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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.
Even if U.S. STEM grads could get work, H1B's artificially drive down the wages so much that they wouldn't get paid shit even if they found work.
It's like farm labor back in the 90's in my hometown. When I was in high school and college (early 90's), you could make good money cutting tobacco for local farmers during the summer. They paid $7/hr. back when the minimum wage was around $3. A few years after that I went back to my hometown and asked some old buddies if they still cut tobacco in the summers. They told me that all the local farmers had started hiring illegals. And now all the tobacco cutting jobs only paid $4/hr.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
It'd be interesting to see the actual duties being performed by the H1-B worker who is hired to fill those jobs. I suspect that some of these hires aren't actually doing everything that was listed in the job description that disqualified American workers.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Disallowing foreign competition is what is distorting the playing field.
You mean like disallowing customers to import goods sold on foreign markets at lower prices? You know; import protection.
If companies are against protectionism, they shouldn't get benefits of protectionism either.
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First of all, welcome to Canada and I hope you're having a good time in our great nation. Sorry about the winters!
Second of all, if the USA wants to do the H1-B visa fairly for all USA citizens, here's a suggestion: Make the minimum annual salary for each H1-B visa holder 10 times "the poverty threshold for a single person under 65" (about 10 x $11,490US = $114,900US based on 2013 numbers.)
That way you will eliminate the problem of employers getting "cheap" labour to corrupt and undercut the job market to displace honest, capable USA citizen workers, and you'll still be able to attract the genuine foreign talent that these billionaires claim to need.
If these billionaires REALLY want what they claim they want, then they'll have no problem with this change. And pigs will fly, too!
Sometimes the "writing on the wall" is blood spatter...
The playing field is distorted by the current H1-B system.
For a citizen, the employer has not much more leverage over the employee than they should have (I think health insurance managed by the employer is something that should be changed, but that's beside the point).
For an H1-B, an employer can pretty much deport the employee. That is not a level playing field. That is an entirely different power dynamic that favors the employer unreasonably so.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I worked for a consulting firm that wrote a fairly complex mobile app which interfaced to devices over Wifi, Bluetooth, and BLE. Our client decided that they wanted to save money, and rather than just hiring US employees, they decided to hire a bunch of people offshore. Of course, this plan depended on the current team sticking around to "train" these guys who claimed to have years of experience in mobile development. After a few sessions, realizing that they had plagiarized their way through school, and B.S.'ed their way through jobs, we all quit. They were full of bluster, lies, backstabbing and finger-pointing, absolute team killers.
So far, they've done one checkin/bug fix this month, for something the most junior member of my team could have done in 2 days. Yep, you guys saved a lot of money.
Treat the companies that export jobs like the traitors that they are. Don't work for them. Don't help them. You'll be stuck on late night calls with "programmers" basically trying to figure out ways for you to do their job for them, or to point fingers at you if you don't. No amount of money is worth that.
That may be. I haven't tracked salaries recently, but I know we're offering programming jobs to H1-Bs at 60K. The advantage, from management's perspective is that these guys are like indentured servants. They're unlikely to quit, or complain.
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Have to post AC so don't get busted! i was working in finance and sat in on the budget meetings with the CEO, VP of HR, and VPs of our functional groups. The VP of HR routinely asked the hiring managers to hire H1-B in order to cut costs. The managers balked at that saying that they could find a hire here in the US, but HR said, "Don't worry, we'll write it so we can justify hiring H1-B. We'll interview a few people here, but we'll find an excuse not to hire them. We'll just say they weren't a good fit for the team."
This is nothing more than cutting costs. There are plenty of people domestically to hire.
Actually, the french revolution, with it's massive use of the guillotine, did have a positive effect on European democracy and decentralisation of power. Here in Europe socialized healthcare, free (or very affordable) higher education and strong worker unions have been a normal part of life since a long time.
Generally, employers have less rights over the employees, and they are more restricted in what their contracts can stipulate, compared to the US and the UK.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.