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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
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?
Talent has nothing to do with it. I can get dozens of jobs at any moment but not one that pays over 50K because a foreign worker will do the same job for 30K. I made 70K when I was 23 (2003) 75-80K when I was 25- 27 doing the same job with less experience.
"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.
The 10 largest users of H1B are off-shoring contract-houses. Last year, those 10 off-shoring companies claimed 40,000 of the 85,000 available H1B visas.
The way it works is that they low-bid on some project, bring in their people on H1B get them trained up and then send them back home to work on the same project.
Citation: Who's Hiring H-1B Visa Workers? It's Not Who You Might Think
All the PR about H1B says that we have a skills-shortage here, but if that is true, then H1B is contributing to the skills shortage rather than fixing it. Most of what is wrong with H1B could be fixed if the politicians actions matched their rhetoric - instead of being an unofficial dual-purpose immigration visa that typically expires just months before the immigrant clears all the paperwork for an green-card, make it a fast-track immigrant only visa - everybody on an H1B is guaranteed a green-card within just one year of residency. That way instead of being a brain-drain out of the US, we would be sucking in the (supposedly) higher-qualified foreign candidates to become permanent contributing members of US society.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
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.
If there's a shortage of H-1B visas (meaning there are times you can't obtain one no matter how much you're willing to pay), they should be put up for auction and sold to the highest bidder so everyone who wants one badly enough can get one. It's irresponsible of the government not to look for ways to reduce our tax burden.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
From experience, I can say there has been a big change from 2004 to 2012.
In 2004, my company got masters degree candidates for bachelors degree salaries.
In 2008, my company got bachelor degree candidates for bachelors degree salaries.
In 2011, we were getting disengaged bachelor degree candidates. They basically counted on working for us for 6 months and then being rotated elsewhere. This had the expected and predictable effects.
In 2012, they laid 90% of us off and replaced us with infosys people. They unexpectedly lost another 5%. Infosys was unable staff so we had the weird situation of not even training our replacements but recording training sessions. I went to lunch with a few of the survivors last week and it's a complete mess.
Funny thing is- apparently these workers count as still being indian employees of infosys. They are working some fantastic hours, don't have the skill set and are trying hard to acquire it, but they are not getting paid U.S. salaries even they they are located in the U.S. - just good pay by Indian standards. Apparently they'll be rotated back to india and another similar crew will be brought in. I don't know- perhaps it's that 6 month thing overseas like we do with Aramco. I hear they are living 6+ to an apartment.
So we are competing in our own country for jobs with people being paid in the $35000 to $50000 range when those jobs cost $100k locally and require degrees that are a lot more expensive to obtain here than in india.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
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.
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.
My mother tells me that I am sooo handsome, intelligent, and just wonderful. She asks, "Why are you still single at 47?!"
I tell her, "Mom. There just isn't any adequate women for me!"
She says," You're 5'7", 200 lbs, with enough hair on your head. What's the issue!"
I say,"Mom. There isn't any 5' 10" blond haired, 25 year old, MDs with PhD in Particle Physics, with big tits, who love giving blow jobs on the first date, and great legs out there! Women are so pathetic these days!!"
My mother agrees with me!
I'm also an IT hiring manager BTW.