Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft & Intel Get a Pass On Higher H-1B Fees
theodp writes "Criticizing companies that outsource high-paying American jobs, Senator Charles Schumer described Indian IT company Infosys as a 'chop shop'. (Nine Indian companies accounted for 20,000 H-1B visas as of 2007. In 2008, Infosys held 4,500 of the visas; the number was down by a factor of 10 in 2009.) The comments came as the Senate scrambled to fund the $600M Mexican Border Security Bill by hiking application fees for H-1B and L-1 visas. The Senate measure increases H-1B visa fees by $2,000 per application on firms that have 50% or more of their employees on this visa. Schumer pointed out that the bill would not affect high-tech companies such as Intel or Microsoft 'that play by the rules and recruit workers in America,' although they are among the biggest beneficiaries of the H-1B program."
Yeah... 50% total is also easy for big companies to avoid, by making sure to have plenty of employees performing non-skilled labor that count. They could actually aim to hire minimum-wage non-technical employees in advance in order to reduce the proportion of H1B workers. It could still be more cost-effective than hiring skilled labor from local applicants.
They ought to require firms applying for H1Bs to report number of workers in various categories or types of work, and if you have 50% or more of your employees performing any particular type of work on H-1HB visa , then the higher app fees apply for workers in that category...
So e.g. if >50% or your secretaries or H1B, or >50% of your support personnel are H1B, if >50% of your accountants/managers are H1B, or if >50% of your engineers are H1B....
If 50%+ of your employees are H1-B's, I would suggest that your business model is not viable in the United States.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
While the starting salary may be $65k under our present system, it can't be said that in the absence of the H1-B program, the starting salary would still be only $65k. It used to be that when labor was short wages would rise, and that when labor was abundant, wages would fall. Since the whole globalization craze, that sea-saw balance of power between between labor and industry is gone, because with a whole world out there capable of living on dollars/day (something completely impossible in America), there is never a chance for labor to be short and for workers to get their payoff for suffering through the times when labor is abundant. In essence, we've created a system that always has a labor surplus leading to lower wages (or no wages) for everyone -- from the low skilled workers in the textile industry, to highly educated people in technical fields.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
A large number of the H-1B professionals who work for MS and Intel and other tech companies, have come in the same way, by competing against other qualified candidates, including Americans, for the same salary, and proving themselves to be the best candidate.
The mere fact that they're competing against qualified American programmers is indicative of a problem. The H-1B program is predicated on the fiction that there aren't enough qualified Americans to fill the open positions to begin with.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
No one is arguing that Intel, Microsoft, et. al. cannot start up divisions in foreign countries using the local labor pools and import the goods. The argument is that they are importing foreign nationals for the sake of undercutting local salaries under the false premise that skilled labor cannot be found in sufficient quantities locally.