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Cringley: H-1B Visa Abuse Limits Wages and Steals US Jobs
walterbyrd sends this snippet from an article by Robert X. Cringely:
"Big tech employers are constantly lobbying for increases in H-1B quotas citing their inability to find qualified US job applicants. Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates and other leaders from the IT industry have testified about this before Congress. Both major political parties embrace the H-1B program with varying levels of enthusiasm. Bill Gates is wrong. What he said to Congress may have been right for Microsoft but was wrong for America and can only lead to lower wages, lower employment, and a lower standard of living. This is a bigger deal than people understand: it's the rebirth of industrial labor relations circa 1920. Our ignorance about the H-1B visa program is being used to unfairly limit wages and steal — yes, steal — jobs from U.S. citizens."
This article fails to even mention that H-1B visas are dual intent - green card applications are common for H-1B visa holders, and many large tech companies encourage green card application as an employee retention mechanism.
I'm a Canadian, and I guess, a reasonably talented EE. One avenue not mentioned is the TN-class visa; same general idea, but yearly renewable. (Canada/Mexico)
The process to actually _immigrate_ to the US is a real pain and very lengthy. So much that the logical extension is that they don't want skilled immigration on a permanent basis - at least from Canada. However, exporting work from the US is made very easy.
What's the problem with opening it up? Why not just find a way to document, all the undocumented? Am I missing something?
..don't panic
Read the article. there are about 700k H1-Bs in the US today
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
When I was a H1B, I was the highest paid member of the team, at a Fortune 100 company.
Now that I'm not a H1B, I'm still the highest member paid.
This is a net benefit to me, and to the country, IMO.
[obviously, I'm the highest paid because I'm damned good, not because they like to pay me more than anyone else for no reason]
I have worked in the software industry since 1984. Not once did I meet an H1-B who was MS, PhD, or other top talent. Every single one of them has been ordinary software engineering jobs. I have witnessed how companies make fake jobs ads that cater to the specific person, and HR admitting they automatically pay H1Bs $10k less because they can...
Just thought I'd add that TFA also indicates that H1-Bs are specifically for technical positions, the domestic labor force of which is 2.5 million, not 150 million.
Yes, this is because the 65k plus 20k caps are annual caps. Thank you for pointing the accumulative effect of this policy have been in place for 20 years! Out of hundreds of H-1Bs I have worked with, I have personally seen only one return home, and it was because of a medical issue.
Otherwise known as a fair market wage?
Whoever's writing as Cringly is just being racist here. There's no moral wrong when a non-American gets an "American job", whether through immigraiton or offshoring. Everyone deserves to compete for any job, without prefernce given by race or place of birth.
Sure, I'd personally like to see all the cool developer jobs reserved for somewhat overweight middle-aged white guys, but that's because I'm a greedy bastard, not because it would be some kind of moral virtue!
The problem is that it puts a net drain on the local market, both in terms of skilled workers and in terms of money. An H1-B takes a low paying job that would traditionally go to an entry-level local worker, works for several years, and returns home with enough money live on comfortably for the rest of his life due to the exchange rate. This means that the local entry-level worker can't find a job and becomes disenfranchised, and a total loss of ~50k * 3 yr = $150k is permanently removed from the local economy. Now maybe this is not ethically wrong, but it is not in the best interests of the local economy or the national economy.
So are you trying to say that by bringing in 60-80k tech workers every year, that salaries will remain 'normal'?
You don't think the H-1B program purposely puts downward pressure on salaries by adding significantly to the supply side of job candidates?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Cumulative effect over 20 years : You can be in H1-B status for 6 + 3 years. The 700K visa holders show this well, being close to 85K * 9 years.
And of course you have not seen the visa holders return home, most of these people get a green card and stay in the US, eventually becoming US citizens.
As AC pointed out above : US gets the best minds from abroad, without paying for their education. If this is not good for the US then I don't see what is...
So, the H1-B worker, by your calculation, lives of donuts he steals in the break room and sleeps on a park bench? While there are probably some H1-B workers who remit a fraction of their income to their home country, most live in the community like every one else, renting a house, buying a car and groceries, and try to get ahead in the new country. As for the "stealing American's jobs", we graduate some 5,000,000 people a year from US colleges. Compare that to the 85,000 total H1B visa given out annually, less than 2% of the total job market entries.
No actually the ones I worked with were living 5-6 people in an apartment supplied by the company that they were contracting for. I'm guessing there is some kind of company store arrangement which paid back the company out of the wages for rent.
They all would carpool together to their work sites.
So, the H1-B worker, by your calculation, lives of donuts he steals in the break room and sleeps on a park bench?
*fweeeet!*
Reductio ad absurdum, five-yard penalty!
What he is saying is actually rather common, though definitely not to the 'sleeps on a park bench' level.
It is very common for immigrants (legal or illegal) to spend only on what is necessary, and send every spare penny back home to family. After a few years, a sum is saved up which would be considered moderate here (say, saving off $50-$75k in aggregate from a middle-class job). After a few years, the immigrant returns to his/her country of origin, and either lives off the saved money for life, or uses it to start a business. The cost-of-living differential is high enough to return home a fairly prosperous person, and none of that money does anything in the local economy.
Renting a house? No problem - In an H1-B holder's shoes, I can rent a cheap 2-bd apartment with four of my friends, bunk two to a room, and pay a mere $200/month for that. Buy a car? No problem - a cheap-but running POS off of Craigslist cost what, $1000 at the most? Groceries? A minimal expense if you know where to shop, and don't get too picky on what you're eating. Given those low expenses, in three years as a DBA @ a (way low for the job!) wage of $80k here in the Pacific Northwest, I could eke out a semi-comfy cheap-assed living, and send home at least $100k to use for when I get back to my family. After all, it's no problem to live like a pauper in some strange land, especially when I know that in just a couple of years I will live like a deity in my own home neighborhood.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?