Slashdot Mirror
IT Workers Training Their Foreign Replacements 'Troubling,' Says White House
dcblogs writes: A top White House official told House lawmakers this week that the replacement of U.S. workers by H-1B visa holders is 'troubling' and not supposed to happen. That answer came in response to a question from U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) that referenced Disney workers who had to train their temporary visa holding replacements (the layoffs were later canceled. Jeh Johnson, the secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said if H-1B workers are being used to replace U.S. workers, then "it's a very serious failing of the H-1B program." But Johnson also told lawmakers that they may not be able to stop it, based on current law. Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at Howard University who has testified before Congress multiple times on H-1B visa use, sees that as a "bizarre interpretation" of the law.
If you are doing software at the low end with regard to quality, you are right. For anything good (and that is where the actual savings by automation are, just requires a bit of a longer-term perspective), software can most decidedly not be written anywhere, as the architects, designers and developers need to be in touch with the users and the business the software is supporting. Cultural and time-gaps are a killer and drive cost through the roof and quality through the floor, often both. Developers having to guess about actual functionality desired are a serious problem. A spec is not enough do decide many aspects of software, unless you invest so much effort in the spec that spec creation actually takes much more effort and costs much more than the implementation. The way around that is that architects, designers and implementers must be able to understand what is desired from other cues and that is only possible if they talk to people.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The recently announced layoffs for the few tech workers in New York and California got cancelled (for now). All 100+ tech workers in Florida got laid off earlier this year. If Disney really wants to do the right thing, they would hired back their laid off workers in Florida and send the Indian workers packing.
Software (yes, I know, with some exceptions) can mostly be written anywhere.
If that were true, then how come there is a need for H1Bs? Why not just outsource the work?
No, there must be some value loss from outsourcing, otherwise they wouldn't need to bring people into the US and have exiting workers here train them.
Perhaps a little collective punishment, reducing the cap from 65,000 visas per year to say 40,000 and reducing it by 5,000 every year in which any company employing these H1-B visa workers misbehaves would send the right signal. Also, the H1-B slots should be sold in public auctions so that those companies that really need talented foreign workers when there are no qualified Americans, which strains credulity, can express that desperate need by either paying up for the Americans they need or forking out expensive foreign workers who are "critical to their ongoing business needs". You need skilled workers? Fine. Show me the money and you shall have them, foreigners or Americans your choice.
Probably the understatement.
If he starts talking like he's an advocate for the Disney employees he clearly takes a side, which means the people who disagree with any aspect of his case (ie: the guys advocating for more H1B Visas, businessmen prone to see any government interference as evil, Republicans who hate Obama on principle, etc.) will not take him seriously.
If he just says something so obviously true that you can't disagree with it then he might get somewhere.
The H1B system was created for a specific purpose - very short temporary workers who should become permanent green card holders very quickly. The problem is that it has morphed into a decade long temporary work program that dangles the green card to make the worker work for longer hours and less pay than a green card holder, under the threat of losing it all after being fired.
What really needs to happen is that US and India should sit down and figure this out. Over 60% of the H1B visa users are from India. US should have a special visa program similar to H1B for Indians but without the exploitative nature of it.
And, the reason why H1Bs are cheaper is because the US doesn't want them to go into the general labor pool but exist in their own special labor pool, not competing with the general labor pool. But, this creates a secondary job market and when corporations see the labor price differences between the two job pools, there will be incentive to do what Disney did. So, US should loosen these artificial restrictions that so that everyone is competing on the same level field.
H1B really needs to be revised so that is does not place so much emphasis on "sponsorship". The employer can dangle the sponsorship for years denying raises, promotions and starting with low wages and long hours.
Ideally, there should be generic visa that gives blanket work authorization for a certain period of time (like 3 years) and a path to green card without an employer "sponsorship". When a foreign worker comes to the US, they should be in the same market as everyone else, commanding the same salary, benefits etc. There is too much power with employers right now and so there is exploitation.
And that is a very serious problem indeed. It is also happening all over the EU with outsourcing to former eastern-bloc countries. Critical infrastructure always needs to be managed locally, anything else is pure insanity.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The USA is an corporatocracy. All candidates are for sale to the highest bidder. It is like that because those that don't play ball that way are filtered out long before reaching that level of power. Bernie may say he's for the little guy and against the current status quo, but Obama had a similar platform and look what happened. Once he was voted in, he just kept on doing what the corporate masters told him to, just like the presidents before him.
They all need to be tossed out of office and the system reworked to prevent money from controlling it again. First step would be to remove campaigning from the agenda altogether. If you get X number of signatures, you get to run for office. All runners get an Internet site of specified size and format, and an X minute TV and radio segment to be aired X times throughout the running period. The information on the candidates and their platforms would be available to all voters. No endorsement of candidates by any corporate entity, any media, or any publication. Just the facts, the vote, and a hard-line enforcement on any who break those rules.
The other problem is preventing candidates from taking bribes from corporate entities, mostly in the form of favors or after-term, do-nothing, highly paid job positions.
Romney was a tool of W's neocon backers that needed a new stooge.
As a candidate, he even had his web page for foreign policy titled New American Century and hired people like Dan Senor as the foreign policy brain trust.
We would have had boots on the ground in Tehran a month after his inauguration. Because perpetual war is good for (war) business, dontchaknow.
--
BMO
You do realize that it is the government that created, enabled, and permits the situation as is, right? Do you think Obama is responsible for any of the policies of his administration yet? Yes, I'm willing to see some irony here. Obama: "I deplore what has been happening as policy under my administration. We must organize to stop it." It is a relief that the Obama administration can finally find something related to immigration that it doesn't like that might actually benefit the US.
Of course what's even "better" is that many of those same businesses give generously to the sorts of causes that are probably near and dear to your heart, and support Obama.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
"Perpetual war" driven by business, is not so much a "load of bull"
I think that you can look to the words of Eisenhower to "beware the military industrial complex", followed by MacNamara's application of capitalist business practices to the waging of war to see the seed that the current conditions of "perpetual war" have sprung from
There was a lot of money to be made as long as there was a USSR 'wolf'' at the gates. We could spend a terrific amount of money on military spending without actually having to go to war. After the dissolution of the USSR we transitioned to relatively bloodless military campaigns where the tools that we developed to fight the USSR were used effectively to crush those same weapons in the hands of countries that had enjoyed Soviet sponsorship
Iraq 2 and Afghanistan demonstrated the failures of going past air wars and quick tank campaigns and getting stuck in the slog where a motivated local with a IED was as effective as million dollar machines and highly trained troops. The miscalculation continued to pour money into the coffers of the military funded corporations, but it stressed the tolerance of the American public
I have every reason to believe that Romney would have gathered the same group of advisers around him that had encouraged W to go too far and pushed their propagandizing of the Red states to new heights in hopes of dragging a few trillion more dollars out of the American public while turning the odometer over from IRAQ to IRAN, as a popular poster in US military sites so proudly proclaimed
Wherever You Go, There You Are
You do realize that it is the government that created, enabled, and permits the situation as is, right?
Delicious cold, you almost manage to describe a world where corporate interests stand silently on the sidelines while those wacky government types run roughshod over the public
Hilarious, you should play the straight-man on some comedy duo. We have all followed the hue and cry from the corporation about how they need foreign workers to compete because there just are not enough capable American workers to fill the slots. Disney just managed to go too far, too publicly and as a result shit the bed for the rest of them by demonstrating that the words that helped to push policies may not have been the truth
Wherever You Go, There You Are
He CAN'T really side with the Disney employee's, because he already has been paid to vote for increasing the H1B cap.
He knows the law was sold to the public as not permitting this, but was written to permit it, because that's what the people who paid for the law demanded.
"Oops, the law we passed lets companies screw their workers. there's nothing we can do about it. sorry."
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!