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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.
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.
>> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 people come into this country from a place where prices are 50% less because of a weak economy, and this causes me to make 50% less, I just want *my* prices in my economy to be 50% less so that my buying power balances as an agent in the market. How is this racist?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
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.
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.
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
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."
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.