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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
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...
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.
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?