New Book Sold Out Offers a Look At the H-1B Debate

theodp writes: The New York Post has published an excerpt from Sold Out: How High-Tech Billionaires and Bipartisan Beltway Crapweasels Are Screwing America's Best and Brightest Workers, a new book on the H-1B debate from conservative syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin and programmer-turned-attorney John Miano. "Sold Out," notes a Computerworld review, "clearly has a point a view about the program (crapweasels, for instance), but it backs up its assertions and gives H-1B supporters a high threshold to cross. A serious argument in defense of the visa program requires explaining how America gains when a U.S. worker is replaced by a foreign visa holder hired to do the exact same job. If you are going to justify the H-1B program, then you have to defend firms that force their employees (no severance otherwise) to train their replacements. That may be the point here. This book lays bare the replacement process, the broad use of the H-1B visa by the IT offshore outsourcing industry, and the lobbying effort in Washington to minimalize the visa's use in displacing U.S. workers." With anecdotes like "how Microsoft wined and dined the Bush administration to expand the foreign worker supply through administrative fiat to circumvent public disclosure and congressional debate," the book seeks out a broader audience than just those already familiar with the H-1B issue.

Comments

The problem with H1B goes back to 1998

[Pontiac]

When the H1B bill was passed in 1998 it set a reasonable for the time exemption pay of $60,000 pr year. Paying a H1B employee more than $60k let the employer bypass the no displaced worker requirement. At the time you could almost fall out of a tree and get an IT job. Workers were hard to find and H1B filled a need.

Now here we are 17 years later and the $60k threshold has never been adjusted for inflation. What was once a tool to protect US workers is now a low wage target off shore outsourcing company's use to bid low ball IT contracts that displace US workers.

Adjusted for inflation the limit should be closer to $90,000 in 2015 dollars. Congress needs to bring the H1B minimum pay back into balance with today's job market.

Re:Not all H1B positions are equal

[DarkOx]

In many areas of the USA, you can have a nice 2000 sq ft house with large yard and a 30 minute drive to work for both spouses and good schools for your kids. In the SF Bay Area, even if you have a million dollars (or more) to spend on a house, there are very few options places where you can have that.

In other words you WERE NOT offering a competitive wage nationally. You right the H1B program does not require you to go on some national talent search but to simply advertise the position. The point of the law though was to address national worker shortage, that is how it always is/was talked about and sold to the public. So the H1B program is broken! The law does not work as expected and is instead having unintended consequences.

Salaries in any field consider the local cost of living. H1B was not developed to make sure your company have bodies in seats in a particular corner of California. There are always economic efficiencies in certain areas specializing. If you want the efficiency of having all the nations tops tech talent living in silicon valley you have to pay for that or you should have to pay for that! Yes that means paying them enough that they will personal enjoy a better quality of life than they can have for what someone is willing to pay them in Kentucky. That might be a dump truck full of extra dollars.