At one time, America was a great country, but now our corrupt politicians are turning it into just another third world country. I don't blame you for leaving. The guestworker visa system is designed to transfer wealth from the middle class (IT workers) to the rich (corporate execs) by lowering wages for IT workers through wage arbitrage and taking the resulting wage savings for themselves. All with the assistance of government.
Note that I mostly do Fortune 500, and they mostly do contract workers with only a few direct hire H1Bs, so things may be different with a small business doing a direct perm hire for a guestworker...
The Fortune 500 are bringing them in so fast that they really don't have time (and sometimes no longer have any permanent folks left with the expertise) to do a technical interview, so they often rely on the bodyshop which has a vested interest in getting a body on site no matter what their qualifications. This financial house brought in 150 in the space of a couple weeks (of which 90 were in one huge boiler room with me).
The larger the corporation, the less they bother with due diligence. Since they no longer hire from within, but poach folks from each other, they no longer have the managerial skills to do due diligence. (Running Microsoft Project or one of its bastard progeny does *not* constitute "managerial skills".)
They are paid much less than equivalent American workers, often 30-50% less, so the taxes they pay are far less.
And most are not permanent employees paid by the corporation, but are contracters paid by the bodyshop and many bodyshops (especially for the L1s) pay them back in the home country in order to avoid taxes entirely (and avoid scrutiny of their low reates of pay).
I'm not humbled. At my last contract at a noted financial house, I was placed in a room with 90 programmers and analysts. Of the 90, only two were Americans, me and a secretary to keep the records.
Of the guestworkers, most only lasted the two weeks it took to ask them to do something and to realize they couldn't do what their resumes claimed, such as testers who didn't know what a test case was. So they were replaced with another H1B, who was no better. This continued until they finally gave up and started to pay the freight and hire Americans who stayed because they were competent and had not lied on their resumes. When the project finally wound down, 90% of those remaining were Americans.
So if you are "humbled" by their abilities, I am sorry for you.
It was not always this way. Ten years or more ago, the H1Bs were competent. No, they never had skills that were unavailable locally, but they were good. Now those who have the skills they claim are a minority.
Although guestworkers can be used for almost any job requiring a BA, most are concentrated in IT (computer programmers, analysts, administrators, etc.), which total about three million.
Leaving out other guestworker categories, such as L1 which has no limits whatsoever, the H1B category lasts six years, with unlimited renewals if a green card is applied for. Since (until our economy died) nearly all H1Bs wanted a green card,that means any H1B holder can stay here forever. So they are additive...got that?
For several years the quotas were 200,000 per year, and for several years they were a tad over 100,000 per year. It only takes five or so years to get a million total, out of our total IT population of three million. Um, that is one out of every three jobs. If you ever worked in an IT shop in the Fortune 500 (where some of us spent our whole professional lives), you would be able to look around and see that about a third of all current IT workers are guestworkers.
And the current 85K per year (typically exceeded "by accident"), does not even mention the totally unlimited number of H1B visas available to educational or non-profit institutions.
Well, at least I can hope that your turn will come soon...
Oh, and if they "need the talent" then why are companies laying off the workers who were doing the jobs, but not allowing them to leave and not giving them their severance pay until after the older worker finishes teaching the new H1B how to do the job that the H1B is supposed to be so much better at doing?
Please get some knowledge of the real world before spouting off the propaganda of "CompeteAmerica" or the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
They are not, repeat *not* paid the same. They are paid on average 30% less for H1B and 50% less for L1. The H1Bs are paid less (semi-legally) due to age discrimination (laying off workers over age 40 and replacing them with younger, less talented H1Bs, because there is NOT "a prevailing wage" but four of them, from "entry level" to "fully competent". So all the company has to do is replace a "fully competent" American with an "entry level" H1B and they can pay at the 17th percentile wage instead of the 50th++ percentile they were paying.
Please do some research before spouting off. If you don't know where to start to find actual information, then start here:
http://www.flcdatacenter.com/skill.aspx
The American auto industry didn't die because of unions. It died because idiotic managers refused to build cars with any quality controls, and Japan listened to Deming. Then idiotic managers chose to try to force consumers to buy gas guzzlers just as gas prices rose to four bucks a gallon.
Poor management was not caused by the unions.
Let me complete it for you:
H1B's are designed to allow US employers to obtain employee's with skills that they are UNABLE TO FIND IN THE US for 30% less than the going wage.
L1 visas H1B's are designed to allow US employers to obtain employee's with skills that they are UNABLE TO FIND IN THE US for 50% less than the going wage.
Offshoring is H1B's are designed to allow US employers to obtain employee's with skills that they are UNABLE TO FIND IN THE US for 80% less than the going wage.
Offshoring is very dependent on guestworkers (H1B or L1) to get company info so the former guestworkers can lead offshoring teams, cut off guestworkers and you reduce offshoring markedly.
Your simple change would work if the employers had to participate in an auction so those bidding the highest wage got the worker.
If a "fast track to citizenship" was a genuine solution, it would be most quick and efficient to give every person in the world immediate US citizenship.
Then everyone can compete on an even basis. And all world wages can reach their common level...about $2.50 a day.
H1Bs simply are not paid the actual prevailing wage because the system has loopholes that let employers pretend to without actually doing it.
There are actually four levels of prevailing wage, from "entry level" to "competent". Although employers tell Congress they want "the best and the brightest" they hire very few who are even "competent" and hire mostly those who are at the prevailing wage for "entry level".
if H1B visa holders had freedom of movement, then their wages would be no different than prevailing wages.
But the prevailing wage would be much lower, first because of an excess of workers chasing too few jobs (American companies have been rigorously downsizing for decades), and second because foreign workers can take advantage of using remittances and relative costs of living between their home country and here to vastly increase their perceived wage.
The result of an open flow of workers between countries is that the average wages in the US would eventually match the average wage worldwide. I seem to recall the median average wage worldwide is $2 per day.
Shortages: Any shortage could be predicted by a reasonably competent manager and filled by training in-house workers. But companies no longer want to train employees, because they no longer have "workers" they have "resources" (commodities).
I've worked for Fortune500 companies for decades and been a technical interviewer for years: nearly all jobs are pedestrian, and companies do not need nor want the best and brightest (except when testifying before Congress). They only want the cheapest, even if it means lower management gets overridden by upper management to force hiring the worst and cheapest.
And, correct, companies have no idea how to define quality in their workers, which is why they settle for cheapest short-term, because that is all they can measure successfully.
H1Bs are not legal immigrants. They are temporary guest workers with a visa that can allow them to stay for six years (three years with another three year extension).
But it is also a "dual intent" visa, which allows their employer to apply for a green card for them, at which point they would become legal immigrants.
No, it's not a felony, more of a minor misdemeanor.
But if they get a job, they have to provide documentation, and falsification of documents *is* a felony, as is identity theft....at which point, it's not quite right to call them "undocumented"...
Even without H1B, it's extremely easy for companies to move their opearations off-shore.
False. This may have been true for largely unskilled factory work, but for IT and similar work, the workers need the background in corporate culture and business processes that they can only get on site in the United States. That is why the H1B is called "the offshoring visa" because it gives workers from other countries the necessary background to offshore entire operations later (say, after the H1B runs out in six years).
Without that six years of knowledge of local operations and proprietary information, the offshoring projects would mostly be doomed to failure (and many fail anyway).
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At one time, America was a great country, but now our corrupt politicians are turning it into just another third world country. I don't blame you for leaving. The guestworker visa system is designed to transfer wealth from the middle class (IT workers) to the rich (corporate execs) by lowering wages for IT workers through wage arbitrage and taking the resulting wage savings for themselves. All with the assistance of government.
Note that I mostly do Fortune 500, and they mostly do contract workers with only a few direct hire H1Bs, so things may be different with a small business doing a direct perm hire for a guestworker...
The Fortune 500 are bringing them in so fast that they really don't have time (and sometimes no longer have any permanent folks left with the expertise) to do a technical interview, so they often rely on the bodyshop which has a vested interest in getting a body on site no matter what their qualifications. This financial house brought in 150 in the space of a couple weeks (of which 90 were in one huge boiler room with me). The larger the corporation, the less they bother with due diligence. Since they no longer hire from within, but poach folks from each other, they no longer have the managerial skills to do due diligence. (Running Microsoft Project or one of its bastard progeny does *not* constitute "managerial skills".)
They are paid much less than equivalent American workers, often 30-50% less, so the taxes they pay are far less.
And most are not permanent employees paid by the corporation, but are contracters paid by the bodyshop and many bodyshops (especially for the L1s) pay them back in the home country in order to avoid taxes entirely (and avoid scrutiny of their low reates of pay).
I'm not humbled. At my last contract at a noted financial house, I was placed in a room with 90 programmers and analysts. Of the 90, only two were Americans, me and a secretary to keep the records.
Of the guestworkers, most only lasted the two weeks it took to ask them to do something and to realize they couldn't do what their resumes claimed, such as testers who didn't know what a test case was. So they were replaced with another H1B, who was no better. This continued until they finally gave up and started to pay the freight and hire Americans who stayed because they were competent and had not lied on their resumes. When the project finally wound down, 90% of those remaining were Americans.
So if you are "humbled" by their abilities, I am sorry for you.
It was not always this way. Ten years or more ago, the H1Bs were competent. No, they never had skills that were unavailable locally, but they were good. Now those who have the skills they claim are a minority.
Although guestworkers can be used for almost any job requiring a BA, most are concentrated in IT (computer programmers, analysts, administrators, etc.), which total about three million.
Leaving out other guestworker categories, such as L1 which has no limits whatsoever, the H1B category lasts six years, with unlimited renewals if a green card is applied for. Since (until our economy died) nearly all H1Bs wanted a green card,that means any H1B holder can stay here forever. So they are additive...got that?
For several years the quotas were 200,000 per year, and for several years they were a tad over 100,000 per year. It only takes five or so years to get a million total, out of our total IT population of three million. Um, that is one out of every three jobs. If you ever worked in an IT shop in the Fortune 500 (where some of us spent our whole professional lives), you would be able to look around and see that about a third of all current IT workers are guestworkers.
And the current 85K per year (typically exceeded "by accident"), does not even mention the totally unlimited number of H1B visas available to educational or non-profit institutions.
Well, at least I can hope that your turn will come soon...
Um, not the INS, why would they have the information?
Try the Department of Labor: http://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/wageinfo.cfm
Oh, and if they "need the talent" then why are companies laying off the workers who were doing the jobs, but not allowing them to leave and not giving them their severance pay until after the older worker finishes teaching the new H1B how to do the job that the H1B is supposed to be so much better at doing? Please get some knowledge of the real world before spouting off the propaganda of "CompeteAmerica" or the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
They are not, repeat *not* paid the same. They are paid on average 30% less for H1B and 50% less for L1. The H1Bs are paid less (semi-legally) due to age discrimination (laying off workers over age 40 and replacing them with younger, less talented H1Bs, because there is NOT "a prevailing wage" but four of them, from "entry level" to "fully competent". So all the company has to do is replace a "fully competent" American with an "entry level" H1B and they can pay at the 17th percentile wage instead of the 50th++ percentile they were paying.
Please do some research before spouting off. If you don't know where to start to find actual information, then start here: http://www.flcdatacenter.com/skill.aspx
They came here to carve a new life... ...out of the American Indian!
The American auto industry didn't die because of unions. It died because idiotic managers refused to build cars with any quality controls, and Japan listened to Deming. Then idiotic managers chose to try to force consumers to buy gas guzzlers just as gas prices rose to four bucks a gallon. Poor management was not caused by the unions.
Let me complete it for you: H1B's are designed to allow US employers to obtain employee's with skills that they are UNABLE TO FIND IN THE US for 30% less than the going wage.
L1 visas H1B's are designed to allow US employers to obtain employee's with skills that they are UNABLE TO FIND IN THE US for 50% less than the going wage.
Offshoring is H1B's are designed to allow US employers to obtain employee's with skills that they are UNABLE TO FIND IN THE US for 80% less than the going wage.
Offshoring is very dependent on guestworkers (H1B or L1) to get company info so the former guestworkers can lead offshoring teams, cut off guestworkers and you reduce offshoring markedly.
Your simple change would work if the employers had to participate in an auction so those bidding the highest wage got the worker.
Can you imagine the reaction if the the gov't created a visa class for foreign grocery workers, truck drivers...
There already is one. It's called "illegal alien".
An auction means those wanting H1Bs win if they offer the highest salary to the worker, not to the government: http://numen.wordpress.com/2008/03/18/h1b-auction/
Try telling that to Microsoft.
If a "fast track to citizenship" was a genuine solution, it would be most quick and efficient to give every person in the world immediate US citizenship.
Then everyone can compete on an even basis. And all world wages can reach their common level...about $2.50 a day.
H1Bs simply are not paid the actual prevailing wage because the system has loopholes that let employers pretend to without actually doing it.
There are actually four levels of prevailing wage, from "entry level" to "competent". Although employers tell Congress they want "the best and the brightest" they hire very few who are even "competent" and hire mostly those who are at the prevailing wage for "entry level".
I thought the USA was founded on immigration, you know...
Yes. Our country was founded by those who found success here by stealing land from the Indians and labor from Blacks.
Has India's standard of living increased for all castes or just the highest castes who are the main beneficiaries of all the new jobs?
if H1B visa holders had freedom of movement, then their wages would be no different than prevailing wages.
But the prevailing wage would be much lower, first because of an excess of workers chasing too few jobs (American companies have been rigorously downsizing for decades), and second because foreign workers can take advantage of using remittances and relative costs of living between their home country and here to vastly increase their perceived wage.
The result of an open flow of workers between countries is that the average wages in the US would eventually match the average wage worldwide. I seem to recall the median average wage worldwide is $2 per day.
Shortages: Any shortage could be predicted by a reasonably competent manager and filled by training in-house workers. But companies no longer want to train employees, because they no longer have "workers" they have "resources" (commodities).
I've worked for Fortune500 companies for decades and been a technical interviewer for years: nearly all jobs are pedestrian, and companies do not need nor want the best and brightest (except when testifying before Congress). They only want the cheapest, even if it means lower management gets overridden by upper management to force hiring the worst and cheapest.
And, correct, companies have no idea how to define quality in their workers, which is why they settle for cheapest short-term, because that is all they can measure successfully.
H1Bs are not legal immigrants. They are temporary guest workers with a visa that can allow them to stay for six years (three years with another three year extension). But it is also a "dual intent" visa, which allows their employer to apply for a green card for them, at which point they would become legal immigrants.
No, it's not a felony, more of a minor misdemeanor. But if they get a job, they have to provide documentation, and falsification of documents *is* a felony, as is identity theft. ...at which point, it's not quite right to call them "undocumented"...
Even without H1B, it's extremely easy for companies to move their opearations off-shore.
False. This may have been true for largely unskilled factory work, but for IT and similar work, the workers need the background in corporate culture and business processes that they can only get on site in the United States. That is why the H1B is called "the offshoring visa" because it gives workers from other countries the necessary background to offshore entire operations later (say, after the H1B runs out in six years).
Without that six years of knowledge of local operations and proprietary information, the offshoring projects would mostly be doomed to failure (and many fail anyway).