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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."
The bill also raises wages for H-1B workers to make them more competitive, although the amount wasn't specified.
It's been said before that H-1B wages are already not supposed to be significantly below the host country's standard cost of living, but we've seen that's enforced about as often as corporate tax laws.
I wonder, will this new provision fare better?
So they can encourage foreign outsourcing? Doesn't anyone see this as having a negative impact on domestic unemployment? (as well as a trade deficit effect as they ship their US$ off to India)
Why is this necessary???
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Instead of giving people H1B visas, why don't we just give them green cards, so they have the same employment bargaining rights that US citizens have so it becomes impossible to undercut local wages. Also, for student visa holders who finish school here with MS or PhD degrees we should just grant citizenship for an upfront fee of $8000 so we keep talented people in the US.
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/
Why not just mandate a H1B be paid at least $100,000 a year, no exceptions. If they're really so good, they deserve the money and $100k would be a bargain.
Why don't we put India in charge of the US. We wouldn't need congress any more.
Or better yet remind them who they are working for. If they do not hear a peep out of the average citizen then they assume there really is a labor shortage and good old Microsoft would never lie would they?
http://saveie6.com/
Can us Americans apply for those jobs?
Won't that be the irony. H1B visas because there are not enough qualified Americans to work those jobs. But I wager, they'll make it so that Americans can't use the site to apply for those very same jobs.
*fumes*
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.
Pure window dressing. Is there anyone dumb enough to think this will make a difference? The H-1B has had various "comparable wages" and "no American worker available" provisions for years. It's meaningless because it's never enforced, and I don't expect any magic pixie dust in this bill to change that.
One provision that will affect India, in particular, limits H-1B visa use to 50% of a firm's U.S. workforce.
This may actually have some effect, but it's frightening to say that. A crackdown means limiting it to 50% of a company's U.S. workforce? U.S. does mean United States, right?
What should be added is to allow H-1B holders to be free agents in the market.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
need to get rid of fake / bloated qualified lists where they can make so that no one will be qualified.
Congress and the President should be Outsourced to India.
also force them to give HB1 full benefits at a level that is same or better then what most of there us workers get.
This is a HUGE blessing. I have been working for a company that uses an offshore outsourcer for quite a few years. They suck the brains of the "re-badged" US employees, then let them go, then bring in kids from offshore to perform their jobs. This needs to stop. /sorry, but bitter. //seen too many good people lose their jobs then be replaced by people with no experience. ///this isn't enough.
Just a dude. Stuck in IT.
We have been denigrating, insulting and making fun of civil servants for some 30 years now. "Govt is the problem" "Most dangerous seven words in english". Now we have a completely demoralized and underqualified unmotivated civil service tackling unwieldy rules and regulations.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I came in as F1, got a H1B, got green card and got citizenship just in time to vote against Rick Santorum. Hip hip hurrey! But not all H1Bs are good like me. Some of them, gasp, become Republicans.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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.
We have been denigrating, insulting and making fun of civil servants for some 30 years now.
30 years? More like forever. I don't think that's the problem. TPTB make sure that government employees turn a blind eye to this. Any attempt to seriously cut through this garbage would lead to some very nasty phone calls from some very generous "campaign contributors".
Although from a US citizen perspective, they view the extra VIsas as a negative, truth to be told, In the field of programming and application architecture, you must go where the job is.
:)
The reason for more Visas, to me, stems from our own US talent not marketing and/or exposing themselves efficiently and more than likely a reluctance to relocate where the work is..
However, that's not the full truth, it's more often a question of saving money.
For the most part. Also, foreign talent can either be very expensive or very very cheap..
On the Cheap Department, for example, some banking institution(s) will hire a lot of programmers from India, importing them at 15$ per hour..
Well you pay for what you get.. just remember that.
But still, These banking institution don't care about quality code, just make it happen.
So, obviously 15$ an hour for a Java programmer is dirt cheap for sure.
The entire consulting firm/banking institution relationship is based on kickbacks to the hiring managers. But that's another story..
The whole H1B idea has been perverted by greedy companies looking for cheap and obedient labor so much that it should be cancelled. There is already O-1 visa for "Individuals with Extraordinary Ability or Achievement" that is intended for geniuses that can be hard to find in the U.S. Any other needs can and should be filled within the country.
First the plutocrats #@&$'d farm workers by claiming "shortage" so they can pay sh$t wages and get slaves, and now they are #@&$ing tech workers using the same pattern.
Table-ized A.I.
We are trying to hire Java developers in Chicago for a salary range of 80k-120k and NOTHING. H1-B or not. The market is very tight.
I thought this was a site of thinkers, geeks, not of xenophobic extremists.
Unfortunately you can find those idiots anywhere.
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.
If we give them nothing, then why do they come here?
As far as your other points, you're going too far in playing up the myth of American immigration. First, the vast majority of H-1B's are not the "best and brightest". They may be competent, and reasonably well educated, but that doesn't put one in the "best and brightest" category. I'm good at what I do, but I'm not in that category.
Moreover, "shelter and refuge" are what you give refugees, not hi-tech guest workers. We're not talking about people who would be oppressed if they couldn't come here. As for "knowledge and experience", the experience part doesn't cut it, as many H-1B's come here (or stay here) fresh out of school. They do have knowledge, but unfortunately it's not of the kind that we don't already have plenty of. Unfortunately, and especially at a time like this when unemployment is still high, very few H-1B's have any skills or knowledge that can't be found amongst unemployed Americans.
What America needs is not what this bill is providing
I am saying this as an American, as one who have funded many startups in America, and as one who have providing jobs to many of my fellow Americans
What America needs are people who are entrepreneurial, who are risk takers, who provide jobs for others
What this bill intends to do is to import even more tech-grunts under the H1-B visas, and to open up the gate for MILLIONS of undocumented aliens, most of them unskilled/low-skilled, lacking in enthusiasm to compete, and they will end up burdening the already over-burdened social welfare system that we have in our country
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Look, I am very sympathetic to the guys in California I worked with. It is wrong that the middle class is being gutted in the United States. Posting here won't help you if you are in the U.S. A lot of paper mail to the senators and representatives might be noticed. You must write!
or you are to picky about any number of things
Some of the big ones are a BIG list of skills
no contractors / temps aka we don't want job hoppers (even when they may of been on a X month contract and when it ended they moved to a different place / contract due to no fault of there own)
Need X degree (even when out of place AKA CS for IT / desktop jobs) (and some times picky about what school) over experience or even a some kind of more hands on / apprenticeship system.
X years in version X of X tech.
resume bot software that does not work.
Tie H1B visas to the local tech unemployment rate and average salary rate for a given field. Don't allow any more H1B visas into a given metropolitan area until average salaries have gone up and average unemployment has gone down. If there is really a shortage than the market will respond by increasing salaries and decreasing unemployment, let the market do it's work. That would get rid of the bogus job ads that are placed for the explicit purpose of not hiring an American.
In other words you can't get H1B visas unless the local area actually has a demonstrable need for people with those skills. This would do wonders for unemployed and underpaid Americans that have been devastated by the H1B visa program. Create a progressive payroll tax that goes up by the percentage of H1B visas that are on your payroll either directly or through contract companies.
Now to address some of the needs of the employers. Get rid of limits for H1B visas altogether, and allow anyone who attends University in the United States to get a similar visa automatically upon graduation. This would allow for true labor shortages to be met and for companies to grow as claimed. Allow the best and brightest to stay in America and contribute to our economy. Company after company has been founded by hard working immigrants that have made significant contributions to our society. These are the people that we want working for us, not for the competition.
Society is the key word here though, make the H1B visa program a fast track to citizenship for America. In four years you earn your citizenship and become a contributing member of society or your out. Allow those that would contribute to our society to immigrate and have a legitimate path to citizenship, it's the American way.
If we give them nothing, then why do they come here?
For an opportunity to earn more money, and use said money to pay for a better living, and raise the family in a safer society (while also paying for that with taxes)?
You know, that whole "pursuit of happiness" thing...
Some employers prefer them because they don't have to put any effort into keeping them happy. H1Bs aren't free to leave like US citizens are. If everything were equal: education, experience, job performance and salary, the H1B is often more attractive because they're not able to shop around if working for you sucks.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
They essentially have two options here. One is to import people that are actually skilled enough to do the work, since the US education system doesn't seem to provide them but focuses on burger flippers and waitresses instead. The other option is to let the companies either offshore the work completely, or go bankrupt because some foreign company comes up with a competing product and takes over the market. The short term solution is to import people, the long term solution is to put government money in education. Since government spending money on things like education and health care is generally frowned upon and politicians are only graded for their short term success, guess what happens.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Is an IT union.
There's ALWAYS an unemployed American capable of any job. Except that you need to find them and it's not trivial for really highly qualified professionals.
They've no fixed value like $100k, but must prove they're paying more than the average pay for that job. It works extremely well, a shockingly huge proportion of Swiss residents are foreigners. In effect, if a Swiss company wants anybody in the world they know exactly what they need to do to hire them, no bullshit, just prove you want them by paying them more.
Amusingly, the Swiss immigration law exists at three levels, federal, canton, and local, so theoretically you might encounter really messy local immigration laws, but the Swiss are sensible about it.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I wouldn't count on getting rid of it so easily....
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There are exactly two kinds of people who hire people from abroad. No, I'm not from the US (I worked there for a few months, but by far not enough for a green card and no, I'm not interested), but come from a country that suffers from pretty much the same problems.
There's the "good" ones. Companies that really have a hard time finding enough qualified workers here. I eventually had to turn my eye abroad, and I make sure that the one guy I finally go through our immigration nightmare gets exactly the same treatment and conditions as everyone else here. Also, I have to say that he fits greatly into the team and while communication is still mostly in English, he's learning the language too. I would have hired domestic, no doubt about that, less for any "nationalist", "my country first" bull, but simply to avoid the horrible hoop-jumping, but there was simply and plainly nobody available that I could possibly have hired. It was a veritable nightmare, but I guess it's much easier to pull off when you do it on a routine base.
Because there's also the "bad" ones. Companies whose sole existence seems to be to funnel cheap labour into the country. They really abuse two people for the price of one, first the person they bring in here, and of course the person who IS here already who could have gotten the job instead. They pretty much make sure they "own" them. Finally after a report on TV came through something's done against at least one of those locusts, but that cures the symptom at best, the sickness continues.
I think one good point to start would be to limit the people per company that you can bring in via H1Bs. Of course, compared to company size, but I highly doubt that there's really a company in the US or around here that cannot find at least 90% of its employee needs locally. If they cannot, they're probably in the wrong business and should move their whole business over there.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
From the really crap work I've seen by "ThoughtWorks" developers, this can only be a Bad Thing.
I mean, when a developer can't even properly craft a curl statement to correctly test his own work... well, ---FACEPALM---
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Unless he pays you for those 24 months this is unenforceable on that ground alone
They work for those who control the votes. As long as the majority of the population votes for the person who spends the most on TV adverts, and there are no limits on the amounts and kinds of advertising that they can do (e.g. political exemptions from do-not-call lists, from truth in advertising laws) , they will work for the people who are most able to give them the money that they need to finance this advertising.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
And you call that nothing? What's your point?
from a economic contribution point of view, skilled migrants contributes higher than average
That's true, if you look at one person in isolation. But what is the overall effect of hundreds of thousands of guest workers concentrated in a few fields? Despite the loud protestations of the billionaires who benefit from cheaper labor, there is no actual evidence of a shortage of Americans with the required skills. In other words, economic activity in these fields is limited by demand, not supply. Americans displaced by guest workers generally make less money than they would have, and wind up throwing away their investment in education. It does not increase the GDP per capita, and it exacerbates the gulf between billionaires and everyone else.
I can say I'm definitely oppressed in my home country. Same with any H1-B that comes from my country who is not of a particular religious background, which comprises of 40% of the population.
That's unfortunate, and I am aware of it. However, it doesn't generally rise to the level that would justify refugee status.
If the goal is to bring over the best and the brightest, why make them identured servants? Give them greencards. Then they can quit as soon as they get here if there pay is not up to market and work somewhere else. The fake regulation to ensure that h1b pay is 'more competitive' is total garbage. Just google immigration forums. The H1Bs are routinely paid far less than what is disclosed in the VISA application. TATA was taking their tax returns (google it they lost a law suit).
then throw in if they are fired, they get deported and that amounts to more hours and a willingness to move around the country at your own expense. Then throw in the 'if you quit or get fired for any reason you pay us $100,000 and really broad non-compete agreements where they will threaten their next employer to get them fired' and you get a captive workforce. I have worked with alot of guys on visas and they tell me about these contracts that they have to sign. They also get stunned when they find out that I am making double what they make.
if all h1bs and l-2 visa holders were immediately given greencards, then you will see there real value. If they can quit, then their employers would have to pay them well enough to get them to stay. If they are better than Americans than they should make more money than us.
if you gave them all greencards then we will see the true demand.
If you are going to outsource, do it and call it what it is.
Don't bring the outsourced workers here and pretend you are employing the domestic workforce.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Every single job posting listed "Ability to speak Hindi" as a job requirement. In order to facilitate communication with out-sourced workers.
=(
H1Bs from India are injecting their uncivilized Caste system in USA.
http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/indias-200-million-strong-dalit-community-faces-discrimination-every-da/
Casteism
This isn't anything new. More than 10 years ago when I was in the labor certification part of the green card process my employer had to post the job description to this website.