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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.
As a former hiring manager for a lager fortune 500 company, whose ass is on the line to finish projects on time, I can assure you, I was not looking for the cheapest hire, but, the most qualified hire. I desperately looked for software engineers with experience in the area of embedded systems and some amount of networking knowledge, but, who are excellent C programmers. For the several positions I recruited for, I could not get a single qualified resume. The good ones don't want to do any C/Linux/Unix programming and are more interested in App or web development for startups. We were paying competitive market rates, with excellent benefits, but, I did not have much luck hiring any good candidates in the Silicon Valley. I completely open to hiring anyone regardless of age, sex, nationality, diability, etc. Being myself an immigrant, I felt bad that I was much more harsh in reviewing the applicants who required H1B and put them at the end of the pile. Believe, me it is much more work for the hiring manager and the company has to spend a lot more to hire a H1B candidate.
What people generally confuse is the abuses perpetuated by the so called body shopping companies, whose primary intent is to get people with some random degree from overseas and try to place them in a position in the US. In contrast, the people who are directly recruited by the large companies as their full time employees, are no different than any other full time employee in that company.
In my opinion, what should happen is, the US congress should close the "body shopping" loophole in the H1B and allow for skill based immigration, instead of H1B.