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Indian IT Sector Warns Against US Visa Bill (reuters.com)
India's IT lobby warned on Tuesday that a bill before the U.S. Congress aimed at imposing tougher visa rules unfairly targets some of its members and will not solve a U.S. labor shortage in technology and engineering. From a report on Reuters: Industry lobby group Nasscom was responding to a bill introduced by Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, that would double the minimum salary required for holders of H-1B visas to $130,000 and determine how many of the visas were allocated, based on factors such as overall wages. India's $150 billion information technology sector, led by Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro, uses the H-1B visas to fly engineers and developers to service clients in the U.S., their biggest market, but opponents say they are using the visas to replace U.S. workers. Concerns about President Donald Trump's immigration policies were heightened by his ban on refugees on Friday. "The Lofgren Bill contains provisions that may prove challenging for the Indian IT sector and will also leave loopholes that will nullify the objective of saving American jobs," Nasscom said.
I could careless about the Indian IT job sector. Piss off.
I worked a few months for a company that was stocked mostly with H1-Bs and owned and ran by Indian immigrants. The way that they abused the heck out of their own countrymen like they had imported the caste system to their little office just filled me with disgust.
Yeah plenty of American employers abusing American employees but at least the American employees don't risk deportation if they quit, or get fired because the employer suspected them of trying to find a better job.
This is a myth
"unfairly target some of its members" ??? Are they kidding ? What about their sham operations unfairly replacing American workers ? And "it will not solve US Labor shortage" ?? Again which labor shortage ? The one where people refuse to work for poverty range salaries, whereas the 4 Indians crammed into a one bedroom apartment sharing one car, making 40% less than the American worker they are replacing ? That is not called a labor shortage. It is called slave driving. All those infosys, tata, wipro, etc companies can go to hell as far as I am concerned.
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The more I know people, the more I love animals
As someone with an engineering degree who is not currently working as an engineer, I have found that the knowledge I gained obtaining that degree is broadly applicable to all kinds of things, both in the world of employment as well as hobbies and home life. I don't regret it for a second. Most people respect the amount of work and intelligence it takes to get an engineering degree and I've never had a problem getting interesting jobs, even if they aren't necessarily making me rich. I would do it again without hesitation.
You can make claims about freedom of religion and all this other nonsense but this issue is about economics, pure and simple. What's being proposed is that incentives to hire people outside of the United States who have no interest in the success of the United States to do the same job for half the wages be greatly lessened. Also, I can tell you from direct experience in the software industry, Indian contractors produce lower quality code, break more builds, have poor communication and many other things that lead to worse quality software. I can't tell you how many times I traced build breaks back to Indian contractors. The only benefit to hiring them is that they cost less.
Before you call me a racist, I have high respect for other cultures and enjoy their cuisine a lot. I love Indian food and I think Indian people in general are pretty cool. What I don't like is when the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is throwing all the American citizens under a bus by hiring less skilled workers for a much cheaper price at the expense of American citizens so they can turn even bigger profits when the corporations the Chamber is comprised of are already sitting on vast piles of wealth. It's really a slap in the face. They've taken advantage of the Land of Opportunity so much that it is no longer the Land of Opportunity.
The U.S. Chamber brought this on themselves. They gamed the system too hard and caused a lot of hardship to good, hard-working Americans and that's why this backlash has occurred.
We'll make great pets
Those workers who come to the United States are more likely to be the ones who starts new companies in their home country.
bullshit.
I have lived in the bay area for over 25 yrs and have 'trained my replacements' countless times.
indians who are brought here to work at the likes of intel, cisco, apple, fb, twitter and so on - they are not any smarter than the avergage local IT guy. they are not horrible people but they are not special, either, and this is the whole point - you can find 'regular old IT people' anywhere and you don't have to fly them in from india and china (why is china not mentioned, btw? lots of h1b's are from all over asia, not just india).
you won't find regular people starting new companies.
now, at the smaller 100 person startups (I'm at one now) you CAN find folks from india who are the best in their field. but these are not h1bs! they are indians who came to the US and now live here with intention of staying. we have some really good engineers from india at my place, but when I was at cisco (etc) - it was nothing special and everyone was mediocre, at best, there. and the place was FLOODED with folks from india; you would go a whole day and not hear english spoken in the hallways (cisco is famous for that, sadly).
the best and brightest don't need sponsors such as h1b to get them here; their own intelligence will get them regular jobs. h1b is entirely just to displace local workers with cheap labor AND THAT'S ALL IT WAS EVER MEANT TO BE.
the jig is up, guys. and its about time! I hope its real, this time, though. something tells me that the orange haired monkey that is now running this country will not really care much about US; and he'll do whatever he wants to make himself better off. the rest of us, I seriously doubt he has our best interests at heart. not a republican big businessman. those are the very people that exclusively abuse this program and benefit directly from it!
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I am not a Trump supporter but I am definitely anti H1-B visa and offshoring. The Indian firms are wrong as there is plenty of talent in America capable of writing excellent software. Conversely, I have seen very poor software come out of India that was not only unstable but replete with spelling and grammar errors on the user interface. Some stuff was so pooly written, that friends of mine have told me that they ended up re-writing large portions thereby negating any savings. The only reason the Indian IT firms are calling foul is because they're going to lose money and it isn't foul because the Indians engage in protectionism for their economy. They have very high import taxes .... sky high to as much as 25%. So the Indians get no sympathy from me whatsoever.
the jig is up, guys. and its about time! I hope its real, this time, though. something tells me that the orange haired monkey that is now running this country will not really care much about US; and he'll do whatever he wants to make himself better off. the rest of us, I seriously doubt he has our best interests at heart. not a republican big businessman. those are the very people that exclusively abuse this program and benefit directly from it!
IMHO, the risk is that the general Trump persona and the over-the-top reaction to everything he does will render his potentially useful actions ineffective, and worse, possibly poison issues like H1-B as just another aspect of a racist nationalist agenda, making positive change on that issue impossible.
It's utterly clear that the globalist/transnationals completely support mass immigration, jobs transfer, etc, whether for cynical motivation (more money for people at the top) or because it fits into some complex long-term agenda with altruistic motivations (spread the wealth, etc), so don't be surprised if/when Trump fails H1-B will back at status quo or worse when the globalists regain control.
As for Trump's personal motivation, I'm never quite sure on this. It's easy to align him with the usual cadre of rich corporate types, but I sometimes suspect that Trump himself doesn't feel like he fits into that crowd as a natural member, which is why he tries so hard and often comes off as a tacky and nouveau riche. He has to flout his wealth harder to prove he belongs.
Bottom line, he may not be motivationally aligned with traditional corporate interests or may not feel like he has to tow their line.
If you pay enough, the workers will come. The problem isn't a labor shortage, it's companies who've been spoiled on cheap labor for so long that they offer workers peanut salaries, refuse to pay relocation costs, offer no training and shit benefits--then run to Congress begging for more H1B's when they can't find American workers.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
LOL
Your example of American superiority is our superiourity to a country which we bombed into the stone age, kicking off a civil war with our own ignorance and greed?
Your example demonstrates our responsibility to refugees...
That said, we have no similar responsibility to enable H1-B abuse...
I'll grant you this, we did have military operations in Iraq and the Middle East in general in recent times but you can't make that the scapegoat for The Middle East's complete and utter incompetence. The killing that I'm referring to has been going for 1000+ years way before the United States ever existed. Sorry, try again. Learn history if you want to join the discussion. At least America supports religious freedom instead supporting coerced Theocracy to the point that if you leave the Theocratic faith, you will be executed. The Middle East makes its own self look stupid without Americans or anyone else having to point it out.
We'll make great pets
Umm, have you *seen* the code from such locales?
Sure, you will have rockstars there as well (I know quite a few living in Pune - they're trying to move here), but for every rockstar, you have something like 10,000 total incompetents whose code will require a massive overhaul just to get built without fatal errors.
Usually ends up costing more than its worth once you add it all up.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
There is no labor shortage in engineering. It is fake, look at the universities, pushing out 10's of thousands of engineers every year. The problem is people like getting paid in the US and companies don't like paying. So they make this crap up about it, hire someone from outside the US willing to do an engineering job for pennies of what a US engineer would do it for.
Again: there is no shortage, just cheap companies that don't want to pay its employees. e.g. the average starting salary for a mech. eng. in NYC is $35K. The average starting salary for a banker is $100K, something doesn't seem right here.