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The Sopranos Meet H-1B In New Jersey
theodp writes "We smack this IT geek around a little, take him for a nice car ride, threaten to 'take care of him' if he doesn't recant his story, give him 5 G's for his trouble, and badda boom, badda bing, case dismissed. Federal prosecutors allege that an H-1B visa-holding IT employee who was owed some $53,000 in back wages was threatened in meetings at restaurants and in his home if he didn't change his story. However, the victim captured some of what happened on tape, and two employees of an Illinois-based IT staffing company — not named in the indictment but identified by the NJ Star-Ledger as ComData Consulting Inc. of Rolling Meadows, IL — are now facing extortion-related charges and a possible 20 years in prison."
This behavior is unacceptable from companies that have offices in America. That might be how people do business in other places, but they need to leave that shit at the door. Perhaps someday we'll realize this has been going on in Chinese restaurants and massage parlors for 50 years and do something about those too?
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Geeks live for this sort of crap, so don't try it.
You will lose.
[End Of Line]
Why shouldn't a company be allowed to do this in a free market? The Market is self-correcting, so if they do this then no one will work for them and they will go bankrupt. So let them do it, that is the American Way!
When I was an undergrad I used to eat across the street from the Engineering building at a small Vietnamese restaurant, it was cheap and hot.
One particular late night I came there with a few hours of Hydro HW, sat down and ordered some Pho and started taking my stuff out of my backpack when I heard this inhuman scream and a slap. I thought they were being robbed or something and froze there in terror until I started hearing the crying and "shhhhhh" sounds I remember all too well from a Catholic school upbringing, someone was being beaten in the back and whoever was doing it was trying to stop other people from finding out. I am ashamed to say it but I went outside and smoked a cigarette, ate the Pho and left as quickly as possible. I think I even left a tip. The next week I came in during the day to get something and the woman behind the counter had a fading welt in the shape of a belt across her face and she was smiling.
So, after that shameful moment of realization I went to the Women's Resource Center on campus and told them. Never found out what happened though, that woman's face behind the counter haunts me to this day. Too many of just do nothing when we know the shitty situation those workers find themselves in.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Our Talent Engagement and Management Teams strongly believe in
The capacity of recruiters for absolute BS is amazing. Mind you there are smart ethical headhunters out there, but they're few and far between.
The H1B program deserves to be bashed, mindless or not. It artificially depresses the IT job market by flooding it with workers who are easy for companies to bully or take advantage of. These workers allow themselves to be treated like crap because they cannot leave their jobs without risking getting sent back to India. Most of them are afraid to speak up when they are treated unfairly because #1, they feel like they have it better than they did in India and #2, they don't know their rights in our country.
Email to info@comdataus.com. If you have hiring authority, promise never to use them. If you don't have hiring authority, just remember the name and badmouth them to anyone who does.
Think global, act loco
try talking about changing the h1b visa laws so that h1b visa holders can change companies when they want to
Umm, they can.
and get paid real us wages for work in the us
The law already requires that. The abuses arise from the difficulty in defining the "real us wages for work in the us".
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Here is an even better idea: Lets change the immigration laws so that if someone wants to work in the US, they can quickly and easily acquire citizenship. I assert that anyone who wants to be an American citizen enough to ask to be, deserves to be. All of this isolationist shit should have died along with the 20th century.
If we just grant these people citizenships, then we won't have to worry about the ethical ramifications of having multiple legal classes of workers in the country.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
20 years for extortion, and how many years for falsifying the need for entry level IT workers? I can name several unemployed people who could easily fit the task of "web development, information technology and software development" mentioned in the article. Specialized skill, yeah right.
Judging by the content of recruiters e-mails that I get, it is not possible to get an IT related job in the United States right now unless you are an H1-B visa holder.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
...URL is:
. http://www.desicrunch.com/DisplayReviews.aspx?company=Comdata_Consulting_Inc
Hey Fed's, you listening?
Under Illinois law, you can only audio record if all parties are made aware of the recording. If this guy was recording surreptitiously, then he might be in for some legal trouble of his own, not to mention that the recording may or may not be admissible (IANAL).
If you RTFA you'd see a) it was NJ, not Illinois and b) On Feb. 4, the two men met him again at a restaurant and offered to pay $5,000 for him to recant his story, authorities said, adding the consultant had gone to federal authorities by then and was outfitted with a hidden recorder that captured every threat.
They should be able to quickly and easily get a citizen-track visa or green card, but if we just grant citizenship to everybody who wants it, people will just be citizens for as long as it is convenient - say, as long as it takes to acquire the knowledge to offshore a process or function. There is every reason to give green cards to hardworking people who want to live and die in America, but I can't fathom why we want guest workers - except to hold down domestic wages.
I remember years back being lured to a new job with one of the incentives being that the job included health insurance. Turned out that they 'had' it terms of it was offered, not included. It was an awful plan with no employer cost coverage. The cost for my family would have been a grand a month if I had paid for it.
I explained that I was one phone call from going back to where I came from and that the recruiters deceptive words were going to have a cost. In the end they ate the cost of the insurance, and I stayed where I was. Some people will bully you unless you stand up for yourself. All that being said, in today's economy I don't know if that is still good advice.
How about accountability in H1B with public records? That would solve this kind of problem for the poor guy who was owed so many back wages. Those in the states who are losing out to H1B's would better be able to make the case that their are Americans who can do the job. Those that do come over could avoid being turned into virtual slaves, I have met far too many H1B's who were worked 80 hours a week for wages less than half what an American would take. They would do it too, whether it was because their passport was confiscated or because such wages were still that much better than what they made at home.
This is fascinating in light of the recent lawsuit filed and won in Louisiana on behalf of a group of teachers from the Philippines who were brought here to teach and virtually held hostage by the agency that recruited them. (They won their lawsuit a few days ago--can't recall the more recent source.) Their visas were held by the recruiter as they were squeezed for ever-increasing fees, forced to rent substandard housing at exorbitant rates, and otherwise abused.
It's especially fascinating to me that in these recessionary times when recent American college graduates can't find work, we have to import elementary and high school teachers and people with the most basic IT skills so that they can be held in indentured servitude and squeezed for more and more money. I guess human trafficking is no longer limited to unskilled workers.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
It would not only be a fun and refreshing change from "normal" work, it would create so many new networking opportunities. Think of all the great and influential people you would meet!
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Sheesh, where did your entitlement come from? Unless you're a fucking Native American, you'd best STFO and be happy that your ancestors illegally immigrated here lest you be born into some "awful non-US country."
As it is, having a h1-b or having to physically move overseas or creating some sort of relationship over there, has kept us from sinking that low - but it will happen eventually. I don't see the World's economy growing fast enough to account for all the labor being added as more and more countries start trading with the rest of the World.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
You can't say it's always "mindless" to "bash the whole H1B program, all Indian techies and Indian call centers"--there are a few who do it out of prejudice, but most Americans complain about these things for perfectly rational reasons.
"Buy American and Americans work." That was the well-advertised slogan of the 80s, and yet NAFTA and outsourcing empowered a transnational corporate world in opposition to the very values of localism and national pride which most Americans grew up embracing. Importing foreign workers and exporting American jobs are some of the most visible violations of these values.
The oft-repeated mantra is, "We don't have enough skilled workers, so we need H1B!" Then why does almost anyone in the tech sector know many skilled but unemployed Americans? And if there were a real shortage, introductory salaries and incentives would let the "free market" attract more Americans to become qualified for tech jobs in the near future--but instead, H1B keeps introductory salaries and incentives artificially low and _creates_ the very shortage tech employers complain about!
"Call center work (or 7-11 clerking, or construction, or industrial farm work, or any 'unskilled labor') is drudgery no Americans are willing to do!" Bullshit. Maybe they won't do it for minimum-wage-or-less like immigrants or outsourced labor, but if not unfairly undercut by immigrants or outsourcing there are millions of Americans who would gladly work any and every job. Just look at the damned unemployment rate, especially among minorities--it is patently unjust and unreasonable to support immigration and job outsourcing when so many Americans are left jobless. If a job is vital and needs to get done, employer and employee will find the right pay each is willing to live with--the market will set fair pay in a fair, largely closed system. But in an open system filled with endless hordes of immigrants and outsourced labor willing to work for wages no American can live on--unless he's willing to live in a closet and eat the cheapest processed foodcrap imaginable and never even dream of supporting a family and kids--employees become a disposable commodity and employers will exploit the unjust and unnatural imbalance.
So, while what happened to this H1B guy is inherently unfair, criminal, and wrong--it is the foreseeable result of the H1B program, which along with outsourcing and uncontrolled immigration is creating an imbalanced market where workers both skilled and unskilled are disposable commodities instead of people.
And that doesn't even begin to touch on the cultural issues. The Western world, and especially the U.S., is currently committing cultural suicide by not limiting immigration to rational levels. We are a nation built on immigration, that's true--but it has never neared this uncontrolled torrent before: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5871651411393887069#
"It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word."--Andrew Jackson
There are two aspects of law that apply to audio recordings.
First, you can't use it as evidence (without having a warrant that says that a specific recording can be made). So, while you couldn't take it into court, you certainly could use it to go to the police and convince them very effectively to investigate further. And if the criminals are using such amateurish standover tactics, then odds are pretty good that basic police investigating will be enough to charge them soon afterwards.
Secondly, it's an invasion of privacy. Even - for some funny reason - in a public place (hey, I didn't write the law). But, odds are extremely low that you'll be charged criminally, since the DA has better things to do than charge victims, and criminals aren't usually going to go to a civil court to say that they've been recorded illegally when the illegal recording in question identifies their own much more illegal activities.
I'm not saying I advocate means-to-an-end/fight-evil-with-evil solutions; I'm just saying that, pragmatically, someone who makes an audio recording of a crime doesn't have much to worry about on account of the recording itself. So you're completely correct, but none of what you're correct about matters very much in practice.
Also; that's not what happened anyway. It was a recording with a warrant (and not in Illinois), so none of what either of us said applies.
Your numbers are at least 50 years out of date. The only reason our (US) population growth is even positive is due to immigration. (direct immigration and children of first time immigrants) If zero population growth isn't sustainable, we have bigger problems than immigration to worry about.
The fact that your facts are so off makes me doubt the rest of your argument.
T
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
I lived in a small town on the Jersey shore and the tourist industry was controlled by organized crime. There were things like pizza shops that stayed in business without customers, suspicious fires, business owners being "encouraged" to sell, etc. Each summer an army of Mexican workers would appear out of thin air to staff the restaurants, hotels, and beaches. I figured it made sense with New York City near and the promise of work.
A few years ago, it came to light that the local mob was working with Mexican mobs to traffic in seasonal workers across the state. They were working for next to nothing, usually tricked or coerced into service by Mexican criminals.
Like you said, it was revolting. A lot of them were teenagers or young families with kids. It was a very small town, but we never saw them in school or playing outside. Police found homes with 70+ people crammed in every room. They were apparently told to stay out of sight and spent months with young children shut inside day and night.
Really? Let's see, I'm a newly minted H1B. My wages here are $15k above the wages that the role was offering (so I'm nicely into six figures before bonuses and stock). I've been coding for 20+ years, I've been brought in to upskill the team and bring those 20 years of experience to bear, I'm leading the development of a small product, pushing code quality, dealing with other teams, users and the wider open source community.
But then I'm British. So why don't you just say what you mean? That you don't rate Indian developers. Don't try to hide behind the H1B programme - you have a problem with a sub-continent, and you're tarring everyone from there with the same brush.
> Try Googling "human trafficking". I think you'll find that many undocumented immigrants live under conditions little better than slavery.
Close. Actually, I think you'll find that many undocumented immigrants live in conditions of slavery. To the extent where the only real distinction is that the law--which they don't know anyway--says that it's illegal.
You'll also find that hundreds of thousands of American teens are at high risk for being kidnapped or tricked into a life of slavery. Sources: The Polaris Project, Terry Lee Wright's River of Innocents, Victor Malarek's The Natashas.
Not that we should care whether it's an immigrant or not. And the difference in the cultures of different immigrant groups make different techniques useful in finding and prosecuting human traffickers. But it's not really an immigrant problem, so much as a human one.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
> This behavior is unacceptable from companies that have offices in America. That might be how people do business in other places, but they need to leave that shit at the door.
I agree. We have to change it. But it's not just a foreign problem.
This is New Jersey. If you haven't heard a story about something like this happening in New Jersey, you haven't been listening. It's like not hearing a story about questionable behavior by waste contractors in several of the nation's major cities, or not hearing about racism on the part of law enforcement in some towns in the South. Sure, there are lots of legitimate businesspeople, and waste contractors, and helpful law enforcement officers. But the other kinds also exists and even thrives. Sure, sometimes its people bringing in their problems, but we have a lot of our own.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Wow, another mindless rant full of misconceptions, Where should I start?
The H1B's (as opposed to "outsourced jobs") are paid the same as an American worker would. So, please learn the difference and understand to place your indignation in the right place. The H1-B Program is a legitimate way for companies to be competitive. You should be holding your representatives and senators accountable for updating the rules and enforcement to root out these types of fraud. But it is easier to "bash the whole H1B program, all Indian techies and Indian call centers". In this case, the angst is misplaced and done out of ignorance or malice. People who engage in this are, quite frankly, ignorant and will willfully throw the baby out with the bathwater. Call your senator and congressman and tell them to fix the H1 Visa program.
Anecdoatlly, I feel that the mantra "We don't have enough skilled workers, so we need H1B!" is actually accurate when taken in context - and for two completely different reasons. One is that you're lumping all "skills" together: a Web Developer is NOT a good systems administrator or a DBA. So, you do get spot shortages of specific skillsets in places. The second is that the Indian software industry focuses on developing niches more effectively than in the US. Our kids are well rounded - they're not as good at being specialists in a given field. So, I can locally find a guy who can figure out his way in a given system (makes for a great supervisor of contract resources, BTW). But if I need someone who understands the intricacies of the SAP-HR module, it is more efficient to get a contract specialist. This is where companies that staff using H1-B's excel because I (a) can't keep this specialist busy and productive 40/hr a week month-after-month and (b) he won't ever be remotely interested (even if he does have the skills) in taking on a more flexible role.
In short, the above has been my experience.in the past 15 years of being in IT and then in SW Development. I have found that many Americans workers detest working with Indian colleagues (regardless of whether they're H1-B or not). I find this racist and stupid in the extreme and this attitude really hurts them and gives American workers a bad name. I know that some managers will prefer to not mix US sourced folks with employees or contractors of Indian origin.
I actually had a US Citizen turn down a 6month contract at $105/hr because he felt that the working conditions were not appropriate. His complaint: no assigned cube with window view and he reported to an "unqualified" supervisor ... which was code for someone of Indian background.
So, I have a hard time finding sympathy with your post. Perhaps if it was a little more informed and researched, I might be willing to engage constructively.
The idiots from the IT outsourcing firm should have done it the "dot com" way. Under pay him by the same amount but promise him lots of stock options with absurd vesting requirements. Too bad if the the stock options go under water and then disappear through a corporate buyout.
You may have better odds striking it rich in Vegas or by playing the lottery but stock options in lieu of salary are legal.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
And fear of the unknown. Even being beat or dying doesn't hold a candle to the fear of the unknown. When people are in an abusive relationsihp, they often stay because the abuse and beatings they get here are at least known. Comparatively, they don't know if they leave _what_ will happen.
Fear of the unknown stops people from many things: from leaving abusive relationships, to success in business and life. It's also a huge problem for guys wanting to ask a girl out.
"We smack this IT geek around a little, take him for a nice car ride, threaten to 'take care of him' if he doesn't recant his story, give him 5 G's for his trouble, and badda boom, badda bing, case dismissed."
We offered him a rig with DUAL SLI ATI Radeon 5970s and an i7 Extreme CPU with liquid cooling. Badda boom, badda bing, case dismissed
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
> Good examples, but FYI the word "née" works the other way around.
You are correct, but you didn't explain it, and I think people will have a hard time remembering how it works if they don't know. The word née means "born" so it's like you're giving the birth name of a person. That's why you list their original name after the word née, e.g. Xe (née Blackwater).
> but most Americans complain about these things for perfectly rational reasons.
ha haha do you really believe that? No they don't, they do it for one of two reasons:
1. They are racist, even if they don't want to admit it (though to be fair, it's usually more ignorance than racism)
2. They are scared that they are going to lose their job to someone else.
I remember when we had a lot of upgrade related tedium that nobody at my company wanted to do, so we hired an Indian company do do it. The white trash people in my company (who, remember, didn't want to do the work), started making silly complaints:
"Doesn't India have like a 24 hour time difference?" No, and if they did, 24 hours would mean 0 hours. They don't mind working different hours to humor us, and it's better if they work off hours anyway, so they can get stuff done when we're sleeping.
"But do they speak English? Probably only Indian" - yeah, there's no language called Indian, brianiac. I guess they didn't know that the official language of instruction at many many places in India is English.
Also, the whole "Our Jobs" concept is bogus. There is work to be done. There is no place where god or satan defined which work is "our work". There's work to be done, and people willing to do it. If I live in New York, does that mean I should say people can't come from New Jersey to do it "My" New York work? I mean, get real. Bitching about people coming to the US to work will only result in the work being moved overseas instead, and the US will decrease in relevance.
Oh yeah, Americans love a free market, when it works to their advantage. As soon as it goes against your advantage, then you don't like it. Part of capitalism is that you will earn the market price. With the world shrinking, and a lot of people overseas willing to work harder than americans for less pay, that market value is falling for many basic jobs. That's the way it is, get used to it - or you could just bitch about it some more instead. There are ways to insulate yourself from it and prepare, though. I suggest you read "the world is flat" for more about that.
Anyway, as an American who had to go through a lot of hurdles to get a Visa somewhere else, I agree that the H1, and similar programs are not great - but in the opposite way. There should be no such requirement to get a Visa. That's just a hurdle to free market dynamics. I would vote that people should be able to move between countries in the future like they do states now, as the world shrinks. All the visa processing mainly just creates headaches for everyone. If anyone could simply move to the US or any other country they wanted (so long as they pay taxes, etc.), then a lot of people would come to the US, and realize that working at McDonalds there isn't any better than working at McDonalds in China or India, and go back. People with true skills would be able to get employed with less hassle, and if you ever got tired of bitching about how immigrants stole "your" jobs, you could go somewhere else and steal theirs. Some countries have taken a step in this direction (The Working Holiday program, which includes Canada, Autrailia, Japan, New Zealand, and a few others) - and it's been good for them in general. It hasn't lead to an explosion of illegal immigrants and the fall of society.
try talking about changing the h1b visa laws so that h1b visa holders can change companies when they want to Umm, they can.
If the next company sponsors them, if they don't (it costs quite a bit) they can't. The worker also can't just up and quit his job like you and me either as they're isn't a grace period. Complaints usually end in a quick termination and then the person has a short period to be on the next flight back to home. Try filing a lawsuit while in a different country and not even being a citizen. It's a difficult situation. On the same note, I agree with making h1b's harder to get and more lax once you get them (aka a grace period of atleast 90days, higher wages based on average salary for similar positions, etc).
WTF Slashdot, why do I have to login 50 times to post?
There is no shortage of citizens that are capable of doing the job - they just have the problem of being a US citizen.
Cancel the program and make it impossible to ignore the citizen until there is a real problem (long-term & short-term unemployment under 2%). Make it so that permatemping/temporary work does not count towards that 2%. Then reinstate with a sufficient amount of people(whom are paid a wage that discourages bribery) to enforce that law.
When you hear "shortage" used to describe the amount of citizens in a needed part of the private sector(whether it is IT or most non-temporary forms of employment in the US), the source is lying through their teeth.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Your point is valid to an extent, there are a few diamonds among the ruff and there are some piss poor american programmers. But (in my experiences and most anecdotal experience I've heard) most native India indian programmers cannot program the simplest stuff. I've come to the belief that it is a culture thing, the ways we think and process stuff has got to be completely different here compared to there. I don't know what's so hard about thinking logically but trying to explain something (with pictures and everything, I spent 6 months in Hydrabad training a team) always seems to fail. Honestly I don't know why that entire country is mostly full of fails.
WTF Slashdot, why do I have to login 50 times to post?
That is what we said about slavery for over 100 years.
Who supposedly support the free and lubricated market when it comes to the free movement of capital across the globe can be so protectionist when it comes to labour. By the tenets of capitalism, a Bangladeshi man should be able to move to New Jersey without let or hindrance and put X plumbers and handymen out of business. How come the proponents of capitalism can consider with glee another country's protected industries and financial markets falling to the inexorable march while at the same time, oddly, not sharing the glee of, say, a Sri Lankan chicken farmer at the thought of selling Americans chicken for 0.50$ / lb, retail?
Capitalist? Ha
you actually have no idea about the level of corruption in "developing countries". There may be lot of sh!t going at top level, but at grassroots level the level of corruption in US is not even a small % of what goes on in countries like India. I live there, so I know.
Heck, to repair my phone line I was asked for a bribe directly, ad if you want a new electricity connection, be prepared to pay big.
And guess what, in the west you have to bribe to get something "Wrong" done, in India you have to bribe for the right thing too!
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
It's good to see the Department of Labor putting some teeth into labor law again. During the Bush years, too many regulatory agencies were out to lunch. The SEC, of course, we know about. Less well known was the attitude at the Labor Department. Now they're catching crooks again.
Also, Obama just made two recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB was down to two members, and couldn't do anything. Now the NLRB is back in business. It's going to be easier to unionize.
US wage and hour law, as enacted by Congress decades ago, is quite pro-labor. It's the enforcement that's been weak. Looks like that's changing.
Here is an even better idea: Lets change the immigration laws so that if someone wants to work in the US, they can quickly and easily acquire citizenship. I assert that anyone who wants to be an American citizen enough to ask to be, deserves to be. All of this isolationist shit should have died along with the 20th century.
Let me tell this to you as a foreigner.
You can't give citizenship out left and right. What makes your country is your culture (and I don't mean things like country music or apple pie here...), and if you just open your borders, you will be immediately swamped by third-worlders (like me) who want their piece of the quality-of-life pie. They don't care in the slightest how the pie came to be there in the first place, or what they have to do, long-term, to keep it - well, some will, but they are the minority. Most just want to have it.
Therefore, for immgiration to be productive, rather than detrimental, to your society, you need to make sure that, however many people you take in, they are assimilated into your culture - and that's your upper limit. And the relatively straightforward way to see how good the immigrant is assimilating is observing how they do when they're still on worker's visa. It also gives them time to learn the language, as well as basics of living in a new place (you'd be surprised to know how many things that are mundane to you are strange and alien to a newcomer), and see what the society there is really like, and decide whether they're really sure they can be a proper part of it.
To that extent, the process of acquiring permanent resident status (and eventually citizenship) from worker visa shouldn't be too simple - you need some gates there to control it. The biggest problem with your program as is is twofold. First, there are no established terms or guarantees. In most other countries that have similar programs in place, you are eligible to apply after working in the country for a certain specific period of time, and the process is straightforward in a sense that there are usually point-based systems with published evaluation criteria, so, for the most part, you know in advance whether you will be approved or not (unless you don't pass a security background check - but that isn't typical, though chances of a "false positive" are higher in today's terrorism-crazy world). The amount of time that processing of the application takes from the moment you submit it is also generally known fairly well.
In contrast, applying for a green card from H1-B is very much a gamble - you never know if they approve you or not, nor how long it takes - and it can take really, really long. I know of people waiting for 7+ years to get there; for comparison, in Canada, the whole process almost universally takes less than 3 years from the moment you first set foot in the country (including 1 year on worker visa so that you're eligible for fast-track permanent residence).
The second problem is just the one GP noted - that H1-Bs are severely disadvantaged, because they're tied to their employer, and, should he kick them out for any reason, they have to start packing right away - no chance to find another job (in practice, quite a few people actually break the law and overstay to do so - but this is also very much a gamble). Yeah, in theory, employers have to prove that the wage they offer to employee is above market average for this position - but there are many well-known tricks on how to legally do this for practically any number. And, once hired, the employer has both the carrot - raises - as well as the stick - termination of employment - at his full disposal.
If a citizen is denied a raise that he believes is rightly his, he can just quit and go look for a better job - and, if his assessment of his worth was correct, he'll find one. An H1-B just has to suck it up, because however bad he has it, it's usually still way better than what he'd get back home. Ditto for overtime.
And, of course, it screws both H1-Bs them
As much as you have a point, I've been working in IT for years as well and I've only met one British worker in the US, and I think he's got at least a green card because he married an American girl. Just about everyone else I have ever seen working H1-B is Indian and boy do they fuck them over. As a white man who actually speaks a dialect of English that is considered civilized in the US, you are going to have a decent time of it. The only thing you need to worry about is idiots making too many Limey jokes and telling you that your spelling is funny.
The Indians generally have to worry about unscrupulous companies that bring them in, keep them in the dark and then make sure that they work under conditions that you could consider appalling. I can't tell you the number of H1-B colleagues that I know who have at one time or another had to worry about losing their job and then having to deal with being packed off back to India 5 days later because they are a guest worker.
The problem with H1-B is that it allows more bad than good. Clearly we want to have some guest workers like you over here to provide actual technical expertise, but most of these guest workers are doing jobs that Americans could definitely do and not even getting paid decently for it. That may be because we don't have enough IT people available to work over here, but I suspect that the supposed lack of IT workers is more of a situation where those said workers actually want to be paid US wages and treated like professionals.
Of course, the H1-B problem is one where many of us feel we are being unemployed in favor of cheap labor, but it doesn't change the fact that the program is allowing the guest workers to get screwed too, if they happen to be from somewhere sufficiently backward. That's just bad all around, and I see no reason that it should be allowed to continue as it has been.
In my grandfathers day, a bagboy's salary+tips was enough to support support an adult frugally. A clerk at a corner store could expect to support a small family (essentially the same as working at a 7/11).
Now? A typical wal-mart employee working full time at minimum wage +$0.25 to $2 can pay rent on a 1 bedroom apartment, pay the electric bill and if lucky some food with nothing left for other necessities. Unless you already own a home outright or want to rent space in a crack house, you can not live on that without help. Realistically, it would take about 3 such incomes to support a family with children and that does not count the cost of child care or saving for college/retirement.
"The H1B's (as opposed to "outsourced jobs") are paid the same as an American worker would." That's bullshit. The job market is just that, a market. Supply and demand. Restrict supply wages go up, increase supply wages go down. Any increase in the supply automatically reduces wages. If there really is a shortage of skilled IT workers, how about investing in education? If people see wages on the rise, you can guarantee more will seek education in the field. If we aren't turning out qualified candidates, look for the reason why. Our math and science education sucks. Importing the products of other, more successful education systems merely hides the fact and covers it up for a little while, until eventual wages between us and them normalize to the point they have no interest in coming here. I for one am not interested in turning America into a 3rd world shit hole so you can find the cheap programmers you want to make some extra profit right now. If there is a real lack of talent, we need a long term solution, and that means improving education, improving access to the education, and letting the market set wages that actually makes the time, effort, and money spent on that education a sound investment.
Furthermore, if we are going to allow immigration (and I think we definitely should) there are much, much better ways then the H1-B program. Ways that lead to citizenship, and a real investment in the future of our country. Ways that enable them to bring their families here, to be represented fairly in our government, and to quit their job if their boss is being abusive or paying them an unfair wage without fear of being deported. H1-B is and always has been a shortcut to cheap labor in the immigration system. If the regular system is to slow and corrupt, FIX THAT, don't make shortcuts.
Right. Just imagine what a mess we'd be in if 100 years ago anyone could become an American citizen just by showing up .. oh wait.
"What makes your country is your culture (and I don't mean things like country music or apple pie here...), and if you just open your borders, you will be immediately swamped by third-worlders (like me) who want their piece of the quality-of-life pie."
This, of course, is already the story of America. Anyone who isn't a Native American is the descendant of people who wanted a better life. Those of us with families that have been here for centuries have no more right to be here than you do.
This, of course, is already the story of America. Anyone who isn't a Native American is the descendant of people who wanted a better life.
It's not that simple - there's also this whole "freedom, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" thing. Everyone wants a better life, but different people understand that differently, and U.S. has its own definition (that is rather unique in some ways).
Well, the "one nation under God" was added in the fifties by Americans. So apparently the current population of US citizens seems to have a severely different grasp of what a "better life" is than the renaissance men who founded the country in the first place.
I look at my own constitution and the state of my nation, and we're facing a very similar issue with Moroccan and Turkish immigrants who are Islamic. Some people want to put caps on immigration, some people want to outlaw Islam because they're clueless and scared.
In the mean time The Netherlands have, since the Unie van Utrecht was drafted and signed in 1579, a ~450 year old tradition of guaranteeing Freedom of Religion and Freedom of a man's Faculty which was continued in our constitutions until this day.
Culture is what you make of it. There's no such thing as a culture that is still alive *and* unchanging at the same time. In the mean time it is important we stay true to the Constitutional values that are the cornerstone of our respective nations.
Cultures change, absolutely. But such changes are evolutionary in nature, and generally happen at the pace with which most members can keep up, or at least tolerate. What I was talking about is a rapid change which discards most, if not all, of the fundamentals, all at once, in a very brief period of time.
And, yes, naturally, any protective measures have to be respectful of the culture they're trying to protect, otherwise what's the point? If part of it is freedom of speech and freedom of religion, then that's what you stick to. It's very unfortunate that some people in the West have recently started to subscribe to the concept that human rights and freedoms - the concept which their civilization is largely responsible for establishing, promoting, and spreading - are not for everyone, and especially not for "foreign-looking" (i.e. not white, Muslim, etc) immigrants.
Last I checked, however, even the most liberal countries still control immigration to some extent or another.
Population growth? How does that affect it much? More people, more people need to provide services to a larger population.
Technology? To a certain extent I guess. As more fewer people can care for more other people. On the other hand, technology has provided new avenues for services. Instead of 2 small grocery shops there is now 1 large and efficient one, but next to it is a cell-phone dealer...
Free market and capitalism? yes. most certainly. here in norway the minimum wage, while absent in law, in reality is over $15/hr for unskilled labour. Even with a much higher tax-rate than the US that still leave plenty of money for a single person to support themselves frugaly... Yes, eating at a restaurant or even fast food frequently is prohibitly expensive here, but that's because even those people working there makea decent salary.
The low cost of many products and services in the US is based on those providing them being payed really low wages./P
Another examle:
Vision Systems Group Indicted for H1B Visa Fraud
http://www.huliq.com/3257/77441/vision-systems-group-indicted-h1b-visa-fraud
They are not lying so much as using the word in a new way. There really is a shortage of programmers willing to work at WalMart salaries.
Think global, act loco