Trump's Next Immigration Move To Affect H-1B Visas; Require Tech Companies To Try To Hire Americans First: Bloomberg (bloomberg.com) 834
AdamnSelene writes: A report in Bloomberg describes a draft executive order that will hit the tech industry hard and potentially change the way those companies recruit workers from abroad. The H-1B, L-1, E-2, and B1 work visa programs would be targeted by requiring companies to prioritize higher-paid immigrant workers over lower-paid workers. In addition, the order will impose statistical reporting requirements on tech companies who sponsor workers under these programs. The order is expected to impact STEM workers from India the most.
Penguinisto adds: If (perhaps when) the president follows through, his next move could limit or at least seriously alter the way H-1B visas are distributed, putting U.S. citizens at a higher priority, and possibly restricting H1-B visas tighter. From the article: "If implemented, the reforms could shift the way American companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Apple recruit talent and force wholesale changes at Indian companies such as Infosys and Wipro. Businesses would have to try to hire Americans first and if they recruit foreign workers, priority would be given to the most highly paid. "Our country's immigration policies should be designed and implemented to serve, first and foremost, the U.S. national interest," the draft proposal reads, according to a copy reviewed by Bloomberg. "Visa programs for foreign workers should be administered in a manner that protects the civil rights of American workers and current lawful residents, and that prioritizes the protection of American workers -- our forgotten working people -- and the jobs they hold."
About (Score:5, Insightful)
fucking TIME!
Re: About (Score:2, Insightful)
Good.
And fuck anyone who thinks differently. You're the reason why I voted for Trump.
Re: About (Score:5, Insightful)
Voting out of spite is a very stupid thing to do, no matter for whom the vote was cast.
Re: About (Score:5, Insightful)
Voting out of spite is a very stupid thing to do, no matter for whom the vote was cast.
Voting out of spite is eventually inevitable, if you offer the voters no alternatives. Trump is a monster of your own making, whether you are a Democrat or a Republican.
Re:About (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you support the $15 minimum wage, which it touted as a way of giving millions of unskilled workers a living wage?
Or is your position something like: that sounds nice, and I'm sure some voting bloc is cheering now but what will really happen is that employment will be reduced and the work will be automated and/or moved elsewhere. So the workers that are getting "lifted up" may find themselves out of a job.
Guess what. Technology workers like you and me aren't immune to the same damn laws of capitalism. Businesses will find a way to reduce costs and punch up their profits, no matter what populist measures are passed by the politicians.
What in the blue hell are you talking about (Score:5, Informative)
Guess what. Technology workers like you and me aren't immune to the same damn laws of capitalism. Businesses will find a way to reduce costs and punch up their profits, no matter what populist measures are passed by the politicians.
I guess you missed it. The big bitch session about H1B's is that it isn't capitalism, it's cronyism. It's using government to interfere with the market by letting business use effectively indentured servants. They bring people in that don't have the knowledge about how much the job is actually worth, suppressing wages. Then when they find out they're getting screwed just like US citizens they have no recourse since if they raise a stink they lose their status and have to go back while the company gets yet another sucker. If this was capitalism then the foreign candidates would just work for somebody else that actually paid them what they're worth but with the H1B program they're prevented from taking any action. But hey, it's not as though this is the only time a company thought that using cronyism is a hell of a lot better deal than actual capitalism.
Re:What in the blue hell are you talking about (Score:4, Informative)
It's not a free market. It's most definitely capitalism. They're not the same thing.
Re:What in the blue hell are you talking about (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why I personally think it's a better idea to scrap H1Bs entirely and replace them with a fast-track to actual green cards and citizenship for skilled* workers in the STEM fields. Take away the ability of employers to abuse immigrant workers with visas tied to specific jobs. And give same immigrants the resources and legal legitimacy to put down roots and contribute back to society; rather than making a quick buck and running or sending remittances back overseas. Everybody (except employers who WANT to abuse and underpay their workers... so everybody worth giving a crap about) wins.
(*And I do mean provably-skilled workers though; NOT those clowns who pad their resume out to 10 pages, list so many certifications that the candidate wouldn't have had time to actually do any work, and whose degree comes from "Initech auto body, project management, and computer science academy".)
Re:What in the blue hell are you talking about (Score:5, Interesting)
US companies generally don't want to set up shop in some foreign country. They want the comfort, safety, infrastructure, and lifestyle that comes from living in the US. They just want to import cheap code-monkeys to work locally, rather than pay full price for local code-monkeys.
If they decide to relocate to another country, that's fine. Let them move to China or India. They can let us know how easy it is for an American company to set up shop and take local jobs away from local tech companies. I'm going to guess that'll be a bit harder than they thought. Or if they can outsource all their coding/IT away and get the results they like, fine with me as well. That's legitimate global competition, but you have to take the bad with the good. In other words, they'd just better not cry to me when all their code or data mysteriously turns up in competing products and services, or on the black market, similar to what hardware makers face these days in China.
And the notion that Trump is doing this simply for political reasons? You guys don't get him. I don't think Trump is a deep or complicated person. He often speaks off the cuff, and said what he was going to do, and now he's doing it. It's pretty simple, but some people can't wrap their brains around it because they see the back-room double-dealings of Clinton as normal and expected behavior for a politician, and so, naturally, expected the same from him. He still has nearly four years to disappoint everyone, so we'll see.
Re:What in the blue hell are you talking about (Score:5, Insightful)
And the notion that Trump is doing this simply for political reasons?
Well, he is doing it for political reasons, as he's now a politician. His logic is very simple: listen to what the American people want, tell them you'll do that, then do it. They will then love you, and put you on Mt. Rushmore, which is Trump's endgame. He's got money, women, fame...what he didn't have was immortality. He'll have that now.
And if you happen to think the things Trump is doing are not popular, you need to stop watching CNN and talk to some actual people. Every time he'd do something crazy the TV would say "surely this is the end of Trump!" And then his poll numbers would go up. Even things like the Muslim ban. Shockingly enough, people don't like Islam that much and don't see any value added to America by allowing Muslim immigration. All downside, no upside. Depending on how you ask the question, you'll get 40% ("ban all muslims") to 60% ("ban immigration from specific countries with a history of muslim terror with reasonable exceptions") approval. When you're saying something 60% of people agree with, your numbers aren't going down, even though 0% of people on TV agree with it.
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the current hub of innovation exists in the western world. GMT -7 -- GMT +1.
Here in Brazil (we're GMT -5 to -1) successive governments have tried half arsed ways to improve technological prowess, without much luck due to corruption and an absolutely insane tax regime. Even so, many companies and businesses got built to provide services and software development to customers in 1st world countries.
If the absurdly huge US tech giants were to begin feeling that "investing" in having Brazil, and probably Uruguay, Argentina and Chile too get their shit together so as to become good place
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A lot of what you are talking about are a misnomer, based on old realities. The far east coding areas, we are seeing pay rates slightly below or comparable with US rate, outside of the Silicon Valley crapfest. We are seeing issues with our coders from India:
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I actually looked into this a couple of years ago, I'm not American but seeing the whole H-1B debate rage on here for years intrigued me. It turned out there are plenty of places online that seemed to list all H-1B visas issued by year including for which company and at what salary level.
It was clear that some companies such as those mentioned in the summary - Infosys and WiPro did indeed bring people over on H-1Bs to undercut the local market, and it's understandable why that would piss people off no end, I can fully agree with wanting to stop that kind of practice.
There's actually quite a few firms; Infosys and WiPro are just the most well known. I ran into one firm in SC where when interviewing with them it was evident they were doing the interview locals just for legal purposes, the entire firm was Indian workers and it was clear that's really all they intended on hiring, especially when you started looking at company culture, etc.
But they were only a small part of the story, what was also clear was that the vast majority of tech industry H-1Bs were going to big players like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, et. al. and when going to these companies, these companies were paying well above the national average salary for the roles in question - in many cases at least 2x higher, and certainly higher than the average local salaries (as best as I could find data on them) for those roles.
All the companies are guilty of playing games to get H1-B visas approved. I've known some great people working in the US on H1-B visas a
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The problem with pushing the wage floor up like that in places where it's happening is that there's basically no more places to build houses, apartments, etc, and people are just going to outbid one another for what few places are available until $15 an hour just isn't enough to pay for it. People need to wake up and realize that a low money supply isn't what makes you unable to afford something, rather it's the overall economy growing while the availability of resources (in this case, housing) does not.
In
Re:About (Score:4, Interesting)
Well then, if that's the logic, then let's halve the minimum wage... no wait, let's make it a penny, and then wow, will we all be in great shape!
This is one of those things where once you have it, you can't really take it away. The best thing that could happen to areas like these is that people move away, reducing the local demand for housing and other high ticket goods, or alternatively, build more high density housing while allowing economies of scale to reduce the real cost of high ticket goods. And yes, minimum wages could go down. On the up side, families that live there will actually be able to have their kids find jobs when they become of age.
I don't know about you, but if I owned a subway, I'm not going to pay some 16 year old $15 an hour if he doesn't even know how to sweep a floor. I might pay him $8 an hour if I often have to show him how to do that and clean toilets, provided he learns and does it without me having to ask, and I'd pay only $7 an hour if I had to micromanage him. And that might sound like a crap job with a non-living wage, but that's kind of the point. If you don't understand the basics of having a worth ethic, nobody is going to ever hire you for a real job. In my opinion, this is even more important than a college education. My company just fired an IT guy because he slacked off and lied about doing actual work, even though the work he was asked to do really was not hard. Who cares what he learned in college if he doesn't even work?
This is why people shouldn't give wal-mart or mcdonalds shit for giving crap wages. Walmart and Mcdonalds are "training wheels" for the job market, and if you're trying to have a career here then either move to corporate or else quit. Even if they did pay a good wage, would you really want to spend your golden years talking about how great your career as a greeter or burger flipper was? Maybe we can engrave a mop on your tombstone? The reality is that these jobs suck even if they pay well.
Re:About (Score:5, Interesting)
Except that more than just 16 year olds work at places like this, and Walmart in particular, through its part time employment practices, essentially uses the taxpayer as its benefits system. If Walmart is to be allowed to pay a very minimum wage, then it should at least be forced to provide a large amount of full time employment.
In actuality Walmart seems to be slowly realizing that its employment practices lead to high turnover, and the cost of training new employees is actually costing it money. There's something to be said for a decent wage and benefits if you're talking about retention. If you could pay one 17 year who you trained to clean the bathrooms and sweep the floor, and he stayed at the job for more than a few months, wouldn't that ultimately be cheaper than having to train a new person with some frequency, even if the training isn't overly complex?
What you're talking about here is a rather one-dimensional of the worth of a job, even a so-called "low skilled job". There are damned few jobs that literally require no training whatsoever, and not that many where the training takes a few hours. A place like McDonalds or Walmart can actually have a good deal of training in safety, processes, systems and the like that can extend longer than one shift, and thus every time you have to replace an employee who you've pissed on because you're paying them shit wages, you're costs actually go up. And that's not even talking about productivity and quality issues that come from paying piss poor wages.
Want to solve the housing problem, don't starve people out. Build more houses. If the market can support the jobs, then the market can support the housing, unless of course you're talking about a real estate bubble, and in the hottest markets that has fuck all to do with minimum wages, and everything to do with speculators, and in some areas, like Seattle, Vancouver, Toronto and London, it has to do with wealthy foreign buyers planting their cash into what they view as safe real estate market. That somebody working at McDonalds slinging burgers for $15 an hour is utterly irrelevant in these kinds of markets, and cutting their wage in half wouldn't bring the housing prices down at all, because there is little if any relation between the overheated market and the hourly wage of burger slingers and door greeters.
Re:About (Score:5, Informative)
The whole minimum-wage argument is based in bad economics anyway.
The best economic system is fiat currency with a fractional reserve system. Technical progress and trade both reduce the cost of goods, and population expansion increases the number of people who need money; this causes deflation, which is bad ju-ju. Instead, we insert money into the system by allowing the issuance of debt: fiat bought into banks allows fractional reserves to multiply the amount of loans made, and a steady rate of inflation slowly reduces the share of a person's income represented by debts the longer those debts stand.
That gives you a slight problem.
The only way for prices to increase (inflation) is for the wage-labor time (wage x hours) backing a product to increase. That means for a thing to double in price when you invent new technology to halve the amount of labor required to make it, you have to quadruple wages. 10 people make 20 units an hour instead of 10; you pay them $40/hr instead of $10; price per unit goes up from $10 to $20, but people have $40 instead of $10 to spend on the object. There's no way for people to not get richer, in general.
With an established minimum wage, the minimum-wage worker's buying power lags. The minimum-wage worker still has $5/hr, even though prices doubled.
Now there's a problem here: with lower-wage workers, we can buy more stuff--creating more jobs; but the above suggests that those workers are getting poorer and poorer, and so those jobs don't amount to much of anything. Obviously, we need to pay them more. That's an imperative fact of the minimum-wage model. Unfortunately, there's oscillation: as MW lags, we get more jobs; when we restore MW, we lose jobs--mainly MW jobs.
There are further considerations, such as what minimum-wage strategy to use. As you can see above, 100% inflation means a good that cost $10 now costs $20; to keep up with inflation, the $5/hr minimum wage must become $10/hr. At the same time, the purchasing-power of a worker making that $20 good must necessarily have quadrupled--to gain the same growth of buying power (fair share income), that $5 minimum-wage must become $20/hr, which will of course incur more jobs lost than a bump to $10/hr.
In actuality Walmart seems to be slowly realizing that its employment practices lead to high turnover, and the cost of training new employees is actually costing it money. There's something to be said for a decent wage and benefits if you're talking about retention.
From a business perspective, this is true. Essentially, a business can profit more at the expense of others: it can pay workers higher prices, retain more workers, get a better public image, and use its other advantages to exceed over its competitors. That can allow the business to expand and have more employees while ultimately reducing the number of jobs in the total economy and even the quality-of-life of everyone except its own employees (someone has to pay the prices that feed those wages).
Generally, people try to economize: if you do something that makes your product more-expensive than the guy across the street, your customers go there. That behavior doesn't create a standing optimal economy; it moves us toward one continuously, and tends to erode outright-harmful behavior.
In a nutshell, if WalMart can pay its employees better and only incur 0.01% more cost, well... that's some 21,000 American jobs lost in the endeavor, and an increase in prices at WalMart that nobody will care about (a penny here and there); it's utterly unimportant. If WalMart ends up bumping prices by 10% or 15% and causing a real decline in the purchasing power of its customers, they'll all shop at target where people get paid $8.50/hr to stock shelves and WalMart will eventually cease to exist.
Economics is complex. I complained the other day that most people are arguing economics that they learned in high school and ECON101, and someone su
Simple solution to the H1B problem exists. (Score:5, Interesting)
All you have to do is insist that any person hired on H1B receive a salary 25% higher than the highest paid equivalent level US person in the company. If they are willing to pay the premium then it's pretty clear it's not bullsh*t to say they are more qualified for the job. I've seen proposals to simply fix the salary at say $150K . but a fixed salary can't span the distance from academia to industry or across various types of work.
As someone who handles a lot of resumes I plainly see that many foreign applicants are infact more qualified in some cases. So I don't think they should end the H1B program. They just need to end the abuse of it.
Re:Simple solution to the H1B problem exists. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not going to defend a clearly abused program, but I can certainly see in some occupations how that wouldn't be terribly reasonable at all. Universities often recruit professors and researchers from overseas, because it's a helluva lot easier to tempt a Cambridge-trained physicist, say, than to train one from the ground up. Once the fellow is here, the university's capacity to train new physicists actually improves.
I think there are legitimate grounds for attracting foreign talent, but it has to be done in a way that doesn't allow companies to basically use foreign workers as a means of driving wages down. If a skillset is hard to find among the domestic population, due to a lack of training opportunities (in which case, bad on colleges and universities), or simply due to a sector be in a state of extensive growth, thus creating an effective shortage, then sure, why not?
The biggest problem with these programs is that even where you require employers to demonstrate they've sought out domestic workers to fill the positions, they still find ways to cheat. Up here in Canada we had the Temporary Foreign worker program, which was, like the H1B program in the US, all about filling in holes in labor markets due to skill shortages, yada yada yada. Inevitably, you had some guy running a McDonalds claiming he couldn't find any local workers, and bringing in a bunch of foreign workers, often paying below minimum wage, and getting away with it in part because no one in the Federal government was paying any attention, and no one at the provincial level making sure minimum wages were enforced.
My favorite trick, one which I saw first hand in my area, was hotels and resorts putting out job ads and either requiring absurd skills like "can speak Mandarin", or simply just shredding any resume that they received, and then proclaiming "You see, we had the job ad out for months, and there were too few applicants!" And of course because the government oversight in these programs is usually next to nothing, basically a few bureaucrats rubber stamping whatever came their way, with neither the resources nor the inclination to actually investigate, they got away with it for years.
So if you're going to put restrictions on H1Bs, which I think is sensible, you're going to need to have an enforcement system in place that is effective enough to catch and make an example of enough of the cheaters to scare the rest straight, or they'll just simply find new and inventive ways to get past the rules. Foreign recruitment is a huge industry, and one that makes enough money to pay the lawyers to figure out how to game the system.
Re:About (Score:5, Insightful)
No wonder the tech community is so upset with Trump. Sergey, Tim, Picachu.
Yes, we are a nation of immigrants, but at some point the country needs sustainable, reliable employment that doesn't shift or outsource with the wind.
Imagine the following. Florida tells Disney they will have to move out of Orlanda because they found a Chineese company willing to come in and pay more taxes. They are generous and give Disney 6-months to relocate.
That is equivalent of telling American workers they are going to lose their job to H1Bs or outsourcing. They have houses, families, communities, commitments, other employment. It just isn't feasible.
So either we have unfettered capitalism, where companies can move to Ireland for Tax Evasion and/or use the government to give them unlimited, cheap labor either through visa programs or just simply turning a blind eye to immigration enforcement, OR THE PEOPLE of the USA have a leader that is going to inject sanity into the system and restrain capitalism to the point where we can have stability and a viable middle class.
I for one do not want unrestrained laissez faire capitalism. If I wanted that, I could go work in Bejing where capitalism is choking out the Sun and factories like FoxConn have to put up suicide nets.
Lastly, if we aren't producing workers that are college and/or career ready, CHANGE THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. I do not know of a single state that REQUIRES COMPUTER PROGRAMMING TO GRADUATE. Prove me wrong, anybody. So what do you expect? Kids who are qualified to fill out worksheets. It's great!
Our politicians scream for 21-st Century SKILLS, STEM and Skills, HI-Tech workers, yet these are the SAME PEOPLE WHO VOTE TO APPROVED ANEMIC EDUCATIONAL STANDARDS that do no include ANY 21st Century STEM, or HI-TECH. If something is a priority, MAKE IT A PRIORITY. Don't just talk about it and say, "Oh golly gee, wish we had more kids with 21st Century skills."
You would think in our day and age DIGITAL LITERACY at a minimum would be required, but sadly we don't even have that in our educational system.
So, I say, GO TRUMP! Be a man of action. The time for talking is over and the time for doing has begun. Maybe the other lip service politicians can learn something from you. Layeth the smacketh dowm brother!
Re:About (Score:4, Interesting)
Our politicians scream for 21-st Century SKILLS, STEM and Skills, HI-Tech workers, yet these are the SAME PEOPLE WHO VOTE TO APPROVED ANEMIC EDUCATIONAL STANDARDS that do no include ANY 21st Century STEM, or HI-TECH. If something is a priority, MAKE IT A PRIORITY. Don't just talk about it and say, "Oh golly gee, wish we had more kids with 21st Century skills."
But we still need simple jobs for simple people. Half of people have an IQ below 100. School doesn't make you any smarter (go in with 90 IQ, come out with 90 IQ). We're not going to be turning these people into electrical engineers no matter how much money you throw at STEM education.
OK, help me out... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, what's the "group think" on this one? Because I don't want to be called a racist or a xenophobe...
Re:OK, help me out... (Score:5, Interesting)
Call me whatever the F you want. I wish this was around 7 years ago when I got outsourced after 9 1/2 years with my previous company!
Re:OK, help me out... (Score:5, Insightful)
if you tried, it would be a one-way trip.
who would hire you after that? lawsuits are public record and your name would be out there.
I can't afford to 'retire' now. can you? most cant.
Re:OK, help me out... (Score:5, Insightful)
good! those are jobs we'd never have anyway.
once they learn that the US's infrastructure IS a key reason why the US is the #1 tech country - they'll be back.
bribes, outages, low service standards, low quality of work, all that will add up and companies have already learned that its not a good plan, long-term, to do this.
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once they learn that the US's infrastructure IS a key reason why the US is the #1 tech country - they'll be back.
And if manufacturing is any guide, it will only take a half century for those jobs to come back.
Re:OK, help me out... (Score:5, Insightful)
The key reason the US is the #1 tech country is because tech workers like to live in the US. If you prevent tech workers from moving here, the tech industry will go where the people go.
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Re:OK, help me out... (Score:5, Informative)
its not racist when you can SEE with your own lying eyes that the bay area companies (I live here) are going out of their way to hire folks from india and china, first. the ONLY reason they do this is for money and servitude reasons.
when I interview and everyone on the table is indian, I can tell that there is a total loss of BALANCE in racial and cultural mix. the bay area is very india-populated but not THAT much that 99% of the folks I talk to in every single interview are all indian, with occasional chinese.
it simply does not represent the population mix and that's obvious to anyone who spends even a week here.
Re:OK, help me out... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not just Bay Area. Houston too. H1-B needs to end. No more indentured servitude.
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Re:OK, help me out... (Score:5, Insightful)
its not racist when you can SEE with your own lying eyes that the bay area companies (I live here) are going out of their way to hire folks from india and china, first. the ONLY reason they do this is for money and servitude reasons.
It's even worse when you see every U.S. President and Congressman (before now) taking big fat corporate campaign donations to play along. If Hillary had been elected, the corrupt H1B program would have at the very least stayed the same. At worst they would have gotten even more H1B's.
Good to finally have a President who's willing to put his own country, and its citizens, first again. It's been a long time.
Re:OK, help me out... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is what happens when the POTUS didn't take a single fucking dime from a single PAC or Corporation. He's fucking crazy but at least he's not a whore and some of what he's doing needed to be done. It wouldn't ever get done with a traditional whore politician. If we can somehow do something about campaign finance maybe this could be the norm.
Fighting greed with greed (Score:5, Insightful)
The old way was "make a law telling companies they must ____." You pointed out how well that worked.
Trump's draft order has taken a hint from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison's approach - if people are motivated by money, you set it up so that they make the most money by doing what you want.
The draft order says that instead of approving H1-B applications at random, via a lottery, as it's done now, they are to use a different approach. If a company truly can't find American workers with the required skills, if the imported labor actually has special skills, the company will be willing to *pay* for those skills. Companies wanting to import cheaper entry-level prpgrammers won't pay them $180,000 / year. That's why Trump's order is to prioritize H1-Bs by salary. You want to import someone and pay them $40K? Go to the back of the line. You're willing to pay $200K salary because there truly aren't any Americans available with those skills? You're at the front of the line.
It totally removes the motivation to use H1-Bs as cheaper replacements for American workers, because it makes H1-Bs cost more than American workers. The company who wants to minimize costs will hire Americans, whenever possible.
Though it's not perfect, there is a certain genius to using their desire to minimize costs to get them to avoid H1-Bs. The founding fathers wrote about doing something similar. They deliberately set up a power struggle. It's designed so that a president could increase their power mainly by taking power away from Congress. On the other hand, Congress is a bunch of people who like having power and won't give it up easily. So to fight the President's desire for power, they used the Congresscritters' desire for power.
That's the old system. Now, prove it by paying him (Score:3)
Just *saying* stuff about what you need is the old system.
Trump's draft order says "put your money where your mouth is." If they don't actually need someone with all of those skills, they won't want to *pay* top dollar for someone with all of those skills. The draft (which will hopefully be revised) says whoever is willing to pay top dollar for their H1-B candidates goes to the front of the line. You don't pay top dollar for someone with unique skills unless you *actually* need those unique skills.
* Ps Tr
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Well, yes, but.. you have to live in North Texas.
You could at least have quoted house prices in Colorado or Utah or somewhere nice.
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Re:OK, help me out... (Score:5, Insightful)
Say all you want about how he is going to screw everybody for his own benefit, but it can really only be said when he actually does it. So far he is pretty much on a roll about all the things he said he was going to do which is rare for a politician this day and age and that is what is freaking people out right now. His actions are not that of a typical US politician.
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Pay attention to what he is doing now. He's already trying to put the post of President before that of all the courts in the land over something that is ultimately not especially important - a completely artificial emergency. How this fight plays out over the next week will show among other things if the Constitution remains binding (as in, do the courts have the power to overturn unconstitutional actions by a President) and if habeas corpus can be fo
Re:OK, help me out... (Score:4, Interesting)
The group I work in is truely international. I work with Indians, Russians, an Israeli and a guy from Venezuela, oh, and a few white Americans as well. Few of them are H1B. We have a hard time finding good engineers and jump at the chance to hire them, regardless of where they come from.
That's fine. But know that if you're going to base your company in the U.S. and benefit from our infrastructure, our high living standard, our universities, our clean air, our non-corrupt cops, and our less-corrupt-than-most political system--then you're going to have to pay for it. And part of paying for it means either hiring American workers or paying a significant financial penalty for importing foreign workers.
Re:OK, help me out... (Score:5, Insightful)
That said - So far, Trump has done exactly what he said he would do. The first two or three days, okay, I'll admit it took us by surprise that a politician (new to it or not) didn't lie. At this point, anyone not expecting exactly this either wasn't paying attention during the election, or is just plain delusional.
"May you live in exciting times"...
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I'll admit it took us by surprise that a politician (new to it or not) didn't lie.
Isn't it sad how corrupt politics has become that it actually surprises us to see a President attempt to actually deliver on his promises?
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Re:OK, help me out... (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting you should say that. Looks like Reagan had an unusually low percentage [fivethirtyeight.com] of kept promises compared to other presidents.
But you know, they didn't call him the teflon president for nothing. The way his legend has grown over the years, seems like embalming fluid must have been fortified with teflon.
Re: (Score:3)
That's because most Slashdotters are either too young to remember Reagan, or not old enough to have understood what he was doing. Not only did he spend four years keeping as many campaign promises as he could, he ran for re-election on his record and earned another four years.
Reagan was also very good at warming up to people though, (hence the name "The Great Communicator") which is why he totally, utterly destroyed Carter in 1980 and Mondale in 1984. Trump has no filter though, so I doubt he can rally people as well as Reagan. Ultimately, time will tell.
Re:OK, help me out... (Score:4, Interesting)
"Political scientists have been studying the question of campaign promises for almost 50 years, and the results are remarkably consistent. Most of the literature suggests that presidents make at least a “good faith” effort to keep an average of about two-thirds of their campaign promises..."
https://fivethirtyeight.com/fe... [fivethirtyeight.com]
Re:OK, help me out... (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, most presidents do in fact keep most of their campaign promises...
Actually they don't. Effort is not the same as keeping, which is the problem. You are one of the first people I've ever heard in 40 years to confuse the two but muddling the conversation with nonsequitors is a common troll.
A good faith effort is the same as keeping their campaign promises, considering no President is king and as such cannot guarantee anything. A good faith effort is defined as what a reasonable person would determine is a diligent and honest effort. That is all anyone can ever ask of anyone else in any circumstance.
Re: (Score:3)
Proposal is highest salaries get the H1-Bs (Score:3, Informative)
The old way was a lottery, with H1-B applications approved randomly. Oh and companies would say there were no American workers available, pinky swear.
Trump's draft order has taken a hint from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison's approach - if people are motivated by money, you set it up so that they make the most money by doing what you want.
The draft order says that instead of approving H1-B applications at random, via a lottery, as it's done now, they are to use a different approach. Preference is given t
Re:OK, help me out... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll help you out, I'm from East Europe, a US company with offices in here once hired some of us, some people from Southeast Asia and some people from Latin America, with not much saying about the project, just the required skills, then they shipped all of us to the West Coast for training, and once we were there, they told us that the American engineers were going to train us (including immigrants with green cards and American born), and afterwards they were going to be fired, and the projects moved abroad, while a few got H-1B visas to continue in site.
We completed the training, and after coming back, I resigned as soon as possible.
So, to make it easy for you. Any people with a moral compass will tell you that this visa programmes are being abused, and as a foreigner that was tricked into this miserable hamster wheel of abusive capitalism. I tell you:
No, this isn't racist at all. They are making a huge profit with this in detriment of the American people.
Companies should hire locally, and only bring foreign TALENT when it is really that, a very hard to get skill, not cheap paid engineers.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm all OK about the H1B abuse ending. That's not xenophobic or racist.
However, the abuse, or well, what I consider abuse, is importing a bunch of mediocre people from cheap countries to make them slaves in the US that have to share a small apartment because they can't afford anything decent by themselves.
However there's many talented people abroad and to be honest if they are paid above average I wouldn't have any quota. Yes, you can import a million Indians if you want as long as you pay them whatever the
Re:OK, help me out... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:OK, help me out... (Score:5, Interesting)
The TFW program is being abused badly and more so since Trudeau loosened the rules that Harper had put into place. More people are losing their jobs to imported workers, and not just the very bottom rung. But skilled tradesman like welders, pipefitters, machinists and so on. The process isn't stringent enough here in Canada, and companies have already figured out how to abuse it.
Re:OK, help me out... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well I'll bite. I think David Frum said it most accurately.
"When liberals insist that only fascists will defend borders, then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals wonâ(TM)t do"
It applies to most of Trump's 'core issues'. In and of themselves, they're not extreme issues.
Controlling the border ...
Keeping good jobs in America
These used to be normal bread and butter conversations. It wasn't that long ago, tariffs were just regular policy. So to was controlling immigration numbers. There's nothing crazy or racist or xenophobic about any of it in and of itself.
The problem is that people have been screaming about their issues for decades now and the 'mainstream' political parties have basically ignored it at best. At worst, they've made it horrible to even bring it up (calling someone racist...)
For people on slashdot, it might be the H1B issue. For others, its the border. For others, it's their factory job.
The growing self-destruction of leftism (Score:3)
Well I'll bite. I think David Frum said it most accurately. "When liberals insist that only fascists will defend borders, then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals wonÃ(TM)t do"
Harris said something similar in 2003ish I believe:
"The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.
To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization."
I mention t
Re:OK, help me out... (Score:4, Insightful)
See? Replacing American workers with H-1B workers actually creates more jobs in the tens and hundreds of thousands. Somehow.
I saw nothing in the snippet you posted about replacing American workers. That is something you added. If you actually understood the snippet, or at least didn't refuse to acknowledge the argument, you would have typed something more like this:
See? Hiring H1B workers to help American companies succeed actually creates more jobs in the tens and hundreds of thousands. Obviously.
What about american companies with... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Aren't most regional offices incorporated in the country they are located in to avoid having to pay taxes in the US? This wouldn't really affect them then.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm thinking that local workers don't need US H-1B visas to work in their own country.
Re:What about american companies with... (Score:5, Insightful)
What US visa is required for a US company to hire someone in Bangalore to work in their Bangalore office?
Answer: None. US immigration law is utterly irrelevant for that job, with or without this proposed order.
thought they already had to (Score:2)
isnt that the point, if you looked everywhere in the country and could not find qualified personal, then you get into the H1 program??
Re: (Score:3)
isnt that the point, if you looked everywhere in the country and could not find qualified personal, then you get into the H1 program??
In *theory* yes, in practice there are a few loopholes...
1. Pay at least $60K and the position is *deemed* to be highly qualified
2. Hire for a University
3. Advertise widely for a junior title position and hire a few on the cheap, then use this salary level to automatically qualify future H1b candidates by saying it is the same title as the previous position already advertised and filled (the trick used by the big consulting companies that hire many folks with "identical" titles).
Fixing the loopholes will go
Re: (Score:3)
In theory that is how it works.
In practice, they sabotage their search for US people in order to claim they couldn't find anyone.
For example, I get lots and lots of emails from recruiters asking if I'm interested in a job opening that is well below my level of experience, and thus pays a much lower salary. The positions are also not in the state I live in, and I've never expressed any interest in moving to that state in any resume I've posted/emailed/sent out.
They use my rejection (as well as several other
Make sure the H1Bs are paid $100k (Score:5, Interesting)
If you make sure an H1B holder is paid over $100k a year the abuses will stop.
Or require them to be paid the average prevailing wage of the position in the CEO's MSA.
Either one will kill large chunks of the body-shop industry.
Lastly, put in a bounty program for body shops that use B1 visa holders for body shopping. Reporters get 40% of the imposed fine, which is a multiple of the salary delta between the body shoppers and the equivalent FTE.
$100k isn't nearly enough (Score:5, Insightful)
You're massively underestimating how profitable the abuse here is because the scale of it is hard to grasp. It's completely pervasive. Anything less than $300k (adjusted yearly for inflation) isn't enough. Remember: these Visas are suppose to be for geniuses. The best and brightest. It's 2017. A code monkey makes $100k, especially on the West Coast.
Hire American Heck, There is rampant H1B fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
And if their replacements had the skills, why would they need training!
I have never been trained by an individual I was replacing
Instead of importing H1-B employees... (Score:3)
Um... aren't they already suppose to do that (Score:3)
Re:Um... aren't they already suppose to do that (Score:4, Informative)
Immigration, not Indentured Servitude (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we should abandon H1-B completely. If someone wants to work in the US, and has a job lined up here, then we should allow them to become a citizen within a year assuming they jump through the necessary hoops (take a night class, pass the citizenship exam, etc). This idiocy of requiring people to wait years, sometimes over a decade, to become a citizen while they work in the US at a well paying job is stupid.
We are a nation of immigrants. It's in most of our blood. Immigrants start businesses [kauffman.org] far more than native born Americans because they are risk takers... if they are willing to uproot themselves and move to a foreign land, they are likely willing to take other risks as well. That kind of risk taking is what built our nation, and shutting it out only harms us in the long run.
The H1-B program creates trapped workers who have to toe the line and rock no boats, lest they be fired and deported. This allows companies to abuse them in ways citizens would not put up with. An immigrant with citizenship is less of a threat to the livelihood of tech workers than an H1-B visitor, as companies would not be in a position to deport them if they asked for a raise; they could look for other jobs with impunity, and thus would compete on equal footing... and similarly, would not have to put up with artificially depressed wages.
So open up immigration, and fuck the stupid fake 'work' visas.
Fired after training three H1Bs (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Wasn't it supposed to be that way ? (Score:3)
Irony (Score:3)
I happen to visit a forum of US immigrants of certain Eastern-European origin. Most are in IT jobs, and came here by way of H1B visa (though significant portion have been sponsored for a permanent residency by now). They are largely vehemently pro-Trump, islamophobic (and generally harbor great dislike and disdain for all "brown people", be that middle-easterners, hispanics or asians). I find the current situation not a little ironic - in a way wouldn't it be poetic justice if they were hit by the very policies they so feverishly support?
Not that I specifically wish this upon anyone or their family, but if the choice must be made - these people surely deserve it more than refugees from war-torn countries.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
The wage gap was so just tempting. If you really cant find an expert in the USA, you will have to find an expert in another nation and then pay top expert USA wages in full.
Some of the cash savings to not hire US workers and then bring in very average low cost workers to keep local wages low could now be more difficult.
It means don't replace Americans with cheaper H1-B (Score:5, Insightful)
It means that if when this happens:
ABC Inc wants to bring over someone who is actually special, who has skills not available locally. Since they have special skills, ABC Inc is willing to pay them $190,000
XYZ Inc wants to import some entry-level coders, for $40K each ($20K cheaper than entry-level US workers)
ABC Inc wins. They are getting someone with special skills not available locally, as *evidenced* by fact that they are willing to pay for those special skills.
It's not perfect, but it's an improvement. No system is perfect.
Re:It means don't replace Americans with cheaper H (Score:5, Interesting)
I've said this before and it still stands: there needs to be a secret shopper program of sorts where test applicants (who have really good backgrounds that match the skills needed) apply and if they are rejected, a hearing is held. public embarassment would result from any company who was cheating.
it would be a bit of work to set it up and manage it, but the alternative is not working at all (ie, trust system).
I've often thought about this. I have been out of work for months and months at a time and yet I'm pretty well qual'd for many jobs. I applied for quite a few, several that were 'below' me since I needed to eat and would take any job I could get that would keep food on the table. even those, I could not get. I knew something was 'up' but no one really cares (who has power to change things).
I'm now employed, but during my 'out' months, it was a real struggle to find a company who would hire an older american and who needs a local salary grade to afford US style expenses.
I'd have volunteered to be a secret shopper. I'd enjoy it, in fact, since I would know that bad co's would be brought to justice.
Re: (Score:3)
Is the US tax system really so archaic that they can't just produce stats on this sort of thing automatically?
In the UK the majority of employees get paid through a system called PAYE where tax information is automatically passed to the tax man. There are of course people outside of this system, but not enough to be statistically significant enough to alter the stats.
This means it's trivial for our statistics body the ONS to produce stats on things like average salaries by field which are then used to infor
Re:It means don't replace Americans with cheaper H (Score:4, Interesting)
XYZ Inc wants to import some entry-level coders, for $40K each ($20K cheaper than entry-level US workers)
I'm Canadian, and we don't really have this problem in the tech industry (other industries are a different matter...), thus I don't have a personal stake in what's happening in the US (other than the fact that I do routinely get calls from HR rep from large, well-known Internet companies that want to hire me and bring me down to the US, but I have solid reasons for not uprooting my family for such a move).
Personally, from what I've read on /., the situation you describe above sucks. We had a similar situation in my city a year or so ago when it was found that several McDonalds restaurants had been turning away student applications, and was using the Temporary Foreign Worker program to bring in foreign workers while claiming no local Canadian were interested in working for them. This is low skilled work, and it turned out there were lots of Canadians who wanted the jobs -- the local McDonalds franchisee just decided that he could bully foreigners into working long hours more easily. When this hit the news, the Government took action and rescinded their ability to bring in foreign workers, and (as I understand things) McDonalds rescinded their franchises. So I agree -- it's wrong, and it needs to stop.
But do you know what else sucks? By forcing XYZ Corp., to pay those entry-level coders more, they're likely to do the math and realize that it will be cheaper to just open up a foreign branch of XYZ Corp. in the country/countries most of these workers are originally from, and then pay them the local equivalent of $20k/year. Now not only have the jobs been lost for American workers, but all the money those workers would have spent in the US for housing, food, clothing, etc. is also gone. You can't offshore fast food, but you can offshore IT workers.
So I suppose the downside is that if XYZ Corp. does the math and realizes it's going to be cheaper to just offshore, it may not do a whole lot to help American IT workers. And it will doubly hurt when the wages they're paying don't get spent in the US either. I'm not saying H1-B's are the solution (I don't have a solution) -- but getting rid of them may not work out as some rosily hope.
Yaz
Re:It means don't replace Americans with cheaper H (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you think XYZ Corp hasn't already done the math on whether its cheaper to offshore? They have. Repeatedly. All of them. Many did offshore. XYZ Corp isn't importing cheap H1Bs because it's cheaper than offshoring, its because it needs a domestic American presence - particularly for customer requirements.
Currently it's a lottery, NOT prioritized, no evid (Score:5, Informative)
Currently there is a lottery every year to see which companies get the H1-Bs, they are not prioritized. (Other than having a couple types of H1-B).
> Thing is, this is already how H1-Bs are supposed to work.
It's already WHY, not HOW. Currently, companies (mostly a few staffing companies) put in applications in which they simply *state* that talent isn't available locally. They provide no *evidence* that Americans aren't available to do the job. There is then a lottery, and H1-Bs applications are randomly approved. The staffing firms, who submit hundreds of thousands of applications, then essentially resell the H1-Bs at a profit.
Trump's order is to give preference to applications which provide *evidence* that there is no local talent available because the employer is willing to pay the H1-B a high salary. A company wouldn't pay an imported worker $200,000 if an American will do the same job for $150,000. Therefore the high salary proves that the H1-B is being used as intended.
As I mentioned before, this plan is of course not perfect, but it's clearly an imprpvement. Perhaps Congress or the4 administration will make further improvements next week, next month, or next year - he's only been in office ten days.
Re:Currently it's a lottery, NOT prioritized, no e (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree. And it makes you wonder why Obama didn't manage to do this in eight years in office. This really seems like a no brainer.
Re: (Score:3)
Right now, H-1B's are assigned haphazardly to companies regardless of salary; that is, one after another, one H-1B may go to a $60000 programmer, and another to a $250000 expert.
Presumably, under the new rules, H-1B's would go to the highest paid positions first. That is, DHS would sort all visa applications (for the year or quarter) by salary, in descending order, and give out H-1B visas in that order until they run out.
This actually is probably a good change: it means that visas go to the most economicall
Re: Goodbye Trump (Score:2, Insightful)
You've missed the obbious. Trump doesn't care what the media thinks. He does what's right no matter how much they screech.
Re: Goodbye Trump (Score:5, Insightful)
"What's right?"
I think you meant to say "He does what he thinks is right".
That isn't to say that it is or isn't right - but Trump isn't automatically right on all things. Keep that in mind.
Re: Goodbye Trump (Score:5, Insightful)
He cares very much what the media thinks. Why do you think he threw a temper tantrum when it was shown that he didn't have the biggest inauguration crowd? He's always checking the media because he's so insecure and so narcissistic.
Your hyperbole is showing. (Score:3, Insightful)
But easy on the hyperbole - we can't defeat the lying and maniacal fury of our White Nationalist POTUS by using their own techniques, any more than we can defend freedom by surrendering our freedom. I would recommend looking to the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior as an example of how we can win this fight. Let President Trump (nee: Drumpf) rely upon the Big Lie, screaming alternative facts at the top of his lung
Re:Your hyperbole is showing. (Score:5, Interesting)
Doesn't look like he's lying to me. I'm as shocked as anyone, but it looks like he actually intends to keep his campaign promises. I can't even remember the last time that happened.
Re:Your hyperbole is showing. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, you're right, he did promise us that - but that means he's lying now, when he says that this ban isn't a ban on Muslims. And permitting those who identify as being part of a religious minority in those countries (a.k.a., Christians) - this isn't a blatant violation of the constitutional prohibition against establishing a State-authorized religion?
I though he was supposed to defend the Constitution, not rewrite it.
Re: Your hyperbole is showing. (Score:3)
But to discriminate who we'll let in based on religion - that is forbidden. You obviously have never read the Constitution of the United States. Neither has President Trump (nee: Drumpf), apparently.
Re: Your hyperbole is showing. (Score:4, Insightful)
He never proposed a ban. He proposed a TEMPORARY immigration stop "until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on." And, that's what he's doing. I would think you would be happy that he's softened his position to only include the most obvious exporters of terrorism.
Re: Your hyperbole is showing. (Score:5, Insightful)
For now, at least.
And he's only banning Muslims from places where he doesn't have financial interests at stake.
For now, at least.
And he's only lying a little bit.
Oh, wait - it's fashionable to call it "alternative truth" now, isn't it?
Re: (Score:2)
If Trump only steals for himself he will steal far less than most other presidents ever.
A president making deals to get his family and himself into cushy post election jobs will cause far more losses. The ROI on good lobbying is immense, the lobbied get "paid" peanuts ... the companies make billions.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, apparently he didn't get the memo that he's supposed to be ashamed to be American or stand up for his country.
Re: (Score:3)
There are way too many loopholes and nobody is really trying to enforce the rules. It is actually quite reasonable and legal to require hiring citizens and permanent residents first since the H1-B isn't even allowed to be here without a special visa that nobody is obligated to grant.
Re:The role of US colleges and ongoing education (Score:5, Interesting)
Is anything missing from the US education system?
No, we graduate 1.55 people with STEM degrees for every entry-level STEM job opening. And then we staff those openings with H1B workers because they didn't have to take out student loans to pay for their STEM degree.
The people claiming we need H1B visas are lying. They want to pay workers less money, and competition from H1B workers drives salaries down. So they lie about not being able to find US workers.
Re: (Score:3)
Your title does say it all.
America is saturated with unskilled labor. Those people need to live somehow. Until we have some kind of guaranteed base income or some such system, they need a job.
Aside refugees from extreme conditions, it's difficult to me, morally, to "help" massive amounts of semi-skilled foreigners when our neighbors might be wondering where their next meal will come. They should come first. The whole "you can't help others if you can't help yourself".
We can't save the world. We just can't.
N
Re:The human factor. And the unskilled Americans. (Score:4, Interesting)
I have tons of empathy for Indian workers, Mexican illegals, etc. I don't fault them one bit for coming here. They have families to feed, and I understand completely why they do it and don't hold it against them (I would do the same thing in their shoes).
But I'm also an American. And so I stand by my fellow Americans first and foremost. And we have kids to feed too, of course.
And I would expect the same treatment from any other country. If I were applying for a job in another country, I would do it with the understanding that a citizen of that country is of course going to get preference over me. That's the whole point of having countries in the first place.