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US Won't Say How Many H-1B Workers Are Female (computerworld.com) 89

Posted by BeauHD from the diversity-in-the-workplace dept.
dcblogs quotes a report from Computerworld: When the U.S. begins accepting applications for new H-1B skilled-worker visas today, we can be certain that tech workers from India will make up a large portion of the requests. While program data shows which job categories, countries and companies are awarded the most visas, the federal government says it is not tracking applicants' gender -- although the question is asked on the visa application form. The U.S. begins accepting H-1B visa applications on April 1 for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) will not release the gender data. It has rejected a Senate request for the information, as well as public records requests from the IEEE-USA and Computerworld. The Anita Borg Institute, which advocates for women in technology, believes "it would be very helpful to have better data on the gender diversity of H-1B visa recipients," said Telle Whitney, the president and CEO of the institute. "Our anecdotal experience is that most H-1B visa recipients are men and that this can have a negative impact on increasing the participation of women in the technical workforce," she said.
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US Won't Say How Many H-1B Workers Are Female More

US Won't Say How Many H-1B Workers Are Female

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  • Finally, SJW's might do some good (Score:4, Funny)

    by elrous0 ( 869638 ) on Friday April 01, 2016 @05:10PM (#51825601)

    They might accidentally do a good thing here.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by SeaFox ( 739806 )

      I'd like to see which they pick to hire if we restrict them to a choice between an Indian female and an American male.

      • Re:Finally, SJW's might do some good (Score:4, Interesting)

        by elrous0 ( 869638 ) on Friday April 01, 2016 @05:43PM (#51825699)

        If you really want to make SJW heads explode, force them to choose between Indian females and American black males. They'll have to break out an oppression/victimhood chart and do some algebra on that one.

        • but I've got a solution for both. We could (and I'm just floating ideas here) not screw over either demographic. I know it's crazy to think like that. Perhaps I've already said too much.

          • We could .... not screw over either demographic [Indian females and American black males]

            You should look at more porn sites. Doesn't look to me like American black males are the ones being screwed over.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          As someone who has been accused of being an "SJW", for me this is really simple. Just give the job to the best candidate. You did your bit to help diversity, as demonstrated by the fact that they both applied. Now pick the better candidate without bias or prejudice.

          Did your head explode?

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Intron ( 870560 )

            Your idea would be fine except that hiring managers meet with the people that they hire and then make a subjective decision on what "best" means. Tests have shown that if you swap the resumes and verbal responses given by the applicants, "best" still tends to be the white male. I think you fail at SJW-ness.

      • Re:Finally, SJW's might do some good (Score:5, Insightful)

        by david_thornley ( 598059 ) on Friday April 01, 2016 @05:46PM (#51825707)

        We're talking about H-1Bs here. If there's a qualified American candidate, there is no justification for the H-1B. If the company is cheating, they'll take the Indian. I don't see that gender is going to matter here.

        They're gathering the information, so I don't see why they can't tell us. I'm not particularly interested, but I like data the US government has to be publicly available if possible.

        • The problem is that they're all cheating as a matter of course, or at least such a large majority of them that there's little effective difference one way or another.

          And its hardly the only thing they all cheat on either; You'd be shocked if you realized just how many IT companies never, as a rule, pay their employees overtime, and how few IT workers realize they're actually entitled to it, despite their employers' claims that the employment contract they signed supersedes state law.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          I don't see that gender is going to matter here.

          Oh but there is.

          Not only are there no qualified candidates in the US, but in a question of qualified candidates from the rest of the globe, if there is a qualified female candidate, well then the choice is clear.

          And especially when companies have to justify not only a lack of American candidates, but a lack of female candidates from a population of 9 billion, will you see any scrutiny towards the program from the larger public.

          It's funny how human trafficking only has a face when women are involved, yet sca

          • Re: Finally, SJW's might do some good (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            True. The vast majority of human trafficking is male. And literally every news piece you see on the subject paints it as a female issue.

            Men are enslaved in countless places around the world: mining, fishing, farming, forced military service, labor,etc.

            Male human trafficking has always exceeded female trafficking by a massive margin.

          • The trouble with the H-1B visa program is that it is dishonest. They *claim* it is a means to get the "best and brightest" but that is not who they hire through it. As a matter of fact, they oppose any sort of quality standards. They refuse to interview able and willing USA citizen professionals, but claim they just cannot find any *qualified* (wink wink nudge nudge) applicants. They won't say exactly what "qualified" means, but it certainly does not mean "able and willing to do the job". But, if you a

        • That's easy! You hire the American candidate in order to train the H-1B and then lay off the American. Duh!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by khallow ( 566160 )

          I don't see that gender is going to matter here.

          It has the potential to enlarge the conflict by bringing in the PC crowd.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • Your post seems to be the only one getting close to the likely truth: that there are far more female H1B's than male... hence the reason TPTB don't find it convenient to disseminate the numbers...

        • I don't see that gender is going to matter here.

          But it does raise the issue of sex imbalance.

          The West has a shortage of nubile women because, as an unintended consequence of women being able to earn equal salaries, many have turned their back on men completely, or after a short fling. Others (large numbers in the UK, don't know about the USA) have a child while single and then permanently withdraw from the "dating" scene to bring up their child - while the Jock father is back in the dating scene the very next day. Hence the innumerable complaints (

          • many have turned their back on men completely, or after a short fling.

            Rest assured, it's not any of the females we need concern ourselves over.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tom229 ( 1640685 )
      You beat me to it. I still don't know if it erases even 1% of the ham they've caused, but it's at least something.
    • They'll have to go to therapy two extra days a week for the next year once they realize it.

  • Classic ... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Always funny when feminists go off track and bark at their masters. We get "diversity" forced down our throats by the same people who fight to keep their important Indians male.

    "Gender data is a curious omission considering U.S. government initiatives such as TechWomen, which is aimed at supporting "women in leaders in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) from Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East"."

    You'd almost think policy was carefully designed to attack white men rather than help w

  • Sanders and Rubio on H1B (Score:4, Informative)

    by Okian Warrior ( 537106 ) on Friday April 01, 2016 @05:20PM (#51825639) Homepage Journal

    Just to keep people informed, note that Bernie Sanders and Marco Rubio voted to increase [senate.gov] H1B visas last round (2013).

    Ted Cruz voted against, and (of course) neither Clinton nor Trump could vote.

    Here's a quote [cnet.com] from [Facebook VP] Joel Kaplan:

    "This is a big step forward for jobs, innovation, and the American economy," Facebook's vice president of U.S. policy Joel Kaplan said in a statement e-mailed to CNET. "We've been talking with members for months about what the technology industry needs to remain competitive and this bill shows that they listened and they get it."

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by elrous0 ( 869638 )

      I believe Clinton has already said she would support more H1B's. Only Trump and Sanders have even criticized the program.

      http://www.computerworld.com/a... [computerworld.com]

  • Microaggressive (Score:4, Funny)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Friday April 01, 2016 @05:23PM (#51825645) Homepage Journal
    More worrying is how many of these H1b people exhibit microaggressive behavior? We need to screen them so we can create inclusive safe spaces for our tech workers.

  • Just do a simple name check (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Just throw all the names at gender.c and you will have reasonably reliable data. That's 5 minutes of scripting for a sysadmin in the private sector, although I guess more like 5 million dollars worth of government work.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      No, the data is supposedly already collected: the question is on the visa form.

      Of course, that could be problematic: the visa data is not always complete and accurate. The visa form also asks for the job title that the applicant is to fill. Reading through the 2014 USCIS report [uscis.gov], one finds on p. 12 that

      In some instances a petitioner will leave the beneficiary’s job code blank, which we report here as “Occupation unknown”. This does not mean, however, that the position is not a “specialized occupation”.

      Beyond the fact that whoever compiled this report uses British punctuation (period outside quotation marks), this tells us that a visa application does not have to be complete and accurate in order to win ap

  • Quality not Gender (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Telle Whitney is interested in the genitalia of tech workers.

    American H1B employers are interested in the competence of tech workers.

    One can see how they might not see things the same way.

    ( And the feminazi institute is really called "Borg" ?! )

  • What the heck is going on? Whose side is President Obama on? The heads of most countries work to help their citizens get jobs. The one exception that I see is that come countries are taking in refugees, even if those refugees take jobs away from native-born citizens.

    But these H-1B employees aren't refugees. They won't starve if they don't get a job here, or be killed by gang violence if they can't live here.

    Whose side is Pres. Obama on?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by myid ( 3783581 )

      I know this is an article about the gender of H-1B's, not the number of H-1B's. But still, it seems that Pres. Obama is trying to protect the flow of immigrants to the US. If a gender imbalance might hurt the flow, then he'll try to hide the gender imbalance.

  • Why do people care so much about the lack of women in tech but don't seem to care at all about the lack of women or men in other fields? And even when they do pretend to care in other fields there is only a push to hire more women in general in various roles but never an explicit push to put them in exactly the same dangerous jobs that are still filled by 99% males.

    • Why do people care so much about the lack of women in tech but don't seem to care at all about the lack of women or men in other fields?

      They do. Next!

      And even when they do pretend to care in other fields

      Oh I see!

      Axiom: People don't care about gender balance in other fields.
      Deduction: Therefore all caring in other fields is fake.

      I think you're silly.

  • Since Hillary has taken nearly $3Million in, ahem, donations from Tata and Infosys you can be sure there'll be plenty of new data available as the foreign workers pour in.

    Source: http://articles.latimes.com/20... [latimes.com]

    Snip:

    Clinton is successfully wooing wealthy Indian Americans, many of them business leaders with close ties to their native country and an interest in protecting outsourcing laws and expanding access to worker visas. Her campaign has held three fundraisers in the Indian American community rece

  • One of India's issues is that women are treated like second class citizens [nytimes.com]. I would be very surprised if even 1% of H-1B workers were female.

  • Women are just not as creatively aggressive as men. By imposing a quota for women H1-B workers in high tech, the entire purpose of H1-B visas is destroyed and American preeminence in technology would be threatened. Simple as that.

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