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UC Davis Study Concludes H-1B Workers Neither Best Nor Brightest
CowboyRobot writes "American companies are demanding more H-1B visas to ensure access to the best and brightest workforce, and outside the U.S. are similar claims of an IT worker shortage. Last month, European Commission VP Neelie Kroes bemoaned the growing digital skills gap that threatens European competitiveness. But a new study finds that imported IT talent is often less talented than U.S. workers. Critics of the H-1B program see it as a way for companies to keep IT wages low, to discriminate against experienced U.S. workers, and to avoid labor law obligations. In his examination of the presumed correlation between talent and salary, researcher Norman Matloff observes that Microsoft has been exaggerating how much it pays foreign workers. Citing past claims by the company that it pays foreign workers '$100,000 a year to start,' Matloff says the data shows that only 18% of workers with software engineering titles sponsored for green cards by Microsoft between 2006 and 2011 had salaries at or above $100,000."
What else is new?
So when nerd inventions blast away other people's jobs, most of the people around here start screaming about buggy whip manufacturers and the need for a rapidly adjusting workforce. When US companies go outside the priesthood and get overseas IT people because the locals don't meet their needs, then suddenly protectionism is awesome. The rest of the country has zero sympathy here. Nerds have constantly pushed technology that has cost people jobs. From replacing checkout operators, to devastating travel agencies, to Google self driving cars getting rid of taxis to "disrupting education" so you can fire a lot of university staff. When a nerd looks at someone with a job who isn't in IT, all they seem to be thinking is "how can I automate it so that this sack of meat is no longer in the equation"
You increase supply, and demand price drops. Train them up, after 5 years they have to leave (H1B is time limited), so they return home, rehire in their home country at a discount, (well after all living costs are cheaper). Then you've cut your costs.
What's good for American business is good for America, well the business part of it anyway.
Just think, if demand was high, Americans would be trying to get good University degrees and filling those jobs. Instead, USA has become a net importer of IT goods and services.
First thing - the Economic Policy Institute is clearly a political think tank rather than a pure research institution. Biased.
I was wondering how would you evaluate the skill of IT workers on a large scale so I looked at the actual article. These are their metrics:
- salary
- rate of patent production
- Ph.D. dissertation awards
- alma mater university rank
- employment in R&D
The data then comes from surveys.
I call BS on this study!
Moreover, once a crop of H1Bs have done their 5 years, gained their experience, and returned to their home country, they become a pool of trained employees who can be hired to work from their home country at wages that are suitable to that country and substantially cheaper than those paid to an American employee - even a new hire in all likelihood. Thus the pool of overseas low-cost employees builds while the number of positions that *have to go* to US Citizens decreases. The former H1Bs are familiar with the working environment and business routines of the US companies after 5 years as well, and so potentially need less training in that regard. This will likely continue to spiral until the majority of US IT jobs are actually being done outside the country wherever possible. I am Canadian, and the same applies here of course after its own fashion. Not all jobs can disappear this way of course but anything that can be done over the internet can - and thats an increasing number of jobs.
When the technology for remote controlled robots being developed in the military spills over to civilian life more completely, you may even see those jobs that require a physical presence here in North America, disappear as well. Right now someone has to physically carry a new system or printer from the loading doc to the office to install it, but when that can be done cheaper by someone operating a robot in Bangladesh, even that might be gone.
Time to learn how to repair robots perhaps (although eventually it will be cheaper to just unpack a new one from China than it is to repair a broken one).
What is in the interest of Big Business, is manifestly NOT in the interest of their employees a lot of the time.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Now that thousands of DOD/NASA/NOAA/FAA/ect technical contractors are going to be looking for work.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Yes, but a U.S. citizen does not risk being deported and if they believe that all companies are screwing them they can attempt to start their own business. An H1B visa holder must find a job with a company that can sponsor their visa in order to stay in the country and they must do so within a time frame that is well-known to all such potential employers. If you are a U.S. citizen it is unlikely that your potential employer knows how much longer you can afford to be unemployed and thus has less negotiating leverage than they do with someone with an H1B visa.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Yes, but a U.S. citizen does not risk being deported and if they believe that all companies are screwing them they can attempt to start their own business. An H1B visa holder must find a job with a company that can sponsor their visa in order to stay in the country and they must do so within a time frame that is well-known to all such potential employers. If you are a U.S. citizen it is unlikely that your potential employer knows how much longer you can afford to be unemployed and thus has less negotiating leverage than they do with someone with an H1B visa.
This is why the companies are able to screw two people at once. They screw the H1B by paying them less than they could make elsewhere, knowing that the H1B has no choice AND they screw the local employee who would have had gotten that job if they hadn't hired an H1B instead.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
There's some disturbing news trickling around the employment process market that you have better chance to get a new job *if you already have one*. If you quit, you risk screwing yourself because then if you don't land one you often don't get unemployment benefits either, and then if your resume goes stale then you're shunned. Scary.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Practically all US tech companies are hiring as many visa workers as they possibly can. Keeps the remaining American workers in line.
IMO: it's way past time for US tech workers to organize, and stand up for themselves. If not a union, then a worthwhile professional organization, like the AMA.
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I'm already organized, and standing up for myself.
Oh, you mean give over my personal sovereignty to leftist union thugs, giving me another faction to struggle against to try to retain my earnings. No thanks.
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You're living in the past.
Today, if you want to start a business, you have to get multiple licenses and permits, make all kinds of protection payments to the local government thugs, beg for zoning "variances".
Merely conceiving of, designing and developing a great software product is the least of your problems... unless it's a new scheme to help the government thugs violate more people's privacy; then the skids are well-greased.
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The San Diego/Los Angeles area business/financial reporters used to talk a lot about Qualcomm, BAE, BEA, SAIC, special effects houses, and the biotechs along Mira Mesa and Sorrento Valley. Digital Domain and Rhythm & Hues are dead.
None of them will deign to interview a US citizen STEM worker. We have US citizen Mensa members with multiple graduate degrees right there within a block or so, who can't get the time of day from STEM recruiters. Some have been mostly or totally unemployed for the last decade. The fortunate ones get survival gigs from time to time, teaching the cheap, young, pliant guest-workers with flexible ethics how to program.
The guest-workers have not only "put a dent in the demand" for US STEM talent but have totally undermined it.
We have over 1.8 million US STEM professionals who are either unemployed or involuntarily out of STEM. Employment of production workers in app development (what BLS calls "software publishing") has been flat at a mere 220K for the last decade. Employers no longer fly US candidates in for interviews (though before H-1B they used to do so). Employers no longer offer to relocate US STEM talent (though before H-1B they did). Employers invest much less in new-hire and retained employee training (which used to run 2-12 weeks for new hires and 2-4 weeks for retained employees).
Since 1970, based on US Dept. of Education and NSF statistics, we've added about 12 million US citizen STEM workers to the talent pool.
All we get from reporters is, "Well, I talked with a couple executives with a vested interest in cheap, pliant labor and he said he just couldn't find *anyone* with degrees in math and physics and mechanical engineering and computer science and graphic arts and PR and at least 5 years but no more than 10 years of professional experience in each within a few surrounding blocks who was willing to work for $20-$30/hour on a temporary/contingent basis. And they tried soooo hard. Why they put 2 ads in the BackCreek WV Gazette and the Boondocks Diner, once a month for 6 months and got no 'qualified' applicants, so there must be a terrrrribbbbble talent shortage."
There is plenty of evidence of an on-going STEM talent glut. No evidence of STEM talent shortage has ever been presented. Ever. Not in the 1980s. Not in the 1990s. Not since 2000.