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Senator Who Calls STEM Shortage a Hoax Appointed To Head Immigration
dcblogs (1096431) writes The Senate's two top Republican critics of temporary worker immigration, specifically the H-1B and L-1 visas, now hold the two most important immigration posts in the Senate. They are Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who heads the Senate's Judiciary Committee, and his committee underling, Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who was appointed by Grassley on Thursday to head the immigration subcommittee. Sessions was appointed one week after accusing the tech industry of perpetuating a "hoax" by claiming there is a shortage of qualified U.S. tech workers. "The tech industry's promotion of expanded temporary visas — such as the H-1B — and green cards is driven by its desire for cheap, young and immobile labor," wrote Sessions, in a memo he sent last week to fellow lawmakers. Sessions, late Thursday, issued a statement about his new role as immigration subcommittee chairman, and said the committee "will give voice to those whose voice has been shut out," and that includes "the voice of the American IT workers who are being replaced with guest workers."
To the outside world, my manager says there is a shortage of qualified labor. In managerial meetings, he states openly that his intention is to replace all new openings with H-1B workers for budgetary reasons. Entirely coincidentally, during that time it has become less and less pleasant to work here, and also coincidentally, all of the attrition last year was amongst regular (non-H-1B) employees.
What I take away from this is that "qualified" in this context means "willing to work for third world wages and no benefits".
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Cisco is still here in California. This outsourcing scare is just like the terrorism boogeyman, an excuse for them to bring in more Democrat voters (or so they think). Companies are not going to relocate everything to India; does anyone really think the corporate executives are going to pack their bags, sell their mansions, and cruise in their megayachts over to Mumbai and set up new lives over there? You can't run a company with the executives in one country and all the operations somewhere else.
the American Competitiveness in the 21st Century Act permits H-1B portability, provided another employer is willing to sponsor the H-1B worker. claims that H-1Bs are indentured servitude are entirely baseless.
The company I work for has fairly good diversity. The company is a chip company with a number of software teams for things like compilers, SDKs, drivers, the Linux kernel, bootloaders, etc. While it isn't 50:50 there are a lot of women developers and while the majority are indian there are a fair number of caucasian and other minorities as well. We hire what we can get. We have positions that have been open for months and the majority of those that we interview are of indian descent. We have a hard time finding good engineers, the key word being good. I have interviewed a lot of engineers of all nationalities who I do not consider competent. The competent ones usually have multiple offers.
The problem with the H1Bs are that they are abused by companies like Infosys and for less skilled engineers and IT people. Some companies also seem to have an inordinate number of H1Bs like Cisco. I'm of the firm belief that we need more good engineers and that we need a lot more people graduating from college with degrees in science and engineering.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Everything Warren spouts has been contrary to everything the Dems have been doing since the mid-2000s. She is no more representative of Democrats than Ron Paul was representative of Republicans.
The claim is not that the H1-B is indentured servitude, rather that the restrictive nature of the H1-B puts the employee at a significant disadvantage, even with the portability that you mention. Having been there and done that myself, I can tell you that I had job offers I could not take up because of the H1-B visa restrictions.
In most times, most places, by most people, liars are considered contemptible. - Ursula Le Guin
I've lived in the US on an H1-B visa - it's not hearsay to me. Despite portability provisions allowing workers to move, the moving positions is time-consuming and costly. It is illegal to be in the country the day after employment ceases, meaning that there is no legal way to organise your affairs appropriately if you suddenly find yourself out of a job. The system is set up in a way that supports the anecdotes given by Just Some Guy. If it is more helpful to you, then consider those stories as "use cases" (plausible ways of interacting with the system) instead of "anecdotes" (hearsay that should be dismissed because it is hearsay).
In most times, most places, by most people, liars are considered contemptible. - Ursula Le Guin
Yes these tech worker visas are corrupt nonsense and we should limit the importation of skilled workers more than we do. But what we must not do is fail to import the cream of the crop of Asian engineers and scientists as well as the same from Europe or anywhere else for that matter. It would have been so easy to deny Einstein admission to the US as well as Goddard and many others. Some of the programmers coming out of places like Taiwan and Hong Kong are miraculously gifted and we would be fools not to ease the path for them to come here permanently. There may be many geniuses born but very few of those geniuses are trained in skilled areas that a nation must have to prosper and those people must be treasured if we are to survive as a nation. Yet I have seen immense prejudice against foreign workers who were highly skilled. One advanced engineer that I knew was working in a labor position and a school board thought he was some sort of lite weight with degrees from Romania. His boss was shocked when i told him that the man was a certifeied engineer with the American Association of Engineers. He got a much higher paying job in another branch of government as an engineer. A liberal arts degree from Romania might not mean much but a Ph.D. in a science or engineering means a person is quite skilled. One fellow told me he was a genius in France but every time his foot crossed our border he was instantly an idiot.
Which they can't. Have you ever SEEN some of the pureed shit that masquerades as code from (some) overseas developers? More often than not domestic coders have to be called in to un-fuck their shit, resulting in additional expenses that wipe out any savings realized from outsourcing the initial development.
"You get what you pay for" doesn't really work when the ignorant suits who make the decisions don't understand what they're getting. All they know is that they gave the developers a vague set of specs and instead of domestic workers demanding more complete descriptions, the overseas workers keep their mouths shut and do whatever they think is what the customer wants. When the overseas devs send back their crap, all the suits know is that it cost less RIGHT NOW to get that work done. Never mind that they've doubled (or more) their future maintenance costs, it's all about quarterly results.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.