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With H-1B Cap Hit, Zuckerberg and Ballmer-Led Groups Press For More Tech Visas
theodp writes: With the FY2016 H-1B visa cap reached in the first week of April (only the USCIS knows how many applications were submitted by outsourcing companies and from Bentonville, AR), it's no surprise that groups like Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us PAC and Steve Ballmer's Partnership for a New American Economy Action Fund are pooh-poohing Jesse Jackson's claims that foreign high-tech workers are taking American jobs, and promoting the idea that what's really holding back Americans from jobs is a lack of foreign tech workers with H-1B visas.
I'm sorry, but Zuckerfuck and Ballmer claiming that there would be more American jobs if only they could bring in more foreign workers to replace Americans is complete and utter bullshit.
This is billionaire douchebags saying they could become even bigger billionaire douchebags of only they could get more cheap labor from overseas.
Will someone put these two clowns into the bear enclosure at the zoo and get rid of them for good?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Because without those H1B workers fuelling the local economies, Amaricans can't find work.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
= "none"
The whole thing has been turned into a gigantic cream-skimming operation.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The college system isn't broken. It's just not "job training," which is what corporate types want.
They want to offload all that "develop the workforce" crap off on the government and other education institutions. They don't care about education. When the job training is obsolete they simply throw away the disposable workers and get the next batch.
Or as close as they can possibly get, and the H1-B is edging fairly close.
Of course there's plenty of domestic STEM talent, just not for $45K a year with no benefits.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
The absurd notion that we should all be competing with the lowest wage earners on the planet is absurd.
Globalization is what happens when corporations tell us we should be competing with people in Bangalore for salaries and jobs.
Globalization is basically fucking everyone else over in the name of corporate profits.
Letting massive multinational companies decide that local salaries are more than they want to pay and importing people who will take less money is a surefire way to be on a race to the bottom.
Between the lie of saying cutting taxes for corporations will make the economy better, and the lie that importing cheaper foreign labor will create new domestic jobs ... the fucking corporations are basically robbing us blind, and idiot politicians are bending over backwards to ensure they have the tools to keep doing it.
The US and every other country playing this stupid game is basically gutting its own economy in favor of allowing corporations to maximize profits at the expense of the society which stupidly keeps giving them tax breaks.
And, sadly, the politicians who are bought and paid for to skew the deck in favor of corporate greed are usually direct beneficiaries, so it makes them even more wealthy and corrupt when they cede ever more to corporations.
You should absolutely blame corporations for foreigners stealing jobs, because they're the ones who have demanded the ability to bring in outside labor and change the rules.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
1. We want to drive down wages in the US
Rationale: Wages in the US are high compared to the rest of the world. To sell to consumers and customers in the rest of the world, US wages must come down.
2. We prefer to import H-1B's. Opening offices in other countries is not as efficient as bringing skilled people to the US where employers have the upper hand.
Rationale: The US is the only developed country with 'employment at will' This is preferred over 'just cause' used by most of the rest of the world. By importing H-1B's we get the business-friendly legal framework, and we can deport any troublemakers back to thier home country if they rock the boat. Opening offices in
other countries is costly and requires a management to be present in the offshore country, and the timezone differences hamper productivity.
3. The US federal government is one of the few in the world set up to put the interests of the 'opulant minority' ahead of the common people.
Rationale: We can pay lobbyists to promote laws in our interest knowing that we will get favorable laws passed which are not popular with the US electorate.
I'm in systems engineering/administration, and have been through many, many outsourcing/offshoring exercises. I consider myself extremely lucky, having gotten into the tech field in the early 90s and building up enough experience to stay employed despite this. Younger people just graduating, in my opinion, don't have as many opportunities. In addition, us older experienced types (just turning 40 this year, so much fun...) are increasingly jumping from place to place as IT is offshored. Eventually, no one will have anywhere to jump to, and that's my major concern with the abuse of the H1-B program.
I've mentioned before that H1-B is used for two primary purposes. The first is the intended one -- short term hiring of extremely talented people who really possess a skill that can't be found. I've seen this used in product development and other arenas, and I support that use because it really does work. The second is the "cheap labor" use where foreign workers with masters' degrees and above are brought in to do low level coding or administration work. This just drives wages down for everyone. Also, it's not universal, but in my experience the quality of work is much lower simply because the outsourcer doesn't have any insight into how the stuff they're doing fits into an organization's plans. There are far more H1-B cheap labor users than there are talent importers.
Raising the H1-B cap is simply a way to lower wages and make the profession less attractive to native workers who demand a higher salary. I've worked with tons of people, foreign and native, and the reality is that some are awesome, some are OK, and some shouldn't be working in this field...no matter where they came from. The problem comes when offshoring firms compete with each other to see how cheaply they can offer a service, still get away with the awful level of service the customer gets, and make greater profits.
I don't know the answer, beyond setting up a guild/apprenticeship system, which techies would never go for. If we could make entry level labor cheap enough to compete, weighing the cost of having to redo offshored work vs. having it done here, etc. and have a slower wage progression over a career, that might do something. I'm not trying to be an apologist, but I do see some companies' points when they have to hire a "rockstar Ruby developer" for $200K who turns out to not be a rockstar. Improvements in education might help as well, but companies need to understand that their workforce needs to be trained. Not everyone is a drop-in replacement for the guy who just left.
Or things you're surprised about because you are so young. Look back at the last 30-40 years, most if not all minority leaders were screaming to keep foreign workers out of the country, especially illegal immigrants.
http://www.usnews.com/debate-c...
Libs are so cute when you all twist yourselves up. I remember 50 years of "Minorities" backing the democrats while they did everything they could bring illegals. BTW the last president to do anything about illegal immigration was Eike
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/...
Serously, I find it amazing that these companies would pay to move a worker from Calcutta but not from Omaha. "Oh we looked in Silicon Valley's and Seattle's rarified labor markets and couldn't find anyone... so now we must look overseas!" Why don't they hire from Nebraska or Kentucky? Why?....because it never even enters their minds.
Next, H1-Bs don't create jobs because they are not allowed to start a company. The system is designed that way. (OK, legally they can create a corporation on paper, but the condition of their visia is that they are only allowed to be employed by their sponsor and aren't allowed to be employed by or draw salary from their own company, so the practial effect is they can't work for their own start-up). If they are creating companies and they or their famlies are working for the start-up, it's a violation of their visa.
Here's how to quash this BS. Create a national registry of unemployeed STEM workers and make them offer to pay the moving costs to move the employee from whereever to the job site. NATIONAL, not just Seattle and San Jose. Make them hire off that list before they can go overseas. If they can show they offered a job and offered a move to somebody in the US and got turned down six times, then they can do the H1-B thing. Next, if they do hire a H1-B because there is no "qualified" american worker, make them sponsor a scholarship in that field and train somebody until they are qualified. If they hire an engineer on a H1-B, then they must pay the scholorship and internship for an american to make him qualified. That newly minted engineer now goes into the job pool.
But only after qualified American tech workers and engineers have been hired to fill those positions. Speaking as an unemployed systems engineer, the attitude of MS and Facebook totally piss me off! They'd rather underpay a young, inexperienced, foreign worker than an older, yet fully qualified and capable, American such as myself.
I came to the US on an H1B back in 2000. I'm now a US citizen, even married an American. My starting pay back in 2000 was around $60k (Washington DC metro region), and is about twice that today (software engineer/architect) not counting bonuses that can add another 10-20k. I got no complaints about my salary.
Most of us in the technology group are/were H1Bs, and are now responsible for hiring new software developers. I've conducted dozens of interviews over the years (mostly entry level new grads from nearby universities) and noticed the extremely small number of American applicants (salary offered is competitive), while other departments are full of Americans (including IT). Sometimes I don't think our still smallish company would have survived or grown without the H1B program. One interesting factor about the Washington DC metro region is that it has a lot of work that requires security clearance so are only available to Americans, but I think that in turn sets a decent baseline for prevailing wages that H1Bs here benefit from.