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Senators Seek H-1B Cap That Can Reach 300,000
dcblogs writes "A bipartisan group of Senators is planning to introduce a bill that allows the H-1B visa cap to rise automatically with demand to a maximum of 300,000 visas annually. This 20-page bill, called the Immigration Innovation Act of 2013 or the 'I-Squared Act of 2013,' is being developed by Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), and Chris Coons (D-Del.). It may be introduced next week. Presently, the U.S. has an H-1B visa cap of 65,000. There are another 20,000 H-1B visas set aside for advanced degree gradates of U.S. universities, for 85,000 in total. Under the new bill, the base H-1B cap would increase from 65,000 to 115,000. But the cap would be allowed to rise automatically with demand, according to a draft of the legislation."
So what the hell use is a cap that rises with demand?
if you want to educate the next generation of IT workers in the US and have them stay here for their lives, adding to the economy, start cutting back on H1Bs now. it's just an excuse to in-shore cheaper help and shoo them away before they start complaining.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I can hire cheap labor once again.
That will never pass senate.
This sounds like they are trying to drive down the costs of labor in the US labor market. I think they are buying into the crap that there are no qualified people to fill positions. My organization has no problem finding skilled labor. We also pay well and have good benefits.
This could be better than the offshoring that is currently occuring as dollars would be kept in the country.
There are less than 2.5mil jobs in the tech sector (what H1-Bs are for). There are already too many people here in US illegally, permanently. The H1-B is a 6 year visa with pretty much an automatic extra 3 years. I demand my government stop trying to keep me an indentured servant. The federal government guaranteed my student loan, and is actively seeking to suppress my employment in the sector in which I received training by means of a loan.
I demand my government stop trying to keep me in a life of involuntary servitude.
Seems reasonable if not slightly racist.
Reduce the percentage of H1-B's by the unemployment rate every year.
is further destruction of the middle class. By replacing American tech workers with H1B slaves, they drive down the wages of the Americans who still have jobs.
Once the rich have taken everything away from the middle, they'll have to turn on each other. That will be fun to watch.
I am not joking here. Increasing HB-1 Visas is going to be a royal pain. Not because we have smart people from other nations working for less doing similar work. What we will allow is the Border Patrol assholes more reasons to limit US citizen rights and monitor (illegally) US citizens in the name of foreign nationals on US soil. Homeland security must be have a royal orgasm right now. Yo, we get more funding.
Trying to weigh all the parts of the bill, I think I would oppose it.
I think foreign workers in all jobs are good, but increasing the number of visas granted is bad in an economy like ours. We need our jobs to rebuild our individual financial infrastructure. Younger workers need to be able to pay off those credit cards.
Google, Yahoo, IBM, etc *should* be forced to hire more US workers. First it would force companies to start giving people with a criminal record a chance. Felons at age 26 with marketable skills in IT, web design, or coding/software engineering are still Felons...they never make it past HR...
Just look at any thread on /. about getting hired...Human Resources is a difficult barrier even with a spotless record.
A second reason to oppose more H1-B visas is that it would force Americans to go back to college or get marketable skills another way. State university systems are economical and could be adapted to be essentially profit-neutral and give 100% financial aid to all who are accepted.
So yes, Americans do need to get off their asses, get some skillz and get to work...adding more *non-US* workers than we already allow is dumb right now
Thank you Dave Raggett
But the cap would be allowed to rise automatically with demand...
Um, that is the exact opposite of a 'cap'.
Importing people who will be automatically put into a process of exporting if they lose their job always seemed more than a bit cruel to me.
The effect of H1b has been to flood the market with fake job offers (intended to find no one available), increase the desperation of the average job seeker (where it doesn't lower wages directly, it has other effects), and to shift the job market gradually overseas as intimate knowledge of US business is shifted to people who aren't allowed to remain in the US market.
It's a mixed result - but mostly negative for the US at large.
Why not just allow more immigrants for technical fields? That way, they can start companies here, they don't have to live in such fear while working, and can pay socially beneficial taxes when they do (statistically) reach the higher incomes they are bound to reach.
Passing laws just to increase profit margins of companies at the expense of workers seems highly corrupt/inefficient. We're a nation of immigrants - we shouldn't shy away from making the nation stronger with citizens - and we've had huge problems with, um, drawing distinctions about labor variants of citizens in the past.
Ryan Fenton
But... :) Tech sector unemployment is quite low, so there actually is a demand for workers now. Adding tech workers to the employee pool will allow firms to grow, which will create jobs in the long run.
It is pretty clear these guys are treasonous bastards.
This is unthinkable. It's this kind of corporate pandering that has gotten us into the unemployment problem we're currently in. I have no problem with hiring people from other countries -- when there is a surplus of work to go around.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
How about no H-1B visas until unemployment drops below 5%.
Here's hoping Senator Bernie Sanders pushes back again on this one. Anyone familiar with the Senator knows that he has been a thorn in the side of H1-B advocates, introducing and pushing amendments to limit the program and fund US STEM for years.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/05/24/338394/-H-1B-Labor-Sen-Bernie-Sanders-Introduces-Amendment-to-Strengthen-America
People argue about the minimum wage. This is what I call our "maximum wage" policy. We have this fixed notion of what different jobs "should" make. And when supply and demand gets out of line with our preconceptions, we allow immigration to drive down wages on picking fruit, or construction, nannying, technology work, or whatever.
Screw that! If we need this for anything, it's doctors, since the supply is artificially limited by the AMA. So why isn't that happening?
H1-B is only granted if a US Citizen or a permanent resident is not available or willing to take the position. Just make sure that these are followed to stop abuse. Quotas make it difficult to companies to hire people here and if the pain to hire here is more than managing an offshore team say bye bye to American jobs. Also there are many indirect jobs that are created with the filling of the position. There are abusers of every provision and decisions should not be made on these bad apples.
Eliminate all H1b visa's and that so called demand results increases in pay, other compensation and scheduling flexibility until more people have the incentive to move into those positions. Who would guess that high demand might increase the price of a scarce supply of goods(labor)?
The cap on H-1B and other visas should be set at 7 billion people.
It's not happening because we lack a powerful tech worker lobby. :)
However, back to the original point, allowing wages to rise is not a short term solution. It is a long term solution, and one that I naturally agree with being a tech worker. :)
disclaimer: I am currently an alien worker in the US under working visa.
I believe the question of how many foreign workers to allow in the country is a very difficult one. There are many things to weight.
First, of course, is the level on unemployement in the country. If you have many unemployed skilled workers within the country, then you do not help your citizens (which should be the point of a government).
Second, as was pointed out before, foreign workers increase offer and tends to decrease salaries; which can also be detrimental to your workers.
But there are also good effects in foreign workers. It brings people that are (typically) debt free and that the will to make important decisions. It is a H1B worker now, but it might be a company tomorrow.
It can brings more skills in the country. Visa workers might stay which means you instantly gained a new trained worker. You lured him pretty much for free. That means he contributes to your economy and not to his country of origin's economy.
It increase competition. Surely american people should understand that's a good things.
"So yes, Americans do need to get off their asses, get some skillz and get to work..."
>"Ah yes, the old unemployed are lazy and unskilled lie."
I didn't mean to go there. I *don't* think that, but I know that there are Republicans and closeted GOP'ers ('libertarians') who I respect on /.
I was trying to weigh the bill all the way around, from all perspectives.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Don't create more visa's, give the workers easy pathways to citizenship. Work on an H1-b for 5 years without run-ins with the law and you're a citizen. If you don't want citizenship then you lose your visa. Simple as that. Is there not enough skilled labor? Or is there not enough cheap labor? Making more visas brings in cheap labor. Making more citizens brings in talented labor. If you're a law abiding person and go through the proper channels citizenship should be easy in this country. I work in a shop with a lot of H1-B people, from India, Russia, Israel, etc... and I'd be happy to have any of them get citizenship here. They're great people and I like most of them better than my asshole neighbors.
Would be interesting if that "low" unemployment actually equated to raises which even matched inflation....
2006: Inflation rate: 3.8% Tech Salary: 1.7%
2007: Inflation rate: 2.8% Tech Salary: 4.6%
2008: Inflation rate: 3.8% Tech Salary: 1%
2009: Inflation rate: -0.4% Tech Salary: 0.7%
2010: Inflation rate: 1.6% Tech Salary: 2.4%
2011: Inflation rate: 3.2% Tech Salary: 5.3%
So if you started with a salary of $100,000 in 2005, it would mean the following (inflation adjusted to 2005 dollars):
2006: $97,977
2007: $99,692
2008: $97,003
2009: $98,073
2010: $98,845
2011: $100,857
In other words, a paltry 0.8% raise in real salary over those 6 years!
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
I am fine with these visas, however, they should make it very easy for the person hired using one of them to switch jobs at will without a slew of requirements that keep them effectively owned by the first company.
Of course, many corporations would oppose it because the people here on such a visa would be asking for much better salaries and benefits, but the only stated purpose to increase the number of visas and the whole idea of the H1-B is to get more workers. Note: I said "stated" purpose.
Anything that has Orrin Hatch involved is an automatic vote against as far as I'm concerned
Slashdot - I remember when you used to have informative comments... every day you're getting closer and closer to the bile spewed out on youtube comments...
H1Bs require LCAs which require the income to meet the standard for that position. This $ figure is set by the government with the intention that companies cannot bring in foreigners and pay them less then citizens.
I know because I've been through the process. I'm an Australian working in the US on a H1B earning as much as I would back home. The minimum wage listed by the government on the LCA seemed fair to me so I have no idea what you all are complaining about.
Until recently I've been one of those guys who was always defending free trade, immigration, multiculturalism and the like. Crap like this doesn't change my views incrementally, it makes me see the polar opposite. These immigrant workers are not "friends". They're here to take whatever they can from us. The government isn't working to improve conditions for the average citizen. They're just making shady deals with companies whose only philosophy is "greed is good".
I've been a fool, but I won't get fooled again. Who said that?
I think foreign workers in all jobs are good, but increasing the number of visas granted is bad in an economy like ours.
So you don't want to sound xenophobic but you really are. Foreign workers contribute to the economy, pay taxes, and bring specific talents that are badly needed by companies but you think we should hire Americans just because they are Americans?
Google, Yahoo, IBM, etc *should* be forced to hire more US workers.
You've never tried to run a business have you? Forcing a company to hire substandard talent is literally counterproductive. Companies need to and should hire the best talent they can get regardless of where the person is from. If that happens to be people from the US that is terrific. Companies need specific skills and those skills don't have anything to do with national boundaries. If the US workers are the best available option then I guarantee you that companies will hire them. If they aren't the best then they don't really deserve the jobs now do they?
A second reason to oppose more H1-B visas is that it would force Americans to go back to college or get marketable skills another way.
So less competition for jobs is somehow supposed to push Americans to get more training? Curious logic since generally less competition has exactly the opposite effect. If I don't have to compete for my job, I'm going to have zero motivation to spend money or time on additional education.
"You may have to be willing to learn new things..."
My contention is that, indeed as you say 'the jobs are out there'...however I contend that the avenues to attaining the skills required are not as open as you indicate.
Yes, theoretically, a random person willing to do the things you list (delve into coding, relocating, entry-level work) could, under laboratory conditions get a job.
I'm talking about people who don't know that avenue exists, which are many. College is still considered the place to go to become a professional, and as I'm sure you'd agree, getting a job in IT/tech is not degree-dependent like other fields such as teaching or nursing.
Colleges need to do a better job of teaching tech/IT skills. It is a long-term project to be sure, but it needs to happen. If you put the money there, the techies with good interpersonal skills will come to Academia.
I have a degree in education from the University of Colorado-Boulder and the overlap between current education theory and 'machine learning' artificial intelligence stuff is very interesting and developing. IMHO it is the perfect time to improve technology education in Academia...major overhaul
Thank you Dave Raggett
There's the jobs bill they promised us a year ago.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
As people above have pointed out there should be a minimum salary for H1-Bs. This salary should be borderline absurd. Then on top of that there should be a special H1-B tax on that salary bringing it down to below what is typically earned in that field. Then 100% of the tax should fund education or training in that exact field. So if H1-B programmers are hired it goes to programming education. If H1-B snake charmers are being hired then it goes to a snake charming school. This way the government doesn't pick winners for educational grants, they pick themselves.
At no point should it be more attractive to hire a H1-B than it is to hire a local of the same qualification. If the system was properly tuned it would always be a last resort to hire a H1-B not the preferred case as with many exploitative companies. Then in theory there wouldn't need to be a cap.
Personally I have always thought that any work you hire in cheap countries should have their labors taxed until the domestic company had paid the same as if the work were done locally. So if you have a company in country X that is getting the work done for $0.50(shipping included) per unit because they pay their people pennies and pollute the crap out of some river and the domestic rate is $1.00 per unit then there should be a $0.50 per unit tax. So if you think the offshore company does it better then you get them to do it. This prevents the economic concept of us not only importing their products but prevents the import of their crappy standard of living.
Oddly enough the above idea encourages simply paying higher wages when you do find yourself having to hire outside help. Thus raising the standard of living in other places.
This to address the shortage of developers who will work 70 hours a week for $35K a year and are afraid to complain about working conditions for fear of being deported.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Get rid of the H-1B.
Only immigration politics could come up with a concept like a "cap" that "would be allowed to automatically rise with demand" during a jobless recovery.
Seastead this.
The supply of domestic tech workers will never increase until the price (pay) is allowed to rise with demand.
You seem to think that there is some secret cabal who controls wages for tech workers. When there is sufficient demand and competition for talent then wages will rise. The market sets the rate. Just because wages aren't as high as you think they should be is irrelevant. Tech workers aren't more special than anyone else and there is no small group that controls their wages.
Screw that! If we need this for anything, it's doctors, since the supply is artificially limited by the AMA.
The article you reference is from 2005 and is quite out of date. The AMA does not control the supply of physicians in the US - Congress is in charge of that. The AMA is a lobbying group and a professional association but they do not control Congress.
I'm all for increasing green cards for people who want to work and live in the United States, even though that directly competes with me. What I am tired of is seeing jobs that can't be outsourced, being set up with the express point of bringing in lower cost labor, for the specific point of having lower cost labor and to drive down wages. Tech is not a low skill job in most cases, it requires schooling, which is expensive in the United States, and the fixed costs of living in the United States. I am severely underpaid, however I was given a job with no experience, no training, little benefits and no advancement opportunities, it's literally the only thing around and we STILL hire people as H1Bs first even with a ton of people unemployed and more than able to fill slots. H1B is a scam for corporations, plain and simple.
Realistically, I view an ability to bring in highly skilled workers as a huge boon for us. Tax revenues, technological innovation, business agility - etc. People who are really driving technology and innovation create way more value than they capture and they become the rising tide that lift all boats.
But how can you identify them? We all know companies that want to import workers for less skilled jobs carefully tailor the job descriptions to avoid any domestic competition, don't publicize the jobs widely, etc.
Salary is the answer. We should prioritize H1-B visa imports by salary. The more you are paying the worker you import, the higher on the list they get to be. Any increase in the cap requires a certain number of workers at the top of the salary curve; if your salary would put you in the top 1% of workers in any science or technology field, then come on in; I don't care how high the "cap" goes. As you move toward the middle of the bell curve, the total number of workers we'll import declines. We shouldn't import even one worker below the median salary. I don't think we should move an inch over the current cap unless everyone over the cap is at least in the top 20%.
The American companies have invested so much in out sourcing, it has achieved a critical mass in India and most of the good ones do not want to emigrate. The only thing that can save the goose here in USA, is the number of world class high quality engg grads in India is quite limited. I would put it at about just 10K to 20K grads per year. Most the rest are no better than a bright high school grad in USA in terms of basic intelligence, skill, perseverance and work ethics. I expect the companies to reverse the out sourcing trend soon. They are losing money in out sourcing to India.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
When the whores in Washington hear the commands of their corporate master, they forget all about unemployed Americans!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
The Republicans are doing it because they're bought by big business interests. The Democrats are only doing it because they love people and want everyone to enjoy our freedoms.
I noted with interest a recent advert in one of the newspapers here in Belize. It was offering Belizeans jobs in New Jersey driving ice-cream trucks for $8.50 an hour. On a six-month H-2B visa.
I realize $8.50 is not a whole lot but can they really find no Americans to do it? Incidentally, a laborer in Belize makes about a quarter of that and a hot meal costs about $2.00.
If that's your employment situation then you should seek another employer. Unemployment among tech workers is half of the national average, and among some tech categories it's as low as 1.7%: citation
Low unemployment would translate to higher wages if tech workers organized and stood up for themselves.
... and they all work in Redmond.
And 90% of them are hired because they're cheap, or because they speak the same dialect of Hindi as the hiring manager, not because they're any good.
I can't count how many times I've seen an Indian manager "manage out" or outright fire a white guy to replace him with an incompetent guy who just happens to be from the same region of India.
What is your source on the "Tech Salary" percentage? Is that the "standard" salary increase given on average across everybody for doing the same job overall? If so then it should be as close to zero as possible after accounting for inflation. If you're doing the same job today as you were doing six years ago then you SHOULD be making the same amount after adjusting for inflation.
Salary increases that beat inflation year over year should only be for those people who increase the quality and/or quantity of their work year over year.
If you increase the pay of everybody regardless of their performance we have a word for that. The word is "inflation" and the old phrase "a rising tide lifts all boats" is relevant.
Generally what people are interested in is how to increase their pay relative to other people, but in order to do that in a fair and honest economy requires increasing your own output relative to other people. You shouldn't expect "everybody" to receive increases that beat inflation because if RELATIVE wealth doesn't change then the numerical values of the pay figures don't matter.
There are only 100 senators. 100 H-1Bs is all we'll need to replace them.
OK, throw in another 435 visas for the House.
Have gnu, will travel.
It's the same as with outsourcing - it enriches companies and short-sells Americans. Expanded H1B program would make unappealing to invest in education in America. There would be no more need to invest in future generations if company could get workers you need w/o spending any money. In addition H1B workforce's living expenses are lower than of American workers which in turn depresses salaries of American workers.
For example, right now my friends company is paying 50% of her expenses to finish her MBA, it costs them $20k. If company could import someone they would be net ~$20k profit (maybe more if they can pay less for the same job) and my friend would be either unemployed or less educated.
This is all about (and always has been about) driving down the cost of US knowledge workers to immigrant levels.
I wonder if the pennies on the dollar H-1B folk have un-forgiveable student loans in the five to six figure range?
This guy gets it.
do you want fries with that code?
1. The foreign workers send their money home instead of spending here in this economy
2. The foreign workers take what they learn here and send it home making us less competitive in the long run
3. The education system here will continue to decline because we are boosting our productivity with foreign trained workers. It hides symptoms.
4. The foreign workers now trained here can be sent back to their home where they can seed outsourcing more labor.
Conservative used to mean "Stingy and Self-Sufficient". What does it mean now?
H1-Bs are the IT equivalent of on-shore sweat-shops only they're legal.
I'm applying for an H1-B next year... with a salary around 140k I think there's a chance my sweat-shop will have air conditioning :)
Seriously, I had the option of US, Canada, England, Germany, France or work from home. I picked the US well, at random, but also because I think it's a good career move (at least California is still pretty big in the IT industry).
Am I specially talented? Maybe? I get good grades and there's probably a reason my starting salary is so nice...
But I'm not an exceptional genius, and I'm not sure how I would go about documenting my skills..
If immigration was harder I would bother with it... I got plenty of options.
Am I a temporary worker? I don't know... If I manage to find a pretty girl, things could become fairly permanent.
Oh, and don't worry about me nagging on your non-existent social services, if that was I career path I was considering I'd most certainly stay in Europe :)
My wife is a software product manager. Her product development is split between the "tough stuff" and closely synchronized systems interfacing work done by American citizens, and the "easy stuff" which is mainly HTML and JavaScript web GUI stuff done by a large Indian consulting company. The Indian company (an investor in the product) keeps a project manager for their Indian folks in the US to coordinate on the product better, and the actual coders are in India.
The Indian project manager has been in the US for years with his family (I suspect his kids feel as American as Indian). But his H1-B is around to run out. He and his family has to go back to India.
But not to worry! The Indian consulting company is sending a new H1-B guy over for project management.
My great-grandmother stepped off a ship with no skills, looked around for work, and then got citizenship after a few years. It is insane that we are bringing skilled folks (and their smart kids) into the US and kicking them out again.
I've been involved in several incidents where immigration rules have messed with my industry. There was a German engineer who had to do the "go back to Germany" thing for a few years because of a screw up. I've seen Canadian tech people turned around at the border by immigration when going to fix a system in Detroit. This is not helping us.
Instead of dealing with libertarians, democrats and non-theists (most of the US universities makeup) those states rather import foreign Christians instead of accommodating the Americans and diluting their voter base.
Just look who is proposing it: Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), and Chris Coons (D-Del.)
Most inflation-adjusted compensation over the last 10-15 years has been in nontaxed benefits, not wages, especially health insurance.
Look at Nonfarm Business Sector: Real Compensation Per Hour (COMPRNFB).
How about we agree to that cap increase, but only if H1-B visas have two conditions attached:
1. The visa is only valid as long as the applicant is employed. If he's unemployed for more than 30 days, the visa is no longer valid.
2. The visa is granted to the employee, not the company, and goes with the employee if he accepts another job.
Companies want to bring in foreign applicants because they can get them cheaper than hiring locally (otherwise, why go through the hassle?). Change the economic rules so they can't low-ball salaries without risking other companies poaching their employees with better offers and I'll bet H1-Bs become a lot less popular.
Instead of allowing the cap to rise automatically with demand, why not allow the price to rise automatically with demand? In other words, eliminate the "shortage" by selling the visas at auction. Then we'll find out which companies genuinely need those visas.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
This:
"most of the good ones do not want to emigrate"
When I was in India two years ago, I was speaking with people on the train that were living abroad (in western countries) and had come home to look at where they can live in India because (a) job prospects have improved (b) their family is there (c) the value of the USD is no longer what it was (d) there are new residential developments there so they can live in a modern community.
All of above mean that not only is it harder to get top people from India out, but the better ones are going back.
300,000 H1Bs? Dime a dozen now that they're so cheap, easy and worthless.
But that's not how it works. I got three promotions in that time, and am making nearly twice what I was in 2006. And 3 newcomers started that are pay well below that, and that's how averages are done. A person gets much more than the average, as more people are joining at low levels or retiring from higher paying jobs, dragging the average down. In fact, it's mathematically possible that the average raise was 10%+ when the industry average wage increase was below 1%.
Learn to love Alaska
That's desperation and a horror right up there with the "Saw" movies.
We, as a people, in MY country, forced a young woman to work right into the grave. We might as well be Pharoahs running the blocks right over anyone who weakens and falls.
Why is it we can give pharmaceutical giant Amgen 500 billion dollars for free in the cliff deal, but we can't find a way to let a helpless young woman die in peace?
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
The AMA does not control the supply of physicians in the US - Congress is in charge of that.
Citation oh-so-needed. The licensing of physicians is a state matter, not federal.
H1B here, posting as AC since I am afraid of getting identified in any way.
Been in this country for 15 years. Engineer from top school in India. MS/PhD from top school in the USA. Working in a blue chip company for a six-figure salary.
Can't get Green Card, No Sirrrrr! Stuck in EB-2 queue for years. EB-1 rules are too draconian, if followed to the letter.
I absolutely love my job and have no plans of moving, but dread what will happen if I get laid off. Since I filed my Green Card application with my current company, I have ZERO movability (if I switch jobs, my green card application will get tossed). If I want to found a startup, zero chance of that happening.
This country does not want really skillful immigrants to get a Green Card. It wants them stuck in their respective company jobs. Which suits the companies very well.
If you're getting crushed by competition in your job field from H1B workers, it's time to find a new field or to start your own business. You're not going to beat back a tide of cheap labor that's backed by Congress and multiple law firms specializing in getting those workers into American jobs.
Dat Repubwikin took mah jerb!
You voted for it. Now suck on it.
If tech workers would quit thinking they are all above average and form a union you can bet your ass the wages would rise and working conditions rise.
Imagine if your IT department went on strike. Try hiring a bunch of scabs that could quickly come up to speed on the existing architecture without the assistance of incumbent staff.
Yeah your smart and could support your own desktop but what about the router, switches, VOIP call manager and various other appliances that make the network work. Who do you call when the ISP has a connection problem, who is your ISP?
Same goes for System Architecture type guys, unionize and get yourselves some bargaining power. But NO you all think you are special and better than average. Try to remember half are above the mean and half are below.
you will be given a management job...to interface with foreign customers.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
I think you're right. I used to be quite against the idea of any kind of IT association was a bad idea, but that was when I was young and dumb and hadn't realized how badly the deck was stacked against us.
Actually if as the H1B advocates claim is true: There is a shortage of qualified IT workers
Then: According to the law of supply and demand the salary for the same position should rise faster than inflation.
If there is a shortage of workers and the salaries do not increase faster than inflation something is depressing wages.
Think it might be H1B workers?
Are we even reading the same article? The H1-B legislation and its backers are nothing but a cabal to manipulate the wages of tech workers, by targeting them with specific regulation to increase the supply of talent so wages don't get out of hand. It doesn't even purport to be anything else.
Unix Tactical Tech Architect / System Admin Sr / San Storage Network Deployment
Took time off in 2005 and wanted to go back to work in 2007 Vacation of a life time...
Worked 2 months as a consultant on a server room migration project killed/delayed by unreasonable goals.
Found work hard to find.
Bought a bar and have been running it to keep food on table. ( one plate only ) PS: I average 3 drinks per week....
A great education in many useful skills, but not a money maker.
Pro: I have good experience.
A four year degree and reasonable salary expectations.
H1-B wages are still okay !
I will relocate, not tied to a location.
Bad: I was once charged (NOT CONVICTED) with a felony ( spanked my son for repeatedly stealing and running around all night as a 13 year old)
I am looking for a place that has clue about what they are doing with IT.
There will be a moving delay while I closeout the business.
Hire an American before a H1-B visa candidate.
I can get more done in 40 hours and make it look easy than a H1-B worker that looks busy for 75 hours a week
Contact me on Monster
Translation: "we want to allow the outsourcing of 300,000 American Jobs as an insidious tool to force down wages for skilled labor in America." It's the race to the bottom. There's no shortage of trained IT people in America, there is a lack of desire by these companies to pay the wages and benefits required to hire them.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
Why do you think the service industry went to India in the last decade. Sure its cheaper, but companies couldn't important enough talent. So they went to where the talent was and was cheaper: India & China.
I remember 5 years ago someone did study and equated that each H1B visa resulted in anywhere from 2.5-3 new jobs in the US. Also the US has the lowest average age among industrialized, first world nations. Its because we have a robust immigration policy.
If you cannot get a job, become more competitive. Don't complain and be a negative nancy and hold back the rest of the country.
other govermnets have more trades based education as well.
IT should not need 4+ year degree with skill gaps it needs more tech and trades schools.
It's simple really. Those states are not very hip and they have a hard time to retain American telent. The talent is there but the company would most likely have to relocate..to a blue state. The solution...H-1B.
Want to get real about this and show this isn't just the same old story of employers refusing to pay living wages to Americans and paying a pittance to people who come over her on H1B?
Tie the cap to wages and benefits that are being earned for each given field. If there is truly a shortage of 'database administrators' than the average pay of 'database administrators' will have risen as the market worked it's magic. For every 10% they want to raise the H1B visa rate they need show that the market has raised the average pay of a certain job by 10%.
Let the market do it's work, quite outsourcing the kinds of jobs that government is in every other scenario /desperate/ to create and let those who want to come here come here.
One more thing, if the best an brightest want to become true immigrants and not simply take our jobs we should encourage that. Make a fast track to citizenship that is tied with the H1B. Allow someone on H1B to fastrack the citizenship process and then terminate the visa of anyone that doesn't earn their citizenship within that given amount of time. Now instead of having 'foreigners' taking jobs, we have the best and brightest becoming Americans and having a personal vested interest that they otherwise would never have.
... provide skilled workers a pathway to citizenship instead. And while we're at it, let's increase the efficiency of our immigration system. I call that "leveling the playing field".
I work for a fortune 500 company. 65% of my department's IT force is contract labor, mostly from India. Our full-time programmers do very little actual programming. This is not a question of lacking talent, it's a question of how our budgetary expenses are divided and shared in this huge company. We are a resource, regardless of our citizen status, but as citizens we do not have a competitive advantage because the bottom line is, well, the bottom line.
Consider:
NONE of these things are limits.... and all are dishonest by design; The politicians put in a limit (so they can tell some of the voters there is a responsible limitation) but then they violate the limit (so they can deliver something some other block of voters wants). This is no accident. It's planned and it's cynical and it will keep happening as long as the majority of the voters tolerate it. The politicians think the public are to stupid to figure it out and at least for far... they are.
"We're a nation of immigrants" ???
Isn't every country in the world? Except maybe Ethiopia?
Does anyone in Congress know what i squared is?
And those are in India... Here the H1-b workers come from. They don't have to pad half their education with expensive non-core classes to make the Colleges feel happy.
Well of course. There is a huge lack of American workers who have 10 years of Windows 8 experience, for instance. I'd use visa workers too.
H1B drives foreign student enrollment in STEM in American Universities. In mid-tier schools like SUNY Buffalo most of the professors, graduate students in Computer science are foreign. You can spot an occasional American, but the graduate/research programs are more or less sustained by foreigners. Take away H1B and the students & some of the professors will be gone, the money (either from the foreigners or from the NSF) will dry up and the whole program will just collapse. I don't see how that can be good.
The Princetons & Harvards may not face the problem, but a lot of non-ivy league schools will. H1B sustains an entire academic ecosystem in the U.S. Any reform of the program should consider this aspect for there are entrenched interests in sustaining the status quo.
Tell them to shove this bill. Even though the actual representative won't answer the phone, a clerk likely will, and will tally your concern. It doesn't always work, but it does often enough.
Table-ized A.I.
I preferred it when the Democrats and Republicans in congress were too busy fighting with each other to fuck with my income.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Anything this guy touches I automatically reject. 300,000? What kind of cap is 300,000? Who is old Hatch working for today? Usually its Disney, or the RIAA/MPAA, but I guess whoever gives him ca$h.
Its not really debateable that if you allow historically lower-paid individuals to enter a higher-salaried job market, the average salary will fall. One would expect it to reach a middle ground somewhere.
But Im not understanding why we should prevent that scenario, so that we might make more money and they less, simply by merit of where everyone happened to be born.
I think it's more to do with where the businesses are started and run. Information Technology businesses tend to start and thrive in the US due to the regulatory environment. The US has a better environment for these businesses to be started and run than other countries, and so they are started and run in the US.
Regulations in this sense include enforcing all laws without favoritism, and government offices being responsive and egalitarian, again without favoritism.
In terms of difficulty of starting any kind of business, it's easier in the US than in almost any other place in the world, save 3. The US ranks #4 in the world out of 185 countries, and, for example, India is down at #133; that means that India is in the bottom 30% of countries A lot of this has to do with graft and corruption in business processes there -- which is why Russia, a fairly modern country with demonstrable software talent, is down at #112. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_doing_business_index
The jobs are in the US because the businesses are in the US.
I think it is therefore less where you are born, than locations where people are willing to keep their government under control, rather than allowing their government to control them.
One of the arguments against granting H1B visas for economic reasons, rather than true lack of locally qualified workers is the general feeling that the economic refugees from poor business climates should perhaps be home making their local business climate better.
So this is insourcing? I guess that's a good way to drive everyone's wages down locally without the security, export restrictions, and tax problems of outsourcing.
One wonders if it was "terminal" or just "terminal on the medical plan I have and what I can afford"
This sounds like a good thing to me.
If you have an H1B holder convert to a GC holder/Citizen, then you're (generally) adding a productive citizen who is familiar with the laws/environment and has useful work experience.
Sounds a lot better than letting somebody in on a resident permit only to find that their skills/experience are only useful in allowing them to work as a cab driver or in a fast-food joint. This seems to happen a lot in Canada as in the big cities a log of places prefer immigrants (more power, easier to control, less knowledge of labor laws), illegals (work under the table for less), etc, and those skill jobs that do hire at market rate prefer locals (more local knowledge of culture, better english, etc). You end up with people coming in as "skilled workers" but then not being able to find a job that makes use of said skills, or at least not for several years.
If only Americans would stay in their own country too..
I firmly believe that a good portion of the H1-B positions in this country are fillable by people too skilled, too experienced or - virtually the same thing, too expensive. If we actually need someone with a skill from another country, we're going to bring them over here, give them on-the-job-training and experience, then give them a green card, let them become citizens and stay here as part of the American work force. The "I can't find anyone here to do the job" requirement is a joke. No one in required to prove anything of the sort. Work in Engineering for 30 years and then try to find a new job. ER hiring standards are not based on anything even close to factual evidence. It is pure prejudice.
I came to this country as an immigrant on an H1B. Now have a Green Card... so I have a bit of personal knowledge.
While a small minority of people have skills that may not be available in the country (scientists, doctors, engineers) , it is MASSIVELY abused by companies to recruit low wage IT workers. I have no doubt in my mind. Most of these H1Bs do not have any special skill... that a citizen cannot learn on their own... given training by their employers... or hard work on their own.
I myself had a masters degree in computer science, but I was horrified at how some of my fellow countrymen I met here ... as they seemed .... .... insufficiently educated / skilled. A lot of them can barely speak english or write coherently. It was shocking to me, coz most of my classmates in my masters program were so much better that I have wondered where they get these people. I feel there must be some kinda of criteria before handing someone an H1B. .. like a standardized test or something. Perhaps there should be a different category for IT workers. And these should be rare - say 25,000 per year. No more.
I feel the solution to the immigration problem is as follows: .. provided they get a minimum GPA.
Any foreign student who completes their Masters in science, math, engineering etc should be given a green card along with their degrees
Any foreign student who successfully completes their PhD should be given a green card along with their degrees if they want it.
Any foreign worker in the IT should provide a certificate proving they have an engineering degree or a masters degree in Math, science or computer science before they are given an H1B.
Once they get an H1B and work here for 2+ years, they should be free to start their application for green card on their own (independent of their employers if they chose to). At the end of 5 years, if they have worked consistently and have shown they are productive members of the society and can contribute the american society, should be able to get a green card.
Any foreign student who successfully completes their MBA should be given an H1B automatically with their degrees with the expectation that if they accrue 5+ year of experience here in the USA, they would get a green card if they can show they are productive members of the society and can contribute the american society .
Once immigrants become citizens, only their wife and children should be able to get on come over. Their parents, siblings, in-laws etc should NOT be able to use their newly minted citizenship to transfer a truck load of non-productive siblings, in-laws etc. Their parents / in-laws could be allowed a green card after the original recipient completes 10 years of citizenship. Till that time, the parents should be able to visit on visitor visa as anybody else. But the parents should not be able to bring over additional children (who may or may not be deadbeats in their own country) using this new citizenship.
my 2 cents
anon
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm "With most of the rank and file employees replaced by robots and eliminated from the payroll, all of the money flowing into a large corporation has only one place to go -- upward toward the executives and shareholders. The concentration of wealth will be dramatic when robots arrive."
Some solutions I've cataloged: http://www.pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html
The most obvious is a "basic income" like they have some of in Alaska with the Alaskan Permanet Fund: http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund
It's kind of surprising how much politicians think they can get away with now in the USA. There is still massive unemployment and they think they can push through legislation like this. Why not instead, say, just mandate that all US companies be willing to pay for two months of employee training a year, to level the economic playing field and promote the growth of the US workforce? And also mandate vacation time as well? ... Germany's workers have higher productivity, shorter hours and greater quality of life. How did we get it so wrong?"
http://www.salon.com/2010/08/25/german_usa_working_life_ext2010/
""Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?": America's misguided culture of overwork
Personally though, I'm all for throwing open the borders. The issue is making H1Bs second-class citizens. If you want to import workers, make them citizens when they step off the boat. And give everyone a basic income. It's an experiment, but its hard to imagine doing much worse than what we have.
What ever happend to "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"? Why not ake the USA into the "Australia Project" Marshall Brain wrote about in Manna?
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
It used to be decades ago that when a US company really needed people without making a commitment to training, they would hire US citizen contractors earnign about 2X to 3X the prevailing wage (beyond overhead). The tradeoff was you had less job security as a contractor, got no training which meant skills could go obsolete, and had little time for chit chat. So, contractors are really what H1Bs have replaced more than employees.
Another casualty has been the older employee, who was previously either employed at higher wages or became the contractor, rather than in general a pervasive age discrimination that has emerged in the IT field (and hiring of young H1Bs is a generally ignored part of that). Related:
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/12/03/1435217/half-life-of-a-tech-worker-15-years
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/11/18/142222/its-hard-for-techies-over-40-to-stay-relevant-says-sap-lab-director
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/11/28/017239/silicon-valleys-dirty-little-secret-age-bias
As Cringely points out:
http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/10/26/1837214/cringley-h-1b-visa-abuse-limits-wages-and-steals-us-jobs
"It's not hard to suppose from this information that an influx of H-1B workers representing an average 20 percent of the local technical work force (those 500,000 H-1Bs against a 2.5 million body labor pool) would push down local wages. There's plenty of anecdotal evidence that it does, too, but most of the more rigorous academic studies don't show this because there is no easily available data."
At the upper limit, at 300,000 H1Bs a year, in seven years the US IT workforce would be entirely foreign with 2.1 million more H1Bs plus 500,000 already. So much for national security. If we do need that many technical immigrants in the USA, at least make them citizens when they arrive so it is more fair for everyone. And then the USA can still tax them when they move out of the country like the US government would if my family moved abroad to lower our living expenses. :-)
As a consequence of H1Bs (and some other trends to be fair, including stuff H. Ross Perot and EDS lobbied for to make it harder to be an independent contractor, and also the rise in people calling themselves programmers), the contractor market in most IT has nosedived over the past two decades. Driving down regular wages and working conditions is just an extra bonus for companies, given now they can get contractors for employee rates and not have to train them or make any commitments to them (including working conditions like office space, assistants, vacation, personal time, and so on). As a domino effect, things have gotten worse for regular professional employees. Just watch some old movies of office life like "Desk Set" to see what many larger corporations used to be like as far as professional employees having more personal and social space at work -- while still leaving their job at the office at 5pm. Some few companies are somewhat exceptions these days, like Google or SAS, but not many. Still, there are other trends as well, so H1Bs can't be blamed for all of that -- they are just part of it. So, while it used to be that being a contractor meant you got paid much better; now the employee position tends to be better compensated overall. Some of that history used to be in comments on Janet Ruhl's "Real Rates" site archive as one place where I watched it all slowly play out over the last two decades, but unfortunately the site had technical problems and most posts disappeared:
htt
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I think it is Oligarchy.
I believe work visa and outsourced projects must be pegged to Human rights/Caste system in CHINDIA.
http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-show/slide-show-1-tech-apple-workers-forced-to-sign-no-suicide-pledge/20110504.htm
http://news.rediff.com/report/2009/sep/29/un-says-indias-Caste-system-a-human-rights-abuse.htm
Otherwise it's "rich getting rich"
http://www.businessinsider.com/profits-versus-wages
Casteism
I could never understand how its even constitutional to create a second class of indentured workers with limited civil rights. I can see how big companies love to have workers who will do anything just to stay emplyed in the hopes of getting a green card.
If we need people, we should be granting citizenship. No slaves. Plus it will be hilarious when the new citizens start asking for a better salary too.
Go to OpenSecrets.org, find each candidate, select 2012, select the industry tab, then the "Campaign Cmte & Leadership PAC Combined" option. Note the combined Computers/Internet amounts.
Orrin Hatch
$290,200
Amy Klobuchar
$148,879
Marco Rubio
$129,157
Chris Coons
$67,950
They are all whores, doing the bidding of their masters. But it should be no surprise to readers of Slashdot, that if Orrin Hatch likes it -- you probably won't.
If tech workers would quit thinking they are all above average and form a union you can bet your ass the wages would rise and working conditions rise.
A better option is to work with and, if necessary, become management. You form a union when you have no realistic opportunity for employment elsewhere and conditions are truly unfair and a danger to your well being. While there are companies out there that treat their IT employees badly, there is plenty of data that indicates jobs in IT are plentiful and mostly they are treated pretty well. My sister actually works for an IT staffing firm and they have no lack of job opportunities available. There are times when forming a union is appropriate behavior (some companies really are kind of evil) but that is very much the exception in IT. I have never seen a situation in IT where a union would have improved the prospects of the company or the people who worked there in the long run.
Imagine if your IT department went on strike. Try hiring a bunch of scabs that could quickly come up to speed on the existing architecture without the assistance of incumbent staff.
I have an IT department. If my IT department went on strike I would see to it that they would no longer be employed at my company as soon as it could be managed. Why? Iif they have a grievance I expect them to talk to me first about it. If it is a reasonable request and I can do something about it I will. If I cannot accommodate their request there is probably a good reason and going on strike will not change that reason. Most IT workers are paid well, work reasonable if sometimes demanding hours, and have a decent working environment. I invite any IT worker who thinks his work environment is terrible to work in a steel mill or in a coal mine for a week. Forming a union basically is an admission by employees (and indirectly by management) that they are not willing or able to communicate and negotiate in good faith.
Oh come on! You're wearing a blindfold man!
I assure you I am not. I run a manufacturing company and about 10% of my work force at any given time has green cards or work visas. Professionally I am a degreed engineer and also a certified accountant.
Corporations are NOT hiring the "best talent they can get" unless you expand the phrase with "for jr level wages"
You aren't quite there. The full phrasing would be "the best talent they can get given the financial situation of the company". In case you had forgotten the point of a corporation is to make money, not to produce the prettiest code. Competitive forces necessarily mean that companies will attempt to get the necessary work done for the least cost.
The skill level needed to accomplish a task has to be balanced against the financial constraints and often the highest quality of work possible costs more than the quality of work that is necessary. In IT work the largest cost typically is labor. You can reduce labor costs by reducing headcount or by hiring individuals willing to work for lower wages. If local workers are unwilling or unable to work for competitive wages then either companies have to relocate where the talent is (offshoring) or bring in talent from abroad (consultants or foreign workers on visas). Either way, workers are potentially in competition with a wider labor pool than those who happened to be born within the boundaries of the USA.
So does this really fit in with your charactorization about corps just trying to hire the best darn talent they can, and gosh darn it those dumb Americans just cant meet our needs!
I don't think Americans are dumb at all. Quite the opposite in fact. However I've been to China and they have 4X the people we do in the US. Think there might be a few smart ones over there? Think they might usefully contribute to the US economy if we can persuade them to work here? If you want people who aren't just "junior level" talent, you have to look for that talent wherever it might be and sometimes the best people for a particular position are not people who happened to be born in the USA.
Let me put this issue into some sort of perspective. The number of H1B visas issued is around 120,000 annually. The size of the US labor force is roughly 150 million people. That means the number of H1B visas amounts to less than 0.1% (one tenth of one percent) of the overall workforce. Even acknowledging the fact that H1B visa holders work disproportionately in IT this furor over H1B visas is incredibly overblown. Even tripling the number of H1B visas would have a most a modest effect on wages and employment of US workers. The risk to IT workers to wage competition with foreign talent is not at all mitigated by reducing the number of H1B visas. All that does is force companies to send the work elsewhere to be done at the lowest cost.
Who decides if it is a reasonable request?
What if you can negotiate a lower fee for the company to move to a different but less well managed 401k program, I know my company moved, if we had a union stuff like that would negotiated. Company got bought, several guys in IT lost benefits, again a union might have been beneficial. The company posted record profits right before the buyout so the loss of benefits wasn't due to the economy, oh wait it was because jobs were scarce elsewhere.
Forming a union is not an admission of the workers not being willing to communicate but a relization that without a union management has all the power and has been abusing it. It usually takes several decades of abuse before workers wise up to form union.
Who decides if it is a reasonable request?
Ultimately management does, whether or not a union exists. That's not to imply that management is always right (they demonstrably aren't) but any action ultimately needs management to approve it.
What if you can negotiate a lower fee for the company to move to a different but less well managed 401k program, I know my company moved, if we had a union stuff like that would negotiated.
A union is not needed to negotiate that sort of thing. Merely sufficiently interested and motivated employees who are willing to walk away if it is sufficiently important to them. You (probably) don't actually need to form a union, merely talk among yourselves and then go talk with management regarding what you want. The only real thing a union can do is to go on strike which is basically a threat to the existence of the company. The problem had better be rather severe for that to be a reasonable step. (sometimes a strike is an unfortunately necessary action) A union is pretty much regarded as something close to a suicide bomber by management. Unions threaten to take the company down unless management gives in to their demands. While I won't argue its effectiveness, negotiation through ultimatums is not a tactic that will win hearts and minds.
Bear in mind that when you request the company to pay additional costs on your behalf you are asking the owners of the company to take money out of their pocket and put it in yours. It's ok to do that but put yourself in their shoes for a second and consider your request. Is this something they can afford? What is the full cost to the company and its owners? Does this hurt the company's competitive position? How important is this request really? etc. If the workers really are getting an unfair deal then it is time to negotiate. Bear in mind that unless you have a BATNA, you can live with then you are not in a strong negotiating position.
Forming a union is not an admission of the workers not being willing to communicate but a relization that without a union management has all the power and has been abusing it.
Re-read what I wrote. I said "willing or able". Often workers are willing to communicate but are ineffective in doing so. (the reverse is true as well, often management is seriously lacking in communication ability) I've worked with many unions and quite a few are unwilling to negotiate in good faith with management. I've seen union contracts where someone can show up for work drunk multiple time before they can be terminated. Many unions make it virtually impossible to get rid of genuinely bad employees - see this flowchart for the steps required to terminate a bad teacher in New York. Unions tend to quickly change from protecting worker rights to extortion rackets. (nice company you have there - shame to see anything bad happen to it...) Management almost never has "all the power" because most employment is at-will. You can leave anytime you want for any reason or even no reason at all. And frankly if working conditions really are so bad that a union seems like a genuinely good idea, do you really want to stay there any longer than you have to?