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

Pff, as if H1B had anything to do.

[goruka]

I'm a highly qualified professional from a foreign country and (due to my work experience) I got offered jobs by Tesla, Google, Facebook, etc. They basically offered me to come to the US with H1B, or go to Europe and work with a team there. They told me they are moving several teams overseas to EU and South America to work around the visa limit.

The real root cause of the problem is that highly qualified American tech workers are extremely overpaid, while equally qualified European, Eastern European or South American workers can do the same for less. For many companies, If they can't get H1Bs, they open shop overseas or hire foreign contractors. It's as simple as that. An American worker loses his/her job anyway. Sorry guys, you are too expensive and we are living in a global economy!