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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."
Maybe the visa numbers are stored in an unsigned short and can't go above 65535 anyway....
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
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.
When my former employer started hiring H1B, the government did a check of salaries compared to market values in the area. The other programmers had to get a raise. There are laws about salary, especially for the guy managing an H1B employee which turned out to be me. He also turned out to be one of the best programmers I've worked with.
I used to have strong feelings against the H1B program, but after seeing jobs unfilled at several employers now, sometimes it makes sense.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
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.
As it says "Immigration attorneys from Cohen & Grigsby explains how they assist employers in running classified ads with the goal of NOT finding any qualified applicants, and the steps they go through to disqualify even the most qualified Americans in order to secure green cards for H-1b workers. See what Bush and Congress really mean by a "shortage of skilled U.S. workers." Microsoft, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, and thousands of other companies are running fake ads in Sunday newspapers across the country each week.
Here's a video of one of their conferences. It's pretty harsh.
How to put out fake ads, how to find ways to disqualify qualified americans.
Quote" The goal is not to find a qualified and interested worker"
http://youtu.be/TCbFEgFajGU
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Belief in slavery, that's why.
I've encountered many who really believe slaves make better workers. This includes the slaves. "I owe, I owe, it's off to work I go" is practically the national motto of the US. They don't call it slavery of course. They call it commitment, reliability and stability. They believe people must be pushed hard, and will do their best when they are in "do or die" situations, there's a gun pointing at their heads, their necks' are on the chopping blocks and the ax is ready to fall. Even better when they have volunteered. "Ability to work in high pressure environment" is a popular and sought after soft skill. They believe this so strongly that they put a higher priority on their ability to get and maintain holds over a job candidate than the abilities and skills they're seeking. Being financially responsible counts against you! They want you set up so that you're in a world of hurt if you lose your job. This is why the US does not have sane health care spending. Relieving employers of the burden of paying for and managing a health care program is seemingly one of the most business friendly things government could do. Yet business opposed it. Why? Employers like having holds over employees, and health benefits make a good one.
Ever had a boss observe that you haven't bought a new car? And this despite the fact that your current car works fine? I have, twice, and my mother once. Why is the boss so interested in your car? No one else cares. One of these bosses explained it, saying that because I wasn't making car payments, I could afford to leave my job and this was bad! At another job, the phrase "flight risk" was used to refer to employees who could afford to leave their jobs. At still another job, a fellow employee told me that he was a better employee than I because he had to have the job in order to afford his crushingly high house payments (he paid $500,000 for a small house, in California, in 2003), and his wife and new baby daughter, whereas I was living in an apartment. He made sure everyone, especially management, knew how screwed he would be if he lost his job, and that he was willing to work long hours. Often, managers are also slaves, and tend to be jealous of peons who have freedoms they don't have. Had one manager who groaned theatrically about his massive credit card debt, but it was easy to see he was really kind of bragging about it. He even held a little pissing contest one day, asking everyone how much credit card debt we had. He "won" by "virtue" of having the most. I refused to answer, and this was met with hostility, and the suspicion that I must not have any, and jealousy.
So of course H1Bs have massive advantages over the natives.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"