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Hillary Clinton Takes Data.gov Overseas
theodp writes "ZDNet reports that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's office issued a fact sheet during her visit to India confirming that the U.S. and India will be working together to develop an open source version of the Data.gov project, which was launched in 2009 by off-to-Harvard Federal CIO Vivek Kundra to serve as a central repository of data collected by the US government. The Hindu Business Line notes that Clinton was also pressed to exempt Indian techies in the States on H-1B or L1 visas from U.S. social security taxes, an exemption that, if granted, could reportedly result in savings of at least a billion dollars for the country's software industry."
I guess it's a good thing that that isn't one of its labels then!
"Obviously, you need to be an Einstein to navigate the Austrian Patent Office website." - platinumrat
An exemption that would also cause an even more vitriolic backlash from American workers who would become even more expensive relative to Indian H1B and L1 holders because of a tax that only the Amish and a few others can avoid (for now).
They'd have a case here if American developers could legally bow out of FICA. I'd take that deal without hesitation. I know a lot of developers who'd love to step outside that system and have the money for their 401ks and FSA/HSA instead.
as a protectorate of India!
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
oh wait, there is no global union of IT workers....
(not yet anyway)
Lord Vishnu thanks you, Hilary.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
23 year old mechanical engineer here, where do I sign out of Social Security?
They don't even care to pretend to act in the best interests of the citizenry anymore. It's absolutely brazen.
--- Do you believe in the day?
I'm a US citizen, and I firmly believe the gov't will piss away all my Social Security 'savings' before I hit retirement age. I'm in my mid-thirties and most of my friends feel the same way.
I think it's screwed up that foreign workers have to pay into a retirement system they will never see a nickle from. I also think young people today paying into a system that we have no faith in is screwed up. It should be an optional system.
Screwing up good processes at State Dept., that is.
This is strictly anecdotal evidence from personal experience, but under previous administration scheduling visa interview at US consulate abroad was a matter of going to a website and doing some clicks.
Under Clinton that changed into two phone calls to the consulate: first to pay some bucks for the privilege to talk to a call center rep and second is to schedule appt.
Job creating, my ass.
But just think, a billion saved by businesses! Obviously that will trickle do—
hahahaha oh god I just can't do it.
This angers me beyond belief! We have plenty of development talent here in the United States. I am so sick of the erroneous belief that Indians make better programmers. It is simply not true. Too often I have seen an inferior product. If a large sector of America is unemployed, why are we importing labor? I thought that Clinton and Obama were against H1B visas. Fucking politicians .... Promise one thing and do another.
Mrs Hillary Clinton, you should be here the development of everything that is USA
I live in a medium-large sized city. IT unemployment here is like 2% and we can't fill our open head count. I'm sure a lot of people are upset that improvements in technology have made it so that lower skilled workers can do their work for less money, but that's certainly not unique to IT (manufacturing is an obvious example). At the same time, while I'm not seeing the wage growth I was accustomed to there's plenty of work for the foreseeable future.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
India ASKED her to exempt them from taxes, she DECLINED to do so, India has PRESSED her again... So even Clinton isn't that dumb.
A lot of vague talk on working with them to market data.gov to other nations.... words.... cheap.
Promises on Cybercrime from the Indians.... words,... cheap. They're a big malware laden pirate software market, up there with Russia & Turkey.
Ditto. Here in Seattle every software shop I know of is hiring like crazy.
Terrorist, bomb, al Qaeda, nuclear, yellowcake, kill, assassinate. Carnivore is dead... long live Echelon.
I was on an H1-B for a while (in academic research, not software development, as it happens), and was puzzled at the time by the requirement to pay US Social Security taxes -- the H1-B is a visitor visa, not an immigrant visa, it's time-limited, and when it runs out, the assumption is that the individual will return to their home country. I would imagine that very few H1-B visa holders ever recover this money, so it's effectively a tax on the employer, paid into the SS trust fund.
Having H1-B holders not make SS contributions seems reasonable to me -- if you want to tax H1-B activity, you can always just raise the fees for the visa itself, to get the same effect -- but having only Indian H1-B holders be exempt from the SS contribution just seems bizarre.
The summary is unclear, but on the grounds of basic common sense, I hope that pressure and lobbying went nowhere.
2*3*3*3*3*11*251
WTF??? As if we didn't take enough of a hit in 2001-2003, we're going to open up the floodgates to India AGAIN??? I'd like a little protection here please, Mrs. Clinton.
Maybe I need to either move to Seattle, or become a developer. I work with the network/hardware support area and unemployment in my area (Tampa Bay) seems fairly high for those types of jobs. Oh, and I've heard Seattle is nice, as well. I will see as I am vacationing there in the next few months.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, though I'm not yet sure about the universe. - A Einstein
The current law stipulates that no more than 65,000 H1-B visas be issued each fiscal year. As of July 18, only 20,500 of these are filled. Of those, around 12,800 hold a Master's degrees. Are you suggesting that stopping the H1-B program is going to improve employment in US? No. What you'll be doing is reducing the quality of workers in American workplaces.
As regards to removing taxation, I am somewhat ambiguous. One could argue that since H1-B holders are not eligible to receive Social Security benefits, so they should not pay taxes However, a significant number of H1-B holders stay on to obtain a green card, making them eligible for the said benefits. Personally, I have no problem paying the Social Security taxes. The job that I am going to start in a month or so is fairly high-tech, the work is very intellectually stimulating and is simply not done in my home country. I am more than happy to help the currently unemployed Americans by paying my share of taxes. I view this as a price I pay for the better living conditions and greater job satisfaction. Mind you, that does not mean that either of them will be able to do my job. If any American is as skilled as I am, he won't have any problem getting a similar job position as mine.
Yeah, who wouldn't want to subject all of their retirement savings to the booms and busts of a corrupt private market?
The figures you mention are, as you said, for EACH FISCAL YEAR. There are many more than 20,500 (or even 65,000) H1-B visa holders in the US. I'm sure that you're a precious snowflake, but you're kidding yourself if you think that no one in a nation of 300 million could do the work you're doing.
I am more than happy to help the currently unemployed Americans by paying my share of taxes. I view this as a price I pay for the better living conditions and greater job satisfaction.
That's socially concious of you. too bad there aren't more people like you.
Most of the people in this thread, it seems, have the attitude of the corporations. Give me all the money and to hell with everyone else.
That's why the US is the mess it is today.
As for US Social security, it's stable as long as they don't fuck with it. And they will, there's money in there, it doesn't matter that it's self sufficient, we can fix that!
*gimme! mine!*
Some would call this fascism.
H1B is not taking your jobs, Outsourcing is.
Workers under H1B may be appealing to some degree because they are cheaper and more over-workable, but they can be counted in the thousands, and they still help the economy by spending what they earn.
Outsourced jobs, on the other hand, are in the millions and much more appealing economically to large companies. There's several millions of outsourced jobs, not only in India, but also taken by Chinese, east Europeans, Russians and Latin Americans.
Also the tale that foreigners are less talented and that Americans should be hired instead is no longer relevant, the same way that china raised it's production standards the rest of the world is doing the same and each year there's more and more companies with excellent track records ready for outsorcing jobs from US and Euro companies.
This is the real effect of globalization and opening trade. Rich countries thought they could own poorer countries by forcing them to compete equally and purchase their goods while providing cheap labor. This had the expected result of destroying most of the local industry in such countries and forcing them to rely on imports.
However, no one expected the software industry to become so relevant worldwide. Cheap labor suddenly became cheap outsourcing, and there is no way first world workers can match the cheap costs of the third world, so this trend will continue and get worse.
Ahem.
YMMV.
Some people here seem think eliminating social security taxes would mean you get to keep that extra money. Consider instead that most employers will just cut pay. Many people wouldn't even notice since the $ amount stays the same on their paychecks.
Why do you think the emphasis was on how much money the software industry could save? It won't be any different when they "privatize" Social Security for Americans.
the worse problem. It's hard to hire a 60k a year programmer when you can hire 10 6K a year programmers.
But H1B's don't help either. Ideally they should be paid market rates, but employers bring them in as junior programmer (lower cost) and once here, the H1B acts like a straight-jacket, making more difficult for the employee to quit/change jobs.
I'm better than an H1B - by a long shot - but financially it's hard to argue with an H1B and offshoring.
The solution for me is to open my own business. Provide the contracting/consulting/marketing that H1Bs and offshoring don't provide. Then when I get a contract, I can hire those guys cheap, verify the work, and rake in the difference as profit.
The long term solution is for this recession/depression to continue...as the dollar keeps falling against the rupie - those 6K programmer are suddenly 30k...and offshore...and everything else that makes offshoring and H1B difficult.
No wonder Indian officials are screaming to exempt their workers from Social Security.
Lucifer Clinton doesn't give a rip about the US or any of the slaves living here. She's busy laying the groundwork for the New World Order, in which she will be one of the ruling elites. I mean, she spent more money securing a beard for her mistress Huma Abedin than I spend on everything over 10 years. And he couldn't even keep his hands off the Tweeter to keep from screwing that up.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Yeah, we know you can't do it. At least not with a straight face.
The social security tax the company pays is separate from the tax the employee pays unless the employee is a self employed owner of the company.
There is no indication that a foreign employee not paying SS tax would mean that the company that hires them would not pay the SS tax.
Hiring is the same in the Bay area (so I read), but the cost of living is higher.
Terrorist, bomb, al Qaeda, nuclear, yellowcake, kill, assassinate. Carnivore is dead... long live Echelon.
then at least the Democrats in Congress could go berserk and the press would dutifully report how much the President is selling out the hard working Americans who desperately need his help. Instead this won't even register except on techy sites.
Kind of like how the press and Democrats are doing the big freak out when Republican controlled states are reigning in public employee entitlements and turning a blind eye to the Democrat controlled ones who in many cases are rolling over the employees worse.
I so wish the press wasn't so overtly biased... if anything their lack of action is the best reason to have a Republican as President, then at least we can call them to the carpet when necessary
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
do people immigrate to us and get call center jobs? nope. this is entirely irrelevant.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
You choose to work here, you get to pay taxes like the rest of us, including SS taxes.
So let me get this straight. The US sends jobs overseas to India when we have high unemployment. Wouldn't the country be better served by using domestic talent, allowing them to spend their hard earned money in our stale economy? Perhaps we need a domestic policy that gives priority for the US government to give jobs to qualified Americans. Make any contractor do the same.
Take a step further, kill the outsourcing bug by offering companies tax incentives to hire domestic talent. I'm sure there isn't a dearth of talent or people that want jobs within our borders.
Uh, no. I mean, H1B's are taxed without representation, but not for that reason. Because being eligible for social security isn't representation either. H1B's (and green card holders, who are eligible for social security, and anyone else who is not a citizen but is subject to any federal, state, or local taxes in the U.S., no matter which tax and no matter what benefits they are eligible for) are taxed without representation because they are taxed by the US government (and/or by State governments, including administrative subdivisions of states) but have no right to representation in the US or State government.
Representation in a government is (logically) orthogonal to eligibility for benefits provided by that government.
Actually what India is asking for (note, India is asking: there is no indication that anyone in the U.S. government is doing anything but recieving the request) is that Indian workers employed on notionally temporary Visas in the U.S. are granted an exemption from U.S. taxes that will make hiring such workers in the U.S. more attractive to U.S.-based employers.
We already have one. The issue here is private jobs, not government jobs. Most U.S. government jobs require U.S. citizenship. I think some may accept lawful permanent residents. None allow H-1Bs.
We're effectively importing the labor. If overseas call centers were illegal or had a sufficiently high tariff, then the call center jobs would come back to the US and immigrants would be seeking those jobs here.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry