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How the H-1B Visa Program Impacts America's Tech Workers (computerworld.com)
Computerworld is running an emotional report by their national correspondent Patrick Thibodeau -- complete with a dramatic video -- arguing that America's H-1B Visa program "has also become a way for companies to outsource jobs." An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes the article accompanying the video:
The vast majority of people who work in IT did everything right: They invested in their education, studied difficult subjects, kept their skills updated... But no job is safe, no future entirely secure -- something IT workers know more than most. Given their role, they are most often the change agents, the people who deploy technologies and bring in automation that can turn workplaces upside down. To survive, they count on being smart, self-reliant and one step ahead...
Over the years, Computerworld reporter Patrick Thibodeau has interviewed scores of IT workers who trained their visa-holding replacements. Though details each time may differ, they all tell the same basic story. There are many issues around high-skilled immigration, but to grasp the issue fully you need to understand how the H-1B program can affect American workers.
Over the years, Computerworld reporter Patrick Thibodeau has interviewed scores of IT workers who trained their visa-holding replacements. Though details each time may differ, they all tell the same basic story. There are many issues around high-skilled immigration, but to grasp the issue fully you need to understand how the H-1B program can affect American workers.
I'm wearying of it, but so far I just post the same thing over and over when I read about this topic. You don't see this with comparable white-collar high-knowledge professions like accounting, teaching, law, medicine and engineering. ...because they are all licensed.
This is not about unionism or protectionism. It's not holding onto the job for nationalism's sake or racism. Any race can get a license, indeed foreigners can be licensed - if they can pass the tests. Most of this outsourcing is not about putting in equivalent people; it's about being able to afford more of them and make up for the lower productivity and accuracy.
Information technology should be a licensed profession for multiple reasons; there are a lot of crappy local programmers that shouldn't have such jobs, too. This isn't about handy helpers or kid's games any more: our civilization depends on code that works right and we lose money, privacy and opportunity every day from IT failures. Medicine was not a licensed profession just a few generations back; it was licensed when it was time. For IT, it's now time.
I personally don't care if they allow people to immigrate.
However what I don't like is that we aren't doing an adequate job of enforcing the current laws.
Come on if you're going to live here illegally and drive without insurance you should not be given special haha can't touch me i'm an illegal privilege.
Fine and or jail them like you would an american.
Or if you're not going to punish them like you would an american why not ship them back out of the country?
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
I do get kind of sick of both the Republicans and the Democrats trotting out immigrants or children of immigrants as if that's some kind of badge of honor. The Republicans parade around Rubio and Cruz and Nikki Haley. Half of the speakers at the DNC were speaking spanish. Where's the speaker who says "My family has been here for 10 generations!" Isn't that kind of impressive? Maybe they've got some generational wisdom passed down? A strong stake in the future of the nation? There's nothing wrong with being from a recent immigrant family, but you'd think there'd be some kind of balance.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
... the poor proles masses pay for the few rich whilst fighting each other rather than revolutionising society. Especially the "American Dream" has gone down the drain. ... All this is nothing new.
However(!!),
there is a new force in the mix, and wether it's HB1 or whatever pushing your sob-story right now, we should prepare for what's coming, because HB1 and the likes will be a joke compared to those overturnings ahead of us.
You have been warned.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Actually, as a pro-H1B supporter, you're wrong.
I fully acknowledge that there's something wrong. Companies like TaTa being able to bring over tech-workers for non-specific, non-highly-skilled generic coding jobs, and then contract them out is very very very wrong. What that does is generates immigration of people with mediocre skill sets, who will likely be net neutral on the economy, but a net negative on the wages of people working in the tech sector.
That's really not good.
On the other hand, what H1B should do (exclusively - it does this anyway, but it should *only* do this) is allow companies to hire people for very very specific jobs, with very very high wages, where it's not possible to find someone else to do it. There absolutely are legitimate H1B workers coming in and doing jobs for Google/Apple/FB/MS etc that no one else in America has the skills to do, and being paid multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. That's good both for tech employment (as it makes products possible that weren't before, and in doing so makes companies more profitable, and hire more people), and for the economy. An all round win.
I can assure you, that if companies like Google/Apple/FB/MS could hire Americans for a role, they would not jump through the hoops of hiring a European for $200,000 a year, plus $150,000 worth of moving them to the US, plus tens of thousands of dollars in paying for visas and green cards. The key is to make sure that all H1Bs are for that kind of role, not the bullshit that TaTa does.
[Disclaimer] I'm an H1B holder working for one of the above companies in a very specialist area.
Fifteen years ago, I was offered a job at Yahoo, in California, making close to four times my then-current salary in Mexico City. About US$70K a year. That money, even today, is a shitload of money for me.
Of course, I declined. I declined even being unaware of the ridiculously high costs of living in the San Francisco Bay area — I declined because I didn't want to stop living at a city I love, close to my family and life-long friends. But yes, digging a bit deeper into what US$70K a year would be for a living there... I never looked back.
Currently, I have been employed for 11 years at the same place. The peso has slided against the dollar, so I still make slightly over US$20K a year. I live a very nice life in a house very well located. I don't have much savings, but then again, I did have something to fall on when my kids were born. Have never had a loan. My wife does not currently work, but we estimate she can go back to doing so in 2-3 years, and then we will get some savings again.
What would there be in there for me going for a life at a country that will always see me as a foreigner? Not much, I guess.