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Microsoft Says H-1B Workers Among Those Losing Jobs
CWmike notes that after a US Senator urged Microsoft to lay off H-1B workers first, Microsoft says it is cutting a 'significant number' of foreign workers as part of the layoff it announced last week. But experts say there is nothing in the law requiring a company to cut the jobs of H-1B workers before US workers. David Kussin, an immigration attorney, said, 'In fact, the law is very well designed to say that you have to treat H-1Bs the same as US citizens in all regards.' Another H-1B critic, UC Davis professor Norman Matloff, said the Senator's letter would help their fight. 'If Microsoft doesn't state that they will lay off the H-1Bs first — and they won't state this — then it would be awfully tough for Bill Gates to come back to the Hill and urge an H-1B increase, wouldn't it?'"
It's an easy thing to fix - require that H1B visa holders receive the same pay and benefits for their work as the rest of the workforce. If companies really have problems finding citizens to fill jobs, and aren't just trolling for lower paid wage slaves, then it ought not to be a problem, right?
Man, I'd love to see the tech industry try to talk its way out of that.
If you are so eager to say no regulation and let the market define for everything else, why aren't you when it affect you position as well? Market regulation only useful when it's for someone else?
First post?
'If Microsoft doesn't state that they will lay off the H-1Bs first â" and they won't state this â" then it would be awfully tough for Bill Gates to come back to the Hill and urge an H-1B increase, wouldn't it?'"
During the recession yes, and rightly so. I don't see any problem if there is a shortage situation when the session ends and they urge for more visas. I am no M$ fan, but they seem to be doing the same as everyone else has to; lay people off when there is less work then take them on when there is more.
The United States wants to be the leader in technology, but it won't encourage kids to go into science and engineering, and won't let many talented and better educated foreigners come and work at their companies.
And then they bitch and complain when companies like Microsoft move jobs to other countries that either do have the people they want, or will let those people come and work there.
Microsoft largely sets their own level of work. They are willingly cutting projects and reducing staff, not because the "invisible hand" is decreasing demand but because the chair throwing hand has mismanaged a company.
Think of all those poor patent lawyers, PR-Fud men, and so on out of a job.
Those are the types who will never be out of employment atMicrosoft, I presume.
I mean if you do not see why a company should pay more for my services when someone is willing to do it for less, then I would like to see the following:
Microsoft should outsource management or hire H-1B visa personnel for management positions as well. It will be cheaper for the company too. How about that?
I agree and disagree with this. You have to be in an H1B shoes to appreciate this. I have seen folks laid off as H1B with unsold houses and cars. They had to just get a ticket, and leave the country. Barring the Native Indians, I think it is a hypocrisy on most Americans. Would you be here commenting, if the same was done to your forefathers. Being an Asian with H1B is taking jobs, but being from Europe, it is heritage.
It takes 8yrs for an H1B to become a permanent resident, for something that should realistically happen over night or in 24hrs. Bureaucracy accounts for most of the time taken. If H1B workers are quickly moved to permanent resident status we wont have issues wrt to unfair or unequal compensation. Corps will be forced to compensate US citizens & others fairly. Mr Bill runs a business not a social service program, he will hire those who work for less pay. Don't blame Mr Bill, blame your friendly bureaucrats.
Don't forget the part about ignoring 20 million unskilled illegal immigrants.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Lets get those low end jobs protection too.
After all we want to be fair.
I can talk my way out of the scenario you presented easily.
1. You won't move
2. You don't have the skills I need
3. You think your worth more than I think the job is
4. Your attitude sucks (by your posting I doubt I'd want you around, sound like a fairness whiner
Really, #1 and #2 are big reasons why H1-B work so well. People go where the jobs are, people with families rarely do, or worse act insulted if asked to.
The majority of jobs people bitch about H1Bs taking aren't being filled by locals because too many are not local to the job or they don't have the skill. Toss in people with chips on their shoulders and I am going to look at people who are EAGER to work and do good work.
Too many see their job at 9 to 5 regardless if it is not. Look, I am on salary. If something comes up I am not beyond putting in more than forty to get the job done. Those things happen. The problem is too many people I have worked with don't think like that and then wonder why they get passed over or go first.
It sucks.
However those jobs are not ours to dictate who they go to. If I create the job opportunity I can decide how it is filled. Whats next? Assigning people to jobs even if they don't qualify all to meet some arbitrary quota? We know what happens when that is done.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Personally, I think the US should take advantage of being able to import skilled workforce. Most H1B holders are the types of people we want living and innovating in our country. In the long run as citizens, they would likely create more jobs than they "steal". I'm all for granting the opportunity to become a citizen to anyone that graduates from an accredited US university graduate program (maybe limited to science and math, but ok with all). Leverage our leadership in university education to create a larger pool of domestic talent.
If I saw my mother or father or anyone I knews mother or father (who worked in a technology field) losing their job to someone from another country because they were "cheap labor" I sure as heck wouldn't go into that field either. The fact of the matter is corporations are greed centric. Management feel they should get all the money and perks and those below them should get $h!t! I wonder if they would change their tune if suddenly the Board of Directors said "we are going to save moeny by outsourcing ALL management in the company. Heck they would save more than outsourcing the regular employees. Look what a CEO and Executive level management make compared to regular employees. I KNOW I could find someone from India that would do the same job for 1/3 what they are doing it for. Heck I would do ANY fortune 500/1000 companies CEO job for HALF what they are doing it for right now! And probably do it a heck of a lot better!
The Truth is a Virus!!!
Let the company pay what they want and put a tariff on the good. The most likely effect is it will stop the trade and force the job offshore. At least until we start putting tariffs on imported data. Looks like a new can of worms just got opened.
So Michael Dell OWES it to us. His hard work, his identifying a need and filling it, somehow makes him indebted to society as a whole because that is what is morally right? So guilt the producers of wealth by claiming that the non producers are the only reason why they were able to produce in the first place.
Have your read Atlas Shrugged? Perhaps you should. The most selfish people in this world are those who demand others to give of themselves.
I am a trader. I earn what I get in trade for what I produce. I ask for nothing more or nothing less than what I earn. That is justice. I don't force anyone to trade with me; I only trade for mutual benefit. Force is the great evil that has no place in a rational world. One may never force another human to act against his/her judgment. If you deny a man's right to Reason, you must also deny your right to your own judgment. Yet you have allowed your world to be run by means of force, by men who claim that fear and joy are equal incentives, but that fear and force are more practical.
And then there's your 'brother-love' morality. Why is it moral to serve others, but not yourself? If enjoyment is a value, why is it moral when experienced by others, but not by you? Why is it immoral to produce something of value and keep it for yourself, when it is moral for others who haven't earned it to accept it? If it's virtuous to give, isn't it then selfish to take?
Your acceptance of the code of selflessness has made you fear the man who has a dollar less than you because it makes you feel that that dollar is rightfully his. You hate the man with a dollar more than you because the dollar he's keeping is rightfully yours. Your code has made it impossible to know when to give and when to grab.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
That is so true. The university i am working in (somewhere in new england) has a bunch of foreign grad students. I would say that about 80% of them are foreigners. I am myself a postdoc and a foreigner, all but 2 postdocs are foreigners. Americans should see the things straight: without foreigners research in the US would take a big hit. I do not understand those xenophobic republicans bitching about us. There is nobody to replace us. The foreign postdocs got hired because there was no american up to our job. Not surprising as few get a PhD anyway. Of course getting a green card is awfully hard and guess what, people do not really like being treated like disposable toilet paper.
Heh, H-1B workers don't vote. Now of course, if the senator had asked them to fire gay people first...
The gut reaction of many slashdotters to migrant workers is simply disgusting. It combines basic misguided tribalism ("Yeah we're in the same group of 300M people") with a rent seeking behavior ("I want a higher wage at the expense of the consumers")
I won't even get started on the total immorality of the concept that the govt grants you or not a "right" to work for a willing employer, grants you or not a "right" to rent a house from a willing landlord, etc.
\u262D = \u5350
Yeah except as rare as it is some H1-B visa immigrants actually DO come from Europe and such... I'd be willing to bet its something like 1% of all of them though.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AtlasShruggedMeanwhile, contrast the "reality" described in that book with the current news.
The United States currently is experiencing, and has in the past experienced, a high stream of illegal immigrants from Latin America. There is no drive for a mass expulsion. If anything, the drive is for a mass legalisation. Anyone who argues for mass expulsion of illegal immigrants would likely find it impossible to find work anywhere in Hollywood (as evidenced by the massive boycott of Republicans earlier last year).
Yet at the same time, arguments come - very often from Democrats - for stopping the skilled worker migrant programmes.
How can the same people argue that the fences against skilled workers should be high, while the fences against unskilled migrants should be low?
If a person immigrates illegally from Mexico, and over 5 years educates himself through public institutions to achieve a high level of IT skill, and proceeds to "take a job that would otherwise have gone to an American" - then that is the pinnacle of what humanity can achieve.
Yet if someone lives in India with a high level of IT skill and wants to come to America to live and work there, to "take a job that would otherwise have gone to an American" - then that is traitorous to America to allow.
How can you reconcile these two extremely different perspectives without brain explosion? How do you define human rights, to allow them to coexist?
I work at a nuclear power plant. We need engineering backgrounds like crazy. They literally just aren't there. We haven't turned to H1B Visas, we turn to contracting. It's quite possible the contractors are H1B, but we don't generally see them, just their engineering designs and such. My company goes around looking for engineering students all over the country that want to work. There just aren't enough graduates.
We are in a constant state of hiring, especially with the workforce entering retiring age in very large quantities(30% or more in less than 4 years). There just aren't enough graduates to go around. This definitely helps my income, because the company will gladly pay to keep my skill set right where it is.
Being a hard working 20-something, I find 1 problem with my own generation. We're lazy as heck. I'm not seeing this laziness with the older generation. Sure, ever generation has had a problem they have to work through. But can you really work through laziness? Lazy is also a very destructive problem. If my generation is going to wake up at 30+ and realize their mistake, it's getting a bit late to go back and fix it after having a dead end job at McDonald's for 10 years, assuming they weren't so lazy they stayed employed for 10 years after high school.
20-somethings on a large scale want something for nothing. I'm not surprised at all about the H1B Visas and companies trying to justify them. Go visit an engineering class and look at how many are actually US citizens. The numbers are only getting smaller. In my opinion my generation needs this recession(I'm expecting it to be a very long painful depression) so we can see that we have to work for what we have. Nothing is given away for free. It's just too bad that my parents are approaching retirement age, and their retirements are dwindling fast from this economic downturn.
A large part of my reasoning for seeing this as a long and painful depression is simply the bumbling idiots with no skill set wanting big bucks to watch TV. They have little/no motivation to work for anything, and feel that everything can(and should) be given to them with little effort on their part. 4+ years of college is "more committment" than my generation can handle.
My generations motto:
If it can't be earned in short order, it clearly isn't worth having.
I don't see why they should pay more for your services when someone is willing to do it for less.
On the surface that seems true, but it isn't. In any capitalist market there is supply and demand. When supply exceeds demand, prices fall. When demand exceeds supply, prices rise. Well understood theory, correct?
In the U.S. workforce market there is ample supply of workers, but the prevailing wage that people need to thrive, you know have a home, wife, children, etc. is fairly high. My health insurance alone, is $14K a year.
So, the government gave a gift to large corporations. With record profits, Microsoft is getting more and more H1B visa workers. This causes a glut of workers on the market and allows Microsoft to pay their workers less. Following suit, other companies can now pay less for the over abundance of workers.
H1B visas are nothing more than "human resource dumping" for corporate america. H1Bs cost less, and lower the prevailing wage. This is undeniable.
And yet you haven't been hired to do just that. Why do you suppose that is?
The shortage is really localized though. Here in Detroit where companies are going bankrupt left and right as the auto companies tank, there are lots of skilled engineers and IT workers collecting unemployment and hitting that refresh button on monster.com every five seconds.
Lots of people are leaving the state to find work, but the problem isn't just that people have families or don't want to move, they literally can't afford to move. With the housing crisis so bad in Michigan, you can't sell your house for even close to what it's worth and in most cases you're lucky to sell it for what you owe the bank.
Typically somebody with an H1-B lives in an apartment instead of buying a house, so they can pick up and move to another state or country when necessary.
You're obviously trolling.
You're probably one of the believers that think Windows 7 is just Vista with a new face.
Wait... is this emeek?!
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
I'm not sure about how I feel about this. I tend to like free and open borders. On the other hand I think making hiring decisions based almost solely on data that can be stuck into Excel is a bad thing.
How ever I am very glad to see this being discussed in a very public forum (US Senate) vs. just on tech sites like Slashdot.
Think Deeply.
Because of how hard it already is to get enough H1-B visas, Microsoft opened a development lab in Vancouver a couple of years ago. Turns out Canada loves to have smart programmers working there, while we in the US only like it if those programmers were born here.
I don't think this was an ideal choice for Microsoft. Even today, the vast majority of their software engineers work at the Redmond headquarters, and I'm sure the company would prefer that these workers could work there as well. However, as a direct result of our immigration policy, engineering work that an American company wanted to have happen on American soil is happening in Canada instead. These workers are paying Canadian taxes instead of US taxes, their children will probably grow up as loyal to Canada as many of us are to the United States, and the US has lost even more software jobs to a foreign country.
But to some in the US, it's apparently better to have fewer skilled software engineers working here than it is to supplement our own population of engineers with a few immigrants. If you honestly think that further tightening our immigration policy will leave our economy in a *more* competitive position when this recession is over, I'm sure Canada and other countries would love for you to speak up right about now.
"then it would be awfully tough for Bill Gates to come back to the Hill"
Awfully tough, considering he already left Microsoft.
The H-1B visas are here to fill jobs vacancies. If the jobs dry up then the H-1B visas need to go home before putting US citizens out of work.
I'd be surprised if _only_ 1% of H1-B visa are from europe, considering the inexistence of other options if you are from the EU and you want to work in the US (there are a couple of others visa for specialized jobs as well, iirc). All the europeans I know that know work in the US are either under a H1-B or started with one before applying for a green card.
The Average American can go to India to get an education. They can even go to Russia, and they can live in India, or any other country. Apply for the permits and you can be living there.
The idea that these countries are not civilized is absolutely bogus! People get good healthcare in India. Not everybody gets it, but you can get it. In fact there is a tourist trade being established where you can take a vacation and get an operation.
Ahh, is the problem that you DONT want to move? Well that's your problem, not the problem of country in question....
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
That's corporate speak for "none of your business" I believe.
"Americans should see the things straight: without foreigners research in the US would take a big hit. I do not understand those xenophobic republicans bitching about us. There is nobody to replace us. The foreign postdocs got hired because there was no american up to our job. Not surprising as few get a PhD anyway. Of course getting a green card is awfully hard and guess what, people do not really like being treated like disposable toilet paper."
Wrong. There are plenty of US citizens doing research in this country (and others). We don't need foreigners in our graduate schools. We like to have (I'm a professor) foreigners in our graduate schools for a variety of other reasons. It's a tack-on, a luxury. . . makes the environment more interesting.
Here's the problem with open borders, free trade, and all that. The rules in other countries, the economies, are all different. To me, free trade, in employees and resources is a form of cheating. We'd never accept it in our games, but we accept it in real life. It doesn't make sense. What's happening and what will continue to happen is businesses will go from crappy economy to crappy economy, seeking the lowest bidder at all times. Business will try and manipulate supply; they will do anything to get a leg up. This isn't evil; this is the reality of doing business. It's not, however, in society's best interest. It's also not necessarily in business's long term interest. In my opinion, we should not allow recruitment of workers or placement of factories, headquarters, etc. . . in countries that have lesser economies than ours (e.g., China and their billions of third world workers) or that have less stringent rules/standards for doing business. If that's allowed, it's not an even playing field. We are not the United States of the World.
- signed natural born US citizen with PhD
You'd think that if the new administration was serious about 'creating jobs', it would call for an end to the H-1B program. Curiously that's not happening. I wonder why?
[Insert pithy quote here]
...bollocks !
'In fact, the law is very well designed to say that you have to treat H-1Bs the same as US citizens in all regards.'
If that were truly the case, there wouldn't be any H-1B visas issued. The program exists to ensure that H-1B's don't have to be treated the same, especially with regards to compensation (in all its forms).
I KNOW I could find someone from India that would do the same job for 1/3
e'hem, try 1/100th.
Executive compensation is so far out of whack with worker compensation that some executives have received 1000 times more pay than some of their full time salaried employees. A disparity of this size hasn't been seen since the height of feudalism. Revolutions were waged over exactly this issue.
We're teetering on the edge here, guys !
We do need to keep our eyes toward home first. In my opinion, all lay offs should begin overseas before hitting home.
Truth, Just Us, And Hatred For All Mankind!
Considering how aggressively the US have been selling the idea of free trade and the continuous U-turn we are seeing in their trading agenda I will be surprised if this is not becoming the norm for both people and products. Funny enough, that is what happened in 1930s... Are politicians not educated in history in the US?
You know what.. I am terribly disturbed by the stand of this senator and most of the commenters here. First and most importantly: Please stop saying companies get away by paying less to H1B workers. They are not! By law, they are required to pay the prevailing wage government says so. Second, by hiring an h1b worker, the companies have to take care a lot of paperwork and pay a few thousands for the visa. Third, they risk a lot of things by hiring h1bs because each time they leave US to visit their home, there is a chance that they might not be able to come back because the embassy might reject the visa or the customs officer denies the entrance.
Considering all these, hiring h1b workers is not all great for the companies. I have a phd from a top US university in engineering. While looking for a job, most of my interviews ended shortly because they realized that they should get a visa for me. But fear not, there will be one less h1b soon. My wife is finishing her phd now, she will look for a job and quite possibly she won't be able to get one. Then we will have to go back home. Lose situation for us, but I don't think it is a win situation for US either as we could have contributed a lot here. I guess the only winner is the senator.
TFA said:
Actually, no. If the H1-Bs are specialists in something Microsoft have desperate need for [1], and the people being laid off are in some area Microsoft don't need any more [2] then it's not difficult at all.
Perhaps someone subscribes to the fallacy of fungibility?
[1] HCI jockeys, security specialists... I could go on
[2] Sucks to be on the Zune team. From what I've heard the games division might be taking an early bath too.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
A sizable chunk of H1B are Indians.Indians, who , after getting the best education ( for example at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Institutes_of_Technology ) at government's ( and tax payer's ) expense, thought not about the society that enabled them, but about the 45 times multiplier ( 1 USD == 45 Indian rupees), and moved to the US.To contribute to a society that didnt invest a penny in them, to a state that is not interested in their welfare, not even in context of basic right to earn a living. Any guesses on where our sympathies lie ?
Its indeed unfortunate for those H1B who lose their shirt.But it is also a stark reminder that irrespective of the progress a society makes, and the freedom and equality it preaches, a migrant will never be on par with a citizen.Gandhi was a victim of discrimination in South Africa, today his children are victims of a different from of discrimination. The world hasnt changed much after al
Bad times dont last for ever. When the recession ebbs, and the economy picks up, maybe the US economy can get a punk rocker citizen to write code.
I am oh so glad I didnt give in to the temptation of pursuing an MS in an US university ( and sell off my ancestral home to pay for it ), getting a job there , only to be sacked thanklessly. I wish some of my brethren had the same foresight and commitment to their own societies that they owe their existence to
Totally true actually. And I am a white American with my forefathers in the Mayflower's passengers list.
If we don't have this influx of skilled foreign labor, we would be way behind in the race for World's tech leadership.
It sounds like a stereotype but, sadly, it is not: We, Americans, being us white, latino, black or whatever, we will rapidly lose the entrepreneurship and courage of our migrant ancestors, and become the fat SUV driver, meth-addicted, beer belly BBQ monsters, just willing to live on Social Security's expense and don't work.
The foreigners are different. They come with this drive, this defiance, that made America big.
Their second generations, US Born, will become lazy and pathetic as we are, but them we can bring another wave of foreigners in...
>>> then it would be awfully tough for Bill Gates to come back to the Hill and urge an H-1B increase, wouldn't it?'
Yes, especially as he doesn't work for Microsoft any more.
So I guess the only reason you don't sell heroin to schoolchildren or defective sprinkler systems or something is because the profit margins are lousy?
Why exactly is it that because somebody calls themselves a 'trader' that they therefore get a free pass from any sort of ethical considerations?
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
It goes deeper. H1-B students get many more college grants then American students which really upsets me. I'm all for being worldly and global but guess what, treat your own people first. Oh not enough skill sets? That's the colleges prices to blame, if Andy the American wants to be a electrical engineer but will cost him 80K for his 4 years he might not be able to. While if Fred the foreigner at the same college with the same degree in mind only costs him 30K who is the favoritism for?
There's more than one side here. Yes, Microsoft or any other company should fire the foreign workers first when possible. But realistically, it doesn't always work that way.
Say Microsoft has one team working on some craptacular product, say Microsoft Songsmith, that isn't as complex or demanding as another product, say Windows 7. Say they decide to lay off some workers. The Songsmith guys are the obvious choice, as the product royally blows to start with, but wait, we need to fire the foreign workers first. However some of the Songsmith guys aren't foreign workers. Do you take some foreign workers, who are actively involved in the production of Windows 7, and replace them with some of the American geniuses behind Microsoft Songsmith? Or do you just can everyone responsible for that crapfest?
Remember, the companies in question are large. They have many departments and projects, and the skills that make one perfect for one project may not be adequate for another. Thus, they're likely to wipe out all those working on a product, rather than simply removing the foreign workers.
Granted, in the current economic climate, Microsoft should NOT be hiring new foreign workers. However shuffling workers between projects would in order to fire the foreign workers first would be devastating to productivity to say the least.
I really cannot see our economy recovering to any large extent at this point. American workers have just been completely hacked off at the
knees by rampant out sourcing. The H1B program is largely a very small part of this, more frightening is the amount of jobs we have lost
through out sourcing. This has finally bitten our nation and I just cannot see recovery happening until this problem is curbed. No jobs means
no money for spending, no spending leads to more market retraction and the vicious cycle continues. Until our elected officials step into the
market and level the playing we will remain on this path of eventual destruction. Giving everyone a check for $500 bucks ain't going to do it, that
check will likely be spent and Walmart and ultimately off shore.
Got Code?
Yes you are.
MSFT has 50,000 employees worldwide.
If you think that the changes in the last five years to the Office suite amount to "cosmetics", you're demonstrating your cluelessness. Let's see. SQL Server. Exchange Server. Windows Server. Clustering stuff. All the Live suite, Messenger, etc., Office, for both PC and Mac, oh yeah, an entire Search Engine that is second only to Google, MSN, the world's third most visited website (when I worked there - now I do Linux work in healthcare, so don't go calling me an astroturfer or shill - 11,000 page views to the home page alone, let alone child pages, per second), Visual Studio, an entire mapping engine and data collation service, an encyclopedia, a PC hardware division, R&D, oh, that obscure, little known console, the Xbox 360, MSNBC, Windows Mobile.
Cosmetic changes to a word processor and operating system, indeed.
If you think the green card process treats you like disposable toilet paper, try being a scientific researcher compared to the other professions in the United States. That's why more Americans don't go into science and research: the pay-per-hour sucks, the hours are long, and you get little-to-no job security.
Here's the problem most are missing when they state it's up to the business and protectionism has no place:
Generally the U.S. is the largest concentration of your customer base, or the customer base for the employers of a lot of your other countrymen.
Now if you take jobs (income) from that base, it will bite you in the ass eventually.
If you increase the customer base, say in china, you increase the disposable society and again it will bite you in the ass. (insert end of world scenario here)
Or we could mandate static societies, but that's never going to happen.
Maybe we need to rethink this?
I'm all for more localized markets, and smaller profits in a green based renewable society.
Except you are not.
I'm working on a return of the black plague.
Seems to fix all the problems.
Second, if the H-1b workers are here legitimately then I can't find anything in the law requiring Microsoft to lay them off first. Correct me if I'm wrong. I may have missed something.
THIRD, there is plenty of evidence that there has been a systemic and deliberate abuse of the provisions of the law in hiring H-1b workers. Specifically, the requirement that the employer make a good faith effort to hire US citizens prior to application for an H-1b visa.
FOURTH, Microsoft is the largest user, and therefore likely the largest abuser of the H-1b provision.
FIFTH, the penalty for filing a fraudulent H-1b application is: To knowingly furnish any false information in the preparation of this form and any supporting documentation thereto, or to aid, abet or counsel another to do so is a felony, punishable by $10,000 fine or five years in the penitentiary, or both (18 U.S.C. 1001). Other penalties apply as well to fraud or misuse of this immigration document (U.S.C. 1546) and to perjury with respect to this form (18 U.S.C. 1546 and 1621).
SIXTH: Since this practice is likely pervasive at Microsoft, it must be prosecuted as a criminal Racket under the provisions of RICO.
SEVENTH: Since Bill Gates and Steve Balmer are clearly the leaders of this apparently criminal organization, they should be indicted and tried for fraud and perjury.
Seastead this.
Because her books were written by her to show the superiority of her beliefs. So anything that SHE wants to advance HER plot/characters is defined as "ethical" by HER.
And, as with most authors like that, she never explores the ramifications of her theories. Things just sort of work out for her hero characters ... because that's just the way the world works in her books.
In essence, she decides that for her world view to work ... actions A, B and C must be "ethical" ... and actions X, Y and Z must be "unethical". Otherwise the heroes in her books would be overrun by the non-heroes. It's consistent once you've already bought into the belief system.
and Microsoft ignores them. There was never any sense that there would be equity in pay, that is why there was a corporate preference for H1s. Also, MS moved them around from job to job (PROHIBITED BY THE RULES) and it was common to have a team member not on your cost center (to hide the fact they were being moved around). It is this idea that they are above the rules that leaves me with no sympathy for MS.
I worked at Microsoft in Redmond with H1B work status for four years. In 2007, I left MS because I found a job opportunity that was better for my family. (This new job happened to be back in my country.)
I can't comment about the overall H1B program in the US, or the overall US labour market, or even on any new changes at MS over the past year, but I do definitely know about the experiences of H1B employees in the developer and testing roles at MS.
I (and all other non-US-citizen employees) were treated exactly the same as every other employee. We had the same job descriptions and responsibilities as other employees and the same opportunities for promotion. We were integrated in teams that included US citizens, other H1B-status workers, and people with other immigration statuses. We were certainly paid the same as any other employee with a similar job and similar experience.
I also know that Microsoft has very high hiring standards for developer and tester roles. I was not in a management/lead position, but I occasionally reviewed resumes and took part in interviewing applicants. Interviews were tough all-day affairs, including questions that required the use of logic, math, programming, and testing methodologies. The point wasn't to see if the applicant could regurgitate the knowledge, but to view his or her thinking process, creativity, and problem solving abilities as they tried to come up with a solution, and handle complications or restrictions that the interviewer throws at the candidate after they come up with an initial solution.
During the time I was there, my group and most others were always trying to hire more people. The major bottleneck was waiting to get any resumes for candidates that seemed worth interviewing. Most interviews ended with frustration that the candidate wasn't up to standards. Just because you applied to MS and didn't get a job or even an interview is not proof that Microsoft didn't need to look outside the US to find candidates up to their standards.
So, you might have valid criticisms about the quality of Microsoft software, but MS really does have very high standards for their employees, and employees with H1B status are treated the same as any other full-time employee there.
Atheism is a religion to the same extent that not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Society is built by cooperation.
Actually, I rather suspect that society is destroyed by competition, not built by it. The competition is supposed to eliminate that which is no longer needed, in one of the least painful ways possible. In other words, a kinder, gentler destruction.
But if you take it too far, then everything gets destroyed at once by competition. Take Rwanda or Bosnia, for example. That's the Darwinist Religion at its worst.
But to get something like Amazon-dot-com going, it took people working together while the payoff was still questionable. That's co-operation.
Just wanted to keep our definitions clear. It's easier to navigate social interactions when language is well-defined.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
You need to read your history books again. Remember the poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty?
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.
--Emma Lazarus
It doesn't mention that Master or Ph.d required.
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First step in an H1B application is Labor Department's evaluation of the case. It is there to make sure of three (3) important things: 1) a local resident, capable of doing this job, isn't available; 2) the position, being filled, offers amount of compensation, that complies with determined prevailing wage (which is quite accurate); 3) the company did not have layoffs in the recent months. The company is required to advertise about the position in the local/regional paper and on the web prior to filing the DoL petition. If company is caught cheating on their H1B cases, they will not get any new approvals. This makes sure "immigrants" (they are not immigrants, they are actually temp workers - after six years must stay out of the status for a year) are not "stealing" jobs. But one thing I know for sure - laying off workers not based on their performance, but on some other factor will not increase efficiency. And that is what capitalism is designed to avoid.
Can you please post the average salary the post/pre docs are receiving?
I have heard they are paid $30k with no benefits.
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The problem with that (and most of her philosophy) is that she is the one defining "mutual benefit" and "ethical".
Is selling alcohol "ethical"?
And too many employers see a job as 9-to-WhenEver, regardless if it is not.
I understand that an employer wants to get "value" for his money, but most employees want to feel like they are providing value also.
The best days I have are ones where I felt productive and actually accomplished things that helped my project and company, but I still need a life outside of my company, especially since the days of being a Company Man are gone.
The contract used to work both ways, a person would work their whole life for a company and in exchange they would get a retirement package and pension. Now I realize that this was unsustainable, but in the days when companies view employees as assets to overwork, or get rid of as soon as things look grey (or to boost market price), and then hire back replacements a few months later at a pay cut, then the company deserves much less loyalty.
(( 'In fact, the law is very well designed to say that you have to treat H-1Bs the same as US citizens in all regards.' )) I wonder does anyone else have an obsession with the "equalization meme" - which I define as "A and B are different, but we must make them equal" ? For example, you can Google (( Canada Equalization )) to find that this meme is a cornerstone of their philosophy of governance. At its most ridiculous is sexual equalization, male and female are SO different. Anyway it seems like "there ought to be a book", but I have not found one. I would found a website myself, if I could figure out how to make money off it.
US workers should get precedence over imports. Period. If the H1B program has verbiage prohibiting this it is just one more reason why the H1B Program SUCKS!!!!
As far as moving goes--I've lived in plenty of crappy US towns (and UK and German ones too!). I'm very happy where I am now, and it is my #1 priority in life. Good schools, good communities, nice weather, diverse culture...all these things are far more important than a few dollars an hour difference I'd get by shopping around. To be blunt, there are plenty of places in the US you couldn't pay me enough to live in.
My experience over the past 15 years has been that H1B isn't used to bring in qualified people that we couldn't otherwise find in the US. It's being used to fill the entry level positions.
I don't know why, but it appears that by filling entry level with the H1B individuals this is distorting the free market within the US. Why do they need to go outside the country? Possibly because there has been a decline in people seeking ComSci and other similar degrees. Why would that be the case? Possibly because the IT industry has not addressed their salaries, or work/life balance issues. Possibly also because in my experience IT departments are extremely bad at recruiting out of college. Possibly also because IT departments are bad at developing talent.
Regardless, the influx of H1B individuals filling entry level positions is destroying the entire IT industry because we are no longer developing talent within the country.
This is actually a pretty major issue. Youw ant to call it tribalism, whatever. I'll certainly call it Nationalism. I think it is important for our country to have a functioning free market system, and the H1B system is distorting the free market and not allowing it to function properly.
There are plenty of American kids who go into science and engineering. But when you compare the population of the US (300 million) to that of India ( just for example--1.2 billion), it's easy to see why there are so many "qualified" Indians compared to Americans.
The problem isn't necessarily a lack of technically qualified Americans--just a lack of technically qualified Americans who will sacrifice things such as quality of life (living anywhere just for a job) or for lower pay. The real problem is Microsoft moving jobs overseas to save a buck--not because they can't get enough qualified Americans to live and work in Redmond.
'If Microsoft doesn't state that they will lay off the H-1Bs first â" and they won't state this â" then it would be awfully tough for Bill Gates to come back to the Hill and urge an H-1B increase, wouldn't it?'"
What nonsense is that? Someone does not understand that workers are humans with specific skills (and productivity levels and team work abilities). So just because you lay off people, it does not mean you go arbitrarily about it. You still want to retain the most qualified one's or the one's that are part of a team that can't just now be dismantled/disrupted or those who have been hired last for that matter. There go many more factors into the decision whom to lay off first. And I'm all for some social considerations, such as have a good reason to fire someone who worked for you for a long time or is the sole bread winner in its family.
As 10% staff reduction in all groups and departments is a dumb idea so is a H1-B visa holders first policy. At least from a business costs and efficiency standpoint.
If you think it actually through you could argue that it causes additional costs, which need to be reduced some place else, so it does potentially mean additional layoffs.
Busy helping non technical users of OpenOffice.org - http://plan-b-for-openoffice.org/
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Studies by Rand and universities have shown that this is FALSE. There is NO demonstrate-able general shortage.
Now there are *spot* shortages, but we need spot shortages to allow us to transition from the surplus spots. Otherwise, citizens would be fired from the surplus specialties but not get the shortage spots because they are filled by H1B's. Think about it.
Because Americans know that masters tend to *limit* your choices rather than expand them. Asian cultures value higher degrees out of historical habit. It's a phallic symbol there. American corporations instead value mostly hands-on and tool-specific knowledge (for good or bad), and a masters does not represent that.
I've seen a citizen fired and H1B's kept with my own eyes. The poor lady laid off was nearly destitute. I felt for her. This was not the stated reason H1B's were created.
It's true the citizen lady had problematic people skills, but the stated purpose of the H1B program was not to replace citizens with people skill difficulties. It was not created to replace "C" citizens with "A" foreigners. Perhaps some of you darwinistic free-marketers want it that way, but that's not the way the bill was sold to and by Congress. Voters would reject it (as is) if they knew what was really going on.
Hopefully this recession will expose some of the dark-sides of the H1B program. It's been festering for too long.
Table-ized A.I.
I'm not sure how the H1B visas work but I'm guessing it is similar to a program Canada has for letting companies hire foreign workers if there are no Canadian residents who can do the job. Leaving aside the fact that the requirements are laughably low and that unavailability really means "not available at a price we want to pay" the fact is that in theory foreign workers are only supposed to be hired for jobs that would otherwise go unfilled because of a lack of domestic labor. Doesn't it then make some sense that if domestic workers do become available that the foreign workers be replaced on the basis that they would never have been hired if those domestic workers had originally been available?
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
No, businesses claim they can't find people for these jobs. The truth is they can't find people for these jobs at the rate they want to pay.
If a business can't find a worker to fill a job, that's the free market's way of telling them they need to pay more.
Those folks with families will move, if you offer them enough cash.
We were certainly paid the same as any other employee with a similar job and similar experience.
Really? Folks openly talked about how much they were being paid? Hmmm. Interesting.
The major bottleneck was waiting to get any resumes for candidates that seemed worth interviewing.
I was once being prepped for interviews after grad school and the placement office told us about an interviewing technique by a local company that was lifted from MS:
The candidate was asked, "How many diapers are sold in the US?" (Saying I'll Google it is the 'wrong' answer, BTW.)
The successful candidate said something like, "Well, there are 300 million people in the US and 1% are having kids. Therefore, there are 3 million babies. Now, babies need to be changed 3 times a day. So that's 9 million diapers a day. Which is 63 million diapers per week."
She got the job. BTW, all of those numbers were pulled out of her ass, but she got the job because of her "logical" thinking.
I can create hiring standards that no one can satisfy. Are those standards pertinent to the job? Nope. But it sure makes my standards look exclusive.
If you consider how un-innovative MS is, I think their standards are completely bogus.
Another thing, how may people coached you about the interviewing process? I had Indian friends in Grad school and I know about and participated in the network of test and interview 'cheats'.
If you have to ask that then this discussion is already over.
You are accepting that her philosophy is "truth".
So selling guns to gang members is ethical.
So growing, processing, shipping and distributing cocaine is ethical.
So a king taxing a serf almost all of his production for the privilege of living on a plot of land is ethical.
Which is a rather narrow and awfully convenient definition of "ethical".
More so because it would be "unethical" for the less advantaged party to claim the more advantaged party's advantage through the same means that the more advantaged party's ancestors acquired those advantages. Example, the serf would be "unethical" for attempting to overthrow the king.
No, selling guns to people who you know are going to use them to kill innocent people is only "ethical" in YOUR philosophy.
The words that best describes that behaviour in the real world are "unethical" and "immoral". Not "ethical".
like disposable toilet paper
Ummm, there's another kind of toilet paper?
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
If one actually believed in the free market, they'd see the lack of candidates as an indication that they need to pay more for that position.
It's amusing to me how many folks spout off free market philosophy when discussing the business side of things, but then rail against free market effects in the labor market.
Got a job you can't find a candidate for? Offer more cash. You'll get someone.
The H1-B program is probably abused by some but by and large it brings the best people for the job into the country from overseas.
I have no stats to offer but here is what you should consider - there is no reason an American corporation will put up with a worker who is not delivering, especially one who is on a temporary visa that the company itself typically sponsors.
H1-B workers are typically highly educated, often from American universities, are highly motivated and are legal and pay taxes. They usually work in white collar technology jobs and are in my opinion the ideal immigrant because they symbolize the well-educated, hard working immigrant. This is the kind of person you want to be a part of American society.
This is the kind of educated, law-abiding person who will buy a house and a car and pay taxes and create more downstream jobs.
There are people to replace you. They're the Americans who quite rationally decided not to go on to grad school because -- as Americans -- the investment in grad school would not pay off in sufficiently increased opportunities to make it worth the investment.
If all the foreign students were cleaned out of the universities, then due to reduced demand the cost of grad school would tend downwards. More Americans would go to grad school, as they'd be able to both afford it and actually get in. It would also make more economic sense for more Americans to continue through grad school, as they would have better opportunities for employment afterwards, as there would be far fewer foreigners competing for the jobs in the U.S. that require advanced eduction.
You are not necessary here. And quite frankly, for your own sake, I would suggest you leave as soon as possible. As conditions here in the U.S. deteriorate, more people will become very desperate. Desperate people get angry, and sadly, there is a long history in the U.S. of turning that anger on foreigners. Since, as you state, so many universities are chock-full of foreign students, the lynch mobs will know where to go. Please go home while it's still safe to do so.
I worked at Dell during the dot com bubble burst. When Dell laid off people in IT, the H1-B visa employees were the last to go (if at all). They were half the price as their American counterparts. Nothing changed then, nothing will change now. For most positions, all that the higher ups care about is the cost of labor, not skill set or what is right. Microsoft will do the same.
Let us not forget, Microsoft has another office building in Richmond, BC (4 hours north in Canada). If they're are unable to place a qualified candidate in Redmond, WA; they would just have him work out of Richmond, BC. Is that what we want to see? Loss of tax? Talent? Being a Canadian working in the US, I don't think, pushing talents near-shore (Canada) or off-shore (Rest of the world) is a wise decision to create more jobs for US citizens; but that's just my opnion.
First, let me note that I have read the book, and I take exception to some of the things in the book. I'll throw my exceptions at the end, for those who don't want to bother with them.
You seem to be comparing Michael Dell to John Galt, or the two or three other main characters (president of the railroad, president of the copper company... I don't remember.)
You forget that there were more character sketches in the book than those three.
There were those who ran companies, but were all the time on the dole of one kind or another, or who did not pay their workers justly, or who did not pay attention to how they were doing a job. Those people were taken for fraud by the president of the copper company (who was simply doing his best to destroy their wealth), and were in turn defrauding their governments.
Now, I would contend that in the current environment of the last 50 years in the US, that almost all successful corporations (and definitely their CEOs) fall into the latter category, not the first. Michael Dell claims that he earned what he has. I would disagree. If you start looking at his employees, and start seeing the value that they put into the company, and the value that they got out, I think you will quickly discover that Dell did not earn what he has. He simply justifies having what he has.
There is a big difference, because Value Recieved = Value Produced + Value Taken from Others. Most interactions involve trading, and most trading outrageously benefits the more powerful party.
Now, you can throw into the equation the amount of money "earned" from government contracts -- all of that money is stolen money, according to Atlas Shrugged. Now, some would claim that "tax zeroing" would not be stolen money (taking contracts that equal the loss on taxes paid out). However, that ignores the value recieved from the government in terms of protection recieved. Most of the costs of government go to protection in one form or another, and the value of that goes not to producers (income earners), but to owners. So almost all taxes, if paid in contract fee-for-service, would actually be paid by owners. Michael Dell is an owner, much more than a producer.
And so on.
- - - - - -Review of Ayn Rand Below - - - - - -
Now, I read Atlas Shrugged, because someone called me a John Galt. To some extent, they were right. I found it impossible, for a time, to work with society, so I internalized my efforts. After a time, I again found it possible, and returned my efforts to working within society.
Now... my opinion on Ayn Rand, is that she was a Communist Agent Provacateur. That is, she was attempting to get the nobility of America to crush the poor, enough that it would stimulate a Red Oktober type event.
I say this, because her philosophy ignored enough factors, that it was actually aimed in that direction. If you compare her work to that of Friederich Hayak, she willfully ignores everything in terms of JUSTICE (not social justice) to the weak, that she actually is advocating a situation that Hayak deplores.
Then, if you look at her personal relationships, you see that she is not for justice in that sense, either. Her morals, if anything, seem to match those of communists and spies. Her writing matches.
Which is, in turn, another problem that I have with Atlas Shrugged. She is a dirty writer, and I don't feel cleaner after I have read her work. Nor do I feel intellectually stimulated. Her philosophy, as I said before, is full of holes. I prefer Hayak, personally.
So as far as reading Atlas Shrugged, I don't advise it for others.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
I came to USA on a H1 Visa in 1997 and subsequently got my Green card and citizenship. During my tenure as a H1 employee, my wages were in parity with other (non-H1) employees. I worked for a big name research firm, so they had pay-grades etc. It would have been hard for them, the way they were organised, to pay H1 worker differently. You are scientist grade A, then you get x dollars, sort of thing.
If I was laid off when I was on my H1, I had 10 days to leave the country. This part is legal. I cannot negotiate around it. Some of you might be able to imagine the trouble one has to go through to put a house, car, etc for sale within 10 days. For me at least, these were all my life's savings. Another thing to consider is this - a H1 Visa is for 6 years. During this time, I had to pay social security taxes, even though I was not eligible for the benefits it offered (One has to contribute to SS for 10 years to qualify. Unless I got a Green card, before my H1 expired, I had to forego the SS contribution and leave the country). So, it might help to remember that every H1 employee, is contributing to the country safety net, when s/he is not able to gain from it.
If a H1 employee were to laid off, it makes sense for the government to give a little more time (3-4 months) to wind down their lives here - 10 days or so is just not enough.
Alas, politicians can't seem to distinguish the difference between ditch-digging and high-tech. Or perhaps they love to play politics at the expense of damaging the company. A US company, no less. Hello! Did I miss something?
The US is plagued with anti-intellectualism, which shapes the career choices of our younger citizens. Because of that, you need to go across the ocean to bring in the talent you need.
When the crunch comes, what's among the first things to be cut? Schools. What's among the last things things to be cut? Prisons, the Armed Forces, and anything else that represents "might" and "power" of the government to lord it over others.
Why is this?
If they want the high-tech firms to hire Americans first, then perhaps they should give some thoughts on how they prioritize their spending. Slash budgets for Prisons and stop arresting people for victimless and consensual "crimes". Stop making divorced dads to pay far more than they can afford for child support and far more than the kid needs, so they can stop occupying our prison systems as well. Stop playing "world cop" and bring those damn troops home already. Stop relying on foreign money to support the wildly out-of-control spending habits of the government. Focus on what truly builds wealth and prosperity and knowledge and well-being of the individual, and stop all pork, corporate welfare, manipulating the markets and the like.
I know, I know, an Impossible Dream.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
Send them home
Guess what. get rid of H1Bs and then companies will just export the whole job to another country if the labor is that good relative to its price (relative to what you can find in America). Then, not only will the American lose out on the job, but they'll lose out on the tax revenue to buy their food stamps and support their military too! Go ahead...get rid of H1Bs!!! Do you really think you're going to stop trade between the US and India, or even slow it down??! LOL
They should be the ONLY ones losing their jobs. Americans are SICK AND TIRED of this outsourcing and giving away jobs to non-USA citizens shit.
Enough already. Time to take back the USA and stop this outsource bullshit. Stop patronizing companies that outsource even ONE JOB to India, China, Vietnam, eastern Europe and so forth.
Its over! The USA needs to worry about itself now.
...people do not really like being treated like disposable toilet paper.
As opposed to the non-disposable kind.
For readers who are born here, they may not recognized that the H1B program facilitates the "brain-drain" of the best engineers from the poorer countries like India and China to the US. This is a very good thing for the US for she can select the best engineers from the world at the prime of their life without having to invest in their early education and latter health cost. The High-Tech industry here would be very different without these workers. You are not recognizing a good thing until it is gone.
You pretty much need to compensate the guys who were evicted by the Israeli military (and/or their descendants) if the Israelis want any hope of getting the moral high ground. Most of the chaos was caused by Europeans (Balfour promised Palestine to the Jews in 1916 or 1917 at a time when the allies promised more land to more people in exchange for help against the Germans and Austro-Hungarians than there is on Earth (all gifts rescinded in 1919), the British and Turks messed up Palestine, the US has since messed up the middle east (and the Americas), loads of countries refused Jewish refugees in the '30s, loads of occupied countries (pretty much all non-scandinavian countries) behaved badly during the occupation...) but the Israelis, considering their history, should know better than to oppress other people; sure the Palestinians are where they are because other Arab countries want to shame Israel by keeping them there, but Israeli behavior has been shameful (funny, the Zionists, who bought land, are vilified, the Israelis who took land and displaced people by force tend to get a pass).
One item that also gets overlooked is that Israel pretty much knows how to reduce violence, and it is not by building a fence. When the borders are open, and the poor, infrastructure-lacking, Palestinians can work and trade in Israel terrorism drops as average Palestinians can feed their families and don't want militants making things worse. Every time the borders get closed you get loads of recruits who have nothing to do, no money, and no food. Ariel Sharon closed the borders over and over and pretty much incited an intifada. Threatening to close the borders is very effective, closing them incites violence. Putting up a fence with 3-4 hour waits to travel either way for the few allowed in just escalates the conflict.
Just like in the US, fighting terrorism can really, really help terrorists.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
I can appreciate everything you say until you got to the part stating 'There is nobody to replace us' and 'no american is up to the job'.
Just so you can have a bit of a reality check, there's always someone ready to replace you, and it might be an American, or Australian, or Chinese, or German, etc.
There will always be someone eager to replace you unless you're a pig manure scientist and even then there's probably someone who would consider New England a big trade up from where ever they live.
He should only outsource at reasonable rates. Ford at least got one thing right when he said he paid his employees more so they could buy his cars. Note that Ford had to keep his company going to make money. With taxes and regulations as they are CEOs don't care if the company tanks as long as they get one good quarter: offshore, claim savings, excercise options, leave dying company.
Offshoring is fine if you pay a desirable wage (say 50% of American salaries, not 15%). You save money and you build a market. At a feeble wage you save money and lose a market. The people you are sending work to will never be able to but your stuff (look at Microsoft and others pricing way down in India and China).
H1B laws make sense in theory, they mandate that people can only come to the US if comparable workers are unavailable, and the H1B workers have to earn at least median salary for the industry. The problem is that there is no shortage of workers, there is a shortage of very qualified workers willing to work very, very cheap. When companies hire an H1B they very often tell the worker, once s/he is onsite "we signed you at X$/year, but you will take X/2 or X/3 or we cancel your visa," and some/many will take it instead of going home. I have Canadian friends who got this, but, as they don't mind going home, the companies backed down. People from India, China, Eastern Europe and so on who want to send money home tend to be a little less eager to get back on the boat/plane. Employers are using H1Bs to artificially lower salaries, not to obtain specialized workers.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
Don't tell the corporations who to let go, just stop renewing H-1B visas and stop handing out new ones. We've had what... 3 million people lose their jobs over the last year? California's unemployment rate is at 9% and rising. The supply of labor, and I'm sure that includes professionals, has just had a huge increase. Unless they create more demand by ending the H-1B visa program, you're going to have a lot of U.S. citizens unnecessarily unemployed.
When the economy starts to turn around, then you can restore the professional worker visa program, except hopefully they'll do it right this time:
1) Give the visas to the WORKERS, not the companies. Allow the workers to choose from companies hiring foreign guest workers, so they are not stuck with one company. Have applicants take the GRE or some other specialized test, and give the visas to the applicants who score the highest. The visa should cost the worker a significant fee, which would be charged annually upon renewal. The funds from these fees should go to training U.S. citizens in the specialized fields that are currently in demand.
2) Auction off a limited number of guest worker permits to U.S. companies, the highest bidder winning. A guest worker permit would be needed before a company can hire a guest worker with a H-1B. Use the funds for the same purpose in 1.
3) ONLY ALLOW COMPANIES HEADQUARTERED IN THE U.S. TO HIRE H-1B GUEST WORKERS! Right now the top two H-1B visa companies are headquartered in India. They hire people from India and then contract them out to U.S. companies. They charge the U.S. company $30 - 80 an hour, and pocket 50% - 75% of it. I've known these contractors, one charged the company $30 while paying a Software Engineer with 7 years of experience $15 an hour (Mexico) and another charged $80 an hour while paying the worker $30 an hour (India).
The goal of H-1B visas should not be just to fulfill a demand for specialized workers, but also to increase the number of U.S. citizens who can fulfill those positions in the future.
What qualities determine the *best* tech job candidate? To someone who has been out of tech work for years and has returned to student status, I have no idea what causes me personally to lose out after the interview. All past interviews seem to go very well, and were usually lots of fun for both myself and the interviewer. Then they choose the other candidate. This has happened to me even for student part time positions! *frustration*
Big Corp doesn't directly hire H1Bs. But they do contract out to other companies who hire the H1Bs (and some token americans). With the economy downturn, Big Corp stops renewing long term contracts, and only renews contracts a month or two at a time. H1Bs are pretty much stuck and have to see if they get renewed. Citizens have more flexibility to leave, and do. Big Corp ends up with an even larger ratio of H1Bs to american citizens.
See ya...I'm off to find a new job...
This is an interesting point. On the one hand, US PhD programs are filled with foreigners. On the other hand, foreigners are coming to the US to get PhDs. What does that say about the quality of US PhD programs? In Fareed Zakaria's book The Post-American World, he shows that in London's Higher Times Educational Supplement, which is one of two worldwide university rankings, American universities comprise 68% of the top 50 (the other ranking is less qualitative, put out by Chinese researchers, and has the US clocking in at 42% of the top 50).
So I don't think the high percentage of foreign PhD students is a measure of how bad Americans are at science: America has 5% of the world population, so we would expect that because of the draw of American universities, American citizens would represent nearly 5% of the class.
Towards the Singularity.
Are you kidding? I'd go back to school for a Doctorate.
If there was any chance of getting a job out of that investment. The reason so many Americans don't bother, is that it's no longer worth the time, effort and headache to do it.
It doesn't seem to be hurting businesses any. There's plenty of Postdocs to go around.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
While I understand the emotions and the rationale behind some of these issues, here are a few things that are being ignored:
1) When you hire, you fill positions and vacancies and individual managers try to fill a position with the resources that they are afforded. Typically, a lay-off is based on (a) elimination of a job function or line of work (no point laying off your best worker whether an H1-B or otherwise, and if a department or group is gone how does it matter), and (b) the least expensive severance costs (so if your severance package is higher you stay, or I lay off a second person to pay your severance).
In these circumstances few companies would consciously pick on any "type" of employee, and forcing them to do something that's not part of a strategic plan is too invasive and may hurt them at a time when they're already hurting resulting in many more layoffs which is counterproductive.
2) The companies mentioned like Dell, Microsoft, etc. aren't always going to centers of cheaper labor, for the labor alone. These emerging economies are also their prize markets as they look to expand marketshare. In fact, if you look at their 10k filings, most of the growth for these companies since 2000 has really come in from the emerging markets and particularly in China and India. If those countries got equally xenophobic, it would only hurt these companies and they wouldn't be hiring anyone.
3) Lastly, we're all still benefiting from their hiring practices. Directly, because each highly-skilled resource who's hired does result in greater demand for administrative support most of which is still satisfied by local talent and resources. Indirectly, because we're among the highest taxers of corporations and when these companies make money that money does go back into the system to pay for the schools, and infrastructure that they certainly benefited from.
Kishan
Spin it however you want to. Since it is easy to demonstrate that her philosophy results in unethical behavior being "defined" as "ethical" it doesn't matter what you say.
Again, you can try to spin it however you want. But the facts remain.
By your definition, it would be "ethical" for a person to sell a gang member a gun KNOWING that the gun was bought with the intention to and would be used to kill an innocent person.
No I did not. I have never said that.
There is no limit on ethical. Just because action A is unethical does NOT mean that action B cannot also be unethical.
Now you are trying to dodge in semantics because you see the flaws in your "logic".
I can make it even clearer for you.
By your "logic" (and her philosophy) and you have admitted it, it is ETHICAL for person A to sell a gun to person B even if person B told person A that he intended to use the gun to kill an innocent child. Because both parties were "traders" who were not coerced in the exchange and mutually benefited.
Yet it would be UNETHICAL for person C to initiate aggressive action against person D to reclaim land that person D's father took from person C's father through aggression initiated by person D's father.
As I said before, that's an awfully convenient "philosophy" of "ethics" there.
In other words, the United States (for all it's pluses and minuses) got Microsoft/Dell/etc going, why aren't they giving back to the United States? I'm not some hippie liberal douche but I tend to believe that there are more important things than the bottom line. We owe it to future generations not to undercut our own population in the perpetual search for lower wages.
This is because Dell is in competition with other OEMs. If Dell does the honorable thing, and their competitor doesn't, Dell disappears.
Consider one of the reasons that Microsoft exists in Washington...there is no state income tax. Why shouldn't all these rich Microsoft employees be paying into the Washington community?
Well, they are. Every time a person buys something, the state gets a share. So I can be Bill Gates and earn billions of dollars - but I don't pay into the community until I start using the wealth for acquiring services or products.
The nation does not have to tax a corporation to see the revenue stream - as long as they corporation is paying local employees, the money goes into the federal and state community coffers.
It is interesting that we want to create more jobs, but also take the money away from the entities that create jobs. Make the burden too heavy, and Atlas will shrug it off.
So, by your "philosophy" it is ethical to sell a gun to someone with the knowledge that it will be used to kill an innocent child.
But it is unethical to steal a loaf of bread to feed a starving child.
That's it. It is simply stated and simply refuted.
And that is the problem with all you Randians. You cannot face the philosophy that you claim to believe in. Instead you have to try to hide behind questioning other ethical systems. Who cares if someone else would find some action ethical or not? You cannot face your own philosophy.
And that is also the flaw with Rand's philosophy in the first place. She attempts to divorce actions from consequences and objects from origins. With her, it doesn't matter how you acquired the property as long as in the next instant you do not force another "trader" to deal with you.
Again, by your "philosophy" it is ethical to sell a gun to someone with the knowledge that it will be used to kill an innocent child.
But it is unethical to steal a loaf of bread to feed a starving child.
Welcome to America, where the streets are paved with gold, and people just throw toilet paper away when they're done with it!
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Yep. That's what I said your philosophy would state.
It took a while to get you to the point where you actually admitted it.
Now, who else would claim that such actions were "ethical"? Not a priest. Not a rabbi. Not a Buddhist. Not many people. Just Randians and sociopaths.
"'If Microsoft doesn't state that they will lay off the H-1Bs first â" and they won't state this â" then it would be awfully tough for Bill Gates to come back to the Hill and urge an H-1B increase, wouldn't it?'"
This makes zero sense. The simple response would be, "If you wanted more H1-Bs, why'd you get rid of the ones you already had?"
This is a free market. Msft is not owned by the American government. Its shareholders are not just Americans. I don't understand why Msft should lay off H1-B's before Americans. If they do, then how about China/India signing in a law that Msft can sell their products in their respective countries for 1/10th the price in the US, for Msft is favoring American's in its workforce, then China/India should favor its ppl when they buy Msft products.
BTW, USA doesn't have enough IT/tech people of its own to satisfy furute IT/tech needs looking at the ratio of foreign to local engineering students in US universities.
well becoming a citizen from H1B is (generally) a very expensive process. So apply it. I do agree the citizen route is when H1B should work best for this country. I don't think having a higher processing cost for firing the H1B worker first is good. I also think having a "all H1B employees must go first" as a policy serves the greater good only for reelection prospects for Mr Grassley...
"Hay, maybe if there weren't HB-1 visa holders filling the slots, there would be more American how got trained and got training for those positions."
Training and Education are not the answer to the lack of skilled workers.
Education is only a part of an answer if the person in question is educable. And then they have to have non-economic motivation for getting that education; with one exception, I've never had a good experience with a person who entered into a field of endeavor solely due to an economic motivation.
I've worked with brilliant engineers and scientists from all over the world; in fact, I pick my employers on the basis of whether or not I will end up working with smart people. Smart people have an intrinsically higher effective communication bandwidth because it takes less data exchanged to communicate with them.
No amount of training and education is going to turn 100 randomly selected -- to pick on a profession that's been hit with outsourcing, former call-center phone jockeys -- into world-class scientists and engineers. You might actually get several from that 100, after you invested a decade or more of effort in the process, but the ROI is just not there to make it worth it, either as a business or as a nation. The latency between when you need to hire them and when they are eventually qualified to fill the position is just too high, even if you were successful.
I have to agree with the people who've as much as suggested that the way to get qualified US citizens for jobs like these is to naturalize qualified foreign workers, turning them into US citizens.
-- Terry
So they'll fire 1 H1-B worker and claim they're good guys?
There are plenty of people to replace you, but kids do cost-benefit analyses (often informally, but they do) of what to major in to prepare for a good career. Enrollment in various majors climbs and drops dramatically in response to the job market. So it's no mistake that not many people want to study CS (for example) these days - the pay seems to be dropping rather than rising for most in IT or software development, it's intellectually tough but also tedious, and many in the field are not treated all that well in terms of hours, appreciation, or work-life balance. ("It seems like a simple task; why isn't it done? Do more with less! Oh, and here's your cell phone for 24-hour on-call in case the server farts...even though you're a programmer, not a sysadmin.") Even fewer get PhDs, because in most fields it's perceived that this only prepares one to be a college professor, and could actually be a liability in hiring. How many people want to spend 5 years working on a degree that won't increase their employability or earnings anyway?
Oh, plus I might add that with the rising amount of college debt due to rising tuition, not many people want to stay in school forever unless the payoff is very large. Hence the continued interest in professional schools, but less so in other graduate programs.
America is Democracy and not Meritocracy.
Hence it is imperative to accommodate adversity and appreciate diversity.
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
MSFT has 50,000 employees worldwide.
94,000 before the layoff, per the local (Seattle) paper this week.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
I see two sides here.
From a corporation's point of view, it merely wants staff who will maximize profit, and some staff, due to their skill set, will do more to increase said profit. So, just because they're not native citizens doesn't mean the company should have to let them go first.
On the other hand, America has held out its hand for quite some time now, and it would only be civil of those whom we have helped over the years to in turn offer a hand back. So, in the spirit of patriotism, and self-preservation for our country as a whole, obviously the company should do everything in its power to help citizens before visitors.
The conflict is, corporations are not people, and have no sense of patriotism per se. That is very sad. Even sadder is that those who run corporations are people, yet many of them also seem to lack this basic empathy. I believe this will eventually be their downfall, as they look to short-term profit over long-term survival.
On a different note, since a company like MicroSoft does not for the most part produce tangible goods (no, the H1-B guy's don't have jobs pressing CD's, building mice or soon-to-be RIP'd Zunes, all of which are most likely actually constructed out of the country anyway), I'm surprised they haven't done an end-run around the whole problem and just sent the H1-B's back to work from 'home'.
MS employs people around the globe; how many beyond our soil are being let go?
I completely agree with you. Force is the great evil. We should never use force to stop Michael Dell from doing what he likes. Obviously, people never need to be supervised or corrected by force, since they always act on their own best interests, which of course benefits everyone, and this leads to utopia.
I'm sure you also agree that it's wrong to use force to prevent people from crossing national borders. Obviously, if a toaster or a pair of jeans crosses a border, that is free trade. Those shoes, they are free to go where they will. The market in goods is perfect!
Unfortunately the evil governments of the world continue to use force to rig the market for labor.
But why does it matter where you live, you ask? Aren't all nations the same?
Well, every country can set its own laws. Do you agree so far? As it happens, some countries may mandate fire exits, public schools, courts, standing armies, food and drug administrations, police forces, including ones that function on a basis other than bribery. Other countries may skip these expensive optional extras.
We used to have laws that tried to create equality as these nations traded with each other. Free trade with a country with slaves picking cotton, for instance, might have an adverse effect on the economies of nations where slavery was illegal, for instance. But we no longer indulge in such foolishness. Thank God, Michael Dell is free shop the laws of the world, to get his computers made in the cheapest labor hell hole he can find.
His workers, however, cannot leave that hell hole and shop for the nations and laws which they might prefer.
I am sure you agree, this is a great evil, and once it is ended and there are no more national restrictions on immigration, then we will truly have a perfect, functional market for labor as well as goods!
I assume Michael Dell would hop the fence to live in the USA if he wasn't born in it. Or perhaps his mother would have to find a citizen to marry. Because when you luck into a nation like the US, hardly anyone in his family will have to die in a chemical plant explosion or beg on the street after they lost one of their arms "in the machine." Since he was born here, he did not have to support his family by working in a factory from the age of 8. He was even able to attend school until his twenties!
I am sure that the sweet life of an American is a complete coincidence, though, and the fact that the world's happiest, wealthiest nations have relatively socialist laws is a coincidence. I, like you, continue to ignore these things and anticipate the coming of a libertarian objectivist utopia any day now. I just hope I can get a visa in the country where it happens!
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1. Many H1Bs are taken advantage of by their hiring companies who have no interest in educating the candidate on current market rates. So they come over on a salary of 50k (or less), which sounds good compared to where they are now. However, they are soon disgusted when they discover the non-H1B in the cube next to them with similar experience is getting paid maybe twice as much.
2. H1B is an expensive, unweildly visa. Expensive to hire and expensive to transfer. For this reason, most companies will not work with H1Bs directly. What this means is that once you're here on H1B, it is very difficult to jump to another company if you want to get out of your submarket rate range and you're stuck with your current employer who is the only one really making any money. This issue is compounded once the green card process begins, because jumping ship would be having to start ALL over again unless you've already got EAD.
Also, H1Bs are NOT always cheaper for the hiring company. An H1B contractor costs just as much as any other to the company hiring them from the same agent. Rates are generally determined by skillset and experience (not on visa status). But the H1B will be getting paid less because they are salaried and their employer is pocketing a large percentage of their rate. H1B contractors only getting 40-50% of their rate is very common in my experience, while any other contractor would be getting 75-80%.
I don't think it was the governments intention to depress the wages of H1Bs, but that's just the way it worked out. There are wage minimums (around 40k I think), but that's it.
I do not understand those xenophobic republicans bitching about us.
Seriously? You think Republicans are the ones bitching about protecting the domestic workers from foreign competition?
Ironically, I see an ad to Stop Internet Gambling. Why is that? Is it because some government entity is truly concerned about the loss and devastation to people due to gambling (and decided not to focus on Los Vegas)? Or is it because the Gambling establishments really want to keep business to themselves. Either that, or go into options and futures trading? .2% of agricultural goods are inspected, leaving the majority of the industry to be self regulated.
Gambling is very lucrative and requires very little base capital to get started. It is so much cheaper to set up business in Costa Rica and sell to customers in the world.
One thing I have noticed that Americans can buy coffee and other agricultural goods for very cheap in South America. However, the problem is getting it over the border in sizable quantities. Customs and parasite prevention regulations make it nearly impossible. I understand that one is worried about bringing contaminates from abroad, but if this is truly an issue, then there should be a systematic examination agricultural goods brought in by major corporation as well. Every pound of Maxwell House coffee should be inspected as well. As it currently stands, only about
Another great example of how our government fails us is with the USDA and cattle in California. Cattle raised in (a desert of) California consume 100,000 gallons water per year at a fixed 1920's price of water (to appease the corporate farmers). These cattle are then shipped off to Japan, and undercut the price of steak sold there. However, if the price of water was that paid by the city of Los Angeles, California grown beef would be just as expensive as that grown in Japan.
My final case in point is with tobacco. I don't know about current legislation, but in the 1970's, tobacco was the most heavily subsidized agriculture in the US. How the hell could anyone have decided to subsides tobacco, unless the Duke family got their paid representatives in government to support these subsidies.
What ever happened to the idea of free markets when our politics is involved?