Posted on 03/10/2017 12:13:45 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Software has been touched. If you look at the stats of who are getting the H1-Bs, it’s overwhelmingly software.
If foreign workers are replacing American workers and if they are being paid less, then it should be reported to the Labor Department. Software companies jump through hoops and pay a lot of legal and application fees to ensure they are not hiring lower paid foreign workers as H1-Bs.
Again, outsourcing to foreign companies where the work is done abroad by low-paid workers is a completely different story than hiring talented H1-Bs to work in the U.S. (In fact, I do know of embedded hardware work that is being done *in* Costa Rica.)
I hope someone like Michelle Malkin can come up with real world examples where H1Bs are putting Americans out of work because the foreigners are lower paid. In over twenty years, I have heard talk and accusations, but have not seen a single real example.
Well, when they come here they must be "sponsored" or go back home (assuming they don't "overstay"). That need for sponsorship effectively makes them indentured servants.
If they were free to quit and move to any other job without sponsorship, they would likely command even higher pay than they already do. But that would defeat the purpose of the H1-B program, which is — indentured servitude.
I'll compete with free workers; been doing it for a long time now. And my being a citizen does help with some clients (such as the feds) who have restrictions on the people they can hire. But slave labor is dirty pool.
There are no American workers to “pour in” if we eliminate the talented H1B workers. We look everywhere for them now, offering ridiculously high salarues — and they are no where to be found.
We can’t take just anyone who is self taught (although occassionally a self-taught programmer is capable enoogh.) They need to be well trained and they need to be talented on top o it.
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That’s what I am talking about. People don’t even know how H1Bs work.
H1B workers are not indentured servants. They can change jobs on day 1. The new companies need to transfer the H1B visa, but that is very easy. H1B workers transfer jobs very frequently.
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I can only reply with my son’s experience.
He is an ABD (all but dissertation) in a physical chemistry Ph.D. program who is very strong in scientific programming and large databases. For reasons that are irrelevant here, he “mastered out” of the Ph.D. program.
In his first job, he was in an “H1B shop.” It was for CGG, a French-owned company, whose Houston-based division did subsea geologic surveys for the oil industry. He was there for two years before they let him go, after oil dropped from $100 to $25/bbl, and they were in deep trouble. (Eventually he got a much better development job for a startup that melded chemical, optical, and programming skills, but that’s beside the point).
The way he told it, at CGG they preferred H1B’s, because they could work them 70 or more hours per week. The reason is that they had to hold a US job for 3 or 4 years to get their green cards. In the meantime, they were near-slaves. If they lost the job, they had to leave.
So, in his department, his managers and many of his co-workers were either Chinese or Indian. All of the non-managers made roughly 65K per year, which is the minimum amount per the H1B program for people at the degree level. That level of pay was pretty good when the program was originated, but is now entry-level for people with Master’s or Ph.D. degrees.... and it hasn’t been changed since 1989.
The arguments that you made, and that companies like Google and Microsoft make, that there aren’t enough skilled US programs at the $150K or so level, may in fact be true. But, as the program is now operated, there are many H1B shops who almost exclusively hire at the 65 to 70K level, and flog the help mercilessly for extended hours.
The net effect is that entry-level (and these are high entry positions) Americans have to compete with near-slave labor. Americans are being strongly discouraged from entering the STEM field by this layer of desperate and mistreated H1B’s. Moreover, within an abusive H1B shop, if you’re an American, you’re a foreigner in your own country. Good luck getting promoted when your manager can promote one of his countrymen.
You’re lying.
Any US company which replaces American workers with foreign labor should be run out of business - PERIOD.
There are a lot of people out of work because of the depressed oil industry but it’s because of new technology and new ways of mining for oil. It is not because of H1Bs moving into Houston and taking their jobs.
H1Bs help tech companies grow. When high tech companies grow they need workers of all kinds. Some of those out of work oil engineers will probably end up in high tech because the H1Bs helped them grow.
One ought to visit Houston and see how many engineers are out of work because of the depressed oil industry. If Trump can order the Dakota pipeline to be built with American steel why can’t he order that all engineering in America be done by American engineers?
Get rid of the H1-B program.
Software AND QA have been overwhelmed by H1-B visas.
You could, for example, offer to train otherwise qualified white males around the age of 40, and then keep them around.
In baseball we have a lot of players from Caribbean countries.
Should Major League Baseball be run out of business?
It’s the same in software. We need players who can hit curve balls.
Engineering should NOT be a profession of choice in America. All you engineering students, change your curriculum.
Yep. He’s lying.
Pearls before Swine makes some very good points.
Companies do have some hooks into foreigners applying for greencards (which is different than H1B visas.)
It’s also true that some of the Indian contracting companies (e.g. Wipro) are bringing in many young H1Bs and might be paying them lowish wages ($60k).
These two areas should be tightened up. But to disallow H1B visas or to put a significant block on them is totally stupid.
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American software engineers out of college are making unbelievable amounts of money, undertaking some very intellectually challenging technology. It could not be better for them — and they know it too.
I encourage every young American who thinks they are capable to consider going into software.
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Very few people have the talent to do software well. You can’t just train forty-somethings.
You can train them to do testing, IT and customer service, etc — and it’s happening. There are many, many Americans getting jobs as not only software developers, but also manages, IT, testing, customer service, marketing, sales, legal, office admin, etc, etc, etc.
Here in the Seattle area, many of our kids are going into the software industry or companies supported by the software industry. They are getting great careers because H1Bs have helped our high tech companies grow.
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Silly Con Valley has been importing Asian workers for many years. Even top tier graduates of the leading American universities sometimes can’t even get interviews. As for actual jobs, forget it. Have you tried taking your masters degree to mcDonalds?
There’s not a single shred of proof to substantiate what you are saying.
Were this the case, they’d be adding to current employment roles, not firing with the proviso of training their replacements.
As such, the H1-B visa program not only needs to end, we need to go in reverse and rescind those currently holding those visas. In addition, the cost of ACTUALLY bringing on an H1-B needs to be far, far higher, with a stipulation that current in-department headcounts cannot decrease for 24 months after bringing on an H1-B.
H1-Bs also need to be ‘First Out’. Outsourcing should also come with it hefty fees for guaranteed severances and a law against retraining as a precondition of severance.
I’m all for outsourcing when you can’t handle the amount of work coming over the doorstep. However, they need to be first out when that flow slows down.
If your leadership decides to poison pill a division to let folks go so they can hire in another division, they should be hit with a tariff so big their heads spin as a result.
I’d also lower the bar to lawsuits coming from highly reviewed workers filing suit against employers. Anybody with 8 years experience and ratings on average of ‘meets’ or higher, or the equivalent, will automatically find federal venue and a presumption of substantiation of claim with 3x damages attaching.
After the reindeer games of the 90s and 2000s, I’m ready to start going to guns on boards that put up with this crap too. Personal liability for fraud at the BOD level will attach, as will conspiracy to commit fraud.
Do your job at the board level, actually police your C-suite, and life will be jake.
So many people out of homes, so many families destroyed, and so much capital transferring from the middle class to the upper class in the last 20 years from control fraud that I have no more stomach for this.
I owned a software company, and we never, ever had an issue finding talent. I’ve also managed teams of Indians on projects and its like doing it all by yourself during the day, with them undoing it all by themselves at night.
As such, sir, you’re likely in some sort of lobbying or management capacity with someone with an interest in perpetrating what can only be called control fraud and theft of intellectual property - using qualified people to train unqualified people for the purpose of firing them without cause.
We used to kill people for stealing horses. What should we do to a guy who makes you train your unqualified replacement for stealing your job?
The question of our times.
There’s no shortage of Tech Workers. There is a shortage of Tech Workers who are willing to work for minimum wage.
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