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NY Times: Temporary Visas To Import Talent Help Copycats Take Jobs Abroad

ErichTheRed writes: A new article from the NY Times surprised me. It describes what we in the IT industry see all the time — H-1B visas being used way outside of their original purpose. I think this is significant because the article describes the problem well and shows how Tata, Accenture, etc. are offshoring regular office work as well as IT work. I feel that showing the average Joe/Jane that their nice safe middle class office job isn't so safe is the only way to sway popular opinion on this important matter! Reader theodp notes that Congress is making H-1B visa less costly for India-based IT services providers.

231 comments

  1. Is the NYT Racist? by CajunArson · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Just saying, since according to the story immediately below this one, any controls of any type on the immigration of young fighting age men from Middle Eastern countries is apparently inherently racist*.

    Consequently, any story about temporary work visas being bad must be racist x 1000.

    * Unless of course the countries who don't let them in are also Middle Eastern countries. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, etc. etc. etc.? Won't let a single refugee in. That's OK though because it's only racist if white people do it.

    BTW --> China? Not on China: Not only do they refuse to take a single refugee, but the state-run media calls the US racist for only taking in tens of thousands of refugees instead of millions. Truly the real leader of the world and a shining example to all of us.

    --
    AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
    1. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Sir_Eptishous · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "Just saying"? Perhaps you should try just thinking.
      Try some seldom used critical thinking skills to understand a basic truth, that the H1-B system is totally broken and is being used to help decimate the American middle class.

      --
      We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
    2. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by N1AK · · Score: 1

      Just couldn't wait to jump on this topic with an ignorant strawman about the plight of the "poor oppressed white person" being held to some imagined different standard. It doesn't take a genius to tell the difference between to two situations that you're too intolerant to appreciate.

    3. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

      Just to add fuel to the fire... These H1-Bs are smart tech workers who want to come and work and not just sit on welfare. From comments in the other story you mentioned those should be the ones at the front of the line and you would have to be a total idiot to try and keep them out.

      I think your comment wins for today. They will be attempting to beat you senseless for using their logic against them and will tell you how its different here. The only difference is its "them" instead of some people in Europe they don't care about being affected.

    4. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by execthis · · Score: 2, Funny

      Not just the American middle class being decimated, but this is the decimation of America. The current generation of politicians are destroying America. Apparently that is and has been the plan of the oligarchy for quite a while - going back at least to the time of Clinton, but accelerated to shocking proportions today in overt acts of betrayal of the American people.

      There is only one chance for a country which is close to dying: Donald Trump, the only non-oligarchy-shill candidate who talks at length in his press conferences about this problem, about problems with jobs being lost overseas, about immigration abominations which never would be occurring in any other developed nation of the world, and about the policies that need to change to truly change a country which has been methodically gutted, stripped, and sold out by global oligarchs.

      Donald Trump 2016, not just to make America great again, but to save it from impending disaster.

    5. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by sandro · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I don't usually get baited, but this is one I have to take. To suggest that Trump is the only one to solve the problem is, in my humble opinion, about as ignorant as it gets! The problem is the completely unregulated accumulation of wealth and power. Corporate interests and the desire for profit (presumably to satisfy the shareholders) are solely responsible for the decimation of the middle class. Trump is part of the problem, and the fact that people don't get that, and continue to be self abusive in their voting pattern (i.e. vote republican), by voting against their own interest is the real problem. How can it be that otherwise intelligent people think that voting for Trump will help is beyond me.

      I support Bernie Sanders.

      Supporting Trump is just idiotic.

      --
      Should'a, Could'a, Would'a... Did'na
    6. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If the middle class were just being decimated, this would be a recoverable problem. We could lose ten percent and carry on. But I fear it being a lot more than that.

    7. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Iran hosts almost a million refugees at the moment. That's more than three times what US has which is impressive as it's a smaller nation with a lot less resources, under sanction! Go write your FUD somewhere else.

    8. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You forgot Israel... which is understandable since they only schemed with the US to overthrow assad and set up ISIS/ISIL causing the war which refugees are fleeing.

    9. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Donald Trump, the guy whose companies have imported at least 1,000 foreign workers over the last 15 years, many of them for jobs like maids and chefs, is not going to save your American job from getting outsourced overseas.

    10. Re: Is the NYT Racist? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow. I can't even.

      Idiocracy, here we come.

    11. Re: Is the NYT Racist? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Couldn't agree more with your dissection of this moron.

      Bernie 2016!

    12. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 2

      ...the H1-B system is totally broken and is being used to help decimate the American middle class.

      It's utterly fucked. The idea that there is NO ONE in the entire United States with the skills they claim to be in such dire need of is pure horseshit.

      330 million people in this country and NONE of them have this skill set? BULL. FUCKING. SHIT.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    13. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

      Donald Trump 2016, not just to make America great again, but to save it from impending disaster.

      LOL!! Good one, execthis. You made me laugh out loud, and that doesn't happen very often these days.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    14. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      The USA takes in 1.7 million per year.

      How many central American refugees does Iran take?

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    15. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 0

      I support Bernie Sanders.

      Supporting Trump is just idiotic.

      Same here, I'm voting for Bernie.

      Trump is an imbecile, a rich imbecile, but an imbecile nonetheless. He's utterly unfit to be president at every level.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    16. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by RavenLrD20k · · Score: 1

      My preference for president: Sanders > Trump > anyone else. In the Democratic primary I'm going for Sanders. In my precinct, I'm probably going to be out voted in favor of H. Clinton (for her 3rd term as President). On the Republican side, I can't affect the primary, but I'm hoping Trump gets it (so far it looks like he might). In next year's election for the office, if he's on the ballot I'm going with Sanders. Being in a very much Red state, I'm most likely going to be drowned out. If he's not on the ticket, but Trump is, Trump gets my vote. If neither of them are on the ticket, I'm writing in Sanders...and then writing off the rest of America as nothing but idiots who deserve what they get while lamenting the fact that I have to be drug into that hell with them. Same answer for if either one of them wind up in the final election against any other member of their respective opposing party and loses.

    17. Re: Is the NYT Racist? by faraway · · Score: 1

      Bernie 2016.

    18. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by kheldan · · Score: 1

      Consequently, any story about temporary work visas being bad must be racist x 1000.

      Really? Well, tell you what, then: If it's H1-B workers being brought in from England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Russia, or any other Western European country full of white people, I am STILL against it, because it takes away jobs from U.S. citizens, and in many cases takes cash money out of the U.S. economy and sends it back overseas. I don't care if you're white, black, yellow, brown, or purple with pink polka-dots, I see the whole H1-B thing as just more profit for corporate America and to hell with American citizens so far as they're concerned. If your argument is that you can't find the talent here then I disagree with you, and even if you're right then the way to fix that is to get our own citizens up to speed, not get someone from half a world away. But we all know I'm right and it's about money and how much less of it you can get away with paying someone from a foreign country.

      --
      Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
    19. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by AntronArgaiv · · Score: 1

      I have no problem at all with bringing in people from foreign countries, AS LONG AS THEY INTEND TO STAY HERE and become citizens. However, that would involve paying them a living wage, and that's clearly not what's going on here. H1-B is all about decreasing labor costs. Maybe it wasn't at the beginning, but that's what it's been about for the past 20+ years.

    20. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by NCamero · · Score: 1

      ...plan of the oligarchy for quite a while - ... Donald Trump 2016...

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      "Oligarchy ... term as a synonym for rule by the rich..."

      Both parties are not so secretly controlled by the super rich interests. Maybe Bernie Sanders might actually have a chance to change the system. Make the 1% start to actually trickle back down prosperity to the average voter.

      I have moderator points, and was going to add +funny to your comment. But really to use the description oligarchy in a negative connotation. Then actually support the richest guy. This (execthis) is clearly the /. username for Karl Rove!

    21. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      **rolls eyes**

      I'm so fucking tired of people pretending there is only one definition for the word "decimate".

    22. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by cat_jesus · · Score: 3, Informative

      I love Bernie but he's probably not electable and even if by some miracle he were, I don't think he would be able to bend congress to his will.

      The single biggest threat is American stupidity. Americans by and large are stupid and incredibly susceptible to propaganda.

      I must point out how incredible it is that the republican field is filled with creationists, war mongers, misogynists and global warming deniers and the top three candidates have never held any public office. They truly are the party of stupidity.

    23. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by kheldan · · Score: 1

      I have no problem at all with bringing in people from foreign countries, AS LONG AS THEY INTEND TO STAY HERE and become citizens

      I second this. Otherwise it's like someone crashing your party just to score some free food.

      --
      Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
    24. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by pnutjam · · Score: 1

      Apparently that is and has been the plan of the oligarchy for quite a while -

      Ask me how I know you've never read "The Jungle" by Upton Sincliar, published in 1906, well before any Clinton held power.

      As a well read person of reasonable intelligence, it's offensive to see the majority idiot class acting like a problem they have been willfully ignoring is something they can turn around and solve with no regard to the greater repercussions.

    25. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Foobar+of+Borg · · Score: 1

      Really? Well, tell you what, then: If it's H1-B workers being brought in from England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Russia, or any other Western European country full of white people, I am STILL against it, because it takes away jobs from U.S. citizens, and in many cases takes cash money out of the U.S. economy and sends it back overseas. I don't care if you're white, black, yellow, brown, or purple with pink polka-dots, I see the whole H1-B thing as just more profit for corporate America and to hell with American citizens so far as they're concerned. If your argument is that you can't find the talent here then I disagree with you, and even if you're right then the way to fix that is to get our own citizens up to speed, not get someone from half a world away. But we all know I'm right and it's about money and how much less of it you can get away with paying someone from a foreign country.

      I'M purple with pink polka-dots, you insensitive clod!

    26. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Cthulhu / Dagon 2016 - Why vote for the lesser evil?

    27. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by penguinoid · · Score: 1

      the fact that people don't get that, and continue to be self abusive in their voting pattern (i.e. vote republican),

      The trouble is that there really isn't much difference between Democrat or Republican. Sure they talk different, but Obama for example might as well have been Republican.

      --
      Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
    28. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by mvdwege · · Score: 1

      Insighful? It's a pack of lies, so yeah, the 'racist' tag is well deserved.

      We used to hang shitheads like you in Nuremberg.

      --
      "I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
    29. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by jeillah · · Score: 2

      Yes exactly this!!! Our country was built by immigrants who came here for a better life, became citizens and contributed to the growth of the country. We are their children and we still contribute to this country (most of us anyway). H1B is nothing but a drain except for the few company execs who get big bonuses for slashing cost, this quarter. The rest of us are screwed!!!

    30. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Curunir_wolf · · Score: 1

      I support Bernie Sanders.

      Supporting Trump is just idiotic.

      And with you and all the other Millennials hell-bent on tearing up the Constitution so the US can be a Socialist country, Sanders probably has a pretty good chance of getting elected. Hell, just the offer of free Bachelor's degrees and single-payer healthcare is probably enough to do it (although the way Obamacare has been implemented, single-payer healthcare is probably the lesser evil).

      Trump's ideas aren't much better, but at least he's not planning to double-down on the unsustainable deficit spending and vast expansion of the Entitlement Class like Sanders. Both are enthusiastic about expanding the 7,000 page tax code to 12,000 or more pages, which only means more crony favors for the big corporations and more profits sitting overseas where it will never generate revenue. The real fix is to gut the thing, simplify it greatly, and eliminate pretty much ALL the corporate welfare, loopholes, and everything else that keeps the burden on the shrinking and struggling middle class.

      --
      "Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
      --- Jerry Garcia
    31. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Trump wants to eliminate a lot of the tax code and exempt the bottom end from paying anything. Do you even know what you're talking about?

    32. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Spy+Handler · · Score: 1

      I support Bernie Sanders.

      Supporting Trump is just idiotic.

      I also support Bernie Sanders. I would really love to see Sanders become the Democratic nominee and Trump become the GOP nominee. That way we're guaranteed to get a president who will reduce (or hopefully eliminate) H1B.

      Aside from H1B, Trump will also reduce illegal immigration, while Sanders will not. Therefore I am rooting for Trump. But if Trump flames out for whatever reason, I would take Sanders over Bush/Rubio/Clinton any day.

      And if you're wondering why I'm bringing illegal immigration into this when we were talking about H1B: they are both closely related issues. H1B brings in cheap IT labor and depresses the wages for American IT workers. Illegal immigration brings in cheap manual labor and depresses the wages for American blue collar workers. See the resemblance?

    33. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by TheSync · · Score: 1, Interesting

      it takes away jobs from U.S. citizens

      Jobs do not belong to U.S. citizens. Jobs are created by companies and can exist anywhere. If you are not competitive, you will not get the job, keep the job, etc.

      Government can not protect you. In fact the "protection" that government tries to provide simply raises the unemployment rate and lowers incomes by harming the economy. The "protection" will be routed around like packets around an outage on the Internet.

    34. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by faraway · · Score: 1

      Cute.  You're worried that we the people might promote our general welfare over the welfare of the few.  That, to you, is tearing up the constitution.

      I like it.

      I'll let you get back to the "No Spin Zone" now.

    35. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Maybe people should have payed more attention when those ... shudder ... blue collar types started losing their jobs. Middle class workers who built things, could buy a house, raise kids, and retire in relative comfort. Hard to believe anyone on the outside is now going to show any concern about under-employment in the tech sector.

    36. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The US is the only first-world nation that considers universal healthcare to be some sort of evil communist plot.
      Maybe military spending - huge standing armies, garrisons all over the world, constantly looking abroad for 'monsters to slay' - is a far greater threat to the constitution.

    37. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I second this. Otherwise it's like someone crashing your party just to score some free food.

      I was a H1-B visa holder, who eventually became a citizen. However your party crashing argument I have to take exception to. H1-B holders still have to pay taxes, sure you can get a social security rebate, but it's not a free ride. So they contribute financially pretty much at the same level that a citizen or immigrant would by paying state and federal taxes in full.

    38. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Curunir_wolf · · Score: 1

      Trump wants to eliminate a lot of the tax code and exempt the bottom end from paying anything. Do you even know what you're talking about?

      Probably not. I haven't made an effort to study any plans he's put out there, and there hasn't been much detail from news sources (which is probably intentional on the media's part). I did note that he had ideas about adding taxes for hedge fund managers and the like, which just sounded like "more complications to the tax code" to me. Other R candidates don't impress me either. Huckabee seems to have the closest tax plan to what I want, but I don't like anything else about him. At all.

      --
      "Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
      --- Jerry Garcia
    39. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Curunir_wolf · · Score: 1

      Cute. You're worried that we the people might promote our general welfare over the welfare of the few. That, to you, is tearing up the constitution.

      Umm... No. Not sure how you got that unless you only read the first sentence of my post and jumped to some unfounded conclusion. What Bernie wants is basically a centralized authority with unlimited power over resources, with the rulers in charge having the ability to decide who pays and who benefits. Whenever these things get proposed it's ALWAYS the middle class that gets hurt, and their burden is already too high. Because that's where the most money with the least means to protect it.

      --
      "Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
      --- Jerry Garcia
    40. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And with you and all the other Millennials hell-bent on tearing up the Constitution

      You mean the Constitution that previous generations defended so well? You mean to tell me all the entrenched old farts in Congress who keep getting reelected and keeping the bread and circus going weren't there before Millenials came along? Or the debt, the taxes, the regulations, the secret spying? Well, it's not so much secret spying as we older more mature folks knew about it. We just didn't talk much about it until that that Millenial brat Snowden brought it up.

    41. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Curunir_wolf · · Score: 1

      The US is the only first-world nation that considers universal healthcare to be some sort of evil communist plot.

      It's also the only country that considers pharmaceutical companies and their profits to be more important than the health of their citizens - but that's how the system works, and Obamacare has expanded on it. I can imagine with their power in Washington and the media (and with the FDA, which is funded by the drug companies) that a single payer system would be shafting the doctors and hospitals even more to help the drug companies even more.

      Maybe military spending - huge standing armies, garrisons all over the world, constantly looking abroad for 'monsters to slay' - is a far greater threat to the constitution.

      I don't know where Bernie stands on the Military Industrial Complex. I agree, it's a great threat to our well being in general, as well as the militarization of the police force (maybe the whole thing will merge - they love declaring war on the citizens). I know he got upset that DHS wasn't being "properly funded", so I don't think he's much better there than anyone else. Bound to be better than Hillary and Obama - they seem to like the Neocon foreign policy just fine. At least Rand Paul keeps talking about cutting off money for supporting foreign dictatorships, a small start in the right direction.

      --
      "Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
      --- Jerry Garcia
    42. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by RabidReindeer · · Score: 2

      I'm for the Hastur / Yog-Sothoth ticket.

      Politics is about as unspeakable as it gets, anyway.

    43. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      it takes away jobs from U.S. citizens

      Jobs do not belong to U.S. citizens. Jobs are created by companies and can exist anywhere. If you are not competitive, you will not get the job, keep the job, etc.

      Government can not protect you. In fact the "protection" that government tries to provide simply raises the unemployment rate and lowers incomes by harming the economy. The "protection" will be routed around like packets around an outage on the Internet.

      The "facts" you "assert" do "not" exist in "reality" no matter how many "quotes" you use for "emphasis". "You" "pompous" "twat".

      You claim the government can't protect me, but it somehow how has the power to harm the economy? What if I'm poor and want to destroy the civilized world? Damaging the economy protects me by reducing the absolute advantage other have over me. So right there, you are wrong.

      But unemployment insurance doesn't reduce the economy, it improves it. Aside from the real world data that supports this claim, if you weren't a fool you could see it: People who have no backup income source take fewer risks, which means less investment and thus relative economic contraction. Ditto for bankruptcy laws - a favorite of Trump in particular who took three of his companies into bankruptcy.

      But you aren't here to learn, just to pontificate, so ad hominem away.

    44. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Curunir_wolf · · Score: 1

      And with you and all the other Millennials hell-bent on tearing up the Constitution

      You mean the Constitution that previous generations defended so well?

      Assuming you're being facetious with that comment (with respect to, probably generations from FDR on), then yes, that one.

      You mean to tell me all the entrenched old farts in Congress who keep getting reelected and keeping the bread and circus going weren't there before Millenials came along?

      They've been really awful at following it, haven't they? So your answer to the thing getting beaten so badly it's on life support is to go ahead and pull the plug and let it die completely?

      Or the debt, the taxes, the regulations, the secret spying?

      Again, Sander's ideas seems to be to double-down on all of them (with the possible exception of secret spying, IDK where he stands on that.

      Well, it's not so much secret spying as we older more mature folks knew about it. We just didn't talk much about it until that that Millenial brat Snowden brought it up.

      Well clearly YOU didn't, but I and others certainly did, except we were just called delusional crackpots until Snowden showed up to confirm it. Yea, maybe you should listen to us crackpots now instead of waiting until Sanders is in charge for a few years, to avoid letting us say "I told you so." Again.

      --
      "Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
      --- Jerry Garcia
    45. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by RabidReindeer · · Score: 1

      I know, I know. The Roman process of decimation meant "to reduce by 1 tenth". But the modern-day meaning of the word is almost invariably "to reduce TO 1 tenth".

      You can whine all you like, but the English language is mutable. "Nice" flip-flops back and forth from being an insult to being a compliment. Political Correctness has done much the same to make word "special" an insult. It happens. Get over it. For the purposes of this discussion there's no ambiguity. Now where's the popcorn?

    46. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by RabidReindeer · · Score: 1

      Have you forgotten? We were told that we were now an "Information Economy" and that the blue-collar jobs would all be replaced with new technical sector jobs so nobody would even miss them.

    47. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We need to fight back and putting grist in the gears. If you see an job ad that is in a foreign language, file a complaint with the US Dept of Labour. If you see online job applications that require a H1B visa number to submit (how can you have an H1b visa number if you are a US Citizen) or list a pay rate below market levels, file a complaint with the US Dept of Labour. These pigs git away with this because nobody complains. If you see any technical job that requires foreign language skills file a complaint with the US Dept of Labour. If you see any job that has a ridiculously detailed job description that only one person on the planet can fill, file a complaint with the US Dept of Labour. See anything fishy, file a complaint with the US Dept of Labour. Also, call you state employment office and forward a copy of the add to your representative and the local unions. Also, call your state's Secretary of State, ask for the corporation's division and ask to file a complaint against the company to have their corporation papers revoked.

    48. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I love me some Bernie Sanders, but if you actually think White Southerners are going to vote for a Jewish Socialist from Vermont, you must have some really good weed on hand. They didn't vote for a Black Guy from Chicago, what will be different this time around? (especially since it seems the more blatantly Racist, Intolerant, Christian Dominionist, and Xenophobic the Republican Primary candidates are, the better they seem to do in the polls.)

    49. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by cat_jesus · · Score: 1

      You obviously are not listening to Bernie, but instead are listening to propaganda about Bernie.

    50. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by cat_jesus · · Score: 1

      You can't study any plans Trump has put out there, because he hasn't put any plans out there. He's a blowhard who is running a vanity campaign.

    51. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They've been really awful at following it, haven't they? So your answer to the thing getting beaten so badly it's on life support is to go ahead and pull the plug and let it die completely?

      LOL, you just pulled one of the tricks they used to usurp the Constitution: the "are you with us or with the terrorist" trick!

      All I pointed out was the ridiculousness of singling out Millenials. Instead of addressing what I actually talked about, you frame the argument as being either for the Constitution or trying to kill it

      If you are against socialism, don't act like a socialist and dehumanize me and reduce my individuality down to a single question. Thanks.

      Again, Sander's ideas

      My contention wasn't about Sanders. Again, my contention is on the Millenial remark.

      Well clearly YOU didn't, but I and others certainly did

      Really? You? The one who just pulled the "if you're not with us" trick, the same one they used to justify the spying?

      we were just called delusional crackpots

      Called delusional crackpots by whom, sir? Not by Millenials.

      With people like you defending the Constitution, who needs enemies?

    52. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Curunir_wolf · · Score: 1

      You're not listening to me. At all. I don't like Bernie, so you're hating on me, and that's all you can see.

      --
      "Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
      --- Jerry Garcia
    53. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      http://taxfoundation.org/artic...

      At least don't make up lies that are so easily refuted by a simple Google search.

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
    54. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Curunir_wolf · · Score: 1

      LOL, you just pulled one of the tricks they used to usurp the Constitution: the "are you with us or with the terrorist" trick!

      Conflating my statement to that one is unadulterated bullshit. I tried to address what you said rationally, but you're full of angst and can't see past your nose. In fact, your initial reply was really nothing more than "Yea, well so-and-so did it first so it's okay for me to do it now." I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt, but you're hopelessly lost in a delusion of your own snowflakitude.

      Good day to you, sir!

      --
      "Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
      --- Jerry Garcia
    55. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He only had to file bankruptcy four times to get where he is.

      Imagine how great America could be if everyone followed his lead instead of working off their debts and mistakes!

    56. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by kheldan · · Score: 1

      OK.. Did you spend all the money you made working here in the U.S., in the U.S., or did you send it overseas? If you spent it all here then I'm OK with it. If you're one of those people who sent as much of it back home as you possibly could then I'm decidedly not OK with it. But since you became a naturalized citizen of the U.S. then you probably spent your money here. I'm talking about the latter of the two: People who came here to work on an H1B visa and sent their money overseas. I don't think that's right, not at all.

      --
      Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
    57. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What Bernie wants is basically a centralized authority with unlimited power over resources

      Where does he say this? Which proposed policy implements it?

    58. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by faraway · · Score: 1

      So far, you have not offered a single thing you dislike about "Bernie" except for some vague "but freedom!!!" comments.

      Let's discuss some of his policies:
      1) Bernie preaches Increased taxes.  The tax rates from the 1940's through the 1980s were much higher, with the top marginal tax above 90%.  The rich still worked and got filthy rich.  This is important because that money was used to pay for the (now) crumbling infrastructure we take for granted.  It was used to pay for social programs that were incredibly popular and successful.

      2) Bernie preaches Increased taxes.  The tax rates from the 1940's through the 1980s were much higher, with the top marginal tax above 90%.  This paid for education which used to cost less than $1800 (inflation adjusted) per year at UC.  Now a year of school at a UC costs $13000.  There has been a redistribution of wealth from those who have not, to those who have (banks and financial institutions collect on this debt, and ultimately their shareholders).  If you have numbers otherwise, show them.

      3) Bernie preaches Increased taxes.  Before Reagan finally put the stake through the heart of the US, US deficit/debt were under control.  The US debt started increasing massively after Reagan cut taxes.  If you have numbers otherwise, show them.

      4) Bernie preaches Increased regulation.  As the right and far right parties in the US cut regulations, they removed any incentives for businesses to provide for the society that gives them the limited liability and corporate-hood they so enjoy.

      5) Bernie preaches Increased regulation.  Worker protection and supporting strong unions.  The Japanese are unionized.  The Germans are unionized.  The French are unionized.  They have middle classes.  They have happier citizens.  They have social mobility.  If you have numbers otherwise, show them.

      6) Bernie preaches universal healthcare.  The US ranks 38th in the world in healthcare.  The US healthcare system available to the average person provides poor outcomes at 2x the cost.  Life is not a for profit business.  Americans travel to Europe so they can get cheap health care.  Americans import drugs from foreign countries because they are cheaper.  The high end medical centers in the US are inaccessible to the general population and are frequented by Sheiks, Dictators, and the American filthy rich.  If you have numbers otherwise, show them.

      7) Social mobility in the US is MUCH lower than any of the European countries with so-called "socialism" (Sweden, France, Germany, Norway, Australia, etc). http://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobility/  If you have numbers otherwise, show them.

      Without infrastructure, without education, without regulation there can be no middle class.  Only the rich and their servants.

      I'm in favor of the Government working for all of us, which is what the Constitution promotes.  Not for a handful of us which is what you promote.

      My question is, why do you want to tear apart the Constitution to keep a few rich people as your masters subverting the intention of the Constitution?

      The only thing I can guess is aspirational identification, you have the illusion that one day you too will rise out of the lower, uneducated class you are in and become filthy rich and will be mildly inconvenienced by having to pay back into the society that gave you the ability to become filthy rich in the first place.

      Please share those policies that Bernie has that you are so scared off, and how they are incompatible with the Constitution.

    59. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What Bernie wants is basically a centralized authority with unlimited power over resources

      Where does he say this? Which proposed policy implements it?

      Oh, I'm sorry. To understand that comment, you would have to look at his policy proposals in total, and apply some critical thinking to how they can be implemented. Probably beyond your capabilities.

    60. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Curunir_wolf · · Score: 1

      Let's discuss some of his policies: 1) Bernie preaches Increased taxes. The tax rates from the 1940's through the 1980s were much higher, with the top marginal tax above 90%. The rich still worked and got filthy rich. This is important because that money was used to pay for the (now) crumbling infrastructure we take for granted. It was used to pay for social programs that were incredibly popular and successful.

      To understand this, you need to review exactly how that "top marginal rate" was applied and when, the people it actually affected, and how it would apply as a modification to the current tax code. The spending (any way you want to break it down) was still significantly smaller proportion of the nation's GDP than what it would be under Sander's proposals.

      2) Bernie preaches Increased taxes. The tax rates from the 1940's through the 1980s were much higher, with the top marginal tax above 90%. This paid for education which used to cost less than $1800 (inflation adjusted) per year at UC. Now a year of school at a UC costs $13000. There has been a redistribution of wealth from those who have not, to those who have (banks and financial institutions collect on this debt, and ultimately their shareholders). If you have numbers otherwise, show them.

      WHY has UC, a state-supported school, gone from charging $1800 to $13000? A significant part of the reason is federal funding of student education via direct lending. It is then paid directly by the beneficiaries (degree holders, who earn more than non-degree holders). Under Sander's proposal of paying for it directly, the funding is likely to increase (more people will want this benefit), and spread out over more people (instead of 22-32 year-olds, you have a larger pool of 18-, say 60-year-olds). But that will include people that have already paid for their own education, people that received NO benefit, because they did not get a paid-for education, etc. That's not really as fair a system, especially because the real beneficiaries will be the highly-paid administration and tenured professors of the state-supported schools. Note that under the current system, there are NO banks or for-profit finance institutions involved. Student loans are now ALL directly provided and managed by the federal government.

      3) Bernie preaches Increased taxes. Before Reagan finally put the stake through the heart of the US, US deficit/debt were under control. The US debt started increasing massively after Reagan cut taxes. If you have numbers otherwise, show them.

      Well during Reagan's administration, the debt did increase. But the budget was later balanced during the Clinton years, so it was handled at that point. Unnecessary wars and excessive foreign intervention were very expensive (and continues to this day), and then the elites in both parties decided in 2008 to ... bail out the banks during the financial meltdown, in spite of the wishes of the citizenry. Blaming all of that debt on Reagan is disingenuous at best. You need to go back at least to FDR.

      4) Bernie preaches Increased regulation. As the right and far right parties in the US cut regulations, they removed any incentives for businesses to provide for the society that gives them the limited liability and corporate-hood they so enjoy.

      He is wrong and so are you. Regulation is hurting small business and increasing the power of the largest corporations that keep their money overseas to avoid taxation. In 1975 the bound edition of the Federal Register (the publication that expresses the details of Federal regulation) consisted of 71,244 pages. It has increased dramatically in recent years and at the end of 2011 it stood at 169,301. 38,000 PAGES of new regulations were released in 2001-2011 alone. Large multinational corporations have cadres of lawyers and accountants that can figure that out, absorb the costs, and figure out how to avoid

      --
      "Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
      --- Jerry Garcia
    61. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, no taxes for singles making $25,000 or couples making $50,000.

      I don't object to that - in fact it's probably a great idea but what do you think he's going to do about himself?

      Well, elimination of the estate tax and a few other goodies that are sure to be very beneficial to only the super-rich.

    62. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by roman_mir · · Score: 0

      Trump will not solve the problem but not for a second for the reasons that you believe. The problem with Trump is that he promises easy solutions to everybody and that is pie in the sky.

      However there is nothing 'unregulated' about accumulation of wealth and power, unless you consider all the government intervention into the free market economy being 'unregulated'.

      The only sane economy is economy based on actual free market capitalism, anarcho capitalism, unregulated (as in no government intervention) free market. We do not have that, we have gigantic, out of control governments, deciding price of everything, taxing every form of income and wealth, licensing every form of business activity, preventing savings from being accrued with extremely high inflation generated by government and pseudo-government structures.

      I see both, Trump and Sanders being potential HITLER (here we go) characters. Except that I don't think Trump actually believes the crap that he is espousing, which makes Sanders much more dangerous. Collectivism (socialism, communism, Stalinism, Leninism, Marxism, Nazism) murdered hundreds of millions of free individuals, destroyed countless amounts of wealth. How many more hundreds of millions, how much more of the economic potential has to be destroyed?

    63. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by execthis · · Score: 1

      I would support Sanders but I supported this other guy 8 years ago who was supposed to be so amazing and turned out to be just another dishonest, oligarchic shill. He even won a Nobel prize of all things. But, what a massive letdown. Yes, I supported that guy way back before the Iowa primary and told everyone I knew to vote for him.

      I'm not going through this same BS again. Sanders is basically the same. And he supports mass amnesty (even though he did claim that an open border policy as being part of the Koch brothers agenda).

      I recommend that you actually check out a number of Donald Trump's press conferences online. Check out the one he did in LA right after the Steinle murder in SF, and also check out one in New Hampshire a couple weeks ago. Some of his press conferences are kind of spotty, but some of them will have you captivated.

      The fact is, he is a very wealthy man, independently wealthy, and thus in an extremely unique position to exercise his conscience and enact some pretty fundamental changes to our clearly outrageously broken country which I simply cannot believe any longer than anyone on the "inside" - Sanders included - even has the capacity to rectify.

      I do not like every single thing about Trump, but that is true with anyone anyhow. But here's just a short list of what he has spoken in favor of: Universal healthcare (but not the Obamacare variety which only enriched the middlemen beyond the obscene amounts they are already raking in), no taxes for the poorest Americans, higher taxes for the uber-wealthy like hedge fund managers, scrapping crappy "free trade" deals which have only exported hundreds of thousands of jobs out of the country, and forcing American companies to keep factories in America or else face high penalties.

      All of his policies and proposals are sound, and far more detailed than I can even remember any candidate from any other party running for the office of President ever stating.

    64. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by jc42 · · Score: 1

      **rolls eyes**

      I'm so fucking tired of people pretending there is only one definition for the word "decimate".

      Heh; another victim of the "etymology is destiny" doctrine (as one linguist - whose name I've forgotten - called it a few years back).

      Yup, in Latin, "decimate" meant to kill every 10th man. In modern English, it means to destroy a significant but unspecified portion of a set. How large depends on the speaker/writer, who usually can't be bothered to give the fraction.

      It's yet another case of English raiding another language for useful words, and mangling both their pronunciations and their meanings to the point that speakers of the original languages wouldn't recognize either the sound or the meaning.

      But if you want to continue using English, you should recognize this general problem, and take it into account. You'll understand that, while the original sound and meaning of a word in the source language is of historic interest, it's nearly useless in decoding the usage in English.

      --
      Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
    65. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I love Bernie but he's probably not electable and even if by some miracle he were, I don't think he would be able to bend congress to his will.

      No one office controls all of the US Congress (or all of government for that matter). That's the entire point of having three different branches of government. People who love to think the US president (the head of the executive branch of the US government) has control over the US Congress (the entire legislative branch of the US government) have completely failed a major part of their Social Studies and US history classes.

      Bernie is only a small piece to a much bigger puzzle. Bernie is important in my opinion as he seems to be one of the few running for office that actually gives a crap about the sorry state of affairs the US is in, but he is still just one piece and needs more than just himself to make real changes. Saying that someone is not electable based on that however is stupid, as it's an artificial limit and a self-fulfilling prophecy. Don't vote someone in you think would make a difference just because you think they will not win the election, and you play right into the trap that The Party wants you to play into.

      The single biggest threat is American stupidity. Americans by and large are stupid and incredibly susceptible to propaganda.

      I agree. Too bad you are not helping the issue, by making propaganda about Bernie not being electable and encouraging said stupid people to continue to vote in the crooks that are actively harming them, based on the old "I wanna be on the winner's side!" argument.

      I must point out how incredible it is that the republican field is filled with creationists, war mongers, misogynists and global warming deniers and the top three candidates have never held any public office. They truly are the party of stupidity.

      I agree with that as well, so why are you helping them?

    66. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I love Bernie but he's probably not electable and even if by some miracle he were, I don't think he would be able to bend congress to his will.

      The single biggest threat is American stupidity. Americans by and large are stupid and incredibly susceptible to propaganda.

      I must point out how incredible it is that the republican field is filled with creationists, war mongers, misogynists and global warming deniers and the top three candidates have never held any public office. They truly are the party of stupidity.

      It's hard to find a poster here dumber than yourself. You identify a politician you like and smear shit like "unelectable" all over him. Or FUD like "bend congress to his will". Neither is desirable.

      First, you tell us that your support for a politician hinges on a critical mass of people, NONE OF WHICH IS YOURSELF. You're specifically classifying your support as non critical. ["Oh yeah, but I know that man but this is like what ... NPR and man, I get it but you man ..."]

      Second, you tell us you don't understand the purpose of Congress which is not to rubberstamp the will of the excecutive branch.

      As for "the party of stupid", this is the third example of retardation. You are easily suckered into red-blue politics.

    67. Re:Is the NYT Racist? by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      a basic truth, that the H1-B system is totally broken and is being used to help decimate the American middle class.

      It would help those of us from the rest of the world if we actually knew what the design purpose of this visa system was. If it is to decimate the American middle class (because that's where the forces disruptive to corporate America come from), then surely the visa system is working as intended.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  2. You know what's worse than being unemployed? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Living in India.

    1. Re:You know what's worse than being unemployed? by nikkipolya · · Score: 2

      So true. I've been there, seen that. Its like living in the middle of utter chaos. One person pounding the road with a steel bar while a dozen other men are just watching. Another person pounding volcanic glass on the side of the road while his family sits beside him watching him. The traffic is utter chaos. With vehicles of all sizes and shapes (shapes you would have never before seen in your life) tightly packed on the roads to the extent of being intertwined into each other. With some patches of road in the middle of an ocean of potholes and rain water mixed with gutter. And when you get to office the scene is no different. There are people chatting all over the office space like its some kind of a congregation. There are people yelling loudly, laughing loudly, no body seems to be working really. You see people overflowing in the cafeteria all through day and relaxing there sipping chai and coffee. Then another hour for lunch. And then in the after noon you see people bringing in stinky snacks on to their tables and there is a congregation around there with people laughing, shouting, talking loudly and munching. When do they work? They don't until after sunset. Then there are serious discussions as to what they were supposed to do but they didn't. And some shitty dirty code quickly gets written with no thought going into the design. The programmers are as clueless as ever. There are about two to three people coding while ten other people watch them sitting and standing in various postures. All fifteen of them are then billed for 8 hours of work. And then people leave for the day. Its the same story the following day. Its as scary as can be. I would rather work as a farm laborer.

  3. Market Forces by sinij · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Market Forces do not guarantee optimal, or even beneficial outcome to everyone affected. Just most profitable outcome for decision makers.

    This is a clear case where US is bleeding jobs and wealth to other countries, so few individuals can enrich themselves while passing the costs/consequences "downstream".

    1. Re:Market Forces by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The hollowing out of the middle class will continue until there aren't enough consumers to buy what these treasonous bastards are selling. Then the economy will collapse, worse than the Great Depression.

    2. Re:Market Forces by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      "Market forces" are a human fiction, they are not a force like electromagnetism. We choose to organize our resources that way, if the outcome is not optimal and we do nothing about it, we are an evil, or at best, lazy, species.

    3. Re:Market Forces by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pretty much, and all this while surrounded by the highest technology ever and most resources in human history. We are an evil species.

    4. Re:Market Forces by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Let's be clear here: "Market Forces" in this context is bullshit.

      This is corporations changing the market for their own benefit by cajoling politicians into providing a mechanism to undermine the market.

      This is the opposite of a free market, this is a rigged game to benefit the people with the most money by bypassing the market.

      People who say H1B visas has anything to do with the free market are either lying or delusional.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    5. Re:Market Forces by ExXter · · Score: 1

      This drain of jobs will continue until the company itself is sold out and overtaken by other forces. Outsourcing always comes with quality loose. The short term benefit is profit, but not for the employees. The long term effect is quality degradation and distortion of market balance. It will continue until the world becomes to small to outsource. The country/states have the power to change that but they don't as lobby does it ob well.

    6. Re:Market Forces by m00sh · · Score: 1

      Market Forces do not guarantee optimal, or even beneficial outcome to everyone affected. Just most profitable outcome for decision makers. This is a clear case where US is bleeding jobs and wealth to other countries, so few individuals can enrich themselves while passing the costs/consequences "downstream".

      is bleeding jobs and wealth to other...

      You know the 1% also sees the rest of the 99%s trying to bleed wealth from them.

      I know it's bad when someone tries to bleed your wealth but good when you stop others from bleeding yours.

      I don't quite get that you say these without a hint of irony.

      I say spread the wealth. The 1% to the middle class and the middle class to the poor countries. In the long run, wealth imbalance whether at home or in the world isn't a good thing.

    7. Re:Market Forces by Khashishi · · Score: 2

      define:optimal
      Most utilitarian? Highest GDP? Stores with the largest number of items on the shelves?

    8. Re:Market Forces by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Argentina is functioning, so is Brazil, and China. Economy will function without a middle class. Most of history had functioning empires, states, and cities without a middle class. Might not have been the most pleasant places, but they functioned.

    9. Re:Market Forces by Stellian · · Score: 2

      Truth be told, there is no need for work visas to make a knowledge transfer. The foreign employee can come by it's own accord, in a "vacation" and observe local operations, or selected US employees can be forced to tutor foreign colleagues in person or via the Internet. Those who refuse or do not produce results, are the first to go. Sure, the H1Bs streamlines the whole thing to the point where they've outsourced the knowledge transfer process itself.

    10. Re:Market Forces by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "The foreign employee can come by it's own accord"

      1) The employee is not an "it"
      2) it's means it is.
      3) Is this so complex?

    11. Re:Market Forces by orasio · · Score: 1

      I don't support (or otherwise care about) H1B visas, but that's inexact.

      US companies trade their products and services throughout the world. The world is their market, so it's a freer market if you allow foreigners to participate, not only with their purchasing dollars, but also with their work.

      H1B visas and other ways to hire cheaper foreigners, while not its "intended" purpose, and while it's bad for locals, it does make the market freer and fairer. That's exactly why this is bad for locals, and they should fight it.

    12. Re:Market Forces by MacDork · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes, exactly. There is no market without a government first setting the rules. If the rules are rigged for an elite few, then everyone else is guaranteed to lose.

    13. Re:Market Forces by gstoddart · · Score: 1

      it does make the market freer and fairer

      No, it doesn't ... it allow corporations to change the rules of the game as they see fit, and bypass the market.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    14. Re:Market Forces by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Market forces continue to exist in nations that have outlawed them. So no.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    15. Re:Market Forces by sinij · · Score: 1

      Your statement is also inexact. Markets must rely on rule of the law as a framework for operation. Otherwise, it will devolve into "might makes right".

      As such, there is no global uniform market as there is no global government with consistent laws. There are many interconnected markets with various levels of rule of the law. By exporting jobs to India, the corporations benefit from reduced labor costs associated with weaker and more corrupt government there, yet they still rely on stronger US-based IP protection to sell the goods.

    16. Re:Market Forces by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The improper use of the contraction was wrong. But using "it" was correct as we need to use genderless pronouns for everything. I mean the employee could have been born a male but self identifies as a lesbian female dolphin for all you know.

    17. Re:Market Forces by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is the opposite of a free market, this is a rigged game to benefit the people with the most money by bypassing the market.

      It's not a free market, that much is true. The problem for the Libertarian ideology is that no free market remains free for long. There is obviously a demand for an organization powerful enough to allow wealthy market players to bypass the market altogether. If government wasn't there to satisfy that demand, some other entity would arise in its place to profit from that demand. It's just natural supply and demand, after all. How does the Libertarian ideology propose to prevent a free market in political power without regulations or a powerful government? The answer is, it doesn't.

    18. Re:Market Forces by Foobar+of+Borg · · Score: 1

      Reminds me of this

    19. Re:Market Forces by Xenographic · · Score: 2

      There is an economic fix for this: remove the parts of the H1B that tie the person to a specific employer. That is, allow them to take any job. This would devalue it because the companies would have to pay them as much as an American would make or they'd simply jump ship after getting the visa. By making them more expensive, they could no longer be used as cheap replacements for an American.

      But what will actually happen is that they will make the rules stricter and pretend that's a solution... even though it simply reinforces the status-quo, ensuring that H1Bs are good as cheap replacements for Americans.

      It shouldn't be hard to understand--this is all about money. If you want employers to buy less, then H1Bs need to be more expensive.

    20. Re:Market Forces by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I eagerly await the field equations for this "force".

    21. Re:Market Forces by orasio · · Score: 1

      They are not discrete markets, it's a single one.

      US companies don't exist in a vacuum. Some of their profits come from foreign countries, and some of that money get spent in the local US market. That helps the local economy, and keeps more people employed. In fact, the US as a whole gets to do business mostly everywhere, so it's a mostly free market in that respect, but labour can't move freely. This kind of thing helps labour to move more freely, so it's a freer market, in the Adam Smith sense. I know that this is fueled by corporate greed, but the market end up more free, I don't think you can question that.

      Again, I think it's reasonable to fight this, because this is harmful to US guys, but I don't think it's a matter of overall fairness, but more of the legitimate personal benefit of US workers.

    22. Re:Market Forces by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      H1B visas aren't even fit for the purpose they were created for. They are supposed to be a way for people from *all over the world* who are highly skilled, to be able to fill jobs that US companies can't fill because of lack of local talent.

      Instead it has become a funnel to bring in *Indian Only* IT workers to the USA as well as ship jobs back to India.

    23. Re: Market Forces by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      F=ma of course.

      Where m stands for money and a is for abuse.

      --sf

    24. Re:Market Forces by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In fact, the US as a whole gets to do business mostly everywhere, so it's a mostly free market in that respect, but labour can't move freely. This kind of thing helps labour to move more freely, so it's a freer market, in the Adam Smith sense. I know that this is fueled by corporate greed, but the market end up more free, I don't think you can question that.

      It's clear you haven't actually read Adam Smith.

      The US does not get to do business mostly everywhere. There are many local laws that restrict this, not much different from the mercantile laws that Adam Smith was writing against in the 18th century. Even when the local laws don't actually prevent US businesses from operating, local corruption is often so bad as to make it impossible to operate and be in compliance with US law (which prohibits paying bribes to foreign entities).

      About 20% of Adam Smith's fairly massive book emphasized the need for regulation to prevent abuse of the system by parties to the market, especially abuse driven by greed or involving collusion between unprincipled business leaders. The H1B problem is a perfect example of that kind of abuse.

      Collusion between local merchants, and the inability of government in one place to regulate businesses in another country, can be just as harmful as having as a cartel operating entirely in one's own country. The need for regulation for a market to be efficient at providing for the greater good means that all parties must have and follow similar regulations.

      Hence, a "free market" in the Adam Smith sense is one in which all parties involved are essentially following the same rules. It has nothing to do with being free to do whatever one wants (no country allows people to be free to do whatever they want, this is anarchy), but rather being free to agree on price within the limits of reasonable regulations (neither buyer nor seller can coerce or even unfairly manipulate the other, or do clear and substantial harm to third parties).

      This necessarily includes regulations that limit the relationship between employers and employees.

      Hence, the abuse of H1Bs is a violation of the principles advanced by Adam Smith.

      Don't be mislead by the phrase "free" in "free market".

      As with many things in language, the meaning of words depends on context. For a nice Slashdot analogy, think about open source software. "Free" does not mean you can do anything you want with it.

  4. One Billion by Forgefather · · Score: 4, Funny

    I can imagine whoever wrote this article sitting in a large leather office chair, holding a white cat while saying "one BILLION clicks!"

    --
    "There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics"
  5. Re:CS people are primadonnas by halivar · · Score: 2

    The Luddites were a group of early 19th-century English cotton mill workers who destroyed industrial machinery they believed were taking their jobs via automation. Today, we generally consider such people backward and provincial.

  6. Immigrants losing jobs... by Sir_Eptishous · · Score: 5, Insightful

    FTFA it states that the irony is that many who are losing jobs to outsourcing to India via H1B are in fact immigrants to the US themselves. People from all over the world who moved to the US to go to school then found jobs here.

    To look at this from a macro perspective, it is the continuing "flattening" of the Earths wealth, whereby the oft used phrase "redistribution" actually means wealth flowing from the First World middle class to a sprinkling(crumbs off the table...) onto the lower classes of the Second World countries, and the meat of the wealth going to the "non-aligned" (for lack of a better phrase) 1%.

    The non-aligned would be those who have no loyalty to country, race or religion. Their loyalty lays only to the brutal Social Darwinism, whereby profit isn't enough, where rendering our planets environment a wreck isn't enough, where forcing homeowners onto the street isn't enough, while they themselves get cushy bailouts, tax breaks and special treatment at every turn.

    --
    We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
    1. Re:Immigrants losing jobs... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But .. but ..but they create jobs and 3D printers rendered the economy obsolete!

    2. Re:Immigrants losing jobs... by Khashishi · · Score: 2

      Perhaps, but this is not the stated purpose of the H1B, and this sounds illegal to me. If we want to help the world, we should just get rid of borders and visas instead of playing this game where the rich get to write visa laws in their favor.

    3. Re:Immigrants losing jobs... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you did that then no social programs can be offered or the poor will flood the counties with the best social programs until they collapse. Then the poor will move on to the next country until the entire planet is destroyed. Borders and immigration help ensure that a nation can offer social programs and that only those that *would have* paid in, but for their circumstances, can get the benefits.

      If people can cross borders then the "but for" test is not passed. In other words, these people would work in the country with the least social programs (lower taxes) and would move to the country with the best programs (highest taxes) after becoming unemployed. Business owners would also follow this pattern.

    4. Re:Immigrants losing jobs... by KGIII · · Score: 1

      It could be done with a one-world-government, methinks. Now, that has about as much chance of happening as the post scarcity economy depicted in Star Trek but it *could* happen, I suppose.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  7. So what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    People are commodities, nothing more. I need to improve my P&L sheet, and the work just has to be good enough. The more I can outsource, the better, because I've cut my OCOGS, I've improved EBITDA, and I've got a good track record on my c.v. that will help me get promoted to Director. This is the way of the future: unless you go into business for yourself or get an MBA and ascend into the management classes, you will all be replaceable peons and I'll make my money off that. And don't bother hitting me with morality arguments. There is no God, and no afterlife--we all end up the same so I'm going to get mine while I can.

    1. Re:So what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sorry but talented people are NOT replaceable; they actually help you make a successful business.
      And once they get pass that door they are never coming back.

    2. Re:So what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are some pretty good Indian MBAs who can do *your* job too now!

  8. Der trken ur jerbs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    abird
    Captcha: clowns

  9. Doesn't matter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As long as it helps the friends of power to make more profit this week, the long term negative effects are irrelevant. Especially since the negative effect of having fewer jobs with lesser pay only affects the unwashed masses; too bad for them if they weren't born rich.

  10. duh by sociocapitalist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And people wonder why rich are getting richer and the middle class is shrinking.

    But hey - free market is good and socialism is bad, right?

    Sure - until you have to live on that socialist welfare because your capitalist company owners dumped your ass cause you cost too much.

    --
    blindly antisocialist = antisocial
    1. Re:duh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're really blaming this on the free market? I can't think of a more perfect example of a system that is broken because it's NOT a free market.

      The core of the problem is that H1B minimum wage is, by law, less than minimum wage for Americans. In other words, the government is interfering in the free market by setting two different prices on the cost of labor, giving incentives to companies not to hire Americans, but to hire overseas instead.

      A free market would have the H1B minimum wage match the state's minimum wage. Oh, wait. That would solve the problem!

      But hey - socialism is good and free market is bad, right?

      Until you lose your job because the government is trying their hardest to convince your boss to take it away and give it to someone from India.

    2. Re:duh by blue9steel · · Score: 1

      But hey - free market is good and socialism is bad, right?

      Mostly yeah. As much as capitalism sucks, and it does, everything else we've tried has been worse. I'm open to suggestions if you have a new alternative.

    3. Re:duh by DarkOx · · Score: 1

      The free market hasn't be allowed to operate in a long time. The free market does not provide bailouts to big banks, or auto makers.

      The definition of middle class has been sneakily altered as well. Most of the people who think they are middle class are really working poor. Middle class used to mean you were a merchant or artisan or something. You were a free person with some wealth who go where you liked. if your liabilities exceed your assets, you are poor does not matte what your income is. If you don't have enough assets that you are 'free' to quit working move to another city and find a job you like better without risk of starving becoming homeless etc, you are poor, it makes no difference how many square feet your current home is.

      Let me make this even simpler, unless you can pay off all your debts today and have a sufficiently portable source of income to relocate at least within the country you are a serf, you are not middle class and would do well to let go of that illusion.

      Had we not bailed out the banks the poor would have gotten crushed for sure, and the wealthy would have lost a great deal of their wealth. The middle class would have profited handsomely. It would have been the middle class with actual savings that got to snap up all kinds of assets at fire sale prices.

      --
      Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
    4. Re: duh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The free market is working just fine. The cost of labor is plummeting. Native cultures decimated. Capital controls the government. All thanks to the free market: the freedom to rape and pillage without limits. Humanity at its best.

      Marx would be proud.

    5. Re:duh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The free market hasn't be allowed to operate in a long time.

      Not since we used to have child labor, trusts, 80-hour workweeks, company towns, and companies that used to hire assassins to kill workers who dared to demand things like sick pay. This is Libertarian utopia.

    6. Re:duh by TheSync · · Score: 1

      And people wonder why rich are getting richer and the middle class is shrinking.

      The facts don't agree with this statement.

    7. Re:duh by KGIII · · Score: 1

      You don't actually know any Libertarians, do you? I'll kinda help... You're confusing a political ideology with an economic system. If you can work on that then you might get somewhere.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    8. Re:duh by sociocapitalist · · Score: 1

      And people wonder why rich are getting richer and the middle class is shrinking.

      The facts don't agree with this statement.

      I don't know what 'facts' you're referring to so please feel free to present something more substantial.

      Here are some references supporting my statement:

      "...economic inequality has worsened significantly in the United States and some other countries. The richest 1 percent in the United States now own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent."
      http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07...

      "University of California, Berkeley research published in June showed America's richest 1 percent captured 55 percent of total real income growth between 1993 and 2014. "
      http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/09...

      "There is no dispute that income inequality has been on the rise in the United States for the past four decades. The share of total income earned by the top 1 percent of families was less than 10 percent in the late 1970s but now exceeds 20 percent as of the end of 2012."
      http://fortune.com/2014/10/31/...

      "...with the share of total household wealth owned by the top 0.1 percent increasing to 22 percent in 2012 from 7 percent in the late 1970s"
      http://fortune.com/2014/10/31/...

      --
      blindly antisocialist = antisocial
    9. Re:duh by sociocapitalist · · Score: 1

      But hey - free market is good and socialism is bad, right?

      Mostly yeah. As much as capitalism sucks, and it does, everything else we've tried has been worse. I'm open to suggestions if you have a new alternative.

      As my /. name suggests, I am for a balance between capitalism and socialism. The problems are (a) gaining that balance and (b) keeping it in the face of corruption and greed.

      The US was headed in the right direction for a long time but now I feel that we are heading, very quickly, in the wrong direction altogether.

      --
      blindly antisocialist = antisocial
    10. Re:duh by blue9steel · · Score: 1

      That's not really a new system, it's just duct tape around some stuff that doesn't work quite right.

    11. Re:duh by TheSync · · Score: 1

      You said "the middle class is shrinking", which is not supported by the facts.

      Your references support the fact that there are a small number of rich people in the US getting richer is true.

      However you will also find that CBO numbers show income for the middle quintile rising from $61,200 in 1979 to $76,600 in 2010 (in 2010 dollars).

    12. Re:duh by sociocapitalist · · Score: 1

      That's not really a new system, it's just duct tape around some stuff that doesn't work quite right.

      So what?

      I never said it was new. I said that capitalism, of which you've learned the same catchphrases as I did obviously, is out of balance.

      Your comments lack a bit of substance.

      --
      blindly antisocialist = antisocial
    13. Re:duh by sociocapitalist · · Score: 1

      You said "the middle class is shrinking", which is not supported by the facts.

      Your references support the fact that there are a small number of rich people in the US getting richer is true.

      However you will also find that CBO numbers show income for the middle quintile rising from $61,200 in 1979 to $76,600 in 2010 (in 2010 dollars).

      "Since 2000, the middle class has been shrinking for a decidedly more alarming reason: Incomes have fallen."
      http://www.nytimes.com/interac...

      "The study found that the percentage of middle class households (as defined above) has shrunk in all 50 states since 2000."
      http://uk.businessinsider.com/...

      "Median household income fell for the fifth straight year in 2012, the Census Bureau reported on Tuesday, to $51,017. That was the lowest annual income, adjusted for inflation, since 1995."
      http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

      --
      blindly antisocialist = antisocial
    14. Re:duh by blue9steel · · Score: 1

      Your comments lack a bit of substance.

      So do your solutions.

    15. Re:duh by sociocapitalist · · Score: 1

      Your comments lack a bit of substance.

      So do your solutions.

      Sure - enjoy your capitalism without balance. I hope it works for you in the future.

      --
      blindly antisocialist = antisocial
    16. Re:duh by blue9steel · · Score: 1

      *sigh* Apparently you didn't listen a thing I said.

    17. Re:duh by sociocapitalist · · Score: 1

      *sigh* Apparently you didn't listen a thing I said.

      Sure I did - sucks nothing better etc.

      You aren't hearing what I'm saying though, choosing instead to focus on 'new' or 'band-aid' which doesn't matter.

      Whatever -

      --
      blindly antisocialist = antisocial
  11. Re:CS people are primadonnas by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    entitlement issues much?

  12. Universal Basic Income! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    With a UBI, H1-Bs would not be a problem. Give out as many as you can to people who want to come here to _work_. Don't want to work? Visa revoked, go home.

    Let all of these H1-Bs and the sick-fuck corporations who want to hire them pay all of the taxes that will support the rest of us (that they put out of work) with a UBI.

    I'll take a UBI to have my life back from those sick-fuck corporation that are consuming 1/3-1/2 of it.

  13. We outsource to keep it local? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "William Werfelman, a vice president and spokesman at New York Life, said the outsourcing was part of a transformation of its technology systems that would soon result in more jobs in the United States. “Our decisions are centered on keeping the company competitive, keeping it in the United States, keeping it growing,” he said."

    We outsource jobs to india to create jobs in the united states. WHY CAN'T YOU PEOPLE SEE THAT?
    Outsourcing also lets us keep the company (read: MY job) in the United States.

    I can't believe he is actually able to say that with a straight face.

    captcha: retail

  14. sway popular opinion of gnats and mosquitoes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    what has "popular opinion" got to do with any governance issue these days?

  15. Kill h1b, but add more tech green cards by WindBourne · · Score: 2

    Seriously, h1b is used to keep local and immigrant pay down. If America needs these talents, then we should have them live here permantly. At the same time, they should be paid the average pay for that position. Otherwise, it is simply a company using an immigrant, rather than solving a true issue.

    --
    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    1. Re:Kill h1b, but add more tech green cards by godrik · · Score: 1

      I have an H1B right now, and I'll be receiving my green card soon. So I understand what you are saying. The H1B ties you to one employer which means that you are not free to move around.
      I would actually think that it would be better to keep the H1B visa but remove the provision of tying the visa to a job. If you are good enough to obtain an H1B, you can work whereever for, say, 5 years.

      You keep people mobile, and you keep them temporary so that you have time to make up your mind which ones you want to keep and which ones you want to cut. (Which is already what happens through the green card process.)

    2. Re: Kill h1b, but add more tech green cards by WindBourne · · Score: 1

      If your talents are needed, and u are good enough for a temporary job, then far better to simply bring you over permentantly. Tata and others should be blocked on this.

      out of curiosity, are you going for citizenship? I hope so. I would rather keep somebody that has job and cultural knowledge.

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
  16. Solution. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The USA should start exporting it's tech workers to other countries on temp visas to see how they like it.

  17. Uh, seriously... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

    the average Joe/Jane that their nice safe middle class office job isn't so safe

    When has an I.T. job have ever been safe? As an I.T. support contractor for the last ten years, I had frequent bouts of unemployment between assignments. The worse was when I was out of work for two years (2009-10), underemployed for six months (working 20 hours per month), and filed for Chapter Seven bankruptcy in 2011. Even my current government I.T. job is under threat from a government shutdown from the nut jobs in Congress.

    1. Re:Uh, seriously... by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      You dance with who brung you.

      If you don't like working for government, get an honest job.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    2. Re:Uh, seriously... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

      The I.T. job I'm doing for the government is no different than the I.T. jobs I've done for Fortune 500 companies. I make the same exact same amount money as I did in the private sector, except that I'm working with 80,000 systems and not 2,000 systems. So I'm not sure why you think a government job is less honest than a private sector job.

    3. Re:Uh, seriously... by RavenLrD20k · · Score: 2

      You missed the point. This isn't about IT jobs. That's been a known sticking point of H1-B's already. This is new. This is taking general office positions...an entire administrative office (accountants, purchasers, middle managers, etc...), hiring H1-B's to observe how these people do their job to the finest detail, then firing the entire office and shipping all its operations over to India.

      This is trashing the rest of the middle class jobs that thought they were safe from being outsourced because "you can't outsource core clerical business like you can IT." We've told them it's only a matter of time before companies found a way. Well, they found a way, and now the rest of the middle class is going to be gutted like a fish...just like we warned. It's not just an IT problem anymore. It's a core middle class office problem. How long before the executives get outsourced? Probably the next economic crash when India takes over American companies from the Top all the way down.

    4. Re:Uh, seriously... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      That's old news. Fortune 500 companies hire contractors for every function except management and engineering. It doesn't surprise me that those same contracting companies are now moving jobs to India to lower their costs and keep the profits.

    5. Re:Uh, seriously... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Double points considering HornWumpus is on record for praising military service: a "dishonest" government job.

    6. Re:Uh, seriously... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The I.T. job I'm doing for the government is no different than the I.T. jobs I've done for Fortune 500 companies. I make the same exact same amount money as I did in the private sector, except that I'm working with 80,000 systems and not 2,000 systems. So I'm not sure why you think a government job is less honest than a private sector job.

      Well, this previous statement of yours ought to be a clue:

      my current government I.T. job is under threat from a government shutdown from the nut jobs in Congress.

      Or to spell it out for you, it's not the work itself, but rather who you're working for, that makes it a 'less than honest' job.
      And for the record, I find it rather amusing that you think 2,000 systems is a normal deployment for a fortune 500 company, or that 80,000 systems is a lot.

    7. Re:Uh, seriously... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Or to spell it out for you, it's not the work itself, but rather who you're working for, that makes it a 'less than honest' job

      Some of the hardest working people I know are government workers. Many are ex-military. They get very little respect from the public because public service is held is low regards.

      And for the record, I find it rather amusing that you think 2,000 systems is a normal deployment for a fortune 500 company, or that 80,000 systems is a lot.

      With my Fortune 500 jobs, 2,000 systems at a site was the norm. With my government job, it's 80,000 systems in ten states and three time zones. Not exactly an apple to apple comparison.

  18. Don't make it temporary. Stop villainizing Indians by m00sh · · Score: 1

    All these temporary visas come with a mountain of restrictions which end up giving a ridiculous amount of power to the employers and nothing to the employees. They should be scrapped for flat out green cards, not a temporary visa then to a green card 10-15 years down the road for Indians. There shouldn't be a second class, temporary worker thing at all.

    However, all the newspaper want to do is make Indian IT workers as a cheap villain, robbing American jobs and sometimes taking them to India.

    People really think implementing a newer version of the "Asian/Indian exclusion act" is going to solve the problem. "If we restrict the Indians from coming here, my job will be safe" mentality.

    We are fighting the powerful forces of economics here. India has a massive surplus of highly trained and educated work force. That's their export. H1B is a tiny tiny little window.

    Those accounting jobs at ToysRUs were going to India no matter what, H1B was just used as a quick way for the new workers to get up to speed. If you stop the Indians from coming here, the companies can simply ask the workers to go to India to train their replacements to get their severance packages.

    All the people who complain that it is the 1% getting all the benefits of workers while the middle class hollows out - guess why that is. Convoluted and restrictive government regulation. Only the 1% can circumnavigate the complex legal maze to get the benefits of cheap labor in India while a new startup or a small business will struggle to utilize it.

    Make the whole thing simple and not so exploitative. The middle class will blossom because lots of startups and small businesses will benefit from cheap Indian labor.

  19. Get a grip people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't understand the protectionism mentality that exists. No one owes anyone a job just because they are qualified and breathing. So what, if millions of other people can do your job, cheaper, faster and better you get replaced. That is the the business side of things. If you're really that smart then you should be able to employ yourself.

  20. That's a free market for you... by ObjectiverR · · Score: 1

    My first introduction to offshoring was 15 years ago when they shipped in a bunch of consultants to shadow a floor of mainframe developers who were all told they were being fired in 6 months. Felt bad for both sides. The young kids shipped off to a new country, making little money, getting yelled at all day by people who were told they aren't worth paying anymore. But, that's a free market economy. If someone can undercut you and do the job just as good or better, people are going to do it. I've found that IT people can value their contributions differently than the business and when the two aren't aligned these things can happen. (And yes, sometimes business just plain doesnt understand and fucks up). Ultimately, if someone can do my job with limited english skills and 3,000 miles away then I'm clearly not as good as I thought I was. It's on me to make sure that doesn't happen.

    1. Re:That's a free market for you... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thats outsourcing.. offshoring is when your company opens a center in a cheaper country and hires developers at 25-50% of what they pay Americans. Outsourcing is when the company contracts the work to another company at 25%-50% of what they pay you and that company hires developers at 5-10% of what you're paid.

    2. Re:That's a free market for you... by ObjectiverR · · Score: 1

      To be clearer on the story - the Indian contractors they brought in went back to India after learning the systems to do their job from there.

    3. Re:That's a free market for you... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Right.. and I checked.. apparently I was a bit wrong in my definitions on outsourcing and offshoring. Still, do maintain a distinction between say, Google hiring developers in India, bringing them to US, training them and making them work in India vs Google paying Infosys which then hires developers in India to do the work. In the 1st case, at worst the Indian skill level will be 80% that of the American skill levels and salaries atleast 30-40% of the USD salary. in the second the skill level will be at best 30-40% of the American skill levels and salaries at most 5-10% (the cost to the client company will be about the same in both cases though, but the 2nd one removes the headache of hiring,etc. and the services company takes a massive cut to do the HR,resourcing,etc work)

  21. copycats? by NostalgiaForInfinity · · Score: 1

    The term "copycats" implies that Toys'R'Us's accounting procedures are somehow the property of the US accounting profession. The fact that these procedures are so complex that they even require consultants to come in and "shadow" workers in order to figure out how to do them properly is itself a testament to the ludicrous complexity of US accounting rules (which are themselves in large part a consequence of lobbying by lawyers and accountants).

    As for Toys'R'Us "outsourcing" these jobs to to India, the company is a global company, with half its stores outside the US. If any justification were needed for moving these jobs abroad, that alone would suffice.

    I just hope we'll be able to outsource our personal taxes and financial services overseas as well, so that tax preparation and other kinds of personal finance become cheaper and more generic as well.

  22. Never permanent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well, to be fair, an Indian migrating to US today can never really get a green card, they are processing green cards from 2008 or so and progressing at 5-10 days/month. Intuitively this speed will only reduce. Cant really fault people for wanting to make money in USD and move back to India, US has declared that Indians are not acceptable as permanent residents and should only be treated as temp workers tied to employers, just like how white collar workers in Gulf are treated (AFAIK US and Gulf countries, specifically UAE though I believe the others are similar are the only countries with both an attractive job market and which do not allow Indians to get permanent residency. Scandinavian, European (though I guess those will go away after Syria), Canada and Australia all give citizenship in less than 10 yeas)
      yet, US still charges Indians living there social security tax though they will not retire there or be able to claim the benefits ever

  23. It is all about driving wages down. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The main effect of outsourcing and H1B Visas is that it is driving wages down.

  24. Larger macro-level problems are coming. by ErichTheRed · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When I saw this in the Times yesterday, the thing that surprised me was that a major news outlet was reporting on this in very matter-of-fact terms. As we've seen, these discussions get heated, and for the record I'm not one of the "they took our jerbs" people for the most part. What I don't like is the abuse of the system by these offshoring companies, and the erosion of any sort of stability throughout the workforce.

    As originally intended, there's nothing wrong with the H-1B and L-1 visa programs. I work for a multinational company and we often use these to bring in very talented employees who just happen to be citizens of another country. The difference here is that most of these people are designing products and providing the exceptional advanced-level knowledge that the visa was originally intended to allow. In the article, and indeed in most IT departments, this is just a flat-out replacement of a low level office job. Tata or Accenture or whoever is just bringing in the few people in their offshore centers who have the capability to learn the target job and teach it to the hundreds of other interchangeable workers they have back home. This is what I think has to be looked at; companies simply don't want to pay for any labor anymore if they don't have to and now we have an environment where they can easily avoid doing so. I like how the article puts it right in peoples' faces -- it's no longer the problem of some anonymous factory worker in the rust belt or an IT worker that makes a higher salary and has a higher perceived degree of stability than the accountants they were profiling.

    What bothers me more about this is the loss of economic stability. People are going to avoid buying things if they aren't secure in their jobs, period. The 30-year mortgage was designed around the idea that people would at least stay in the house for 10 or 15 years, preferably for the full 30. Someone who's picking up stakes and moving every five years chasing the jobs around the country to the lowest-cost environments is wasting a huge amount of money in real estate transfer taxes, realtor commissions, loan fees, mortgage interest (since it's front-loaded), etc. It easily costs mid-5 figures when everything is added up to move, but most people just pay for it with their next mortgage and don't think about it. Not to mention the cost -- moving a family with kids around constantly does not make for a stable home life. Ask any military family about that; every military kid I've ever talked to says they hated moving every year or two because they never got to settle in somewhere and put down roots.

    It sounds really mean to say this, but think about your average corporate worker. Not management, not a hotshot developer, just a random cubicle dweller producing reports or processing customer records. The jobs in the article, like low level corporate accounting tasks and such, were where the vast majority of average, C-student college graduates have wound up for the last 30+ years. The progression was thus - get into a big state university, party your way through 4 years and get a generic business or communications degree, show up at corporate recruiting events during your senior year, and get hired on for some sort of entry level task. If you kill off all the middle class jobs out there, what do you propose doing with these educated people who previously bought houses, paid property taxes, and felt secure enough in their lives to have a family? If there's no good answer for this, why are we bothering telling students that college is worth it in the long term? These are the questions that need to be asked, and no one is doing it because companies are only focusing on today, not 20 years from now.

    1. Re:Larger macro-level problems are coming. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is why I've been saying for years that real estate is not an investment. It may have been in the time of my parents, say the '50s to the '80s. Home "ownership" is nonsense these days.

    2. Re:Larger macro-level problems are coming. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have zero pity for these party-animals, these people are NOT educated by my standards. They just bought into a scheme which is no longer profitable. The hilarious thing is that they don't know it. I seen these type of people treat others who are 10x smarter than them (this is just a small estimate, I'm sure the actually multiplier is higher) like shit because they do not have a piece of paper. If I owned a company, I would hire exactly 0 of these asshats. I rather higher someone with a brain than a piece of paper.

    3. Re:Larger macro-level problems are coming. by yes-but-no · · Score: 3, Insightful

      jobs are vanishing. outsourcing is just one reason; the bigger reason is technological-unemployment. humans should come to terms with the fact that only a small percentage (say top 5% or even 1% in any skill) of the population is needed to work [these too work out of the love/passion for the job]. The rest can just relax -- society should come up with some solution like basic-income.

    4. Re:Larger macro-level problems are coming. by SScorpio · · Score: 1

      Real estate is still an investment, but like a any other investment it has risks and doesn't offer a guaranteed return. Buying houses, commercial buildings, and land and then renting it out can make more money then a mortgage or loan on the property. If this is a house the cost of the mortgage, taxes, and repairs might be less than the cost of renting in an area.

      The old saying you are thinking of from the 50s is that your home is an asset because real estate always goes up. Owning a house is not an asset, it is a liability. It's possible you could come out head in relation to renting, but you could also lose all of the money you put into house. Through with renting that money is just gone each month and you never have equity in a property.

    5. Re:Larger macro-level problems are coming. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Those interested in two perspectives on these changes should read the following:

      The Great Risk Shift
      The Bell Curve (Yes, that book. Most of it isn't about race. It is about what happens to society when the only decent paying jobs out there require intellectual abilities possessed by less than 20% of the population.)

    6. Re:Larger macro-level problems are coming. by Foobar+of+Borg · · Score: 1

      This is why I've been saying for years that real estate is not an investment. It may have been in the time of my parents, say the '50s to the '80s. Home "ownership" is nonsense these days.

      Actually, it wasn't considered an investment then, either. It was considered your biggest liability. Thinking of it as an "investment" keeps you from thinking you are a poor serf.

    7. Re:Larger macro-level problems are coming. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You keep renting. I'll enjoy the $350,000 I've already made since purchasing my first home in 2011, not even counting all the taxes I've saved by writing off my mortgage interest and property taxes - things you're paying your landlord for without the ability to deduct. When I sold my last home, the net result was that I was paid about $3,000 a month to live in my house. How much are you getting paid to live in yours?

    8. Re:Larger macro-level problems are coming. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      " I rather higher someone with a brain "

      And the first thing I'd do is teach you to spell "hire", you dumbfuck.

    9. Re:Larger macro-level problems are coming. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I rent in Quebec, where you can't deduct your mortgage or property taxes from your income tax. If you earn less than 35000$ a year, you can get a Relelve 8 from your landlord for the portion of municipal property tax I paid through my rent, then it does get deducted.
      So much for those points. As for your imaginary 350k$ you "made" in 4 years, this is either feverish imagination, or something else is going on. If you bought a house for 1$ that is now worht 350K$, this is more of a lottery than an investment strategy for all.
      So, show me the 350K$ cash. You don't have it until you sell, in which case you will be homeless and need to buy another home, which puts you in the same situation as me; no money in your pocket and living in a house. Big deal.
      My rent has only increased modestly since 2001 because of the Regie du Logement in Quebec which regulates rent increases.
      My rent is 505$ a month. If I had the misfortune of "owning" a similar propery, I'd be paying 600$ a month in mortgage, plus 150$ condo fees, plus 1800$ a year in property taxes, plus 350$ in school taxes, plus god knows what else.
      I simply save 500$ a month into my retirement savings plan, which is tax deductible, and is a far safer investement than real estate.

      So yes, I'll keep renting, just like I'll keep buying food at IGA instead of owning a farm.

    10. Re:Larger macro-level problems are coming. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "The Bell Curve (Yes, that book. Most of it isn't about race. It is about what happens to society when the only decent paying jobs out there require intellectual abilities possessed by less than 20% of the population.)"

      You are correct, sir. The claim that the time is coming when 80% of the population will consist of people who are incapable of being educated to the point of being self-sufficient is definitely not about race. It's simply nonsense. But, if you can believe that, then you don't have any problem believing the part of the book that *is* about race, either. BTW, did you simply ignore the part of the book that's about *class*? The black population of the United States is a low, low 13%. What race is going to make up the remaining 67% of losers, do you think, given that Asians, Indians, and Jews have all of the intelligence?

  25. Only... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Dumbshit MBA's believe globalisation is a good thing, luckily a couple years from now, they too will be wondering where their jobs went.

  26. Unionize... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If the workers were in a union, this bullshit wouldn't be happening. There is a union for office workers and it workers. It is called OPEIU - Office Professional Employees International Union and I'm in it. www.opeiu.org I used to work at various IT shops from startups to fortune 500 companies. I had the typical salary job and worked the typical IT 50-60 hour week crap. Not any more. We unionized and now get paid hourly. Overtime is time and a half on anything over 40 hours and Sunday is double time. No one can stop you from organizing, that is illegal. You just need the balls to do it. People bitch and moan about these jobs getting outsourced, but they sit there and help train their replacements like the helpless little idiots they are. If you are that spineless then you deserved to be outsourced. Yes, the company will dangle your severance package over your head and you won't get anything if you quit before training your replacement, but if you don't stand up against this bullshit, you get what you deserve.

  27. Re:Don't make it temporary. Stop villainizing Indi by SQLGuru · · Score: 1

    While I think the whole thing sucks, here's the problem:

    TRU isn't bringing in H1-B workers.....they're hiring TCS to replace a department for cheaper. Done. End of TRUs involvement with choosing the replacement workers.

    TCS is using H1-Bs to bring in people skilled in job shadowing as part of the outsourcing contract.

    TCS is then using Indian labor to fulfill the contract because those workers are cheaper and can NOW do the same job, thanks to the job shadowers.

    Had TRU picked a different outsourcing firm, that firm would have still brought in people to learn the processes and the TRU people would have lost their jobs (or potentially been transferred to the outsourcing firm --- that used to be a fairly common condition of outsourcing).

    So, who's to blame? TCS if anyone. Could they have found some non-Indian people qualified to do the job shadowing (the skill the H1-Bs were hired for)?

  28. hard to close that loophole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    From the article, not all of the people on-site to run the outsourcing were on H-1B or L-1 visas. Someone really could be a world-class expert in KT for outsourcing, coming form India, but not a particularly competent accountant. And there aren't any laws that prevent the end result of this kind of outsourcing. The KT people weren't taking the incumbent employees jobs, it sounds like those were going to third persons back in India who would never set foot in this country.

    (Speaking as someone who once had a phone interview for Wipro, and currently works for a U.S.-based outsourcing company that competes directly with Accenture and Infosys and has a huge India workforce.)

  29. Re:CS people are primadonnas by blue9steel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Of course the Luddites were right about their own personal situation, but let's gloss over that part.

  30. H1B Visa Scam by SandwhichMaster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This one hits close to home for me. Having worked for Accenture for a number of years, I saw the H-1B visa scam play out over and over. The campus I was staffed at originally hosted several thousand employees, then Accenture started bringing in the visas. Every year Accenture would grab as many visas as possible, train those people in at an existing jobs, then send those people back to their home country with someone else's job and make a round of layoffs locally. By the time I quit, those thousands of jobs had been cut to hundreds and the campus was a ghost town.

    Having seen this repeat so many times, the whole political theater over illegal immigrants seems ridiculous. If our representatives aren't trying to save good paying jobs that require government approval to be shipped away, it's clear that the whole immigrant debate is just a political red herring.

    To be clear, I have no problem with immigrants who come to stay and make what they can in this country. Pretty much all of our ancestors did this at some point. People that come here to swoop up a job and bring it home, however, that's another story.

    1. Re:H1B Visa Scam by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To be clear, I have no problem with immigrants who come to stay and make what they can in this country. Pretty much all of our ancestors did this at some point. People that come here to swoop up a job and bring it home, however, that's another story.

      Your govt disagrees... Indians cannot get GC's anymore. If I was to come to USA today, under current rules, I will not get a GC for 20-30 years,and will have to leave the country immediately on being fired.Also need to take permission ("Advance Parole") if visiting some other country
        If your govt wants Indians to work in US long term, it would allow them to do so, and not treat them as 3rd class citizens wouldnt they?

    2. Re:H1B Visa Scam by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      There are no bad reasons for leaving Accenture. You should party.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    3. Re:H1B Visa Scam by ErichTheRed · · Score: 1

      "By the time I quit, those thousands of jobs had been cut to hundreds and the campus was a ghost town."

      This is mainly what I'm worried about, and why the article was a good thing to get in front of everybody. I've spent a long time working either directly for very large companies, or as a contractor to them doing various IT jobs. These are the kinds of companies like you describe, with huge multi-floor buildings employing thousands of people. (Basically, you're not in the "very large" category until your building/campus has its own parking garage.) The problem that not everyone seems to get is that the entire economy is based around giving thousands of people like this a way to earn money and have a stable existence. Unless you want to throw out money and switch to a Star Trek utopian society, people need to work, earn money and spend it. People in favor of squeezing out every single inefficiency in the economy love to point to big employers and say how much waste there is, how much less they could be paying their workers, etc. And yes, large companies do have some completely dead wood and less productive people -- I've seen tons of dead wood over the years. I've also seen a lot of corporate jobs that involve little more than taking a stack of input work, performing some sort of process on it, and submitting it to the next person in the chain. But...here's something to think about:
      - A lot of those paper pushers own real estate and are paying property taxes.
      - Many have one or more children, and are using public education to educate them while they work, which requires property taxes.
      - Most, if not all, have had to purchase or lease one or more cars from car dealerships.
      - Everyone pays sales tax, and car owners pay gasoline taxes to keep the roads in driveable condition, so they can get to that 10,000 person corporate campus every morning.
      - Every W2 employee pays Social Security and Medicare tax, and most 1099 contractors pay it themselves as well.
      - The ACA as it currently stands means we will still be on the "insurance" model for healthcare regardless of who pays for a very long time, and large employers are able to get better deals from insurers than individuals can.
      - Employees who are happy and feel safe in their jobs are going to be willing to spend more money. This includes discretionary "treats" every now and then as well as vacations, and this spending powers a huge other side of the economy. Employees who are scared about being laid off next week are going to hang on to their money.

      Given that large employers' employees affect a large portion of the economy, I'm all for some inefficiency. Otherwise, you're going to get the same effect that I saw growing up in the Rust Belt-- factories and steel mills that had the 70s equivalent of these corporate jobs all of a sudden stopped contributing to the economy, and everything just started grinding to a halt. Unless we want to flip the entire economy on its head, everyone is going to need a way to make money, and getting rid of these jobs is not the way to do that.

    4. Re:H1B Visa Scam by KGIII · · Score: 1

      If your work is like your grammar then, by all means, I can see why people would be upset. I never hired any. I've never really had much experience working for someone else other than meaningless jobs while in college. But, yeah, if I were a worker and they were bringing people in who couldn't do the job very well and firing me then I'd be pissed. I'd unionize but, still, I'd be pissed.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    5. Re:H1B Visa Scam by SandwhichMaster · · Score: 1

      Wished I had quit much sooner. I got a huge pay increase, equally large workload decrease, and now have to tolerate minimal 'execuspeak'.http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/09/30/133216/ny-times-temporary-visas-to-import-talent-help-copycats-take-jobs-abroad#

    6. Re:H1B Visa Scam by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It isnt, its better than my grammar.. hell, my normal official mails are better that what I type here ;)
      Its just that I dont put in any effort towards proofreading or correcting mistakes when commenting as AC since typically those comments get ignored by the /. crowd anyways. My normal (non anon) account (on both Reddit and /.) is reasonable and way more coherent

  31. Brazil, and China. have basic health care for all by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    Brazil, and China. have basic health care for all.

    also Brazil has good workers rights as well.

  32. Corporate America by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Will throw Americans under the bus in a second to be a cheapskate.

    Cant have stock holders bare their fair share.

    1. Re:Corporate America by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually it had become worse, now it's more like "America incorporated' !
      The very people we elect to represent us throw us under the bus.
      The corporations send lobbyists to washington with promise of money support for their re-election or for favors.
      One of the favors is wage busting by issuing H1-Bs to allow import of workers.
      That keeps wages down by limiting jobs because more jobs usually equals demand causing increasing pay.
      Then some businesses totally screw us all by sending workers trained here back to their country.
      Then some open busness there to take work away at lower cost and sometimes causes local business to fail.
      I've seen this happen several times.
      End the H1-B program, it's one of the causes of the great "sucking sound" of jobs being removed from America.
      For those that vote in America, help get rid of the problem by voting out the ones now in office who support H1-Bs.

  33. Re:CS people are primadonnas by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

    Please post where you learned you history so /.ers can avoid being so stupified.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  34. Re:duh [Test Solutions] by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    Sometimes you just have to experiment. Let's try getting a better deal from our Asian trade partners rather than keep accepting the lopsided trade. Don't use tariffs to halt trade, but rather as a negotiation tool.

    Their system and currency is set up to increase exports rather than local consumerism. They will keep doing that UNTIL we give them a clear incentive to do otherwise.

    And tell the WTO to go shove it. We'll do things our way on our own terms.

  35. Turnabout is fair play. by zerofoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've got kids and plenty of family in the toy-consuming age bracket......and I can't remember the last time we set foot in a Toys R Us.

    With any luck, internet retailers will kill the Toys R Us model anyway - its about efficiency (for me) you know.

    1. Re:Turnabout is fair play. by Maxmin · · Score: 1

      With any luck, internet retailers will kill the Toys R Us model anyway - its about efficiency (for me

      Yes, and you'll definitely be supporting the offshore model. You'll be purchasing toys from a distribution company that sources its products outside the USA.

      With any luck, there may have been an American designer behind that toy's first incarnation, but then the manufacture was shipped overseas.

      --
      O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
  36. Average Joe/Jane doesn't read NY Times by twasserman · · Score: 2
    I saw the article yesterday, and it did a good job of explaining a phenomenon that has been happening for 20 years or more.

    But I'm afraid that it won't convince "the average Joe/Jane that their nice safe middle class office job isn't so safe." That's because the average Joe or Jane doesn't read newspapers much anymore, and they certainly don't read the Times. I also suspect that Joe and Jane, if they or their family members have salaried jobs, have already seen this situation and perhaps been affected by it. If you want to get the message out, then it has to get to the cable news channels, where it can be explained in basic English and illustrated by a couple of interviews. The extreme right-wing is already against the H1B program for its own reasons.

    When you combine the H1B assault on the middle class, with the "workforce optimization" programs used for hourly staff, you get a severe squeeze on all workers, which helps to explain why so few people outside the 1% feel secure in their jobs and their lives.

    1. Re:Average Joe/Jane doesn't read NY Times by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually it's a poorly written article.

      The issue is really outsourcing job overseas, which has been happening for decades and is perfectly legal, not H-1B workers. And the major problem with H-1B visa is not outsourcing but that it allows companies not to train or employ US workers.

      If a company is going to outsource jobs and make US workers redundant they can use any US worker, a H-1L worker from an overseas subsidiary, or any anyone with a valid work visa, to train up in your job, then train people OS. The article offers no evidence they are using H-1B visa holders improperly and the company denies it, but the article just keeps on implying it anyway. If they are this should be stopped, but it won't stop the outsourcing just make it a tiny bit more expensive.

  37. Re: Are guest-workers, their sponsor/emoloyers, "m by NickGnome · · Score: 1

    Given the comments and practices of the employer/sponsors, immigration lawyers, lobbyists for guest-work visa programs, and, yes, many of the visa grantees, there seems to be quite a bit of evidence of belief in guest-worker privilege.

  38. Re:CS people are primadonnas by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The "Connections" series with James Burke helps a lot.

  39. The article leaves out a minor point... by Rob+Y. · · Score: 5, Informative

    The article neglects to report on the end results of this process - making it seem like 'well, this is nasty, but it's what American business needs to do to remain competitive'. Since they mention Cognizant as one of the big players using this 'tape the current workers and then fire them' approach, let me comment as an ex worker that was ultimately fired after surviving a Cognizant outsourcing for several years and working with their devs (technically 'rebadged' as a Cognizant dev myself):

    1. Productivity takes a huge hit. I have no idea whether the cost savings are enough to counteract that, but in our case the software products that had their development outsourced, all - without exception - have died on the vine and are now running on skeleton crews in anticipation of being shutdown once all existing support contracts with customers end. That's the endpoint where I lost my job.

    2. The Indian developers never get up to speed. Or more accurately, they begin to get up to speed after 9 months to a year - but then Cognizant rotates them out to other projects, and you're back to total green junior guys watching the videos and asking stupid questions again. And yes, this is all by design. Cognizant's big selling point to the US companies is that they enable great flexibility to ramp staff up and down on demand. Why those companies believe that crap is another story altogether.

    3. There is no concept of a senior developer. Prior to the Cognizant experience, the senior devs came up through the ranks and had an incredible depth of knowledge and experience about the specific products they were managing. Ultimately, that product-specific knowledge became as valuable as their tech chops. The Cognizant model relies on 'business analysts' who came up through the product design - i.e. spec writers, not through development. So where those folks used to be or have access to senior developers to sanity check their designs, there is now an utter vacuum. So there is no iterative back-and-forth to fix broken designs. Stuff gets built (way late) according to specs with problems that should've been caught along the way. Meanwhile, the offshore dev's spun their wheels trying to build something they didn't understand - often because it didn't make sense. Only to need to have it completely trashed and rewritten.

    4. And this is a big one. All that 'knowledge transfer' material (i.e. the videos and any corresponding writeups) are the exclusive property of Cognizant. So that even if you come to realize that the Cognizant outsourcing was a mistake, you have already fired the people who had the original knowledge - and you don't even own the (shitty) materials to train staff to replace Cognizant. They essentially own your operation - at the same time as they drag it down.

    --
    Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
    1. Re:The article leaves out a minor point... by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 4, Informative

      2. The Indian developers never get up to speed.

      Yes, I've seen this repeatedly in several different companies.

      At Boeing, the Indian developers I worked with didn't have the required security clearance(s) to work on the project they had been hired for...so they sat in a separate room and played solitaire at $65 an hours. For months.

      At Microsoft they could barely communicate, didn't understand the goals of the project (!!) and were nearly incapable of coding; anything that required the slightest bit of innovative thought or initiative was beyond them. Problem solving? Forget it, they just had no idea how to even begin to disassemble a problem and work the steps necessary to get through it.

      At AT&T they turned in code that wouldn't compile, and they did this over and over and over and over and over and over and over. They "coded" stuff with no error checking, no bounds checking, no type checking, no sanity tests, no sanitization of incoming data, etc etc etc.

      But remember, there are NO people in the entire USA that have the skills these guys were hired to do. Apparently not even me, the guy who was fixing most of their mistakes.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    2. Re:The article leaves out a minor point... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      2. The Indian developers never get up to speed.

      "Indian developers"?

      Yeah, there are only 2.75 million [1] of them and you'd worked with most of them to have an opinion. Nothing but, sweeping generalization.

      [1] As of 2013

    3. Re:The article leaves out a minor point... by Rob+Y. · · Score: 1

      ...the guy who was fixing most of their mistakes

      Yep. I was that guy too. And what's most irksome is that these guys would spin their wheels and implement utter garbage because they were afraid to admit they didn't have a clue. Admittedly, they may have been intimidated by my reactions in the past to how many times they asked the same questions after silently listening to the answers without letting me know they didn't understand them.

      I'll be charitable and say that it's not that the Indian developers are not talented. It's that they're simply not in a position to provide any creative input to the process. By design, they are drones working off of specs that are supposed to be complete. But specs are never complete - except in the warped minds of executives who think that 'process' and 'accountability' can solve all problems. That said, since talented developers are just as hamstrung by this process as novices are, I have no doubt that Cognizant hired as cheaply as possible. There's competition for talented devs in India too.

      In my case, the company was secretly for sale when the outsourcing was undertaken. Successful future development was not a priority - profitability on paper was all that mattered. What's hideous about this is that the buyers should know by know that a buyout target that has outsourced this way is not a good prospect. But again, in our case, the private equity firm that did the buying had its eyes on an IPO 2 years down the road. An IPO based on a marketing promise to redeploy all apps 'in the cloud' in that time frame. In other words, either idiots - or hucksters confident that they can hype and resell this junk before the shit hits the fan.

      --
      Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
    4. Re:The article leaves out a minor point... by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

      they asked the same questions after silently listening to the answers without letting me know they didn't understand them

      THIS...this this THIS times a billion. It's cultural.

      They will NEVER say they don't understand, and the answer to ANY question is either "yes" or whatever it is they think you want to hear.

      They are culturally and pathologically incapable of saying "no" or "I don't understand". They will nod their heads and smile and agree with whatever words come out of your mouth regardless of what you just said.

      I had a coworker who once, in the middle of a conversation about a function call, told one of the Indian programmers "I am the pen that holds the conductor's cap in Buffalo", and the Indian dev nodded and said "Yes, yes, right, yes".

      My buddy looked at me, I looked at him, and at that moment we both knew the project was DOOMED. Utterly fucking doomed.

      I've no idea what skill set that particular dev was hired for, but whatever it is, there are no Americans that have it, none anywhere in the entire country.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
  40. what!!! you mean there might be competition!!! by rbgnr111 · · Score: 1

    I thought that was all just the spirit of free trade. If you have the ability to take an idea and do it better then why not. There are plenty that do the same within the US, why would it be ok, to copy the aspects of a business model only if you stay within the country of origin?
    The us did it in the past in copying some of the business models of Japan... If you read sam waltons book "made in america" walmart did it too, taking all the things that worked for his competitors and trying to implement them within walmart.
    if the outcome is better quality of life and lower cost products, then I don't see how this is a bad thing.

    on a side note... I'm worried about all these cars are going to affect my horse buggy making business. we need to ban cars

  41. Open the Boarders : Entitlement Society by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We live in this entitlement society where we expect the government to care for us, secure our jobs, etc. Well, I'd prefer to take personal responsibility for myself and be free to travel, learn, and go where I please. Be it a socialist hell hole or even a 'terrorist' training camp in some far off corner of the world. There are costs to living in a free state. If we actually value the ideals we claim to uphold we must take a step back and say sometimes freedom comes at the cost of life.

    I have no doubt that opening the boarder would push wages down. However free trade has been pushing wages down for 30 years. We started outsourcing manufacturing to China in the late 70s (1979). We moved on. People in the US took up education and our lives largely improved. Now maybe if we stopped throwing money at the educational industrial complex we'd actually have sane educational costs rather than the souring prices which make it impractical that we have now. It might help if we stopped training so many kids for degrees that would leave them stranded. Maybe capping the number of humanities and liberal arts majors for a start. The problems we have are the labor isn't going where it needs to go in order to maintain high paying careers or a middle class life-style. Fixing this should be a priority.

    We also need to eliminate the social welfare programs including education, vehicle registration, license plates, social security, insurance, etc. I'm not a republican and don't necessarily think we shouldn't cover *common* critical stuff we all need. We need roads and we need hospitals, but what we don't need middle-men for-profit insurance companies.

    Short of this we need severe limits on a lot of this stuff. The middle class shouldn't be paying for it at all. You want free education, housing, and food? Go setup camps to educate those truly in need. The majority of Americans *could* pay for all these things themselves if we didn't have government programs costing us billions of dollars. I could have long ago have paid for college without a loan had it not been for the insane taxes and educational system that lives off government and government-backed funding.

    1. Re:Open the Boarders : Entitlement Society by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      I could have long ago have paid for college without a loan had it not been for the insane taxes and educational system that lives off government and government-backed funding.

      No one is forcing you to go to an expensive school and take out college loans that you can't afford. I had a roommate who completed four-years at the university by working 40 hours per week and taking a full load each semester. I worked 30 hours a week at the college bookstore while taking a full load each semester. It's easy rage against the "entitlement society" but that's not the problem. Too many Americans have unrealistic expectations about what they can get out of life. Having more is not always better, having less can be much better.

    2. Re:Open the Boarders : Entitlement Society by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ..says the genius who can't spell "borders"...

    3. Re:Open the Boarders : Entitlement Society by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I had a roommate who completed four-years at the university by working 40 hours per week and taking a full load each semester. I worked 30 hours a week at the college bookstore while taking a full load each semester.

      Given what you have described, it's very likely that your school was not in the top 25 or even the top 50 and that neither you nor your roommate majored in an engineering or hard science discipline. What you describe might work in the social sciences or the humanities, but if you try that in engineering you're just going to flunk out as better and more competitive students, who aren't saddled with part-time job, eat your lunch on the grade curves.

    4. Re:Open the Boarders : Entitlement Society by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      My roommate majored in computer engineering at the state university and works for the FBI as a computer forensic expert. I skipped high school to graduate with a general education A.A. degree in 1994, and graduated with a computer programming A.S. degree and made the president's list for maintaining a 4.0 GPA in 2007. Not everyone needs to go to a top whatever school to earn a decent living.

  42. What can we do about it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I agree with most of the people commenting here. My question is what's the recommended path to support reduction or reform of H1-B program? I tried to find organizations that lobby Congress against the influx or expansion of the program but all I could find were from the early 2000's.

    I'm ready to donate money and time to the right organization if one exists

  43. Where are all these employees? by radish · · Score: 0

    I've been a hiring manager at a few large companies over the years. It's never been easy to find good people with or without H1-Bs. Right now I'm sitting on 3 open seats for devs, it's not because of pay or benefits - on the face of it these are pretty desirable jobs - it's just really hard to find qualified candidates. Once I'm turning great people away I'll believe we don't have a talent pool problem.

    --

    ---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"

    1. Re:Where are all these employees? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Appropriate pay and benefits is a subjective determination. Double the pay and you'll get plenty of qualified applicants. Just because you can't find a Ferrari for the price of a Kia doesn't mean there aren't any cars for sale.

    2. Re:Where are all these employees? by ErichTheRed · · Score: 1

      "it's just really hard to find qualified candidates"

      I can't totally disagree, as I have been on the hiring side as well as the engineering side. I guess my question is how unqualified you feel they are -- and in the case of the visa programs, how every employer feels about this. I think it's somewhat unrealistic to find a drop-in replacement for someone who knows everything about how your company works and can be productive immediately. I do systems engineering work in the airline industry -- there is a huge amount of domain knowledge that you have to gain before you can tackle the technology side.

      I think companies do need to bear some of the responsibility of training their workforce. Most used to do this with no issue - they'd take a completely green college graduate with no work experience and make them productive. The visa programs just remove another incentive for companies to do this.

    3. Re:Where are all these employees? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh poor you, can't find experienced developers for your open positions. Right, and you immediately discard any applicant who was born before, say, 1980.

    4. Re:Where are all these employees? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What are you offering and in which city? I may be able to fill two of those seats.

      I have a feeling the other ACs comment is probably the correct answer. Even if you offer twice what the people I'm thinking of are making but it turns out the job is in Silicon Valley or Seattle or somewhere else with a high cost of living, they'll will be happy to stay put in flyover country. Oh, and both of them expect to work between the hours of 8 AM and 5 PM only except in the extremely rare event of an absolutely unforeseen emergency.

    5. Re:Where are all these employees? by LunaticTippy · · Score: 1

      Google doesn't have trouble finding candidates. Have you tried their approach of higher than average pay and benefits? You may need to beat their salary and/or benefits since your company probably isn't famous for being a good workplace.

      --
      Man, you really need that seminar!
    6. Re:Where are all these employees? by radish · · Score: 1

      Actually we are very famous for being a good workplace, we've won awards for it. We compete directly with Google for talent and are competitive with them on both pay and benefits - a number of our staff are ex-Google. So yeah, when I said it wasn't pay or benefits I meant it.

      --

      ---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"

    7. Re:Where are all these employees? by radish · · Score: 1

      I like to think we're pretty open minded when it comes to experience. For example, when I joined the company I had many years of development experience, but in a totally different domain. It was a tough learning curve but they helped me through it. We also do hire grads straight out of school, typically through our intern program which has identified a number of really awesome people.

      It's the mid-level 3-7 year crowd. There is no shortage of people applying, but the SNR is terrible. So much resume stuffing, lots of people lying about their experience and knowledge. If you come along saying you're an 8 year Java veteran who's been building performance critical stuff and you can't tell me the difference between a LinkedList and an ArrayList you're either lying or just really bad at your job.

      Oh well I guess I'll stop complaining and go back to reading terrible resumes :)

      --

      ---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"

  44. Re:CS people are primadonnas by blue9steel · · Score: 2

    Society as a whole eventually did fine, excess labor was channeled into other jobs and as a species we were better off. The Luddites themselves often faced gloomy job prospects, loss of social standing, financial distress and even bankruptcy. So they were wrong, but also right in a way.

  45. Re:duh [Test Solutions] by blue9steel · · Score: 1

    Sometimes you just have to experiment.

    Suggest something that hasn't already failed miserably and isn't based on whimsical fantasy and I'd be pretty interested. So far no one has come up with a reasonable alternative.

  46. Re: "migrants", "refugees", "asylees", "guests", i by NickGnome · · Score: 1

    That's about 1.4M legal immigrants (legal permanent residents = green card grantees) per year, over 580K on H+L and about 635K with E guest-work visas. 70K "refugees", 25K "asylees" per year, including about 1,520 known Muslim terrorists whom cousin Obummer and Jeh Johnson assure us will never misbehave ever in the USA.

  47. Gee, exactly what we told them in the 90s by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

    Took you a while to clue in, huh?

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
  48. Elite Colleges by Niterios · · Score: 1

    Elite colleges in the US are plagued with international students, particularly computer science majors. A very significant amount of the greatest engineering talent comes from these colleges: MIT, Stanford, the Ivy league, etc. Additionally these kids generally come to the US to stay, at least for a good while: consider that they can expect to be paid 10x less in their home countries. The admission process of top american universities recognized these kids as being more talented than american candidates. Are companies to blame for wanting to get these kids an H1-B? Or is the american education system and its lack of results the real root of the problem?

    1. Re:Elite Colleges by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Elite colleges love international students because they can charge them more $$$ than they do American students. Never mind it doesn't cost more to teach the same courses.

  49. No by dlenmn · · Score: 1

    No.

  50. Functioning by dlenmn · · Score: 1

    "Functioning" is a pretty low standard -- just like the standard of living for many people in those countries. We shouldn't settle for "functioning".

    1. Re:Functioning by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We shouldn't settle for "functioning".

      I don't believe that we will. The American population is too well armed for that.

  51. subsidies by dlenmn · · Score: 1

    the taxes I've saved by writing off my mortgage interest and property taxes

    A number of republican presidential candidates want to ax the mortgage interest and/or state tax deductions. Power to them. The rest of us shouldn't be subsidizing your houses.

  52. Oxymoron? by RatherBeAnonymous · · Score: 1

    " “To do this quickly and efficiently,” she said, Cengage sought support from Cognizant."

    I understand the words individually, but put all together they just don't make sense.

  53. Apples and oranges by dlenmn · · Score: 1

    Yes, there are a lot of very talented and driven international students who come to the US. I know many of them. Power to them. I'm happy to have them stay.

    The issue here is jobs that don't require very talented and driven people. The article is about outsourcing accountant positions. We're not talking about MIT trained engineers; we're talking about run-of-the-mill, white-collar jobs that many people can do.

    You're talking about the first category, but the article is about the second category: the H1B system was meant to bring in people from the first category, but the system is being abused to bring in people from the second category. The american education system is irrelevant to this discussion.

  54. Re:duh [Test Solutions] by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    You make it sound like all or nothing (knob at 0 or 10). It's not. Japan has relatively high tariffs and "protectionism" from big-box stores, yet one of the lowest unemployment rates in the world. True, certain goods are more expensive there, but one could argue that jobs are more important than cheaper trinkets.

    Some countries also have the same or higher median income as the USA, yet higher taxes. That's good evidence that higher taxes on the wealthy don't hurt the middle class. (I didn't use "average" for a reason.)

  55. H1-B1 100k + COL min wage by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    H1-B1 100k + COL min wage will help as well with it going to 150K-200K for any one working 80 hours a week.

  56. Decimate by tlambert · · Score: 1

    [...]the H1-B system is totally broken and is being used to help decimate the American middle class.

    Dec.i.mate: kill one in every ten of (a group of soldiers or others) as a punishment for the whole group.

    As long as it's only one in ten, I'm kind of OK with this. Also, I'm kind of OK with the idea that such punishment is actually deserved, since it implies 90% "good apples" and 10% "bad apples", which, if you've ever worked a middle class job, is very easy to credit as an underestimation.

    1. Re:Decimate by jc42 · · Score: 1

      [...]the H1-B system is totally broken and is being used to help decimate the American middle class.

      Dec.i.mate: kill one in every ten of (a group of soldiers or others) as a punishment for the whole group.

      As long as it's only one in ten, I'm kind of OK with this. Also, I'm kind of OK with the idea that such punishment is actually deserved, since it implies 90% "good apples" and 10% "bad apples", which, if you've ever worked a middle class job, is very easy to credit as an underestimation.

      Except you're a couple of millennia out of date with that definition. I decided to check with a few online dictionaries before commenting. Most of them give a definition much like that of the Cambridge dictionary: [T]o kill a large number of something, or to reduce something severely: Populations of endangered animals have been decimated.

      Some do also give the original Latin "kill 1/10th of" definition, but they generally make it clear that that was the Latin meaning, not the modern English meaning. Some even say that it's considered poor form in English to bother specifying the fraction eliminated, on the grounds that it's redundant for people who understand the word and confusing for those who don't.

      --
      Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
  57. Re:duh [Test Solutions] by blue9steel · · Score: 1

    What you're describing are just various flavors of mixed economy capitalism which is what pretty much everyone is using nowadays. Nothing to see here, move along.

  58. Re:CS people are primadonnas by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    If you get pulled into HR for that talk to sign your replacement's training agreement, sign it. Then teach your replacement the most screwball, unreproducible way to do your job. For example, don't just pull-up stuff.log and look at line 14 like you always do in a text editor. Show them how you write a new script from scratch in the command line that forces you to review, in alphabetical order, every log file on your computer before you get to stuff.log. Do you job, but do it in the most bone headed way you can. Add complicated extras steps, "to prevent errors you must check every xyz file for the customer's name to prevent foobar errors do to the fizzbat requirement. Do NOT show them the easy way to do it, not even once. Hide your implicit knowledge. You have nothing to lose - toss your wooden shoes (sabats) into the loom!

  59. Re:duh [Test Solutions] by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    So, then we do know the solution (or at least an improvement), but are not currently applying it in the USA.

  60. Re:duh [Test Solutions] by blue9steel · · Score: 1

    We already have mixed economy capitalism in the US. All the countries that use it have slightly different flavors, they all have problems, it just sucks in slightly different ways.

  61. I don't get it by Lord+Duran · · Score: 1

    I just don't get you Americans.

    These visas were invented to enable highly-skilled workers to come from overseas to work in the US. That's clearly not what they're doing. Why don't those laid off sue? Or at least write your congressmen?

  62. Re:duh [Test Solutions] by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    That's a truism either way because just about every economy back to antiquity is a mix of central (hierarchical) control and market forces. Even the Soviet Union had some amount of barter going on, which is a form of a market system.

    I'm presenting solutions based on looking around to see what other countries do and the impact of such actions. The categorization of such solutions is mostly a game of terminology minutia that doesn't interest me. Nor am I necessarily looking for some revolutionary economic invention. If it's "mere tuning", so be it. I'm not here to add more cowbell.

  63. Coren22 CRUSHED & dominated (by facts) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Aryeh Goretsky NOD32/ESET agrees hosts = good security -> http://it.slashdot.org/comment...

    Oliver Day (Symantec) does too -> http://www.securityfocus.com/c...

    MalwareBytes' hpHosts BOTH hosts & recommends my APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl...

    ---

    * HOW MANY REAL SECURITY PROS (not menial wannabe rookie like you) DO I NEED TO KNOCK THE CHOCOLATE OUT OF YOU SOME MORE?

    ---

    Those security pros?

    They INCLUDE ME too you noobie rookie obvious dimwit as I work with those guys from malwarebytes' hpHosts on a fairly regular basis!

    I've worked professionally for decades as a combined domain-wide network admin & software engineer professionally since 1994 (with ME showing you HOW to migrate a hosts file across an enterprise -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... )

    (I've also been securing computers + WRITING GUIDES (which you told me you learned from guides) + WARES TO DO IT 1,000's to MILLIONS USED, probably LONGER THAN YOU HAVE BEEN ALIVE possibly BEING PAID FOR IT -> http://pcpitstop.com/news/winn... )

    ---

    You're all TALK & can't back it -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

    APK

    P.S.=> YOU say "hosts=bad" (yet they add security, speed, & reliability) & bitch about using admin privelege (first) to UPDATE them vs. threats online:

    "So, have you figured out why privilege escalation is a bad thing yet?" - by Coren22 on Tuesday September 22, 2015 @05:15PM (#50577809)

    Hypocrite - You admit using admin priv yourself & how else could I programmatically update hosts minus it inside Windows?

    ---

    "Of course it requires elevation to write to the hosts file" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday September 23, 2015 @05:35PM (#50585879)

    Since you're MENIAL ASS limited in skills self doesn't code (& didn't even KNOW that) & CLUE/FACT:

    Even MalwareBytes AntiMalware (best there is) DEMANDS you use admin privelege (you saying it's "bad" too?) it can't do its job fully otherwise, like many security tools... apk

  64. Not going to happen. by sethstorm · · Score: 1

    We are fighting the powerful forces of economics here. India has a massive surplus of highly trained and educated work force. That's their export. H1B is a tiny tiny little window.

    Then build up India to stand for itself, instead of cribbing off the notes of developed countries.

    People really think implementing a newer version of the "Asian/Indian exclusion act" is going to solve the problem. "If we restrict the Indians from coming here, my job will be safe" mentality.

    If that's what you call a complete rollback to 1940's era immigration law, then it's worth a try. Besides, nothing excludes them if they become full-fledged citizens.

    Guest workers got us into this mess, getting rid of them will help get us out of it. It would also serve as test of alignment to one's country - the wheat will stay and hire citizens within the US, the chaff will die out or run away to some hellhole.

    The middle class will blossom because lots of startups and small businesses will benefit from cheap Indian labor.

    You mean small businesses like this one?

    No thank you, but startups (and other parts of the on-demand economy) are too unstable in terms of stability, compensation, and long-term planning. Even the worst days of Fukushima would be more stable than the best days of a startup.

    Make the whole thing simple and not so exploitative

    Adopt Australia's approach of a points system and a consistent approach of enforcement - but omit any guest worker program.

    --
    Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
  65. I'm NOT surprised by NewYork · · Score: 1