H-1B Cap Reached Today; Didn't Get In? Too Bad 512
First time accepted submitter Dawn Kawamoto writes "Employers stampeding into the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service to get their H-1B petitions filed before the cap is reached are getting the door slammed in their face today. The cap was hit in near record time of 5 days, compared to the 10 weeks it took last year to have more than enough petitions to fulfill the combined cap of 85,000 statutory and advanced degree H-1B petitions. While U.S. tech workers scream that they're losing out on jobs as H-1B workers are hired, employers are countering that the talent pool is lacking and they need to increase the cap. Of course, Congress is wrangling in on this one as to whether it's time to raise the bar."
talent! (Score:5, Insightful)
talent pool is lacking = we don't want to pay
Re:talent! (Score:4, Insightful)
Sad but true.
I'm willing to bet that the big H1-B heavy corps (Microsoft, Intel, Infosys, and similar) had people sitting at the door waiting in line, metaphorically speaking. They likely snatched up their maximums in less than an hour after opening.
Good luck if you're a small operator, but at least the good news is the big guys made it easier to work with a lot of excellent-but-smaller companies.
They're not who you think (Score:5, Insightful)
If you scroll through the government's visa data, you notice something surprising. The biggest employer of foreign tech workers is not Microsoft â" not by a long shot. Nor is it Google, Facebook or any other name-brand tech company. The biggest users of H-1Bs are consulting companies, or as Ron Hira calls them, "offshore-outsourcing firms."
For the past decade, he's been studying how consulting firms use temporary work visas to help American companies cut costs. He says they use the visas to supply cheaper workers here, but also to smooth the transfer of American jobs to information-technology centers overseas. "What these firms have done is exploit the loopholes in the H-1B program to bring in on-site workers to learn the jobs [of] the Americans to then ship it back offshore," he says. "And also to bring in on-site workers who are cheaper on the H-1B and undercut American workers right here."
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 â'â' all Indian firms.
consulting companies, (Score:3, Informative)
And who uses the "consulting companies"? Your local company. They use these "consulting companies" for their IT needs.
And in the meantime they bitch and moan about the lack of local talent.
Listen folks: business people are two faced liars. Anyone who defends them is the same.
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And who uses the "consulting companies"? Your local company. They use these "consulting companies" for their IT needs.
And in the meantime they bitch and moan about the lack of local talent.
Listen folks: business people are two faced liars. Anyone who defends them is the same.
Nope, not my "local company". Mostly it's the big guys that ARE NOT on the H1-B Top List: Microsoft, Google, IBM, others...
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And who uses the "consulting companies"? Your local company. They use these "consulting companies" for their IT needs.
And in the meantime they bitch and moan about the lack of local talent.
Listen folks: business people are two faced liars. Anyone who defends them is the same.
Nope, not my "local company". Mostly it's the big guys that ARE NOT on the H1-B Top List: Microsoft, Google, IBM, others...
And government contract work, again through contract agencies. The Pimps, as I affectionately call them.
I'd be surprised if even 10% of the quota is filled with direct hire, H1B to Employer hires, with no mediating Pimp.
Re: consulting companies, (Score:3)
Re: They're not who you think (Score:2)
Look up your H1-b visa co-workers and see what they make:
http://salaryquest.com/ [salaryquest.com]
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I don't know where they get there data from but it's complete bullshit. A software developer making over $800k? Yeah, sure. I make far more than most developers and I'm not even in the same league as that. All of the salaries listed looked like pipe-dreams to me. I think they took real salaries and multiplied by 5.
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M*therf*cker. No wonder the NorthEast market has been dead this last year.
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Re:They're not who you think (Score:5, Insightful)
It's easy to look good when you have no student loans to repay and are willing to work for half the market rate.
Of course slave labor is going to look better to to an employer. That doesn't make it acceptable.
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Paid out-of-state rates, since as a foreign student I could never qualify for in-state rate, no matter how long I lived here.
The same insane rules apply to citizens. I know people that moved to a new state for a state uni, and they paid out-of-state rates the whole time, even after 6 years. It would take something like two full years off with no school to earn residency for tuition purposes before re-starting school. Even a year off working between an undergrad and graduate school, and your 6th year in-state would still be as a non-resident (for tuition purposes, 30 days in the state and you had to update your driver's license
Re:They're not who you think (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They're not who you think (Score:5, Informative)
From the perspective of a friend who lives in Silicon Valley, what is especially upsetting to her about the requested increase in H-1B and other visas (whose blatant goal it is to import more "high-tech" workers) is the support it receives from high profile high-tech leaders like Bill Gates, John Chambers, Eric Schmidt, and other. Those men made billions off the backs of American high tech workers, and they are using deception and outright lies to support their cause to bring in more H-1B workers. This is a pure race to the bottom, for salary, and skill. There is *some* need for H-1B's, but it's a mere fraction of the current 85,000 cap. This is an agregious attempt to displace qualified American workers, period. Read on if you want accurate information about this outrage.
Some of the information presented in the following links would shock most Americans, because American corporate leaders don't want us to know the truth, and they are paying off policy makers with contributions to keep the truth from us. The H-1B fiasco has cost Americans $10TRILLION dollars, since 1975 (fromProfessor Norm Matloff's study (UC Davis).. For anyone who wants to know the truth, read on.
One of the most respected technology pundits in Silicon Valley: http://www.cringely.com/2012/10/23/what-americans-dont-know-about-h-1b-visas-could-hurt-us-all/ [cringely.com]
Watch this attorney and his consultants teach corporations how to manipulate the law to replace qualified American workers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU [youtube.com]
Here's more abuse of the L-1 Visa (H1-B's are only the tip of the iceberg http://economyincrisis.org/content/l-visa-programs-brimming-abuses [economyincrisis.org]
Professor Norman Matloff's extremely well documented studies: http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html [ucdavis.edu]
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How do you want foreign people to come to work to US? Close the borders for the foreign workers? I had opportunity to work in US for 3 years (L-2 visa), I liked it and I never had any problems with the salary level. At the moment I'm working in Europe again and happy, but if I ever wanted to return to work in US how should I do that? I also worked in China and sad to say the Chinese government is more open towards foreign workers than the US government.
I would hope that a real capitalistic economy would be
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...having companies held hostage to some nation wide union of american workers is not a good thing in the long run.
Good for who? The limits may be inconvenient for foreign workers. They may be inconvenient for international corporations. But, keeping American jobs in America is good for American workers. And yes, America makes more than enough highly skilled workers to fill all these jobs.
Re:They're not who you think (Score:4, Interesting)
@Kumiorava,
I went to the UK a few times as part of my job employed by a US company. I usually arrived via Gatwick. I had a US passport, but no Visa since I was working for a US company temporarily at their offices. I was "grilled" at the airport in Customs by a british custom/immigration agent for around 10 minutes. I even told her I had a house in the US and I wasn't going to be there more than 2 weeks. But I still had to answer all these questions and I was treated like I was trying to "sneak" in to the UK.
I also went to the Philippines several times and went through some of the same mess and I had to get multiple Visa's to stay beyond 2 weeks each time, even though I was working for a US company based in the Philippines and had no intention of staying or taking jobs from local residents. I was in fact there to train staff.
I went to India one week to conduct training working for a US based company. I had to get a letter of introduction from someone that worked as my office, a visa that cost a couple hundred dollars from the Indian Consulate, fill out a bunch of papers with my personal information, and then I got treated like crap and ordered around by security in the Bangalore airport a few times by security officers brandishing assault rifles. I was there to train consultants from India. If anything, I was helping to train the local staff, not taking any jobs from anyone, but I still had to jump through all these hoops for 1 week. Only 1 week.
In my experience, I think the US is probably not as much as a hassle compared to other countries. I dispute what you are saying.
Re: They're not who you think (Score:3, Interesting)
It actually costs a company more money to hire a foreign worker than a U.S. worker. You have over $2000 in USCIS filing fees. If a company doesn't do the work in-house it cost at least another $2000 in attorney fees. If the qualified U.S. workers were out there we would be hiring them. Another thing to bust your conspiracy theory, we must by law pay a foreign worker Prevailing Wage so they are being paid fairly (compared to people in the same role in the particular geographic region - down to the county)
Re:talent! (Score:5, Interesting)
(Microsoft, Intel, Infosys, and simila...
When I see those assholes and others cry about the "lack of local talent" and see the out of work - willing and talented folks, I just shake my head and do what I have to. I have a 10 year old computer because I can't afford better. I have a 20 year old car because I can't afford better. I have student loans because I was told that if I "went up the food chain" and leave the low level jobs to overseas people the things would be better for me.
I am sitting in a ton of student debt with no job prospects because I did what I was told was right - more education is better. NO, I don't have a PhD in Lit - almost as bad: MBA - I was hoping to get into tech mgt and be the PHB that actually knew about tech - ya know, the PHB that techies respected because I was there.
Instead I'm told I was stupid for doing so. I was stupid for going back to school and I was a sucker.
I am told that there's something wrong with me. I am told that I wouldn't be unemployed if I had the "skills".
Really?
Well folks, Java, C++,C,SQL, Windows 32/MFC.WPF,C#, Linux, Unix, OS/2 are all worthless skills! Because those are what I have.
Wiling to have a book FedEx'ed from Amazon to cram to learn a new skill that the mgt decided to use after you were hired isn't worth anything.
No, hiring mangers want you to know everything before hand.
You know, I looked at current salaries and they're at about 70K for most higher level developers these days. Back in '99, those same developers were getting over 100K.
Recently some friends of mine who are C++ guys jumped on jobs that paid 60K+ here in Metro Atl. They were making almost 100K at their previous job. But with all these H1Bs and others being imported, pay has been depressed and they got bills to pay - like student loans for that BSCS they paid through the nose for so that they could have job security.
And in the meantime, Bill gates and Mark Fucker - Zuckerberg are begging kids to learn programming.
I'm beginning to understand why people have become revolutionaries and followed some asshole who screwed everyone over after they took power - like Castro.
Please excuse the grammar and spelling errors: I'm in a rage.
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From a practical view, employers want somebody who can solve new problems, like working on a university solar car project, run an auger tool lab to become the defacto "owner," and go to person for people needing
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What projects outside of class did you participate in. You'll find those types of experiences are much more important than a high GPA in stuff you've been spoon fed. The most impressive candidates are ones who do well in school, but are also motivated enough to do things outside of the curriculum.
Fat lot of good this does when the poor guy is already out of school.
Besides, how do you know that he didn't listen to a guy just like you? Why should he listen to you over them?
The cool thing about Slashdot is there are lots of ideas and opinions around. The really shitty part about Slashdot is that there are lots of ideas and opinions around. Who the hell knows, really, what's good and what isn't?
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Lies (Score:3)
As for qualified Americans, I've seen what the H1-Bs do. They're ever loving code monkeys. You will never, ever, ever trick me into b
He IS worth $70k a year (Score:3)
br> You're worth a decent wage. You're entitle to food, shelter and Health care. You EARNED a good life just by being BORN. Pull you're head out of your rear and stop beating up on yourself just because your daddy wasn't board rich. Bill Gates, Mark Zuck, Dick Cheney. Every last one had wealthy parents and connections. Not a damn one of them got anywhere near a boot strap. Lies, all lies.
Re:talent! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it has been a fairly interesting week. Let's see, got the jobs data right here, and it's a doozy: link [reuters.com]
Given those unemployment figures, it's kind of hard to argue that there is a lack of people in those fields seeking gainful employment. Oh, wait, I'm wrong; apparently, a large number of them have recently given up looking for work, as they simply couldn't find any, and thus are dropped from the count in the future (hurrah!).
Personally, I can't wait until we see the past few months' employment figures readjusted, at some future date.
But yeah, if you had to listen to the techs or business people on this one, the techs are probably telling it straight: they're being screwed. But that's alright, it's not like it's going to affect the security / whatever of our nation, as surely people will continue to enter into these great fields despite the now frequent hardships, right? Only no, it appears that a lot of programs seem to be having problems here. It warms the cockles of my heart to know that the US's CyberCommand will, in time, possibly be 100% foreign-born.
Hey Congress, just keep doing what you've been doing. Fantastic job thus far, can't wait to see the results next quarter. Just know that a large, angry, and extremely vocal contingent of unemployed techs will certainly not spend their idle time trying to find ways to undermine you as you've undermined them. Nope, that'll never happen. Plus those are votes you can count on not getting on election day...not that it will matter with the kickbacks you will be earning for passing this crap...on the other hand, an untimely exposure of a scandal does tend to limit one's chances, and does cost a lot less. Price of a bought Senator? $5,000,000. Price of an Android phone? $300. Catching the good Senator making out with someone not his wife, and uploading it to YouTube? Priceless.
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Babe, techs have been screaming about this for months, years even. You have come to the wrong website if you think you can play this game, and get away with it.
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Who said anything about hacking? Look, when you manage to get your GED, then you'll realize that 'hackers' like those portrayed in movies largely do not exist. What I am speaking of, simply, are the grass-roots activists and impromptu bartenders, as one Republican nominee found-out, that can catch you off-guard, using perfectly legal technology, in public places.
And you know it will happen...because politicians will never stop being corrupt, nor will they ever stop appearing in public. This is every politic
Will they remember to turn out the lights? (Score:2)
If you are an unemployed techy type ... well, let's just say you'd better start picking alternative countries.
Any bets whether they'll remember to turn out the lights as they leave?
Like ALL of them? B-)
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Increasingly stigmatized? Really? Holy sh*t, where have you been? For the last two years, we've been thrown under a bus, repeatedly! Demonized by the media? Name one computer-related incident where they haven't mentioned the person was a hacker, whether or not it turned out true? And the punishments handed out by the courts? Fuck, I could rip off the NY stock exchange for $50 billion, and get a lighter sentence, than reporting a bug in some company's latest software.
Re:talent! (Score:5, Interesting)
talent pool is lacking = we don't want to pay
So why not have a minimum salary for H1B employees? Increase with inflation every year of course.
If an H1B is truly necessary because the talent is lacking, the presumably they'd be willing to pay. If it's because they only want to pay a foreigner $35k/yr for job with a market value of $70k/yr, then that's not what the H1B program is supposed to be about. Set the minimum at something like $80k/yr, and you'll be limiting it to folks who are really in high demand and the absolute in their field, otherwise you can hire an American.
I mean, really, what talent is there that should pay less than $80k/yr that you really cannot find an American to hire for?
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It's not quite that simple.
An H1b is paid a "reasonable" salary which is princely by their native countries standards.
And the company gets to treat them as slaves and work them long hours because if they quit, they must find another job who can sponsor them for an h1b quickly or return home.
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Reasonable should be no less than 50% ABOVE the median income of the area they are getting hired to work in. If the companies really can't get workers in that area, then they should be willing to pay more.
You find me a job, ANY JOB, where they lack qualified applicants and I can show you a job where they don't pay enough.
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Well, there's a trick to it. Something I came across, by accident, was something of an interesting read (i.e. was not something I went looking for). Apparently, a number of firms have requirements for special software that is only available through that firm...you can see where this is headed. So if the firm, which is posting the job, lists experience in this software, as a requirement, software that is not readily available to other native applicants...they manage to fulfill the letter of the law (they did
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talent pool is lacking = we don't want to pay
So why not have a minimum salary for H1B employees? Increase with inflation every year of course.
Good first step but not enough.
Also, why not make it easy to transfer your H1B visa to a competitor? Otherwise, competitive pay or not, but what you get is an indentured servant who will be deported if fired.
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Because the H1B program, in reality, is an indentured servitude program...? There are people, supposedly, who work here for 10 years, at abominable pay, yet never quite get that green card...
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The reason employers prefer H1B employees isn't due to salaries - they get paid competitive wages. The reason they prefer H1B employees is because, if you fire someone on an H1B, they have a very short window to find a new job in America before being deported. Which means they are very scared of losing their jobs, which means that if you tell them to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, they will.
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talent pool is lacking = we don't want to pay
So why not have a minimum salary for H1B employees? Increase with inflation every year of course.
The H1-Bs being underpaid is their business model. Plus it doesn't hurt that if he's fired he's kicked out of the country--nothing like an employee who can't quit without being deported to keep the complaints from staff down...
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For some actual salaries check out: http://www.h1bwage.com/ [h1bwage.com]
Not sure how accurate it is but I'm in there.
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I wouldn't mind that. But employers would hate it. The green card is a source of artificial leverage over someone's salary. You take that away, they'll scream murder.
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I didn't see this mentioned, but the sponsoring company has to [...] show that the visa candidate is going to be paid a salary at or above the "prevailing wage".
The sponsors already work around that. They give the poor sap a job title and description for position with a "prevailing wage" far lower than the work they're actually assigned.
I wonder if a law making it a federal offense to assign, pay for, or allow the performance of work outside the job description on the application would be a game-changer?
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In my experience, it is mostly lacking. Sure, people are graduating from college with these shiny IT degrees, but for example I know of all too many IT graduates that can't even do something as basic as subnetting.
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I pulled the plug on that, and no issues
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Surprisingly, the CS program I was in did not teach you much in the way of IT...kind of frightening if you think about it. I guess IT has been reclassified as some sort of trade in their minds, while CS is some sort of Ivory tower nonsense...
But then, I thought a Bachelors would teach you more than it apparently does...and I am working on fixing that.
CS is not IT and stuff like subnetting is tech sch (Score:3)
CS is not IT and stuff like subnetting is tech / trades school
Re:talent! (Score:5, Informative)
If you want someone who knows subnetting right out of school hire from a trade school. If you want someone who will be able to troubleshoot an issue that he/she has never seen before, hire a college graduate.
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True, and they ask for fantasy qualifications...or what they ask advertise for, and what the actual hiring person wants isn't always the same. I went to an interview in another city...took the train up, since the phone interviews with the HR people and such went great...then I got into the interview, and instead of a SysAdmin for Linux, the actual person doing the hiring wanted a programmer, but he wasn't allow to get one he was interviewing SysAdmins hoping to get a programmer!!! What at sh*thead he was!
Congress is still debating the Barbary Pirates (Score:2)
They should get to this issue sometime around the year 2347
There IS a talent shortage. (Score:2, Insightful)
> While U.S. tech workers scream that they're losing out on jobs as H-1B workers are hired
No *competent* tech worker is screaming that. Seriously. If you are in tech and unemployed right now, it is nobody's fault but your own; everyone is hiring like a madman right now.
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I used to want to get a job in IT, but all the entry level positions required 5 years or more of experience on top of the certifications, and that was just for jobs where they were having you read a support script.
I'm sure once you're in it's a lot easier, but I don't recall seeing a single opening back then where I could apply, not a single one. Ultimately, I gave up and got work in a different sector where it wasn't quite as bad, but entry level does not mean 5 years of experience, it means at most 1 year
You are right! And a woman shortage, too!! (Score:5, Funny)
My mother tells me that I am sooo handsome, intelligent, and just wonderful. She asks, "Why are you still single at 47?!"
I tell her, "Mom. There just isn't any adequate women for me!"
She says," You're 5'7", 200 lbs, with enough hair on your head. What's the issue!"
I say,"Mom. There isn't any 5' 10" blond haired, 25 year old, MDs with PhD in Particle Physics, with big tits, who love giving blow jobs on the first date, and great legs out there! Women are so pathetic these days!!"
My mother agrees with me!
I'm also an IT hiring manager BTW.
Re:There IS a talent shortage. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Talent has nothing to do with it. I can get dozens of jobs at any moment but not one that pays over 50K because a foreign worker will do the same job for 30K. I made 70K when I was 23 (2003) 75-80K when I was 25- 27 doing the same job with less experience.
Me too. I know I have talent because I literally went from making $40k in 1996 to $180k in 1998 because companies kept stealing me away from each other. I was 28 at the time. Now I make under $100k. Not too bad by average wage standards, but pretty pathetic for someone with 3 times the experience I had when I made $180k and who works 50% more hours than what I did back then.
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If the talented tech workers are not looking for work (at your company), perhaps you are not making them an offer they find interesting. Perhaps your company looks like it has a dubious business plan, and they see no reason to hitch their wagons to your ailing horse.
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Beggars can't be choosers. If there is indeed this mythical horde of talented tech workers out there looking for work, surely they would prefer any job to no job. So, where are they all?
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Both opinions are true (Score:2)
While U.S. tech workers scream that they're losing out on jobs as H-1B workers are hired, employers are countering that the talent pool is lacking and they need to increase the cap.
US tech workers have to compete with the tech elite of the world. It is then quite obvious that most of US workers are not competitive on their skills alone, not even counting salary and benefits and other expectations (like a somewhat limited work week.)
The US employers at the same time are expecting to hire the best and br
Re:Both opinions are true (Score:5, Insightful)
In nearly every other case a foreign coder is a better match for the cheap ass that wants to give himself a bonus for having higher profit margins because he paid less wages.
There fixed that for you.
Re:Both opinions are true (Score:5, Interesting)
From experience, I can say there has been a big change from 2004 to 2012.
In 2004, my company got masters degree candidates for bachelors degree salaries.
In 2008, my company got bachelor degree candidates for bachelors degree salaries.
In 2011, we were getting disengaged bachelor degree candidates. They basically counted on working for us for 6 months and then being rotated elsewhere. This had the expected and predictable effects.
In 2012, they laid 90% of us off and replaced us with infosys people. They unexpectedly lost another 5%. Infosys was unable staff so we had the weird situation of not even training our replacements but recording training sessions. I went to lunch with a few of the survivors last week and it's a complete mess.
Funny thing is- apparently these workers count as still being indian employees of infosys. They are working some fantastic hours, don't have the skill set and are trying hard to acquire it, but they are not getting paid U.S. salaries even they they are located in the U.S. - just good pay by Indian standards. Apparently they'll be rotated back to india and another similar crew will be brought in. I don't know- perhaps it's that 6 month thing overseas like we do with Aramco. I hear they are living 6+ to an apartment.
So we are competing in our own country for jobs with people being paid in the $35000 to $50000 range when those jobs cost $100k locally and require degrees that are a lot more expensive to obtain here than in india.
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Welcome to globalization ... the corporations and governments tell us it's inevitable and that it's good. Now it's a race to the bottom.
The companies who want this aren't incapable of finding talent, they're unwilling to pay the salaries of Americans.
They're inshoring the jobs basically and driv
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Add to the problem the duality of the salary. A salary that barely feeds a US worker is a windfall in the 3rd world. Work in the USA for up to 6 years, come back, open a business on all that money, and you are set for life. This is how Mexicans operate, for example.
Why does a "US worker" need so much more than an H1-B immigrant? Do they eat more expensive food?
How is it possible that an immigrant (who makes so much less than their US counterpart) can manage to survive in the USA with such a low salary AND have enough to help his family back home and eventually go back home to start a business? Whereas, as is claimed, if a US worker made that salary, he'd barely survive? It doesn't add up.
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so let me get this straight: because the US companies learned they can hire for cheap and get 'affordable slaves', those of us who have lived here all our lives, paid into the tax base and have a STAKE in what this country is going to become, we're supposed to LOWER our living standard, now?
as companies' profits soar to record highs, why in hell are the US workers supposed to take cut after cut and live closer to poverty?
that's bullshit, man! we all know it. we know the game.
'race to the bottom' is true.
I
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India and China are large places, and their people are not corrupted yet with ideas that everyone owes them a fine living.
Right. How dare those American workers think that they deserve a reasonable share of the wealth they create! They have not yet learned, as the Chinese and Indian workers know, that they are techno-serfs who can expect to receive as little as the CEO finds he can pay.
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How dare those American workers think that they deserve a reasonable share of the wealth they create!
At this point in time the US worker is not even invited into the game. He is deemed to be too expensive and too fickle. Why to bother if there are millions of other who will work for less? Obamacare alone forces businesses to drop full time employees and switch them to part-time work, under 20 hours per week, or whatever it is.
You can also understand the position of a business. If you make cheap stuff a
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We're talking about H1-B immigrants, not offshore workers. Doesn't the H1-B guy LIVING IN THE USA have the same cost-of-living handicap? How can he survive with such a smaller salary than the US worker?
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...Doesn't the H1-B guy LIVING IN THE USA have the same cost-of-living handicap? How can he survive with such a smaller salary than the US worker?
By typically being a single individual not raising a family, saving for retirement in this country, nor paying off educational debts incurred in this country. Capische?
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Doesn't the H1-B guy LIVING IN THE USA have the same cost-of-living handicap? How can he survive with such a smaller salary than the US worker?
He has no peer pressure. He can live in a bad part of town; he can drive a junk car; he does not need to visit bars and strip clubs; he does not need to marry and raise children (with all expenses of that.) All he needs is a few years to park their $behind at, so that he can save as much as possible.
Not every H1B does that, but I know those who do. It's not nice
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So are US workers incapable of or unwilling to make those same choices?
Re:Both opinions are true (Score:4, Informative)
So are US workers incapable of or unwilling to make those same choices?
An excellent question indeed.
Yes, the US workers are capable but unwilling to make those same choices, for several reasons.
First, the H1B worker knows exactly what he is dealing with. Three years working as a slave, and then I'm RICH!1! back in India or wherever. I can live for three, or even six years like that if I know that this is a voluntary and temporary issue. I also know what I'm buying - I'm selling my comfort and buying future comfort in much larger quantity. If I don't want this anymore I can quit at any time, and the DHS will not forbid me to leave the USA.
Second, H1B workers are required to work or to get out of the country. They cannot linger here and live on social assistance. But US citizens *are* eligible for all kinds of social assistance. At some point it is more profitable to collect welfare instead of working. I knew a guy around here who was on welfare. I found a temp job for him, with a good possibility of going full time. He refused! He said that social security money is more dependable.
This means that the very existence of payments (food stamps, money, living, etc.) to able-bodied workers washes them out of the market of jobs that pay less than that entitlement. Actually, the value of the payments is higher than that. You get money for nothing - you don't have to expend your labor; this means that you get the payments + the cost of your labor as you price it internally. The employer has to beat that number!
The employer is also burdened with minimum wages. This measure subverts the free market of labor. I am forbidden by law to sell my labor, whatever cheap it might be in terms of its value, for less than $7.25 per hour. Doesn't matter if I am suffering from some malady or the other and only can work at 20% of efficiency of a healthy worker. Who will hire me? But in a fair labor market I would be hired for the appropriate salary, and it would be fair to everyone involved. Same would happen to a secretary who works from home and answers five calls per day. Are you willing to pay her $1,160 per month for such a hard work? If no, would you pay her $100/mo? It's a good thing to have a human secretary who can deal with callers in a reasonable way, even if your company is very small.
I'm sure there are more reasons to do what people do. I didn't even mention keeping up with the Joneses, but that is an important factor as well.
H!B is About Off-Shoring (Score:5, Interesting)
The 10 largest users of H1B are off-shoring contract-houses. Last year, those 10 off-shoring companies claimed 40,000 of the 85,000 available H1B visas.
The way it works is that they low-bid on some project, bring in their people on H1B get them trained up and then send them back home to work on the same project.
Citation: Who's Hiring H-1B Visa Workers? It's Not Who You Might Think [npr.org]
All the PR about H1B says that we have a skills-shortage here, but if that is true, then H1B is contributing to the skills shortage rather than fixing it. Most of what is wrong with H1B could be fixed if the politicians actions matched their rhetoric - instead of being an unofficial dual-purpose immigration visa that typically expires just months before the immigrant clears all the paperwork for an green-card, make it a fast-track immigrant only visa - everybody on an H1B is guaranteed a green-card within just one year of residency. That way instead of being a brain-drain out of the US, we would be sucking in the (supposedly) higher-qualified foreign candidates to become permanent contributing members of US society.
Interesting- no jobs, but no h1b's (Score:5, Insightful)
Jobs report today said no jobs being created.
Yet we are hiring many h1b's.
Meanwhile, many of our 30 year olds are suicidal over a combination of unforgivable debt and no jobs.
Quite a disconnect.
I think it's time to put a tariff on offshored/outsourced jobs- including h1b's.
Re: (Score:2)
If you call 88,000 jobs "no jobs" the sure. By this metric, in other news there were no H1B visas granted this year.
Re: (Score:3)
Which is irrelevant the statement is "no jobs being created", not "not enough new jobs for new workers being created". The unemployment percentage wasn't mentioned because again it is irrelevant to the raw number of jobs.
The economy is screwed, don't get me wrong on that.
But if 88000 new jobs be created is "no new jobs" then 85000 h1-b visas being granted is "no h1-b visas".
Let eBay settle it (Score:5, Interesting)
My H1-B solution (Score:2)
The businesses that are snatching up the visas claim that there is not enough local talent to fill the positions while opponents claim that the lower wages paid the visa holders undercuts any chance of locals filling any of those open positions.
First, require that H1-B visa holders are paid based on some industry standard adjusted for the region where visa holder is employed.
Sec
Fundamentaly flawed (Score:2)
The H1-b program is supposed to attract highly skilled workers. Instead it is used for lowering the cost of workers or for outsourcing firms to train some of their foreign workers to, well, improve their outsourcing offerings.
It is rather simple to improve it.
First of all, allow their dependents to work. A good highly skilled professional that won't have a hard time finding a job in the country of his choosing won't elect to go to a country where he has to go through all these hoops and end up a 2nd class c
Re: (Score:2)
Ok, I have no idea how that "white" before "US/H1-b" got there.
Day Wunt Ur Jubzzz!!! (Score:2)
(You will notice how I am not only a xenophobic racist in the above exclamation, but I am inarticulate if not down right illiterate. This merely goes to show that people of my race/gender/age (white/male/old) not only must, as an urgent economic necessity, be displaced by importing hundreds of thousands if not millions from abroad, but that we deserve to be displaced.)
Re: (Score:2)
Attempt at sarcasm fail. The people you were trying to mock are not xenophobic Bush-loving Repubs; most of them are union-supporting anti-corporate liberals. IT workers and slashdot in general are heavily biased towards Dems.
Although liberals are generally pro-immigrant (esp. for undocumented ones), if it's *their* jobs that are on the chopping block, opinion changes fast. Another thing is that H1B smacks of corporate greed trying to displace expensive local workers with cheap indentured servants, well beca
Drives me nuts (Score:2)
So every company has a semi-random assortment of software and languages already in use.
They don't want to have someone they need to train a little bit, no they want someone with 3 - 5 years minimum on every single bit of tech they have.
Out of a thousand potential employees there's only going to be a few that hit the magic combination of experiences you want, and dozens who will lie about it.
Oh screw that, if we go global and add a few billion people to the mix we can hit 10x the number of "perfect matches"
How about a national job pool? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
The biggest consumers of H-1B visas do just that. Want to work at Google, Microsoft, Amazon, whatever? If you're good enough, you can get a job there pretty much whenever you want. Their ads are all over the place all over the country, and obviously on all the big job advertisement web sites. The salaries are often totally out of wack compared to other jobs with similar education/experience requirements, and so are the benefits. And they're STILL looking for people.
I work for a a smaller (but still somewhat
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Yep. The real problem is that there is a lot of people who aren't nearly as qualified as they think. They've got a few flavor-of-the-month certifications, a couple of dead end entry level jobs on their resume... and they think they're God's own gift to IT and rate senior salaries. They don't seem to realize the dot bomb detonated over a decade ago now, employers aren't lining up to desperately grab anyone with a pulse and a barely
Re:How about a national job pool? (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the issues that always comes up when talking about H-1B is that employers say they can't satisfy their needs with the talent already available. So, how about adding the requirement that any H-1B applications require the company post a "Help Wanted" ad in a national database for three months before the application is approved. Let's see why companies don't like citizen talent. Let's see how citizens can fill those jobs.
A requirement similar to this already exists. It is quire trivial to work around. All it takes is to write a list of requirements that exactly much the foreign person you want to hire (or retain) and virtually no one else in the world. Then you place the ad wherever it is least likely to be seen. A mid-week newspaper classified will do. For extra insurance, the only contact method should be a PO BOX.
Am I the only one not scared of Indian workers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just scrolling through the +5 comments, I see a ton of xenophobia...
Can't find an entry level IT job? Where are you? Arkansas? Here in silicon valley, we're experiencing another surge in hiring. I'm pretty low on the skillset, so whenever I get myself back into IT, I consider the economy to be doing well. Case in point... Company I work for. We've been losing a ton of local talent to google who's been on a hiring binge. When a small shop like ours (120 or so employees) can afford to pay great salaries, but we lose out to name brands like google, we have to turn to H1B.
And for the H1B worker, life isn't all cherries and apple pie. Case in point, this big ass march from immigration voice.
http://imgur.com/YKxR6NG [imgur.com]
See the white guy with pelican case in tow? That's me.
Let's say you're here from India on H1B and you have a family emergency. You have to go home. So many H1B's are scared to go home, because when they try to return more often than not, they're denied re-entry into the country. I haven't met a single H1B that wouldn't LOVE to be a US citizen, but instead we give them a non-citizen status as an H1B that gives them basically no rights as a US citizen.
I think we should just trash H1B altogether, and allow anyone of decent education (BA or BS) come live here, become a citizen, and pay taxes.
As slashdotters, we shouldn't hate on the H1B people. They are not the problem. It's our policy, the very creation of H1B to sidestep proper citizenship that is.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure if it is "xenophobia" to truthfully say that we have a jobs crisis in this country and are importing foreigners to drive down wages on the few remaining middle-class wage jobs. That's not "Xenophobia," that's mathematics.
What kind of a site is Slashdot? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe it's time to clarify what kind of a site Slashdot is? It claims to be "News for Nerds" but there are a lot of nerds who have H-1B visas, or live outside the US.
This article's title is just plain nasty. There is room for debate on these issues, and I personally think the numbers of H-1B visas are excessive (or better put, the requirements for getting one are too lenient), but the idea that people applying for H-1B's are to be despised is very offputting to potential users of this site. Unless, of course, Slashdot isn't really for these people in which case you should be more explicit about that.
On the issue of H-1B's themselves, it is necessary to separate out generic issues of free trade, from issues that are specific to trade in human labor. Any valuable commidity will benefit country that imports it. If there were a ban on importing rare earth metals to the US, and suddently this was lifted, it would benefit companies that utilize these metals (and ultimately consumers) and harm producers of rare earth metals. However the net benefit would be positive, this is standard economic theory. Now I imagine that when the ban is lifted, the rare earth producers would say "there is no shortage of rare earth metals, people just aren't willing to pay a fair price. If people paid more, we could mine previously uneconomic deposits, etc.". This would be a mistaken interpretation, again because economic theory says that the welfare of society is maximized under free trade.
Now this theory breaks down when it applies to people, but only because of externalities. That is, people who come to the US on H-1B visas may have a negative influence on the US apart from their impact on the labor force. Some of these are simply because a person in the US temporarily will be less engaged with the community and civil society. Also many Americans prefer that the US retain its cultural and ethinc composition, and so these people may be negatively affected.
So there are many valid arguments against H-1B visas, although most of the economic arguments are wrong. I think the criteria should be stricter so that only the people who add the most value to the economy can get one. This way, the US would get the maximum benefit for the minimum number of people. A masters degree should be a minimum.
Anyway that is my view on H-1B visas but can we please keep personal animosity towards people on H-1B's out of it?
If shortage == true then pay = pay + 1 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Who's Hiring H-1B Visa Workers? (Score:3)
Here's one perspective re this issue.
Who's Hiring H-1B Visa Workers? It's Not Who You Might Think [npr.org]
Make US collgle free or much lower cost with loans (Score:2)
Make US collgle free or much lower cost. Plan B is loans with a income based repayment plan with a low MAX interest rate. Say X% over an amount that is a somewhat over min wage. and make you so that if you get a good paying job you can pay if off quicker and pay less over all. But if you say best you can get is a job in food service or even a good but not as high paying good like a costco or some other place that is better pay then a place like BK or bestbuy you pay little to none on your loan and after 10-
You're a programmer and you want a job? (Score:2)
Here it companies are fighting over new employees. It's almost impossible to find qualified people.
Please, send them over!
Australian and E-3 visa (Score:3)
What's the best way to find a job in the US as an Australian Citizen and using the E-3 visa?
The E-3 visa is like H1-B but better and has a seperate 10.5k cap and is only available to Australian Citizens.
I find many employers don't know what an E-3 visa is (as they only do H1-B) and don't bother, nevermind the fact that getting an Aussie on E-3 visa is much easier and cheaper (its free, in fact) compared to the hassle of H1-B...
Any tips, information, etc, would be greatly appreciated.
We don't need them (Score:3)