With Carly Fiorina As Running Mate, Cruz's H-1B Stance Now In Question (computerworld.com)

dcblogs quotes a report from Computerworld: In 2013, Sen. Ted Cruz emerged as one of the Senate's top H-1B visa supporters, and argued for a 500% visa cap increase. But during his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, Cruz had a conversion. Cruz's presidential platform proposed a $110,000 minimum wage for visa workers, among other restrictions, as a way of ending their use as low-cost labor. The move marked a complete turnabout on the H-1B issue. Cruz's decision Wednesday to add former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina as his running mate if he wins the nomination, may make his newly found H-1B beliefs a hard sell. At HP, Fiorina was a prominent supporter of the offshore outsourcing model, said Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at Howard University. "To pump up profits, she was an early adopter of the practice, which given HP's status as a leading Silicon Valley firm, pushed other firms to adopt offshoring," said Hira. As offshoring gained, Fiorina played a leading role in defending globalization. To make her point, in 2004, Fiorina said: "There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore," reported the San Francisco Chronicle.

Comments

Re:Why does Slashdot oppose H-1B?

[amiga3D]

I think the problem is bringing them here at the same wages they make in India. If they force the corps to pay them a wage equivalent to what an American worker in the same job normally makes then it's not a problem. Using them as cheap labor is racist.

-1 Disagree

[Anonymous Coward]

I modded you down because I disagree with you. It's not racism. H-1B takes jobs away from qualified Americans. I hope I was quick enough that nobody sees your post. Please stop posting crap that's wrong. Otherwise I'll keep modding down all of your garbage that I disagree with. I'm posting anonymously so I don't undo your well deserved downmod.

- chipschap

Re:-1 Disagree

[Anonymous Coward]

How about not at all? The US already has work visas, which worked perfectly until businesses wanted cheap imported labor, and undying loyalty (90 days until deportation is a big motivator.)

I see H-1Bs abused all the time. From recruiters demanding 5-7 years of Apple Swift2 so the employer can say they can't find anyone in the US, so have to go overseas, to "secret requirements" which only can be fulfilled by a H-1B worker. I have been told by bosses that Americans and Europeans are lazy and are going to be replaced, and H-1Bs are where real productivity happens, this speech happening the same day I was cleaning up messes caused by a H-1B squad that didn't understand "DROP TABLE" autocommits in MS SQL server.

Re:-1 Disagree

[MightyMartian]

The problem here appears to be fraud. In Canada, we had similar abuses going on with the Temporary Foreign Worker program (the equivalent of an H1B). In general, companies were using a number of different tricks, from putting out job listings with very difficult to fulfill requirements, or in some cases putting out job listings but then rejecting any Canadian applying for the job regardless of qualification. The TFW program was so poorly managed, and the Provinces so unwilling to enforce labor codes, that unskilled workers from the Philippines were being brought in to staff fast food restaurants, but the real crime was large companies, like the Royal Bank of Canada attempting to layoff their IT staff to hire people from India. It was all technically against the rules, but as there was virtually no oversight at all, companies were literally committing visa fraud, all facilitated by major international recruitment companies like Actyl.

The low skilled jobs were grating in their own way because what they were doing was allowing fast food joints, particularly in the communities servicing the oil sector in northern Alberta and Saskatchewan to put cheap labor in place, in some cases, once their rents and fees were deducted, these TFWs were making far less than the provincially-mandated minimum wage, and often housed in pretty astonishingly shitty conditions to boot. In the end, the former Conservative government was forced to largely shut down the TFW program to save itself from embarrassment.

The whole time, of course, if applications weren't being rubber stamped and if the provinces had been enforcing labor standards laws for the foreign workers, this would never happened. Of course, the politicians and the bureaucrats put on a good show of being ever so shocked by the abuses, when one has to infer from the number of abuses and the length of time that it had all gone on, that the whole thing had been a wink-and-nod affair for a long time before the whole thing finally leaked to the press. Naturally a few McDonalds outlets were targeted for fines, but the big companies apologized and were never fully investigated.

The solution I agreed with in the end wasn't to kill the TFW program, because there are sectors in which local labor markets can't fill the need, but rather to make it the first step to immigrating and ultimately becoming a citizen. Barring that, at least enforcing existing laws and regulations would have been a start.

Re:-1 Disagree

[guruevi]

All you have to say is: "There is no applicant that fulfills my requirements, I promise" and for good measure you make up a job posting with requirements such as 10 years of experience with Exchange 2016 and a minor in archeology. That's literally the extent of the H1B and the lottery only applies if your company needs more than a certain amount of workers per year, I forgot the exact limits. If you need only a few workers, you're guaranteed to have the applicant you want, it's less than an hour of paperwork and far less issues with HR (it's a modern slave trade).

Where I work we regularly hire through H1B, we pay 35k/y for a PhD from China or Eastern Europe and as an added benefit we/they get a fast track through the green card and permanent resident process later on, in comparison we pay 125k/y and relocation costs for similar degrees from American sources.

500% increase would be 1.25 million H1B's/year on top of the 'regular' .25M work immigrants through other methods such as Visa's.

Re:-1 Disagree

[Shadow99_1]

Well since the late 90s american law firms have taught companies how to disqualify american workers for jobs and get in H1Bs instead. A Pittsburgh firm famously got on Youtube for a seminar were they did that. It hasn't stopped. In my region it's gotten so bad for H1Bs that there are barely any large companies that have american IT workers, at the same time myself and hundreds of others who have applied for some of these jobs were not hired. While I can't tell what rate those workers are then paid, what exactly do you suppose is the reason to discriminate against american IT workers?

Re:-1 Disagree

[AK Marc]

The H1-B visa holders are doing jobs Americans are willing and able to take (illegal) and the H1-B visa holders are being paid below market for the position (also illegal).

What do you see that makes you think they are being done right?

Re:-1 Disagree

[alvinrod]

"Too expensive" or "overqualified" are not valid reasons for an H1-B, nor is "not a good fit" for that matter. This is a program designed for the case where "we couldn't find anyone with the skills we needed at all" kind of cases. They could easily fix the system, by allowing as many H1-B visas as a company would like, but increasing the cost for every time a new one is created. Give them a 10 year life span and don't require holders to remain at the same company. It immediately provides a market based solution where companies are only going to be willing to get an H1-B worker when they really can't find any talent within the country or need someone who's so insanely skilled that the extra cost is worth it from their perspective.

Re:-1 Disagree

[Shadow99_1]

Well the main problem in general is no one checks the 'why' in why a person is not hired. The companies get to say "We tried to find a local, but none were suitable for this position", the majority get thrown out during the paperwork phase before even getting an interview. Less than 1% get interviews and of those any reason under the sun is 'valid'. Technically they can't avoid hiring you for age, gender, or other protected status traits, but even that happens all the time because the company doesn't even have to tell you why you weren't hired. Most people get form letters that simply say "We found a more qualified applicant". Which is hilarious if the same job then appears in the paper (or online) the next week at that same company.

If the company had to disclose why they didn't hire someone and could only hire an H1B for skill, things would be much different. The companies would hate it though.

Re:-1 Disagree

[MightyMartian]

Absolutely. Bringing in foreign workers distorts a labor market, very much in business's favor. One of the big defenses of using the TFW program to bring in Asian workers to hand out coffee and burgers was "We can't get anybody to work up here in Frozen Butthole, Alberta", to which my response was "Well, no, you can't get anyone to work in Butthole, Alberta serving coffee for $15, when it costs over $1,000 month for the privilege of sleeping in a closet. If you pay $40 an hour, which is what serving coffee in the frozen tundra is really worth, then you'd be surprised."

One of the biggest scams going was a guy in Northern British Columbia whose company was bringing in Chinese foreign workers, and he'd made himself a litle sideline with a big tenement to house them, and then he'd charge them rent! And the real evil was that because these are sponsored workers, if they bitched, he fired them and they got sent back to the country they came from. The TFW program had quite literally turned some foreign workers into little better than indentured slaves. It was a sort of quasi-legal human trafficking operation, with the Government of Canada and the Provincial governments looking the other way, because, you know "BUSINESS!"

Re:-1 Disagree

[Trailer Trash]

Well the main problem in general is no one checks the 'why' in why a person is not hired. The companies get to say "We tried to find a local, but none were suitable for this position", the majority get thrown out during the paperwork phase before even getting an interview. Less than 1% get interviews and of those any reason under the sun is 'valid'. Technically they can't avoid hiring you for age, gender, or other protected status traits, but even that happens all the time because the company doesn't even have to tell you why you weren't hired. Most people get form letters that simply say "We found a more qualified applicant". Which is hilarious if the same job then appears in the paper (or online) the next week at that same company.

If the company had to disclose why they didn't hire someone and could only hire an H1B for skill, things would be much different. The companies would hate it though.

I looked at the requirements for hiring H1Bs as an employer - this is pretty much spot on. You basically have to swear that you can't find a local qualified worker and that's the end of it. Oh, and pay a few thousand bucks to the government. After that you can bring your H1B(s) over as long as you get a slot.

The whole thing needs to be shut down. You can read elsewhere on here where I describe the conditions around my wife coming here 23 years ago as an H1A. It's the exact same thing only in the medical industry. Most of the foreign nurses that you see here are the equivalent of the cheap programmer, with the main difference being that nursing is easier (bluntly speaking) and more standardized with a required board exam, so they do as good a job as an American would. Just much cheaper, and that's the point. Get rid of H1B and wages would rise and more Americans would be interested in being nurses. Allowing H1Bs simply manipulates the market in favor of business, cronyism 101.

Re:-1 Disagree

[kilfarsnar]

Funny. When lefties talk about illegal immigration from Mexico they're all "tear down the wall" "no human is illegal" and so on. But when they talk about H1B, i.e. something that makes THEM loose jobs, instead of some "dirty rotten fascist Republican-voting redneck in his farm in Texas" then suddenly it seems that all men may be made equal, but when it comes to techie jobs, Americans are more equal than Asians.

You know what's even funnier, other than your caricature of "lefties"? That you think the Right gives a crap about illegal immigration. There is one sure way to stop illegal immigration: aggressively identify and prosecute the businesses that hire them. If they can't get jobs, they won't come here. But you don't hear or see anyone doing that, do you? That's how you know that no one, left or right, gives crap. So forget "lefties". Look to the Chamber of Commerce and the politicians they have in their pocket.

Carly Fiorina is...

[brennz]

a bad business person.

Like many other CEOs, she thought short-term without considering the long-term implications of her actions.

She pushed outsourcing to the detriment of American workers
She eroded the previous HP quality
She bought a horrible company in Compaq
She failed to properly integrate Compaq into HP
She failed to leverage a crown jewel in the DEC Alpha, and contributed to its cancellation after the acquisition
She destroyed the value of the overall business of HP

I don't need to say she is anti-American, though she may be. Definitely a business failure though, despite the golden parachute.

Re:Carly Fiorina is...

[AK Marc]

Compaq was a good buy. That she mis-managed the opportunity doesn't mean the purchase was necessarily a bad thing. The HP servers were falling, and with them the more profitable professional services. Compaq had a better server line, and the popular servers these days are descendants of Compaq, not HP server lines. So without Compaq, HP would have been even worse off. It's just that the inability to act on the good acquisition makes it look like a bad move. Given the other blunders at the time, how is one able to tell which blunder lead to which bad result?

The unforgivable sin was the damage to the handhelds (including calculators).

Re:Carly Fiorina is...

[MightyMartian]

She was an utter moron, the very picture of the idiot CEO who has no fucking idea what the business they've been put in charge of does, and just starts running amok through various business units, building debt with shit purchases, and then firing the R&D people because they can't get the two or three quarter turnarounds the fucking retards put on the Board by the institutional investors (read: corporate rapists) think is needed.

Re:Carly Fiorina is...

[Orgasmatron]

Well, she did get a 7% bump in the stock price.

When news got out that the board sacked her.

Re:Carly Fiorina is...

[plopez]

She also made Lucent what it is today. Let's never forget Lucent.

Only complete idiots

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

ever believed Cruz's "H1-B visa stance". It's all just propaganda. Before he started running he was advocating for a 500% increase in H1-B visas in 2013.

Re:Only complete idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump recently pivoted in a debate to say that he now supported the H1B program, in spite of what his web site said. Megyn Kelly followed up just to make sure she heard him correctly. Then the next day, probably after talking to Rudy Guiliani and other trusted advisors, he flipflopped back to his original position.

So you can't trust Trump on H1B either. He'll say whatever it takes to win the election. I bet even he doesn't know what he'll do if he got elected, on that and any number of issues foreign and domestic.

Heh.

[Black Parrot]

Cruz may need H1-B status to work as POTUS.

Madame Vice President

[PopeRatzo]

Official Cruz-Fiornia campaign portrait:

http://cache2.asset-cache.net/...

And the other side

[s.petry]

H1Bs even if implemented "correctly" are bad for the nation. If that person is so exceptional, the company can pay for them to immigrate. You know, like we did for the majority of human history.

Your thesis works if, and only if, there is a single global economy with the same rules for all workers. The whole "but we are global" argument falls flat on it's face because that scenario does not, and will not ever, exist. It's always about higher profits at the expense of the worker, always. If China required unemployment insurance, health insurance, retirement plans, caps on hours a person was allowed to work and/or forced to work, and all of the safety and regulation training companies are required to provide in the US, do you think labor would still be pennies on the dollar in exchange? H1B workers receive huge tax breaks, and allow companies to bypass legal work restrictions. You know, like that one company who literally had slaves escape last year who were here on H1B visas? (One of how many obvious violations, and how many under the table threats.. yeah)

Look, if Politicians and Uber wealthy people really had _your_ interests in mind they would stop lining their own pockets and start lining yours. They don't, you are delusional if you believe they are on your side and looking out for you, the end.

Re:And the other side

[TheSync]

If China required unemployment insurance, health insurance, retirement plans, caps on hours a person was allowed to work

In China, under the Social Insurance Law both employers and employees are required to make contributions (at different rates) to a pension fund, unemployment insurance fund and medical insurance fund, as well as the Housing Provident Fund. Employers, but not employees, are also required to contribute to the work-related injury and maternity insurance funds.

Under the Chinese Standard Working Time System, workers shall not work more than 8 hours a day and shall not work more than 40 hours a week; workers have at least one day off per week.

To the extent that labor costs less in China, it is due to the massive surplus of rural labor moving into urban manufacutring zones. However China's GDP per worker is only 17% that of the USA due to less capital per worker being available for productivity. But capital investment continues in China, worker productivity is growing, and wages are growing - especially as the surplus rural labor pool runs out.

Re:He doesn't have a running mate...

[shanen]

The party bosses hate Cruz just slightly less than Trump. They'll try to find a way to nominate !Jeb but failing that it'll be Rubio or Kasich. It should be an interesting election. They say Hillary will get the women's vote and I suspect that is true but I don't know that many men that feel good about her. I guess I'll end up voting for whoever runs against her. I just hope it's not !Jeb.

I don't like Hillary that much, but I have to respect her for her taste in enemies. Mindless and irrational, usually sexist.

Congratulations. You're 3 out of 3!

Anyway, my #1 beef with Hillary is her personal identity. All of us have many of them, but I think her top one is probably "corporate lawyer" and certainly not "idealist". It's Bill Clinton who is first and foremost a "politician". Probably Obama, too.

None of which is related to the original H1B topic, unless you [amiga3D] are one of the folk who think President Obama needs one. (Also, I don't think Trump believed the birther nonsense any more than he believes most of the crazy stuff he says. His #1 identity is "salesman" or "con man" and he is just telling the 'customers' (the so-called Republicans voting in the primaries) what they want to hear.)

Re:Why does Slashdot oppose H-1B?

[khallow]

Anyway, there is no reason to expect Ted's position on this to change because of Carly. VP candidates typically have zero input on policy.

Biden - *IAA. Cheney - Halliburton. The last two VPs had strong connections to certain lobbies and those lobbies did well during the tenure of those VPs.

Re:Why does Slashdot oppose H-1B?

[Fire_Wraith]

The law already requires that an H-1B be paid more. The problem is that there are ways around that where you don't put them in an "equal" position.

For instance, Acme Widgets decides that instead of paying its own IT workers at $80,000 apiece, it'll just contract out its IT work to a company like Infosys or Tata. That company just happens to employ lots of H-1Bs as its workers for contracts, making $40,000 each, but it tells Acme they'll work for an FTE rate of $50,000, saving Acme $30,000 per worker. No workers were directly replaced, so they get away with it.

Re:He doesn't have a running mate...

[MachineShedFred]

I have no idea why people paint dislike of Hillary as automatically sexist. I have no problem with her being a woman. I do have a problem with a leading candidate for President being a habitual liar, a follower of the poll of the week rather than a leader who joins the debate in order to sway public opinion, and someone with a long history of patronage and hypocrisy.

None of that has jack shit to do with gender.

Republican Mind Control

[Sloppy]

The People: "I am not fucking voting for Hillary! I won't! I swear, I won't!!!"

Republicans: "Oh, yes you will. You will vote for exactly whom we want you to."