Slashdot Mirror
If Immigration Reform Is Dead, So Is Raising the H-1B Cap
dcblogs writes: In a speech Wednesday on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) declared immigration reform dead. He chastised and baited Republicans in Congress for blocking reform, and declared that winning the White House without the support of a growing Hispanic population will become mathematically impossible. "The Republican Presidential nominee, whoever he or she may be, will enter the race with an electoral college deficit they cannot make up," said Gutierrez. If he's right, and comprehensive immigration reform is indeed dead, then so too is the tech industry's effort to raise the cap on H-1B visas. Immigration reform advocates have successfully blocked any effort to take up the immigration issue in piecemeal fashion, lest business support for comprehensive reform peel away. Next year may create an entirely new set of problems for tech. If the Republicans take control of the Senate, the tech industry will face this obstacle: Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee could become its next chairman. He has been a consistent critic of the H-1B program through the years. "The H-1B program is so popular that it's now replacing the U.S. labor force," said Grassley, at one point.
H1B is merging with the us labor force, not replacing. The overwhelming H1B workers I know have either become citizens or are eager to do so.
Is there a problem here? (Other than congress failing to deal with illegal immigration?)
That's a euphemism for "Let the illegal immigrants (criminals) stay in the country".
It's surprising to be that the R's support lower H1B caps. I've never really heard a position from the Dem's on this. I'm not exactly educated on this issue, but it seems that H1B directly compete with my ability to be a programmer; and large companies are the ones mostly vying for the talent H1B brings in. With barriers to competition being as low as a cost of a computer, why would we want increased H1B? I know they say there's not enough US workers for the tech industry.. but do they really mean, there's not enough CHEAP tech workers? What's the Dem's position on this?
I made this: http://www.bpftpserver.com
Next year may create an entirely new set of problems for tech.
Problems like how to treat their employees like human beings rather than disposable trash?
The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
Now maybe the IT jobs will pay a little better and people over 40 can get a IT job.
Just say no to a cheaper, but less productive H-B1 visa holder
Is no way to go through life; it's what big labor has been doing for the past 30 years, and what most of the GOP has doing on social issues for at least as long.
Besides, the US can use a population infusion from abroad just to keep up with (or rather, not fall as far behind) China, India, and Brazil. Let's make these programs better, not try to curb them.
and telling talented people that can help businesses here to go fuck themselves and starve rather than allowing them to work for a living embodies everything their kind represents. They're racists so they don't like H1-B visa holders like the rest of the hateful morons in this country that don't support the program. Most of my cowokers are lazy racists so they constantly whine about the competition. In their world because they were born white and rich, it is their duty to make sure that brown people starve and die. That is the Republican way. That is why anyone that isn't racist supports raising the limits.
So a Democrat is so concerned about the possibility that the Republicans won't take over the Senate, or won't get into the White House; that he, out of the goodness of his heart, tells the Republicans what they need to do to win.
Reminds me of the phrase, "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts".
To have someone in the Senate that sees the H1B program as replacing the American workers, would be a refreshing change from the current leadership that looks for every opportunity to raise the H1B cap, for their K street buddies.
H1B is merging with the us labor force, not replacing. The overwhelming H1B workers I know have either become citizens or are eager to do so.
No, immigrants are replacing native workers. The Center For Immigration Studies just released a report showing that all employment growth since 2000 has gone to immigrants, legal and illegal. There is no general labor shortage.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
H-1Bs do not sabotage, unlike disgruntled Americans, nor are they security threats.
Instead they are the ones in a company that actually do work. There is a reason why Tata and Infosys do well... They make companies go and work around uneducated natives.
There is a reason for the H-1B demand, and it is not money, it is skill.
google cognizant. Lots of forum posts by their employees complaining that the company won't sponsor for a greencard. When you don't sponsor they have to leave. Company I work for refused to spend money on an h1b to continue sponsoring him , but brought in contractors who were L-2 visa holders at an india company instead. they don't want greencard holders. sponsorship costs a little money and once they get a greencard they can get market wages and will quit.
look if companies have been h1b dependent for this long its because the ones they sponsor are not getting converted to greencard and/or quitting when they do because the job sucked. they just want lower wages with worse terms. its so obvious.
rather odd that a guy from Iowa is the one guy seeing it. But go Grassley. If you just give them all greencards to start with.. then you will see the real demand for immigrant workers. cause they can quit.
My personal problem with all this talk of immigration reform has been the consistent desire by both parties to making the expansion of E-Verify a requirement of any bill. To sum it up, E-Verify is a way for the executive branch to block the employment of anyone that the database flags. Or more colloquially, you have to get permission from the president in order to feed and house your family.
One of the biggest problems with e-verify is the false negative rate. Even if you assume absolutely no malice, you can easily end up on the "no work list" by accident. Note, that's not a false positive - giving people permission to work when they aren't permitted, it is stopping people who have done nothing wrong in the slightest.
Requiring government permission to work is absolutely unacceptable policy in a free society. E-verify is a case where the cure is worse than the disease.
Employers: There is a shortage of good tech qorkers. Give us more H1 visas so we can get the work done.
Employees: These darn foreigners are taking our jobs! They work for much less than us people born in Amerika! (studys show about $13,000 less http://www.workpermit.com/news... )
The simplest solution is of course to offer unlimited H1 Visas - at the cost of $15,000, paid by the corporation, before the employee is hired.. (with inflation adjustments so this doesn't become abused).
This solves all real claims of not enough tech workers, it reduces the US budget, and gets rid of the financial incentive to refuse to hire perfectly good American tech workers.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The only country where illegal immigrants get to complain about the immigration policies.
no accounting for bad tastes
add to that the filing costs, legal fees, and costs associated with other compliance requirements and it's MORE expensive to hire H1B workers.
The real difference is that corporations can treat them like crap and and most of them will take it because it's better than what's back home.. Being an H1B worker is a kind of indentured servitude ... quit your job and go home(or get deported) ... get let go and go home (or get deported)
Have you deal with the call centers some time the same people are the H-1B's
http://thecarnivoreproject.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8345295c269e201a5116584a7970c-800wi
also forced OT pay for H1's As getting 60-80 hours an week work out them of with the idea if they get fired they get kicked out of the USA makes them better / cheaper then us workers.
or what about cost of $15,000 + they must be payed at least 100K + inflation / cost of living adjustments an year.
Dianne Feinstein should be charged with criminal negligence for writing the law that has been encouraging unaccompanied minors to travel to the US to cut in front of people who are in line for H1B's.
We have too many people in this country. Time to kick some out.
You bet those greedy US-government-buying corporations need more and more cheap labor. And future batches (years) of H1B people are being carved more carefully to completely assimilate American jobs. In the beginning they spoke more Indian-broken-English and were difficult to understand, the latest batches are focusing more on the language AND culture to assimilate. They are sending back work to home as well to actually be more productive than Americans can be with a single life to spend. We're doomed.
I think H1-B visa's should be reduced to zero, and the only way one can gain US citizenship is through marriage to another US citizen, have a parent who is already a US citizen, or have performed service for the US military in another country. I think the biggest problem in the US today, is that there's not enough investment in employees from employers these days. They just want to continue to make record profits with short term bottom lines.
Was going to rant, but basically it comes down to if Immigration reform is OK, then there needs to be welfare reform. Also the IRS should probably stop focusing on political groups and losing emails and do their job when it comes to illegals. Our country might have been built on immigration, and have a history of providing racially biased welfare when it concerned immigrants. But there was incentive for massive immigration then. We had a workforce to fill, and an economy to explode. Now immigration is just oursourcing American jobs to people for a cheaper price, where there is the workforce to supply the work.
There really is no need to import foreign work anymore as most of it can be done in their own country. India is a good example, where employees abroad are able to work remotely. Most companies know and do this due to VPN to sponsor company in US. That is why Virtual Desktops is a growth industry! As an added bonus, they can be paid in native wages for their local country. Why would companies bring employees to the US, except if a physical presence is needed, i.e. farm work., etc.?
I'm moving in two months to the US because I got a job wich pays about 200k a year. When I got the job, my wife started looking as well and got another job for about 170k a year. Me L1, her H1b.
I'm tired of reading here in slashdot people complain that they cannot get a job, or that 100k jobs don't exist, and than H1b workers go to the US to earn little money for jobs you wouldn't accept. My opinion is that if a foreign worker, who has to leave their place behind, has to learn a new language and work entirely on a foreign language and a whole lot of other things against their odds is taking your jobs away, you suck, there is no other explanation, sorry.
I'm probably going to be moderated troll, but you have to face the facts people, you have it too easy. I work on a company where we struggle recruiting, we search for the best candidates around the world, including the US, obviously. The candidates from the US are just not there, they don't exist. H1b candidates have hiring windows of just a couple of months a year, and still then, the rest of the year, when the only that we would be able to hire is people from the US, we don't get any. So we struggle to hire people to work in other countries until the H1b is ready, then they are transfered, we pay relocation to the first country and then another one to the US. This is fucking expensive, in your dreams a H1b is cheap.
What it's done is placed a carrot out there to bring on H1-B programmers instead of college hires.
With an H1-B the employer has a lot of power over the employee. They can't move jobs with out sponsorship. It's very easy to knock them out of the country. You can easily classify them in a lower pay band because they have very little recourse. These employees usually get little to know employee development (i.e. money).
With a college hire the employee can change jobs at will. You as the employer are expected to put money into employee development. And in the end they are likely to leave after a couple years to seek greener pastures.
So yes, the H1-B program has done tremendous harm to our country. I consult with many large companies and I haven't seen a intern in a programming department in half a decade. College hires are few and far between. It's a radical change from how things were when I started in the 90s. Simply put business have put their money into short term H1-B and Offshore workers. They stopped putting money into college hires. Now they whine they can't find qualifies workers because they stopped investing in Junior programmers a decade ago.
H1-B is horrible for tech workers *already here*.
Now wages can stay nice and high/fair without competition against barely competent immigrants.
Republicans don't actually need to win a presidential election. They just need to control enough of congress to block or hinder any kind of meaningful social progression. The Tea Party knows this, which is why they really don't care about fielding an "electable" candidate.
Visa, immigration laws, borders, they all are artificial blocks stopping the natural flow/equilibrium of offer and demand or resources. We know they never work in the long run. If people were free to work wherever they want and live wherever they want, the world would be soooo much better.
If foreign engineers aren't given H1B visas they will find work in their own (or another) country. The net result is that the jobs they might have taken in the US will be shipped overseas. In addition, we will not get the benefit of the new jobs or industries they may eventually create. For example, IC design used to be an American industry. Now it's mostly done in India and China. Not bringing in H1B workers did not save any american jobs.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us...
Familiar with the Dreyfus model of skills acquisition?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
Sure you are. It goes like this: Want to be an expert? First you need to to be proficient. Want to be proficient? First you need to have been competent. Want to be competent? First you need to have been an advanced beginner? Want to be an advanced beginner? First you'll need to be a novice. Want to be a novice? Great! Just get started learning by following the rules and doing what people around you do. Experience will let you unwind the stack.
Every profession maps to this. It's a type of career ladder. And what do H1-B's do? They seriously knock out the chances of getting a position on the lower rungs of the ladder. H1-B aren't taking me and other Gen-Xers jobs, they're taking the millennial's jobs. And the Baby Boomers who pissed & shit in the punch bowl that used to hold the American dream don't care enough to do anything about it. They started setting the tone for all this bullshit over 10 years ago and just like everything else, now we're left holding the bag.
Fuck class warfare. I think there's some serious generational knuckle dusting that needs to be applied to those in power in BOTH political parties regarding what's happened on their watch to whole notion of careers they've been selling to the rest of us.
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
He chastised and baited Republicans in Congress for blocking reform, and declared that winning the White House without the support of a growing Hispanic population will become mathematically impossible.
When that happens the country will no longer be worth living in and you'll be seeing white flight like you've never seen it before, except maybe from South Africa. The fate of the Republican party will be the least of anyone's worries.
According to a major new report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), net employment growth in the United States since 2000 has gone entirely to immigrants, legal and illegal. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, CIS scholars Steven A. Camarota and Karen Zeigler found that there were 127,000 fewer working-age natives holding a job in the first quarter of 2014 than in 2000, while the number of immigrants with a job was 5.7 million above the 2000 level.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/381362/study-all-employment-growth-2000-went-immigrants-nro-staff
if there wasn't so much Automation and off shoring going on. More importantly, those studies look at _total_ # of jobs, not Job quality. The reason there's a shortage of non-immigrant farm labor is that they pay them less than minimum wage and rely on their illegal status to keep them quiet. Also nearly all of the job growth in America is in low paying service sector jobs like fast food and customer service while the middle class manufacturing, tech and office jobs have been going off shore and to H1-Bs
But hey, one of the best things about armchair economics is you can declare anything you don't agree with a fallacy.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
At least if we mean Republican Politicians, which is implied by the context. There's several cases where Republican leadership got caught saying they want to crash the economy so that people will blame the democrats. There's several (mostly on the Tea Party fringes) who believe the democrats policies are so damaging to the country that it'd be better to wreak the economy than to risk those policies.
So yeah, Grandparent's kinda trolling, but compared to what the Repubs are doing it's small potatoes.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
As a son of an immigrant, canada will take you!
We make it easy for tech people to come here.
Again I'm not judging but hey if you want to come here and make our country stronger we will take you.
The employer, in your proposal, would need to pay the fee EVERY YEAR (since the pay difference is in annual salary) PLUS there would need to be an add-on "servitude fee" (perhaps $100K annually) for the immensely valuable benefit the foreign worker provides of being "compliant" and "fully-dependent" and an add-on "intimidation fee" (again, probably several hundred $K per year) for the effect these employees have on all their American citizen colleagues, who are (effectively) told "don't ask for raises, better benefits, better conditions, etc and don't take your vacation and sick time because you too can be replaced by an immigrant"
Wages for U.S. citizens have been flat or declined (if you leave-out the "investor class" in NYC) for the entire time this current decade-long immigration wave has been underway. This is historically NOT NORMAL for the U.S. where each generation has always done better than the preceding generation. There are fewer non-immigrant American citizens with full-time jobs today than there were in the year 2000 - a COMPLETE perversion of what is the normal trend in the USA.
If there was ANY shortange of workers in ANY field in the USA, then wages in that field would be rising - and in response people would be re-training themselves to move into that field and college kids would be moving to those majors (that's basic free-market economics and has been the historic pattern).
Anybody who [1] knows no history [2] ignores all evidence [3] posts in every damn thread blaming the same party for everything, no matter WHO actually did it is a complete idiot.... and in this case obviously the sort Obama counted on for two election cycles
I don't want the cap raised. I want it lowered.
Overstaying a visa, a common way of being in the US illegally, is a civil issue.
However, that's not the case for border jumpers, as imprisonment is clearly part of the potential punishment.
8 U.S. Code 1325 - Improper entry by alien
Any alien who
(1) enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers, or
(2) eludes examination or inspection by immigration officers, or
(3) attempts to enter or obtains entry to the United States by a willfully false or misleading representation or the willful concealment of a material fact, shall, for the first commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both, and, for a subsequent commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18, or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both.
Did you bring your child or any other aliens with you when you jumped to border? Criminal.
8 U.S. Code 1324 - Bringing in and harboring certain aliens
(a) Criminal penalties
(1)
(A) Any person who—
(i) knowing that a person is an alien, brings to or attempts to bring to the United States in any manner whatsoever such person at a place other than a designated port of entry or place other than as designated by the Commissioner, regardless of whether such alien has received prior official authorization to come to, enter, or reside in the United States and regardless of any future official action which may be taken with respect to such alien;
(ii) knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, transports, or moves or attempts to transport or move such alien within the United States by means of transportation or otherwise, in furtherance of such violation of law;
(iii) knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place, including any building or any means of transportation;
(iv) encourages or induces an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be in violation of law; or
shall be punished as provided in subparagraph (B).
(B) A person who violates subparagraph (A) shall, for each alien in respect to whom such a violation occurs—
(i) in the case of a violation of subparagraph (A)(i) or (v)(I) or in the case of a violation of subparagraph (A)(ii), (iii), or (iv) in which the offense was done for the purpose of commercial advantage or private financial gain, be fined under title 18, imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both;
(ii) in the case of a violation of subparagraph (A)(ii), (iii), (iv), or (v)(II), be fined under title 18, imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both;
(iii) in the case of a violation of subparagraph (A)(i), (ii), (iii), (iv), or (v) during and in relation to which the person causes serious bodily injury (as defined in section 1365 of title 18) to, or places in jeopardy the life of, any person, be fined under title 18, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both; and
(iv) in the case of a violation of subparagraph (A)(i), (ii), (iii), (iv), or (v) resulting in the death of any person, be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, fined under title 18, or both.
And once an illegal gets here, assuming they've avoided the criminal penalties of these and many other statutes, their whole life here is one long string of criminal actions, starting with that first job:
US Code says [Title 18, Part I, Chapter 47, Section 1015] "Whoever knowingly makes any false statement or claim that he is, or at any time has been, a citizen or national of the United States, with the intent to obtain on behalf of himself, or any other person, any Federal or State benefit or service, or to engage unlawfully in employment in the United States...Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both."
Sure, let's build some of those. We can keep these pitiful refugees there until it is safe for them to return home.
Freedom of entry into a welfare state is not supportable.
We can resume the free flow of "workers".
That is all.
Here is an idea, make H1B permanent residenets able to change jobs everywhere. Sounds counter intuitive but it would give them a better bargining position if they're not captive.
The DotFogey Network is a new online community and services support hub to assist over-40 American tech industry and IT professionals cope with institutional ageism and H1B driven job loss. Request an invitation to become a charter member. http://goo.gl/GJgHXf
What they mean by shortage is there is not enough tech workers working for half or less than the going rate. My InfoSys students cannot find a job but the H1-B visa applicants have one before they even get here.
It's worthless.
I haven't met a single H1-B visa holder that was in any way, shape or form better than a native tech employee, be it programmer, technician or system's admin.
The hype behind H1-B visas is made up of 100% falsehoods. The program just keeps damned good American techs out of jobs, while allowing shit-for-brains to step in and fuck up everything on a daily basis.
End corporate personage.
End money as speech.
End the H1-B visa program.
End outsourcing of American jobs.
Don't allow any data about American's to leave our shores, ever - in any way, shape or form.
Then, and only then, will America start to prosper again.
No, no, no.
$ 150,000 - for 6 months - for an H1-B visa holder - paid directly into the Social Security fund.
Then and only then, might it be worth it - because then only the best and brightest would even be considered, instead of the sniveling snots that are less intelligent than my mucous membranes that we get today.
So, let me see if I have this right:
If you don't let more Hispanics in to vote, the Hispanics already here will vote against you.
Why, exactly, should the US increase the racist vote?
Seastead this.
New Spain/Mexicans NEVER OWNED ANY OF THE USA. They CLAIMED IT, but never had more than .5M ppl here EVER, while the native Americans were over 100 million. With your argument, then Japan, Germany, Iraq, Afghanistan, South Korea, etc belong to the United states. After all, we had a small population in those places fighting against portions of the population. Heck, we fought far fewer of them, then what Mexicans were fighting. Mexicans were TRUE invaders into America.
Get over your stupidity and crack open a real book.
The ONLY ones that have claims on this are the North American Indians who were busy fighting Mexicans from the south (and wining which is why Mexico ONLY had forts and nobody outside of them; or rather, none that lived for long), and did not see what was coming from the east.
Many studies have looked at this over and over, but all note the fact that the studies are based on loads of assumptions. PEW, who is biased towards illegals, came out with a study that shows that even under the BEST situation, that the illegals barely cover their federal costs, BUT, the states lose BIG TIME on it. And when looking at federal costs, it did not take into the fact that higher paying jobs taken from American, who paid into the system.
SO, no, you do NOT deserve insightful on that. Not even close.
see, fools like you are the ones stopping this from being solved. Right there, indicates how idiotic you really are.
A smart compromise would be:
1) in all of the following, if you have a violent crime, or are associated with gangs, you are out of here. There will be an exception in 2 to this, but otherwise, you go.
2) if you have served, you get immediate citizenship unless you had a violent crime/association with gangs AFTER serving (if happened prior to service, it is ignored). If you are married/have kids, they also get immediate citizenship. If a recruiter promised you that other family members CAN STAY, and some amount of proof shown of that, then it will be honored. Note that there are about 5000 men/women that fit this bill.
3) if you have been in our schools for at least 5 years, and either continue to attend them, or have GED/better, than you can stay. However, to earn citizenship, they must do service. It can be military, or say vista. BUT, they have to do more than just education.
4) if you are the parent who brought somebody from above, and live here (i.e. your kid did not bring you here, but you brought the kid here), then you get a 'pink card'. Again, no violent crimes/drugs/gang assocaitions. You can work here, you can have unemployment, BUT, you do not get Welfare, SSI, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. And es. you NEVER GET CITIZENSHIP. IOW, you can stay, but you do not participate in the social benefits, but do have to pay into them.
5) all others must go.
6) to ensure that all others go and that future ones do not want to come. we need to prevent businesses from hiring illegals either directly or indirectly. That means that all businesses have to e-verify. In addition, all business must check that the other one has used e-verify. If not, they can not do business. This is designed to stop what is basically mass out-sourcing in the construction field. Companies like Shea, Richmond, etc. hire sub-contractors of which many are nothing more than fronts for groups of illegals who will send the money out of the nation. The penalty must be SEVERE to the company AND TO HR and HIRING MANAGER.
7) stop all gov. subsidies to illegals. No more free education. No more unemployment. No more welfare, even if you have a child here. The ONLY one is if you go to hospital for medical emergency, then you will be treated. However, if you do not have a legal photo ID (state ID, passport, etc), then You will be fingerprinted and checked by ICE. If your stay in emergency is short (i.e. just a cold, or bug), and your fingerprint checks out as illegal (i.e. you were caught once already), then police will be called to pick you up and turned over to ICE.
8) again, penalty for businesses hiring illegals must be SEVERE to the company, along with HR and HIring Manager. In addition, any state that gives more than medical emergency support, will have their federal money taken from them.
THIS IS HOW YOU STOP THIS BS. THIS IS A SIMPLE COMPROMISE THAT YOU FOOLS COULD PRESENT AND FORCE THE DEMS INTO A FUCKING CORNER. But instead, all you want is to have a 100% WIN. IOW, you would rather fuck over America than 'lose'.
With all of the engineers looking for work, why do they need more H1B? Cheap labor, same reason the Chamber of Commerce pushes open borders even with few low skill jobs available.
They posture protecting domestic labor but at the command of their fatcat donors, push to increase caps in sneaky addition to other legislation..
...then I'm voting for republicans until it's dead.
H1-B aren't taking me and other Gen-Xers jobs, they're taking the millennial's jobs. And the Baby Boomers who pissed & shit in the punch bowl that used to hold the American dream don't care enough to do anything about it.
It's not just that. The Millenials have mostly drunk the immigration kool-aid sold to them by their corporate and political masters, and seem to be mostly in favor of open borders, meanwhile they advocate this from their parents' basements because they can't afford to move out on their own.
This country is completely screwed, and it's pretty scary to think what it'll look like in 20 years.
...
According to BLS reports, we have many US citizen roofers who are unemployed, carpenters who are unemployed, steel-workers who are unemployed... We have many US citizen tool & die makers, precision machinists, chemical engineers, biologists, chemists,... who are unemployed or under-employed. We have millions of US citizen software product developers, systems administrators, network administrators, operating systems developers, mechanical engineers... who are unemployed or under-employed. We have US citizen biophysicists who are under-employed. We have US citizens certified to be teachers (including STEM teachers), lawyers, paralegals, real estate brokers and sales-people who are unemployed or under-employed.
Altogether, each month over the last 5 years or so that I've been paying particular attention, we have been short about 29M to 32M jobs, according to BLS employment/population ratio data. And the USA has had a jobs dearth for the last 60 years according to economists such as Lester Thurow.
The H-1B laws, regulations and practices have never had effective minimal standards such as to select and attract the genuinely best and brightest to become US citizens. Early on, applicants were required to prove that they owned property or had other anchors to their countries of origin, to ensure that they would go back, but those were quickly eliminated when it was converted to "dual intent". The wordings of the laws and regulations, and unguarded statements from those who lobbied for the H-1B and its several expansions and loosenings make clear that the purpose is an "infinite" supply of cheap, young, pliant, low-skilled foreign labor with flexible ethics. In the process, a very few* bright people were brought in, but that is incidental (*less than 8% of H-1B recipients according to some analysts, less than 2% according to others).
E-3, F with OPT, H-1B, and L visa grantees are not only directly abused to displace perfectly capable and willing US citizens, but indirectly to displace them, to facilitate both domestic bodyshopping in addition to the more obvious cross-border bodyshopping, and to facilitate off-shoring through transfer of knowledge and intellectual property, in addition to performing middleman functions to keep off-shoring functioning.
...
Yes, but I can only think of 1 or 2 politicians (maybe Jeff Sessions) who favor immigration reform. Most prefer to keep on making the visa and immigration laws worse and worse -- doubling down again and again on the bad they and their predecessors have done over the last century.
As to founding new businesses, I can't see that happening until a lot of the licensing, taxing, etc., are eliminated... but, instead, state legislatures have tended to require more and more. (Here, the government agency in charge of business and professional licensing has been spending some of their money on ads, telling people to only do business with licensed individuals.)
But then some of that is perception. Perhaps, out of ignorance or whatever, the immigrant is more likely to go ahead to start a "black-market" business and be able to make a go of it for a while before the governments hunt them down and demand protection payments (and then ask for and get "forgiveness"). Those stronger (i.e. not yet eroded by Great Society and other government programs) family ties and investment round-tables (by whatever name) can also boost likelihood of business founding as compared to an nth generation US citizen with little personal savings who feels overwhelmed by the crushing government burdens (town/city, county, state, federal).
...
"the company made a good-faith effort to fill the positions with Americans, but wasn't able to find people with the needed skills."
I must congratulate you on not using/abusing the transparent weasel-word "qualified".
Tell us about this "good-faith effort":
Did they put the hiring manager's e-mail address and desk-phone number in the half-page or quarter-page display ads in newspapers across the country and in trade publications, the way employers did before H-1B?
Did they include them in their postings on a dozen or more job boards? (A lot of firms place job ads on sites, either without an e-mail address and phone number belonging to a manager, or at a site which blocks such contact information from job-seekers.)
Did they offer to fly candidates in from Maine, Florida, Hawaii, Alaska, Kansas... for interviews, and were the executives and mangers ready and willing to cover the hotel, rental car, and meal costs the way employers used to do before H-1B?
Did they offer relocation assistance the way employers did before H-1B? Did they offer to buy the new-hires' homes and re-sell them at the company's risk the way better employers did before H-1B (some firms offered this service on a contract basis to other firms)? Did they offer coaching or assistance in dealing with movers?
Did they offer 2-16 weeks of new-hire training (and 2-4 weeks per year of retained employee training) the way employers did before H-1B?
If applicable, did they offer to sponsor the new employee for necessary security clearances?
Were able and willing candidates' info buried in their "applicant management system's" black-hole data-base, never to be seen by human eyes again?
Were they actually offering market compensation (not just a bodyshopper's hourly rate, but total package of salary, insurance, paid holidays off, paid vacation off, sabbatical, company gym, company cafeteria, training, tuition and fee and text reimbursement, company thrift plan, credit union membership, on-site or near-site day-care, stock-share grant, stock options, IRA, Keogh, intrapreneurship grants, flexible hours... whatever)?
Were the "needed skills" actually *needed*, or were there a lot of "nice to haves" listed as "required"? Did they describe an actual human being, or were they seeking a purple squirrel kind of candidate to do -- for one below-market wage -- the jobs appropriate to a team of 5 or more specialists? Or was it merely a very peculiar niche?
...
There are several fictions rolled into such claims.
How local is "local"? "Oooh, we couldn't find someone who was already living within 4 blocks, so obviously we had to take someone from 5K-6K miles away, instead. Surely, you didn't expect us to advertise the job across the 3 neighboring states, let alone across the country, did you."
"Qualified", as in "an important qualification for this job is to be a pliant indentured guest-worker much less likely to jump ship to another employer or blow the whistle on unethical activities than a free US citizen willing to stand up for himself". "Qualified" as in, "We must have a purple squirrel (software designer + algorithms specialist + software developer + data-base analyst and architect + graphic artist + accessibility specialist + internationalization expert + PR/marketing/sales specialist + mathematician or physicist or chemist or pharmacist or economist or historian or mechanical engineer or psychologist or 12th century literature expert or utilities app area expert or...) for this job! A team of 6 or 12 collaborating specialists just won't do."
"Surely you didn't expect us to offer average or below-average market pay and benefits for someone with well-above average intelligence, creativity and industry, with the expectation that he work hellacious hours did you?"
...
Certainly... as long as by "in an area" you mean within a radius of 2K miles or so. "Industrial automation" covers a lot of ground, from citrus juice processors near Orlando, to heavy-metal manufacturing in TN, KY, OH, IN, IL, to metal refining and such in PA, OH, MT.. to consumer products manufacturing in OH, NJ, KY, TN, KS, GA, PA...
But with the surplus of STEM workers we've had over the last 30 years or so, old clusters like Route 128 in MA and the Chippewa Falls, St. Paul, Minneapolis super-computing hot-bed, or even the mini-clusters around Detroit, MI and Dayton, OH and Cleveland, OH and Rochester, NY and Kansas City, KS and Oklahoma City and Ponca City, OK and Ft. Huachuca, AZ... have dumped tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of STEM pros into unemployment and under-employment.
I met people in San Diego who said they did embedded programming, and H-1B guest-workers there who said they were data-base experts who were either so shy of industrial espionage or incompetent to talk shop. There was supposedly a biotech cluster there, but you'd never know it from recruiting efforts. Ditto with the NJ pharmaceutical cluster. US citizens need not apply.
I'm positive H-1B is a scam. I'm optimistic that reform (i.e. reduction, moratorium; institution of reasonable standards) can be achieved.
...
In practice, it has always meant a little less than local market compensation for the average worker doing this particular kind of work (and, yes, job titles and such can be and have often been gamed*). Sometimes and in some places in the USA, it has meant 2% below local market compensation; other times and in other places in the USA, it has meant 35% below local market compensation. (And we must remember that L visas have no local market compensation or "prevailing wage" requirement; they can be paid at the levels of their country of origin.)
But, the H-1B grantees, if we are to believe the lobbyists, are each and all "best and brightest". And someone who is "best" or "brightest" should be earning a significant premium over the average. Since the very best software developers have been found to produce as much as 10 or 12 times as much value as the mediocre, then the premium commanded by one of the "best" or "brightest" should be as high as 10 times the compensation of the average.
But what has been found? Those H-1B grantees who were also sponsored for green cards (i.e. most likely the better ones), were earning 0.001% above the median. Not 10 times the median, not 5 times the median, not 130% of the median.
So, absent other more or less objective measures of the skill levels of the individual H-1B grantees (IQ, SAT, ACT, LSAT, MCAT..., increased value of stock granted as part of the pay package), perhaps a 150% of median or average would be reasonable. But, once again, what do we see in practice? If pay is a few thousand dollars BELOW the average for new (most likely lower-skilled wet-behind-the-ears, inexperienced) college grads, i.e. if pay is merely $60K, many standards for H-1B grantees and their employers are waived under current law.
( * For instance, the rules allow, or at least allowed, e.g. a cross-border bodyshopper to pay all H-1B grantees the same, below-market compensation, so long as they were all paid the same and no US citizens were employed at that location at a higher compensation. And this was even the case when an employer dumped all of his US citizen employees doing the same work at a higher compensation level in favor of contracting with the bodyshopper. The new, below market compensation, because it is the same for all of the bodyshop's employees doing that kind of work in that place, is the "prevailing wage".
Domestic bodyshoppers have also pulled the equivalent of this scam; negotiate a deal; employer dumps all his people in a particular kind or kinds of work; replace them with cheaper bodies shopped who are paid significantly less by the bodyshopper (in hourly wage, benefits, training, etc.), and charges original employer slightly less than prior total costs of employing people; the difference going into the pockets of the execs of both firms. Voila, the new "prevailing wage" is less than the local market compensation used to be. Some people with few alternatives will absorb the cuts in a lowered quality of living and hire on at the bodyshop; others will be unemployed or under-employed for extended periods, will seek greener pastures elsewhere...)
Is H1B same as Affirmative Action?
Casteism