Slashdot Mirror
H-1Bs Reduced Computer Programmer Employment By Up To 11%, Study Finds (marketwatch.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MarketWatch: There would have been up to 11% more computer science jobs at wages up to 5% higher were it not for the immigration program that brings in foreign high-skilled employees, a new study finds. The paper -- by John Bound and Nicolas Morales of the University of Michigan and Gaurav Khanna of the University of California, San Diego -- was conducted by studying the economy between 1994 and 2001, during the internet boom. It was also a period where the recruitment of so-called H-1B labor was at or close to the cap and largely before the onset of the vibrant IT sector in India. In 2001, the number of U.S. computer scientists was between 6.1%-10.8% lower and wages were between 2.6% and 5.1% lower. Of course, there also were beneficiaries -- namely consumers and employers. Immigration lowered prices by between 1.9% and 2.4%, and profits increased as did the total number of IT firms.
Nevermind. It's an article with no content other than what's behind a paywall. Move along.
If H1Bs are bad, why are illegal immigrants from Mexico good?
So they can immigrate and compete for jobs along with everyone else. That's much different than H-1B contracting.
The only way to equalize the marketplace is not to have artificial salary standards. It's to make them permanent alien residents. They don't compete just on salaries. They compete on work place conditions, too. They are willing tolerate more hostile work environments and more abusive management in general. The only way to make them not compete is to put them on the same legal footing as the US citizens and others who are not afraid that losing a job would mean a possible deportation. If there is a shortage of workers, then nothing is lost by giving them green cards on the 1st day. This is not a security threat because they are physically present in the country regardless of the visa. By importing workers on work visa the employers do much more than suppress wages. They import people who are willing to tolerate abuse. The employers suppress work place standards by doing this.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Undoing mod action.
"No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session." -- Judge Gideon J. Tucker
>> there also were beneficiaries -- namely consumers and employers
Er...have you have had to deal with H1B code? Most of the "security vulnerabilities" and other showstopping bugs I've seen over the last ten years could be traced to a "consultant" working as an indentured servant for one of the interchangeable Indian body shops.
Immigration is good. Indentured servants who fail to work long hours for little pay get sent back home...H-1Bs are bad.
One of those makes it stronger, the other make it weaker.
The thing I really don't like about the H-1B program is the abuse. There's nothing wrong with keeping a few visa slots open for truly exceptional people. I've seen the program used for this purpose and it mostly works. The problem is the companies that use it to directly replace older workers in routine, run of the mill IT and dev jobs. Companies are totally aware of what they're doing when they hire Tata, Infosys or Cognizant -- it's a "Pontias Pilate" move that lets them wash their hands of the IT department. That's what has been happening with the big stories making the news (Disney, Southern California Edison, etc.) The outsourcer comes in, has to make a profit on the deal, and so they offshore everything they can and slowly replace domestic workers with H-1Bs for things they can't. These are not the best and brightest -- its mostly DBA and dev work that requires just enough on site interaction to make offshoring ineffective. I've worked in outsourced IT environments -- everything takes twice as long and nothing new will ever be attempted in a company that has someone else running their iT, partially because change orders cost so much.
Allowing the abuses is essentially a brake on IT workers' careers and an artificial salary cap. I've been lucky enough to become the senior guy in our engineering group over years of experience, and feel very strongly that we oldies (I'm 41 :-) ) have to develop the next generation. I don't want the pipeline of newbies to dry up because they're worried there's no future in technology. Young students are going to make rational choices and we're going to be stuck the same way the mainframers are now...no one will take the leap to learn enough to replace the retirees.
Also, I totally don't buy the argument that there's no domestic talent. No one is a drop-in replacement for the last guy, and especially today it's impossible to be an expert at everything. That narrative that paints offshore consulting firms as world-class experts on technology has to change. I would love to hear accounts of domestic hires that had zero talent -- I just haven't experienced it!
If you increase the supply of something and demand remains fixed - the cost of that something will go down.
Econ 101
The US does not need to import low to mid-skill labor. We have plenty of that here. We definitely want to import brilliant PhDs - but that's not how H1B is being used.
H1B is a cheap guest worker program - it is enriching companies at the expense of the US worker.
This seems to back up the idea that there's a shortage of qualified domestic labor. The unemployment rate among CS grads is like 3.5%. If all those folks replaced H1B workers they would only make up 1/3 of the total jobs filled by H1Bs.
Not sure where you get those number, or if you're adding up percentages :)
Regardless, an unemployment rate a 3.5% is not necessarily good for growth... This the problem with unemployment, if you have no companies can't grow, if you have too much -- well, yeah nobody wants to be unemployed. Particularly, not in a country like the US without any safety net.
I am open-minded about H-1B and defer my judgment to the balancing of employment+wage concerns for US citizens and the effect on entrepreneurship, market growth, and American tech market share going forward. Bound, Morales, and Khanna's paper studied the effects of H-1B during a relatively distant era in tech (1994-2001); since that time, our industry has expanded in all directions, new market segments (e.g. smartphones, streaming, etc.) have taken hold, and the labor market has swelled to accommodate all of these changes. It might helpful to compare the impact of H-1Bs during the pre-Internet-bubble era and subsequent eras wrt. impact on American employment/salary, but making conclusions about this impact without the added context would be hasty at best.
There are several big problems with the article:
1. It covered the period from 1994 to 2001, when anyone remotely qualified could get a tech job, and companies were desperate to hire. In 1998-2000, my company was offering college freshmen $10k bonuses to quit school and come work for us. I am extremely skeptical that 11% of techs were unemployed during this period.
2. It assumes that nearly every job taken by an H1B is one less job for an American. That is not true, since some of these jobs would have otherwise been moved overseas, or the company may have never filled the job opening at all. Job markets are not zero-sum.
our model suggest that immigration increased the overall welfare of US natives
Also this isn't peer reviewed.
But yes, ofcourse immigration has negative effects in the short term for the people affected. Honestly, I don't feel bad for software engineers in the dot-com era making a few percent less. Back then, and indeed today, there is some pretty outrageous salaries in the bay area.
On topic: the easy fix is setting minimum H1B salary, it's stupid simplistic, it'll satisfy the stupid people (Trump). But it won't affect most H1Bs like me, except maybe my company would fill out an LCA that states the salary I'm making and not some arbitrary number significantly below my salary, hence, fixing the statistics.
For the record, I'm an H1B and I don't feel particularly hostage... I could move to Europe tomorrow and get a decent job if I wanted - but I wouldn't live in the tech center of the world.
But for the first few years we were just recovering from the Bush recession. Bush in fact lost due to this. By 98 the boom had started but it was delayed. I for one did ot start earning a decent wage until '96.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
There's a difference between immigrants and indentured servants who have to return to their country at then end of their contract.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
It's not a free market it is captured labor. Both for the company using the H1Bs, who cannot quit, and the Indian companies where emplyees have to give 90 days notice.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Sounds like free market competition to me.
H1Bs are not "free market", since it is difficult (although not impossible) for the visa holder to change employers. There should be several reforms to the H1B program:
1. The workers should be able to change employers at will.
2. Instead of a lottery, there should be an auction. That way the quotas go to the companies that need/value them the most, and it is doubtful they could be used for "cheap labor".
Your post has to be trolling? NO ONE has a right to come to this country. You may apply for immigrant status, but you have no right to enter this country. Also, the H1B crap is causing the lowering of wages. It needs to be stopped. How many times just in the past couple years have we heard, an employer outsources their I.T. or support jobs to H1B visa holders, and FORCE the current employees to train their replacements.
This study is racist and xenophobic and slashdot is also for posting it. America is a country of immigrants and Indians have just as much right to a programming job as anyone who was born here.
Racism is usually usually defined as prejudice or antagonism based on race, and xenophobia has something to do with fear.
The problem with your argument is that there is no actual racism or xenophobia involved. No one is "afraid" of people from India, no one "fears" the Indian programmer, and from the looks of things in this country no one tries to keep "the Indian savage" down or prevents them from doing anything a regular citizen could do.
They drink at the same water fountains as anyone else, and no one cares.
This is the typical argument of the left. It's OK to hit a racist, so you start by labelling everything you don't like as racist.
Then when you're caught breaking windows or giving someone a beat-down, you sayl "yeah, but he's a racist!".
In fact, you don't even need to apply the label yourself. So long as someone else calls it racism, you're free to riot and beat people all you want.
That's really the reason the left uses all these silly labels, it's to justify virtuous acts of violence.
It's OK to hit a racist.
Hahahahah that's a good one. I have met maybe 1 in 5 H1Bs who weren't clueless and unmotivated ("severity 1 for our biggest client? I'll fix it Monday").
And most of the ones with a clue were the women. The men were a waste of oxygen.
India! Send us your women!
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Yes, but how many of those 96.5% employed CS grads are in jobs that use their skills? How many of them are stacking shelves at the local store because they can't get work in their field?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
If a US university cant produce the workers needed, no students would bother to attend any US university for any advanced degree..
So its not a skills issue. The US education system is still offering the education people can use.
No rush to other advanced nations for a better, more useful education.
So US workers out of the better US university settings or in the work force are still smart enough globally.
Can a brand tell the entire USA about a job on offer? Thanks to the internet that distance or very local job market issue is not the problem it once was.
Are the jobs on offer needing set state or federal security clearances, permits or exams? If any very average, random person outside the US can still get that job then its not a problem for any qualified US worker.
The only reason to not hire good US workers is to keep wages down by using low cost workers from outside the USA long term due to bureaucracy that still thinks in terms of local newspaper ads not been able to find skilled workers from all over the USA.
If you need an expert from some other really advanced nation, pay them a full US wage. Remove the wage incentives to hire workers from outside the USA.
Tell the educators in the US about the pool of expert workers that the US needed per year. What skill, what ability that not one other person in the US had. Whats on that list that no US university could offer or no US worker could find any further education in?
That no community in the USA could teach or had?
When that list is made, fund some US university or other educators to close that huge education gap in a few years.
Think back to the vast public and private education efforts from the 1920's-1990's that saw the US out pace every other nation.
Then export the products and services globally. Low skilled workers from other nations that lower wages in the US is not really doing much for the USA.
Wages are lowered, US workers don't get jobs and multinationals move the profits out of the USA.
The only winner is the law firm that got past the US bureaucracy to get the low cost worker into the USA.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
No, the easy fix to eliminate H1B visas and create a program which gives green cards based on the same qualifications as H1B visas are given right now. If companies really couldn't find local workers, they wouldn't care if the newly coming ones were on H1B's or on green cards. Oh, and you lying. H1B already has minimum salary requirements. If you were on H1B, you'd already know this.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
No, it's a skewed market place. It would be basic supply and demand if they had the same legal rights as other legal immigrants. Establish a criterion that anyone who deserves an H1B, deserves a green card and then you'd have a basic supply and demand.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
For a few years now I've seen posts on Slashdot saying that H1B visa workers work for lower salaries or longer hours than other workers. What geographic location is this? What field? Because that doesn't jive with my experience at all.
I have been writing software for almost 20 years. For 17 of those years, I have worked in Maryland and Washington DC along side H1B visa workers. They work the same hours as everyone else on the team, with the same expectations, for the same salary range. They are subject to the same labor protection laws as everyone else. What idiotic manager would hire a less qualified software engineer for 10% less? Everybody I know takes the most qualified person possible within the salary range.
The real salary question is: Are H1B salaries significantly lower comparable green-card holders? Foreigners typically make less than their native counterparts because they have poorer communication skills since they were born overseas, and because there is a significant risk that they will up and leave for their home country. In the case of H1B workers, the company has to pay for sponsorship and probably can only bring them on as a contractor through a third-party. So all that will affect their salary. But these stories of H1Bs working 80 hours for 20% less money doesn't jive.
"And no kicking out the H1s will not mean the jobs will be filled by American citizens- they will go offshore"
I've got news for you - almost every job that can reasonably be off-shored has been. Companies going back a few years have been bringing work back on-shore:
http://upstatebusinessjournal....
Lots of companies got burned by off-shoring work and getting higher cost and lower quality work than was expected. Managing "blended rate" teams half a world away turned out to be a much more difficult challenge than many expected.
H1B as it stands now is being abused and not used for its intended purpose - and there is an administration in place that is committed to fixing that problem. The only losers here will be the H1B body shops.
what's behind a paywall
Lrn2 internet, nub.
http://www.psc.isr.umich.edu/pubs/pdf/rr16-857.pdf
Your localized analysis of labor markets is like trying to judge global climate by the weather in your backyard.
Immigration policy is a national policy and it must be evaluated on a national level.
"If the cost goes down, why would the demand remain fixed?"
Do you have evidence that demand for these people is increasing? The author of the article doesn't seem to think so. Slashdot has been filled with stories over the last couple of years of firms laying off tech workers and forcing those workers to train their replacements.
If demand for this talent was increasing, salaries would be rising across the industry and very few firms would be laying off workers. Why would you layoff anyone if you can't meet your demand for employees?
H1B is a cost saving measure at the expense of the American worker. Anyone who thinks otherwise is being willfully ignorant of the situation.
What is to stop a programmer with a chip on his shoulder from holding back the better ideas on the product. Finish his work at the company. And repackaging and selling it as a greater "different" product?
They are subject to the same labor protection laws as everyone else.
Oh? I had no idea that all programmers face deportation within 6 months if they get fired.
What idiotic manager would hire a less qualified software engineer for 10% less?
What idiotic manager would not hire an employee of equal skill, but who can be pressed to work longer hours without compensation, over a citizen who can simply change profession if gets tired of this type of environment?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
aha. it's trump's fault. no wonder the judge opposing him came from Seattle. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Dot fucking bomb?!!
Of course there were fewer programmers working in 2001 compared to 1994-2000. Many went from a $100k "web developer" position to baristas at Starbucks. It took until 2004 or so for employment to really recover, for the top half of people that were working in the field before the dot bomb.
H1Bs have plenty of issues, but it is important to focus on goals. Stealing the best and brightest from other countries is good. Replacing the bottom 25% of Americans is a different discussion, and is also tied into globalization and MBA-speak about "core competencies". If you want to make more jobs for Americans, you need to decide if your exports associated with globalization outweigh your additional imports. Theoretically, creating a few billion additional middle class consumers is better for everyone, but at least critique that point first...
since the supply of programmers is high in Silicon Valley, the cost there will be low. ...which completely ignores the "Demand" side of the equation. The supply of programmers in Silicon Valley is in fact not at all high compared to what it could be, primarily because of the cost of living in that area. It keeps many potential programmers away...
Meanwhile the demand in that area from companies is astronomical which is why the programmers that are there earn so much. That at the fact that you have to pay programmers a lot there just so they can live!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have always viewed every discussion about H-1B on Slashdot with the assumption that the only reason people complained about them is because they're salty about the competition
There is plenty of work to go around. No-one cares about that at all.
the truth is that I thought it was an alternative path for immigration
it is but it is a TERRIBLE path. I have a number of good friends who came in as H1-B and eventually became citizens. That is great, I'm happy they made it in. But the H1-B program allowed for basically years and years of legal abuse for these guys. They really could not think of looking for another job and during layoffs they were way more fearful of being laid off than most workers. Similarly if there was a problem in the workplace they simply could not speak up because of potential consequences if they lost their job.
That's my problem with the program, is that it is abusing people in the system, all while claiming to be a benefit... primarily it helps companies get cheaper programmers who cannot complain.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It is for places like IBM where the outgoing people "made redundant" train their guest worker replacement.
Some places have no strong evidence either way but the places we do have strong evidence of are enough of the total to matter.
I agree that Germans have an amazing work ethic. I can't speak for French. Having worked in England, I can tell you that they work 9am to 5pm, and 5:01 they hit the pubs. American's tend to work longer hours in general.
Silicon Valley does not have a monopoly on writing software. If not for our carefully cultivated brain drain, these graduates from world's top universities would have started companies where they live. Look where most of world's smartphone makers are. Federal government, please do not mess with our tech OR agricultural immigration that you simply do not understand. It's as idiotic as Republicans talking about female reproductive system or Democrats talking about guns.
The problem is with a few IT body shops that specialize in outsourcing. Not off-shoring. See: http://www.epi.org/blog/new-da...
The idea is for places to simply close down their internal IT shop and send the work out to one of these hives. Often with the soon-to-be laid off current IT workers having to do a knowledge transfer for their foreign replacements. The use case of a few developers hired into a team to work along side them as equals is still not great, but it is not the source of most of the abuse either.
The solution is an accelerated permanent residency for foreigners with skills needed here. If we really need the skills, why futz around with temporary visas and indentured servitude?
You might not realize that your fellow employee is taking shit and grinning because they are just waiting for the greed card to come through.
So let me get this straight: I ask for evidence that H1B visa workers are abused, and the best I get is that even though I work with them, party with them, and go to church with them, secretly my boss is being an asshole to them and I don't know it. And this has been going on for 17 years without my knowledge. But an AC on the internet knows the real truth about my coworkers and my friends secret lives.
I'm looking for someone to tell me who and where H1B visas are being approved. Because I don't see it. I'm not looking for speculation, I want examples, anecdotes, SOMETHING other than anonymous cowards on the internet making unsupported claims.
Here is the list of H1B companies. Notice which ones pay a lot, which don't pay much. Chances are you aren't working at the companies that pay so little, because they're miserable places to work. Chances are, the people who work with you will still be able to get visas.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I've heard about Tata. Is Cap Gemini that same way?
I know a local company that just outsourced most of their IT department to Cap Gemini. I know much of Cap Gemini's workforce is overseas. I've been politely listening, but so far no one has mentioned any H1B visa workers involved. Slashdot has had a few articles on the topic, but I have yet to see any real evidence that H1B was involved in these cases.
I agree about permanent residency. I work with some H1Bs who would love citizenship, and are absolutely frieking smart. We want those people! That's why I want to hear some of these H1B abuse stories. It is frustrating to need smart people, and at the same time have people decrying the H1B program that is providing us those smart people. We don't need to get rid of the program, we need to quickly find those talented ones and give an efficient path to citizenship. I want to know who is abusing these H1B visa workers. I'm pretty sure it isn't engineers, which is why I'm not seeing it.
When the program was started, the minimum salary was set at $60,000. Adjusted for inflation, it would be $110,000 today.
Not many bachelor's degree programmers with less than 7 year experience make $110,000.
Any fixed value we set it too would quickly become cheap again due to inflation.
So we need to set it at a quintile. If we said that H1B's had to be paid a minimum of top 10% income, then companies would only import workers they really needed (as was intended).
However, the cow is out of the barn. If wages go up in the U.S., many companies will simply offshore the work. Try to ban it, and they'll set up "separate" companies under the corporate umbrella offshore which do the work.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Thanks for the link. That's a good start. We can try to guess what the fields are from the job titles. Hmmm... This link shows it by occupation. That's interesting.
Okay, so this is painting a picture for me. There are two kinds of H1Bs. One kind is hired by a company that does actual work and makes an actual product: Apple, Microsoft, Intel. Those H1B visa workers are probably not being abused, and they probably aren't displacing American workers. Those are the kind I know. The other kind is the IT outsourcing companies like WiPro, Tata, and IGate. They are replacing American jobs with a combination of H1B visa jobs and outsourcing. I notice that the "Software developer" occupation makes >100k, and they work at places like Intel, IBM, Motorola, Apple. And the "Computer programmers" make 67k and work at Tata, InfoSys, IBM, and WiPro. IBM is in both lists, interestingly.
I wonder what those "Computer programmer" H1B visa workers are really doing? Looking at Tata's business model, how can H1B visa be justified here? That company's job is to basically put IT workers in other companies out a job by outsourcing. But if they have that many H1B visa workers, aren't they just displacing an American worker with an H1B worker?
I had no idea that all programmers face deportation within 6 months if they get fired
Nope, just H1Bs. Also: it's 60-days, not 6 months.
What idiotic manager would not hire an employee of equal skill
Interviewing doesn't work that way. There's no such thing as equal skill. Everyone has advantages and disadvantages. Companies that are large enough to sponsor H1B visa workers aren't splitting hairs over 10% salary differences.
but who can be pressed to work longer hours without compensation
Who? Where? What field? You are just repeating the claim. I am trying to figure out who this is happening to. I know it isn't Software engineers. So who is it? Do you know any?
For such a small effect (5-10%) I'm wondering why it is so much discussed. I think it's just because immigration is neatly divided in "us" vs "them", but other causes are much harder to discern.
So one in ten jobs were shipped overseas.
It's probably more complicated, in the sense that the jobs were going away anyhow many times, and companies like Intel just outsource for the end of a lifecycle of whatever system. I can definitely see companies and analysts responding with something like that.
At the same time, for all we know this 11% figure is low. Look at what data they used.
There's no denying that outsourcing has been abused and that the rules are tipped in favor of large company profits over needs of US workers.
Thank you Dave Raggett
A few questions: Do you know their title? Do you know where they were working from? Or why could they not find a job locally?
Since you say you were writing software, I assume the other person was also writing software. The government should have turned down the H1B application if the person was not being paid a market rate since that is a requirement of the program. I wonder if the CTO was actually lying to you about the salary. Could it be that the remote employee was making more than you, and the CTO didn't want to tell you that? Usually, they don't talk salaries anyway. Another possibility is that he was committing fraud, and put a higher salary on the H1B application and was pocketing the difference. Fraud would be an interesting twist here.
peel off a layer of that dinosaur skin. This is happening all over.
I ask a legit question, provide examples, and it ends with ACs posting ad-hominem attacks and making unsubstantiated claims. Ugh, it's not like I'm new here, I should be used to this by now. But I just keep on trying anyway.
Providing foreign students with the world's best education, and then sending them back to their country to compete with us is asinine. I think that for skills in demand, we should staple green-cards to their diplomas.
I don't have to read the study to know it is full of crap. Without the talent we imported from the whole world, Silicon Valley would not have been nearly as successful. They created more startup companies, employing more white American-born programmers like me, than could have happened otherwise. I know there are counter-examples of companies expoiting foreign workers, but on the whole, we owe the talent we've imported thanks. They've increased our salarys... duh.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
There are a lot of problems, like somehow assuming there will be more jobs available if those jobs have higher salaries (i.e. you can afford fewer employees), while also acknowledging that lower wages lead to lower prices (meaning consumers can afford more of a thing, leading to more production, thus more jobs).
Perhaps they meant that 13% of programmer jobs would go away--the Indian jobs--and be replaced with 11% more non-H1-B programmer jobs. Fewer in total, but more that aren't outsourced.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
I guess you forgot the Bush recovery. Commonly referred to as the Clinton Recovery - when it fact the recovery recovered in the spring of 1991.
...
The media famously laughed at Bush for saying that there were two quarters of economic growth. See what happens with media lies - they work.
Now we have bubble heads like you regurgitating sh!t.
Don't take my word for it. Look it up. NYTimes called it the Clinton Recovery before he even took office:
Signals of the Clinton Recovery - Rebound Is Seen, but a Slow One
www.nytimes.com/.../signals-of-the-clinton-recovery-rebound-is-seen-but-a-slow-one.ht...
Nov 30, 1992 - A number of business executives say the Clinton expansion may have arrived even before the President-elect moves into the White House.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
RTFA:
"It was also a period where the recruitment of so-called H-1B labor was at or close to the cap"
This would show you the affect of H1B Visas on the labor market. And *YOU* assume these jobs would be moved over seas. Off-shoring did not pick up traction until the 2000s.
FYI Potsy if the company doesn't fill the job position then there isn't a need to increase the H1B Visa cap.
You do realize that the majority pf H1B Visas holders are not foreign students educated in the United States. The majority are from India.
Give it up Potsy. The H1B Visa program is being abused. The majority of H1B Visas go to off-shoring firms like Tata and InfoSys. They do not go to business trying to find hard to find skills. The H1B Visa program is meant to supplement NOT replace US workers.
Sounds like free market competition to me.
H1Bs are not "free market", since it is difficult (although not impossible) for the visa holder to change employers. There should be several reforms to the H1B program:
1. The workers should be able to change employers at will.
2. Instead of a lottery, there should be an auction. That way the quotas go to the companies that need/value them the most, and it is doubtful they could be used for "cheap labor".
At the very least "Guest worker" programs should pay people 10% or 20% more than prevailing wages, let people change jobs "by right" without any additional paperwork and be capped well below demand and auctioned off according to the highest salary.
But much better to let people that actually want to come here and be Americans stay here as either green card holders and put them on a path to citizenship. There are already far too many people living here that are living in a society apart from the rest of us. Immigration has been the life blood of this country... not non-immigrant guest worker programs.
Students who come here for 4, 5 and 6 years for education should be a priority as they are usually already well socialized in American Society.
This study is racist and xenophobic and slashdot is also for posting it. America is a country of immigrants and Indians have just as much right to a programming job as anyone who was born here.
You are trolling. Did you even read the study? I guess not because of your comment. Stop playing a victim here.
Study Link
Overall, our results suggest that high-skill foreign workers contribute to the well-being of the typical US consumer, mainly through the assumption that these workers contribute to innovation at the same rate as US high-skill workers. Indeed, under our calibrations, accounting for foreign workers’ effect on innovation, the gains to consumers are an order of magnitude larger than gains excluding this effect. At some level, this is hardly surprising. While simple models of the impact of immigration on native welfare suggests the immigrant surplus is second order (Borjas, 1999), if the immigrants shift out the production possibility frontier, their effect will be first order.
Although our results suggest that the introduction and expansion of the H-1B program in the 1990s brought gains to both US consumers and IT sector entrepreneurs, we also found indications of losses for US computer scientists and potential computer scientists. Recent work (Peri and Sparber, 2009, 2011) has emphasized the importance of immigration affecting the occupational choice of US natives. Our results tend to support the importance of this view.
Indeed, our estimates suggest that high-skill immigration has had a significant effect on the choices made by US workers and students.
However, the study assumes that all H1B are high-skill foreign workers. I am not so sure about that assumption...
to compete with us
Uh, they are competing with us. That's kind of the point.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
I interviewed for a position with a major airline a few years ago. The job listing had a long laundry list of qualifications - probably about 15 or so "required" skill sets, and another 15 "preferred". I had every single one, required AND preferred. Plus a Master's degree in CS. Plus prior experience in travel. Airline specifically. They phone screened me, brought me in for an onsite, brought me back for ANOTHER onsite... and then never got back in touch. Something fishy's going on.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
cheap employees
Not just cheap, but willing to work 70-80 hours a week. Never taking time off to look after a sick kid or go watch their little league game.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
It covered the period from 1994 to 2001, when anyone remotely qualified could get a tech job, and companies were desperate to hire.
I worked for a video game company that went on a buying spree in the run up to the dot com bust. After the banks stopped financing the mergers and the company started selling acquisitions to pay off accumulated debts, upper management figured out that they overpaid each acquisition by two to four times the actual value. Fun times.
Correct. He played them like a drum. And they went for it. Probably because they felt he was going to get his butt kicked the more he talked.
I doubt they would have given him the airtime if they thought it was helping him or the Republicans in general.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
companies forget that loyalty goes both ways. when management demonstrates zero loyalty to employees, employees felt compelled to reciprocate. the first lesson learn by their cheap guest worker replacement is the very same.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
NYTimes called it the Clinton Recovery before he even took office:
Just like how Trump not only got a $2B+ in free advertising from the news media during the election but he is also being credit with the stock market surge after the election despite not having done anything at all.
Trump didn't have to do anything other than show that he wasn't going to do all the regulatory crap that Obama did, which is part of what he campaigned on. The surge in the markets since has been because of that, nothing else.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
The title alone says it all. H1B folks are impacting the economy. Needing the best and brightest to make a web page barked by trained seals has gone beyond a concerned level. Maybe the Lard Ass without Balls and Chief will think "Americans First?"
Expect more controversies, scandals and indictments than the Nixon and Reagan administrations combined. For the news media, this is better than having a Clinton in the White House. After the election, The Washington Post announced they were hiring 60 investigative reporters.
We'll see so far there are no scandals. NSA lied to Pence and Trump. He's out. Controversies? Define controversy? Something the opposition disagrees with? You mean like Obamacare? Or invading Iraq?
So far nothing of note. There may be. There not.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Good info, thanks.
We'll see so far there are no scandals. NSA lied to Pence and Trump. He's out. Controversies? Define controversy? Something the opposition disagrees with? You mean like Obamacare? Or invading Iraq?
Are you blind or willfully ignorant?
So far nothing of note. There may be. There not.
That sums up Trump's first three weeks in the White House despite issuing 45 executive orders and presidential memos.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/president-trump-has-done-almost-nothing-214775
The surge in the markets since has been because of that, nothing else.
If Hillary had won, everyone expected a low growth, low inflation economy. Since Trump won everyone on Wall Street is expecting a high growth, high inflation economy. Except the underlying economic data doesn't support a high growth, high inflation economy. With the economy overdue for a recession, and the stock market flooded with excessive cash, the crash will hit pretty hard. I'm looking forward to buying stocks on the way down.
I'm willfully ignorant. I see nothing that counts as a scandal. The closest is the NSA guy having to resign for lying.
You think there were scandals good for you.
I want to see the end of Imperial Washington. Get rid of the Department of Education. So DeVos is not a scandal. I hope she pares down, if not eliminates the cabinet position.
Why would anyone want the Dept of Ed? We have local level school boards, principals, superintendent of school systems, mayors and counties; state legislatures, governors' boards; the federal legislature. Why the f00k do we need a cabinet level position. It should be a no-brainer that this is irrelevant patron-client, feed-the-beast B$.
DeVos is not a scandal. It's a feature. I was a neverTrump and this made me cautiously optimistic. Now if only we can get rid of the Dept of Veteran's Affairs (useful in 1946 when 15 million people were being discharged from the armed forces). It's not useful now. It's the HR dept of the armed forces. Get rid of it as a cabinet level position.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
I'm willfully ignorant.
Than you're part of the problem.
Why would anyone want the Dept of Ed?
To set national priorities. Would the US have won the Space Race if science wasn't made a national priority in the classrooms after the launch of Sputnik?
I hope she pares down, if not eliminates the cabinet position.
Don't count on it. No one willingly gives up power and put themselves out of the job.
I was a neverTrump and this made me cautiously optimistic.
As a moderate conservative, I've never supported the Tea Party or Trump. After 20 years of being a Republican, I switched to my registration because I got sick and tired of being called a RINO by ignorant people.
Now if only we can get rid of the Dept of Veteran's Affairs (useful in 1946 when 15 million people were being discharged from the armed forces). It's not useful now.
The current VA was founded in 1930 to consolidate three agencies into one department. I guess you don't know many vets from the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.
BTW, Trump appointed the number two guy at the VA as VA Secretary, who is against privatizing the VA and recently confirmed 100 to 0 by the Senate.
BLS 2014: 3.9 million
H-1B Visas (New and renewed) 2014: 315,857
315,857 / 3,900,000 = 8%
I'm also incredibly curious how companies are hiring "11% fewer employees" because of H1B visas when H1B employees only make up 8% of the CS workforce (And that's even assuming 100% of all H1B visa applicants go into CS). That would imply that H1B employees are so efficient that the total workforce can be scaled down by nearly 33% thanks to their presence. Which would mean H1B employees are incredible!
According to this: http://www.myvisajobs.com/Visa... Cap Gemini do seem to be part of the problem. I've worked with two really good H1-B people and one of them ended up sent back to India because the company decided not to sponsor his permanent residency. I'm not sure what happened with the other one, but I think she got married and stayed in the US via marriage to a citizen. It's ridiculous to say the US economy is in desperate need of talent and then have the companies go hog wild over a temporary visa program. Either we need them and they should stay or we don't and it's just a game to keep costs low.
I am not talking about IT jobs. I am talking about the real estate broker who sells them a house, the Uber driver who drives them to concerts, the musician who performs in the concert and a 100 other jobs all getting part of their business from the H1B worker spending to live in the US. If you force the work offshore all this spending will be generating jobs in India.
**Life is too short to be serious**
You yourself contradict your own post by pointing out the legal abuse and lower wages that H1-B illegals (and they are illegal - both they and the company skirting the law) suffer. Do you understand basic economics? This kind of market imbalance most definitely affects the entire labor sector in technology.
They affect the labor sector for a number of large companies.
Guess what? There are LOTS of smaller or mid-size companies to who this hardly applies. They cannot even generally afford outsourcing, much less H1-B. The benefits can be even higher than large companies in part because of the same downward forces on large company corporate IT labor....
My friends all went to smaller places and did better. I went the consulting route and am doing great. I appreciate that you are bitter but as you said you left the tech sector, so why do you think you know how things are?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In.addition, the H1B are typically paid a great deal less.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Sorry disagree with every point. National policy on education should be in CONGRESS. Not the president. And the actual implementation needs to be done on the local (with oversight on the state level).
It's time for this patronage BS position (The Department of Education ) to go.
By the way the Board of Ed was formed under Carter. It would be more advantageous for the monies put into the agency to be spent on actual education.
Here's an idea - use the money to maintain a digital public library with downloadable PDFs (and all digital formats) so that no one has a barrier to education material. This should include college level textbooks.
Truly. Honestly. The Dept of Education needs to go. If this, and this only, happens the Trump Presidency would be success.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
It's time for this patronage BS position (The Department of Education ) to go.
The U.S. government no longer has a patronage system. That got replaced by the civil service system in 1871. Out of less than ~3M government positions, POTUS appoints only ~4,000 positions.
By the way the Board of Ed was formed under Carter.
The Department of Education (1980-present) was the consolidation of two earlier agencies, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and Office of Education (1867-1972). Free public education didn't become a reality until after the Civil War. Only half the states had education systems at that time.
Ambassadorships are, in large part, patronage jobs.
The Department of Education does not need, should not be an Executive Branch responsibility.
Another example would be the VA. It's the Armed Forces HR. It made sense in 1946 when 13+ million people (out of a population of less than 150 million) were being discharged. It doesn't make sense today.
Get rid of it.
Another one is the Postmaster General. This made sense in 1788. It doesn't make sense today.
These roles are necessary. The Cabinet level position for the role is not. Time for them to go.
We're not talking about the work - we're talking about the position.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Ambassadorships are, in large part, patronage jobs.
Ambassadorships are political appointees.
Another example would be the VA. It's the Armed Forces HR. It made sense in 1946 when 13+ million people (out of a population of less than 150 million) were being discharged. It doesn't make sense today. Get rid of it.
What about the Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam and the few remaining WW2 vets who need specialized medical treatments? Civilian doctors don't have the security clearances to look up military records on specific injuries.
Another one is the Postmaster General. This made sense in 1788. It doesn't make sense today.
A federal agency that could make a profit if the Republicans haven't required that the USPS pre-fund 75 years of retirement benefits. No other retirement system in the country has that requirement.
I liked Senator Elizabeth Warren's proposal to restore basic banking services at the post office. My mother had a savings account with the postal service when I was a kid. Since I pick up mail from a PO box, I could also do my banking there.
Again. The issue isn't the work done. It's the fact that it is a Cabinet Level position. There will always need to be an HR staff for the military. It needn't be a cabinet level position. It's the hallmark of a bloated bureaucracy. The work needs to be done. The title and the perks with the title can go.
Again. Re the Postmaster General. The work needs to be done. The cabinet level position can go.
As you pointed out there isn't a "true" patron-client relationship in place, but they still exist. New positions that act as "stepping stones" for higher office are created all the time. NYC has borough presidents and the Public Advocate.These positions have no purpose except to act as resume enhancers and helps people jockey for political power. These positions need to go. Bureaucracies throughout the ages are famous for this, whether in government or in large corporations.
When do we start to phase them out? Again - it's not the work involved - it's the position. The work, obviously, still needs to be done.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Give those who are ACTUALLY exceptional a green card immediately
Thus, Capitalism has all the labor it needs, it just won't be able to exploit because the workforce is protected by open competition
Some reason Capitalists don't want to face competition for labor?
Oh, that's right
PROFITS!
No, the END OF RECESSION was 1998, says the NBER, not the recovery.
The runaway stock market created the Recovery, and the Bush II crash #1 of April, 2001
??? There was a short recession 1989-1990. Then it slowly recovered. Staggering a bit in 1992 and then took off.
The media was calling Bush 41 out of touch; that the economy was staggering. Bush was saying that the economy was getting stronger. As soon as Clinton won (see link in earlier post) the media started calling it the Clinton Recovery.
Whatever happened after has nothing to do with the 1992 election.
Re the claim: there wasn't a recession in the late 90s. It was a boom time.
See chart: http://www.multpl.com/us-gdp-g...
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
The Economist found that between 2012 and 2015 the three biggest Indian outsourcing firmsâ"TCS, Wipro and Infosysâ"submitted over 150,000 visa applications for positions that paid a median salary of $69,500. In contrast, Americaâ(TM)s five biggest tech firmsâ"Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoftâ"submitted just 31,000 applications, and proposed to pay their workers a median salary of $117,000 http://www.economist.com/news/... https://qz.com/889524/the-us-s...
Casteism
I suggest you check the actual source used by BUSINESS ECONOMISTS next time and save yourself the embarrassment
NBER.
Last time I looked, the activity charts were still online there.
whatever. As someone old enough to have lived through the period. There wasn't a recession in the late 1990s.
See links below. There was a recession in 1990-199 and another in 2001
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.nber.org/cycles.htm...
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
You have described everything precisely. The only thing that I would add is that for the two different "castes" within the H1B system that you have identified, there's one other difference.
People who are working for Apple, Microsoft, Intel etc are using H1B as a gateway to a green card, and ultimately to citizenship - which they can do, because H1B is explicitly "dual intent", so you can apply for a green card without getting kicked out of the country; and because there's a specific process whereby employer sponsors the employee for a green card. This isn't to say that every single H1B working for these companies will do that - but the majority will. The companies in question are generally interested in retaining employees long-term, so they do sponsor any employee who asks for green card (in fact, they will proactively push you to apply if you don't do so yourself), and will provide lawyers to handle the application for you, pay various fees etc.
People who are working for Tata, Infosys etc are not there for citizenship. It's not that they wouldn't want to - it's that those companies will generally not sponsor them. So it's really just a gig to come work in US and earn a lot of money (comparatively to what they could earn at home), and then come back rich, and with a US job on your resume.