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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.
... how to work long hours for next to nothing.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Fully impossible I say. The usual pro-H1B supporters on here say there's nothing wrong, and it's really good that all these people are being brought in to displace American works and push wages down. Just like how it's happening here in Canada with TFW's and employers are laying off employees because they don't want to pay the wage, then paying the 1/3 the wages that they were going for. And that ranges from welders and pipe fitters to skilled factory labor and IT.
Om, nomnomnom...
in other news....
The only response 'modern' technologies seem to get from Slashdot is how the 'old way is better'' and "it'll never work". "Those kids are going to have to deploy apache servers BY HAND like I used to. None of that Docker Cloud Crap".
For example "graphical programming languages", which by Slashdot standards are terrible, has a lot of job openings. There are plenty of jobs for hardware in the loop (HIL) testers. Same goes for people that know CAN/J1939 and the tools that go with it
For those training their replacements, I don't see what the problem is. I hate doing parts of my job, I've already done it once. I would be able to train a high school graduate to do 90% of it and if they have questions I'll be around for the other 10%. But it means that I get to concentrate on doing something else. If you're doing the same thing for more than a year heads up, someone or something is trying to automate it and replace you. Unless you think companies should still be bootstrapping a new Laptop instal by hand instead of having an imaging server.
I'm sure the older engineers that were replaced by kids straight out of college that knew CAD thought they were 'highly skilled' workers as well. Turns out an engineer that can draft is cheaper than an engineer AND a drafter. But don't let that get in the way of the narrative that your skills are 'up to date'.
There are jobs out there. A lot of them.
to work the way that it is sold as working.
(1) Keep the number of H1B workers about the same.
(2) Bring fewer new H1B workers into the country by offering permanent residency to ones already here.
(3) Require participating companies to meet minimum goals for H1Bs converting to permanent residency in order to continue participating.
(4) Since fewer new H1Bs will be coming in, raise the standard so they really do bring in hard-to-find skills.
Good people don't just take jobs. They create jobs. That's why employers like to locate in tech centers -- concentration of talent. So if someone's good, bring them in and keep them. It's beyond folly to have a program which kicks good people out of the country, along with skills and know-how that they've accumulated. It's disloyal to the country.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
When you talk about illegal immigration from Mexico, it's all "no man is illegal", "we are all born equal", "tear down the wall", "just let them in". But the moment some brown person comes to "steal" not some low-income redneck job, but your hipster job, suddenly the song changes completely. Guess the equality of men regardless of race applies only to the uneducated. i.e. other people.
Maybe all of that social justice stuff is really just a ruse to get people to think they're not a bunch of greedy monsters who have more in common in their attitude toward paying workers with John Calhoun than Bernie Sanders. One reason I'm voting Trump is Trump is precisely the sort of asshole who might call up the AG, ask if the statute of limitations under the criminal component of the antitrust laws has expired on the anti-poaching settlement and if the answer is "no," might say "bring indictments." Will he? Who knows, but it's a possibility and would be hilarious to watch some of these self-righteous fuckers face the full wrath of the federal government in criminal court.
Bullshit.
This has been happening in industries for decades, there is nothing inherent about IT workers that gives them more knowledge just because it has been happening more recently.
I was a contractor at Agilent from 2000 to 2003, and during that time Agilent brought in workers from India to replace their US workers in the finance department. The special talent the Indian workers possessed was they'd work for almost nothing. The Agilent US workers were told to train the Indian workers to do the Agilent US workers job or they would be fired and lose their retirement moneys. The H1B program needs to be abolished.
It's not really a function of price so much as a function of skill level. Most of the H1-B folks I've had the displeasure of working with had very little experience, skill, or talent. Were there actually a glut of workers in IT, I'd say it made sense, but there aren't, and it's getting worse every day as more are imported annually, displacing folks that make better business sense to hire in every aspect save for price. There's a saying, "you get what you pay for." It may look good on paper to replace that $150k/yr rock star programmer with five $30k/yr H1-Bs (supposedly illegal, but it happens, and more often than you think), but one high quality developer will consistently produce more and better code than an army of mediocre ones. The biggest issue with this is, even though IT business process automation represents a major part of a given company's competitive advantage, if all the companies in a market play the same game and begin to all suck equally, any lack of advantage due to poor systems becomes moot. As a result, what used to be smart work done by smart workers becomes the domain of the MyComputerCareer lowest-common-denominator. And real fast, we're all out of a job.
Exactly! We just import the Indians now!
Then you know the company is going H1B because there really is a shortage of workers, and not simply because they're greedy sons of bitches looking to lower their labor costs rather than paying what it takes to get the employee they want.
Not really. The IT workers are price competitive for their market. The h1b visa is like currency manipulation, you're importing foreign workers who by default are paid a lower rate. These employees are locked into the companies so cant compete in the market for a higher wage like the american workers are free to do. So they are artificially suppressing the wages in the industry as a whole. The point of the h1b program was to bring in people to temporarily fill voids that american workers could not. Instead its being abused to wipe out jobs that americans are willing and capable of doing.
Were those workers being replaced in a government-run program to import foreign workers to labor in Ford and GM plants to lower wages? No. Are those objecting to H1B basing their complaints on having to compete with software companies located in other countries? No.
Does that mean you have the lamest analogy in the story thus far? Yes.
Corporations laugh at the regulations that are never enforced unless there is some sort of massive publicity. Even then... Our congress is bought and paid for.
I'm amazed at all the idiots who think a billionaire who has gone bankrupt (yet somehow still has billions) many times with failed businesses is going to change that.
Every other complaint is just a variation on "I shouldn't have to be price competitive because I was born in America".
You meant to say: "I'm fine with a company importing in people where there is a demand for jobs that Americans could do, then displacing me from my job with someone from another country, making me train my replacement who will work for 1/4 of the wages I worked for."
Yep brilliant. Millions of people out of work in the US and not in the labor force, and you're pro "let's bring in more people, and make sure they drive the wages down" while there are people who could do the job, but the companies don't want to hire because they can find someone from a 3rd world shithole at a cheaper price and can legally import them.
Om, nomnomnom...
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.
People should stop beating around the bush and call this what it is: a government run program to subsidize labor costs for businesses and shareholders, to the detriment of American workers and taxpayers. "Fair market rates" only apply when they are to shareholder's benefit. When they actually give the worker a leg up for a change - fuck you, we're going to bring in some grads from India to do your job. Grads who can compete without five figures of student loan debt hanging over their heads.
no job is safe, no future entirely secure
When was the last time you heard of an H-1B worker taking a politician's job?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Then you are made redundant, have saved (right? $150k/y programmers can understand compounding interest, assets and liabilities?) enough to bootstrap with some of your peers a business that just kills all the other sucking bastards, improving overall productivity. Or so the story goes. But it's easier to complain.
Every other complaint is just a variation on "I shouldn't have to be price competitive because I was born in America".
In short - "it is reasonable for American citizens to expect a drop in standard of living down to Third World levels in order to fluff corporate profits."
Well, I said what I meant to say, but I also agree with your statement. In the same way that I have no problem with people buying foreign goods that non-competitive American firms provide, I have no problem with American firms buying foreign labor that non-competitive American workers could provide. If that ends up being a temporary negative for me for a time, that's a.) my own responsibility, and b.) a price I'm happy to pay for the benefits of a globalized economy. An Indian or whatever is no less a person than an American, no less worthy of a job to sustain themselves and grow. There's nothing inherent about geographical boundaries that changes the moral calculus about whether or not someone "deserves" a job.
There aren't many 30k/yr H1Bs see the distribution: https://www.graphiq.com/vlp/YQ...
And this is a strict lower bound, I make a lot more than what is reported in my LCA. Sure there is some abuse IMO 60-80k is problematic.
Most likely it seems like you just need the laws to be enforced... Like so many other broken things in America.
Is your argument that all foreign trade is harmful and destructive to (Importing Country)'s living standards, or just labor imports? If the former, you're empirically wrong. If the latter, what's the difference?
Do you feel the same way about manufacturing jobs lost to foreign competition? If not, why? If so, how do you explain that trade and prosperity have, at every point in history, gone hand in hand?
I know a lot of people here in Silicon Valley who are not naturalization seeking, and working on a visa.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
And I have a lot of friends who eventual became citizens after getting their first job in the US with the H1-B program.
Taking the best and brightest from other countries is in America's best interests. And there needs to be some new regulation to make it harder for companies to use H1-B as a way to train up foreign workers to prepare for a big outsourcing and inevitable local layoff.
I think the easiest thing is add new restrictions. For example, if a company has paid H1-B in the last 18 months, they should face stiff penalties for layoffs. Including some severance requirements for the employees they let go (2 years salary severance seems fair to me). I pick 18 months because it would likely screw up the scheming that corporations do around their quarterly accounting.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
They're only price-competitive for their market if you define their market as "American IT workers", in the same way that US steel is price competitive only if you're talking about a certain type of steel produced in the US. I agree that the lock-in part is bullshit, and should be abolished, but the overall ideal is still completely open borders and a free flow of goods, services, capital, and labor. Question: if not for the lock-in part, which I agree probably exerts a downward pressure on wages (although I don't know the significance of that pressure), would you be fine with importing foreign workers?
"Stealthyroid??" I wonder how many other stupid /. UserID's you've got, shill...
Some people need the severance package that companies usually offer if you play nice. If only to pay for the family's healthcare while you're out of the job. For many people it's really hard to follow through with principles when there are other factors to consider.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Just this one, and my account # is lower than yours, so nyaaaaaaaah.
There is nothing wrong with third world wages, if you live in the third world. If companies expect to pay that here then they need to drop the cost of living to that level.
If every company does it, that means decreased costs and thus lower prices. We're not "fluffing corporate profits" because anyone who attempts to make that drop in cost full profit will die at the hands of their competitors. If only one company benefited from H1-Bs, it would be different. Lower prices means more buying power which means higher standard of living for everyone (except maybe the displaced programmer who wasn't competitive on the world market).
"No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session." -- Judge Gideon J. Tucker
How about instead of a lottery, distribute the visas starting from the top paid applications?
That would take care of the low end pretty fast.
Here's a list of per-capita GDP (PPP) by country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Pick a reasonable place on the chart to start the third world, and tell me that's what US companies are paying H1-B programmers. India, for example, is about $7k USD per capita. Are programmers working for that here? No, they're working for like 5x that. I bet most H1-B workers are either at or above the US level (55k).
So, what's your complaint again?
The thing is, anyone's skills are only special if the government protects that interest in the skill. Today plumbing qualifies as a special skill by your standards, but if the government were to tell all plumbing companies that they could go to a website and find India plumbers that would work for low wages.. guess what plumbing isn't special any more. All that has happened is that the US government has decided that the US standard of living isn't important any more and they are willing to sacrifice it so corporations will do well, the skill itself has not changed.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
So long as they have an underclass of ultra cheap labor to support their middle class while they're getting trained they will always be cheaper than Americans. H1-B isn't just about driving tech wages down, it's about eliminating training costs. The Indians get trained in a very, very narrow skill set for pennies. Then they get cycled in and out and you don't worry about investing in them as employees.
We've built our society around a social contract where you work hard, make your employer rich, and get a little bit for yourself. That's the whole "American Dream". If you honestly think the 1% won't break that social contract first chance they get you haven't been paying attention. They did it for thousands of years save for one brief period after WWII when we'd killed enough working males and blew up enough infrastructure that they didn't have a choice but to pay top dollar for workers.
The solution to these problems is Democratic Socialism & Basic Income. The 1% are going to break the social contract. It's a "When" not "If". Restructure society so that when they do it doesn't matter. Either that or enjoy your race to the bottom...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
It all depends on what way of life the American government wants for its people. If you want an 'American' way of life that is somewhat better for Americans than everywhere else then you need to isolate to an American only market. I thought America prided itself on having a generally wealthy and peaceful population but apparently that part was for sale. Even worse, the way they opened up the global market it's not bad for everyone, just the poor and middle class.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The problem is that good IT workers have no incentive to stay in the field. They go to management or they just say "to hell with this", and become a /r/sysadmin goat farmer.
I have had the dubious pleasure of working with the H-1B folks as well. A few are truly competent. However, most tend to be clueless, and at best, willing to follow a sheet or spec you give them, but can't really do more than that. For example, if you ask a H-1B DBA who knows how to work their way around a RDBMS fairly decently, and who has worked with Linux on a user level, how to make a query that can run at certain times automatically, they will immediately say it is impossible or try to find a way to shirk that task onto you. They are also quite passive-aggressive and fond of the "CC" game, where they are unable to have a conversation with you unless it is via E-mail, and they carbon-copy as many PHBs as they can cut/paste from the Exchange GAL they can find into the conversation. If you ask them a question, they will reply (with managers included), questioning your abilities. If you ask them to do something, they will immediately throw any tasks back at you, adding stuff to the helpdesk ticket such as "as we discussed offline" (when no such discourse happened.) Of course, when you make a fool of them by replying and countering every insulting assertion, management sides with them regardless.
The passive-aggressiveness and willing to fuck someone over at a second's notice is the worst part. I've had to deal with configuration changes which hosed a production box, and the way I proved that it wasn't me (oddly enough utmp was zeroed out, but the logs shipped to the SIEM box showed who was actually on at the time...) is the fact that I use etckeeper, and the change was not anything that was put into the git repo. Of course, the only other person with full sudo access to the box was the H-1B.
Is the United States Government importing Mexicans, as a matter of public policy, to take jobs that require a low skill level?
Is the purpose of the workers to serve the economy or is the purpose of the economy to serve the workers?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Some of us (I was working in software dev at the time) saw this shit going down fifteen years ago.
/. Dissent will not be tolerated. Think like us or perish.
If your job was going to go to India or some other country, it was probably going to go anyway, HB-1 visa program or no HB-1 visa program.
With HB-1 visa-holders coming her to "learn the trade" at least there are a few man-years of work being done here, with those people buying lunch and paying rent and the associated taxes in this country for those man-years.
I know my skills are "portable" and that if I plan on having a halfway-decently-paying job until retirement I need to either:
* be someone who can't be cheaply replaced, anywhere in the world, OR
* do work that can only be done locally (in-person sales, on-premise hardware-installation, etc.)
* do work that can't be outsourced for legal reasons (government contracts, certain national infrastructure work)
* work for a company or industry which can't easily outsource abroad due to financial, regulatory, or other reasons
* change careers
There is another alternative, but one that has a very high emotional cost as well as other costs (learning a new language, etc.): Emigrate to a low-cost-of-living country and live off of my accumulated life savings plus whatever meager earnings I can get there. Not every country would want me but many would be happy to have me.
Yes, I'm being pessimistic, but I'm also being realistic. Most of my technical skill set - programming, troubleshooting, remote-tech-support skills, technical writing, etc. can be found in many other countries where the labor costs for people with similar skills are much lower than they are in countries with "highly developed economies."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Correcting grammar in the post above is left as an exercise to the reader, or, more likely, as an exercise for the offshore person who will be trained by the HB-1 visa-holder that you are training now.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
But it's not up to the government to decide.
People's lifestyle is currently depending on the global lifestyle more than before, and that will only increase as time goes by. It's like a very slow-moving tsunami: its movement might not be detectable by a single individual, but it's there, it's coming and there's nothing anyone can do anything about it.
Wages in the high-paid countries will slowly decrease and wages in developing countries will increase (at a faster rate) until, maybe a century or so from now, there will be little, if any difference.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
"The program was intended to serve employers who could not find the skilled workers they needed in the United States." Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa
The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is responsible for ensuring that foreign workers do not displace or adversely affect wages or working conditions of U.S. workers. For every H-1B petition filed with the USCIS, there must be included a Labor Condition Application (LCA) (not to be confused with the labor certification), certified by the U.S. Department of Labor. The LCA is designed to ensure that the wage offered to the non-immigrant worker meets or exceeds the "prevailing wage" in the area of employment. ("Immigration law has a number of highly technical terms that may not mean the same thing to the average reader." [wikipedia]
Given the above, modify H-1B so that not only must the employer must pay H-1B positions 150% of the average wage rate for the position computed by DOL and pay an additional 50% of the wage rate (total 200% effective wage rate for each H-1B) into a fund for training displaced workers.
If there truly are no Americans who can do the job at 200% of the DOL wage rate, then employers should be happy to pay 200% to import the skilled labor they say they need.
The Medical Industrial Complex is sucking Americans dry, while the Indians send their dollars to India, where they need to spend 1/10th on medical bills.
I am always amazed to see Americans accepting that a simple flu visit to the doc costs in the hundreds of dollars.
Well, you can try to abolish the H-1B Visas, but then, perhaps, American firms will be less competitive. And then, perhaps, the next Google will appear in China. Who knows, after some time of it, perhaps it's the Chinese who will be complaining of all those American cheap programmers that are willing to work for pennies because there is no work in their own country.
You have to recognize that America is now the leader in software services, and I'd guess that the H-1B visa program has helped it getting to that position. Of course the right equilibrium is difficult to get, but you can't have it both ways.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
... 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
2. To those who think US IT workers are whining about losing what used to be an unfair advantage and they ought to just suck it up: Maybe you think your job is safe or that you're just "special." Maybe every US worker ought to have the same living standard as Indian workers, including doctors, lawyers, accountants, .. everyone. In some sense that would be more fair. But I happen to think that the goal of US trade policy should be to improve the competitiveness of US workers and the life of all Americans. As it is, trade policy benefits only the corporations involved in the trade; not the workers or the consumers.
3. Yes I know that the theory of competitive advantage says that we are better off "on average," but some individuals are inevitably worse off. Unfortunately, US trade policy makes no effort to share the benefits, which go almost entirely to the corps. Also the theory (as I remember from school) assumes full employment. Anyone who thinks we are even close to full employment is drinking the government's koolaid. Workforce participation is at a post WW2 low and salaries have been stagnant for decades. It seems clear that India and China are exporting their unemployment to North America and Europe. Now maybe you think that as a citizen of the world that's how it should be, but I expect our political leaders to look out for *us*.
COE
Or perhaps you are a rock star programmer because you enjoy programming, and have no interest in the other 90% of the business that would be required of you if you went off to start your own thing.
There are plenty of jobs for [this, that, and the other thing]
There are plenty of job ADS.
This is because, in order to hire an H1-B, the employer must first advertise the job to US persons.
But there are whole classes given on how to gimmick the hiring process so that anyone who applies, other than the desired H1-B, can be plausibly turned down as unqualified. The US applicants waste their time, and the H1-Bs get the positions.
Give us a call when there are plenty of HIRES of US citizens for these, or any, positions.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The purpose of the economy is to serve consumers.
2016: Q. What do you call a Devry graduate? A: Waiter! 2026: Q: What do you call a (Ivy League school or other expensive univerity of choice) graduate? A: Waiter!
It's amazing how much tech folk can sound like auto workers in the 80's bitching about Americans buying foreign cars. The only thing lamentable about the H1-B visa is how it turns foreign-born employees into virtual slaves of whoever their sponsoring employer is. Every other complaint is just a variation on "I shouldn't have to be price competitive because I was born in America".
I think they would have done a lot more than bitch about it if you brought in some h-1b workers to replace them and then told them they had to train them before they left. There might be some bloodshed.
The senior management doesn't make the company great, it's the employees who make it great. When someone trains hard and works hard and helps create something great, you don't screw them over by replacing them with someone who doesn't know what they are doing so that you can get a big fat bonus then leave the company before they realize the company is now brain dead.
So is a nation a collection of consumers, rather than a union of citizens?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
How is our lifestyle global? So maybe we have to give up smartphones then, or they become affordable for less people. It's better then starving.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Well no one knows what Trump will do.. to me the thing that makes Hillary the right candidate is that it is plainly obvious Trump doesn't stand by anything he says. She may not be a good candidate, but at least her presidency will look something like her campaign. Trump will just do what he fancies on any given day.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
A lot of people deride unions, but unless we have them, corporations pull this type of shit again and again. The government is either apathetic or complicit, which means the only protection for this type of shit is unions.
companies will find ways to abuse it. We need to kill it.
I have been working in a support tech company for 6 or 7 years which has brought me into the cubical space of many of the top tech companies in Silicon Valley. One thing I have noticed is the overwhelming majority of foreign names on the cubicles. Hardly ever a Smith or Jones and most I find totally unpronounceable. Rough estimate: 70-80 percent foreign names. No doubt H1-B visas.
Actually I think it's more accurate to say "I can't be price competitive because I must live in the American economy". My generation didn't make things expensive here, that was done before me. We're just the unlucky bastards that are alive post-globalization and have to live with first world prices and third world wages.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
in a country where "socialism" is considered an insult? You get cowboy capitalism. As long as the American people keep voting for leaders who are economical extremists in this regard it's their own fault.
Americans already have opportunities that far exceed the majority of the world. People who want to close the boarder are bigoted and/or biased. Growing up my parents were impacted by changing dynamics as my dad worked in IT as a programmer and was laid off a number of times. That doesn't justify bigotry or restricting peoples right to travel and work freely. Yes- that may have negative implications, but Americans can and have learned to cope with a changing landscape many times in the past. Get over it. We retrain, we go back to school, we start our own businesses. There are lots of options and programs out there. Programs which are *funded* by violence through government mandated taxes. People have no excuses. I'm not an immigrant. I'm unproudly an American citizen by birth, Caucasian male at that. It actually is in our collateral disinterest to make the companies we work for uncompetitive on the world stage. What happens when we do that is they leave the United States for greener pastures elsewhere. Rather what we need to do is make our system more competitive. We need to get rid of copyright (copyright creates monopolies and monopolies are otherwise illegal, it makes no sense that when copyright doesn't do what it was sold to us that we continue to put up with it, it's not for the public good, not when we extended copyright from being a limited monopoly to basically an indefinite one, it also spurs violence due to enforcement, if you don't pay up they steal it from you the state will use violence and kidnap you), get rid of borders (things get more competitive and people can travel freely), get rid of taxes (most taxes are from things like education, social welfare, and military, minimise these and we all can afford to cover our kids education), get rid of public schooling (this doesn't mean people can't contribute to social welfare voluntarily- we did that long before governments got involved), get rid of government instituted monopolies (cable/phone/internet),
Take part in the migration movement to New Hampshire if you want freedom, individual liberties, and a right to self determination, rather than be babied by a nanny state:
www.freestateproject.org
www.freekeene.com
Absolutely!
In part, it's all about how things look on the budget sheet. Replacing one North American worker for two Indian workers - and paying less - looks good. And the numbers can be shown to management. The downside - inferior code, taking longer to produce - isn't captured as neatly. And the numbers can't be shown to management anywhere near as easily.
And one other fun fun fun detail ... managers get promoted based on the number of people they manage, not the total salary of their underlings. So replacing your home-grown, competent North American worker with multiple lesser-skilled, lesser-paid foreigners means the managers get bumped up a pay-grade.
So ... while the outsourcing (or, in the case of H1-Bs, in-country outsourcing) means that companies pay much, much more for the same software, the people making the decisions don't care about that - they care about promoting themselves.
And one final candle on the cake: the stock market punishes companies that deviate from the pack. If one company were to stand up and say "Hey, this outsourcing is costing us more! Let's stop doing it!" then their stock would take a hit. And corporations are run by the board, for the board: the largest part of their remuneration is stock options.
A country without borders is no longer a country.
In an ideal world, the flow of labor, capital and ideas should be free and borderless - but we do not live in an ideal world.
Countries have differing laws, social programs and structures. To protect a country's citizens and its social programs and infrastructure, there needs to be sensible immigration control.
Flooding any nation with immigrants until social structures break benefits no one. Immigration is a noble thing (both of my grandparents were immigrants), but there are practical limitations that need to be enforced.
30k/yr is the price of an outsourced Indian software developer though. That's exactly the price quoted by our Executive VP.
And replacing a local 100k developer with an outsourced 30k one is much faster than fishing for H1Bs.
Reclassify the sector under national security interest that requires natural born US citizenship
If the political will existed to do that, then the same will could be used to simply eliminate the H1-B program.
Problem solved.
What problem? Tech workers see the problem as too many immigrants depressing tech wages. Most economists see the problem as a shortage of skilled workers, and believe that more skilled immigration helps the overall economy. The general public sees the problem as illegal Mexicans sneaking across the unwalled border, which has nothing to do with the H1-B program. Politicians see the problem as not enough campaign donations from companies that want H1-B expanded.
Or perhaps you are a rock star programmer because you enjoy programming, and have no interest in the other 90% of the business that would be required of you if you went off to start your own thing.
Then team up with other under-appreciated rock stars and hire someone to do the management. If you really think that you are undervalued, and your competitors are mismanaged, then you should have no problem being successful.
How about instead of a lottery, distribute the visas starting from the top paid applications?
That would take care of the low end pretty fast.
This is a really good idea.
how do you explain that trade and prosperity have, at every point in history, gone hand in hand?
Trade increases prosperity, but it also increases inequality. There is plenty of prosperity in America, but is mostly going to highly skilled people and people that own capital.
So what is the solution? Many people, including Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, think the answer is protectionism. But that has been tried, mostly unsuccessfully, many times before, and falls into the category of "simple, obvious, and wrong". Liberals tend to say the solution is "education", partly because they see that as the solution to everything, but government promoted education schemes don't have a good track record of getting people into jobs. Taxes on the rich to fund handouts for the poor, kills initiative, and is a political non-starter in America. There are no easy answers.
How is our lifestyle global?
Flip over some of your possessions and look for a label that says "Made in ____".
So maybe we have to give up smartphones then, or they become affordable for less people. It's better then starving.
Who is starving? How will more expensive cell phones cause them to be fed?
That's hand waiving. Corporations say they need H1B's because there aren't skilled Americans to do the job. Let them prove it by paying for it.
Let's not. Or did you forget you'd be trusting the same companies that lobby Congress for more H1B's, even while laying off thousands (or even tens of thousands) of American workers? This is all just a game to them, to increase the size of the labor pool and lower their employment costs. Pegging it to 90th percentile is just asking them to drive down wages even further.
Get rid of the program and its enabling acts. Hard, but that's what has to happen. It, along with every single other program of its class, solely exists for fraud and abuse - and that anything else is a convenient side effect. Whether it is the US, Australia, Germany, the UK, or any other country free enough to need a supply of perpetually desperate labor, the purpose remains unchanged.
Naturally, this might be an issue with the pro-hellhole, anti-citizen part of /. that justifies it as "competitiveness". These people are largely outside the US and have no business in doing anything other than learning that it will happen to them.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
There are jobs out there. A lot of them.
For the ones that are real and hire citizens, employers are getting way too picky.
Training
The only training done these days is for non-citizen entities. Anyone else is required to satisfy the entitlement mentality of an employer's unrealistic qualifications.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Lots of people are incapable of thinking like the owner of a business
That doesn't mean you imply they're wrong for not having the proper perspective.
As an owner, having fewer admin grunts means more money to reinvest in higher-return activities (which as an employee you can help drive, if you're so inclined) and/or return to shareholders, who, after all, own the damn business and expect something from it.
When your wings melt from flying in rarified air, don't be surprised when people cheer.
But this hard-nosed perspective, for some reason, strikes people as cruel, or you're viewed as the villain or whatever.
The problem is that they're right.
It's just how the world works and you have to adapt accordingly, even if it's annoying and extra work at times.
So you support the fraud and abuse that devalues citizenship of a First World country? You are the problem and deserve anything coming to you that stops it.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The kind of behavior you describe sounds like it deserves BOFH level tactics to counter.
The law is pretty straightforward, how it's actually implemented is anything but. The oversight attention paid to H-1B visas simply doesn't pair up to the way the law is written. Many US tech giants, and some large employers outside tech, simply violate both the letter and the spirit of the law hoping lobbying and campaign donations will keep them from getting noticed.
Organization? You must be joking..
For "non-exploitation" H1Bs, they already pay high salaries and then have to pay quite a lot of money in relocation, legal fees to get that employee transferred to green card eventually, etc. It's not as much as $200K, but it's certainly at least half of that for most cases.
Remember, it's not that there aren't skilled Americans to do the job, there aren't skilled Americans *available*. If you look at the highly paid IT/engineering jobs that require 10+ years or experience, almost every company out there has a bunch of openings *all the time*. They are very difficult to fill.
If you close the loophole of underpaid and cheap H1Bs, the rest of the system will work just fine. It's already very difficult and expensive to bring in experts on H1Bs.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
One posting a comment at CW said it doesn't happen that often... well guess what? It happens more often than you realize because some of the businesses have had their ex employees sign nondisclosure agreements.
Okay, so she was a green card holder before she became a citizen! BFD. It still refutes the GP's contention that Trump married her when she was an H1B holder
Do the dead children bother you right now, while that happens in lesser developed countries?
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
The economics term for this is "labor arbitrage" and it has gutted many high-tech companies with rich-kid executives treating workers as fungible resource pools of interchangeable servants. US hardware engineers and US software developers are replaced by hordes of low-paid overseas technicians, especially in what are perceived as support roles such as data management, specs documentation, and quality assurance testing. I can corroborate the truth of this from personal experience, from my time at both Hewlett-Packard and Qualcomm. Entire US departments disappeared in just a few days. Fortunately I continue to self-train in new technologies as a lifetime hobby, and so have managed to stay just ahead of the worst of it, for now.
Who is starving? Our economy hasn't fully transitioned yet. When people can't find jobs, they'll go on social services, then there will be too many people on social services and they'll fail. You know there are people starving on the streets in Africa and India right? That's where we're headed.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The US economy doesn't produce enough IT workers because Americans want better employment prospects than the industry is currently providing. No way my kids are going into anything to do with tech.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I've been watching for decades where technical people, the brains create things. The Sales people take home big bucks. They're the ones that have no skill. Sometimes all they have is a short skirt and look good.
It's high time the people that actually do the work get paid.
To the subject matter, it's a ruse. They come over, they're not that good though they're cheap. Some of them are good bullshit artists. They should discontinue the h1b program.
If a co wants "10 years of experience in X", even a citizen with 4 years of X and a PhD will not "qualify". You cannot manufacture experience. The co's need to be encouraged to break out of the HR paradigm of 10-in-X-or-bust mindset.
Table-ized A.I.
is that it only applies if there is full employment in both countries and zero cost to labor mobility...
http://internationalecon.com/T...
"The higher price received for each country's comparative advantage good would lead each country to specialize in that good. To accomplish this, labor would have to move from the comparative disadvantaged industry into the comparative advantage industry. This means that one industry goes out of business in each country. However, because the model assumes full employment and costless mobility of labor, all of these workers are immediately gainfully employed in the other industry."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
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1. Tax Company Revenues, Not Profits;
2. Regulate Market Capitalization of Corporations;
Casteism