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2013 H-1B Visa Supply Nearly Exhausted
CowboyRobot writes with news on the FY2013 allocation of H-1B visas. From the article: "As of June 1, the government had issued 55,600 standard H-1B visas out of the annual allotment of 65,000, according to United States Immigration and Citizenship Services (USCIS). The feds also issued 18,700 H-1B visas reserved for graduates of advanced degree programs in the U.S., out of 20,000. " CowboyRobot continues, "Last year work visas did not run out until late November, but this year the pool of visas is almost entirely claimed and it's still only June. One interpretation of this is that the tech industry is hiring much more actively than it was a year ago. Some companies, such as Microsoft, have been lobbying to increase the number of available visas (currently limited to 65,000) while others argue that offering visas to foreign workers reduces job prospects for Americans."
A bit more from the article: "Industry lobby group Partnership for A New American Economy last month released a study that claims the U.S. will face a shortage of 224,000 tech workers by 2018 unless immigration rules are loosened."
H-1B is a scam by which white collar companies (not blue collar, because they aren't cool enough) can fire American workers and then replace them with foreign workers who are so happy to get to the States that they will work for $10,000 less per year. (There are laws against this kind of wage fuckery. They work the same as speed laws in Saudi Arabia: No one cares to obey or enforce them. The "shortage" of workers is a lie manufactured by Oracle, Microsoft, etc. in order to cut costs. Most of the comp sci classes I took were filled to the gills, and the program I got into in college was so impacted that I had to go in on another major and switch after the fact. It's like that in lots of places. Fuck all this H-1B nonsense, and fuck all the liars and misinformed idiots who think we are just gagging for foreign labor. We aren't gagging for foreign labor. Larry Ellison and Bill Gates are gagging for foreign labor because they can be paid less.
Someone needs to figure out a way to get the people who are out of work in touch with these companies who are "desperate" to fill these open positions. It's a win-win situation.
Won't work. Many of those Americans aren't skilled in tech, and none of them are willing to be treated as slaves. That means that they'll have the temerity to demand proper training and pay! That would never do, as it might slightly cut into the fat bonuses given to part of the 1% lording it over the tech industry...
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
AC wrote:
>Americans ask for more money than they are worth.
No, Americans ask for more money than H1B visa holders are willing to work for. Wages as a share of the GDP peaked in 1972 in the U.S. yet profits over-all are still going up --- H1B visas are a tiny part of how corporations are able to get more work done for less money paid so as to maximize profit.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Study: When highly skilled immigrants move in, highly skilled natives move out
In the first study to measure the temporary impact of highly skilled immigrants on native populations, University of Notre Dame Economist Abigail Wozniak and Fairfield University's Thomas J. Murray — a former Notre Dame graduate student — found that when highly skilled immigrants move to a city or town, the U.S. natives in that area who are also highly skilled tend to move away. However, the study found that the same immigrant group's presence decreases the chances that low-skilled natives would leave.
"High skill" refers to those having some post-secondary education or above, while "low skill" are those with a high school diploma or less education. "Natives" refer to U.S. citizens by birth.
According to the study, which will appear in the July issue of the Journal of Urban Economics, smaller and more geographically isolated cities show the biggest impacts. There was little difference in results between growing versus declining cities.
"We conclude that natives with less education take longer to adjust to the arrival of immigrants in their local labor market than do natives with more education," Wozniak says. "These effects are more pronounced in smaller, more isolated communities, from where it would be more difficult and expensive for less skilled natives to relocate."...
Seastead this.
You mean, ways to find workers like Monster.com or Dice.com?
These companies aren't hiring anyone that they would have to train unless they're just looking for an H1B worker. I work for a large multinational company in the U.S. and I have seen the job postings they put out. They're so full of precise specifics that the worker absolutely must have that an American engineer won't be able to fit the bill. Then they hire the H1B from the overseas office that they had in mind in the first place (and who fit the onerous job requirements exactly, strangely enough) and pay him less. It's a scam. What we need is a nice, well-funded PAC for IT workers and engineers that can lean on the lawmakers and tell Oracle and Micro$oft to get bent. The only way to get the lawmakers to listen to us is to bribe them with campaign contributions. It sucks, but that's the system we have in this country.
Oh, and this Project for a New American Economy reminds me a lot of the Project for a New American Century, which brought us the Iraq war.
Americans are welcome to study in India at Indian rates. Note that the education system is crappy and has an acceptance ratio of less than 5%. (0.5-1% in the universities where american companies recruit from)You essentially study in 2 schools simultaneously for the last 2-3 years of your school life (9th-12th grade, or 11th - 12th grade)
Its relatively cheap, usually financed by parents with the expectation that you will finance your kids education and so on, hence loans are minimal at best
And, I doubt many Europeans want to come to the US anyways (as you mention, Indians get most H1B's)
Surely the last remaining world super-power could manage that?
Well yes, they probably could, but I fail to see what China has to do with any of this...