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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."
Willingness to accept substandard wages?
That this isn't common knowledge, corporations are trying to return us to 1800's regulation, it isn't just the H1B's, it's every facet of the larger corporations.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Not really. Under the visa, they can only stay a few years.
In the long term, you're training foreign nationals to do your jobs, and then take that knowledge with them.
Competing with India for wages in the long term is a losing proposition ... they have vastly more room to go up, than you do down.
I'm willing to bet of the 500,000 or so tech workers with H1B visas, there's almost as many of your own citizens in the same field who are out of work. This is just a cheap labor pool for corporations, and short term benefits.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Yes, taking the cream of the crop of foreigners who you don't have to pay for their education or upbringing and having them work in tech or science fields is terrible economics. A mediocre American who the government has to subsidize $200k for education is such a better investment.
By the way, how many H-1Bs were issued last year? 65,000. Out of a labor force of 150 million.
This is just xenophobia.
I myself am paid at par with my American colleagues.
...and that's the problem. If $MEGACORP can get employees for a lower price by way of H1-B, then the local people trying to get a job there are forced to accept the same lower wage, or they don't get the job.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Um, the free market, applied to labor/companies, would say that salaries and job demand will level out over time. If you bring in a lot of outside labor, you drive salaries down. Students entering college will look at these lower wages and say, hum, I'll go for a degree that's not engineering related. Which gives employers their ammo that "we just can't find qualified US applicants." Stop the H1-B visas and wages will rise until supply and demand settle out. It's has nothing to do with racism: , By artificially increasing supply, H1-B visas keep wages low for jobs that tech companies cannot offshore.
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
Ok, how do you gain skill/experience if you can't even catch a break in your own country because you have to compete with the rest of the world? What if you were born poor?
I was born poor. My first programming job paid less than we now pay most freshers in India, and I was living in a major US city! Now I make a ton of money. Your first job will totally suck - get used to the idea.
guess the people who can't make it in your society should just starve to death in a gutter someplace. Ayn Rand would approve.
False dilemma. Your choices are not "do this one thing I want to do" and "starve". There are always jobs with an actual labor shortage, and society would benefit if people did those jobs instead of what they do now.
Programming pays more than the median income in pretty much every nation - as you would expect for a job that's hard to train for, and hard to do. But your first job in the field is for your training, not your enrichment.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Ok, so that's cool and all. Did you bother thinking?
H1B workers only come into "in-demand" careers in highly competitive fields where large amounts of sensitive data is concerned. You're ignoring crucial things like:
* This diminishes domestic demand for employees, resulting in both fewer people entering the fields and lower wages
* These people are taking jobs in industries with a fraction of that 150 million number. (How big is the IT industry? The biotech industry? Etc.)
* On the lower side of the pay scale, there are illegals taking jobs and driving down the price for cheap labor as well.
We're already at the point in the US where people well into their 20s can look forward to "dorming" well into their 30s with housemates and roommates, and where many are still living at home because of higher costs and minimal opportunity. This is partially their fault (for picking something like an English major in college), but not everyone can be an engineer. God knows even those who are (regardless of race or culture) are rarely up to snuff.
My personal experience with Indian H1B workers is that there are a lot of them. They're upwards of 10%-30% of the IT workers I've seen. Some are very good, exceptional even. Many, if not most, are no better than and not as good as "common" DeVry types. Most of them lack crucial problem solving skills which are a "given" in Western cultures. Now, imagine for a second if there were 10% more jobs in IT oriented fields than there are now, and had been since H1B workers became common place. Would wages be lower? No, they'd probably be higher than they are now by a fair margin, making comparable amounts to other "skilled professional" careers with similar experience - as opposed to markedly less than eg. civil engineers or the like. A crucial point to consider is that there is a very large number of skilled, experienced, and unemployed people in the US right now who are looking for work (or in some cases, have stopped trying) who are "unemployable" because they're too old, too experienced, or two "American" (what with being insistent about only working 40-45 hours a week, or the like).
I wonder if either of the Presidential candidates would dare to say that on their first day of office, they would create 65,000 high-paying, skilled domestic employment opportunities. It could be done fairly trivially, and there are certainly close to that number of Americans looking for work in in-demand fields. So why not hire a 22 year old college grad from the US than a 21 year old Indian with questionable education or experience?
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