Slashdot Mirror
IEEE-USA Criticizes Failure To Reform The H-!B Program (ieee.org)
Slashdot reader Tekla Perry writes: IEEE USA says H-1B visas are a tool used to avoid paying U.S. wages. "For every visa used by Google to hire a talented non-American for $126,000, ten Americans are replaced by outsourcing companies paying their H-1B workers $65,000," says the current IEEE USA president, writing with the past president and president-elect. The outsourcing companies, Infosys, Cognizant, Wipro, and Tata Consultancy in 2014 "used 21,695 visas, or more than 25 percent of all private-sector H-1B visas used that year. Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Uber, for comparison, used only 1,763 visas, or 2 percent," they say.
On Friday, IEEE-USA also issued a new criticism about the lack of progress in reforming the H-1B program, saying "At least 50,000 Americans will lose their jobs this year because the president has yet to fulfill the promise he made to millions who voted for him."
On Friday, IEEE-USA also issued a new criticism about the lack of progress in reforming the H-1B program, saying "At least 50,000 Americans will lose their jobs this year because the president has yet to fulfill the promise he made to millions who voted for him."
How can we go on without Donald? Some crazed democrat jumped the fence and went after our Donald !!! Probably an H-!B !!!
Love live the Donald !!!
No need to even RTFS to reach the first typo.
Isn't H1B issuance impossible right BECAUSE it's being reformed? What am I missing?
HB, or H not B. That is the question
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I've been to IEEE meetings. Everyone is 50+ with extremely outdated skillsets. If IEEE is complaining, they should be complaining about unwillingness to learn new things, and some ageism.
That said, Trump has already done more for limiting H-1Bs then Hillary would have...she wanted to make it easier to replace Americans.
Genuine question here. Companies are supposed to hire local people if they are available and H1Bs only when there are no qualified locals. The question is:
Have any of you ever been hired instead of an H1B because you are local? Have you ever heard of a situation where a company wanted to hire an H1B but ended up having to hire a local person instead because of this requirement?
In my experience, the idea that H1Bs only get hired if there are no locals available is complete fiction. Has anyone ever seen this rule help a local person get a job instead of an H1B?
At least 50,000 Americans will lose their jobs this year because the president has yet to fulfill the promise he made to millions who voted for him.
You thought Trump would fulfill his "promises"? Remember when he said he'd put Hillary in jail? How about when he said he wouldn't have time to go golfing because he'd be too busy working? Mexico paying for the wall? Draining the swamp?
Like so many others who voted for Trump, you've been conned.
How many H-1B contractors from Infosys, Cognizant, Wipro, and Tata Consultancy did Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Uber have on their bench? There's a failure here to connect a critical dot.
I may not be much of a fan of the current POTUS, but this seems premature. He is expected to deliver on all promises within the first 50 days?
You can't criticize the President because he'll just declare you as a source of "fake news"
His followers are being manipulated due to the sorry state of "news" reporting, but they are not being manipulated anew. They were manipulated before Trump entered the scene. Previously, they were manipulated for sensational news, to raise advertising exposure. That's why every tiny fire in a city took the center stage when national struggles were lucky to even get a mention.
Trump and his staff know this. They'll do whatever they can to be sensational, and it won't hurt them either way. They believe in the "no bad news" mantra, which basically means "If you are in the news, what they say about you can't hurt your exposure". They are shooting for 100% exposure, because they know that most people abide by their known references, or their exposed references.
So expect more silliness from the Trump cabinet. It will get them more news headlines, more exposure, and more people who view the middle-of-the-line stance to be closer to the Trump-on-a-bender stance. In short, we will accept that crazy people who make Presidential backed threats to be sort-of whats normal, and will become a less rational, thoughtful, kind, and considerate country.
Assholisim is the current politics. Just pray you don't get caught in it's cross hairs.
P.S. I hope that one day, compassion will rise again, but it looks doubtful. The Christians are more interested in killing Muslims (figuratively if not literally). Trump's transgender direction (deny they have rights, which is a step towards denying they exist) shows off his intolerance. Trump's policy on Mexico shows extreme intolerance (stating that Mexicans are default violent criminals, like rapists and murderers). Trump's policy on everything is a policy of intolerance. He's not going to even consider the "other side". That's a recipe for immediate emotional gratification, but typically it leads to a bad end. A person who is intolerant of too much is just a bully, and the world eventually rises up to make a bully's life hell. I pray that our Country doesn't suffer as our allies (who are already acting against us) don't make life in the U.S.A. worse than it is already.
P.P.S. And that's spoken as a former member of the military (8 years) who deeply loves his Country, but sees it making the mistakes that eventually lead a Great Nation (and fuck you Trump for saying it isn't already great) into the patterns that make Third World Countries.
The problem is not H1B visa. With globalization, IT jobs can be easily shipped to any location with Internet. US Companies which were hesitant to move the jobs overseas saw H1B as an opportunity to bring the cheap labor to US. This kept the job/income tax within US. If the H1B laws were to be enforced to be used only for high skill labor, cheap IT jobs are going to vanish from US and move overseas. I think this will cause more job lose here in US.
You thought Trump would fulfill his "promises"?
He's only been in office 50 days.
What makes you think that he *won't*?
I know that we mere mortals can't edit our posts (O The Horror) but for fuck's sake, can't the editors even correct a typo?
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the word "editor" is based on the word "edit". That implies the ability to ummm, edit.
Is the ability to alter a post outside the lofty control of the Powers That Be?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
... he he .. typo in the headline ;)
It is quite rare for major tech companies to offer an H-1B package to bring someone in from overseas. More often than not they contract H-1B workers via the outsourcing companies listed above. You've got to be already established as a rock star level talent before one of the tech majors offers you a direct employment H-1B package. Plenty of fresh graduates end up at those same companies as cheap contract labor.
Whenever I think people cannot get any dumber, something like this is in the news. Expecting a pathological liar to keep promises is hard to top, but I am sure the idiots will find a way to do even dumber things.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
They're the ones causing things to go wrong, not Trump. Deal with them and their lobbyists.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
> Like so many others who voted for Clinton and other establishment candidates, you've been conned.
Fixed that for you to reflect facts.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Because he's an incompetent, narcissistic clown who clearly has idea NO how the government works?
That's Obama for you.
Because he's an insecure, delusional jackass who's filled his cabinet with crooked, deceptive people who have no real-world experience in the posts they've been awarded?
From Valerie Jarrett to Hillary Clinton, that's Obama again.
Or maybe, just maybe, because he just willing to say whatever it took to whip his gullible followers into a frenzy and he never had the slightest intention of doing most if not all of the things he claimed he would do?
He's busy claiming credit for stuff he hasn't done, why should he make good on any of his promises? I mean, that shit takes work.
Obama, yet again as demonstrated in his jobless recovery, wiretapping Trump out of fear, and enabling black racists to riot.
After all, this is the guy who said, "Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated". Nobody knew? Really?
That's Obama's doing.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
That's the adaptation of those American citizens - you die, they win.
... training my replacement, after I gave notice.
,very high tech , company. I'm a sys-integration guy, which means I used to be an very good developer, then got more interesting in the bigger picture. Since I was never satisfied with my knowledge in any aspect of computing, I became very good with OS fundamentals, networking, file systems, and all the other peripheral stuff associated with software development (revision control, ticketing, testing, deployment, you name it, I know about it ) So Integration came easy.
I am always looking for a new job, anyone who isn't is a fool.
So, I was/am happily employed by a medium sized
I recently found a significantly better paying, more interesting job, so gave notice. My company hired an H1B to replace me.
He is useless. After 3 weeks of fairly intensive OJT, he is still unable to even start to resolve the few minor problems that come up.
I have very, very little faith that he will be able to take over for me.
I know for a fact that he is being paid less than half of what I am earning. I also know that totally qualified locals are available, for about 85% of my rate.
So, I have told him, he shouldn't even have the job, he is taking a decent paying position from a properly qualified local, and that he should be happy I'm not his boss, cause I'd fire his ass immediately. I have a pretty good suspicion that he was hired because the project manager' wife (indian) has a H1B recruiting company in India. She's a bitch and a half too.
Needless to say we're not really on speaking terms.
Fuck the H1B program. It's just a way to abuse the labor market. There's no skills shortage, there's a corporate greed problem.
I hope trump goes full on pedal to the metal with more tax cuts to multi millionaires and billionaires, together with tax evading/"optimizing" for them, out sourcing, more lobbied spending of pork, sheeps chickens all counts to the foxes guarding the kingdom.
This slow collapsing from the inside is amazing to watch with the apathy (well words and shouting does little) of a powerless "laws are for the poor "society.
Expand the program and blame it Obama...
The biggest problem we have is not from the migration of individuals to the US, but rather it is from socialist policies and H1B itself. If we opened the boarder and ended the war on freedom to travel we'd all be better off. The economy would eventually figure out what the appropriate wages are and with an near-end to taxation we'd all be a bit richer and be able to put the money where it matters. We don't need government to educate our children. We don't need government to give us the illusion that we are "safe". We have the means already to protect ourselves, but most can't afford them because of the high rate of taxation both hidden and otherwise. The majority actually pay 30% in income taxes or more, 15% is hidden and other 15% comes from your "paycheck". Most states then have general purpose sales taxes, hidden taxes like vehicular registration "fees" (ie another form of tax), inspection (tax/fee/whatever, point is government mandates it even when its not necessary as demonstrated by NJ and many states not requiring it for the first several years of a new car, and other states not requiring it at all), property taxes (you pay this through rent, mortgages, etc), etc.
http://www.freestateproject.org/ - migration of individuals to New Hampshire to form a free state
http://www.shiresociety.com/ - migration of individuals to New Hampshire to create a free society
http://www.somaliafest.com/ - freedom - no more copy"right" - no more government indoctrination programs (public schools) - no more permission slips (driving, vehicular registration, license plates, etc)
I'll work for $65k. Maybe not in Mountain View, but out source jobs to Philly or St Louis.
Currently, H-1B visas are given out by lottery, which makes little sense. It means that outsourcing firms just flood the process with applications for low-paid workers.
Trump has proposed reforming the H-1B program so that visas are handed out for the highest-paying jobs first. That would fix most of those problems. It may be something Trump can even do without congressional action.
he's not going to be working that hard. It's a miracle he made it through the election. Hilary didn't (she looked tired the entire time) and that lack of campaigning cost her the election.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
"What have you got to lose?". The trouble with Hilary was a) she campaigned on no policy whatsoever (seriously, there was just an article about how her ads were almost completely policy free) and she didn't campaign in the rust belt (either because she took 'em for granted or was too old/tired to do so, doesn't matter really).
Trump's voters don't expect him to keep his promises, but his opponent didn't make any. And the ones that put him in office (Blue collar guys abandoned by us white collar guys, so much for worker solidarity) don't have anything left. The ones that have jobs make $9/hr if they're lucky when they used to make 3x that. They go nothin'.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
because he'll push through it or quickly get replaced. H1-Bs work 60, 70,90 hours a week. Whatever it takes. If they don't it's back to their home country and well, there's a reason they came here.
/.ers used to have. This stuff isn't hard. It's mostly database driven apps and entry level engineering. 4 years college..hell 2 years of self training and you're good to go. That's what makes us replaceable and it's why we need laws to protect our standard of living. There's nothing wrong with that. There's no good reason to engage in a race to the bottom with countries that don't have food security let alone the basic freedoms we enjoy.
The H1-Bs we're mad about aren't the rocket scientists, cryptography experts and geniuses. They're rank and file programmers taking jobs us
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If Trump were even half the "man of the people" he has claimed to be, he'd shut the H1-B (or H!-B) program completely down and throw the current crop of H1-B (or H!-B) parasites out of the country at the same time.
Then these corporations would have to actually hire US talent; they'd have no choice in the matter. No more pretending they can't find skilled workers. No more using every excuse in the book to rule out a US hire who is actually perfectly capable of doing the work.
The entire H1-B (or H!-B) program is a congressional sop for the 1% because you know they just aren't making enough money {cough}
Don't criticize Retardo's code. That's how he got his H1-B visa. The border turds said "hey, can you write a slashdot filter" and he whipped out his "Perl for Dummiez" book and now he's a Real Live Boy
I am a New Zealanders currently working for the New Zealand branch of a USA company. In my last job my employer was a New Zealand company that has a branch in the USA. It is my personal view that H-1B programs, and the New Zealand equivalent, should be paying imported staff more that local staff for the same role to stop out sourcing just to save money.
In the case of my current role we have a couple of people working in NZ from the USA who are here because they know the parent companies operation and products and are helping our branch fit in with the parent operation. I believe they are being paid well above the rest of us so we know the reason is not money saving but rather company experience they bring. There is no animosity here towards them, they are welcomed team members.
I was wondering about the reverse situation, if I was to work for my former employer in the USA. I would expect to be paid at least the same a local for the same role, probably more due to my skills and experience. There would be one less local employed but the company would be better off because of my deep and long knowledge of their product range. Would I still be seen as stealing a job from a local?
Nail the slimy fuckers (Infosys, Wipro, Tata), and leave the rest of us legitimate H1B folks alone. Full disclosure : BS + PhD here in the US, H1B for ~3 years, now a permanent resident.
So, we're criticizing Trump because he hasn't gotten around to this in his first 50 days. At least he acknowledged that there's a problem and has proposed a very good solution.
I have to wonder what all the Trump bashers would be saying now had Hillary won, because her handlers had her dancing to the tune of "we're going to expand the H-1B program". I don't know if the IEEE leans left, but was this ever an issue for them before Trump became President?
Do you have ESP?
In a capitalist system, you can't really make laws telling companies to not reduce their wage bill as much as they (legally) can. If they can't bring people here, they're going to send the job there. Just like America will never be a manufacturing economy again, it looks like it is not going to remain a 'basic software' economy either.
The world is changing and if the US wants other countries to open up their markets, the US will have to open up their own labor market. The US used to be able to bully others into asymmetrical trade agreements, but that is going to get tougher and tougher as more and more countries lift themselves out of poverty.
I remember when Japanese and Korean cars were called "junk" and now they make the best cars. It's not going to take long for the Indians to get good.
Americans tend NOT to lie to match a job spec, but H-1b Visa placement companies will make a candidate's resume matches the requirements exactly, even if that isn't possible and a few lies are necessary.
I remember seeing a resume where someone claimed to have 7 yrs of Java when the language had only been known for 4 yrs.
I see people asking for help to "come up to speed" on different technologies in a week all the time. They think spending 2 yrs to learning a skill isn't needed. Really their questions are about the interview they have next week and trying to lie their way through it. They will get passed HR, but not someone who knows their stuff.
I don't want to say that the person on the visa is lying, but the company representing them definitely is. I don't think they provide a cost-of-living adjustment either. The low-end housing those companies get for their people is just scary. I don't expect C++ programmers on my team to live in drug-invested apartments and to walk 3 miles to/from work and a mile to/from the grocery store.
I've worked places where H-1b visa people were hired. At the tiny companies, it was a win-win. The folks were really smart and were paid a fair, competitive salary (I saw the payroll). We'd hire them AFTER interviewing 10+ local candidates who didn't fit our needs. At small companies, there isn't room for dead weight.
At larger companies where HR was overly involved in getting new hires in, the h-1b visa people were NOT gifted. Most (not all) of them were fresh out of some training school where they learned X, but weren't able to so X+1 without a detailed example.
I never worried about my job over personality or technical skills. I was let go because of a company policy about contractors only being there 2 yrs. They got an extension for me, but I'd already made plans to travel for 6 months.
From the comments in slashdot over the years and indeed in the comments in this post as well, it indicates that many people are affected by the H1-B program abuse.
But instead of just voicing their concerns on a website, why don't people report it to the authorities if they witness H1-B fraud.
They have a website giving instructions on what to do and a form that needs to be filled and submitted.
Link: https://www.dol.gov/whd/forms/...
Form: https://www.dol.gov/whd/forms/...
Why are people not doing this?
And why does the H1-B hate invariably translate to hate towards Indians?
"The outsourcing companies, Infosys, Cognizant, Wipro, and Tata Consultancy in 2014 "used 21,695 visas, or more than 25 percent of all private-sector H-1B visas used that year."
While this statement might have been intended to highlight the dominance of H1-B visa usage by outsourcing companies, the truth goes far beyond that. In 2015, the top-8 companies receiving H1-B visas received 49539 or over 58% of the total visas. Of those 49539 visas, 48651 or over 98% went to Indian nationals. Furthermore, of those 49539 visa, only about 700 went to holders of graduate degrees from schools. That means that these top-8 outsourcing companies received over 75% of the 65000 non-graduate degree visas.
I am on H1B and from India, but I worked fucking hard academically and professionally to get to my current position. I am currently hired by a major technology industry on east coast. Now, we have an entry level position open for the last 4 months that requires control systems background. Guess how many applications we got from locals or even US citizens? Can you guess? NONE. fucking none. And none of the current H1Bs are underpaid all of them earn more than 100k on the same level as other local citizen employees. Now, can you guess how many applications we got from H1Bs? At least a dozen. Currently we are in the process of interviewing them but they are from all over the country and its a very tedious process. Not to mention our HR HATES H1Bs due to all the additional paper work, they literally hate that and told me so, still they do it otherwise the work will not get done. Now tell me, is this abuse of H1B? I don't think so. But its soo frustrating and scary when I get angry looks from people in the super market or mall.
I also know there are people who do abuse the H1B visas, and the so called "consulting company" loop hole is abused by several SW companies. Those are the ones that must be investigated and penalized. Not blanket hatred or punishment for all H1Bs. Ultimately its you representatives and politicians and so called 1% who are preventing the government from thoroughly investigating those abusers. You must direct your anger at them. Not the people who worked hard to make a better life. This blanket hatred is only fueling xenophobia and thanks to the racist president, its only getting worse.
ARE REAL. FUCKING SUCKERS.
Communist until you get rich,
feminist until you get married,
atheist until the airplane starts falling,
capitalist until you get replaced for cheaper worker
Because he's an incompetent, narcissistic clown who clearly has idea NO how the government works?
That's Obama for you.
Because he's an insecure, delusional jackass who's filled his cabinet with crooked, deceptive people who have no real-world experience in the posts they've been awarded?
From Valerie Jarrett to Hillary Clinton, that's Obama again.
Or maybe, just maybe, because he just willing to say whatever it took to whip his gullible followers into a frenzy and he never had the slightest intention of doing most if not all of the things he claimed he would do?
He's busy claiming credit for stuff he hasn't done, why should he make good on any of his promises? I mean, that shit takes work.
Obama, yet again as demonstrated in his jobless recovery, wiretapping Trump out of fear, and enabling black racists to riot.
After all, this is the guy who said, "Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated". Nobody knew? Really?
That's Obama's doing, if not his exact words. The truth really must hurt badly if you're going to modbomb it.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Yes -- training is being replaced by H1B hiring! Investments in employee training by big companies like HP and IBM are what made Silicon Valley possible in the first place.
Discussions about H1Bs also often imply that if you pay an H1B as much as a US citizen then everything is OK -- but it is not. Where is the extra incentive for people to risk their own time to learn stuff which might or might not be in demand when wages are essentially capped at market wages for employees? Or for contractors to put a *lot* of extra unpaid time (and stress) into learning as they go after taking on a project? Granted, most techies learn stuff on the side anyway -- but that is more problematical when you have a family. Example:
"Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?"
https://news.ycombinator.com/i...
Another part of this rarely discussed is that companies used to pay 2X to 3X more than a worker's salary+benefits to specific highly-compensated individuals as independent contractors. But, big contracting firms like Perot Systems lobbied around the 1980s to get laws passed affecting IRS regulations that made it financially risky for companies to hire individuals on a 1099 independent contractor basis -- thus forcing more individuals to work through big companies as W2 employees. We just take that change for granted decades later, but things were not always like this. (That said, in many areas of the economy 1099 IC workers are indeed exploited -- just not back then in the technology field in in-demand areas.)
Increasing mastery (i.e. on the job learning) is one important part of a happy work life (along with autonomy, purpose, and community); sad that so many companies ignore it:
"RSA ANIMATE: Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
And no, learning some new flavor of the month JavaScript framework that reinvents the wheel badly does not count much towards a feeling of "mastery" for an experienced programmer...
Related:
http://blog.getabstract.com/th...
"So, why are some companies dragging their feet and refusing to invest in employee development? In some cases, it comes down to an insecurity most managers don't want to acknowledge: the fear an employee may become become overqualified, outgrow his job, and leave the company to pursue a better position elsewhere before a promotion is available. This fear isn't completely baseless. Young high achievers job hop frequently to earn a higher salary, and on average, leave their jobs after only 28 months.
Withholding professional development from employees is not the right response to this fear; it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Employees seek professional development to achieve successful careers, and when companies don't invest in this development, employees leave."
As I suggested in this comment about Google and H1Bs:
https://slashdot.org/comments....
"So, in a similar way that Angela Davis suggests prisons are the USA's way [of consolidating] dealing with social issues it can't or won't address, hiring H1Bs willing to live like sardines in SV slum-equivalents helps Google make up for those less-than-desirable recruiting aspects while not having to address fundamental issues which are harder to wrestle with involving the soul of the organization and how it spends its revenues towards what ends."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
They're the ones causing things to go wrong, not Trump. Deal with them and their lobbyists, which want the status quo.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Like so many others who voted for Clinton and other establishment candidates, you've been conned.
Fixed that for you to reflect facts.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I wonder if the managers realize that they are, by offshoring the actual knowledge, also offshoring themselves?
See "Fridgedare" and "Westinghouse" !
This by it's self proves that they are incompetent...
And if a company like Google can't find an experienced worker in all of America to import. That position should be paid well over a $135,000. That should be a $250,000 position bare minimum.
And the number one way that contracting firms filter out locals from H1B. Wages offered. They'll offer a $65K job in the greater DC/Baltimore region. An American with a family who is unwilling to live in a slum can't afford that low of a wage.
You're on the east coast. I'll presume mid- to north- east. In which case, a decent IT salary would be around the $110K mark. Are you offering anything like that?
How much was your college education? I bet a year with an American salary can pay off most of the Indian educational costs. For an American to get a similar equivalent education, costs a fortune in student loans. As such, an American often needs about 40% more salary to cover those loans than an H1B visa holder. So when you make $65K, and lower the wages of an American down to $65K. You actually get a better standard of living than the local. As they're often paying a large percentage of their income to their student loans.