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IEEE: New H-1B Bill Will "Help Destroy" US Tech Workforce
dcblogs writes New legislation being pushed by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) to hike the H-1B visa cap is drawing criticism and warnings that it will lead to an increase in offshoring of tech jobs. IEEE-USA said the legislation, introduced by a bipartisan group of lawmakers on Tuesday, will "help destroy" the U.S. tech workforce with guest workers. Other critics, including Ron Hira, a professor of public policy at Howard University and a leading researcher on the issue, said the bill gives the tech industry "a huge increase in the supply of lower-cost foreign guest workers so they can undercut and replace American workers." Hira said this bill "will result in an exponential rise of American jobs being shipped overseas." Technically, the bill is a reintroduction of the earlier "I-Square" bill, but it includes enough revisions to be considered new. It increases the H-1B visa cap to 195,000 (instead of an earlier 300,000 cap), and eliminates the cap on people who earn an advanced degree in a STEM (science, technology, education and math) field. Hatch, who is the No. 2 ranking senator in the GOP-controlled chamber, was joined by co-sponsors Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) in backing the legislation."
See? They do work together! They are a team! The majority wants this. Don't even try to argue with them.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
They're like workers in the US (and everywhere):
Precious, precious few talented and useful ones, hordes of shitty ones
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Considering the way China and India are growing, many of the brightest graduates that are turned out from state-subsidized universities are better employed at home.
There was a time in the last 2-3 decades where a highly qualified engineer from these countries had no choice but to emigrate to the states to have a career. This is increasingly no longer necessary. Making it harder for people to move to the US will have the beneficial effect of halting the brain drain in these countries and keeping the brightest minds home.
Explain to me how allowing more foreign workers to come to the US under H1B visas will increase offshoring? Surely not allowing people to work here is going to cause work to be sent overseas, not the other way around.
Every H1B worker I've met (including myself) wants to get a green card so they can live and work in the US permanently. At which point they are just as much part of the US tech workforce as a citizen who was born and raised here.
for senators? They may be cheap enough for ordinary people to bribe.
It's using the phrase "offshoring" to mean Americans losing jobs to cheaper foreign workers in general. Probably because by now everyone understands that "offshoring" == "bad".
It doesn't change the fact that the basic point (the death of American IT) is correct. If you can bring anyone in with an "Advanced STEM" degree then India will just open more schools to rubber stamp 'em. Race to the bottom.
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Being anti-H1B isn't protectionism.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Did any of the other areas have a congress that was actively importing cheaper labor?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
US Jobs Policy:
Step 1: Export tech jobs overseas to increase corporate profit
Step 2: Throw all low-skill immigrants back across the border
Step 3: Now US tech workers can get jobs doing lawn work, picking crops, and nannying.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
This has nothing to do with protectionism. Nobody is saying not let foreign software into the country.
As for foreign labor, I have no objection to bringing foreign labor in. My objection is kicking that labor out after it has gained experience. If there really was a tech worker shortage, these are the very workers we'd want to stay.
What this does is create a pool of offshore labor that's familiar with the work being done *here*. The obvious purpose is to use the immigration system to assist companies that want to relocate work overseas. And there's nothing special about American tech people; anything we can do can be done in India or Ukraine. That's fine, but I don't think the US government should be in the business of making it attractive for companies to move jobs overseas.
It's something so irrational (if we were to assume for the moment that the US government works for the welfare of the American people) there isn't even a word for it. It's the mirror image of protectionism. It's self-predation.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Yeah more people get fucked to make billionaires richer.
Yes. Just like here. Except less expensive. So actually not just like here. See how that works?
Soon the American worker WILL cost less, if he or she wants a fucking job.
Isn't unrestrained capitalism great ?
It sure is, if you're at the top of the pyramid.
/
"Do the legislators really believe that, in doing this, US tech workers won't be negatively effected?"
Of course not. They really believe that, in doing this, they the legislators will be positively affected by means of their corporate patrons.
Keep people in fear of losing their job at any time so they are forced to act grateful for any low wage and position an employer deigns to give them. Fuck the people responsible for this legislation.
Politicians do the bidding of those who pay bribes
That's only true if the people watching (i.e. the voters) aren't paying attention. If we got together and voted out anyone who accepted bribes, then politicians would learn quickly.
If voters actively looked for the campaign platform of the person they voted for and ignored ads, then politicians wouldn't need contributions.
But we live in a world where people don't take democracy seriously, but vote anyway. Welcome to democracy, we (collectively) get what we deserve.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Self inflected wounds cannot be blamed on the weapon. The American people did it to themselves by electing these assholes. If the people who don't like this wanted to avoid it, they would have either voted or voted for someone else. You can't say both parties would do it, because an active electorate would have ensured someone who met the needs was on the ballot. If you are Democrat, make sure a Democrat who don't do this gets nominated. Likewise, Republican. Or find an independent.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
When management started to look at IT people as strictly a cost center. No more training. No more enough people to do the work. No more. It's long overdue. We really need to consider unionizing. Otherwise it's just going to get worse.
( Being anti-H1B isn't protectionism.) Especially when other countries aren't just throwing their gates open to Americans. Last time I showed up to do a project in Canada I had to lie about the scope and they were clearly less than thrilled about my arrival. All developed countries that I'm aware of are at least moderately, if not highly cautious of allowing foreign workers. A playing field that isn't totally level, in this case is better than the alternative. We're busy telling our young people to go to college and get STEM degrees. We owe it to them to protect the jobs we are telling them are there and for which they are needed. I'm all for a robust global economy were all workers can earn a living in dignity, but not at the cost of losing the American middle class.
Yeah, majority of campaign contribution dollars...
Table-ized A.I.
"Uh, a federal bill giving benefits for importing low cost workers isn't free market, dumbass."
No, it's a federal bill taking out limitations for importing low cost workers. It IS free market, dumbass.
This article lists some H-1B employer fees. Let's increase that by $50,000 per year per "guest" employee. That should cut down on the number of employees who are brought here in order to save on wages.
However, some non-American hiring managers will want to hire only people from their own countries, because of feelings of patriotism for their countries. So we should have a law that states that "guest" hiring managers must hire at least 50% Americans, and that each year, the lowest starting salary of Americans that he/she hires must be higher than the highest starting salary of the non-Americans that he/she hires.
More importantly, isn:t capitalism great when you have non-monetary incentives to hold over people? The ability to deport workers works much better then benifits packages, and all those pesky US workers who can do things like change jobs and thus have competition are just too expensive.
Well, considering that I don't have a job, 65,000 seems like 65,000 too many. Since the current unemployment rate is about 6% (not including people who have fallen off the chart due to not being able to find a job within a certain amount of time.), and 193 million people between the ages of 18 and 64, it looks like we need to fill another 11.5 million jobs with American unemployed people before we allow any H1bs in.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Why don't you link one or two of these diploma mills? I might as well go get my masters degree so I can compete on equal footing with the H1bs.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
No it isn't. HIB is a slave status. Being against a slave status is not protectionism. It's classic American patriotism (Common Sense).
You are trying to conflate immigration in general with the HIB underclass status and they simply aren't the same thing.
If they're worth importing, they're worth treating right.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
That's funny because I have personally managed to out earn an H1B with a PhD (if not several) simply because of my status as a full citizen. I am free to bargain with an employer. I don't have to worry about deportation if I am too demanding.
Now that's the "good side" of H1Bs (abused talent).
The bad side is mediocre no talent sleazebags that are just used to lower labor costs. I've seen that variation on the H1B system as well.
Your "situation" could be much better. You could have an actual green card.
Also, cut out this "team of lawyers" crap. This makes you sound like such an obvious shill. I'm familiar with that end of things too. You're so full of it.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
This also fails as a "free market" because the labor that's being undercut isn't able to move where costs are lower. It's not a "free market" if corporations can import talent but individuals can't move out of the resulting disaster area.
If Republicans destroy Ohio, I can move to Pennsylvania.
I don't have that option with this particular "free market".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You forgot the fact that the cost of goods and services will never drop in half to match the salary drops. That equals profit. Why would they drop the profit?
Does apple drop the cost of the goods because they use cheap slave labor instead of making the products in the expensive US?
So enjoy your 10$ loaf of bread. It now only takes you 3 weeks to make that.
love the taste, hate the texture
It's hard to understand how disconnected they are from us and our daily concerns. They're representing their interests and the interests of everyone they know and meet. Senators, and the people who hang out with senators, don't have to worry about being outsourced. "Outsourcing" is something that makes people's business more successful and their bank accounts bigger. Why would you oppose it?
Or, if you're feeling cynical:
They're connected now, if they weren't already before. When the US turns into a third world shithole because of their actions, they'll be the feudal lords or safely relocate to a less distasteful locale. (Or at least they hope that's the case. Or they know they'll be dead before any sort of collapse and don't care what their lifestyle costs the chattel.) If they aren't so pampered and surrounded by sycophants to see the outcomes of their actions, they're just-world believers and think the displaced workers probably deserved being laid off.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
The problem is not necessarily foreign workers, but foreign workers that we don't actually need. Corporations are lying through their teeth when they say they can't find local workers to do the same work here. These are not all foreign workers showing up to do advanced R&D, most of them are doing very basic grunt work much of the time only they do it a lot cheaper. These are basic mainstream jobs, but the rationale being used to push this is that these are highly specialized jobs that are so arcane and rare that we need to import an additional 195,000 of them or else the economy will collapse.
If it really is so very difficult to find American workers then one would logically expect the corporations to pay MORE than the prevailing wage in an attempt to find these amazing workers. Everything would be fine I think if the person next to you who's entering data into ActiveDirectory is paid double your salary because there was no one anywhere in the country who is skilled enough to do that job. But that's not at all what happens. Congress is not raising the numbers because there are so many above average workers who are so good that we're willing to pay a premium in salary to recruit, they're raising the numbers because on average they'll be cheaper than local workers.
Of course there are exceptions. But foreign workers should be the cream of the crop, above average, for jobs requiring actual skills that are proven to be in short supply, and paid at *least* the average prevailing wage and benefits. There should be severe penalties for any company which falsely states that they can not find workers already within the country who are able to do these jobs.
What did you say when shiny gadget manufacturer #1 announced that workers had better learn to "run against the robots"? And when shiny gadget manufacturer #2 exploited underage workers in dangerous sweatshops in China? I haven't read any comments about "unions turning the IT sector into another Detroit" on this page, but instead I now learn that government regulation is in "the true spirit of America, because it's againt slavery". If selling stuff in Spain but paying taxes to the British Virgin Islands is not only moraly acceptable, but even a duty, because it's in the interest of the investors, then why would hiring IT developers from abroad be any different?
Capitalism is about making money, and that's it. It's not a philosophy, it won't make your lives better by itself. And rightly so. It is a government's job to ensure that the interests of those making money proceed in harmony with the interests of a nation as a whole; to which extent is matter of debate. When the government turns out as an expression of those with the most money (bi-partisan agreements...) rather than the choice of informed voters, we'd better learn to love the "invisible hand" and wait for its positive effects on the economy to trickle down on us.
That article expresses one theory. Of course it doesn't mention the fact that the economy in Texas has been besting the national average since long before the shale boom. Since right about time we started electing Republican governors, of turns out.
But saying it doesn't make it so. You cite no metric, or evidence, or source to support - or even clearly define - your claim.
Lets take a look to see if this is real, or good old Texas bragging.
Since the current Republican hold on the governorship began with Bush in 1995, lets look at an actual chart of Texas relative performance. What we see is that the ratio of the Texas per capital GDP to that of the overall U.S. sank after 1997 (it did worse than the rest of the nation) and did not recover to its same relative economic performance until 2010, with the recovery occurring after 2006 --- or just at the time oil shale arrested Texas's declining oil production.
So no, your claim is a fantasy.
I charted the data and like looked anxiously to see which party had better economic growth. It turned out that both parties had years of high growth and low, all over the place. The chart made one thing very obvious, though. Economic growth had ALWAYS improved under every Republican administration, and always got worse under every Democrat administration's budgets. No exceptions.
My, my, my. What a nice little story. Full of angst, with a surprise, and to you, heart-warming ending.
It is a shame we have only your word that you didn't just, you know, make this all up. You cite no specific figures for any administration, or overall figures, that could be easily checked to see if you did any of the math correctly. I guess you figured that everyone would have to perform (I won't say "replicate") the whole analysis to check to see if you aren't just blowing smoke.
Problem is, lots of other people have done this exact same analysis, and consistently come to the opposite conclusion. Just try Googling it. Look for example at the Conservative British economics journal The Economist. Their analysis is interesting because they find it embarrassing to admit and look for ways to turn a silk purse into a pig's ear.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj