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H-1B Cap Reached Today; Didn't Get In? Too Bad
First time accepted submitter Dawn Kawamoto writes "Employers stampeding into the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service to get their H-1B petitions filed before the cap is reached are getting the door slammed in their face today. The cap was hit in near record time of 5 days, compared to the 10 weeks it took last year to have more than enough petitions to fulfill the combined cap of 85,000 statutory and advanced degree H-1B petitions. While U.S. tech workers scream that they're losing out on jobs as H-1B workers are hired, employers are countering that the talent pool is lacking and they need to increase the cap. Of course, Congress is wrangling in on this one as to whether it's time to raise the bar."
talent pool is lacking = we don't want to pay
> While U.S. tech workers scream that they're losing out on jobs as H-1B workers are hired
No *competent* tech worker is screaming that. Seriously. If you are in tech and unemployed right now, it is nobody's fault but your own; everyone is hiring like a madman right now.
If you scroll through the government's visa data, you notice something surprising. The biggest employer of foreign tech workers is not Microsoft â" not by a long shot. Nor is it Google, Facebook or any other name-brand tech company. The biggest users of H-1Bs are consulting companies, or as Ron Hira calls them, "offshore-outsourcing firms."
For the past decade, he's been studying how consulting firms use temporary work visas to help American companies cut costs. He says they use the visas to supply cheaper workers here, but also to smooth the transfer of American jobs to information-technology centers overseas. "What these firms have done is exploit the loopholes in the H-1B program to bring in on-site workers to learn the jobs [of] the Americans to then ship it back offshore," he says. "And also to bring in on-site workers who are cheaper on the H-1B and undercut American workers right here."
The biggest user of H-1B last year was Cognizant, a firm based in New Jersey. The company got 9,000 new visas. Following close behind were Infosys, Wipro and Tata â'â' all Indian firms.
Have you read my blog lately?
"In nearly every other case a foreign coder is a better match for the employer."
In nearly every other case a foreign coder is a better match for the cheap ass that wants to give himself a bonus for having higher profit margins because he paid less wages.
There fixed that for you.
Bullshit, what US employers want are an exploitable workforce that will work for cheap. This shit extends to other industries as well (mining in Canada, for example.) And these assholes that come from overseas are all-too-willing to go along with it too, fucking us all over in the process.
And then there are assholes like YOU who fucking support these cocksuckers in their mission to enslave working people.
Sincerely,
Fuck your mother
Die of cancer
Rot in hell!
(asshole)
Jobs report today said no jobs being created.
Yet we are hiring many h1b's.
Meanwhile, many of our 30 year olds are suicidal over a combination of unforgivable debt and no jobs.
Quite a disconnect.
I think it's time to put a tariff on offshored/outsourced jobs- including h1b's.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
With the nice handicap of a higher cost of living.
Is it? I see Indian companies setting up shop in the US and importing people with the primary goal of exporting knowledge and jobs from the country. It's the same bloodbath that manufacturing has seen engaged in by greedy executives as they export manufacturing jobs to China.
Ah yes, because expecting to be paid a living wage in your nation of residence is an insidious ideal.
Precisely why corporations like to offshore jobs. They get to take advantage of a wage gradient that individuals don't.
He cannot win. So long as India and China can keep the cost of labor down and increase their knowledge pool, much like US manufacturing, US tech jobs will be exported as well and US workers will have no recourse. Except, of course, to accept pay as low as received in India and China but without the lower cost of living. Which is what employers want. To keep income high and impoverish their workers - without realizing that they are shooting themselves in the head by destroying their market.
Perhaps we should end the bullshit that is "free trade" and start some creeping tariffs. Exporting jobs should be met with a nice, stiff tax.
Just scrolling through the +5 comments, I see a ton of xenophobia...
Can't find an entry level IT job? Where are you? Arkansas? Here in silicon valley, we're experiencing another surge in hiring. I'm pretty low on the skillset, so whenever I get myself back into IT, I consider the economy to be doing well. Case in point... Company I work for. We've been losing a ton of local talent to google who's been on a hiring binge. When a small shop like ours (120 or so employees) can afford to pay great salaries, but we lose out to name brands like google, we have to turn to H1B.
And for the H1B worker, life isn't all cherries and apple pie. Case in point, this big ass march from immigration voice.
http://imgur.com/YKxR6NG
See the white guy with pelican case in tow? That's me.
Let's say you're here from India on H1B and you have a family emergency. You have to go home. So many H1B's are scared to go home, because when they try to return more often than not, they're denied re-entry into the country. I haven't met a single H1B that wouldn't LOVE to be a US citizen, but instead we give them a non-citizen status as an H1B that gives them basically no rights as a US citizen.
I think we should just trash H1B altogether, and allow anyone of decent education (BA or BS) come live here, become a citizen, and pay taxes.
As slashdotters, we shouldn't hate on the H1B people. They are not the problem. It's our policy, the very creation of H1B to sidestep proper citizenship that is.
Maybe it's time to clarify what kind of a site Slashdot is? It claims to be "News for Nerds" but there are a lot of nerds who have H-1B visas, or live outside the US.
This article's title is just plain nasty. There is room for debate on these issues, and I personally think the numbers of H-1B visas are excessive (or better put, the requirements for getting one are too lenient), but the idea that people applying for H-1B's are to be despised is very offputting to potential users of this site. Unless, of course, Slashdot isn't really for these people in which case you should be more explicit about that.
On the issue of H-1B's themselves, it is necessary to separate out generic issues of free trade, from issues that are specific to trade in human labor. Any valuable commidity will benefit country that imports it. If there were a ban on importing rare earth metals to the US, and suddently this was lifted, it would benefit companies that utilize these metals (and ultimately consumers) and harm producers of rare earth metals. However the net benefit would be positive, this is standard economic theory. Now I imagine that when the ban is lifted, the rare earth producers would say "there is no shortage of rare earth metals, people just aren't willing to pay a fair price. If people paid more, we could mine previously uneconomic deposits, etc.". This would be a mistaken interpretation, again because economic theory says that the welfare of society is maximized under free trade.
Now this theory breaks down when it applies to people, but only because of externalities. That is, people who come to the US on H-1B visas may have a negative influence on the US apart from their impact on the labor force. Some of these are simply because a person in the US temporarily will be less engaged with the community and civil society. Also many Americans prefer that the US retain its cultural and ethinc composition, and so these people may be negatively affected.
So there are many valid arguments against H-1B visas, although most of the economic arguments are wrong. I think the criteria should be stricter so that only the people who add the most value to the economy can get one. This way, the US would get the maximum benefit for the minimum number of people. A masters degree should be a minimum.
Anyway that is my view on H-1B visas but can we please keep personal animosity towards people on H-1B's out of it?
If the shortage is so terrible why aren't we seeing tons of stories talking about exploding pay rates and people hopping from company to company because of ridiculous job offers? Oh that's right, it's because there is no shortage of talent, just an unwillingness for them to pay the market rate.
One of the issues that always comes up when talking about H-1B is that employers say they can't satisfy their needs with the talent already available. So, how about adding the requirement that any H-1B applications require the company post a "Help Wanted" ad in a national database for three months before the application is approved. Let's see why companies don't like citizen talent. Let's see how citizens can fill those jobs.
A requirement similar to this already exists. It is quire trivial to work around. All it takes is to write a list of requirements that exactly much the foreign person you want to hire (or retain) and virtually no one else in the world. Then you place the ad wherever it is least likely to be seen. A mid-week newspaper classified will do. For extra insurance, the only contact method should be a PO BOX.
Yep. The real problem is that there is a lot of people who aren't nearly as qualified as they think. They've got a few flavor-of-the-month certifications, a couple of dead end entry level jobs on their resume... and they think they're God's own gift to IT and rate senior salaries. They don't seem to realize the dot bomb detonated over a decade ago now, employers aren't lining up to desperately grab anyone with a pulse and a barely passing grade on their Introduction to HTML course anymore.