this land and we consider this to be our home. If you want your kids to get a fat job, well it's not my place to tell you how to raise your kids but that statement of yours almost sounds like xenophobia. Immigrants working along with Americans made this country what it is today and I don't think it'll work to suddenly turn back and say "Hey enough immigrants, let's seal the country's borders for this country's future and job protection".

Immigration reform is required but I can see your reply being similar to the one you just gave me. Again, I get your point and the fact that you do not care for how and the why as long as the "what" i.e.,"your world being secure" happens. I could further educate on the topic at hand but I can see it being totally futile and off-topic as far as you are concerned. Peace mate.

Re:Make Them Become Americans

[Doc Ruby]

I don't know why you got my desire for foreigners to improve their own countries exactly backwards. I didn't say we should seal the US borders. I just said that I wish that the US advantages as a better place to live and work weren't so big, weren't a result of foreign countries being so relatively bad to live and work in.

I know foreigners built this country. Including my own recent family (grandparents, great and great great grandparents), and of course everyone whose family in the past 225-500 years have all been foreigners arriving in North America. What I said was that foreigners could build their own countries, too. Which I don't see as any kind of xenophobia, especially as I said it's because I want me and my kids to have opportunities to live and work in those foreign countries. Which I have already done myself, with great success, but I wish there were more such opportunity for everyone.

So I guess you're taking a cue to quit this interesting discussion, which I thought was enlightening each of us. But it seems more like you've already decided all Americans interested in this topic are xenophobic, and don't want to have a mutually enlightening discussion. Instead you want to feel like you're the only one with expertise, and will even say that I said exactly the opposite of what I did to preserve that illusion of yourself, as the misunderstood expert victim. If that's the case, then further discussion is indeed futile.

Too bad, because people who want to change the actual xenophobia are going to have to do a lot better engaging the Americans with the power to help change American policies. Engaging those sympathetic and enlightened enough to find a rational way in everyone's best interest would have been a good start, but you just abandoned it.

No, YOU misssed the point.

[Hankapobe]

I know plenty of H1B people at MS who are probably getting *better* medical insurance than they had in Canada!

Bullshit.

So stop twisting IBM's words. It's absolutely true - there are plenty of talented students coming out of American schools - but not enough.

Define "enough".

Hi, I'm a CEO of XYZ corp, and there isn't enough great CS grads coming out of Canadian Universities or US Universities. So, I have to go overseas . Prove me wrong.

Get it now?

I know plenty of fellow graduates (Canadians) who are making $100K+ fresh out of college.

Define "plenty".

We're talking top-tier tech workers, not VB script monkeys.

Define "top tier".

I'm the CEO of XYZ corp. there are no top tier CS folks in the Western Hemisphere. I NEED someone with a Ph.D. in CS AND EE AND Physics AND an MBA. They also need to be well rounded. I don't want someone who will spend all their time in school. I want someone who played team sports along with getting those degrees. Who also has some art education too.

Do you get it now?

Just because there aren't enough MIT grads to go around doesn't mean IBM needs to start hiring community college code monkeys.

Why do they need those? IBM does almost exclusively business applications and consulting. A code monkey is mostly what they need.

BTW, you sound like a newbie beemer. Wish you luck if you are - you'll need it. Let's just say that I know - and hopefully, I didn't violate my NDA.

Re:No, YOU misssed the point.

[Your.Master]

I know plenty of H1B people at MS who are probably getting *better* medical insurance than they had in Canada!

Bullshit. Not bullshit. Even in Canada, many companies offer what they call "extended health benefits", because the government health insurance is good but not truly comprehensive. Microsoft offers roughly what the best extended health benefits offer (except on dental -- they have kind of a crappy dental plan compared to what you get in Canada).

Define "enough". Well, the GP isn't IBM and neither am I. How about you defend the counter-assertion that protectionism is a necessary and good thing?

Define "plenty". I agree, in that 100K+ for an undergrad degree is very high unless they struck lucky at a startup. But *I* know plenty (double-digits, I will not count for you) of Canadians at the 80K mark before generous stock & bonuses, with a fresh undergrad degree and no experience outside of internships.

IBM does almost exclusively business applications and consulting. A code monkey is mostly what they need. They do things like sophisticated Java JIT compilers, they seem to for some reason have two office suites (wtf?), they write drivers -- they need real programmers. Code monkeys might also be welcome in such a giant 180K person company with their fingers in so many places.

Re:Don't worry, it's just jobs Americans don't wan

[Anonymous Coward]

Oddly enough European society has completely failed to collapse, and we haven't found ourselves dealing with hordes of evil Chinese people plotting to take over our countries.

Personally it helped me learn how to make some really good Chinese meals.

No, but you will be overrun with Islamic fanatics within a generation and your social structure is going to collapse due to inadequate funding. Anybody who snipes at social security in the U.S. would have a heart attack if they looked at the numbers regarding the upcoming retirement of the Euro-boomers with regard to those generous European benefits.

Re:Americans are good enough.. just not CHEAP enou

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming outputs are same, cheap is a desirable attribute and if you cannot provide it in a global economy, tough luck.

Re:Americans are good enough.. just not CHEAP enou

[Rutulian]

They can't get americans to buy their crappy pay, benefits, and job security, so they want to farm out slave labor they can have deported at their whim.

Oh cry me a river!

From the US Dept. of Labor:
In May 2006, median annual earnings of wage-and-salary computer applications software engineers were $79,780.

In May 2006, median annual earnings of wage-and-salary computer systems software engineers were $85,370.

How can you possibly suggest that a salary like that qualifies as "slave labor?" That's well above the median income of $46,326 in the U.S. per the U.S. Census. Are you aware that there are real cases of slave labor in the U.S? Such as those where a person has to work 2-3 jobs, gets no benefits, vacation, or job security, and still makes less than the poverty line?

The whiney upper-middle classers need to wake up and stop crying about their employers. As long as corporate abuse doesn't happen to them, they are ok with it. Well, guess what? India, China, and Japan are training top notch computer scientists and they are willing to work for less than Americans. That's called competition, and since that is what our capitalist economy thrives on (or so the Republicans/Libertarians keep saying), deal with it.

Re:Americans are good enough.. just not CHEAP enou

[man_ls]

I respectfully disagree with your point that technology/software companies can't get Americans to fill the jobs. I think what we're seeing right now is the results of a market correction about the value of technology positions.

Older laborers have an idea of their worth that dates back to when their skills were scarce and hard to build. They're the ones with enough experience, but they're too expensive for corporations.

Younger laborers, recent graduates and future graduates, can look around and see that their skills aren't worth that much. (Look at how EA hires developers, there have been a few stories about it here on Slashdot. College grads work long hours for low pay and are happy for the opportunity, until they burn out.) The trouble is these younger people don't have experience, so they get hired more slowly because there exist foreigners who will take college student pay, and have old-timer experience.

Give it a little bit. I imagine that some of the jobs will return to America, as the younger people slowly rack up the experience necessary to be marketable. But they'll still have the same value of their skills.

Re:Americans are good enough.. just not CHEAP enou

[Eli Gottlieb]

See, nobody believes this because if there was actually a shortage of highly-skilled tech workers, all of us who took basic economics in college know that the firms would be willing to pay more. The higher pay would then inspire more people to go into CS and STEM majors in college; computer science departments in particular are running far, far below capacity in terms of the number of students they educate.

And let's assume that the money is there, but students still aren't taking Computer Science in large enough numbers. At that point, we can only come to one of two conclusions:

1) The money isn't enough after all. That's how a free market works.
2) Something other than money, perhaps working conditions or perceived (lack of) socialization, is severely discouraging young talent in America from pursuing computing.

I can tell you that the talent is there. Loads of smart people are trying to find any work they can in the biomedical field right now because it pays DAMN WELL. It's just that even the smart people see some reason not to go into computing, and I can't help but trust their own reasons for their own actions.

H-1Bs are not mmigrants

[walterbyrd]

An H-1B is a temporary work visa. I suppose some H-1Bs might become citizens, but that is not what the program is about.

Re:Don't worry, it's just jobs Americans don't wan

[CodeBuster]

Nah. If you want a free trade Republican to show his true colors, just ask him, why should money and goods cross borders freely, but not people? The answer is quite simple: there cannot be uncontrolled immigration into a welfare state. The United States is not as bad as Europe in this regard, but we are still at least 40% socialist in terms of expenditure of national income once all of the taxes and entitlement programs are added up. In fact, we are already seeing the consequences in western states, like California, Arizona, and Texas with large populations of recent immigrants who place tremendous strains on public education, hospital emergency room care, and even law enforcement. If the Democrats are willing to cut the entitlements and reform the citizenship laws (i.e. only children of citizens are citizens at birth) then us free trade Republicans are willing to let more people have a shot at coming to the United States. However, if you want to allow people to cross borders freely then there have to be few (preferably zero) entitlements to keep them here if they fail (i.e come in and succeed at standing on your own two feet or else go back where you came from). So lets trade (pun intended).

Re:Doesn't matter - few companies signed up for th

[CodeBuster]

Well, if she is hot and you love her then why not consider getting a visa to live in her country for a while when she goes back? You might be able to get residency there more easily than she can here.

All a matter of economics

[ShinmaWa]

You didn't even address the issues Okay then, I'll address the issue. Why are teachers, especially those in the private sector, so poorly paid? Simply put, the reason is that the supply of teachers far, far outstrip the demand. There are many more people who are technically qualified to be a teacher than there are positions for people to teach. This drives down the price of teaching. Why should a school pay $40,000 to one teacher when there are 5 more willing to work for $35,000?

Because the supply of teachers is so high, those that are actually willing to sell their labor for that low of an amount tend to fall into two categories:
1) Teachers who "live to teach" and would do it no matter how much they are paid.
2) Teachers who have no other marketable skills and have no choice but to sell their labor as cheaply as possible.
As much as I would like to say that most teachers fall into category 1, the reality is that most fall into category 2. Those who have other skills outside of teaching will tend to move to those jobs, leaving only those with no other marketable skills (which, sadly, are often also the most unqualified teachers to boot) behind to teach.

The solution is actually simpler to say than it is to implement. The solution is to drastically reduce the supply of teachers while also increasing demand. To increase the demand for teachers, teachers need to have any idea of "tenure" removed. Poor performance = you are fired. No more rubberrooming of teachers. Also, the qualifications for teaching needs to be gradually increased, without any grandfathering. This will help reduce the supply side. The problem is that both of these are fraught with political pitfalls. As I said, much easier said than done.

Myths and Realities About the USA H1-B Program

[walterbyrd]

Myths and Realities About the USA H1-B Program

Myth: H1-Bs are the "best and brightest"

Reality: If that were true then the typical H1-B would a Nobel prize winning scientist. The truth is, the typical H1-B is an average student, hired right out of college with only a four year degree. The typical H1-B is no more qualified than the US graduates who are not getting jobs. The H1-Bs are just cheaper. And because of the lottery nature of the H1-B process, employers do not even know who they are getting. So how do employers know that they are getting the best and brightest?

Also, isn't it funny that almost all of the "best and brightest" come from countries where people earn as little as $1 a day? If it's really about the "best and brightest" then why aren't there more European H1-Bs?

----

Myth: H1-Bs are needed because of the critical shortage of US technology workers

Reality: Serious academic studies clearly indicate that skills shortage is a myth.

> These studies done at Duke aren't alone in their assessment that there is in fact no skills shortage. They're backed up by other studies conducted by RAND Corporation, The Urban Institute and Stanford University, among others, all of which settle upon the same conclusion: There is no shortage of educated IT workers.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1081923#PaperDownload

This according to a well researched article at baselinemag.com:

http://tinyurl.com/yoy2rw

----

Myth: H1-Bs do compete unfairly, because H1-Bs are paid the prevailing wage

Reality:

> According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) as the measurement of U.S. wages, and the H-1B LCA disclosure data to measure H-1B wages, 90% of H-1B employers' prevailing wage claims for programmers were below the median U.S. wage for that occupation and location, with 62% of them falling in the bottom 25th percentile of U.S. wages, said Miano [founder of the Programmer's Guild].

> Ron Hira, an assistant professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology (currently on leave) and a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, pointed to USCIS's most recent report to Congress, which shows that the medium wage in 2005 for new H-1B computing professionals was just $50,000 -- even lower than the entry-level wages that a newly graduated tech worker with a bachelor's degree and no experience would command.

http://tinyurl.com/4bvwyh

According to the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Service's (USCIS) annual report to Congress in 2005, the aggregate data for computing professionals lend support to the argument that the practice of paying H-1Bs below-market wages is quite common.

http://www.sharedprosperity.org/bp187.html

H1-Bs are hired at four different skill levels, "4" being the highest. But most H1-Bs are hired for the lowest "1" level jobs - regardless of what kind of work the H1-Bs actually do.

----

Myth: In the USA enrollment in technical disciplines is declining. Proof the USA needs to hire more foreign workers

Reality: This myth is designed to confuse cause and effect. Employers are not forced to hire offshore because enrollment is down. Rather, enrollment is down because of aggressive offshoring by employers. But even with enrollments down, there are still more than enough US workers.

> Due to both outsourcing and insourcing, many young people are concluding that technology is a bad place to invest their time," said Mark Thoma, a professor of economics at the University of Oregon in Euge

Re:Myths and Realities About the USA H1-B Program

[felipekk]

Also, isn't it funny that almost all of the "best and brightest" come from countries where people earn as little as $1 a day? If it's really about the "best and brightest" then why aren't there more European H1-Bs? Because most of the Europe is considered first world.

Re:Myths and Realities About the USA H1-B Program

[megaditto]

So I read the paper you reference (Getting the Numbers Right: International Engineering Education in the United States, China, and India) and it looks like you might be missing something:

Page 6: B. The Role of Foreign Nationals in Engineering in U.S. Universities

In the United States, concern has been raised over the large proportion
of graduate-level science and engineering degrees that are
earned by foreign nationals. This preoccupation has been exacerbated
in recent years because of the perception of an increased likelihood
that these engineers may return to their home countries in response
to new incentives to develop high-technology fields there.
This export of the fruits of their American-earned education
abroad for the benefit of other economies marks a reversal of the
traditional international brain drain from which the U.S. hightechnology
community has long benefited (Pollak, 1999). [...]

Statistics collected by the ASEE on
bachelors, masters and Ph.D. degrees in engineering indicate that
during the 200506 academic year, 7.2 percent, 39.8 percent and
61.7 percent of these degrees, respectively, were awarded to foreign
nationals [...]

Given the changes in the U.S. visa system since 2001 and the rapid ascent of
the Chinese and Indian economies, there are serious concerns that
the U.S. visa landscape is greatly limiting the countrys capacity to
retain exceptional individuals once they graduate (Wadhwa, Jasso,
Rissing, Gereffi and Freeman, 2007).

Re:Myths and Realities About the USA H1-B Program

[atomic777]

Offshoring is happening in plenty of other 'rigorous' fields as well: medical tourism is a huge and expanding field. I personally know of several people taking exotic vacations to places like India, had a hip replaced, some dental work done, rested and recovered, flown back and still come out far better than had they paid for the service in the US.

Re:Myths and Realities About the USA H1-B Program

[joocemann]

This really does clear things up for all these lie-regurgitating ignoramites on here. Thanks for the long and informative post.

Re:Myths and Realities About the USA H1-B Program

[Anonymous Coward]

And what exactly do you mean by

Also, isn't it funny that almost all of the "best and brightest" come from countries where people earn as little as $1 a day? If it's really about the "best and brightest" then why aren't there more European H1-Bs?" You better not be looking down on those less than $1 a day countries. Graduates from those countries often know and do what it takes to succeed and are thus rewarded.

Re:Don't worry, it's just jobs Americans don't wan

[thermian]

I think I'll be happy to miss out on some of those brainwashed chinese kids

I believe the reason for our different views is that you've seen them on tv, and I've lived and worked with them.

Myth about this entire discussion

[DigitAl56K]

Student visas are J visas, not H-1B's.

Isolationism, xenophobia and bad education

[jandersen]

Take a lesson from Denmark - currently notorious for its xenophobic legislation. In Denmark we have for at least the last decade introduced laws that make ever less attractive for foreigner to come and work or study, and we are now facing a situation where, in not too many years, we will have a large number of people in the retirement age, but too few younger people to do the work necessary to produce the revenue for care. One solution would have been to get more immigrants into the country - the fact of the matter is that immigrants don't really 'come and steal our jobs', they come and produce taxable income, just to mention one, very basic thing, and that benefits everyone.

All in all it is very stupid to stop immigration, especially of young talented people like students. America rose to greatness in the world, not because of immense wealth in natural resources - just look to Saudi Arabia for an example of what that kind of wealth does on its own; and it certainly wasn't because of military power either - need I mention Iraq and Vietnam? In fact, the main, if not the only, reason for America's greatness is that there has been a steady influx of immigrants, who have brought new talent, initiative and ideas. This has gone on from the earliest pioneers until fairly recently, and until fairly recently, the US has been on top when it comes to wealth, education and influence.

And that is another matter - state funding or not, you have the educational resources you want, as a people, at the end of the day. The religious fundamentalists wouldn't have any influence on schools if it wasn't because a lot of people agree that 'too much education is bad for you'. All the funding in the world will make no difference if it is spent on teaching children that 'Evolution is just a theory' and that intelligent design is just as valid.

What is at stake here is the US' position in the world - I, being a foreigner, don't have as much invested in America's reputation and well-being as an American would, or should, but it would be very sad to see a nation that was once admired and envied crumble into the dust and become a sleepy, introverted backwater.

Re:Isolationism, xenophobia and bad education

[deadweight]

H1B =/ Immigration. They work at low wages for a set time and then GET SENT HOME. If we want skilled immigrants, which we should, then we need to fix the broken green card system. Right now a European PhD scientist could die from old age waiting for that fsked system to produce a green card :(

Re:Don't worry, it's just jobs Americans don't wan

[TheSync]

If the Democrats are willing to cut the entitlements and reform the citizenship laws (i.e. only children of citizens are citizens at birth) then us free trade Republicans are willing to let more people have a shot at coming to the United States.

Those of us who actually believe in free markets suggest that you Republicans and Democrats should just unilaterally end your socialism and allow for the free movement of people as well as goods.

When my great-grandmother came to the USA, you got citizenship after two years of residency. Let's go back to that (the "conservative thing to do"...)

Silly cliche? Uh, what are you basing that on?

[big_paul76]

Uh, do you work in the school system? Do you have any experience or evidence to back your assertion that "teaching to the test" is a silly cliche? I worked as a tutor for math/physics/chemistry for high-school students while I was in university, and I can tell you that teaching to the test is a very real problem. I can give you lots of examples where I wanted to spend more time on making sure a student had a genuinely good fundamental comprehension of a subject, to make sure that they'd be properly prepared for university level courses, but because of preparing for standardized tests I had to settle for a 'good enough' rote repetition approach.

This leaves them not really understanding trig or algebra fundamentals but just memorizing a series of steps that will allow them to do one of the handful of 'types of problems' that you can expect to see on the test.

This is, of course, a problem that exists with testing in general to some degree. But the greater the separation between the person writing the test and the students, the worse this problem is. When you create an incentive to produce higher test scores, the focus becomes test scores, not actual learning. Testing, like democracy, is a 'worst of all systems - except for all the other ones' approach. It's not really a great way to run learning, but there aren't a lot of other options save really radical ideas like free schools. So focusing on tests as the end all and be all is misguided, at best.

Personally, given that many people in favor of standardized testing seem to be the sort who, philosophically, think that publicly funded schools are a communist plot, I can't help but wonder if there's a hidden agenda to deliberately sabotage the public school system, so that then in a few years, one can say "Well, they're really not working, so let's just privatize the schools'.

While it might be convenient amongst a certain fraction of the political spectrum to pretend that teachers are just lazy, overpaid selfish closet-socialists who are only in it for themselves and for the money, and that's why they fight tooth and nail against standardized tests, that doesn't hold up for 10 seconds. If somebody was motivated by selfish motives and money, what the fuck would they be doing working as a teacher? Why not do a commerce degree/mba/law degree and then go work for an investment bank if all you wanted was money?

I'm not saying there aren't lousy teachers. There really are. There's a lot of burnt-out teachers who have given up caring. But a great deal of teachers are in it for the love of it. Why the fuck else would they put up with working in the public school system?

There _MIGHT_ be a place for standardized tests at the much younger grade levels in say, math or reading comprehension (say, up to about grade 6 or so), but even then there's plenty of better ways to address problems. Standardized tests turns kids into robots, at best, kills creativity, and is indicative of someone peddling easy answers. So let's give a complex problem the respect it deserves.

What we need is sort of a "de-industrialization" of schools. The goals of a public school system in a democracy articulated by guys like Thomas Jefferson are not well served by Taylorism/'scientific management'. What we need is varied curricula and more individual attention based on the fact that people learn at different rate, and have different strengths and weaknesses. A school system is not a Ford assembly line.

Re:Silly cliche? Uh, what are you basing that on?

[phlinn]

If the test is a reasonable overview of the material, then it may be less effort to just teach to the test, but teaching a general understanding will also allow students to pass. There may be one or two students who will never achieve that general understanding but may be able to learn enough to pass the test, but teaching just the test is evidence of poor teaching and/or a poorly written test, not a flaw with standardized testing as a concept.

"Why the fuck else would they put up with working in the public school system?" because the pay is actually pretty decent when you factor in actual time worked compared to other fields, and it's a stable job which it will be difficult to remove you from once you make it to tenure. This may not hold everywhere, but it certainly holds where I live. There are those who feel personal satisfaction that they are personally responsible for the success of future generations, although they rarely have as much impact as they believe. And yes, many good teachers are in it for the love of it, but so are many bad teachers. The fact that someone has a sense of personal satisfaction has no bearing on whether they are actually good at what they do or not.

Re:Silly cliche? Uh, what are you basing that on?

[big_paul76]

"but teaching just the test is evidence of poor teaching and/or a poorly written test, not a flaw with standardized testing as a concept. "

I agree with you, basically on this. But it's a non-trivial problem to make "non-poorly-written tests." Can you show me a decent example of a good standardized test? Like, maybe there are some jurisdictions where it works.

But like the man-friendly lesbian in 'chasing amy', I have yet to see them. Can you point me at one?

Re:Silly cliche? Uh, what are you basing that on?

[big_paul76]

"
"Why the fuck else would they put up with working in the public school system?" because the pay is actually pretty decent when you factor in actual time worked compared to other fields,"

OK, sure, it's competitive with some other middle-class professions. But up here in BC, Canada, teachers start in the 30-40K range.

Which means, for example, why would anybody with a math or CS degree enter the school system?

At any rate, what I'm saying isn't that teachers make crap all the time in all jurisdictions - I'm saying that someone motivated primarily by money would be in a different line of work.

Re:Silly cliche? Uh, what are you basing that on?

[clampolo]

I have a sister who is a teacher. And most of your points don't make sense.

I can give you lots of examples where I wanted to spend more time on making sure a student had a genuinely good fundamental comprehension of a subject, to make sure that they'd be properly prepared for university level courses, but because of preparing for standardized tests I had to settle for a 'good enough' rote repetition approach.

So basically you didn't have time to teach people what you wanted to teach them because they had failed to already learn the basic material which is covered by the tests.

And from the way you quickly started teaching towards the test, you yourself knew that they were completely unprepared to show a knowledge of basic skills. So either way they test completely succeeded. Either 1) your students failed - demonstrating that they were not learning required and basic material or 2) they passed - showing they had learned the material (something they wouldn't have if you hadn't started cramming them for the test.)

Re:Silly cliche? Uh, what are you basing that on?

[big_paul76]

Wow, way to twist my words around to spin it in favor of your ideological position.

"So basically you didn't have time to teach people what you wanted to teach them because they had failed to already learn the basic material which is covered by the tests.

And from the way you quickly started teaching towards the test, you yourself knew that they were completely unprepared to show a knowledge of basic skills."

This assumes that the test is an accurate reflection of basic or fundamental skills, an assertion that you have offered no evidence for.

If you _do_ have evidence that standardized tests are a good way to measure someone's comprehension of say, pre-calculus algebra, or basic Newtonian physics, then I'd love to hear it. But in my experience, the skills that make you good at taking a standardized test are not the same as understanding the material.

For example, one of the best 'hacks' for standardized test-taking is to go over things like how to rapidly fill in those little circles with a pencil, and strategies to ensure that you're putting the answers in the right place. It's basically a pointless distraction and completely unrelated to learning, but it's one of the first thing anybody prepping for say, the SATs will cover.

There's a finite amount of time. Time you spend on "test-taking skills" is time you're not spending getting your students to really have a fundamental grounding in trig or something.

But don't take my word for it - talk to a first-year calculus or physics professor. Ask them about how students are coming in from high school and they need to go over the unit circle with them in calc. 101.

Re:Silly cliche? Uh, what are you basing that on?

[clampolo]

pre-calculus algebra, or basic Newtonian physics

Let's assume the test is on the level of the SAT. I doubt it's anyway near that difficulty since these are tests of basic skills. When I took the SAT it was basically HS algebra + HS geometry - Trig/complex numbers/induction/etc. So you had to stop teaching people so that you could keep them from bombing a test covering that material? I stand by the assertion that they were completely unprepared for any other material if they needed serious help doing well on a test like that.

Yeah, your students were really ready to handle Newtonian physics when they didn't know any trig, and they needed special tutoring for basic algebra. No trig means they will be solving 1D problems.

You gotta be kidding about speed-filling dots on the SATs. You either know the answers to the questions or you don't. The amount of time filling circles is very insignificant to the time spent solving.

Time you spend on "test-taking skills" is time you're not spending getting your students to really have a fundamental grounding in trig or something.

Spend more time making sure they have a mastery of the subject and then they won't need "test-taking skills."

But don't take my word for it - talk to a first-year calculus or physics professor. Ask them about how students are coming in from high school and they need to go over the unit circle with them in calc. 101

Well then maybe they should force people to take the math achievement test if they want students with basic math skills.

Re:Silly cliche? Uh, what are you basing that on?

[sumdumass]

There is a joke that goes something like those that can, do, those that can't, teach. Those that can't teach, coach. And finally, those that can't even do that, become a politician.

However, I have known many people for which this is all too true. A lot of the teachers use teaching as a fall back occupation when they can't be hired. In the US, generally you have to be certified as an teacher as well as holding the degree in CS or math. Some teachers get additional degrees in case they can't get hired as a teacher or in order to specialize in a subject that interests them. Often, the more degrees you have and the higher levels of those degrees means the more money you can make as a teacher too. We recently found that we had teachers with doctoral degrees teaching elementary education on our local school system. The degree entitled them to something along the lines of $125k a year in salary to teach generic subjects that their education levels would never touch on. Why were we paying elementary education teachers a rate that high for subject qualifications that would never come into use is beyond me but somehow it was in the contract.

So there are a number of reasons why someone would teach with a degree in a field that could pay more. But as the parent was saying, their desire to teach doesn't mean they would be a good teacher. It just means they aren't likely to do something else.

does the term 'biased sample' mean anything to you

[big_paul76]

Across all OECD countries, across all demographics, the single best predictor of a student's academic success is the income level of their parents. Which, let's face it, makes sense. Higher incomes are correlated with higher education levels. So if your parents don't read, well, they're unlikely to read to their parents. If you're working 3 crappy jobs to pay the rent, you don't have a lot of time for the PTA.

So if you take a sample made up of people who can afford a 5-figure annual tuition, what do you think's gonna happen?

And, "lower cost per student?" What fucking color is the sky in the world you live in? Maybe you mean 'lower cost to the taxpayer'? But TANSTAAFL.

Protectionism and Short Term Security

[yakiimo]

Many businesses believe that employees (here, programmers, etc) are overpaid in the US and more controversially that there are not even enough capable programmers for the business that needs to be done.

Many (here US) programmers believe they are undervalued and can do better quality work than the H1-B types and thus deserve better pay.

Is either one totally correct? No I don't think so. Certainly Americans are paid more in some (many?) cases for the same job so it is understandable that companies want to get the work done by the person who will do it for less.

Can programmers in the US really do more advanced / quality work than their H1-B counterparts who will work for less? Maybe in some cases.

Personally, I think the small number and random-luck H1-B system is just another protectionist wall like farm subsidies that keep us competitive in the short term but hurt us in the long term. The US is great in many ways because of its immigrants, not in spite of them. I am often surprised to see the slashdot crowd supporting more strict H1-B limits.

Re:Protectionism and Short Term Security

[walterbyrd]

The US is great in many ways because of its immigrants, not in spite of them. I am often surprised to see the slashdot crowd supporting more strict H1-B limits. 1) H-1Bs are not immigrants, they are here on temporary work visas.

2) H-1B are not the "best and brightest." If that were true, H-!Bs would be nobel-prize winners and the like. In fact H-1Bs are very average people, usually right out of college. And the random lottery nature of the system insures that employers have no idea what they are getting. H-1Bs do nothing except replace displace equally qualified US IT workers. How does that make the US greater?

3) Many of Americans have invested an awful lot in their IT careers. To lose your job, just so a company can save a few bucks on cheap foreign labor, hurts - a lot.

4) H-1Bs are absolutely not needed. According to the US-DOL, there is a glut of IT workers. There have been huge layoffs all over.

5) According to Dr. Ron Hira, an expert on the subjust, the real reason of H-1B is to make it easier to send US development jobs offshore - where the pay is $5 an hour instead of $50 an hour.

Re:Protectionism and Short Term Security

[yakiimo]

1) H-1Bs are not immigrants, they are here on temporary work visas. You are of course correct here. It is not immigration, but freedom to work where you want is a closely related issue.

 

2) H-1B are not the "best and brightest." If that were true, H-!Bs would be nobel-prize winners and the like. In fact H-1Bs are very average people, usually right out of college. And the random lottery nature of the system insures that employers have no idea what they are getting. H-1Bs do nothing except replace displace equally qualified US IT workers. How does that make the US greater? You touch on several points here.

I never claimed that they were the best and the brightest, and I think that argument misses the point anyway. I think it's more an issue of the value of work. Work is done by all kinds of people with all kinds of IQ's. If a person is willing and capable of doing a job for $5 instead of $50, $5 is probably closer to the real value of the work if they can survive on that.

On the randomness, I think we agree. It's silly mostly any way you look at it.

Finally, how does freedom of work make the US greater? Because the US is supposed to be all about competition and being the best (whether that's a good thing or not is another story). Sticking our heads in the sand and imagining/insisting that our time is worth so much more than other people of similar talent makes us into victims rather than recognizing the situation and competing on merits.

Do you look at our outrageous agriculture subsidies and think we are greater for it? I don't.

 

3) Many of Americans have invested an awful lot in their IT careers. To lose your job, just so a company can save a few bucks on cheap foreign labor, hurts - a lot. Agreed. However, in another's words (maybe a stretch, but not too much), "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." In this case, I think hiding behind protectionist walls is temporary safety that will get us in trouble in the long run.

 

4) H-1Bs are absolutely not needed. According to the US-DOL, there is a glut of IT workers. There have been huge layoffs all over. That depends on your perspective. As you also mentioned, if a job can be done for less, then a company would have the opposite perspective.

 

5) According to Dr. Ron Hira, an expert on the subjust, the real reason of H-1B is to make it easier to send US development jobs offshore - where the pay is $5 an hour instead of $50 an hour. That would be one possibility. The other is simply to depress wages within the US. Is it "evil"? Maybe "bad"? Maybe so. But again, I don't think hiding from it will do any good in the long term. It will reduce our competitiveness and slow down our drive to move into more profitable / valuable areas.

...... All of this is kind of cold, but I think it is true for the most part. I know that someone else could have done work I have done (maybe what I am doing now as well) for less. Rather than thinking that is "how it should be" I recognize that there is a lucky party and an unlucky party in the picture. I happen to be on the lucky side. If we put our heads too deep in the sand, we will eventually be on the other side.

Completely wrong on many levels

[walterbyrd]

Take a lesson from Denmark - currently notorious for its xenophobic legislation. It takes a lot of balls to suggest that the USA is being xenophobic. The USA is way beyond lavishly generous in matters of immigration, and work visas.

All in all it is very stupid to stop immigration, especially of young talented people like students.

H-1Bs are not immigrants. Furthermore, how does it benefit US IT workers to have their jobs replaced by cheap foreign labor? The H-1B program is mainly designed to help msft, and a few Indian contracting companies.

What is at stake here is the US' position in the world - I, being a foreigner, don't have as much invested in America's reputation and well-being as an American would, or should, but it would be very sad to see a nation that was once admired and envied crumble into the dust and become a sleepy, introverted backwater. You think it's beneficial to the USA to further hurt it's workforce during a recession? That is your idea of sound economic policy? Consider this:

> "Currently, the Department of Labor estimates that there are about 656,000 unemployed IT workers in the U.S. In addition, the slowing economy has led to a loss of jobs across the board including in IT. The Denver-based Rocky Mountain News reports that Colorado -- the state with the third highest concentration of IT workers -- has lost 47,200 technology jobs since 2001."

http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer?pagename=research_may08nl02

Re:Completely wrong on many levels

[jandersen]

It takes a lot of balls to suggest that the USA is being xenophobic. The USA is way beyond lavishly generous in matters of immigration, and work visas. And I've got plenty, mate.

However, I am not saying that the US is xenophobic, only that Denmark is. And I'm saying: Don't go that way. It's up to you, of course, but chances are that you will lose more than you gain if you do.

Re:Completely wrong on many levels

[walterbyrd]

However, I am not saying that the US is xenophobic, only that Denmark is. And I'm saying: Don't go that way. It's up to you, of course, but chances are that you will lose more than you gain if you do. You are confusing rational national policy with racism. No industrialized country allows unfettered access to foreign nationals.

The H-1B system is, by design, a scam. Practically all h1b workers are hired by six Indian contracting companies. If the h1b were honestly about filing shortages then 1) why so hugely disproportionately IT? There is a huge shortage of nurses in the US right now, and a glut of software developers - but the h1b are almost all software developers. 2) why are almost all h1bs from India? Why no Europeans?

Opposing the present h1b scam is not xenophobic at all. It is perfect reasonable to oppose a scam that hurting this nation in order to benefit a few Indian contracting companies, and a few corrupt US politicians.

Re:Americans are good enough.. just not CHEAP enou

[happyemoticon]

Here's an elegant way to put it: in The Winner-Take-All Society, they point out that a smart person with generic talents can make a killing in business, law or finance, or expect to be mistreated and underpaid as an engineer while working just as hard. How can we expect smart people (or anyone) to make a decision contrary to their best interests? I think we take too dim a view of the profit motive here on Slashdot sometimes. Yeah, some diploma mills churned out code monkeys who were just in it for the gold rush. But if someone's very smart and hardworking, they generally expect to be compensated accordingly. If they don't see that happening in a productive year, why is it a surprise that so many of our brightest people are avoiding science?

It's probably futile to try and block the H1-B program entirely, or even if we did, expect that to change anything since wholesale outsourcing is the ultimate goal. One solution proposed in the book was to end subsidies for business, finance and law programs, since too many people are entering them for the benefit they provide to society, and grant lavish subsidies to science and engineering programs, increasing both financial aid and the number of spots. If you knew that you'd have to pay a half million bucks to get JD, but you could get a Ph.D. in EECS with enough grant money that you'd never have to work while going to school or take out a single loan, that Ph.D. would start looking a lot better. Of course, I'm skeptical of this, since the primary problem seems to be that companies don't want to properly compensate anyone regardless of their education.

don't forget the health-care benefits.

[NoBozo99]

iirc Norway has a pretty decent universal health-care system.

I'm assuming you are a Norwegian citizen then?

Re:Don't worry, it's just jobs Americans don't wan

[CodeBuster]

Those of us who actually believe in free markets suggest that you Republicans and Democrats should just unilaterally end your socialism and allow for the free movement of people as well as goods. Nothing would please me more, that is precisely what I want.

When my great-grandmother came to the USA, you got citizenship after two years of residency. Let's go back to that (the "conservative thing to do"...) Yes, but that was before social-security, medi-care, medic-aid, and innumerable other government entitlement programs were passed under pressure from progressives and new-deal agitators in the first half of the twentieth century. They took advantage of the Great Depression, which was caused almost entirely by poor Federal Reserve (the government) policies and NOT market failure, to push through sweeping changes in line with their socialist agenda and we have been paying the consequences ever since. If you want to go back to the original immigration requirements then you have to roll back all of the entitlement programs as well, otherwise you will find that there a nearly unlimited number of people around the world who would love to move to the United States and sign up for their "fair share" of the entitlements.

So, free-trade Repub != anti-immigration?

[zooblethorpe]

What the hell are you two talking about? Every free-trade Republican I know also wants (relatively) unrestricted immigration. It's the so-called "paleo-conservatives" that are against immigration, largely on cultural grounds.

Interesting, thank you for making the distinction. My guess was based in large part on people I've known (including several I'm related to) who talk about free trade but tight immigration, and tend to identify themselves as Republicans. From what you're saying then, it would seem they are not the mainstream of "free-trade Republicanism"?

Cheers,

What would happen. . .

[Hasai]

. . . if school performance were scored by the entry exam results of accredited colleges?

Doing it this way, drop-outs would get their school a zero, those who opt-out of college would get their school a 50 as one possibility, those who go on to college get a base of 50 as well, plus some value based-upon their entry exam results, plus an amount based upon the degree they achieve: drop-out=0, associates=10, etc.

I suspect this would be a little more difficult to game; it takes the metrics out of the hands of some political bureaucrat and puts them into the hands of organizations that have a vested interest in keeping the quality of their 'product' just as high as possible.

Just a quick thought, and a pretty rough one at that, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

Real Evidence = None

[Tablizer]

Rand corporation and a University (I forgot name) have done separate studies on whether there is really a "shortage" of sci/tech workers. The result was the same both times: there is no evidence that there is a shortage. Corporate lobbyists simply want "A" workers at "C" prices. In other words, IBM is exaggerating.

Re:Americans are good enough.. just not CHEAP enou

[magus_melchior]

Ding ding ding! Give the man a cigar. Or better yet, a plasma cutter (always wanted one of those).

As a CEO, why pay the cost of hiring a local when you can instead import cheap labor, and give yourself a nice fat bonus/stock options package with the difference? And spread the wealth around, lest anyone dare to complain. Machiavelli would be proud.

Steel and Auto industries

[Tungbo]

Look at those examples.

I do agree that it's very painful and as a society we need to help people adapt to changes in job demands. However, it is extremely futile to try to protect informational industries such as software. For example, medical Transcriptionists are virtually extinct within the USA. All off-shored.

Even without H1B, it's extremely easy for companies to move their opearations off-shore. Even if you can do the jobs of 3 of the workers off-shore (quite generous, I think), the wage differentials STILL makes it cheaper to go off-shore.

That said, I do believe that we need to produce more scientists and innovators locally. How it can be done probably will not be solved on /.....

Re:Steel and Auto industries

[Catbeller]

Here's the adaptation to the new marketplace: people aren't bothering to study the subjects anymore because they *know* they will be treated like contract bathroom cleaners. Why bother to become a whatever knowing the wages will shrink?

Who will pay/borrow a third of a million dollars to obtain a series of degrees to be told that they need to adjust their expectations to that of a worker in Pakistan? This is impossible. You cannot simultaneously gut the professions in the name of increasing value for Wall Street - and the CEO's two hundred million dollar bonus - and expect to see many bother to increase your worker base. There is a glut, and it is artificial. And it is killing our middle class and our economy. Rich people aren't spending the profits in the local supermarket - they're hoarding.

I can solve it in Slashdot. Regulate profits of corporations, including the looting by the boards of directors and Wall Street players. Remove or reduce the H1B system. Let wages find a TRUE free market adjustment, by segmenting the players into appropriate wage sets. We survived a half-century without the H1B infusion, and we were stinking rich with an excellently paid middle class. Somehow, I don't think that hurt us. The people doing well from this new flood of workers are the usual suspects, the stockholders and the corporate bosses. Reregulate them. A corp is a government creature, and needs to be brought to heel to serve the interests of the nation that allows it to exist with all its privileges.

Here's a quickie: language and core skills proficiency provision for obtaining an H1B. If an applicant can't speak English well and doesn't know the job he's taking, then it's a warm body being imported to depress wages.

Here's another quickie: force company to pay prevailing American wage even to those overseas, and certainly to those coming here to work. Take the incentive out. Let the stockholders scream. Want to make the world middle class? Pay them a real wage, not the pretend wage we pay to people we import, in reality or virually.

And it diminishes the overall capability of the industry to constantly water down the talent pool by importing lesser abled (sometimes - remember language ability counts towards the total), and once again, guts the national economy and security by disincentivizing students to enter the field. Race to the bottom.

Countries are instituted to take care of their citizens, not their corporations. Corporations are just legal fictions, and should be treated as such. We are hurting ourselves to serve an ideology that in the end is looting our future.

Re:Steel and Auto industries

[Catbeller]

And one more thing: if outsourcing and H1B workers are good for the corporate bottom line, and nothing else but that matters, then WHY aren't they firing the executives and replacing them with cheaper foreign contract executives? A company could save hundreds of millions or even billions that way.

Unless, of course, overall corporate profit performance is not the goal, but rather the executives' profits. Lie and loot. The executives rake in millions, then quit and move on to the next company to loot, leaving devastation behind.

Re:Steel and Auto industries

[Anonymous Coward]

And one more thing: if outsourcing and H1B workers are good for the corporate bottom line, and nothing else but that matters, then WHY aren't they firing the executives and replacing them with cheaper foreign contract executives? About 30% of Fortune-500 companies were either started by or are currently managed by foreign-born CEOs.

Your argument stinks and you lose, right?

Re:Steel and Auto industries

[Catbeller]

I didn't say "foreign-born", and you know that wasn't the argument.

The argument is why not hire H1B executives at 1/2 or less the cost and save billions. H1B is not "foreign", it is a classification of imported workers who live here at their American employer's discretion and wages. They can't quit, as they would have to return home. They can't bargain after they are here, not until contract's end, and the conditions are not such that they have leverage even then. The purpose of H1B as far as American corps is concerned is to flood labor markets with indentured employees willing to work for peanuts, and thus drive down everyone's wages.

This importation DOES NOT threaten the CEOs and board members who authorize it. They don't vote to import people to drive down THEIR salaries. Their salaries and bonuses are in the many many billions, from their own coffers, as a direct result/reward for sh*tcanning American workers and driving down everyone's wages but theirs .

Re:Americans are good enough.. just not CHEAP enou

[p0tat03]

Mmm, you'd be right, except that jobs don't always work that way. Here's what I see from my time in college, both in traditional engineering programs and CS:

Now that the market is picking back up, we're seeing a resurgence in CS program enrollment, but many people drop out fairly quickly. Why? I've seen many of my peers go this way, and here's a basic demographics breakdown from what I can observe.

IMHO is because people are starting to figure out that there isn't that much money in CS unless you're willing to *dedicate* yourself to it. Which is to say, if you were not a hard core CS-type before even leaving high school, odds are you are not the type that's going to be making big bucks doing insane code somewhere. Nor are you the type to *enjoy* doing such work, so you're either going to hate your high-paying code-hacking job, or you're going to be a VB monkey somewhere, which might be worse. CS is not for everyone, and the "easy" code jobs no longer pay the ridiculous salaries they used to. The "good money" in the field is strictly reserved for more advanced engineering type jobs.

Many people also entered CS with an intent to shoot for management. Of course, the realization here is that for people with strong soft skills, management in other fields (e.g. finance) is far more lucrative, and unless you had a serious interest in tech, managing here vs. there makes little difference, except the paycheck.

So, to address your conclusions:

1) The money isn't enough after all. That's how a free market works.

Yes, with caveats. The money is still great for "real" CS type engineers. The type that are doing search algorithms and some even more hardcore things that are above *my* head. The difference is that, in general, the industry is no longer paying 6-digits for PHP hackers.

2) Something other than money, perhaps working conditions or perceived (lack of) socialization, is severely discouraging young talent in America from pursuing computing.

Perhaps, all the working environments I've been in have been the same old, same old. Perks are nice, but they do not turn a bad job good. Socialization is IMHO not a real problem in the tech workplace - unless you're not a real geek, in which case you'll feel oddly out of place...

and I can't help but trust their own reasons for their own actions.

At the risk of sounding like a cop out... I think the crux of it is that people realize CS is not for everyone. It requires a certain mindset, and for people who aren't in the right demographic, a code job is downright painful.

easy way to find the great teachers

[fearadhach]

You look at 2 things: 1. Do that teacher's students tend to do better the year they are with the teacher AND the year after than they did the year before? (a really great teacher will see an increase of the average grade of the kids for the year AFTER the teacher has them. One who is inflating grades to make him/herself look good will see average grade drop) 2. Is there a stealth/whisper campaign going on in the district (mostly the teachers, but spreading to councilors and admins) to oust the teacher? If yes to both, triple that teacher's pay and fire anyone who is working to get rid of him/her. Groupthink is probably the biggest cause of our public school woes. There is this attitude that education is the process of shoveling information into those little heads, and getting them to spit it back out on cue. Teachers who fail to subscribe to this get pounded down. Hard. Want to see where it has happened? Take a look at State and Federal 'Teacher of The Year' award winners. You will find that very few of those who receive the award are in teaching much longer. Find out the reason they keep leaving, and you will find one of the big problems with our schools.

"Land of opportunities"

[dashesy]

Canada is the new "land of opportunity". H1-B visa is a "visa",while permanent residence (PR) in Canada is like Green Card. The wages are lower in Canada but you get the social benefits, respect, even gratitude and safety in a much friendlier environment. The "Welcome to Canada" that you hear from Canadian immigration officer (regardless of your race) tells you that you are in a truly free country. There are many job opportunities for certain level of expertise and education in all countries that care for tech development. Dont forget that H1-B is supposed to be issued for very high tech jobs, like so many of them which are now empty for years.

Parents don't pick their homeschooled pupils

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they can pick and choose their students.

Homeschoolers don't "pick their students".

From Wikipedia:

"Home Schooling Achievement, a study conducted by National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI), supported the academic integrity of homeschooling. Among the homeschooled students who took the tests, the average homeschooled student outperformed his public school peers by 30 to 37 percentile points across all subjects. The study also indicates that public school performance gaps between minorities and genders were virtually non-existent among the homeschooled students who took the tests."

Re:Parents don't pick their homeschooled pupils

[Waffle Iron]

They sure do pick. Home schooling parents are self selecting. Many, if not most, of the problems that public schools deal with are caused by bad parents in the first place. The chances of such bad parents choosing to home school are virtually nil.

Re:Americans are good enough.. just not CHEAP enou

[Eli Gottlieb]

Now that the market is picking back up, we're seeing a resurgence in CS program enrollment, but many people drop out fairly quickly. Why? I've seen many of my peers go this way, and here's a basic demographics breakdown from what I can observe. Was it CS enrollment or graduation that hit an all-time low in 2007? I've forgotten.

Anyway, I honestly hope what you say is true. Having been hard-core into programming since middle school and being utterly enamored to CS now, it would be just lovely if there's still really good money for someone like me.

bullshit

[nguy]

If that were the reason, this would only be a US phenomenon. But it is happening in many developed countries, many of which guarantee job security by law, provide have stable salaries, and have nothing like an H-1b program.

The Offshoring Visa...

[nomonos]

Even without H1B, it's extremely easy for companies to move their opearations off-shore.

False. This may have been true for largely unskilled factory work, but for IT and similar work, the workers need the background in corporate culture and business processes that they can only get on site in the United States. That is why the H1B is called "the offshoring visa" because it gives workers from other countries the necessary background to offshore entire operations later (say, after the H1B runs out in six years).

Without that six years of knowledge of local operations and proprietary information, the offshoring projects would mostly be doomed to failure (and many fail anyway).

Tata Consultancy, any one?

[Tungbo]

Do you mean failure like this one?

From Wikipedia: "As of 2007, it is Asia's largest information technology firm and has the largest number of employees among Indian IT companies with strength of over 110,000[1] employees in 47 countries. The company generated consolidated revenues of US $5.7 billion for fiscal year ended 31 March 2008 and is listed on the National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange in India."

Sure, there have been failures, but the process has been refined and expectations set to more relistic level now. One may not be able to off-shore 100% of the software work, but one could off-shore 75-85% and keep the business liasons and system architects in the US. DE Shaw is one among many firms doing something like that.

Even Stock Equity analysis has been off-shored to India. If you think that your job will never be affected, don't be too sure unless that is a real need for your physical presence.

What if we awarded visas based upon wage?

[tyen]

What would the consequences be if we awarded visas starting with the worker with the highest wage, then the next highest wage, and so on until the allotment is exhausted? Note that I'm not advocating an auction system based upon how much a visa sponsor offers. Instead, the determining factor is the W-2 regular income paid to the worker, exclusive of bonuses and other deferred compensation; just straight monthly/bi-weekly wages. The higher it is, the better the odds of getting a visa.

This would encourage using H1-B visas for positions higher up the value chain that can justify high wages, and maximize the value we get out of each visa. Tying the award to the periodic cash wage amount would place a premium upon fulfilling urgent work with a ready revenue stream backing it able to put up the required cash flow, thus immediately releasing pent-up economic value at the high end of the economy that is held back for want of high-end talent. Finally, enforcing the wages requirement with a loopback check with the IRS and making kickbacks illegal (with infractions incurring a lifetime ban on the sponsor company, piercing the corporate veil, and a lifetime ban on the executive leadership of the sponsor company from ever participating in the H1-B program or any company that sponsors), would help encourage recruiting firms to try not to skirt the system.

Regulation Can Become a Beast Also

[yakiimo]

There may be a lot of profit keeping / hoarding. I don't have any numbers, but that seems correct to me. However in the long term, companies/societies doing things for less and reinvesting more profits will have an inherent advantage. Thus I think the profit hoarding will self-regulate itself assuming force/war is not brought into play (even then possibly).

On another of your points, I agree about government needing to regulate corporations to serve the benefit of society rather than the other way around. I do not think that detailed regulation like wage/job stratification is a job for regulation though. Government needs to set large scale incentive type regulations and businesses will figure it out. I don't know the solution, but your proposals sound to me like a recipe for giant government bureaucracy which is another beast we want to keep tamed.

For some bizarre reason UK politicians love the US

[fantomas]

"It's always amazing to me how a demonstrably bad idea gets mimicked over and over again."

For some bizarre reason UK politicians adore the USA to the point of embarrassment for the general population. Maggie Thatcher practically swooned over Ronnie Reagan but this was often seen as the Conservative (right wing) political view combined with Cold War practicalities - it was felt we needed US military support to keep the UK safe from the Soviet Union. With the end of the cold war and a Labour (left wing, supposedly socialist) government a lot of people thought this would finish but Tony Blair spent a lot of time appearing to dream of being vice president of the USA/governor of the 51st state of America.

This love of all things American seems to permeate down through political layers and US initiatives are often seen by politicians in the UK as desireable models to emulate.

I think it's a hang over from post first and second world war periods where the USA emerged as much stronger economically, comparatively speaking. For war weary and rationed British people, America was indeed a glittering, glamourous and wealthy country and many people aspired to that level of wealth. I think a lot of politicians felt then and now if we followed the same political systems we'd have the same wealth in the UK.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:Don't worry, it's just jobs Americans don't wan

[paulgrant]

chinese are on a 10 year plan. lol ;)

Re:Americans are good enough.. just not CHEAP enou

[Eli Gottlieb]

If your job is in the Boston, New York City or San-Francisco Bay areas, those salaries aren't exactly upper-middle class. Also, check the working hours.

But other than that, carry on.

Re:Americans are good enough.. just not CHEAP enou

[Shadow99_1]

Being a coder is not all their is to CS... Otherwise where will you find your network engineers & Network admins...? As a network admin I know businesses want a CS degree for their admin spots...

I however ended up in a network admin job that looked good initially (talk of at least a 10k pay increase for the job within 6 months, increased benefits, etc), but in the real world pays out 28k as the promises were smoke & mirrors... Well below Median income you quote... I can very well cry you a river & then some.

Re:Americans are good enough.. just not CHEAP enou

[Rutulian]

I find that really hard to believe. From the same site,

Median annual earnings of wage-and-salary network and computer systems administrators were $62,130 in May 2006.

If you look at the breakdown, even public schools pay more than what you say your salary is.

At any rate, that's not the point. The point is that a lot of people in the tech sector think they have an entitlement to a cushy job that makes >80k/yr with great benefits, vacation time, and 40 hour work weeks. Well, you don't. In the real world you are just another trained professional offering a service, and you will probably only ever make an average wage with average benefits--which isn't necessarily very much. If you were lobbying for better pay and working conditions in general for all trained professionals, I would sympathize. But people in the CS field don't deserve special treatment "just 'cause they know them computrons."

Re:Americans are good enough.. just not CHEAP enou

[Shadow99_1]

I'm not lying at all about how much I make... The joke was very much on me... They used to have a management company doing their IT work... They paid roughly 28k for someone to be there during the day, so when they separated from the management company they said they would pay ~45k/year... The board though nixed that at the very last minute after I'd already taken the job & so all of last year I made 28k... They swear I'll make 38k this coming year (July 1st on), which is all they could afford as an increase... >_>

And I'm just saying that some people actually can complain and it isn't because they feel entitled to 80k+ a year with a nice benefits package... But really... If there are more people like myself who owe 60k for college... I can see why we feel entitled to making a bit more than the average person... 28k/year after taxes is almost exactly what my college loan holders want form me every month... >_>