Slashdot Mirror
Immigration Bill Passes the Senate, Includes More H-1B Visas
An anonymous reader writes "While the landmark immigration bill (full text PDF), which recently passed the U.S. Senate, is being hailed as bringing crucial reforms that will vastly improve the state of immigration in this country, there is a provision in it that is seeing relatively little discussion: section 4101, a 'market-based' increase in the amount of H-1B visas for skilled workers. 'The pitched arguments of both sides, which are likely to resurface in the House when it takes up its version of an immigration overhaul, cloud a complicated reality. There is little empirical evidence to suggest that foreign engineers displace American engineers as a whole. If anything, one recent study suggests, the growth of immigrant workers in American companies helps younger American technical workers — more of them are hired and at higher-paying jobs — but has no noticeable consequences, good or bad, on older workers.'"
Precisely, I'm curious as to how they explain all the people that give up on the IT sector because they can't get a job due to the ridiculously narrow job requirements that even entry level positions have.
I'd be fine with a lift on the H-1B visa limits if it required them to actually demonstrate that they had made real efforts to hire Americans first. And that the requirements they were posting were reasonable for the job they were hiring for.
As it is, the job requirements seem more there to show that they're "trying" to hire Americans while ensuring that as few Americans as possible are actually qualified for the job.
> If anything, one recent study suggests, the growth of immigrant workers in American companies helps younger American technical workers
Of course. Isn't that a basic law of economic theory? As the supply of labor increases so do salaries.
I have some doubts.
In a band? Use WheresTheGig for free.
There is little empirical evidence to suggest that foreign engineers displace American engineers as a whole.
Written by someone that obviously has never worked in the tech industry.
Fact: H1-Bs are abused to artificially suppress wages in sponsoring countries. There's nothing inherently wrong with having a program to help immigration, but the way it has been implemented, enforced, and maintained is causing serious harm to the U.S. economy.
If you need citations for this, you're at least as clueless as the bought and paid for government approving expansion of this legitimized abuse.
have an H-1B min wage and or open job switching aka the (worker owns the H-1B).
The min wage can be like 50k+ forced overtime pay maybe at the 100k+ level no forced OT pay.
Some H-1B are abused with low pay and or lots of foreced OT.
How's that BA in English working out for you?
The ridiculously narrow job requirements are specifically designed so they *don't* find Americans to fill their jobs. They want an excuse to hire H1-B indentured servants, and to go to Congress claiming that there are no Americans to fill them.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
I used to tell people computers, tech, programing were the way to go when they told me they were starting college now if they ask I tell them to find something that can't be outsourced.
There is little empirical evidence to suggest that foreign engineers displace American engineers as a whole.
Apparently the author is unfamiliar with Internet search engines and/or the name Norman Matloff. You'll find plenty of empirical evidence.
If anything, one recent study suggests, the growth of immigrant workers in American companies helps younger American technical workers — more of them are hired and at higher-paying jobs — but has no noticeable consequences, good or bad, on older workers.
Would the author care to mention the name of the study, who it was performed by, or even (*gasp*) provide a link? Otherwise a reference to "one recent study" has no credibility whatsoever.
If you're going to shove a line of bull at people, at least have the respect to make it seem a little credible. Propaganda like this is just plain insulting. I'd rather have somebody be honest enough to say "Screw you, the tech billionaires won, courtesy of the propaganda they pay for and the bribes they give their sycophants in congress. If you don't like it you can eat sh*t."
I don't think Mexico has only people of one race in it. I am pretty sure there are Mexican citizens of many races.
I oppose that program as well, but I am not sure it is racist. I think those who implemented it were trying to be racist, but were too racist to know that Mexico has other races.
You mean there's an opposition party? Wow. Normally I side more with the D's than the R's (not that I have much faith in either), but this time I'm damn glad there's an R majority in the House.
Plumbing. Except they can always bring in cheaper plumbers on H-1B Visas and name them sanitation engineers.
How's that BA in English working out for you?
You tell 'em!
There's only 3 degrees universities should offer:
1.Engineering - ONLY Electrical, chemical and petroleum.
2. Computer science.
3. Nursing.
And there's only 3 universities worth going to: Harvard, Yale and MIT. Everyone else should just close down.
Other than that, college is just a waste of time and money.
We need a society of technologists and people to clean the bedpans of the old people.
For all the stupid people who couldn't get into those programs, well, there's always Walmart. And if you speak Spanish, McDonalds.
The World needs ditch diggers too, ya know!
The reason it shouldn't pass is it rewards those who broke the rules instead of those who actually try to follow the process. I'm not saying we shouldn't have immigration, but I don't see how rewarding someone for bad behavior won't increase the amount of it. This isn't the first time the "amnesty" idea has come up and each time I was going to address the issue of illegal immigration. And each time, it just makes it worse.
people that companies REALLY want to hire talk to the group who needs the help, THEN they get sent to HR for a nice rubber stamp. HR is for the cattle.
The number of CS undergraduates closely mirrors the demand for workers. Hiring H1-Bs just reduces the number of young Americans who study CS. In the end, it doesn't really effect people already working in the field.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
What field and what location are we talking about? Lack of willingness (or simply not being able to for various reason) to relocate is definitely the only reason a qualified IT worker would have trouble getting a job.
Even if you were out of the market for 10+ years (I had a male friend who decided to raise his daughters at home instead of the stereotypical mother doing it...and he was able to come straight back in. It took a few months to get back into the interviewing groove, but not all that long compared to people generally complaining about having a hard time getting a job).
In the big tech centers, the qualification required to get a high paying job is "being able to breath". And sometimes they'll waive that one too, or so it feels.
Even factory workers and whatsnot will generally have an easy time if they can relocate, but that's the kicker: relocating for a low paying job is rarely an option.
Thats the main issue. There's plenty of jobs. They're just not always at the right places. In the IT sector, that can be solved by pushing telecommuting more. Other sectors are harder (you may be able to do a surgery remotely with modern tech, but doing nurse work remotely is probably a lot harder...).
My issues with the H-1B visa program is that it doesn't fix any of the problems that it tries to address and probably creates new issues.
The basic problem H-1B visa tries to address: "There are not enough mediocre engineers for our current business needs." The H-1B visa brings in some temporary employees to fix the short term shortage. But when the visa expires they go home and the company has to hire a new H-1B employee to replace him (remember there is a shortage of qualified applicants) and probably has increased their need of mediocre engineers during the past few years. There is no incentive for the company to fix the problem but instead to just apply the H-1B bandaid to it.
If the company hiring a H-1B visa holder was forced to train workers that would take over the position then the H-1B visa program would probably be rarely used and only when there was an actual need. Or if the company could only use H-1B visa employees/contractors every 2 years out of 5 so that they knew that they were ineligible for the H-1B bandaid when the current employees leave. Or even make the visa permanent, the visa holder isn't forced to leave the country and is free to find other employers whenever they wish; broader immigration issues this would fix the short term problem by just importing more people.
and they are not loaded down student loands
And therefore what? Shun foreigners to help perpetuate wildly excessive education cost growth? Or ...and here comes a new thought... change domestic education to stop the relentless growth of costs.
We flail about trying to pin the costs of healthcare and education on each other while the costs of these products annually balloon to record breaking levels. Educated people somehow elide any thought about why the costs of these things compound themselves while honing ever more hate filled arguments about who is supposed to pay to a fine point.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
The U.S. government runs a lottery that gives out an additional 50,000 VISA's per year beyond the level playing field of normal immigration, but people from Mexico arent allowed to win any of them, and you are there claiming its not racist by any stretch of the imagination?
Really?
What fucking distortion field do you live in?
He's probably living in the distortion field perpetuated by both the CIA World Fact Book and Wikipedia, in which it is well known that Mexico isn't comprised of a single race any more than Los Angeles is comprised of a single race, thus making it impossible to discriminate against a particular, single race by discriminating against all of Mexico.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_people#Today
Or maybe it was the one where, under NAFTA, there's already an economic agreement in place for non-professional workers, and professional workers get TN-1 visa rather than H-1B visa?
http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/types/types_1274.html
You know what? Those TN-1 visas discriminate against Europeans, who are require to return to their own countries after a period of time, whereas a TN-1 can be renewed again and again, indefinitely, without ever actually leaving the US. Those bastards! Favoring Mexico and Canada over Germany and New Zealand!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TN_status
Actually, they are required to pay the H-1B visa holders the prevailing wages
Laws are meaningless if they're not enforced, and that one isn't.
Watch How not to hire an American to see how the whole H1-B system has become a scam, they rig the requirements of the job so its impossible for ANY American to meet the requirement (such as demanding 10 years exp on a tech that has only been around 5 years) so that they can hire more indentured servants through H1-B.
For those that beat the globalization drum all you are doing is killing our future, these guys will go back to their own countries and come up with the next new things while we will be left a husk. in my own area the local college is getting ready to pull the plug on their entire IT program, why? Because students have found they can't compete with a guy that paid less than we pay for a new car for a master's degree so are no longer even attempting to go into tech fields, they know it will just leave them buried in debt in a dead end job.
I wish i could take all those that constant scream "free trade" and "free markets" and drag their sorry asses through middle America to see the seeds they have sown, where there is more boarded up businesses than open ones and the business districts look like Escape From New York thanks to all the abandoned factories. there is NO SUCH THING as free trade, all you are doing is exporting misery and pollution, and all you are importing is more indentured servants.
They won't stop until the highest paid IT jobs are less than the manager at a Mickey D's, and when the day comes that countries stop taking our overprinted money they will all leave and we'll be left with another dead sector. Of course it won't phase them as they'll just move, as Thomas Jefferson wisely pointed out :"Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains."
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
CS is not IT and going to school for Computer science will give you skill gaps.
It has lot's of hands on stuff that is a good fit for an apprenticeships.
Ok, I posed the GP and it was meant to be satire.
You're right, Actually, back in the old days, college WASN'T for career training. It was for an education to better and refine oneself.
Engineer? You apprenticed or went to a TRADE school because engineering is a trade.
So is medicine.
Law? Read about the founding fathers. If they went to college, they would get some liberal arts degree and then apprentice with a lawyer and "read law" - no law school. See. Bio of John Q. Adams.
CS? I'm on the fence on that one. On one hand it's a branch of math on the other, let's face it, it's almost an engineering discipline - apprenticeship career.
Business school? Please! Apprentice.
And also, our colleges and universities have become High School prt 2.
Freshman English?! WTF is that? That shit should have been taught in high school! Same for Bio, Chem, Physics I&II.
It's a symptom of how our schools have failed and how corporate America has turned our education system into one big trade school to benefit them at tax payer's cost.
If anything, one recent study suggests, the growth of immigrant workers in American companies helps younger American technical workers — more of them are hired and at higher-paying jobs — but has no noticeable consequences, good or bad, on older workers.'"
Those same people seem to think that NAFTA really helps American's as well, but our economy in shambles for well over a decade seems to prove them wrong. And no, I will not bend logic to suit their purposes as they do to suit themselves.
Providing lower paying jobs for non citizens while taking away jobs from US Citizens does not increase pay for US Citizens. The fact is that it reduces US jobs and harms the economy. The Henry Ford model was right and we have Detroit and Flint's economy and collapses to show he was correct. These people are just idiots, and it's too bad that so many suckers actually believe their bullspit.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Too bad there aren't even more (unlimited) H1-Bs.
Then all the left wing techies who are all happy and gang-ho about a bunch of low-skilled immigrants flooding USA (because they don't hurt their precious white collar jobs) would suddenly realize that Yes, People Get Hurt when you import a bunch of cheap workforce in a bad economy.
"If anything, one recent study suggests, the growth of immigrant workers in American companies helps younger American technical workers"
Not only do I find that claim dubious, it's completely beside the point. At least one recent study discussed here on Slashdot, possibly more, said THEIR IS NO SHORTAGE of qualified technical workers in the United States. Some corporations just want more H1-Bs because they're cheaper.
This isn't even so much about "individual" needs of individuals. This is about the health of a nation's economy. People who understand that money is more about flow than about hoarding (accumulating wealth) also understand that when people are not working and are not making enough money, they aren't spending money. This causes a reactive affect which radiates out everywhere in every direction.
Now we're opening the doors even wider to bring in more people which will put more locals out of work, raising unemployment and underemployment and those people reacting with the rest of the economy. Additionally, this brings a much larger number of people who will require social/government programs to survive.
This feels "intentional" and if feels planned. But one part isn't planned -- it's corporate greed and short-sightedness. They have no sense of responsibiity for what they are doing to the economy -- an economy in which those very businesses cannot exist for long without. That's a kind of given natural law. The real decision makers, the same ones who spend orders of magnitude more money than they collect in taxes on weapons we don't need, have decided they would rather help a small few at the expense of the nation's economy.
Meanwhile? The people who are the most affected? They're bitching about what's on "reality TV" and the news of the latest xbox. Sheeple.
It can't be stopped because not enough people are going to actually do anything about it. A person writes "shame on [the banks]" in chalk and getting charged with a crime that could end up with years in prison. We're in a real problem situation and the leadership of the country is unable to stop the train wreck that is happening all around us.
Have a nice weekend.
that exist for the sole purpose of teaching businesses how to do an end run around every rule regarding hiring H1-Bs.
Saying "I'd be fine with a lift on the H-1B visa limits if it required them to actually demonstrate that they had made real efforts to hire Americans first." is pointless. It's not just wishful thinking, its fundamentally ignoring the purpose of the system...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
That's not what happens. It's just wishful thinking. Outsourcing isn't being brought back on shore because of communication problems, it's because a few of the outsourcing firms got greedy and cut corners a little too thin. They'll learn.
Plus code written by slaves is cheap. So Cheap I can throw out your old code and start from scratch and still come out ahead. The last piece to the puzzle is to remember that for the top 1% who are pushing these things through they own a piece of just about every major company. So if company A overcharges company B the 1% still make gobs of money.
And Managing a Mickey D's is incredibly hard. First it's brutally difficult work. 50 to 60 hours a week. Next, you're constantly jockeying to keep your employees because you don't pay them enough to have anything near a stable lifestyle (and no, they're not all kids. That workforce is graying too).
Basically, the world doesn't work the way you think it does. I'd be OK if you were only hurting yourself, but when you go and vote you hurt me too...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
drag their sorry asses through middle America to see the seeds they have sown
It is really, Really, REALLY hard to convince the people who believe in Free Trade. They were taught the theory in school. Often they were taught it or had it reinforced in Comm school while getting an MBA. I had an argument about this with somebody taking Comm school while I was an undergrad. This was back in the 90s, when Perot was running. It was all "why should I listen to an undergrad. What do you know?" and I was like, "our grandchildren are going to hate us". It looks more like our children will hate us. I had no idea how fast it would happen.
Finally, a lot of these guys are doing well for themselves. Even if they see other people doing badly, they still buy into the "they're just not working hard enough and smart enough" meme. It's waaaay too easy to believe something when you're paid to believe it. The people who are doing well are often paid to believe in Free Trade.
Finally, the middle class can indeed get a temporary boost from Free Trade. It's the macro economic version of selling your house and using the money to take trips and throw parties. We sell our production capability, the middle class gets $20 microwaves at Wal Mart for a few years, while ignoring the relatively small number of people who used to work at the microwave factory. Then, we cut another trade deal.
Eventually we run out of new trade deals to cut, just as you run out of possessions to sell. Then the party is over.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
you're too lazy to google.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If they still don't make it easier for people who go there LEGALLY to work to eventually get a green card (no tons of money, no company sponsorship or getting married, no years of waiting) then fuck it, it still isn't worth going there to work. I worked there for six years and moved back to Canada because it would have taken forever to get a green card and being indentured to a company for the duration. Fuck that. If they can give green cards to illegal immigrants and not those there legally, fuck them.
Most countries will give you a landed immigrant status (same as a green card) if you work there LEGALLY more than a set time (usually four or five years), keep your nose clean, and don't mooch off the government for anything. If that isn't the case, even though I get recruiters calling me from there regularly because of my good reputation in the city I worked in, I won't go back there to work ever. The odd vacation maybe but that's it. Not worth the stress of worrying about having to relocate your family out of the country within a month if the contract ends suddenly. Nor the stress of companies feeling like the fuck you because they think you are captive for the same reason. A big three letter telecom convinced me of all this because of the last statement.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
There is little empirical evidence to suggest that foreign engineers displace American engineers as a whole.
If this were true, they'd be given green cards instead H1B. With H1B, they are indentured servants. Getting fired means getting deported for them. Stop forcing Americans to compete with indentured servants in technology and then you'll see more Americans going into those fields. Even if you accept that they don't compete on salary, they still compete on work conditions.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
That's the number of actual H1-B workers in this country. E.g. take the legal limit and multiply it by 3. We don't send them home when their Visas expire, so lots of them stay. The estimates are around 3 times the limit. 180,000 today. Once we raise the limit to 300,000 we'll have a million new tech workers hitting the economy within 3 years. Forget the tech economy, that'll depress _everyone's_ wages.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Also, managing Mickey D's sounds pretty easy
That is an *awful* job. Think of people wanting 5 star service for 2 bucks. All day every day. Then you have a set of employees that you are lucky will show to work today. You dont dare fire them as you have to have *someone* to call when the previous 3 guys said they are 'sick'. You think IT guys have it bad with overtime and crazy requirements? Go work for a mc'ds for a few months as salary.
The real issue is the gov has created an artificial scarcity. Thus driving up wages for who are not H1B (yeah americans). Then stagnating the H1B guy (still wildly better pay than they get in their home country). Creating a market where only H1B can get in. The gov has moved in and said how you can hire people. It is law of unintended consequences at its best.
Also if there really is a shortage wouldnt you want to make it easy for those people to become a citizen? Thus creating a long term employee? Instead we keep upping the limits and creating a large market distortion.
Actual true immigration is better long term for our country. Instead we kick them out just as they are learning the ropes...
I can hire 4 guys for the price of 1 american. Will it be 'good' maybe, maybe not. Depends on if I get lucky on the outsourcing merry-go-round.
Many industries have a lobbying group:
1) Doctors have the American Medical Association
2) Teachers have the National Education Association
3) Realtors have the National Association of Realtors
4) Senior citizens have the AARP
And so on and so forth.
The employing companies certainly are represented in Washington DC. Which is why we get the system we have. There's the IEEE which gave a whopping 70-80 thousand dollars a year to politicians. The ACM - I couldn't even find them as a lobbying organization at all.
We can whine about it. But tech workers need a lobbying organization. Politicians do what's in their own personal best interests. And you can't expect them to vote against big donors. They won't even talk to you if you're not a sizable contributor or don't have some block of votes to present to them.
HR is for the cattle.
Indeed. Most of our people were hired either through referrals, or through our internship program. Less than 10% were hired by submitting a resume to HR. Instead of shotgunning resumes, you should be using your network. If you don't have a network, you need to start building one: go to meetups, volunteer for a FOSS project, etc.
My company just underwent some major changes. We had open positions before, but we recently had a number of people hit their 1-year cliffs and leave, so we now have a lot of open positions and I'm one of the people that's been designated as a hiring manager. I can tell you that we have zero intention of hiring H1-Bs. If someone already has the paperwork from a previous job, we'll consider them, but we need people now and aren't willing to sponsor.
And yet HR still insists on writing the overly-narrow job descriptions that everyone I know loves to hate. I've tried, on multiple occasions now, to get the descriptions changed to more of a "We use x, y and z and are looking for someone smart that either knows them or can learn them fairly quickly," but every time we test it out, they find ways to sabotage it (I was told, verbatim, "Github is too expensive for an experimental job posting, so we only posted it to Dice").
People on /. bitch all the time about how few jobs there are and how large companies are using H1-Bs to drive down wages. But I also get upwards of ~10 touches from recruiters (the few that mention salary usually say around $200k) on LinkedIn and we've had multiple openings go unfilled for the past 4-6 months because we simply can't find qualified candidates.
This exposure to the HR recruiting process has left me convinced that the majority of the problem isn't H1-Bs or disingenuous companies but, instead, HR that's out of touch with the way that talent looks for jobs these days. Because it's clear that there are people who want jobs and don't have them and jobs that want talent and can't find it.
Shameless plug: If you're in San Francisco and looking for a job, see here: (and don't worry if you don't meet the exact skill set requested)
UI Engineer
Java Engineer
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
Ya know I USED to make fun of the survival nuts, but after driving through the south and seeing scene after scene that could have been taken straight out of 1934? i really can't anymore.
And I have met the type you are talking about, fifth and sixth gen money who live in their little bubbles with other bubble living people that parrot the same and all I have to say is they better "Get to teh choppa!" when the shit finally does hit the fan because i don't see the peasants going gently off to starve like they did in the 30s, I really don't. look at NO after Katrina to see what will be more likely to happen, it was total "welcome to the jungle" and in a survival situation where its survival of the fittest? they ain't looking very fit from where I'm sitting.
But anybody who believes their little 'recovery" bullshit really needs to take a trip through the flyover states, you'll find reality FAR different from the BS they are spewing. More and more scrambling to get on the dole just to keep a roof over their head, boarded up homes and businesses, its getting pretty damned bad here folks. I see all this shit like H1-Bs and all I can think of is some rich guy drinking wine while the boat sinks, sooner or later reality is gonna bitchslap them and when it does its not gonna be pretty. the shit they have done in the last 20 years will probably take a century to fix and all the BS in the world isn't gonna make that reality go away.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
You have a good point. Instead of a protest sign or a bumper sticker that demands congress do something, I should get one that demands they do nothing. I'd probably be able to sell a lot of them too.
In many large places HR have far too much power in office politics and insist that everyone plays by their rules. The answer is to go to a place small enough that HR has less power than the department head that wants to hire people (and CAN ask for a rubber stamp), or start collecting those keywords.
There's no point ignoring what's already happened. You've got a huge shadow economy of "illegal" workers and keeping it in the shadows doesn't help your country. They are there and there are not enough jails to put them in (not that such a thing would be anything other than a stupid and expensive idea) so why have a law that a country has no intention to enforce on the books at all? It's not a "reward", it is instead just a consequence of deciding to stop a pointless effort to endlessly push shit uphill.
I've personally switched jobs twice while under H1-B, getting something like 10%+ raise each time. The visa is transferable under 2 weeks for an extra fee, and transfers are not subjected to quotas. There is a theoretical limit of 6 years (3 years times 2) with H1-B but it definitely does not mean you have to be tied to any specific company. At least that's how it was for me 6 years ago. While a H1-B is tied to employment, you have 'reasonable time' to leave the country, or get an other job. I've seen someone out of a job on H1-B, stay in the area for a few months (reasonable time) and get an other job with the visa being transferred. All legal. Also note that after my first H1-B job, which was actually my first job out of college, I did get paid much above the legal base salary which was about $60k/y in 2001.
The real problem is when the employees that are on extended H1-B past the 6 years while waiting on a green card application. Because the extension is tied to the green card application and hence that company which is applying for you, this mean that you are literally stuck or have to leave the country.