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U.S. Senate's Big Immigration Bill Seeks Centralized Database For H-1B Jobs
dcblogs writes "The U.S. Senate comprehensive immigration bill, due Tuesday, will allow the H-1B cap to rise from 65,000 to as high as 180,000. The bill, overall, contains some interesting provisions. It will require the U.S. Labor Dept. to create a website of H-1B job openings that employers must post to. The jobs must be posted least 30 calendar days before hiring an H-1B applicant to fill that position. The bill also raises wages for H-1B workers to make them more competitive, although the amount wasn't specified. One provision that will affect India, in particular, limits H-1B visa use to 50% of a firm's U.S. workforce. The provision may prompt India firms to buy U.S. companies to expand their U.S. presence."
I've been in IT for 15 years and never have I seen a more anti-American approach to hiring than the H-1B visa debacle. I've seen firms literally taken over by foreigners and every American basically leave because it became uncomfortable to work there.
The law should be hire Americans first. If no one in the city or state can be found, create a jobs database like the one proposed and people in other states can apply. Once the company has shown they cannot find a qualified applicant in CONUS, Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, and all American islands, then, and only then will they be allowed to look elsewhere. If a qualified applicant is found, they must be hired.
Disagree all you wish. We have gave the farm away. All of these people come over here, work for American companies, go home, start companies, and then compete with American companies. It happens all the time.
The US needs to regain complete control of the IT sector and maintain it. Coming to work here should be by lottery with, say, only, 10,000 a year allowed. Maximum stay 3 years with caveats.
Instead of whining in a slashdot post go email, call, tweet, or whatever to your senator! The link I provided is all 100 of them.
If your senator is a democrat tell them how much wages have not went up and how job ads actually state "H1B1 rates in salary and how employers are abusing the system as it was designed to only allow an employer to hire someone at a comparative rate. Never as a way to lower costs.
If your senator is a republican tell them it is an assault on the free market as employers get to choose where to hire, but you do not have the choice to do the same. Mention government interference and tax dollars wasted, then close with the same line I had above in your own words how it is not going as intended.
Also, mention one of the organizations was a fraudalent fake one by Microsoft looking for cheaper workers. Not an actualy organization of I.T. professionals who are lobbying for this as this is self centered and not in the will of your constitutions. Call them too as the staff checks the amount of calls everday and a spike is certainly noticed by the senator.
Remember the DMCA 2.0 law requiring DRM TCPA chips in every computer sold? It was thrown out after we at slashdot put down such links. Senators got so much of an earfull that was cancelled. Slashdot generates 10,000 if not 100,000 of views for stories. So spend 3 minutes and do your part.
http://saveie6.com/
Where, exactly, are these alleged companies that supposedly save millions of dollars by hiring H1B workers? I've worked for 3 very, very large corporations in the telecommunications and banking industries that hire H1B workers, and as far as anybody could tell, our H1B coworkers got paid the same amount as everyone else, and actually cost *more* for the company to hire and employ due to greater paperwork requirements.
In most cases, the H1B employees were Indians who went to college (or grad school) in the US, found India's corporate culture to be soul-crushing and demoralizing (regardless of pay), and were denied permanent visas by our dysfunctional immigration system that's almost neurotically-obsessed with family reunification over "twenty/thirtysomething guy who'd view his family's distance and inability to come join him in the US as a perk and bonus".
We should phase out most of the H1B program, and replace it with a policy that makes it relatively easy for single young American-educated prospective immigrants who are unencumbered by wives, kids, and extended families to become permanent residents, then citizens.
Corporate America's solution to unemployment is importing cheaper labor from other countries.
Oddly enough, they have a completely different view on importing cheaper products from other countries
See DVD region encoding, out-of-country textbooks, software, etc.
I honestly do not know what to make of this. I have just done my state and federal tax. I owed the feds nothing. I owed the state $57. I do contract engineering work in things like analog and microprocessor control.
I have been working with one small company trying to build it up. I have been working there for six months now, and have been paid a little over $2000. Just yesterday the owner gave me an agreement (NDA) he wanted me to sign, which transferred any and all IP I come with to the company along with a commitment from me I will not work for any of his customers or competitors for 24 months after termination.
I refused to sign the damned thing.
It read like a prenup, making sure no alimony can be claimed, yet commitment not to take another partner for two years assured through legal means..
My sentiments are that any obligation to him cease along with any obligation he has to pay me if this is indeed the case of a true "at will" legal environment. If he wants my continued obeyance of something after termination, it is my belief he should also be obligated to reimburse me for the opportunity cost I forfeited to obey his wish.
I realize my Congress is not there to help me, even though they are there in full if I should succeed in making a taxable income. They will shut down Napster if a business claims they are violating copyright, They will shut down online pharmacies if they go around regional pricing algorithms set by the drug companies, but they will also hold lawful offshore tax havens. The wonders of a lobbied congress.
I do not know what to do, but from all I see, it is pointless to try to do anything at this stage of the game. I have a few more years to go before I am on full social security. I feel foolish trying to invest my savings on trying to maintain employability by agreeing to every pre-nup out there, agreeing to give the businessman all of any IP I come up with, and gracefully accept "at will" termination when I have given all I have.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Last time we had this talk, I made this comment
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3620197&cid=43374569
One AC response to my comment was sort of scary...
Yeah, I see a white guy standing in a crowd of filth which probably means now you stink as bad they do. Congrats on being a traitor to your country. It was good of you to post that photo so we know exactly what you look like. After the day the people decide wipe the shit stains off our land, we'll turn their attention to those like you who betrayed their race, for special treatment.
What the fuck? I thought this was a site of thinkers, geeks, not of xenophobic extremists.
Rather than waste time on a lengthy post (I am at work) let me just make one simple point...
100% of H1-B workers that I know wish they could live, work, and pay taxes here. The only issue I take with H1-b is the treatment of said workers. This is a country that once prided itself on harboring the best and brightest from around the world, giving them shelter and refuge in exchange for their knowledge and experience. Now we give them nothing for that.
Check your hiring process. I've run into times when we can't find anyone because all the candidates HR sent us were unsuitable (the ones we interviewed flunked on the basic C/C++ skills test despite claiming a minimum of 5 years experience coding in C/C++), and yet I knew there were at least 2 highly-qualified candidates that HR hadn't sent to us to review because I handed their resumes to HR myself. That right there tells me that the problem might be not that there aren't any candidates but that HR's throwing them out before they ever get looked at. Ditto for recruiters, who probably use the same process HR does to screen candidates.
I've thought it might be amusing to bypass the HR process entirely, task some of the developers with attending the various techie get-togethers around town and collect qualified candidates that way, then give the hiring manager their resumes directly in addition to sending them to HR. Then if their resumes don't show up, the hiring manager can send them up from his side asking "This candidate looks qualified and we'd like to interview them but they weren't in the stack you sent down. I know it should be there, I had one of my devs run it over to you personally. Can you get back to me about what happened to it?".
I compared my pay with the median reported in IEEE and concluded I got the top dollar. I was lucky, the company was run by really kind and gentle folks.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact