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FWD.us Wants More H-1B Visas, But 50% Go To Offshore Firms
theodp writes: "On the day the U.S. began accepting H-1B visa applications for FY2015, Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us PAC stepped up its lobbying efforts for more tech visas even as ComputerWorld reported that the major share of H-1B visas go to offshore outsourcing firms that use visa holders to displace U.S. workers. 'The two largest H-1B users,' notes ComputerWorld, 'are Indian-based, Infosys, with 6,298 visas, and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), with 6,258.' ComputerWorld adds that food and agricultural company Cargill is outsourcing IT jobs to TCS, including 300 in Minnesota, the home of Sen. Amy Klobuchar, sponsor of the I-Squared Act of 2013, which would allow H-1B visa caps to rise to 300,000 annually."
Management still doesn't understand why you pay for talent.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
The American workers out of jobs, at least support American companies in the process, no? I'm not even American, I'm Canadian, so while I don't have a vested interest, I can see and understand the hate. Essentially it makes sense to bring in tech talent with the purpose of filling vacancies that can not otherwise be filled with the domestic talent. It isn't being used for that in many cases, though - rather is used to cut cost and 'get 'er done'. If the gov't is going to enable this cost-cutting advantage, it should make sense to at least offer it to American companies rather than foreign - why would they want to both displace more expensive workers as well as displace them with the intention of supporting a foreign enterprise in the process?
There are plenty of STEM workers to fill the available jobs; I think the last figures put a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio of workers to roles. There just aren't enough available at the prices these companies want to pay. Hence offshoring: find a cheaper supply of labour elsewhere.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
This is exactly correct. Plus, H1B visa holders are tied to the company that issues the visa. If they leave the company, they must return to their home country. Tech companies like Facebook like to have such indentured servants.
H1B visas serve only to drive down wages for US employees. Additionally, they end up training foreign talent that are later kicked out of the country (after 3 or 6 years, depending upon whether the visa is renewed). They don't help the nation's interests, nor the public's interest. They serve only to increase the profit margins of the large firms.
Get rid of the H1B, and increase the green card slots available to foreign workers, especially the Indians. I've very pro-immigrant, but the H1B visa only provides for indentured servitude.
--Be human.
Instead of increasing H1b's which are abused by offshore firms, make a new category for foreigners who hold a graduate degree from a top US school. The US has by far the best Universities in most areas, but the best foreign students often leave the US because of the very restrictive H1b Visa system (employment-tied, application only on April for October start, dependents not eligible for work etc). Why provide world-leading education and then let the best talent go?
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As someone who worked on an H1-B visa about 10 years back in Silicon Valley, i can confirm that these visas are being misused by IT consulting companies. They take the majority of these visas and then use them as baits in india for IT professionals. Most indian IT companies are nothing but cheap labour shops. If there is a dearth of IT professionals, make H1-B non-employer specific. All it does is make you a bonded labourer for 4-6 years with your employer who promises to process your green card while paying you a low salary. This is a big scam and i hope enough people take notice so that something is done about it. Most people on H1-B won't speak about it cause they don't want to go back home or lose their job. This is what keeps it going.
The people that make the decisions don't care what happens in 10 - 20 years; They'll be retired at 50 with £X,000,000 in the bank and a new Ferrari every three months.
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How do H1B visas drive down wages when it's vastly more expensive to hire an H1B than to hire a local? That's the part of the anti-H1B thing I just don't get.
There are some significant costs associated with hiring, however once they're hired you only have to pay them the prevailing wage for the industry. This sounds good, but 'the industry' can be interpreted very broadly, so when you're hiring someone to do realtime C programming they count as being in the same industry as a guy who dropped out of high school and writes PHP. They're also in a very weak position when it comes to bargaining, because if they lose their job they have a very short time to find another sponsor for their visa before they are deported.
If you want to avoid this, the solution is to offer a full work permit to anyone who has skills in one of the shortage industries, so they can go to the US and work at the real (i.e. defined by the market, not defined by some fixed spreadsheet) prevailing wage. Immigrants don't depress wages when they expect the same standard of living and have the same bargaining power as their native colleagues.
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Have you seen http://www.h1bwage.com/ ?
According to the site - "h1bwage.com is the online wage library for h1b prevailing wage determinations, and the disclosure databases for other programs."
So it's referencing the standard salaries for positions, and/or the H1B application statements of companies applying for the visas. It in no way reflects what the hired workers actually earn, and is not intended to. Salaries are always "negotiable".
I suspect that some of those figures are what the consulting firm is charging to place one of those working in another company - so the company is paying that amount for the person, but the consulting firm is taking a good portion of it off the top before they actually pay the worker.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I donate a LOT of money to FWD.us to try to get the H1-B limits increased. Why? Because while my company does do business in the US, I despise US workers - who are generally a bunch of self-important, entitled brats who think they are God's gift to development. The worst part? They are simply lazy. My God are Americans lazy. Show up at 8:45... leave at 4:15... hour and half lunch.. sitting around surfing the Internet all day while finding a few minutes here and there to do some work in between facebook posts.
And yet their output is still just as high in quantity and orders of magnitude higher in quality than anything that comes out of your 14-hour-day Bangalore sweatshop. I have to use 5 of those guys to do the work of 1 American developer, and it's still not a deal, because it has to be sent back 5 or 6 times for fixes just to reach the level of "barely acceptable".
You're still doing business in the US because there are still idiots that thing they're getting a deal. Boeing sure learned their lesson after their Dreamliner got grounded when the steaming pile of crap that HCL delivered was so bad they had to hire a whole new set of American developers to fix it. And yet, incredibly, after multiple failed projects like that which required total re-write to fix, HCL is somehow still getting work.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
There are still good jobs for American tech workers, in America.
Just wait until we hit the next economic bump.
When wages really get depressed, Americans will stop studying for tech. Then US employers will point to the declining enrollment and scream that Americans are too stupid, and lazy, to study tech subject. The only answer will be to import more visa workers.
The more visa workers the US lets in, the more US workers will feel out of place in their own work environments. Then it will get easier to offshore tech jobs for even bigger savings. Then, due to technology transfer, foreign companies will take over - this is already happening in China.
If you think things are bad now, just wait for about ten years.
A good amount of management salary is based on performence/ percentage of profits and stock options
That has been blatently untrue for years as boards practice "repricing" and back-dating of these ostensible stock options http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2007/1007/perspectives/p6.htm
Those practices of making stock options into can't-lose forms of compensation haved moved them squarely out of the category of "pay for performance".
However, he is correct that the system is fucked up. We desperately need to change our immigration laws back to allowing only talented ppl (i.e. skills that we need), their immediate family (spouse and kids), and kill off the H1-Bs.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Lets issue another 535 H-1B visas, take the first 535 people off of the streets in New Delhi and replace congress with them.
I bet they would come to every session, special investigation, ad-hoc committee and all have perfect attendance. They would probably do a MUCH BETTER job, since there would be little in-fighting, and they would not be indebted to some controlling political group.
Just a thought...
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Suppose you have a guy leading your Java dev team under the title "Java lead engineer". He is paid $100k pa. You want to cut this cost.
Here's how H1B's work: You decide there is a new role, "Key Java developer", you declare this has all the same skills but it's a "new" role. You declare that people doing this role (which you just invented) get paid $60k pa. Weirdly, no-one applies for a $100k pa job that only pays $60k pa. Damn, there is now a "skills shortage". The imaginary "skills shortage" means you can hire under H1B and pay $60k as you wished. An immigrant is glad to be paid $60k to do the job, and their visa is now legally under your control, so if they displease you then they aren't merely fired, they are thrown out of the country.
And that's how you replace a $100k pa salaried citizen with a $60k pa indentured servant.
At its best it's a nasty cynical way to hold down wage costs. At it's worst it's basically a milder modern day slavery.
Ah, a political bigot. Thanks for putting that up front and saving me the effort of reading any more. Next you'll be telling us how Obama caused your erectile dysfunction.
Which is a shame, because his post was spot on. We used to import the best and brightest, and now we import whoever has a pulse and is willing to do the job for 20% less money.
The people that we used to import had PhDs, and had knowledge that was rare in the workforce. Now, we import people who do grunt work for which any number of unemployed Americans have the skill and knowledge to do.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.