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

Re:Just Moral Panic: They're taking our jobs!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

AC here for reasons. The problem isn't H1Bs coming over to take jobs that can't be filled. The problem is H1Bs coming over to displace entire IT departments that are already fully staffed.

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2879083/southern-california-edison-it-workers-beyond-furious-over-h-1b-replacements.html - fair example.

Either you're naive to the issue or you're schilling for the other side. Hopefully the first thing.

Re:This is what...

[Raseri]

Since many of us work in IT, the widespread, unchecked abuse of the H1B program has had an overwhelming negative effect on many /.ers, so it's no surprise that it would be reported on frequently. I find it strange that you'd complain about the number of posts on the topic, but not the rampant fucking over of IT workers.

Re:Sounds nicely balanced...

[BarbaraHudson]

Problem is that's ALL they do. But we're to blame too. FTFA:

Yes, companies hire and fire workers all the time. But only in the case of H-1B and related foreign guest worker programs are American corporations and offshore outsourcing rackets explicitly aided and abetted by the US government- and routinely in violation of the basic principles of these programs. With no well-financed, high-powered interest group in Washington, DC, to advocate on their behalf, American technology workers have endured this systemic displacement and humiliation for at least two decades.

Should have listened when some of us were calling for unionization to help restore some semblance of a balance of power.