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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 needs more attention. Congress needs to be forced to think about this.
I've known even the Federal government to use H1B visas to employ virtual slaves at reduced cost who will be deported if they don't perform.
what is the average H1-B wage?
I don't think H1-b workers are cheap, plus the Visa+lawyer fees
If they weren't working in the US they would be doing the same work for US companies overseas. Visas allow the workers to work here where they also contribute more to the US economy as well as US society. They might also start companies and create jobs. True, wages may fall in the short-term, but having a larger educated and working population will help us in the long run.
If there is a global market on the price of oil, why is there not one for labor? Is it because global high tech customers see employees as worth less than western/US counterparts? I suspect no. People should all be treated equally and not be discriminated based on nationality.
I suggest you read this before you marvel at the opportunities Americans have for education.
You know why H1Bs threaten American jobs? Because they mainly come from countries where education is better and free, so they come better educated and debt-free. Debt-free people accept lower wages and employers prefer people with a better education.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
This is a recurrent topic on Slashdot. I will not pretend I know how it's done in every single company but, as an H1B I have:
- paid the same amount of taxes as citizens in my company - had the same wages (even higher actually) as citizens - had the same access to healthcare as citizens - created an extra legal cost to my employers for maintaining my immigration status - not worked more (at least hours-wise) than citizens
The BLS (bls.gov) regulary publishes a list of the jobs with the most potential on the market. There is a lack in STEM. It's a fact (unless BLS is conspiring against the people, this is Slashdot after all).
In my field there are roughly 20% of citizens that fill positions, in any given company. Not sure why. Maybe head over to the engineering department of a big university and see who's attending and getting top grades. You have a sh*tton of people from Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia, and also now Latin America, working their asses off. Not many Americans... no they're all at the Business School learning 1- blah 2- blah 3- profit. Let's fix that first, then complain.
signed: former H1B, now permanent resident, one day citizen
Oh, and obligatory: "I took yer jerb".
H1B's are not only artificially driving down wages and generally screwing over American programmers, engineers, etc., but they are also a blight on the job market for another reason: fake jobs.
There are a LOT of fake job ads are out there right now that employers are only posting so they can run crying to Congress and the Labor Dept. later, claiming that they can't get enough "qualified applicants" (and to beg for more H1B visas). You know, that ad that asks for a programmer with 20+ years of Java programming experience, or with qualifications so specific that it HAS to be tailored to a specific H1B candidate, or that asks for an experienced programmer with a salary range of $30,000-$35,000, or that never seems to get filled no matter how many qualified people apply? These are the jobs that colleges cite when they try to sucker in new programming and CS students, that applicants waste valuable time and effort on, and that create an artificially rosy appearance of the technical job market. They make it look like there are way more jobs than workers out there (that's what they're designed to do), when in reality the REAL job market is a lot more dismal, especially for newbies. They're a blight for honest job seekers, and a tool for the dishonest to use to con Congress, the Labor Dept., and desperate potential students.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
For most companies, it's all about competing on COST instead of QUALITY of work. Example: A lot of internal-corporate software is now written in Java, instead of a better, more efficient language simply because the cheapest engineers have been trained in Java, to the exclusion of everything else.
Not just in the IT world. In the construction industry I was pretty much able to demand $30/hr and the employers wouldn't even bat an eye. Now days I am expected to work for roughly 60% less because Julio will, plus he doesn't have any kind of Visa and the money he makes gets sent back to Mexico so his family can pay to sneak over here as well. And don't start calling me a racist. I grew up with Mexicans(and they like the term "Mexican" not "latino" or "hispanic") and they hate these guys just as much as I do.
I know this is an unpopular topic, but I see that throughout history that diversity -- of any form: religious, ethnic, cultural, racial -- has failed wherever it has been tried because it offers people a choice between having no culture or being ostracized for maintaining a cultural identity.
Immigration seems to be popular with the construction industry, cheap labor employers, and serf-masters like the big Silicon Valley companies. Cheap lawn mowing and cheap software production are high on their agendas. However, it's not really working in that this country continues to have clashes between value systems, including those rooted in culture, and increasingly, between our lack of values and anyone who does have cultural values.
Can anyone name a time and place in which diversity has thrived? It seems like all of our accounts come from a couple centuries later when the experiment has failed, and left behind a culturally-confused third world nation.
Perhaps instead of just walking lock-step with the rest of the herd, we should think independently about this issue, and unlike the rest of our society, question whether it's a good thing at all.
Futurist Traditionalism
Before the global infrastructure built up, before so much of investments were made by big companies in India, before many mid level execs have hitched their wagon to the out sourcing horse (which was stolen from the barn mentioned earlier), it might have been possible to reduce H1B and kept the job in USA.
But right now, if you reduce H1B, it is going to move the whole damned job to India. At least they (or us, because I am an ex H1B) work in USA, pay taxes in USA and spend most of their money in USA and save and invest in USA. The outsourced job lives, spends, invests and pays taxes in India.
I ran the rat race in India, and won it. And the prize was US Citizenship. I don't want my daughter fighting for jobs with the next generation of me who wins the rat race in India. But that makes me sound like the guy who dynamites the bridge after crossing it himself. This is quite complicated.
As Obama said in the third debate, "Some jobs are not coming back. They are low wage low skill jobs. I want high wage high skill jobs here", it would be great if we could make sure the jobs that were lost are all low wage low skill jobs and keep the high wage jobs here. Even if that means my daughter has to fight with the next generation rat-race winner from India.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
In the tech industry? I would be surprised if more than a small percentage actually became citizens. Based on my experience, every H-1B employee I've ever worked with (~ 25) left the country after their visa expired.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
The reason you're paid on-par is because American wages have dropped a massive amount in the past few decades. It's a plan that's been at work for decades. We were warned about it but failed to listen.
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/16/us/the-1992-campaign-transcript-of-2d-tv-debate-between-bush-clinton-and-perot.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
"To those of you in the audience who are business people, pretty simple: If you're paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory South of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor, hire young -- let's assume you've been in business for a long time and you've got a mature work force -- pay a dollar an hour for your labor, have no health care -- that's the most expensive single element in making a car -- have no environmental controls, no pollution controls and no retirement, and you don't care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going south.
"So we -- if the people send me to Washington the first thing I'll do is study that 2,000-page agreement and make sure it's a two-way street. One last part here -- I decided i was dumb and didn't understand it so I called the Who's Who of the folks who've been around it and I said, "Why won't everybody go South?" They say, "It'd be disruptive." I said, "For how long?" I finally got them up from 12 to 15 years. And I said, "well, how does it stop being disruptive?" And that is when their jobs come up from a dollar an hour to six dollars an hour, and ours go down to six dollars an hour, and then it's leveled again. But in the meantime, you've wrecked the country with these kinds of deals. We've got to cut it out."
So yeah, it's great for people who come from other countries to work, but it came at the expense of the American people who used to be able to afford vacations, health care, and college but now no longer can.
Both political parties dutifully ignore the issue, as they have been paid to do.
They are "Guests" who never go home, essentially.
Look up the writing of Kim Berry, John Miano, and Norm Matloff for more.
You're right, but that's only half the truth I'm afraid. Of all the H1Bs that I've met in corporate America (and I've met with a lot in my lifetime), almost all of them have have come from a middle to extremely wealthy background. That is to say, it was their parents that fronted the money in sending their child to a western university prior to landing a job in the states. That's nothing new. What *is* interesting is how their parents got their wealth. Generally in nations such as China and India, a good portion of that wealth is illegitimate. That is to say, much of it was either obtained via politics or corruption (paid for by the tax payer of course) vs say...an honest salary based on a free market competitive wage.
Life is not for the lazy.
True. But that doesn't mean we can't to encourage employers to be willing to pay a living wage.
We can do this lots of ways, such as limiting their ability to import cheap workers, or by instituting fines for them paying too little (to expand upon this, I think we need to rais ethe minimum wage a la Australia to an actual liveable wage). I don't see a problem with 'nudging' employers to be willing to pay a living wage. You may, but that's because you're a pseudo-anarchist.
That's your opinion, and I respect that. I disagree, however, and I believe that we, as a whole, owe each other the opportunity to pursue action at the societal, rather than the individual, level.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
An unemployed citizen isn't going to cost the government nearly as much as raising and educating a citizen to the level to work in a tech or science field. And this foreigner will almost certainly become a citizen. In effect, an H-1B allows the US to steal the valuable labor and contributions to society from another country.
From my experience, the people who oppose H-1Bs tend to be very xenophobic. Have a conversation with them and soon it will digress to topics like self-deportation or worse.
I'm about as left as it gets, but I oppose the H1B status on the fact that it puts a large portion of workers at a major negotiation disadvantage. The problem isn't that there are foreigners taking these jobs, its that the foreigners are not able to negotiate on a level playing field, which drives down the wages for everyone. A similar and far more dramatic shift has happened in blue collar jobs involving illegal immigrants. The reason you don't see Americans picking fruit in California isn't because they don't want to do it, it's because the farmer can pay the illegal immigrants half the minimum wage, is not liable if that worker is injured on the job, and can arbitrarily change the deal at any point with no legal repercussions. Slave labor is bad for us as a nation, whether it be white collar or blue collar.
It also depends on the accounting, Most places I've worked, the full-time worker's salary comes out of operational expenses, while contract resources come out of capital expenses, usually tied to a project of some sort that's been through a business case to get capital funding.
Your $40k wages have lots of hidden company costs as well, up to 35% of gross salary.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
The problem is that we also get these visa holders taking the place of citizens, so saddling us with educated candidates that can't pay for that education.
But no matter, the schools were paid. The government fronted them the money, the loans go unpaid because the borrowers cant afford their education, and taxpayers pay for it all.
Sound familiar? It SHOULD.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I read somewhere, probably here (a month or two ago?), a very interesting proposal (paraphrased):
Increase the number of H-1Bs and similar programs. Tax them. Pour money from that tax into education so we can compete in the next generation. This has numerous benefits: it levels the playing field, it invests in our future, and it encourages the kind of immigration that, once upon a time, made this country great.
Several of my coworkers are here on H-1Bs. They are very smart and very talented. Their presence and perspective helps my team's diversity and encourages us all to do better and be better people. If a tax were enacted that made them effectively cost more, we'd be happy to pay it for them*, and we'd think nothing of paying it when it comes to the next round of hiring (and not just for those reasons; we'd have to. The talent pool really is that small).
Consider the alternative; if there really isn't enough workers here in the States with the right education, and the tech industries can't attract them to the States, the tech industries will open offices in places they can attract this talent, outside of the States. Isn't that worse?
* I do not speak for my employer, yada yada yada
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
I used to work as an H1-B worker. I 100% agree that the work visa program lowers wages and steals jobs from Americans.
From my personal experience I know, that if I was not dependent on my employer I would have asked for higher than the market pay rate, rather than take lower than the market rate. However, since US government "helped", none of the companies I worked for had to offer proper wages to job applicants. I have seen many tailored job postings that were not really looking for applicants, but were posted only to fulfill requirements set forth by the government. Prevailing wage analysis and numbers that come out from that are mostly irrelevant and do not have to be lower than the wage being paid to the H1-B worker. My approved green card application had much higher wage than I was/am getting.
The program does not protect American workers at all. I used to hate H1-B due to somewhat slave labor legal conditions associated with it, but now that I am almost a citizen, I hate it because in its current state it does not benefit Americans and actually harms them.
Another things worth mentioning, although many people apply for green card after being on H1-B, the work visa is not considered to be a proper path to citizenship by US government. Partially due to this, none of the experience gained while working on H1-B can be used in green card application to prove that person is an asset to the company or to the country.
I'm about as left as it gets, but I oppose the H1B status on the fact that it puts a large portion of workers at a major negotiation disadvantage. The problem isn't that there are foreigners taking these jobs, its that the foreigners are not able to negotiate on a level playing field, which drives down the wages for everyone.
That's the first intelligent thing I have read in this thread. The H1B program has two flaws: first, it is too expensive, slow, and restrictive for getting a Visa. At our startup, If we find someone really good we want to hire from europe (which is not so seldom, since we know a lot of people there) we have to wait for next year's quota, so (s)he can't get started until october next year. That can be over a year of waiting time! We're talking people we know, with a PhD and a strong track record.
Second, as the parent poster mentioned, it puts employees at a negotiation disadvantage because they cannot be unemployed while on the H1B. Also, if they are in the middle of a green card application and they change employers, they have to start from scratch. Solution would be to de-couple immigration H1B status and green card applications from employers. E.g., if an H1B holder could be unemployed for up to 12 months before he loses his visa, his negotiating position would be about as strong as a citizens', so he could ask for a fairer wage.
And before anyone starts the xenophobic rant that we should be hiring americans, nobody in the team that started this company was born in america. Now we are bringing money and jobs here. If the rules had been only a little bit more restrictive, this company likely wouldn't exist.
Whichever country can attract the best qualified people will have the strongest economy... this is what the US has excelled at so far. Now already the US doesn't allow people who study here and get degrees from top universities to transition to a job and eventually a green card. That is one of the dumbest economic policies currently in effect in this country.