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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.
It's already required.
You're ignoring two things:
1. Companies have ways of working around this rule. This typically involves saying that the visa holder has skills not available in the U.S. workforce.
2. By importing workers, the company effectively shifts the supply curve and lowers wages across the board.
I will also add, laying off foreign workers first is a form of protectionism. Protectionism is never a good economic policy.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
One place I worked at, it was no secret why were hiring H1-B workers. It was much cheaper.
Whenever we hired Americans my boss would interview them, I'd interview them, another peer would interview them. Indian workers just kinda showed up.
One guy was fresh out of training and needed a lot of hand holding to do basic things. Any random CS grad would have been the same.
The best people we had were American. That sounds ethnocentric but the people I'm talking about included Russian-American, Indian American, etc. either first generation or immigrants.
I remember another time when someone contacted me about developing a small site for them. They explained how they hired an indian firm for $2,500 and after months of not getting the project done hired another for $3,500 and the didn't complete it either. He decided to share this information with me after I quoted him $10k for his project. He ultimately decided to try and find another outsourcing firm. Months later I checked and he didn't have the site done. He wound up spending almost the same in and got nothing in return.
So medical doctors would be the richest people in the world. I can choose to go without a car. I can choose not to use roads. I can choose to raise my own food and make my own clothes. However, when I get very sick, I can either find a doctor and pay them whatever they want, or die. Sure, if I want to hold strongly to my beliefs, I can tell the doctor to go screw themselves. However, death is kind of a big deal. You don't get to change your mind.
Plus, this was the attitude that allowed Crassus to become one of the richest people in history. His fire brigade would show up at your house fire and refuse to work unless you sold him everything for pennies on the dollar. Again, I could hold to my beliefs and watch it burn, or I could sell it and salvage something from the fire.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
Shopping around the world for labor and materials ultimately lowers the price of goods.
No it doesn't; it increases the profit margin of the people providing the goods. Why on Earth would they lower prices when they're making good money? Demand is not perfectly elastic in the real world (especially for necessities like food, housing, health care, etc.), so lowering the price won't necessarily make a seller more money by increasing the amount demanded. Therefore, it's in their best interests to just pocket the money, and that's exactly what they do.
No, actually they can't. Take a look into the rules those countries have in place to protect their workers from immigrants.
Actually that's not true. H1B's often accept a dramatically reduced standard of living, with the intent to make as much money as they can for the duration of their visa, then take it home with them. Sometimes this is still much better than the conditions they left at home.
H1B's make on average 23% less than their citizen counterparts.
The citizen counterparts tend to want things like kids, gadgets, a nice car, good clothes, a house, etc. The H1B tends to have 1 week's worth of clothes, takes public transportation or has an inexpensive used car, lives here alone (maybe with family back home), lives in a one-room studio apartment, and maintains a minimum of optional expenses.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!