Fearing Tighter US Visa Regime, Indian IT Firms Rush To Hire (moneycontrol.com)

From a report on Reuters: Anticipating a more protectionist US technology visa programme under a Donald Trump administration, India's $150 billion IT services sector will speed up acquisitions in the United States and recruit more heavily from college campuses there. Indian companies including Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, and Wipro have long used H1-B skilled worker visas to fly computer engineers to the US, their largest overseas market, temporarily to service clients. Staff from those three companies accounted for around 86,000 new H1-B workers in 2005-14. The US currently issues close to that number of H1-B visas each year. President-elect Trump's campaign rhetoric, and his pick for Attorney General of Senator Jeff Sessions, a long-time critic of the visa programme, have many expecting a tighter regime.

Comments

"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[sexconker]

H1-B skilled worker visas

Depends on your definition of "skilled".

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[Anonymous Coward]

At the company I work at that means relatives of the president of the company...

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[Anonymous Coward]

Skilled.

They will take average wages and never say anything negative for fear of deportation.

Legal slave is a skill right?

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[geekmux]

H1-B skilled worker visas

Depends on your definition of "skilled".

At 1/3 of the cost, it's rather irrelevant to those who do nothing but stare at the bottom line all damn day long.

With those kinds of demonstrated cost savings measures, even system outages perpetuated by a lack of skills are somehow justified.

Re: "H1-B skilled worker visas"

[Anonymous Coward]

To temporarily service American firms.

I guess that depends on your definition of temporary. H1-B should be renamed "indentured foreign service program to take IT jobs from Americans'

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[Tangential]

At 1/3 of the cost, it's rather irrelevant to those who do nothing but stare at the bottom line all damn day long.

With those kinds of demonstrated cost savings measures, even system outages perpetuated by a lack of skills are somehow justified.

This is the BS part of the H1B Fraud that is going on. If you look up the rules around H1-B one of them is:

You must be paid at least the actual or prevailing wage for your occupation, whichever is higher.

If this was being done legally, there would be no advantage to displacing the US workers; it would only be used for skills in short supply as it was intended. This law is being totally subverted by Infosys, Tata, WiPro and everyone of their customers that uses such replacements. I think that they would qualify for prosecution under RICO statutes.

Re: "H1-B skilled worker visas"

[Anonymous Coward]

Those "dumb americans" were OK building a great nation, including space travel, electronics, hardware and software industries without Tata & Infosys 'experts'

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[Hognoxious]

Doesn't even need any changes. They just need to vigorously enforce that rule and the one about the skills not being available locally.

That's "available" without any qualifier or modifier, not "available at the wage they're prepared to pay".

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[Fire_Wraith]

This, exactly.

These companies, and the companies that hire them, are performing an end run around the restrictions of the law that completely subverts the intent. Specifically, they do this by acting as a middleman, so that a company like Disney (http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/25/technology/disney-h1b-workers/) or SoCal Edison (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-edison-layoffs-20150211-story.html) doesn't actually 'replace' a US worker with an H-1B. Instead, they simply subcontract out the positions (or the entire department) to a company like one of these, who just happens to employ H-1B visa holders working at a cheaper rate.

This is the loophole that needs to be closed. These companies constitute the lion's share of H-1Bs, and make a mockery of the ones who are actually higher-paid expert workers in critical demand.

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[shaitand]

Sure but even that gives wiggle room because they can take the average wage nationally instead of locally, allowing them to rural Missouri pay rates to cut metropolitan wages to half the actual prevailing wage. They also create impossible to qualify for postings so they can justify firing or not hiring the US talent and then hire an import worker who doesn't meet those qualifications. You don't have to justify the qualifications of the person you hire, you only have to justify those you don't.

Re: "H1-B skilled worker visas"

[oh_my_080980980]

This coming from a country (India) that ranks at the bottom of education standards...

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[Hognoxious]

Sure but even that gives wiggle room because they can take the average wage nationally instead of locally

Do you even read?

From the link above:

"The prevailing wage is determined based on the position in which you will be employed and the geographic location where you will be working (among other factors)."

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[shaitand]

First "prevailing wage" should be defined as within 1% of the mean salary for functionally comparable positions within the organization. For a sys admin the prevailing wage depends on the flavor and the sector and also the location. In the rural midwest salaries might top at 55k with the average being $35-45k. In Dallas that range is more $85k-150k with the division having to do with specialization and experience. If an organization has to pay an average of $120k/yr for sys admins domestically they should have to pay an H1B $120k/yr + cost of benefits + a guarantee of paying for them relocate back to their origin and a period of continued sponsorship to search for alternate employment should either party decide to end the arrangement.

Otherwise they can use that $35k in the rural midwest or ignore the level of resource being required for the type of sys admin work in question to pay less. Even paying the same amount they have a slave for the term of the contract who has to risk deportation if the company is unhappy for any reason and has no leverage to negotiate increases.

Re: "H1-B skilled worker visas"

[shaitand]

I'd be careful, those Americans invented most of the technology the rest of the world needs to modernize and those H1B visa workers are coming here to work on.

Re: "H1-B skilled worker visas"

[Anonymous Coward]

doesnt mean they are unskilled. that said not all tech jobs need guru's in the field.

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what HR is for; create bogus job openings that no one local can fill, therefore there *is* no prevailing wage.

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[Hognoxious]

In the rural midwest salaries might top at 55k with the average being $35-45k. In Dallas that range is more $85k-150k

Already debunked. In theory at least - see Requirement 4.

https://www.uscis.gov/eir/visa...

As I said before, there's no need for any new rules - they just need to enforce the existing ones properly.

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[Anonymous Coward]

skilled in using open source software.

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[jeff4747]

There's plenty of other loopholes.

You post that you are looking for a "Software Developer II". With typical requirements for a Software Developer II. You then magically fail to find any qualified candidates by doing things like only contacting people who do not live in your state. So you hire an H1B visa worker at the going rate for a Software Developer II.

But a miracle occurred! The guy you hired happens to be qualified to be a Software Developer V. So you give him those additional duties. Yet he's paid like a Software Developer II.

Just dump the whole program. If there really is a problem finding qualified Americans, then hand out more green cards for people who can do that work. If the problem actually is temporary, then the market will sort it out.

Re: "H1-B skilled worker visas"

[losfromla]

Maybe in general that is true, but when I was at UCLA, the Indians were the most badass as far as grades and ability to learn. It probably helped them that they came largely (exclusively?) from their top universities like IIT. US born Indian guys were more-or-less like everyone else, largely slackers :-). Yeah, I said guys, I can't recall any Indian females either native or Indian born in any of my classes.

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[Anonymous Coward]

Skilled enough to navigate the typical corporate office space.

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[rholtzjr]

No, it needs refinement. No fixed rate for minimum rate. Always a percentage above prevailing industry rate for the geographical area.

Also no Contracting or Staffing agencies will be allowed H1B visa applicants, only the company sponsoring them. No third party payment processing for the applicant to eliminate the slave labor practice that is going on now.

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[ghoul]

They are not breaking the law. They look at a position advertised as needing 4-8 years experience with salary 70-90K as the prevailing wages. They will hire someone from India with 8 years experience at 70K. Over a period of 4 years his salary will rise to 90K. At that point he will probably have a GC EAD and move to a product company to do more valuable work and get paid more. The consulting companies are based on the precept that the work which is outsourced out does not increase in complexity every year so you do not need more and more experienced person to do the same work. Once the person's experience demands a salary better than the billing rate for the position commands he/she is expected to move on to a better job and be replaced with a more junior person. This model does not work for people who expect to work forever at the same position and have their salary go up just because their experience went up. Typically what happens is that a whole department has been around long enough that their salaries have gone up with annual increments to a stage that it makes sense to outsource. The way to avoid H1B outsourcing is to keep moving up the value chain. Either do work not easily outsourced or if it can be outsourced do it with fewer people every year (automation). If you have a group of people with high business knowledge and automation (dont make the automation idiot proof . Focus on efficiency not robustness in the automation) its difficult to outsource

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[ghoul]

HR does not have to recruit for every position. HR simply has to file an LCA which describes the needed position and the wage being offered. If the wage matches the prevailing wages the company can go ahead and file an H1B. There is no requirement to recruit locally. it would not work. If you need someone in October you have to file the H1 in April which means you have to do the hiring in February. Noone local will interview in February and then wait 8 months to join a job. H1s are filed for general positions which will be needed 8 months in the future not specific (you cant be specific 8 months in advance given the pace of the industry)

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[Dan East]

Doesn't even need any changes. They just need to vigorously enforce that rule

Sounds like you're talking about immigration law in general, that everyone is freaking out about on the left with our president-elect. The laws already exist, but what has been happening is "legislation" by the executive branch, by not enforcing law. Another example is the legalization of marijuana at the state level, when it's illegal at the federal level. I'm not attempting to open a debate on whether or not it is right or wrong that the federal government regulates it in the way it does (I am pretty adamant across the board that the Federal government has gotten way too strong and usurped too much power from the states), but what I'm saying is the inaction and lack of enforcement by the executive branch of laws passed by the legislative branch is a misuse of power and an imbalance in the three branches. This has been a problem with previous presidents, but Obama has taken lack of enforcement of law to another level. The judicial branch only gets to rule on cases brought before it, thus if the executive branch does not prosecute in the first place, the judicial branch is also totally removed from the picture.

So in other words, the left has been flipping out over the mere enforcement of existing laws, and the H1-B enforcement is just another example.

Re: "H1-B skilled worker visas"

[molarmass192]

.. top universities like IIT ...

You might not like this, but IIT is only considered a top tier university in India. It has little to no reputation in North America / Europe. Most respected world university rankings rank it in the middle of the pack, along the lines of Iowa State and Oregon State.

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[saloomy]

I'll be modded down for this... but there is also I believe a problem with the perception of "skilled" IT labor, and the expectation of lifestyle being in IT brings. You have good people that are even certified in one profession or another (Oracle DBA's, storage admins, etc..) who expect to earn $200k a year when that isn't really feasible most of the time. The education requirements to become decent DBA will be a few years in a robust environment, plus a few months of courses, and voila!

It's not the same regimen as 8 years of medical school, 4 years of residency, $300,000 in student loans and years of practicing before you earn that much. I know IT pros who legitimately make more than the salaries of senators, and still bitch about how much everything costs and how they deserve to earn more. The market is sorting itself out. There are others out there who can come in and offer a better value, so a better value will end up winning. To have the delusion that it's always because some asshole manager is trying to earn a bonus or pocket from a deal is just not a reasonable view of reality.

Re: "H1-B skilled worker visas"

[losfromla]

I don't mind, I guess having three of their campuses in the top 50 in the world makes them "middle of the pack" (#36 and #42). I know this, they are top tier in India, and presumably their top students made it to UCLA, thus they were more than competitive. Interestingly UCLA placed #16, which is nice considering we suck so bad at the football. This data was 2008 which is ok since I graduated almost two decades ago and so am talking about students in the past though not this exact year, obviously.
https://www.iitbombay.org/news...

They appear to have slid significantly since then, now coming in at 103rd. And according to this article http://blogs.wsj.com/indiareal...
they suffer from factors not having to do with the quality of their graduates or education offered.

When I was at community college otoh, they weren't quite so ranking as a whole.

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[Anonymous Coward]

Skilled.

They will take average wages and never say anything negative for fear of deportation.

Legal slave is a skill right?

Most of them don't speak English well enough to find the bathroom before pissing themselves.
I was an IBM employee that had to train my replacements who came from TATA and they are painful to have a conversation with and get confirmation that they understood you. They don't understand that a sentence containing more than "ok" is needed. I have met Indians that have an incredible command of the English language and the Indians I have worked with from TCS are like deer in headlights and that is just carrying on a conversation with them!

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[Anonymous Coward]

H1-B skilled worker visas

Depends on your definition of "skilled".

At 1/3 of the cost, it's rather irrelevant to those who do nothing but stare at the bottom line all damn day long.

With those kinds of demonstrated cost savings measures, even system outages perpetuated by a lack of skills are somehow justified.

I have worked for Morons who think that the bottom line is more important than pesky things like "IT Security" or "Skilled IT Workers" and I can guarantee that is not what they are getting here. With all the talks about cyber security being a concern in the workplace.. you hire someone who is underpaid from another country and expect not to have a problem? Jesus what the hell are they thinking or are they capable of thinking?? This is a situation like the Challenger disaster, where one of the root causes was beancounters in management getting an ego and thinking that because they make lots of money that it somehow qualifies them to make technical decisions. Funny, the company I worked at, and replaced IBM with H1b employees and the Vice President Badmouthed me and tried to destroy my career, is no longer working there.. he got fired! You have to really be an idiot to be a Vice President and get fired.

Re: "H1-B skilled worker visas"

[Anonymous Coward]

... space travel, electronics, hardware and software ...

Mostly based on work by the Germans (and the English).

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[Anonymous Coward]

Going AC because I don't want to burn my karma.....

Some are very skilled. Some are worse than useless.

I remember working with a brilliant guy from China once. I remember a meeting where we discussed some program and he just kept nodding his head, "yeah, yeah, I understand". I wasn't really sure he did and he wrote a great program but it wasn't what we asked for.

At one place I worked with two Indian women. One was a complete idiot, the other was brilliant. Neither had a problem speaking or understanding English though.

I've seen Americans laid off while their H1B co-workers with no better skills were retained.

One place I worked for brought in an Indian CIO who immediately flooded the office with Indian H1B workers. There were a few who actually were really good and knew their shit and spoke English at least as well as their American counterparts. But those were the exception. The Indian firm where the contractors came from was eventually found to have cooked their books to the tune of about $1.5 billion.

One of my co-workers, I'm sure very tactfully (that's not sarcasm - he would speak his mind, but say things diplomatically), said something to the CIO about the hygiene of some of the H1B contractors. He got called a racist, but lasted longer than the Indian CIO.

I smoked at the time so I didn't notice the lack of hygiene among the contractors until I had to work closely with this one guy. He turned out to be worse than useless and not only that even as a pack a day smoker I could smell him from 6 feet away. He had no clue what he was doing and I almost threw up when I shook his hand on his last day of work because he stunk so bad.

As a contrast to that I used to work with another Indian H1B worker - with Canadian citizenship - who drenched herself in perfume. She was actually pretty in a plastic sort of way, but she was also incompetent.

* I'm posting AC, right?
* My pediatrician when I was a young kid was Indian.
* One of my best friends in school was Indian - he was a geek like me.
* There are well over a billion Indians - you can't really generalize about them. There are poor, rich, intelligent, stupid, honest, corrupt just as you can find all those characteristics among Americans or Russians or Chinese people.

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[rholtzjr]

This was the same approach that was done at the Texas Department of Transportation. The entire IT staff of the TxDoT went to a contract to NTT Data (Nippon Telephone and Telegraph). Now they did keep existing employees, however downsized in the process shutting down offices in cities that were close (within a couple of hours travel). This approach is nothing new, however replacing your entire staff with H1B's is definitely illegal. That is why I was saying the use of H1B's should not be allowed for staffing or consulting agencies.

Re: "H1-B skilled worker visas"

[Anonymous Coward]

You said "guru". Americans say "expert". Yes it means they are unskilled.

Re: "H1-B skilled worker visas"

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, some asshole manager IS always trying to earn a bonus by making short term decisions, so that's a totally reasonable way of looking at things.

In addition, while medicine has in fact changed a lot over, say, 50 years, human bodies have not. The subject matter doctors study changes significantly less over a lifetime than a skilled IT pro's world changes in 5 years. If you took a doctor from 50 years ago and placed him in a regular primary care office, he'd understand a lot of what's going on. IT folks from back then--not so much. Go back 200 years and a doctor might be amazed, not at our tech necessarily but because we understand things that they could have understood if their profession wasn't historically so damned stubborn.

That's not the market adjusting btw. It's that doctors, unlike IT folks, understand that banding together and protecting their profession by regulating the supply of doctors and keeping amateurs out is a GOOD THING for them. They are being seriously attacked now by rip off tuition rates and insurance companies, and I'd have thought they'd have fixed that by now but they'll eventually manage.

Meanwhile, us IT types continue to believe we're special snowflakes who can't be bothered to understand that protecting our livelihood is important. That is why doctors will outlast us, because we are too stupid to force laws and rules that will hold asshole managers accountable for their shortsighted uninformed decisions, for substituting the criminally unskilled for actual professionals, and for the consequences of rushing the latest vunlerability laden whatever to market and the consequences and mayhem those things cause.

Also, fuck Indian outsourcing firms and their race to the bottom wage slaves stealing our livelyhoods in ourbown country.

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that a gap is being driven between rich and poor in most of the Western world for the past 20 years or so, and the middle class is disappearing. Everyone thinks they are entitled to be on the right side of that gap. And the way the asshole manager gets on the right side is by cutting the costs of his department, which puts the IT staff on the wrong side, or out the door. Expecting to earn $200k per year should be unreasonable, but in certain areas (where the bulk of the IT jobs are basically), it is what is needed to ensure that you stay on the right side of the gap between rich and poor.

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[Anonymous Coward]

The other thing they do is to take advertised salaries for similar jobs. But private sector companies don't tend to advertise salaries, so only public sector jobs get included in the comparison (but without the benefits and stability that usually come with public sector jobs).

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in the "rural midwest" and your numbers are full of it. Typically we make about 20% less than the national average and have 30% less in living expenses. We let ignorant people like you speak about how terrible we must have it because we don't want arrogant people like you to know better and move here.

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[just another AC]

... who expect to earn $200k a year when that isn't really feasible most of the time. The education requirements to become decent DBA will be a few years in a robust environment, plus a few months of courses, and voila!

It's not the same regimen as 8 years of medical school, 4 years of residency, $300,000 in student loans and years of practicing before you earn that much....

So you are saying that the only thing that should matter with pay is how hard it is to get "qualified" and years of experience (ie barriers to entry), not market demand, nor skill, ... that is a really screwed up world view.

What about the people who are naturally good at something. Some people will have more skill/intelligence/... than others several years their senior.

Under capitalism (even one as heavily distorted as we have), you are paid what you are "worth". If writing a good database can bring $200K/year benefit to the company then it is reasonable to pay them that much.

The problem is society has started to believe your world view that employees should be paid nothing, but it is reasonable for a CEO to earn 30-100x more than a low level employee. Sure a CEO can have a huge effect on the bottom line, but they don't do that without help of those beneath them (yet they think it is ok for them to reap all the benefits). Every worker in the whole economy should be having higher expectations relative to those at the top. We shouldn't be letting them get away with it.

Also the entitlement isn't just in IT. It is far worse in the other professions. "If I go to an ivy league school, then do an MBA then I should be middle management and easily earning 200K+" etc etc

Re: "H1-B skilled worker visas"

[Anonymous Coward]

After reading many comments like yours I'm wondering why some of the "I'm-born-here-and-entitled-to-it" mentality folks like you are pissing in their pants over a few paltry low paying jobs that you don't want to do and cannot do anyways. At least many of the overseas folks are from real poverty -- they are not trying to get a higher paying job so they can afford that new car/boat/house/wife like you!

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[shaitand]

Either a percentage (25% is reasonable, most benefits packages are valued there or below that) above the prevailing industry rate for the geographical area or within that same percentage above the pay rate of the highest paid employee who previously performed a functionally similar position within the last 2 years within the hiring organization, whichever is higher.

The only way you even have a chance of ending H1B abuse is to guarantee it will never provide a cost saving measure vs existing or local talent. I don't care what market data you are coming up with, if the actual market has resulted in the guy you have now commanding $120k/yr plus a benefits package that is the most targeted indicator of the correct wage.

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[rholtzjr]

I agree the monetary incentives needs to be permanently removed as a reason to utilize an H1B over local talent.

Re: "H1-B skilled worker visas"

[Hognoxious]

Exactly. were, not are.

The guys who did all that stuff are mostly dead or retired.

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[Anonymous Coward]

Well when managers are a dime a dozen and making more than the engineers that supposedly nobody can find fuck that. Besides I'm not going to entertain that 8 years of looking at flash cards until graduation is nearly the same as sitting through analysis of algorithms and data structures.

It especially stings to sit through all that bullshit so you can get jobs writing test cases, systems automation, and providing application support to major american companies who seem to be staffed entirely with accented morons who don't know their ass from a hole in the ground.

Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas"

[painandgreed]

Doesn't even need any changes. They just need to vigorously enforce that rule

Sounds like you're talking about immigration law in general, that everyone is freaking out about on the left with our president-elect. The laws already exist, but what has been happening is "legislation" by the executive branch, by not enforcing law. Another example is the legalization of marijuana at the state level, when it's illegal at the federal level. I'm not attempting to open a debate on whether or not it is right or wrong that the federal government regulates it in the way it does (I am pretty adamant across the board that the Federal government has gotten way too strong and usurped too much power from the states), but what I'm saying is the inaction and lack of enforcement by the executive branch of laws passed by the legislative branch is a misuse of power and an imbalance in the three branches. This has been a problem with previous presidents, but Obama has taken lack of enforcement of law to another level. The judicial branch only gets to rule on cases brought before it, thus if the executive branch does not prosecute in the first place, the judicial branch is also totally removed from the picture.

So in other words, the left has been flipping out over the mere enforcement of existing laws, and the H1-B enforcement is just another example.

It's hardly just the left. The right has big advantage with illegals being here too, as it is the business owners who are profiting from cheap labor. But really, the main culprit in both illegal aliens and marijuana examples will probably be budgets. Deporting all those people would take something like 20 years and half a trillion dollars. Trumps wall is estimated at 200 billion and that is just for a fence like one fifth the border already has, and doesn't include the cost of watching and maintaining said wall. One of the reason that the states are legalizing marijuana is that it was just cluttering up their jail and court systems. The Feds don't push it because if the remarks of the police here in Seattle when it was legalized was anything to judge, if they did, the police would arrest every single marijuana violator and call the Feds to come get them, take them to Fed jail, then Fed court, all on the Fed's dime. The Feds don't want millions of dollars in possession cases clogging up their system any more than the states do. Probably even less. Anyway, this is why nothing is really getting done and probably won't even under the guy that ran on that issue, the money just isn't there.

Re: "H1-B skilled worker visas"

[qfman]

I have no problem with H1B workers IF they must pay the H1B worker 20% more than any american citizen doing essentially the same job. This eliminates the use of H1B to just cut cost and keeps the ability of companies to find talent that really is not available here and now but encouraging companies to keep looking for local talent to fill the bill.

haha

[Anonymous Coward]

Deal with IT!

Rushing to hire?

[tomhath]

There aren't any qualified IT personnel available in the US. Otherwise there wouldn't be any need for all those H1-Bs in the first place.

Re:Rushing to hire?

[DirkDaring]

Beat me to it, damn you. Mod parent up.

Re:Rushing to hire?

[zlives]

true true, i guess US will just have to deal with the dregs of unskilled IT workers without qualifications other than a hastily procured certificate.

Re:Rushing to hire?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, like the former IT workers at Disney who were outsourced in a cost-cutting move?

Re:Rushing to hire?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except qualifications can include pay level. Importing labor when there is a shortage artificially deflates the cost of labor, keeping wages down.

Not to mention, last time I checked, Disney had a qualified IT department filled with American workers. they chose to lower costs by importing labor.

It's a scam designed to screw over workers in the country by using temporary, indentured labor.

Take a look at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU for more about how the scams are run.

Re:Rushing to hire?

[Anonymous Coward]

\dude lay off the crack pipe!

Re:Rushing to hire?

[Anonymous Coward]

bullshit... tell that to all the IT people at Edison Electric in California that got laid off, and forced to train their H1-B replacements.

"They're just doing the jobs that americans dont wan't to do"

Bullshit...

the actual quote is "They're just doing the jobs that Americans don't want to do at 40% of its valued wages"

go take an 60% paycut and come back to me with that crap you're sputtering. The people pushing for this shit is HP, Google, and Facebook. They don't think YOU should make $120k a year. They would rather pay an H1-B $40k/yr. Meanwhile they make 7 and 8 figure salaries. Make THEM take an 60% paycut if you're going to fucking cut someone's pay.

Re:Rushing to hire?

[tekrat]

.... and yet you'd probably be the first to complain if we elected someone who wanted to tax the rich bastards at a 50% tax rate, which would benefit everyone.

That money could be used to feed the hungry, rebuild roads and bridges, pay for basic research that corporations no longer do, and help us pay off the crushing debt we are already under.

Re:Rushing to hire?

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to work on your sarcasm detector.

Re:Rushing to hire?

[geekmux]

The people pushing for this shit is HP, Google, and Facebook. They don't think YOU should make $120k a year. They would rather pay an H1-B $40k/yr.

Lacking identifiable sarcasm in the parent's post, this fact is not lost upon a single American IT worker today.

Meanwhile they make 7 and 8 figure salaries. Make THEM take an 60% paycut if you're going to fucking cut someone's pay.

Uh, you DO realize the reason they can pay themselves 7 and 8 figure salaries is due to the fact they've demonstrated considerable "cost savings" by outsourcing the shit out of the IT department, right?

In other words, fat fucking chance of them stopping the very activities that feed and justify their obscene salaries and bonuses.

Re:Rushing to hire?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also look at http://www.gao.gov/assets/320/314517.pdf, a GAO report regarding the fact that "Restricted agency oversight and statutory changes weaken protections for U.S. workers"

Re:Rushing to hire?

[DirkDaring]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm

Re:Rushing to hire?

[Anonymous Coward]

Define qualified.
If you mean hired with competitive pay, and an expectation of being a valued member of a team? Then yes there are plenty of us.
If you mean willing to work for chump change, (which is actually a lot of money back home in India), and master one & only one set of skills so that one will fit into a cog of unimaginative yes-staff. Then no, there are not enough US locals willing to fit that description.

If the near east's IT programs are so great, why are we not clamoring to get hired over there?

Re:Rushing to hire?

[execthis]

shocking. its basically a criminal conspiracy.

Re:Rushing to hire?

[Hognoxious]

And his apostrophe usage.

Re: Rushing to hire?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dillards corporate headquarters only hires H1-B visa workers for their IT dept. CEO salary last year was $500,000,000.

One would think he could have gotten by on only$498,000,000 and kept the American jobs, but nooooooo. Somebody like that has no conscience.

Re: Rushing to hire?

[geekmux]

Dillards corporate headquarters only hires H1-B visa workers for their IT dept. CEO salary last year was $500,000,000.

One would think he could have gotten by on only$498,000,000 and kept the American jobs, but nooooooo. Somebody like that has no conscience.

Exactly the reason legalities need to come into play.

We sure as hell can't rely on morals or ethics to keep this shit in check.

Re:Rushing to hire?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Except qualifications can include pay level.

I don't know about "can include"... it seems apparent that accepting a ridiculously low salary is the main qualification.

Re: Rushing to hire?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no moral obligation to pay someone more than someone else who is willing to do the same work for less.

Salaries should be determined by the free market. The government should only step in on salary regulation if there is some greater good served by said regulation (like, for example, ensuring that the country has a solid supply of internal top-tier technical talent, so as to avoid being left behind in the tech race).

Nobody is ever morally entitled to a high salary. Not the CEO, and not you.

Re: Rushing to hire?

[geekmux]

There is no moral obligation to pay someone more than someone else who is willing to do the same work for less.

Quite true. So how much do Indian CEOs cost these days?

Salaries should be determined by the free market.

How ironic we label the market that somehow justifies a $500 million-dollar CEO salary as "free".

The government should only step in on salary regulation if there is some greater good served by said regulation (like, for example, ensuring that the country has a solid supply of internal top-tier technical talent, so as to avoid being left behind in the tech race).

The greater good in this case would be the qualified and skilled American IT workforce.

Nobody is ever morally entitled to a high salary. Not the CEO, and not you.

Now that we've beat a horse named Moral to death, perhaps we could focus on his twin brother Ethics. As an US employee, my company certainly seems to demand I do...

Re: Rushing to hire?

[ColdWetDog]

Dillards corporate headquarters only hires H1-B visa workers for their IT dept. CEO salary last year was $500,000,000.

One would think he could have gotten by on only$498,000,000 and kept the American jobs, but nooooooo. Somebody like that has no conscience.

Did you just go all Donald on us? 500 million US dollars?

Yes, he makes more than the rest of us combined, but give the hyperbole a break, shall we?

Re: Rushing to hire?

[shaitand]

Salaries being determined by the free market is a race to the bottom. There is localized salary variation for a reason, there is a higher standard of living in some locations. The lowest bidder lives in third world conditions, if you want to open an IT shop somewhere with those conditions and sell services to the people who live in those conditions then by all means hire at their local rates.

But as long as you want the superior conditions found in the US to exist, if for no other reason so that you can benefit from the economic power of selling to the fat US market, you'll need to pay US level salaries to the workers in your US level market. You believe in the free market? The free market is ethic and moral free leverage, squeeze, blackmail do whatever it takes to gain no matter who you burn. Well, the US is an organization with massive economic power and it is just as free to leverage it to the benefit of local workers as companies are to leverage their size and ability to absorb the impact of any one worker being fired to take advantage of staff in employment term negotiations.

Re:Rushing to hire?

[unixisc]

Except qualifications can include pay level. Importing labor when there is a shortage artificially deflates the cost of labor, keeping wages down.

Not to mention, last time I checked, Disney had a qualified IT department filled with American workers. they chose to lower costs by importing labor.

It's a scam designed to screw over workers in the country by using temporary, indentured labor.

Take a look at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... for more about how the scams are run.

Qualifications do not include pay level, or else, 2 laws would contradict each other. The H1B visas require that the imported worker work at prevailing wages pegs them at a level higher than that of the people who work offshore. If a company wants to pay its workers the Indian rate, they need to have them work remotely from Bangalore/Hyderabad/Gurgaon/Pune

Re:Rushing to hire?

[erapert]

... tax the rich bastards

Careful, you're revealing your ulterior motives (envy and greed).

... at a 50% tax rate

Golden rule: how would you like to be taxed at 50%?

... which would benefit everyone.

The fact that you are included in the "everyone" group did not escape my notice.

That money could be used to feed the hungry, rebuild roads and bridges ...

You're so altruistic when planning how to spend other people's money.

... pay for basic research that corporations no longer do...

Because IBM (just to name a single example) isn't filing huge numbers of patents and innovations every year, right?
Also, I like how vague and condescending your term "basic research" is.

... and help us pay off the crushing debt we are already under.

Or we could stop giving money to foreign governments, stop handing out "free" stuff to our own citizens, stop spending fortunes on cruise missiles and drones, etc. ...

The Forbes 400 for America says that they own about $2.4 trillion. So you would have to go after a much larger number of people than that if you want to really punish those evil greedy rich people whose money we wish we had.
The federal budget is about $3.95 trillion with a deficit of $616 billion and a total debt of just short of $20 trillion.
This article gives the net worth required to be in a percentile of wealth.

Please check my math: 0.01 * 338 million = 338,000 people => 338,000 * $30,644,280 gives us a guess of their net worth being about $97,448,810,400,000 (ninety seven trillion dollars assuming that they all have about a thirty million dollar net worth).

If confiscated then that would be sufficient to pay the national debt... You were saying merely that we should tax them at higher rates (50%). It really just means taking their money over time rather than all at once.

The end effect is the same. In the long term, it would produce the following problems:
1. The rich will just leave. Nobody will sit around while most or all of their wealth is confiscated. It doesn't matter how justified you think it is, they won't just sit there and be shafted. Next year you won't have anyone to confiscate the wealth from.
2. All businesses who can possibly manage to do so will flee the country. What do you think that would do to the GDP? Do you think tax revenues would go up or down?
3. You will have set the precedent that in this country we'll just take your stuff if you have it and we want it. Talk about the destruction of Western civilization. Everything is predicated upon the notion of "ownership" in our culture, society, and civilization. If you can just take someone else's stuff because you want it (individually or collectively) then what incentive is there to work, to earn and save, to do anything other than the absolute bare minimum to get through today? Would you work for free? Would you work for subsistence wages? Would you think it was fair if most of your income were taken away from you and given to others? Why do you think anyone else would or should?
4. With the evacuation of businesses (and jobs) and the ultra-rich a power vacuum and societal upheaval will leave the country vulnerable. Probably you would get a dictator in a couple years promising to make things better and to punish those responsible... read a history book or recall your history lessons in school and you'll see how such

Re:Rushing to hire?

[Anonymous Coward]

>> ... at a 50% tax rate
>
> Golden rule: how would you like to be taxed at 50%?

The optimal tax rate is between 33% and 50%. The naive calculation to find it yields 50%. Anybody who believes the optimal tax rate should want to be taxed at 50%.

Re:Rushing to hire?

[Tesen]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm

Dude I wish we could dual mod you as funny and informative! ;-) LOL!

Re:Rushing to hire?

[ghoul]

No jobs were outsourced. A function was outsourced to a company and it was upto TCS to decide what kind of staffing to use to execute the program. Those Disney workers could have applied for jobs with TCS. They preferred not to and instead preferred to make it an issue of foreigners taking our jobs. The only way to make them happy would be to specify that anytime a company outsources a function the vendor needs to hire all the employees doing the job currently. Of course there would not be any cost savings then. The whole precept of outsourcing a function is that the vendor can do it better or cheaper (with fewer people). This means they have some efficiencies of scale due to doing the same thing at many differnt installations they can share common resources.

Re:Rushing to hire?

[erapert]

Please define "optimal".

Re: Rushing to hire?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dillards corporate headquarters only hires H1-B visa workers for their IT dept. CEO salary last year was $500,000,000.

Good job - more than two orders of magnitude off.

Re:Rushing to hire?

[bongey]

No the H1-B should be revoked because there was no shortage of US workers at the site when the H1-B was granted. IE in two states at the same time.

Re: Rushing to hire?

[Anonymous Coward]

You clearly did not watch the linked YouTube video of a law firm advising how to use wage levels to eliminate us workers.

Re:Rushing to hire?

[Anonymous Coward]

You could tax all the rich at 100% and it wouldn't even touch the debt.
research? Are you serious? There's so much research going on in the states it's amazing.
Please crawl out from under the tumblrstone and actually read some scientific journals for once in your life.

Re:Rushing to hire?

[unixisc]

While that may be one of the drivers, the whole idea behind outsourcing is that a company let out something that is not a core function of the company, but is needed for its operations. Like Acme Capital, Inc. could have Burger King run their cafeteria, or have PwC audit their books. In other words, they outsource those operations to those companies, so that they don't have to deal w/ the headaches. Saving money is a bonus that they expect as a result of it.

In the above case, it is illegal to hire someone from abroad if you can find someone who can do that job in the US, as far as the Department of Labor laws go w/ H1Bs. In the case of Disney, they already had an IT staff, so when they chose to hand that over to Cognizant or HCL, it was up to those 2 to first see if the existing Disney employees would take it, and only go offshore if they refused. Note that nothing in the law says that they have to find those employees within a given budget, so it's not a valid reason to state that the existing Disney employees were being paid much more.

Claiming 'no jobs were outsourced' is legalese here: while Disney decided to go w/ HCL and Cognizant, those companies were supposed to find Americans willing to do the job onshore, or, if they preferred, they could avoid hiring anybody in Santa Ana/Orlando and instead just have their Bangalore/Noida staff service Disney from offshore. Those companies who look for people below the prevailing US wage and then claim to the Department of Labor that they can't find anybody are clearly violating the law.

Re:Rushing to hire?

[ghoul]

You are incorrect. TCS has to offer the prevailing wage. As per law it does not have to give the existing employees first crack at it. And if they already have employees who can do the job the govt cannot ask them to fire their own employees and hire the ex-Disney workers in their stead. As I said if you want ex-employees to have first crack at vendor jobs you have to put that into law. Its not part of the law currently. And it most probably never will as it would break the whole model of outsourcing a function to a vendor irrespective of whether the vendor is an American or non-American firm

Re:Rushing to hire?

[ghoul]

Did the Disney employees apply for the job at TCS? No. So TCS can say noone applied for the job so they had to use H1Bs. In any case most H1Bs are not brought in during a full replacement project. The senior folks are already in the US working at other clients. Hence their H1 application is not linked to the Disney deal. They are employees of TCS and not Disney. TCS may have hundreds of projects and for many of them there will be no local candidates. Once the H1B are working in the US TCS as a company has every right to transfer them from project to project even if the project is a vendor replacement of an existing department.

Re:Rushing to hire?

[unixisc]

You are conflating 'outsourcing' w/ 'offshoring', which is a common mistake Indians in particular make

The offshoring company can use their own employees (not sure why you mention TCS, when the vendors for this particular Disney project were HCL and Cognizant), but only if the employees are either working from India, and occasionally coming to the US for business meetings (usually, this would involve a B1 visa as opposed to H1B or L1s). If they want to bring them to the US, they have to indicate why they need them here. The fact that they've already hired them in India is not a valid justification for getting visas in the US. It's not a question of whether they hire the replaced workers or not - it's whether they adequately searched for American citizens or permanent residents who can do the job in the first place. If they don't want to/can't afford to do that, they are at liberty to use their existing employees - working remotely offsite.

I know that one major reason for this is that they want employees who can communicate w/ the offshore employees, which they believe Indians can do better than Americans. In which case, job descriptions should include a requirement to know Hindi/Kannada/Telegu/Marathi, so that they then have a valid reason not to hire Americans.

Re:Rushing to hire?

[ghoul]

I am not conflating outsourcing and offshoring. In this case First outsourcing happens to HCL America. HCL America as an American company may then decide to use whatever workforce they have onsite or offshore to fulfill the outsourced function. Outsourcing automatically doesnt mean offshoring. Also very few functions are moved completely offshore. There are always people onsite. These are the people who have to take knowledge transfer (this is not training. They already know the tech. They need to know the particular configuration the tech has been put in at the present installation). These folks in turn may or may not work with offshore teams. These folks are already in the US on visas for previous projects and moving to a new project.

Further many things which should be allowed under B1 like KT have come under fire in recent years so companies have started getting H1s for people who will be on site for short periods. The correct visa the H3 (training visa) is hardly ever used and companies just go for B1 or H1.

I think your point on communication is important but its not the language. People working in software speak English. Its the empathy. To work well with offshore you have to have worked offshore and know the work culture. Send fresh American grads for a year of internship offshore and then they would be able to work well as onsite reps.

What "Fresher" Means

[RoscoeChicken]

A "fresher" is someone who is cheap to hire because they don't know sh*t.

Most of the Indians in my US-based grad program self identify as "freshers". The professors all but beg them not to cheat.

Uneven

[Tablizer]

An article in the LA Times describes how un-equal our trade deals are in terms of professions. Doctors and lawyers are protected from much offshoring & visa workers due to various laws and trade agreement exceptions, for example.

There's no reason law and medical schools couldn't be set up other countries to train remote and visa workers on US law and medical practices. But our rules arbitrary limit or exclude those schools.

You want cheaper ACA? make outsourcing and/or visa-ing doctors easier. Otherwise somebody who used to make $25/hr at a factory and now making $9 as a Walmart clerk has to pay $200 an hour for a doctor. One is zapped by globalization and one protected from it, creating a huge discrepancy between their service rates. Of course medical care goes up for such people. It's not ACA's direct fault.

If the impact of globalization is spread around more evenly, then perhaps life won't be so difficult for those subject to globalized careers: their wages may go down, but so will their cost of living as others' wages also go down.

Trump may be a babbling blowhard, but he has focused attention on this issue. Let's do it right this time: Spread the "love".

However, something tells me the heavy lobbying money of those professions will buy protection. Blue-collar workers don't have the equivalent counter-bribing force. Lawyers and doctors won't accept a cut without a heavy fight. The rich simply have more weapons.

Re:Uneven

[Major Blud]

Blue-collar workers don't have the equivalent counter-bribing force.

They most certainly do, but it looks like they didn't choose the winners in the election this year:

https://www.opensecrets.org/or...
Carpenters & Joiners Union : Democrats = $23,278,997, Republicans = $436,816
Laborers Union: Democrats = $21,409,886, Republicans = $459,250
Service Employees International Union*: Democrats = $12,645,476, Republicans= $1,600
Intl Brotherhood of Electrical Workers: Democrats = $10,507,556, Republicans = $159,818
AFL-CIO: Democrats = $10,634,478, Republicans= $187,200
Plumbers/Pipefitters Union: Democrats = $8,666,315, Republicans = $306,700
Operating Engineers Union: Democrats = $6,605,597, Republicans = $773,250
Communication Workers of America: Democrats = $6,413,565, Republicans = $29,000

That's just the ones that I saw in the top 50 organizations.

*Some of these folks may be classified as Pink-Collar.

Re:Uneven

[e432776]

You are on to something. I would only add that blue collar workers used to have a way to counter such measures, but they have been leaving unions for decades.

Re:Uneven

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear that's partially already happening. More foreign doctors are being hired. X-Rays are sent over the Internet to India for analysis. Even pharmacy workers are being replaced with H-1B visa workers.

This shit can't last.

Re:Uneven

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, you assume the unions are for the blue-collar workers...that hasn't really been true for decades. They are lobbying for the union leaders. When a union is banned from forcing the workers to pay dues, the number of card carrying members drops dramatically.

Re: Uneven

[Anonymous Coward]

As Orwell once said, "all animals are equal but some are more equal than others.". It is the direct result of turning over tax money, power, and rights to politicians who have only their own interest in mind

Re:Uneven

[swb]

Doctors and lawyers are protected from much offshoring & visa workers due to various laws and trade agreement exceptions, for example.

Mostly it's because the regulatory bodies for those professions are made up of...wait for it...people in those professions, and they are often statutorily empowered to make rules and often adjudicate problems. So the medical board is run by doctors who, surprise, surprise, rig the rules in their favor and limit qualification for their trade which has the effect of limiting the labor pool.

In some ways it makes total rational sense, because why wouldn't you want doctors, who best understand the practice of medicine, setting the rules and standards for who can practice medicine?

On the other hand, the fox is in charge of the henhouse. I had a friend get horrible dental care. In so much pain, he pretty much randomly selected the closest dentist he could get into on short notice and dentist 2 was horrified at the work. Dentist 2 documented everything wrong and what he did to fix it, solving my friend's problems. He submitted a claim to the dental board against Dentist 1 -- only to have the claim rejected as unsubstantiated. And why not? If a bunch of dentists gets to decide what complaints are legitimate, why wouldn't they reject a claim against a fellow dentist, even if another dentist provides documented clinical proof?

Re:Uneven

[Tablizer]

It could be that way first because most polls projected H would win. You want to influence the likely winner. Donations are not necessarily intended to finance campaigns, but to buy influence, and to do that you want to pay the likely winner.

Trump also baffled the political managers of such organizations who would make those decisions, being T is such a different (non) politician. He was a wild-card that many didn't know what to make of. He won mostly the angry/revenge vote, and those in management of such orgs are doing relatively well because they are managers after all.

Someone doing well won't want to rock the boat. It's the angry "losers" (for lack of a better term) that typically want to rock the boat. Therefore, those managers didn't feel/understand the revenge/anger angle of Trumpism.

You have to throw the normal political analysis out with Trump. The books have to be rewritten.

Re:Uneven

[Major Blud]

It could be that way first because most polls projected H would win. You want to influence the likely winner.

Fair enough, but the list doesn't look that much different for the 2012 and 2008 election cycles. The Unions have traditionally been heavily Blue since Reagan's first term.

https://www.opensecrets.org/or...
https://www.opensecrets.org/or...

User e432776 below posted that blue collar workers "have been leaving unions for decade". (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm). There are plenty of reasons for this, but part of it could be that the Union leaders aren't getting the message that their members disagree with who they keep trying to influence.

Re:Uneven

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting to see you mention medical school locations. You might be surprised where your doctors were trained if you ask/check.

Re:Uneven

[ColdWetDog]

I hear that's partially already happening. More foreign doctors are being hired. X-Rays are sent over the Internet to India for analysis. Even pharmacy workers are being replaced with H-1B visa workers.

This shit can't last.

Lots of foreign doctors have entered the US over the past 30 years. There is a dedicated pathway for this. Some of the are OK, lots of them are pretty marginal. The marginal ones tend to go into marginal residency (post doctoral) programs and turn out to be marginal docs. Some of them end up pretty competent. You'll find many MD / DO job postings that cater to FMG s (Foreign Medical Graduates) because they're in places that US trained docs don't want to go (downtown Baltimore, NE. S. Dakota) and even those jobs are better than what they can get in rural India. There are still primary care residencies that don't fill so in and of itself, FMGs aren't the answer.

There is a big pushback on some of the radiology reading firms who have used dodgy, ill trained docs to read films. They were really popular a couple of years ago but a number of high profile malpractice cases has cooled everybody's ardor. Pharm techs and pharmacists, pathology techs and a number of other bits of the medical puzzle are being outsourced with fairly variable results.

You tend to get what you pay for.

Re:Uneven

[shaitand]

Tech workers should have similar professional regulation and an oath not unlike Doctors. This would create an ethical barrier to some of the terrible things tech workers are asked to do. Spam, military drone programs, massive domestic spying, work for the RIAA/MPAA/BSA. I know many tech workers who work on critical systems where mistakes could massive disruption and even loss of life on an epic scale and I've seen some of them replaced by completely unqualified and inexperienced foreigners. A tech manager should have to risk losing his professional credentials for those kind of staffing choices and those workers should lack the professional credentials required to hold them.

Do you really want air traffic control systems coded and administered by the lowest H1B bidder with his 4 year degree handed out after 2 years of joke education and no actual experience or do you think maybe we should require some professional regulation on the people performing these functions? So that not only are they qualified but when asked to make unsound choices like getting rid of important redundant equipment as a cost saving measure by management they can refuse saying they'd lose their credentials for that, just like doctors refuse services they think are unethical all the time.

Re:Uneven

[swb]

We already have professional regulation for engineers with the PE licensing system, requiring a PE to sign off on a lot of critical engineering.

I doubt it would be a panacea, I've worked with engineering companies on projects and most of the engineers, while degreed in engineering, were not PEs, and despite being actually college educated in the discipline often approached design issues worse than IT people with minimal formal education.

I'm kind of surprised we haven't seen PE-style requirements for computer systems yet. Maybe they are required in health care or some critical control systems (possibly as an inherited requirement for the larger "system").

But like anything else, the reason we haven't is the market's appetite for IT systems is for the most part unquenchable and requiring more intensive certification would balloon IT costs massively. There's H1B pressure on IT workers now because they're scarce enough to still command decent salaries and that's with the labor pool swollen to accept all comers. If you mandate professional certifications, it will dramatically cut the labor pool and force wages too high.

I'd also question how practical it would be. With physical engineering, there are principles of physics which don't really change. Even Medicine and Law, while they do change, change slowly enough that educations aren't made worthless in 5 years and most working professionals in those fields can get by with continuing education credits and ongoing experience/exposure to new techniques or drugs.

With IT people, it all changes so rapidly and is often so vendor/product driven that there's few principles outside of information theory or symbolic logic that remain constant enough. Someone certified as an IT professional could literally be functionally deficient in 5 years. We already have treadmills for product certifications requiring renewal every couple of years.

Re:Uneven

[Tablizer]

Mostly it's because the regulatory bodies for those professions are made up of...wait for it...people in those professions...

Yeah, it's sort of a ... drum-roll please ... union!

who best understand the practice of medicine, setting the rules and standards for who can practice medicine?

Publish those standards, and if offshore schools/workers qualify, they qualify.

He submitted a claim to the dental board against Dentist 1 -- only to have the claim rejected as unsubstantiated.

One can hire a personal lawyer, but of course that's expensive.

Re:Uneven

[Tablizer]

the list doesn't look that much different for the 2012 and 2008 election cycles. The Unions have traditionally been heavily Blue since Reagan's first term.

Fair enough. Republicans often threaten to limit unions, which is rare with Democrats. Maybe their actions differ than their words, but as a union member I wouldn't go with the group that verbally threatens unions over the one that doesn't unless I had inside info that differs from their words.

blue collar workers "have been leaving unions for decade

I don't think they outright leave unions, but rather union-oriented industries are dying, such as manufacturing. Most of the new jobs opening up to replace those are more varied and specialized. It's easier to unionize a shop where most do the same kind of work. Anything large-scale and consistent/regimented gets offshored or automated.

Re:Uneven

[magarity]

Except for service employees international most of the people represented by those unions make over 100K/yr and are solidly in the 10%ers.

Re:Uneven

[TheGratefulNet]

trump is a republican (at least that's the party he belongs to) and those guys HATE workers and workers rights.

I expect nothing to change as long as rich guys who run things get all the say in this country. workers have not had a say in decades and with an ALL R set of 3 branches of government, nothing will improve for the working guy. nothing.

but the conservates had their 'stigginit' so there's that, I guess (deep sigh).

Re:Uneven

[Major Blud]

Republicans often threaten to limit unions, which is rare with Democrats. Maybe their actions differ than their words

I think the latter part is what's driving some of this. Union members don't feel as if the current administration has been doing enough to help (regardless if that's true or not). My father has been a member of the United Steel Workers for the larger part of his life. Earlier this year he was telling me about the amount of backlash he saw at their chapter meeting when the union representative recommended that they should all vote for Hillary.

I don't think they outright leave unions, but rather union-oriented industries are dying

This is one of the "plenty of other reasons" as well, and definitely the largest one. I'm still blown away that the Carpenters & Joiners Union is able to donate more money in 2016 than AT&T and Microsoft COMBINED.

Thanks for the conversation....what can we do to get you some higher Karma :-)

Re:Uneven

[Tablizer]

H didn't score so well with blue-collar men. I don't know if it's because she's female, or is too reserved (stiff) when they really want a Rosie O kind of personality, who knows. There are many voting issues to consider besides union, but if unions are important to you, then the average Republican politician is not your friend.

Thanks.

Re:Uneven

[Loki_1929]

So your solution to one group getting fucked by globalization and outsourcing is to fuck everyone else so we're all reduced to the same shitty level playing field?

Why don't we just stop everyone from getting fucked by globalization and outsourcing?

Re:Uneven

[e3m4n]

you really have drank the coolaid if you think any member of congress is for workers and workers rights. Do yourself a huge favor and avoid the bullshit mantra that dems are somehow behind the working man. They just pander to get their money. In 2008 they controlled half the supreme court, the executive branch, and all of congress. If there was a chance to do ANYTHING for the constantly shrinking middle class that was 4 years they chose to sit on their asses and pretend everything including tropical storms and cancer was bush's fault. Its SOOO much easier to point fingers and deflect failures than to actually solve problems. They were, at the time, paid higher than any previous session of congress yet held substantially fewer days in session than any previous term also. Considering how dire our economy was, they should have taken a 20% pay cut to send a message that they too were not without feeling the pain of financial impact.. AND they should have worked 2x the normal number of sessions to try and brainstorm a fix to that mess. Instead we got record setting number of golf trips. Shakespear had a few things right...

1) first thing to do is kill all the lawyers
2) a pox on both your houses.

Re:Uneven

[cyberchondriac]

And there you have it, the contradiction: this isn't just big business and conservatives pushing this. The Left espouses globalization and multiculturalism; it also supposedly supports the unions and American worker's rights. The two are currently incompatible. How are the unions - essentially democrat- okay with American workers' standard of living being challenged and lowered by the influx of H1Bs and illegal aliens willing to work for 40% of a native worker's pay? Because if you challenge these programs, you get called racist and xenophobic.

Trivial to stop the abuse

[tempmpi]

It seems trivial to stop the abuse: Stop the lottery and replace it with a list ordered by salary and give the visas to the applicants with the highest salaries. This would make hiring H1Bs expensive and limit their use to hiring rare very talented foreigners.

At the moment H1Bs are broken: The lottery often prevents bringing in highly talented people, while it doesn't matter too much for companies that just want a random cheap semi-skilled person. They just fill a lot of extra applications to get enough H1Bs granted.

Re:Trivial to stop the abuse

[Guybrush_T]

This is indeed a good solution, though it may have to be weighted depending on the area, otherwise Silicon Valley will get all the H1-Bs.

But yes, those three Indian IT companies are the one abusing the system, and it is their fault if H1-Bs are so hard to get. They prevent other companies from legitimately bringing foreign talents by flooding the system.

So of course they're fearing it won't work long, and I hope it will be the case. I don't really trust Trump to do this smartly, but if at least they can fix the H1-B system, that would be an interesting achievement.

Re:Trivial to stop the abuse

[tempmpi]

Some weighting depending on area could be a good idea, but needs additional measures to prevent abuse. Otherwise consulting companies will apply for H1Bs in a cheap area with very low wages and then move people to silicon valley soon after the visa has been granted. It also seems a good idea to give more H1Bs to areas with higher wages as these often indicate real shortages. Stricter limits on working hours are also needed, otherwise companies will cheat the system by paying a high monthly salary that is actually a low hourly salary because of the insane working hours demanded. One potential solution for that issue could be rules that require paid overtime for H1Bs and allow workers to sue for their overtime payment even several years later.

US was exporting jobs, now it is importing workers

[Anonymous Coward]

30 years ago, companies exported manufacturing jobs, today it is import workers to save money. Older engineers hare the most vulnerable, At Intel Hillsboro alone laidoff 3000 experienced employees to hire guest workers and contract with Indian companies to bring in more H-1B workers. Now 40% of software coders in Intel Hillsboro are foreign workers.

The Big Lie Exposed

[byteherder]

If there really were a shortage of skilled IT workers in the US, then companies including Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, and Wipro would not be able to hire anyone and would need to import such workers.

Since they now are speeding up the hiring of skilled U.S. IT workers, there must not be a shortage to begin with. There by exposing the Big Lie.

How will Facebook, Apple, Microsoft now react?

Re:The Big Lie Exposed

[TigerTime]

Honestly, they're so big that they'll likely just set up off-shore programming centers in India and not worry about the H1-B visa program. I really don't think it'll affect the corporations TOO much. It will affect the smaller/mid size IT groups that aren't prepared to deal with the hassle of off-shore.

Re:The Big Lie Exposed

[Anonymous Coward]

The big tech companies (Microsoft, Apple, Google, FB, Amazon etc) are really not abusing this system, they pay awesome wages for real software engineers. They would absolutely hire an American if possible. It isn't. Even with very high wages and an offer for free relocation, they can't fill the job reqs. Hence they go overseas and import, at even greater expense. And when they do, it's an additional hire, not a local replacement. It's a very selective process, at my big tech company 5 - 7 interviews, data structure, algorithms, design patterns, coding on the white board, and a group decision of other engineers gates the acceptance. (source: I do hiring and lead a team of engineers, and I'm an expensive import)

This is certainly not the case with InfoSys, Tata etc they are certainly coming for ya jobs.

As for what the tech companies will do...

I would not be surprised to see big dev center open up just over the border in Canada (very close to Seattle) and imports move to that location. I'm sure Canada will love the extra income tax. Ohttps://news.slashdot.org/story/16/11/28/1536249/fearing-tighter-us-visa-regime-indian-it-firms-rush-to-hire#r Trump will change the visa requirements significantly and make the bar much higher. The big tech companies can still clear it with engineers, but the outsourced IT sysadmins won't be able to. Or tech just moves away from the states and goes to Europe and leaves a bunch of stranded software engineers stateside looking to relocate or unemployed.

Re:The Big Lie Exposed

[unixisc]

If there really were a shortage of skilled IT workers in the US, then companies including Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, and Wipro would not be able to hire anyone and would need to import such workers. Since they now are speeding up the hiring of skilled U.S. IT workers, there must not be a shortage to begin with. There by exposing the Big Lie. How will Facebook, Apple, Microsoft now react?

Actually, those companies are now looking at college graduates, since that's the lowest cost workers they can get anywhere within the US. Since the H1Bs would be regulated in some way, they are looking at the cheapest US workers that they can find - entry level people who can be molded in the corporate culture.

Just that from now on, off-shoring IT would have to be done for logistic, rather than financial reasons

Re:The Big Lie Exposed

[Anonymous Coward]

places like Apple, Microsoft and Facebook actually use H1B's for their intended purpose. I know several people working on H1B's at one of those and they are being paid above what the average employee their earns.

Re:The Big Lie Exposed

[byteherder]

The big tech companies, I am seeing, are looking for top talent and not so much influenced by the candidate's status. They also pay according to the position and do not distinguish between citizen and non-citizen.

Re:The Big Lie Exposed

[Anonymous Coward]

How do they react? Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft executives start issuing press releases and holding earnest, sit-down meetings with the politicians.

"We'd love to hire, we really would! We have shovel-ready projects just waiting to start. We just cannot find the skilled talent we need in the United States. We need to hire the best people from around the world, which coincidentally always means the developing world, where salary expectations are half or less of the U.S. talent we have scouted. That the U.S. does not have."

Re:The Big Lie Exposed

[TheGratefulNet]

and cisco and intel and juniper and and and ...

any company with its own building in the bay area is probably close to 90% h1b filled.

I was at cisco recently and english was rarely heard in the hallways. those that move here and live here usually speak english even if its their 2nd language. 'guest workers' could give a flying fuck and never even try to fit in to the local culture.

its not a good situation. as someone who was passed over for many jobs, for many years, I would love to see the h1b program fully disbanded. I know for a fact that most of the imports are NOT skilled programmers. unless 'skill' means 'can warm a seat'.

Re:US was exporting jobs, now it is importing work

[Anonymous Coward]

That is happening all over the US

Honest Question-

[Anonymous Coward]

> India will speed up acquisitions in the United States and recruit
> Indian companies have long used H1-B skilled worker visas to fly computer engineers to the US

Wait a minute... I'm confused.
a) So Indian firms recruit FROM the US, but yet fly engineers TO the US. Which is it? Are they coming or going?
b) Or are they recruiting Indian students in the US universities, and upon their graduating home to India, flying them back to work in the US?

Re:Honest Question-

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article it 'seems' to be Indian firms hiring locally for local jobs. In other words even though the employer is out of country, the actual job is local.
So the engineers they're flying out under the H1B program will be reduced to managerial staff, and the worker bees are local hires.
Seems to be the read, but I may be wrong. The article is a bit confusing.

Auction system

[Tablizer]

An auction system may reduce riff-raff and "shortage" BS.

Have a base cap, such as 30,000 skilled visa positions a year, for example. Maybe have another 30,000 slots, but corporations have to bid against each other for them. If there is truly a shortage, they will pay a high wage for them, and select them for actual skill instead of for cheaper bodies who work long hours because they have no family etc. They wouldn't bid on actual people, just the salaries. And perhaps tax some of that to help pay down the national debt.

Re:Auction system

[Anonymous Coward]

The damnedest thing would happen, the big tech firms would somehow all end up paying bottom dollar and distributing the slots among themselves...almost like they were colluding or something.

Re:Auction system

[oh_my_080980980]

Or you could just eliminate it. Besides there's another visa program (EB-1) that can be used.

Re:Auction system

[shaitand]

Or we could exclude all things technology from the H1B program since the workers aren't actually needed.

Re: Auction system

[Anonymous Coward]

"if there is truly a shortage, have the companies bid for them"

There isn't a shortage. There are a lot of IT workers looking for work.

Re: Auction system

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a lot of IT workers who have been discouraged from looking for work. Hence the shortage.

Re:Auction system

[slew]

Or you could just eliminate it. Besides there's another visa program (EB-1) that can be used.

The EB (employment based immigrant visa) program is basically one of the many ways to get a green card. Generally, before you get the a green card, you cannot work in the USA. Given the limits on the issuance EB green cards, the wait times are in the years so it makes this path pretty much intractable for companies hiring people (unless you are a big multinational company that is willing to employ someone in another country while you wait).

The H1 visa program started as a non--immigrant visa for people working here temporarily, but the loophole is that it allows the holder to be a *dual-intent* (e.g., while working in the USA on the H1 or H1b visa, you can attempt to apply for an EB based green card). This makes it so you can work in the USA while you are waiting the years it take to get your EB program (or other eligibility-criteria) green card.

I think many of these contractor staffing companies are probably using the H1b program as temporary workers (although the workers might want to stay, the staffing companies probably want to cycle them through the USA to keep salaries low), but the complication arises when you also have regular companies than want to hire a person through the EB program, but desire an H1b to have them work right away in the country instead of waiting years and funneling them through the same H1b program designed for temporary workers.

One big problem with hiring and just waiting for a EB green card is that if you didn't hire that person through the H1b program (which allows dual-intent) and say have the person work remote in their country while they wait for a few years for a green card, you might find want them to occasional, visit the USA temporarily after you hire them. If you use one of the other available visas (e.g., B1 or L1 god forbid a V tourist visa) you will compromise their ability to actually get the EB-based green card (they could be theoretically banned from the green-card program for entering with dual-intent on a B, L, or V visa which do not allow dual-intent).

It's kind of a mess right now, if you ask me. The EB program is pretty much useless without the H1b for hiring anyone.

Re:Auction system

[Tablizer]

Smart call. The sub-contracting markup would probably have to have an upper limit to reduce such.

Furthermore, perhaps charge more for heavy users of visa workers. Somebody who hires thousands will have to pay more than somebody who hires 5.

If you have the money to hire thousands, then you have training money for citizens: no "shortage" excuse.

They Don't Get It

[Anonymous Coward]

The objective is to stop them from harming the local labor force and siphoning money overseas. If they hire locally they will just be taxed to death with tariffs.

Ultimately the result will be local companies hiring local people, not foreign companies hiring foreign people or foreign companies hiring local people or local companies hiring foreign people.

Re:They Don't Get It

[unixisc]

What I don't get is - what's the rush? It's legal to hire US students, or college graduates. Even if they are foreign students on F1 visas, they can use them for a year on OPT. This aspect is one where Trump does want them to stay on, unlike in the case of the import of foreign workers. So they can hire OPTs and then ask Trump to do something to make them permanent residents. Of course, students of US colleges - be they American or foreign - will have no reason to prefer them to other US employers who pay better starting wages.

40K is under the H1B min but there are ways

[Joe_Dragon]

40K is under the H1B min but there are ways around that. We need to enforce the laws on the books and have away for workers to reports abuses with out being kicked out or being fired.

Re:40K is under the H1B min but there are ways

[Anonymous Coward]

40K is under the H1B min but there are ways around that. We need to enforce the laws on the books and have away for workers to reports abuses with out being kicked out or being fired.

They should have to pay more than the market wage for an H1B. That would kill off the abuse of the program fairly quickly.

Re:40K is under the H1B min but there are ways

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck enforcing the laws when Trump will be issuing a hiring freeze come Jan 20 and seeking to cut all non-defense/policing budgets.

Re:40K is under the H1B min but there are ways

[jeauxkewl]

They should have to pay more than the market wage for an H1B. That would kill off the abuse of the program fairly quickly.

I'd mod this up if I had points. This is exactly the issue. My proposal: tariff the H1B so the sponsor pays 120% of US landed resource rate and see how many H1Bs are actually required. This isn't about skill. This is about skill at the rate companies think they should have to pay for it and it artificially skews the pay rate downward. I'm all for H1B in its intended form but right now it's an easy ticket to cheap, indentured labor.

Re:40K is under the H1B min but there are ways

[shaitand]

They should have to pay a minimum of within 1% of the mean average salary of US workers in the same position at the same company plus the estimation of benefits package value. Also the H1B visa worker should have to meet the qualifications listed for the position instead of those terms just being used to justify not hiring higher priced workers. There should be no cost savings with H1B workers, period. By the time it is all worked out H1B workers should cost more than domestic talent for that same position at that same company.

Re:40K is under the H1B min but there are ways

[ranton]

They should have to pay more than the market wage for an H1B. That would kill off the abuse of the program fairly quickly.

Only if you could find a way to actually enforce it. I make about 30% more than at least one coworker with the same title as me. And if I look at coworkers without a Senior or AVP prefix to their title, the discrepancy grows. It would certainly not be easy to craft legislation which stops workers from being hired for intermediate software developer positions with software architect level responsibilities. If my company hired an H1B employee to replace me at $100k, they would save a lot of money but still appear to be giving a high wage in the Midwest. But he would still be "underpaid" by the standards of those complaining about H1B worker salaries.

Re:40K is under the H1B min but there are ways

[DirkDaring]

Take Trump seriously, not literally. The sky isn't falling Democrats.

Re:40K is under the H1B min but there are ways

[unixisc]

This was the Ted Cruz proposal: impose a minimum wage of $110k, and watch the abuse dry up fast!!!

Cheaper

[Anonymous Coward]

It's cool for maids and fast food workers to get $7.25 an hour but just cause you know to clang on a keyboard you should get ten times that amount when there are monkeys who grew up without a computer able to do the same job slightly less efficiently?

Re:Cheaper

[Anonymous Coward]

I miss the days on Slashdot when the trolling was at least somewhat clever.

Re:Cheaper

[Anonymous Coward]

They should really hire H1B CEOs, lawyers, etc.
Once they do that I will stop complaining about them replacing my job.

Re:Cheaper

[Anonymous Coward]

just cause you know to clang on a keyboard you should get ten times that amount when there are monkeys who grew up without a computer able to do the same job slightly less efficiently?

Hilariously apt, since clang is the C compiler notorious for syntax error messages so verbose that it practically tells you what to type.

make the min 100K-120K on W2 and maybe X2 OT

[Joe_Dragon]

Make the min 100K-120K on W2 and maybe X2 OT at 80 hours a week.

Also cap the number of them at on corp so they can't all be channeled thought some staffing place.

Re:make the min 100K-120K on W2 and maybe X2 OT

[Anonymous Coward]

Better yet, make it so they have to be payed the same as an american expat would be payed.

Silicon Valley able to cope with Trump regime?

[k6mfw]

With all this anti-immigrant attitude that is sweeping the country, and with lots of immigrants here in blue state of California (that appears like a foreign country compared to rest of US in this now Trump administration), where will this put many Silicon Valley companies? I heard Ro Khanna got a lot of backing from many SV companies to unseat incumbent congressman Mike Honda because Khanna is a proponent of more H1Bs (disclaimer: I've not extensively researched the details). I can see why many companies are going to push for more visas in these last two months of current Administration (do it while they can). Anyway, as I see Apple being pressured to bring back jobs to US (yeah, lots of luck with that) then there many other companies either friends with Obama and backed Clinton in the election, how will they fit into the Trump regime?

Re:Silicon Valley able to cope with Trump regime?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you are worried about rich people in SV that attempted to bribe the candidate who would write the regulation in their favor in order to screw the US workers.

Re:Silicon Valley able to cope with Trump regime?

[k6mfw]

So you are worried about rich people in SV that attempted to bribe the candidate who would write the regulation in their favor in order to screw the US workers.

no, I was simply asking about what will happen with many of these companies. Regarding rich people, many SV residents that are getting pushed out because of high cost of living would be happy to see many such as Google, Apple, and FB leave the area.

Re:Silicon Valley able to cope with Trump regime?

[colin_faber]

Anyway, as I see Apple being pressured to bring back jobs to US (yeah, lots of luck with that)

My understanding is that this is less to do with possible pressure from the next administration and more to do with the massive counter-fitting problem they're dealing with

Re:Silicon Valley able to cope with Trump regime?

[WindBourne]

visas are fine. Seriously. NO ISSUES with green cards.
The 2 big issues is the massive number of illegals living here (probably a lot closer to 30 million, not 12 million; last time, stats got it all wrong)
And then the huge misuse of H1Bs.

The solution is to add more visas for position based, as opposed to family based, while solving the illegals and remove the H1Bs.
In addition, for the position based green card, the pay needs to be at least AVERAGE for that position (no less), while the taxes are double of which the company will pay the second portion.

Re:Silicon Valley able to cope with Trump regime?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that there *ISN'T* an anti-immigrant sentiment. That myth was broken a long time ago. You know Trump's wife will be the first immigrant First Lady in almost 200 years right? This was a bunch of nonsense created by the Democrats to try and paint the Republicans as xenophobes.

There is an anti *ILLEGAL* immigrant sentiment.

There is a rather substantial difference between the two.

Re:Silicon Valley able to cope with Trump regime?

[DigiShaman]

Hillary Clinton will be the next POTUS with Pence as the VP.

Yes, you heard correctly. LOL, why else do you think Jill and the Clintons what a HAND RECOUNT. They won't make it in time. THATS THE POINT!!! This will put Trump below the 270 EC votes needed, and thus Congress votes on who the next POTUS will be. 1:) They HATE TRUMP. 2:) Congress LOVES power!. Think about it. Congress will control Clinton; if she steps out of line, she gets the book thrown at her and threatened by Pence taking her spot. Meanwhile, Congress will cockblock Clinton's SCOTUS nominee to keep the court divided with the lower court ruling having stand. It's muthafucking brilliant. Those globalist will run the world joined at the hip with wall street. 100% pure corruption. And you all are going to take it up the ass!!!!

Yes, America is fucked.

Re:Silicon Valley able to cope with Trump regime?

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump's wife will be the first immigrant First Lady

He even outsources pussy

This proves H1-B program is abused

[Anonymous Coward]

They just admitted they can get their needs met with local talent, albeit at a higher price.

Re:This proves H1-B program is abused

[shaitand]

This isn't real local talent, these are immigrants on student visas.

From Jerry Maguire

[Anonymous Coward]

"Pimpin' ain't easy, but it's necessarayyy."

Hack the vote

[Anonymous Coward]

India needs to up their cyberops game so they can hack the next election like Russia did. It's a seriously good investment as Putin can attest to.

Why stop at IT, lets offshore Senior MGMT as well!

[bodog]

I have no doubt offshore CEO's could easily be had at 1/10th the cost of US born CEOs, and yield a much much higher per capita savings. Then maybe they will have money for american labor again...

Sessions' role

[unixisc]

President-elect Trump's campaign rhetoric, and his pick for Attorney General of Senator Jeff Sessions, a long-time critic of the visa programme, have many expecting a tighter regime.

One concern is that one has is that Jeff Sessions has been made Attorney General, instead of Secretary of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE and USCIS. So whether the US will be strict or not will depend not on Sessions, but rather, on the guy who heads DHS

I wish Sessions had been given DHS, and someone else the AG.

Re:Sessions' role

[knorthern knight]

> One concern is that one has is that Jeff Sessions has been made Attorney General, instead
> of Secretary of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE and USCIS. So whether the US
> will be strict or not will depend not on Sessions, but rather, on the guy who heads DHS.

Doesn't the Attorney General have power to prosecute law-breakers? If there is hanky-panky going on with H1B workers, he would be able to make things tough for their employers.

Re:Sessions' role

[unixisc]

I thought that falls under the Department of Labor, if labor laws are violated?

I don't have such a jaded view of the visa program

[gosand]

I worked for about 9 years in one of the big banks, managing software testing teams.
We uses infosys and TCS quite a lot, about 75% of my teams were from there - either offshore (India), nearshore (Mexico), or onshore (US).

One of the reasons we used them was because they were flexible.
Our teams were dependent on what projects got funded and got put on our roadmap. So we could have a project that needed to be staffed up in a month, test for 3 or 4 months, then either dissipate or roll onto another project. They usually had good testers 'on the bench' to work on projects like that.

Over the course of my time there, I had anywhere from 18 to 50 people on my team. The flexibility was very necessary. It was much harder to make the case to hire full-time people because of the nature of how we handled projects. If we needed someone to be onshore, they got us someone onshore even if they had to move them here. Even though they took care of all of that overhead, a lot of my time was spent doing resource management.

Fast forward to today, and I have gotten out of the large corporate world. I have a small team of five and am hiring two more employees. Of the 17 resumes I have reviewed over the last few months, only a couple were not on some kind of work visa. Only 2 were men. I can't really explain it, I just know what resumes I have seen and information from the recruiter. Would I hire anyone not on a visa program? Absolutely! If they would apply and be qualified, I would love to hire them. But my perception is based on the reality of what I am seeing, and that is that the visa program is fine or actually needs more support. (but I also understand this is my situation and not everyone's)

college students would be smart to say no

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, if they they wait until the H1B get blocked (rightly), then the offers will be close to what they would make at any American company for the same position.

As it is, I get loads of calls from Indian contractors and they all want to offer 1/3 to 1/2 less than what the normal position pays.

Where is the EEOC?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ex staffing recruiter here

As far as recruiting within the US goes, different Indian companies have different wishlists from staffing agencies. TCS usually requires employees to be either US citizens or Green cards. Tech Mahindra has a strong preference for Indians, so if they hire from campuses, they'll likely look at Indians only. Wipro is somewhat open, while the smaller Indian 'boutique' companies have such low budgets that nobody other than Indians will look at them. Therefore, they look for Indians, and are even willing to hire from India and ship them here.

One thing that strikes me - where is the EEOC in all of this? They are usually all over the place with their signs about laws against discrimination, but these companies are pretty blatant when they ask staffing companies to submit only Indians, or only goras (White n----rs). Only thing - they usually don't leave a paper or email trail, so it would be tough to prove, but if I were the EEOC, I'd set up a NSA program to permanently spy on them, and catch them in the act. The fines alone would pay the salary of a US citizen - one needn't even be an H1B employee at the EEOC

Jobs are given, not taken.

[Anonymous Coward]

And, most of them are given by _AMERICANS_. As usual, the xenophobic idiots on Slashdot blame the powerless, rather than the powerful.

Re: Jobs are given, not taken.

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot readers are xenophobic? Thanks for the laugh.

Which round are we one now?

[rholtzjr]

Oooo, this discussion thread is going to be really amusing. Globalist vs Nationalist Debate Round Number ???

Quick get more popcorn!!!

Re:yuo mfa1l it

[losfromla]

Is this the kind of text that sets off a bot-net that has been lying in wait somewhere?

Re:I don't have such a jaded view of the visa prog

[losfromla]

So, you are saying that these big banks were unwilling to maintain adequate staff and due to decisions made at the beancounter level, you were left having to staff and destaff continuously. You talk as if these decisions were forces of nature but are in fact perfect examples of why US corporations are fundamentally evil. What they needed to do was staff up adequately and then phase the work in so the necessary crew got to the work when they scheduled it.

Your now small team is made up of work visa holders because (it sounds like) you are choosing to staff through these same kind of H1B types of staffing companies. Hire in a more "standard" manner and you will start to get normal hires.

Fsck 'em.

[TigerPlish]

This is the IT version of sending manufacturing jobs overseas. While I was not a "rah rah buy 'Murican" I agree that certain things must be built here. Or in their country of origin. Seeing my projector from Panasonic say "Made in China" is as sad as seeing a "Made in China" on the back of my iphone, my monitor, and some of my speakers - Klipsch - which USED to be built in Hope, Arkansas. Some models still are, but not the affordable stuff.

So no... I will not shed a tear for these Indian companies, nor for the asshats who hire them.

Wow. I've become an Angry Old Man!

They're not temps

[rsilvergun]

they bring them in for 18 months, cycle them out, bring another one in for 18 months. Lather, rinse, repeat. It used to be 12 mo but they lobbied to get that extended. It's the same two guys for 5-10 years cycling in and out. They're not temps.

Re:I don't have such a jaded view of the visa prog

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

my perception is based on the reality of what I am seeing well, I think I found your problem. Being in management, your perception is supposed to be based on what you WANT to happen. Even if it doesn't happen, you still pretend like it did, blame someone else, and move on to the next project!

Balance of trade is the issue

[Anonymous Coward]

The issue is balance of of trade. I buy stuff from you, you buy stuff from me, as long as we both benefit from a roughly equal balance, it's all copacetic. When it's as one sided as it is now, it's rape.

Skilled?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only skilled in tossing the problem to the next guy.

What a scam. Send them back.

You want your employees to be like migrant laborer

[Anonymous Coward]

You have designed your business around treating your employees like migrant farm workers. It's unsurprising that people with alternatives (or dependents) don't want to work for you.

There are others ways of designing your contracts to offer longterm employment, but apparently that doesn't interest you -- and why should it? YOUR job is secure. The REST must provide "flexibility."

What are great US graduates missing?

[AHuxley]

Every year the top US universities graduate a lot of really great students. They passed exams, know what the US engineering sectors expects.
The students can get security clearances, know the USA well and work hard. They have a deep understanding of systems and networks.
What is missing from the mix of students the US educates every year? Are the top % of every year lacking something that every US university cant/won't teach and every US profession wants?
Have academic entry standards become so lax that very average students are been given top degrees for some reason? Making decades of US grades useless to any US profession?
Has US academic work drifted so far from what the best US brands and firms need? What are US students doing for a few years then?
Loans for a few years of campus in a holiday, party like setting? Scholarship not based on merit? Selected STEM but funding goes to arts and sport?
Why does the USA need to fly in, look after, hire and even grant citizenship later to very average workers from other nations?
What are other nations doing with education that can totally outclass every US student for generations?
Do other nations have some merit based Gymnasium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., Institute of technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... schooling?
Do other nations have merit based public school exams, schooling that only helps the very best students for decades?
What has happened to US exams and merit based advancement that cant offer US brands and firms what they need?

Re:What are great US graduates missing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Want to know what happened? Cost. Thats it.

I can hire 5 indians for 1 american. Is the code any good? Sometimes. Mostly not. But it fits the 1 need I had and is 'good enough'. I can hire 1 guy and re-write the whole thing 4 more times and STILL come out ahead.

The H1B system

[Anonymous Coward]

If these people are so highly skilled and we cant find their equivalent in the USA then I would propose a minimum salary of $125,000 for any H1B recipient who can prove they have a job offer in order to stay. If their skills are so Sierra Hotel that we cant find an American who can do the job the least we can do is give them a hefty salary. This would likely cause American companies to really dig around to find an American worker, maybe relocate them, maybe provide them with additional training etc. this could lead to "growing the work force" instead of a kind of "on-shorel offshoring" we are doing today.

Re:You want your employees to be like migrant labo

[gosand]

Not exactly.
1. it wasn't my decision, I was working within the system of the machine
2. we had some of these flexible contract workers there for many many years. That is the thing.. their jobs were actually more secure than some employees, because they worked for the consulting agencies. And the agreements were that we couldn't hire them as employees. (that's how those agencies survive)

Re:I don't have such a jaded view of the visa prog

[gosand]

Yes, you pretty much summed it up.... the way money moved around internally based on projects/business need/unknown forces was staggering. It was a machine, and I don't really know who was driving it.

I am at a different company now, and my team is all non-visa employees. I am hiring and using the company recruiter, who basically posts the jobs, fields resumes, and seeks out local people on linkedin. We actually don't want to have to deal with hiring people on visas, but that seems to be the majority of people who apply.

Racism

[NewYork]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2325502/Map-shows-worlds-racist-countries-answers-surprise-you.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15/a-fascinating-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-racially-tolerant-countries/