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Study Questions H-1B Policies
An anonymous reader writes "One of the arguments for continuing and even expanding the H1-B visa program (pdf) is that it enables highly-skilled immigrants to work in the U.S. and grow the U.S. economy. Counterarguments state that the H1-B visa program does not bring in the 'best and brightest' and is used to drive down wages, particularly in the STEM fields. This Bloomberg article, discussing pending H1-B legislation, quotes some of the salaries of current workers in the U.S. on H1-B visas: $4,800/month and $5,500/month which work out to $57,600/year and $66,000/year; only slightly higher than the average entry-level salaries of newly-graduated engineering or computer science majors."
employers want to bring more people in. If we didn't, people in the STEM fields could demand more money. We should have H1B Visas for lawyers and politicians. It would be amazing how quickly the program would be shut down then.
Solution: Issue H1-B visas only if there is a contract with a wage of at least 80kUSD/a. (the value of this limit is just politics...)
A discussion on salary isn't complete without also discussing the location of these immigrant workers.
Hint: They're always in major cities. National averages don't mean a damn thing when your local supermarket pays more for a meat department employee than your "average H1-B". Why do people see 50-something salary nowadays and think that is par? This is an engineering profession. Even the least skilled should be doing better than a teacher's or a cop's salary.
50k was good...25-30 years ago.
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I work at a major bank where they constantly have a choice between a high quality, albeit highly paid, US workers and low cost, low quality H1B workers. They always go H1B. And it becomes a real Indian ghetto at a lot of IT shops. Having multicultural abilities is part of being "best and brightest" yet many of the Indians are only comfortable working with other Indians. So the incumbent Indian employees end up only hiring Indian H1Bs, which is obviously a negative for the whole organization in the long run. But who every cares about the long run anyways.
It's nice to see the H-1B program questioned in at least some of the MSM (e.g. the NYT). It might have an effect on legislation if we had a representative form of government (by which I mean one that represents voters, as opposed to representing money).
The Bloomberg article is crocodile tears though:
While the legislation raises the annual H-1B cap to as much as 180,000 from 65,000, it increases visa costs five-fold for some companies to $10,000. It also bans larger employers with 15 percent or more of their U.S. workforce on such permits from sending H-1B staff to client’s sites.
It nearly triples the quota, but might cost as much as $10k to bring in someone on an H-1B. Good heavens, no! If $10k is too much, then there is no skills shortage and you could hire an American for the job.
Current draft House legislation also lacks the clause barring visa-dependent employers from client sites
Surprise, surprise, surprise! Wouldn't want any draconian restrictions on screwing Americans now, would we.
Since given all the hoops you have to jump through to get in they apparently believe there is a huge doctor glut. (You know, a 30+ on the MCAT a 3.9+ on your premed coursework and loads of extracurricular activities.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
It's been suggested that rather than abolish the H1-B program that in order to sponsor one the company must pay 120% of the 90% percentile wage in the area where the person will work. If the 90% percentile for a cornfield in say Iowa (You hear that IBM?) is $100,000 then they have to pay the person $120,000 exclusive of any living costs and fees associated with the H1-B program. There has also been talk about surcharging H1-B sponsors for inspections by the Feds to ensure that the workers are getting paid correctly and are working with the sponsor. Right now it's an honor system and there's no honor at IBM, Wipro or Infosys.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Last time there was a major backlash against H1Bs, it resulted in outsourcing.
When was this alleged major backlash? The quota hasn't dropped below 65k/yr in what, at least 20 years?
Second, you're falling for the "if you don't let us have more H-1B's we'll just outsource more" threat. It's bull. No matter how little they pay H-1B's, they're still way more expensive than people working in the 3rd world. Hence, anything that can be outsourced already has been or will be. The H-1B's are for the jobs that they can't outsource.
Except that the H1B is being used to support and expand outsourcing. The big outsourcing companies send developers with H1B to clients in the US to provide an on-site presence to coordinate with the larger development teams in India or China. Without the H1B program being used like that, either the entire project would be done in the US, or American developers would fill the roles of the on-site technical leads.
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There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
It's about profit
It's about work ethic/culture
It's abut indentured servitude
You can get 80 hours a week out of a HB-1 for a salary
A US citizen is not going to sign on to that ball and chain
Rick B.
200 "furniture movers" were given H1-b visa's in 2001. Are there really not enough furniture movers in NYC that a company had to import 200 of them? Google "Urban Moving Systems".
I, Cringley Cringley had a very interesting post on how H1B fraud is accomplished, except in this case, the he got caught.
How many other scams like this, are being run to prevent American engineers from being hired?
This question is becoming increasingly interesting to ask. I see no clear answer. Society is not willing to pay for them, so they are not needed .. or there is sufficient supply. This is not a value judgement; Poets have much to offer, but society does not extract much direct benefit - so the wages are low.
I'd recommend the best and brightest do engineering as last resort, not a primary one. Engineering is a better hobby than a career these days.. in some ways, that is how it's always been.
You're far better off learning how to build a sucessful business, entering law (technical law is very lucurative), or going into medicine - medicine isn't all that difficult if you can get accepted, and protects itself very agressively.
Do what society values for money. Do what you love to be happy. Sometimes those things are the same, frequently they are not. I've been lucky as a EE but I started almost two decades ago, and much of my success has come not from engineering skill, but entreprenurial endeavours.
A profitable, but well managed career can set you up to be financially independent in 8-12 years - then you can go do whatever you like.
Want to increase STEM? Why?
..don't panic
I was just hired with a fat salary to be the onsite tech lead. Working for one of the big Indian it shops. They may be getting ready for this eventuality.
Because having something for cheap is good microeconomically, but bad macroeconomically. H1Bs create poor workers, who don't spend money expect for basic, low margin survival stuff. By paying workers more, they can actually spend the money on you, your competitors (including those who compete with you only for the raw purchasing power of the workers), and your B2B customers. It drives business up. By keeping your margins for yourselves (which as a broken window fallacy afficionado you'll probably advocate, but the fallacy goes both ways), you're basically freeloading on the economy that allows your business to prosper.
The only objective evidence I have is that I have never met someone who is involved with hiring developers who has said how easy it is to find quality talent at market rates.
Then they aren't actually offering "market rates". The definition of market rate is "The term “market rate” refers to the level of compensation an organization must provide to enable it to effectively compete against other organizations in attracting and retaining qualified employees. "
http://www.da.ks.gov/newpayplans/whatmarket.pdf
(A board meeting, somewhere in the US. Probably Texas. 10:00am..)
CEO: We need to get our operating overhead under control! Look at all these hockey-sticks! (pointing to whiteboard)
CF0: We've already closed 500 stores, offshored 90% of our labor and manufacturing, layed off 15000 retail and customer service positions, and cut everyone else to part time so we don't have to pay benefits. There's not much more fat to trim except for...
CEO: What?
CFO: We get hold of some of those H1B visa workers. I hear they are happy to work for half of minimum wage.
CEO: How do we do that?
CF0: We cut lunchbreaks to 10 minutes, and make overtime mandatory. Also include rotating weekend shifts for everyone, including managers. We make it so miserable to work here, that people leave.
CEO: That doesn't sound like such a great plan. Who is going to run the stores?
CF0: We don't do it all at once. We do it regionally. Not everyone can afford to quit right away so there's a good chance there will be some stragglers. We promote them to managers for the time being and advertise to fill the empty positions, but advertise at half the wages the others were getting. Nobody in their right mind will take that job.
CEO: That sounds like a really dumb move. How are you going to fill those positions.
CFO: We tell the government that there isn't any available labor pool for us to hire from. We show them how nobody has applied for the listings, so we need to bring in H1B visa workers to fill the vacancies.
CEO: Hmm...
CFO: As an added bonus, I'm sure we can find some taxpayer dollars to subsidize our H1B visa "program".
CEO: Great! I'll be out the rest of the day yacht shopping. Hold all my calls.
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It is happening to some extent
Not nearly enough. We need to bring it up to the efficiency standards of software and engineering.
One difference is that law firms are usually run by lawyers for lawyers. They're usually partnerships, which means even senior partners may suffer from some silly sentimental resistance to screwing American lawyers. Software and engineering do not suffer from this.
Also, lawyers have a really good union. It's so firmly entrenched that membership is required by the government in order to practice law. Talk about rent seeking and restraint of trade - supported by the government granting the lawyer's union a monopoly!
In the past few decades, the change in norms removed a lot of cushions that were there:
1. There are fewer entry level jobs -- few companies are willing to train people.
The buzz from Jack Welch was to treat team members like pro athlete stars -- pay the alpha performers well and get rid of the beta performers. The problem is that almost all new comers will under perform for a while. Why hire them?
2. There is less loyalty towards an employer.
Again this hurts entry level jobs. The norm used to be that employers used to train people, and the people would stay with the employers for a few years, even if the pay was less. The loss in productivity and the training costs from an employers perspective would more than be made up by the long term savings. From an employees perspective, skipping from job to job made you appear unreliable and would hurt your job prospects. Then with the dot com boom, everything changed. People used to join a company that offered training and then immediately jump ship to get even a slightly higher pay. Jumping from company to company became the most reliable way to get a pay raise. Most companies saw their investment in training wasted and eliminated or severely reduced training.
3. There is no loyalty towards employees and long term planning is no longer considered.
IT is typically a cost center. The norm today is to look for saving by cutting payroll where ever possible. Strategically employers look for a cheaper alternative, even if the long term risk to the business increases. incentives for managers are based on short term performance, so even star employees are at risk of layoffs. Salaries are often cut, irrespective to the damage to the morale of the workforce, because by the time the effects are seen, the people responsible for the cut would have moved on.
4. The geographical mobility has decreased in the past 30 years.
The drag caused by having ever larger mortgages, and complexities of ensuring both the husband and wife have a job, often prevents people from moving to places where there are new jobs.
With constant layoffs a new fact of life, the risks of moving, particularly to smaller markets and single company towns has risen. In a larger metro like NYC, folks can look for new jobs more easily if they feel their job is at risk, and even go to interviews in their lunch breaks. In a small town, this becomes much harder.
5. The move towards orienting IT personal to a project at all times creates a need for an ability to hire and lay off people at all times. As the projects becomes larger, at times there is a glut and times there is such a shortage that the project is moved offshore.
6. The need to restrict liabilities, reduce fixed costs and deflect responsibility is leading to more outsourcing. (Outsourcing != off shoring.) This in turn leads to a need for a more mobile workforce. Just pouring money into these issues will not make it go away, and often the cost could be too high. The solutions for these problems -- rethinking at will employment, tort reform, rethinking home ownership as a primary method to build equity, rewarding long term performance over short term performance are complex, difficult to implement, and will require a ton of time, and right now these problems are not even on the public radar. In the mean time business must go on.
H1Bs offer a quick fix to many of these problems by creating a more mobile, more employer dependent workforce. They are a crutch, and do not solve the long term issues, and they do have a downward pressure on wages. But they also buy time for US society and business to get its act together. Whether this time is used properly, I have no idea.
tl;dr: I want a 5' 8" 24 year old blonde who has an MD and paid for med school as a lingerie model.
i have an extra one of those. where should i send him?
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