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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."
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.
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.
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.
That's because you're working for legitimate companies. There are also companies full of fresh-from-college hires that pay far under going rate and lie to their employees egregiously about the immigration process and how easy it is to change jobs with an H-1B. Taking advantage of people young enough not to know any better isn't an "immigrant" thing, however. My first full time programming job paid $18k - as a US citizen in a big city! I think there's a false belief that it's somehow only the H-1B consulting shops that abuse their employees to pay them nothing - that's just not visa-specific!
From TFS:
One provision that will affect India, in particular, limits H-1B visa use to 50% of a firm's U.S. workforce
That would be a huge change for the better - exactly because it would break the current model of the companies that exist just to abuse the system. Sure, in 5-10 years they'll have a new model, just as abusive, but that will be a good 5-10 years!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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.
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?".
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 !