Senator Prods Microsoft On H-1B Visas After Layoff Plans 574
CWmike writes "US Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) told Microsoft this week that US citizens should get priority over H-1B visa holders as the software vendor moves forward on its plan to cut 5,000 jobs. 'These work visa programs were never intended to allow a company to retain foreign guest workers rather than similarly qualified American workers, when that company cuts jobs during an economic downturn,' Grassley wrote in a letter sent Thursday to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. The letter asked Microsoft to detail the types of jobs that will be eliminated and how those cuts will affect the company's H-1B workers."
Reader theodp adds, "On Friday, Microsoft coincidentally announced it would postpone construction of a planned $500 million data center in Grassley's home state of Iowa, although work on data centers in Chicago and Dublin will continue."
Re:...because H1Bs are forms, not people (Score:4, Informative)
Re:...because H1Bs are forms, not people (Score:5, Informative)
Re:...because H1Bs are forms, not people (Score:5, Informative)
They don't just have to find a new job.
They have to find an employer who is willing and able to sponsor them for either an H1B or a green card.
They didn't want to hire American's in the first p (Score:5, Informative)
Some of these companies didn't want to hire Americans in the first place according the Programmer's Guild.
Here's a video showing Immigration Attorney's explaining what companies need to do to get around the laws and hire more H1-Bs.
Basically, create impossible job descriptions and then go oversees since no American would qualify.
I've worked with and managed a few H1B programmers. Some where very talented. Some were hired just because they were cheap. They were no better than any random American college grad. They were just cheaper.
Both the American and foreign born developers worked hard and there were good and bad in both. It all boils down to money.
Most of these companies depend on American consumers to survive, but if everyone decides American workers are too expensive to hire, they're not going to have American consumers to buy their products and services.
Here's the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU&feature=channel_page [youtube.com]
Re:Republican? (Score:1, Informative)
I suggest he is just grandstanding. If you look over his record and positions at http://www.ontheissues.org/Senate/Chuck_Grassley.htm [ontheissues.org] your opinion might be refined. Or your hair might stand on end...
Re:...because H1Bs are forms, not people (Score:3, Informative)
Funny, thousands of highly skilled nerds lost their jobs in 2001, yet...the next Google did not form. Neither did the next Apple. The unemployed nerds just found new employment.
Re:...because H1Bs are forms, not people (Score:4, Informative)
I can understand that the well-being of american workers is more important than that of visa-holders to an elected politician. However, the impact of losing the job is much higher for H1Bs, as they usually have to leave the country (within 1 week I think). Considering the fact that these are humans, too, maybe it would be acceptable to lessen these restrictions somewhat, i. e. allow these people to stay in the country for a year if they have the financial means.
The entire H-1B process is reliant on the fact that there are people who have more rights (in this case, American citizens) and people with fewer rights (in this case, non-citizens of the USA). The American citizens have for whatever reasons the right to get jobs ahead of the others. Microsoft is allowed to hire non-citizens if they can prove that American citizens can't fill all the needed positions. Microsoft _wants_ to hire non-citizens because they have fewer rights, so they are willing to work for less money. If these people coming into the USA through H-1B didn't have fewer rights, they wouldn't be willing to work for less money, and Microsoft wouldn't want to hire them.
Whether the situation is fair or unfair is surely worth a discussion, but with H-1B you are only allowed into the USA because Microsoft couldn't find Americans to fill the job. Clearly if Microsoft fires American citizens, then that argument would be moot.
Re:...because H1Bs are forms, not people (Score:5, Informative)
actually, laid off h1b workers are allowed a 2 month "grace" period to either find a new job or leave the country
That is completely and utterly untrue. You have a 10 day period to leave the country - if you do not have another visa in process with the USCIS BEFORE YOU GET LAID OFF you are considered to be "out of status" after those 10 days and a USCIS examiner is likely to refuse you another visa if you apply for a new job without leaving the country. Being out of status is bad because it will count against you if you ever decide to get another visa or apply for a green card - even ONE day can result in a refusal.
Re:...because H1Bs are forms, not people (Score:3, Informative)
Re:...because H1Bs are forms, not people (Score:1, Informative)
Good luck with that (Score:4, Informative)
Obama has stated that he wants to RAISE the H-1B cap.
Gates disagrees (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Preferential Economics (Score:3, Informative)
Background: I am an American. I have usually voted Republican but not always. I am a Senior Programmer/Analyst by title, a development team lead by actual assigned task, at a Fortune 500 company.
Our company has a mandate to bring in technical consultants people from Patni or HCL. There is no interest in the best and the brightest, or the best for the job; they want the cheap body count. Of the three interviews of Patni folks we've had, two were great and the third couldn't tell me what "static" meant as a C keyword. The bosses would have been fine with any of them - it's just body count to them. In my experience, that's how managers in most big companies think - adequate body count, not best available.
Wikipedia says the H-1B program...
A company would at least claim in public that it brought in the H-1B because it couldn't find an adequate citizen. (To do otherwise would be PR suicide.) If they lay off a citizen employee who could perform the H-1B employee's tasks in an adequate fashion, they now know exactly where to find a citizen employee who can perform that H-1B's tasks.
However, assuming Wikipedia has it right, that is not, in fact, the rule of law. To quote:
But it doesn't seem right to me. In fact, it seems like an area where people who don't like the H-1B program should do some lobbying of their elected representatives.
Assuming a roughly equally qualified citizen and H-1B are available for a job in the US, I believe the citizen should be given preference. Maybe that makes me protectionist but it seems morally correct. Citizens of a country should have some preferential treatment in that country over non-citizens, including in matters of employment.
Are there other countries that allow non-citizens to come in to work under such a scheme, specifically allowing them to be employed instead of qualified citizen workers? I really don't know. Someone educate me.
Re:Hey! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hey! (Score:4, Informative)
I have no idea if the visas stop working if one lose ones job and if one have to leave and become the responsibility of the country you came from?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H1B#An_H-1B_worker_faces_additional_obstacles_at_his.2Fher_workplace [wikipedia.org]
Any H-1B worker essentially has the following weakness:
his ability to remain in U.S. is directly linked to his current job.
H-1B holders can change jobs only with difficulty. In some cases, the holders of H-1B visas find their employers have not completely accurately represented the terms of employment; they find themselves in a foreign land with only a limited understanding of the legal system.
H-1B workers can be disciplined at any time, by being laid off: the worker then has to leave U.S. within 10 days (and even these 10 days are allowed only at USCIS's discretion, no days are actually guaranteed by law).
The employer has, however, the legal obligation to pay for the return transportation of the laid-off worker.
The worker can only avoid leaving the country by finding another employer that is willing to sponsor for H-1B, often impossible in the short amount of time available.
If unhappy with the workplace, a U.S. citizen or green card holder can simply quit his or her job, whereas a H-1B's right to remain in the U.S. is tied to the job.
Re:Republican? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:...because H1Bs are forms, not people (Score:5, Informative)
On a side note, I thought the US was build on people coming from bad situations to live the American dream, you guys sure have changed your mindset lately.
If that was the case, there wouldn't be any complaints, because then they wouldn't be getting paid less. It's the fact that they're only temp workers that get paid up to 23 percent less [ddj.com] than Americans in the same positions that cheeses people off. Level playing field--fine. Unfair playing field where management lies about not being able to find qualified personnel and then turns around and pays substantially lower salaries--not good.
And, to continue, the "lower pay" part is illegal. I have actually looked into it (from a business standpoint) before, and, as a business owner, I have to basically sign an affidavit that I will pay the same rate to the foreign worker as a similarly qualified US worker, and I have to swear that I can't find anyone in the US to fill the job.
My wife came over on an H1A originally as a nurse, and it was the same story. The nursing home was getting Filipino nurses to come over so they could pay them shit wages that Americans wouldn't even consider. The Filipinos also put up with *anything* because they could be sent back to the Philippines with a signature from the director.
I have a friend who's in the same shitty position now as a computer programmer - the company illegally didn't pay him for 8 months while he was "benched", but he won't sue them because he wants to be in the US so bad. They owe him tens of thousands of dollars. He ended up finding the current contract that he's working by himself, but still is working through the agency that dicked him over. Looking them up on the internet, he's not the only one they've done this to.
Anyway, it's a mess, but if the US simply enforced the law, particularly the "equal pay" part, the problem would go away.
About Chuck Grassley (Score:3, Informative)
ObDisclosure: Charles Grassley is a family friend. I haven't had a conversation with him in several years, though.
Grassley is a vanishing breed. He's a small-town Iowan who still runs his own family farm. He's a child of the Depression and stretches a buck like it's nobody's business. He's the stereotype of Republicans from old Frank Capra movies: you can easily imagine him in a green-tinted eye visor making quiet, forlorn grief over how he forgot to get a receipt for lunch at McDonald's.
He was part of a labor union when he worked on an assembly line, and he has been current in his union dues for the last five decades. Yes, Chuck Grassley, a 28-year Senator and Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee, is a lifelong union man and an advocate for organized labor.
He is no fan of the FBI. He's spoken out many times about FBI abuses of power, lack of accountability, and the FBI's tendency to retaliate against whistleblowers. He's shielded many whistleblowers from retaliation.
My favorite Grassley story comes from my father, who once phoned me up after he went for a drive with him. Grassley was pulling into an underground parking garage... shut off the engine, put the car in neutral... and coasted down five levels of parking. He explained to Dad that the price of gas just kept on going up and up and up, and he was trying to cut back on his usage.
So yeah. Grassley's the real deal. He's part of a dying, vanishing breed of Republicanism. God knows I'd much rather have Republicans like him than GWB any day of the week.
Re:Republican? (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft H1B visa employees are on the same payscale and benefits program as US employees. Just keep in mind when you're arguing about/against/for H1B visas, that Microsoft is one of the (seemingly few) companies that does not abuse the privilege-- they genuinely need qualified people from overseas.
Wow, Check out these H1B YouTube Videos (Score:1, Informative)
An unbiased opinion on the H1-B (Score:2, Informative)
I was an H1B worker at Microsoft (Score:3, Informative)
I worked at Microsoft in Redmond with H1B work status for four years. Last year I left MS because I found job opportunity that was better for my family. (This new job happened to be back in my country.)
I can't comment about the overall H1B program in the US, or the overall US labour market, or even on any new changes at MS over the past year, but I do definitely know about the experiences of H1B employees in the developer and testing roles at MS.
I (and all other non-US-citizen employees) were treated exactly the same as every other employee. We had the same job descriptions and responsibilities as other employees and the same opportunities for promotion. We were integrated in teams that included US citizens, other H1B-status workers, and people with other immigration statuses. We were certainly paid the same as any other employee with a similar job and similar experience.
I also know that Microsoft has very high hiring standards for developer and tester roles. I was not in a management/lead position, but I occasionally reviewed resumes and took part in interviewing applicants. Interviews were tough all-day affairs, including questions that required the use of logic, math, programming, and testing methodologies. The point wasn't to see if the applicant could regurgitate the knowledge, but to view his or her thinking process, creativity, and problem solving abilities as they tried to come up with a solution, and handle complications or restrictions that the interviewer throws at the candidate after they come up with an initial solution.
During the time I was there, my group and most others were always trying to hire more people. The major bottleneck was waiting to get any resumes for candidates that seemed worth interviewing. Most interviews ended with frustration that the candidate wasn't up to standards. Just because you applied to MS and didn't get a job or even an interview is not proof that Microsoft didn't need to look outside the US to find candidates up to their standards.
So, you might have valid criticisms about the quality of Microsoft software, but MS really does have very high standards for their employees, and employees with H1B status are treated the same as any other full-time employee there.