Yes. But that was before the financial meltdown. If they go to the Senate this year and ask for an increase in H-1B visas, your point would be valid. Context is important.
Also, why do you assume that the 5000 workers that Microsoft is going to layoff are all tech workers with homogeneous skills?
Adding to what you wrote, across the board tax cuts do not really help people in lower income groups. The popular theory propagated by the Pubs is that it stimulates growth which is partially true, but it also results in inflation which wipes out the advantage of getting an extra hundred dollars in your paycheck for low/middle class workers.
This is exactly what the Bush tax cuts have achieved. Education is the most important factor that keeps income inequality in check and allows future generations of low/middle class families to catch up with rich kids. The cost of college education has soared to an extent where only the rich can send their kids to the top schools, irrespective of merit. The U.S. used to be such a great country because there was some balance between capitalism and socialism. The extreme forms of both have proved to be unworkable. In the past 8 years the balance has tilted firmly in favor of capitalism. If the basic framework of an economy is weak, how can it support long-term growth? If healthcare costs soar to an extent where it's not possible for small businesses to afford it, most people will be afraid to leave their jobs in big firms to form startups.
However, due to advances in medical science, the average life expectancy is going up, hence the rate at which people are dying will go down unless the growth in the birth rate + immigration balance it out.
This is partly true. There are 3 stages in the Green Card process - PERM, I-140 and I-485 (a.k.a. Adjustment of Status). The day the PERM application is filed is called the priority date and roughly decides your place in the queue. Roughly because the USCIS frequently processes out of order.
After the I-485 has been filed and pending for over 180 days and the I-140 has been approved, the employee can switch jobs as long as it's in a similar position. It's also possible to recapture the priority date by having another employer file for PERM and I-140 if the old I-140 has been approved and not been revoked by the previous employer.
As long as you have an approved PERM and/or I-140 it's fairly easy to keep extending the H-1B indefinitely beyond the 6 year period till your I-485 gets approved. You can also choose to work on EAD instead of H-1B if the I-485 application is pending.
The biggest hiccup in the Green Card process is the per country limit of 7% of the quota which keeps applicants from large countries like India and China waiting in line indefinitely while applicants from most other countries get approved a lot sooner because they are not affected by the per country quotas.
It's not as if the groups that oppose the H-1B program (Programmers Guild, NumbersUSA, etc.) by calling it "indentured servitude" are advocating for improvements in the Employment Based Immigration system (a.k.a. Green Card) where someone from India and China could have to wait for 6-10 years to get a Green Card. They've opposed all immigration reforms that would bring relief to the estimated 500K - 1 million people stuck in the backlog.
It's nice to throw in terms like "open borders" to voice your opposition to the H-1B program, but without any support for reform in the EB immigration system, it's just plain old hypocrisy to mask your true protectionist agendas.
Like I said, C is heavily used in the systems programming area - all the low level stuff like kernel, drivers, compilers, high-end servers, networking/telecom software etc, irrespective of whether they are new projects or old. Most Bay Area startups that are in the systems area use C or C++. I didn't claim that C was the language of choice for web/application/middleware programmers. It's far from being dead or on life-support like most people believe. Don't equate it to Cobol.
Thanks for supporting the theory that there is indeed a shortage of good programmers in the systems area where C is heavily used. Of course, that's not what you intended to say. You thought your smart ass comment about C being an obsolete language that is only used in legacy systems would make you sound really cool and hip - didn't you?
Since this limit wasn't expanded this year (yet), that means lots of H1-Bs are starting to go home.
So a lot of H1-B's are going home this year. The local labor market WILL get tighter, and wages WILL rise.
H-1B extensions are not counted towards the quota. People are going back because there are more growth opportunities in India and getting a Green Card is simply taking too long these days. No one wants to work as a software engineer for 6-10 years anymore just to get a Green Card. In India you can become a senior manager in the same time.
The U.S. is invading every damn country in the world and is responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians and you're not going to buy a laptop from a Chinese company because of civil rights issues?
Maybe you should also use leaves from your backyard instead of toilet paper from now on.
The response to this question proves what I've suspected for a long time - Many nerds/geeks/techies who post on slashdot have strong opinions about technology and almost everything else and will go to great lengths to prove that they are right. Finally, there's a question that requires actual knowledge about technology to answer it (not just opinions) and look at the number of posts rated 5 (or even the total number of posts).
I'm from India and our educational system is similar to that in U.K. We have general courses till class 10 - English, a second language (it was Hindi for me), Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, History, Geography and another subject - we had to choose between Computer Science, Accounting and Economics (I chose CS). For class 11-12 (we call it higher secondary or plus two), we had to choose between Science (English, Physics, Chemistry, Maths, Biology optional and another subject - Computer Science or a second language), Arts and Commerce. When I moved to class 11, I was happy that I didn't have to study Arts and Commerce courses because I loved Science and Maths, but in hindsight I wish I had a broader exposure to other subjects. It's a separate issue that it's difficult to study a lot of courses during classes 11-12 and also prepare for the I.I.T. entrance exam that tests you on Maths, Physics and Chemistry only.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure that this was dug up by one of those losers at Programmers Guild.
Motherfucker, you can't even Google, can you?
Yes. But that was before the financial meltdown. If they go to the Senate this year and ask for an increase in H-1B visas, your point would be valid. Context is important.
Also, why do you assume that the 5000 workers that Microsoft is going to layoff are all tech workers with homogeneous skills?
Adding to what you wrote, across the board tax cuts do not really help people in lower income groups. The popular theory propagated by the Pubs is that it stimulates growth which is partially true, but it also results in inflation which wipes out the advantage of getting an extra hundred dollars in your paycheck for low/middle class workers.
This is exactly what the Bush tax cuts have achieved. Education is the most important factor that keeps income inequality in check and allows future generations of low/middle class families to catch up with rich kids. The cost of college education has soared to an extent where only the rich can send their kids to the top schools, irrespective of merit. The U.S. used to be such a great country because there was some balance between capitalism and socialism. The extreme forms of both have proved to be unworkable. In the past 8 years the balance has tilted firmly in favor of capitalism. If the basic framework of an economy is weak, how can it support long-term growth? If healthcare costs soar to an extent where it's not possible for small businesses to afford it, most people will be afraid to leave their jobs in big firms to form startups.
There will always be people dying......
However, due to advances in medical science, the average life expectancy is going up, hence the rate at which people are dying will go down unless the growth in the birth rate + immigration balance it out.
This is partly true. There are 3 stages in the Green Card process - PERM, I-140 and I-485 (a.k.a. Adjustment of Status). The day the PERM application is filed is called the priority date and roughly decides your place in the queue. Roughly because the USCIS frequently processes out of order.
After the I-485 has been filed and pending for over 180 days and the I-140 has been approved, the employee can switch jobs as long as it's in a similar position. It's also possible to recapture the priority date by having another employer file for PERM and I-140 if the old I-140 has been approved and not been revoked by the previous employer.
As long as you have an approved PERM and/or I-140 it's fairly easy to keep extending the H-1B indefinitely beyond the 6 year period till your I-485 gets approved. You can also choose to work on EAD instead of H-1B if the I-485 application is pending.
The biggest hiccup in the Green Card process is the per country limit of 7% of the quota which keeps applicants from large countries like India and China waiting in line indefinitely while applicants from most other countries get approved a lot sooner because they are not affected by the per country quotas.
It's not as if the groups that oppose the H-1B program (Programmers Guild, NumbersUSA, etc.) by calling it "indentured servitude" are advocating for improvements in the Employment Based Immigration system (a.k.a. Green Card) where someone from India and China could have to wait for 6-10 years to get a Green Card. They've opposed all immigration reforms that would bring relief to the estimated 500K - 1 million people stuck in the backlog.
It's nice to throw in terms like "open borders" to voice your opposition to the H-1B program, but without any support for reform in the EB immigration system, it's just plain old hypocrisy to mask your true protectionist agendas.
... on your priorities.
Do you want to get laid on a regular basis during those 4 years or do you want to get a job after you graduate?
Like I said, C is heavily used in the systems programming area - all the low level stuff like kernel, drivers, compilers, high-end servers, networking/telecom software etc, irrespective of whether they are new projects or old. Most Bay Area startups that are in the systems area use C or C++. I didn't claim that C was the language of choice for web/application/middleware programmers. It's far from being dead or on life-support like most people believe. Don't equate it to Cobol.
Thanks for supporting the theory that there is indeed a shortage of good programmers in the systems area where C is heavily used. Of course, that's not what you intended to say. You thought your smart ass comment about C being an obsolete language that is only used in legacy systems would make you sound really cool and hip - didn't you?
Since this limit wasn't expanded this year (yet), that means lots of H1-Bs are starting to go home. So a lot of H1-B's are going home this year. The local labor market WILL get tighter, and wages WILL rise.
H-1B extensions are not counted towards the quota. People are going back because there are more growth opportunities in India and getting a Green Card is simply taking too long these days. No one wants to work as a software engineer for 6-10 years anymore just to get a Green Card. In India you can become a senior manager in the same time.
They already had a website for that - http://webcast.berkeley.edu/ I guess this moving those videos to YouTube was the next logical step.
The U.S. is invading every damn country in the world and is responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians and you're not going to buy a laptop from a Chinese company because of civil rights issues? Maybe you should also use leaves from your backyard instead of toilet paper from now on.
I thought the 21st birthday was a bigger deal :-)
Last week the focus was on the U.S. This week the focus is on the world. Although it may not be obvious to many, there is a difference.
The response to this question proves what I've suspected for a long time - Many nerds/geeks/techies who post on slashdot have strong opinions about technology and almost everything else and will go to great lengths to prove that they are right. Finally, there's a question that requires actual knowledge about technology to answer it (not just opinions) and look at the number of posts rated 5 (or even the total number of posts).
I'm from India and our educational system is similar to that in U.K. We have general courses till class 10 - English, a second language (it was Hindi for me), Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, History, Geography and another subject - we had to choose between Computer Science, Accounting and Economics (I chose CS). For class 11-12 (we call it higher secondary or plus two), we had to choose between Science (English, Physics, Chemistry, Maths, Biology optional and another subject - Computer Science or a second language), Arts and Commerce. When I moved to class 11, I was happy that I didn't have to study Arts and Commerce courses because I loved Science and Maths, but in hindsight I wish I had a broader exposure to other subjects. It's a separate issue that it's difficult to study a lot of courses during classes 11-12 and also prepare for the I.I.T. entrance exam that tests you on Maths, Physics and Chemistry only.