"H1B visas should be converted to green cards after 1 year with minimal paperwork and cost and a streamlined approval process." ...
Sure... about 5 years after they start running (and charging reasonable costs for) proper background investigations on every visa applicant.
Then, after the initial term of 8-10 months, when/if they ask for a renewal, only an incremental investigation need be conducted or charged for, and they can have a nice sabbatical of a couple months back home, before starting another guest-work term of 8-10 months. Then, after 10 years, they can apply for green cards and only have to go through another incremental investigation.
And, since we'd only be approving the genuinely "best" or "brightest" with "high skill levels" it shouldn't be more than 1K or 2K new guest-work visas (H-1B, H-2B, L, J work) per year. Except that it should respond to unemployment rates such that when unemployment rates rise, the numbers decrease to 100 or 200 per year.
"for 7 years. Upon my return, I found the curriculum MUCH easier." ...
I've gone back several times for refreshers. I also try to keep in touch with relatives attending university, and some professor friends. Some things are much easier and others more difficult, and some of the differences vary from prof to prof rather than a reflection of general standards. One consistent trend has been that universities engage in far more privacy violation.
Some profs like to tax/test students' ability to make creative leaps from incomplete information. Some refuse to retrogress to re-explain things students have forgotten from disuse or whatever, or to explain them in different ways. Others spoon-feed every little thing. Both can convey the same amount of info when all is said and done, and each approach has advantages and disadvantages.
When I started, the only deadlines we had for programming assignments and term papers was the end of the term. Now, there's a much more rigid system of due dates and penalties which doesn't let you juggle priorities as much amongst work and other classes as we used to do. Part of that is because very few students plan to work their ways through university, now, it having been made virtually impossible. Instead, everyone takes out loans and pay the piper later.
"almost no change in the number of degrees awarded" ...
I'm not seeing that, looking at http://nces.ed.gov/ the Digest of Education Statistics.
In academic year 1959-1960, US citizens earned about 45,624 engineering degrees, and some 80,566 STEM degrees altogether.
That rose to 71,795 engineering degrees, and 162,190 STEM degrees in AY1971-1972; 95,044 engineering degrees and 230,129 STEM degrees in AY1989-1990, when the H-1B visa program started and the Cold War supposedly ended, after which US citizen STEM degrees dipped.
In AY2001-2002, US citizens earned 71,492 engineering degrees and 240,592 STEM degrees. In AY2009-2010, US citizens earned 91,430 engineering degrees and 310,586 STEM degrees.
From AY1969-1970 to AY2009-2010, US citizens earned over 1.3 million CS degrees, 3.1M engineering degrees, and 91M STEM degrees.
Studies by Michael Teitelbaum, Hal Salzman, and B. Lindsay Lowell suggest that only about a third to a half of new STEM grads have been landing STEM jobs.
But degrees with particular majors don't equal the ceiling on the talent pool for competent software developers, engineers or other kinds of STEM professionals. NSF reports suggest that, from AY1969-1970 to AY2009-2010, over 2.3M US citizens developed skills and knowledge in software development, 4M in engineering, and 11.9M in all STEM fields -- many by minoring or otherwise taking significant university course-work in those fields. Additional US citizens developed the necessary knowledge and skills by taking only 1 or 2 classes or employer-provided training combined with additional self-directed study and work experience.
According to Samuel C. Florman, past president of ASCE, in his book, in 1916, half of America's practicing engineers had never been to college. I would add that Nicolaus Otto, developer of the internal combustion engine, was a grade-school drop-out due to the death of his father and never attended a university.
"I am an electrical engineer, and work in Europe. What I see here, is that the quality of engineers coming out of college or universities is declining at an alarming rate. The knowledge-level about basic subjects is embarrassing to say the least." ...
Please, tell us more. What "basic subjects" are they failing to teach?
"its absolutely baseless to claim that outsourcing firms bring cheaper workers on H1-B visa to work in US... when an employer files H1-B petition for a potential employee, the employer promises to pay more than the amount recommended BY LAW." ...
Yah, sure. He's required to pay the "prevailing wage", which is considerably below the actual local market compensation when intelligence, degrees, certificates, experience, the specific job, etc., are taken into account.
US DoL uses 4 levels for determining the "prevailing wage", and the vast majority of H-1B recipients are, miracle of miracles, classified in the bottom, newbies, apprentices, inexperienced, generally unable to solve problems on their own. And the pay more or less matches that evaluation, not the much bandied about claims in the media that H-1B recipients are "the best and brightest" or "highly-skilled".
Compensation of H-1B grantees has been studied quite a bit. Vandrevala of Tata claimed that they're paid 25% to 35% below local US compensation. One study concluded that they're paid about 12% below US compensation. A study of the best of the best H-1Bs sponsored for green cards concluded that this tiny sub-set were paid 1.0001 times the local median (i.e. one ten-thousandth more) as I recall, rather than the 2 to 3 times median that would be expected for someone exceptionally bright, knowledgeable, creative, etc.
There have been at least another half dozen such studies which reached similar conclusions.
An especially interesting series of articles in the Portland Maine papers disclosed that it was common practice to declare that H-1B workers would be living and working in low cost of living/low pay locales, and keeping a mail drop or closet office for mail forwarding, paying them at the level appropriate for the mail drop's location, and having them work in expensive/high pay locations like Manhattan and Washington DC, instead. There was some token effort to discourage such scams after the series was publicized, but whether it has continued I know not.
The point is that "prevailing wage" is a legalistic term of art which seems to mean one thing (what the words would mean as defined in Merriam-Webster's dictionaries, for instance) while meaning something completely different in practice. In this case, combined with difficulties of transferring from one sponsor to another (especially if the first sponsor is also sponsoring a green card application) keeps the guest-worker stuck with less mobility and less compensation and less ability to seek better working conditions, which is why the turn-coat IEEE and ACM are stabbing US STEM workers in the back by supporting replacement of or addition to H-1B visas with even more excessive numbers of green cards.
The H-1B at least has the advantage of being a "temporary" visas, even if the term is awfully long -- 3 years initially, up to 3 years on renewal, and then year-by-year extensions after that only informally (not absolutely) limited to 2 or 3... while green cards would drive an ever increasing explosion of immigration and over-population and over-crowding.
"Even though I frankly don't like libertarians and think they all come down to 2 camps, one who wants a government to whip the slaves and the other that would prefer to hire a goon squad to whip the slaves" ...
Libertarians are people who oppose the initiation of force and fraud. They don't want anyone treated as slaves. Even when it comes to criminals -- i.e. those who have been convicted of initiating force or fraud -- libertarians are split as to whether there should be any penalties, but all agree the violator should pay restitution to his victims.
"How do you want foreign people to come to work to US?" ...
1. Pay for and pass a proper background investigation (this should be the same for any kind of visa).
2. Provide some significant evidence that you're several standard deviations above the mean in intelligence, knowledge, and creativity. If you want an O visa that better be at least 5 standard deviations above the mean. We can afford to be picky; with 7G people in the world, that makes 700M in the top 1 percentile and that would be far far far too many, 350M in the top 0.5% and that would be far far too many, 35M in the top 0.05% and that would be far too many, 3.5M in the top 0.005% and that would still be far too many.
Unfortunately, H-1B and L and J visas have essentially no intelligence, or skill, or knowledge, or experience standards at all. And F visas now have only token standards; you only have to be good enough to get into Sopchoppy-Massapequa Unified junior college. And the 1 year employment standard for L visas is easily gamed.
Remove the H-1B, limit the L (to 6 months and e.g. 10K per year). Apply some standards to O visas (instead of giving them out the sleazy porn "actresses").
"'most Americans' never went to Engineering school in the first place. ever." ...
You are correct. It would have been ridiculous to expect that "most" would be interested in doing so.
OTOH, from 1970 to 2010, 6,107,360 US citizens earned STEM degrees and some 12M learned STEM skills by all means. From 2000 to 2010, 3,006,100 US citizens earned STEM degrees.
According to congressional testimony from Michael Teitelbaum, and research reports by Hal Salzman and B. Lindsay Lowell (repeated research done separately and together), we've been turning out about 3 times as many capable, degreed, US citizen STEM professionals as have landed STEM jobs over the last couple decades.
Thus it is interesting that though there was an 400K excess of STEM workers in India in 1990 (per Gurcharan Das) which generated a sequence of international lobbying by their government and business executives since, there has been not a peep about the millions of surplussed US citizen STEM workers, though their existence is documented in the government statistics if you know where to dig, and in a few obscure research reports posted but not ballyhooed in the media.
"Nope, not my "local company". Mostly it's the big guys that ARE NOT on the H1-B Top List: Microsoft, Google, IBM, others..." ...
yah, sure, but, e.g. MSFT and Ill-Begotten Monstrosities, employ thousands in Red China to do things that used to be done in the USA. One of IBM's biggest divisions is "Global Services". They also both contract with other cross-border bodyshoppers.
And let us not forget the tens of thousands of L visas and J visas and F visas with OPT and CPT.
Then there's the professional ethics issue. The 3 firms you mention have done such shoddy work in the past, engaged in so many scams, the they should have to pay a sizable premium/strong to get people to deign to work with them.
"The biggest user of H-1B last year was Cognizant, a firm based in New Jersey. The company got 9,000 new visas. Following close behind were Infosys, Wipro and Tata -- all Indian firms." ...
Cognizant is owned jointly by Dun & Bradstreet (76%) and Satyam Computers (24%).
But Matloff is correct that wholly US firms abuse H-1B visas as well -- directly and by contracting with the cross-border bodyshoppers.
The US State Department says that they issue well over 100K H-1B visas through consular offices each year, and that additional thousands are granted H-1B status via other processes. ...
year numbers issued through consular offices
2005: 124,099
2006: 135,421
2007: 154,053
2008: 129,464
2009: 110,367
2010: 117,409
2011: 129,134
All this blather about 65K or 85K is sand and dust thrown in your faces... especially considering that even a 65K cap would be abou 64K too many to bring in only the genuinely "best" or "brightest", "highly-skilled" rather than the reality that over 100K additional new H-1B visas are given out each year to cheap, young, pliant foreign labor with flexible ethics and with no standards for skill level.
Now, being tall, and "handsome" or "beautiful", has a more significantly positive effect on compensation than intelligence, creativity, industriousness, reliability, honesty, knowledge, etc.
"I think you got it wrong. Americans have university degrees." ...
I think you got it wrong. University degrees are beside the point. Some universities are much better than others. Good students can do well even at a poor university. Poor students can get through the best programs and learn little. Autodidacts sometimes outshine them all.
Are you honest? Are you intelligent? Do you have the knowledge? Do you have the experience? Are you diligent? Are you creative? Are you industrious? Are you conscientious?
In academic year 2003-2004, US citizens earned over 66K CS degrees, and over 270K STEM degrees. In AY2009-2010 this was down to between 48K and 49K CS degrees, and 310K and 311K STEM degrees. Since 1970 US citizens have earned over 1.3M CS degrees, and over 9.1M STEM degrees.
And, once again, in the last decade or so, only about a third of new STEM grads are landing STEM work, so we have a surplus of both new US citizen STEM workers and experienced US citizen STEM workers, and a huge untapped pool of US citizen STEM talent that needs to be brought back to full employment.
Even former cross-border bodyshopper Vivek Wadhwa has admitted that, by every measure, US STEM workers are the best. He also admitted that the core issue is that the guest-workers are cheap... plus, he has a certain understandable sympathy and solidarity with those from the land of his birth.
Yes, American STEM professionals have degrees, intelligence, knowledge, experience, industriousness, creativity, honesty, and conscientiousness. Yes, we always did engage in continuous learning. The only thing we no longer have is STEM employment.
If demand for STEM talent were high, even more US students would be investing more money, time and effort to get STEM degrees, compensation (not just hourly wages, but salaries, sabbaticals, travel, employer contributions to pensions, etc., would be increasing), employers would be trying harder to recruit, they'd be putting their own e-mail addresses and telephone numbers in job ads, they'd be offering more training (not less), retention bonuses...
In Southern California, the STEM job markets are dead. In Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, New York, Alabama, Carolinas, Florida, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Michigan, and Minnesota, the STEM job markets are dead or dysfunctional. ...
The San Diego/Los Angeles area business/financial reporters used to talk a lot about Qualcomm, BAE, BEA, SAIC, special effects houses, and the biotechs along Mira Mesa and Sorrento Valley. Digital Domain and Rhythm & Hues are dead.
None of them will deign to interview a US citizen STEM worker. We have US citizen Mensa members with multiple graduate degrees right there within a block or so, who can't get the time of day from STEM recruiters. Some have been mostly or totally unemployed for the last decade. The fortunate ones get survival gigs from time to time, teaching the cheap, young, pliant guest-workers with flexible ethics how to program.
The guest-workers have not only "put a dent in the demand" for US STEM talent but have totally undermined it.
We have over 1.8 million US STEM professionals who are either unemployed or involuntarily out of STEM. Employment of production workers in app development (what BLS calls "software publishing") has been flat at a mere 220K for the last decade. Employers no longer fly US candidates in for interviews (though before H-1B they used to do so). Employers no longer offer to relocate US STEM talent (though before H-1B they did). Employers invest much less in new-hire and retained employee training (which used to run 2-12 weeks for new hires and 2-4 weeks for retained employees).
Since 1970, based on US Dept. of Education and NSF statistics, we've added about 12 million US citizen STEM workers to the talent pool.
All we get from reporters is, "Well, I talked with a couple executives with a vested interest in cheap, pliant labor and he said he just couldn't find *anyone* with degrees in math and physics and mechanical engineering and computer science and graphic arts and PR and at least 5 years but no more than 10 years of professional experience in each within a few surrounding blocks who was willing to work for $20-$30/hour on a temporary/contingent basis. And they tried soooo hard. Why they put 2 ads in the BackCreek WV Gazette and the Boondocks Diner, once a month for 6 months and got no 'qualified' applicants, so there must be a terrrrribbbbble talent shortage."
There is plenty of evidence of an on-going STEM talent glut. No evidence of STEM talent shortage has ever been presented. Ever. Not in the 1980s. Not in the 1990s. Not since 2000.
Yes, I have friends who are doctors and friends who are lawyers who similarly refuse to associate with or pay these groups of thugs. In the 1990s, my next door neighbor had just finished his stint as president of the ABA, and a friend was a clerk at the state bar association. ...
My father was in unions. I've read UE's _Labor's Untold Story_. I've known former Teamsters shop stewards (one of whom re-tooled to become a mechanical engineer), and dock-workers. We've all seen the thuggery of the SEIU.
The problem is that they are thugs -- quick to initiate force and fraud, quick to drain dues and other "contributions" into enriching and empowering themselves, and quick to work against the better interests of individual members.
We've seen how ACM and IEEE keep on stabbing US STEM workers in the back, including in today's congressional hearings.
You're incorrect, both in particulars and in context.
BLS said that the unemployment rate for computer science and math workers (not "IT") was 3.6%. In times of full employment, the comparable unemployment rate was between 1.1% and 1.8%. So, we're a long way from full employment.
Further, multiple studies over the last decade by Hal Salzman, B. Lindsay Lowell, and Michael Teitelbaum concluded that only between a third and half of new US citizen STEM grads have gained STEM employment. Matloff's (and others') earlier examinations of BLS data suggested that as time passes after graduation, that figure drops.
The H-1B visa has nothing to do with "highly skilled workers" as is shown by Matloff's study under discussion as well as the fact that neither the statutes nor regulations have any skill level requirements at all.
"a U.S. citizen does not risk being deported and if they believe that all companies are screwing them they can attempt to start their own business." ...
You're living in the past.
Today, if you want to start a business, you have to get multiple licenses and permits, make all kinds of protection payments to the local government thugs, beg for zoning "variances".
Merely conceiving of, designing and developing a great software product is the least of your problems... unless it's a new scheme to help the government thugs violate more people's privacy; then the skids are well-greased.
"IMO: it's way past time for US tech workers to organize, and stand up for themselves." ...
I'm already organized, and standing up for myself.
Oh, you mean give over my personal sovereignty to leftist union thugs, giving me another faction to struggle against to try to retain my earnings. No thanks.
"you're stagnating domestic IT salaries, which means talented people will not look to work for you or will leave the field. And suddenly, your domestic company is 100% dependent on [cheap, young, pliant] foreign labor, which you need government regulation to acquire." ...
Isn't that soo strange that Americans want to be paid enough to afford to replace the car every few years, cover the costs of that continuous learning we're always blathering about, buy a home on a little piece of land, enough for food, utilities, taxes, etc., to marry and raise a small family (oh, and some of the same malefactors whine about a "birth dearth"). Why, they should be eager to be paid less than what coming to work costs them so that I can afford another vacation home and brag to my cronies... if you are to believe many execs these days.
That's correct, CAIMLAS. Two of the last 3 nibbles I got were from places (in Chicago and NY) which had been in the news in the last few days for their unethical activities. So, how eager do you think I was to jump on board to help them carry out their nefarious schemes and enrich them some more? And then they whine "talent shortage", "There aren't enough 'local' people with 'reasonable attitudes' (i.e. willing to help us abuse people), at 'reasonable prices' (i.e. cheap cheap cheap as compared with local costs of living in our over-taxed, over-priced, over-crowded, over-regulated h*-holes). We neeeeed more visas for cheap, young, pliant labor with flexible ethics, because, obviously, "gullible, ignernt Merikans" can't innovate and are inflexible."...
Only after I posted my other response did that term "aging programmers" really catch my eye. ...
All programmers are aging programmers. What has changed with the advent of H-1B is that, now, a 35-year-old is considered "over the hill".
I've taught 70+ year old engineers how to program, FCOL! Age has little to do with the ability to learn yet another programming language, operating system, design methodology, IDE, etc.
The problem is that government regs make older people geometrically more expensive to employ... while the visa programs (the flood of cheap, young, pliant foreign labor with flexible ethics)` undermine their careers from the other end.
I've never seen that. I do see unemployed software product developers who know a dozen programming languages on a dozen operating systems, etc. C'mon! Once you have the academic basics, then learn several, new ones are easy to pick up. The only problems are changes in terminology (old words with new meanings, new terms) which could be handled with a straight-forward glossary and/or examples in context (but, of course, today's atomistic approach actively avoids such).
OK, I do see some inability to stay current... now that the STEM job markets have already been undermined by the flood of cheap, young, pliant foreign labor with flexible ethics. Once you're unemployed for a while, your cushion dissappears. Your personal tech library becomes obsolete; your hardware becomes superannuated, as do your dev tools, and you can't replace it/them because you have no money. You may lose your car because you can't maintain and fuel it any longer, so you can't bop around to "network" or travel on your own dime and time to interviews or to relocate yourself.
So, you try to tap the local libraries... But because of all the drunk/druggy/deranged people, they've sealed the libraries at the universities (it's like an armed camp or prison over there). And the public libraries have only obsolete STEM materials (e.g. they have a policy of waiting until they're at least a year old before considering a purchase, and since pubs usually lag new releases, the info in them is at least 16 months old by then). Of course, the STEM execs would never seriously consider taking a little out of their personal profits to endow a library STEM collection, especially if it's not in their back-yards. The on-line docs and videos have been modified so that they don't work with your old hardware and software. You can't run the latest greatest IDE, and frameworks, so when you read the docs it's a totally abstract exercise.
At the same time, the execs have cut back on new-hire and retained employee training, so not having actual experience on the latest greatest toys and versions of them (even when they work essentially the same way as the ones from 10-20-30 years ago), it's just another excuse to declare even the brightest, most knowledgeable, experienced and industrious "unqualified"... and then there's the execs' fear of increased taxes and costs of older employees from ObummerDoesn'tCare and its predecessors.
I've even seen cases in which I picked up something in a few hours -- helping a friend figure out how to do something on his new system for his business -- where the brain-dead recruiters were insisting that they could only consider someone with several years of experience on that specific version of that specific brand-name on that specific operating system version of that kind of toy. They couldn't imagine anyone being able to do productive work unless they had put in so much time doing the same things over and over and over... that a bright person would be totally bored.
"If hiring cheap and inexperienced employees is a bad strategy..." ...
In free, open, honest markets you would be correct. Unfortunately, bodyshopping and off-shoring started on the sly, giving the most dishonest executives an advantage over the honest.
Added to that are the "knowledge transfers", a.k.a. intellectual property thefts and robberies; the average 48% tariffs of the USA's trading partners vs. the USA's 2%-8% tariffs; the unexpected "permit raj"; the hardware and software back-doors added in India and Red China; apps and systems which "phone home" to dump personal private data...
And government inflation/devaluation of the currency helped muddy the waters as execs and retailers pushed to lower the quality of products while maintaining and increasing prices.
All of them give the malefactor an economic advantage over honest people.
Of course, what might be thought of as the first big fraud were the initial claims of projected talent shortfalls or shortages. Then the second was the "best and brightest" claim, with, pointedly, active efforts to fend off any efforts at setting standards. The third or fourth would be the "innovation" or "innovators" and the "entrepreneurs".
"there is most certainly a shortage of local talent at a realistic price and reasonable attitude."
If you really invested some effort you could throw in a couple more weasel-words.
Thank your for corroborating that it's about cheap, young, pliant labor with flexible professional ethics, and for corroborating the gimmick of refusing to relocate able and willing US citizen talent but jumping straight from your tiny neighborhood's talent pool to foreign labor imported from thousands of miles across the seas, rather than tapping the vast pool of US citizen STEM talent of all ages available (unemployed or involuntarily out of STEM fields, as NSF refers to it) within just a few hundred miles.
Before H-1B, employers would fly in US citizens hundreds or even thousands of miles for interviews. Before H-1B, employers would relocate US citizen talent from one part of the USA to another, and provide temporary housing while they searched for apartments or homes. Before H-1B, employers would invest in 2-12 weeks of new-hire training, and 2-4 weeks of retained employee training; now they bodyshop.
Thank you for corroborating that, for many "IT" employers it's about finding people willing to implement your unethical schemes.
Before H-1B, a "reasonable attitude" was, "Let's make great software products that do good things!... even if we have to work around the clock once in a while to meet management's unrealistic release schedule despite what we told them in the planning phase.", not "How can we violate millions of people's privacy and leverage that information to get money for ourselves?"
* A great product in those times might be CAD/CAM/CAE software to design, pre-test, and manufacture higher quality products (cars, cranes, cherry-pickers, back-hoes, power tools, baby baths, tanks, diesel truck engines, toy trucks, sky-scrapers) while holding the line on expenses. It might be simulating a building to test it's resistance to earth-quakes or strong winds, or simulating a rocket to minimize costs of launching a communications satellite into stable orbit, or simulating various kinds of gun-powder grain to optimize performance and reduce schmutz. It might be analyzing and designing data-bases as tools to help optimize getting soldiers and everything they need to trouble spots as rapidly and safely as possible. Or it might be examining whether early adoption of steam engines increased or decreased productivity in manufacture of sugar and rum on plantations in Jamaica as compared with places which did not adopt the engines. Or it might be software to examine migration patterns in response to tax and regulatory changes in each state (yes, people do "vote with their feet" to flee power-mad politicians).
Slashdot Mirror
...
Sure... about 5 years after they start running (and charging reasonable costs for) proper background investigations on every visa applicant.
Then, after the initial term of 8-10 months, when/if they ask for a renewal, only an incremental investigation need be conducted or charged for, and they can have a nice sabbatical of a couple months back home, before starting another guest-work term of 8-10 months. Then, after 10 years, they can apply for green cards and only have to go through another incremental investigation.
And, since we'd only be approving the genuinely "best" or "brightest" with "high skill levels" it shouldn't be more than 1K or 2K new guest-work visas (H-1B, H-2B, L, J work) per year. Except that it should respond to unemployment rates such that when unemployment rates rise, the numbers decrease to 100 or 200 per year.
...
I've gone back several times for refreshers. I also try to keep in touch with relatives attending university, and some professor friends. Some things are much easier and others more difficult, and some of the differences vary from prof to prof rather than a reflection of general standards. One consistent trend has been that universities engage in far more privacy violation.
Some profs like to tax/test students' ability to make creative leaps from incomplete information. Some refuse to retrogress to re-explain things students have forgotten from disuse or whatever, or to explain them in different ways. Others spoon-feed every little thing. Both can convey the same amount of info when all is said and done, and each approach has advantages and disadvantages.
When I started, the only deadlines we had for programming assignments and term papers was the end of the term. Now, there's a much more rigid system of due dates and penalties which doesn't let you juggle priorities as much amongst work and other classes as we used to do. Part of that is because very few students plan to work their ways through university, now, it having been made virtually impossible. Instead, everyone takes out loans and pay the piper later.
...
I'm not seeing that, looking at
http://nces.ed.gov/
the Digest of Education Statistics.
In academic year 1959-1960, US citizens earned about 45,624 engineering degrees, and some 80,566 STEM degrees altogether.
That rose to 71,795 engineering degrees, and 162,190 STEM degrees in AY1971-1972; 95,044 engineering degrees and 230,129 STEM degrees in AY1989-1990, when the H-1B visa program started and the Cold War supposedly ended, after which US citizen STEM degrees dipped.
In AY2001-2002, US citizens earned 71,492 engineering degrees and 240,592 STEM degrees. In AY2009-2010, US citizens earned 91,430 engineering degrees and 310,586 STEM degrees.
From AY1969-1970 to AY2009-2010, US citizens earned over 1.3 million CS degrees, 3.1M engineering degrees, and 91M STEM degrees.
Studies by Michael Teitelbaum, Hal Salzman, and B. Lindsay Lowell suggest that only about a third to a half of new STEM grads have been landing STEM jobs.
But degrees with particular majors don't equal the ceiling on the talent pool for competent software developers, engineers or other kinds of STEM professionals. NSF reports suggest that, from AY1969-1970 to AY2009-2010, over 2.3M US citizens developed skills and knowledge in software development, 4M in engineering, and 11.9M in all STEM fields -- many by minoring or otherwise taking significant university course-work in those fields. Additional US citizens developed the necessary knowledge and skills by taking only 1 or 2 classes or employer-provided training combined with additional self-directed study and work experience.
According to Samuel C. Florman, past president of ASCE, in his book, in 1916, half of America's practicing engineers had never been to college. I would add that Nicolaus Otto, developer of the internal combustion engine, was a grade-school drop-out due to the death of his father and never attended a university.
...
Please, tell us more. What "basic subjects" are they failing to teach?
...
The unemployment rate in times of full employment runs about 1% for software product developers, according to the BLS data.
They should have included graphs, with markers for times of full employment in the past, and markers for times of worst unemployment.
...
Yah, sure. He's required to pay the "prevailing wage", which is considerably below the actual local market compensation when intelligence, degrees, certificates, experience, the specific job, etc., are taken into account.
US DoL uses 4 levels for determining the "prevailing wage", and the vast majority of H-1B recipients are, miracle of miracles, classified in the bottom, newbies, apprentices, inexperienced, generally unable to solve problems on their own. And the pay more or less matches that evaluation, not the much bandied about claims in the media that H-1B recipients are "the best and brightest" or "highly-skilled".
Compensation of H-1B grantees has been studied quite a bit. Vandrevala of Tata claimed that they're paid 25% to 35% below local US compensation. One study concluded that they're paid about 12% below US compensation. A study of the best of the best H-1Bs sponsored for green cards concluded that this tiny sub-set were paid 1.0001 times the local median (i.e. one ten-thousandth more) as I recall, rather than the 2 to 3 times median that would be expected for someone exceptionally bright, knowledgeable, creative, etc.
There have been at least another half dozen such studies which reached similar conclusions.
An especially interesting series of articles in the Portland Maine papers disclosed that it was common practice to declare that H-1B workers would be living and working in low cost of living/low pay locales, and keeping a mail drop or closet office for mail forwarding, paying them at the level appropriate for the mail drop's location, and having them work in expensive/high pay locations like Manhattan and Washington DC, instead. There was some token effort to discourage such scams after the series was publicized, but whether it has continued I know not.
The point is that "prevailing wage" is a legalistic term of art which seems to mean one thing (what the words would mean as defined in Merriam-Webster's dictionaries, for instance) while meaning something completely different in practice. In this case, combined with difficulties of transferring from one sponsor to another (especially if the first sponsor is also sponsoring a green card application) keeps the guest-worker stuck with less mobility and less compensation and less ability to seek better working conditions, which is why the turn-coat IEEE and ACM are stabbing US STEM workers in the back by supporting replacement of or addition to H-1B visas with even more excessive numbers of green cards.
The H-1B at least has the advantage of being a "temporary" visas, even if the term is awfully long -- 3 years initially, up to 3 years on renewal, and then year-by-year extensions after that only informally (not absolutely) limited to 2 or 3... while green cards would drive an ever increasing explosion of immigration and over-population and over-crowding.
...
Libertarians are people who oppose the initiation of force and fraud. They don't want anyone treated as slaves. Even when it comes to criminals -- i.e. those who have been convicted of initiating force or fraud -- libertarians are split as to whether there should be any penalties, but all agree the violator should pay restitution to his victims.
...
1. Pay for and pass a proper background investigation (this should be the same for any kind of visa).
2. Provide some significant evidence that you're several standard deviations above the mean in intelligence, knowledge, and creativity. If you want an O visa that better be at least 5 standard deviations above the mean. We can afford to be picky; with 7G people in the world, that makes 700M in the top 1 percentile and that would be far far far too many, 350M in the top 0.5% and that would be far far too many, 35M in the top 0.05% and that would be far too many, 3.5M in the top 0.005% and that would still be far too many.
Unfortunately, H-1B and L and J visas have essentially no intelligence, or skill, or knowledge, or experience standards at all. And F visas now have only token standards; you only have to be good enough to get into Sopchoppy-Massapequa Unified junior college. And the 1 year employment standard for L visas is easily gamed.
Remove the H-1B, limit the L (to 6 months and e.g. 10K per year). Apply some standards to O visas (instead of giving them out the sleazy porn "actresses").
...
You are correct. It would have been ridiculous to expect that "most" would be interested in doing so.
OTOH, from 1970 to 2010, 6,107,360 US citizens earned STEM degrees and some 12M learned STEM skills by all means. From 2000 to 2010, 3,006,100 US citizens earned STEM degrees.
According to congressional testimony from Michael Teitelbaum, and research reports by Hal Salzman and B. Lindsay Lowell (repeated research done separately and together), we've been turning out about 3 times as many capable, degreed, US citizen STEM professionals as have landed STEM jobs over the last couple decades.
Thus it is interesting that though there was an 400K excess of STEM workers in India in 1990 (per Gurcharan Das) which generated a sequence of international lobbying by their government and business executives since, there has been not a peep about the millions of surplussed US citizen STEM workers, though their existence is documented in the government statistics if you know where to dig, and in a few obscure research reports posted but not ballyhooed in the media.
...
yah, sure, but, e.g. MSFT and Ill-Begotten Monstrosities, employ thousands in Red China to do things that used to be done in the USA. One of IBM's biggest divisions is "Global Services". They also both contract with other cross-border bodyshoppers.
And let us not forget the tens of thousands of L visas and J visas and F visas with OPT and CPT.
Then there's the professional ethics issue. The 3 firms you mention have done such shoddy work in the past, engaged in so many scams, the they should have to pay a sizable premium/strong to get people to deign to work with them.
...
Cognizant is owned jointly by Dun & Bradstreet (76%) and Satyam Computers (24%).
But Matloff is correct that wholly US firms abuse H-1B visas as well -- directly and by contracting with the cross-border bodyshoppers.
...
year numbers issued through consular offices
2005: 124,099
2006: 135,421
2007: 154,053
2008: 129,464
2009: 110,367
2010: 117,409
2011: 129,134
All this blather about 65K or 85K is sand and dust thrown in your faces... especially considering that even a 65K cap would be abou 64K too many to bring in only the genuinely "best" or "brightest", "highly-skilled" rather than the reality that over 100K additional new H-1B visas are given out each year to cheap, young, pliant foreign labor with flexible ethics and with no standards for skill level.
...
Now, being tall, and "handsome" or "beautiful", has a more significantly positive effect on compensation than intelligence, creativity, industriousness, reliability, honesty, knowledge, etc.
...
I think you got it wrong. University degrees are beside the point. Some universities are much better than others. Good students can do well even at a poor university. Poor students can get through the best programs and learn little. Autodidacts sometimes outshine them all.
Are you honest? Are you intelligent? Do you have the knowledge? Do you have the experience? Are you diligent? Are you creative? Are you industrious? Are you conscientious?
In academic year 2003-2004, US citizens earned over 66K CS degrees, and over 270K STEM degrees. In AY2009-2010 this was down to between 48K and 49K CS degrees, and 310K and 311K STEM degrees. Since 1970 US citizens have earned over 1.3M CS degrees, and over 9.1M STEM degrees.
And, once again, in the last decade or so, only about a third of new STEM grads are landing STEM work, so we have a surplus of both new US citizen STEM workers and experienced US citizen STEM workers, and a huge untapped pool of US citizen STEM talent that needs to be brought back to full employment.
Even former cross-border bodyshopper Vivek Wadhwa has admitted that, by every measure, US STEM workers are the best. He also admitted that the core issue is that the guest-workers are cheap... plus, he has a certain understandable sympathy and solidarity with those from the land of his birth.
Yes, American STEM professionals have degrees, intelligence, knowledge, experience, industriousness, creativity, honesty, and conscientiousness. Yes, we always did engage in continuous learning. The only thing we no longer have is STEM employment.
If demand for STEM talent were high, even more US students would be investing more money, time and effort to get STEM degrees, compensation (not just hourly wages, but salaries, sabbaticals, travel, employer contributions to pensions, etc., would be increasing), employers would be trying harder to recruit, they'd be putting their own e-mail addresses and telephone numbers in job ads, they'd be offering more training (not less), retention bonuses...
...
The San Diego/Los Angeles area business/financial reporters used to talk a lot about Qualcomm, BAE, BEA, SAIC, special effects houses, and the biotechs along Mira Mesa and Sorrento Valley. Digital Domain and Rhythm & Hues are dead.
None of them will deign to interview a US citizen STEM worker. We have US citizen Mensa members with multiple graduate degrees right there within a block or so, who can't get the time of day from STEM recruiters. Some have been mostly or totally unemployed for the last decade. The fortunate ones get survival gigs from time to time, teaching the cheap, young, pliant guest-workers with flexible ethics how to program.
The guest-workers have not only "put a dent in the demand" for US STEM talent but have totally undermined it.
We have over 1.8 million US STEM professionals who are either unemployed or involuntarily out of STEM. Employment of production workers in app development (what BLS calls "software publishing") has been flat at a mere 220K for the last decade. Employers no longer fly US candidates in for interviews (though before H-1B they used to do so). Employers no longer offer to relocate US STEM talent (though before H-1B they did). Employers invest much less in new-hire and retained employee training (which used to run 2-12 weeks for new hires and 2-4 weeks for retained employees).
Since 1970, based on US Dept. of Education and NSF statistics, we've added about 12 million US citizen STEM workers to the talent pool.
All we get from reporters is, "Well, I talked with a couple executives with a vested interest in cheap, pliant labor and he said he just couldn't find *anyone* with degrees in math and physics and mechanical engineering and computer science and graphic arts and PR and at least 5 years but no more than 10 years of professional experience in each within a few surrounding blocks who was willing to work for $20-$30/hour on a temporary/contingent basis. And they tried soooo hard. Why they put 2 ads in the BackCreek WV Gazette and the Boondocks Diner, once a month for 6 months and got no 'qualified' applicants, so there must be a terrrrribbbbble talent shortage."
There is plenty of evidence of an on-going STEM talent glut. No evidence of STEM talent shortage has ever been presented. Ever. Not in the 1980s. Not in the 1990s. Not since 2000.
...
My father was in unions. I've read UE's _Labor's Untold Story_. I've known former Teamsters shop stewards (one of whom re-tooled to become a mechanical engineer), and dock-workers. We've all seen the thuggery of the SEIU.
The problem is that they are thugs -- quick to initiate force and fraud, quick to drain dues and other "contributions" into enriching and empowering themselves, and quick to work against the better interests of individual members.
We've seen how ACM and IEEE keep on stabbing US STEM workers in the back, including in today's congressional hearings.
...
You're incorrect, both in particulars and in context.
BLS said that the unemployment rate for computer science and math workers (not "IT") was 3.6%. In times of full employment, the comparable unemployment rate was between 1.1% and 1.8%. So, we're a long way from full employment.
Further, multiple studies over the last decade by Hal Salzman, B. Lindsay Lowell, and Michael Teitelbaum concluded that only between a third and half of new US citizen STEM grads have gained STEM employment. Matloff's (and others') earlier examinations of BLS data suggested that as time passes after graduation, that figure drops.
The H-1B visa has nothing to do with "highly skilled workers" as is shown by Matloff's study under discussion as well as the fact that neither the statutes nor regulations have any skill level requirements at all.
...
You're living in the past.
Today, if you want to start a business, you have to get multiple licenses and permits, make all kinds of protection payments to the local government thugs, beg for zoning "variances".
Merely conceiving of, designing and developing a great software product is the least of your problems... unless it's a new scheme to help the government thugs violate more people's privacy; then the skids are well-greased.
...
I'm already organized, and standing up for myself.
Oh, you mean give over my personal sovereignty to leftist union thugs, giving me another faction to struggle against to try to retain my earnings. No thanks.
...
Isn't that soo strange that Americans want to be paid enough to afford to replace the car every few years, cover the costs of that continuous learning we're always blathering about, buy a home on a little piece of land, enough for food, utilities, taxes, etc., to marry and raise a small family (oh, and some of the same malefactors whine about a "birth dearth"). Why, they should be eager to be paid less than what coming to work costs them so that I can afford another vacation home and brag to my cronies... if you are to believe many execs these days.
That's correct, CAIMLAS. Two of the last 3 nibbles I got were from places (in Chicago and NY) which had been in the news in the last few days for their unethical activities. So, how eager do you think I was to jump on board to help them carry out their nefarious schemes and enrich them some more? And then they whine "talent shortage", "There aren't enough 'local' people with 'reasonable attitudes' (i.e. willing to help us abuse people), at 'reasonable prices' (i.e. cheap cheap cheap as compared with local costs of living in our over-taxed, over-priced, over-crowded, over-regulated h*-holes). We neeeeed more visas for cheap, young, pliant labor with flexible ethics, because, obviously, "gullible, ignernt Merikans" can't innovate and are inflexible."...
...
All programmers are aging programmers. What has changed with the advent of H-1B is that, now, a 35-year-old is considered "over the hill".
I've taught 70+ year old engineers how to program, FCOL! Age has little to do with the ability to learn yet another programming language, operating system, design methodology, IDE, etc.
The problem is that government regs make older people geometrically more expensive to employ... while the visa programs (the flood of cheap, young, pliant foreign labor with flexible ethics)` undermine their careers from the other end.
...
I've never seen that. I do see unemployed software product developers who know a dozen programming languages on a dozen operating systems, etc. C'mon! Once you have the academic basics, then learn several, new ones are easy to pick up. The only problems are changes in terminology (old words with new meanings, new terms) which could be handled with a straight-forward glossary and/or examples in context (but, of course, today's atomistic approach actively avoids such).
OK, I do see some inability to stay current... now that the STEM job markets have already been undermined by the flood of cheap, young, pliant foreign labor with flexible ethics. Once you're unemployed for a while, your cushion dissappears. Your personal tech library becomes obsolete; your hardware becomes superannuated, as do your dev tools, and you can't replace it/them because you have no money. You may lose your car because you can't maintain and fuel it any longer, so you can't bop around to "network" or travel on your own dime and time to interviews or to relocate yourself.
So, you try to tap the local libraries... But because of all the drunk/druggy/deranged people, they've sealed the libraries at the universities (it's like an armed camp or prison over there). And the public libraries have only obsolete STEM materials (e.g. they have a policy of waiting until they're at least a year old before considering a purchase, and since pubs usually lag new releases, the info in them is at least 16 months old by then). Of course, the STEM execs would never seriously consider taking a little out of their personal profits to endow a library STEM collection, especially if it's not in their back-yards. The on-line docs and videos have been modified so that they don't work with your old hardware and software. You can't run the latest greatest IDE, and frameworks, so when you read the docs it's a totally abstract exercise.
At the same time, the execs have cut back on new-hire and retained employee training, so not having actual experience on the latest greatest toys and versions of them (even when they work essentially the same way as the ones from 10-20-30 years ago), it's just another excuse to declare even the brightest, most knowledgeable, experienced and industrious "unqualified"... and then there's the execs' fear of increased taxes and costs of older employees from ObummerDoesn'tCare and its predecessors.
I've even seen cases in which I picked up something in a few hours -- helping a friend figure out how to do something on his new system for his business -- where the brain-dead recruiters were insisting that they could only consider someone with several years of experience on that specific version of that specific brand-name on that specific operating system version of that kind of toy. They couldn't imagine anyone being able to do productive work unless they had put in so much time doing the same things over and over and over... that a bright person would be totally bored.
...
In free, open, honest markets you would be correct. Unfortunately, bodyshopping and off-shoring started on the sly, giving the most dishonest executives an advantage over the honest.
Added to that are the "knowledge transfers", a.k.a. intellectual property thefts and robberies; the average 48% tariffs of the USA's trading partners vs. the USA's 2%-8% tariffs; the unexpected "permit raj"; the hardware and software back-doors added in India and Red China; apps and systems which "phone home" to dump personal private data...
And government inflation/devaluation of the currency helped muddy the waters as execs and retailers pushed to lower the quality of products while maintaining and increasing prices.
All of them give the malefactor an economic advantage over honest people.
Of course, what might be thought of as the first big fraud were the initial claims of projected talent shortfalls or shortages. Then the second was the "best and brightest" claim, with, pointedly, active efforts to fend off any efforts at setting standards. The third or fourth would be the "innovation" or "innovators" and the "entrepreneurs".
...
Thank you for admitting that you're a newbie.
"there is most certainly a shortage of local talent at a realistic price and reasonable attitude."
If you really invested some effort you could throw in a couple more weasel-words.
Thank your for corroborating that it's about cheap, young, pliant labor with flexible professional ethics, and for corroborating the gimmick of refusing to relocate able and willing US citizen talent but jumping straight from your tiny neighborhood's talent pool to foreign labor imported from thousands of miles across the seas, rather than tapping the vast pool of US citizen STEM talent of all ages available (unemployed or involuntarily out of STEM fields, as NSF refers to it) within just a few hundred miles.
Before H-1B, employers would fly in US citizens hundreds or even thousands of miles for interviews. Before H-1B, employers would relocate US citizen talent from one part of the USA to another, and provide temporary housing while they searched for apartments or homes. Before H-1B, employers would invest in 2-12 weeks of new-hire training, and 2-4 weeks of retained employee training; now they bodyshop.
Thank you for corroborating that, for many "IT" employers it's about finding people willing to implement your unethical schemes.
Before H-1B, a "reasonable attitude" was, "Let's make great software products that do good things!... even if we have to work around the clock once in a while to meet management's unrealistic release schedule despite what we told them in the planning phase.", not "How can we violate millions of people's privacy and leverage that information to get money for ourselves?"
* A great product in those times might be CAD/CAM/CAE software to design, pre-test, and manufacture higher quality products (cars, cranes, cherry-pickers, back-hoes, power tools, baby baths, tanks, diesel truck engines, toy trucks, sky-scrapers) while holding the line on expenses. It might be simulating a building to test it's resistance to earth-quakes or strong winds, or simulating a rocket to minimize costs of launching a communications satellite into stable orbit, or simulating various kinds of gun-powder grain to optimize performance and reduce schmutz. It might be analyzing and designing data-bases as tools to help optimize getting soldiers and everything they need to trouble spots as rapidly and safely as possible. Or it might be examining whether early adoption of steam engines increased or decreased productivity in manufacture of sugar and rum on plantations in Jamaica as compared with places which did not adopt the engines. Or it might be software to examine migration patterns in response to tax and regulatory changes in each state (yes, people do "vote with their feet" to flee power-mad politicians).