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What f___ing BS!!!! High tech companies want techno coolies to do work that US college tech grads will do (but at 1/3 salary). Computer World just did an article about techno coolies hired by Silicon Valley firms. If we truly have a shortage of tech workers, then let us do it by the free market way and not sponsor H-1B fraught with indenture conditions. Example, if we need tech skill A, then let us immigrate tech skill A people. Let that immigrant throw out his resume listing the badly needed skills and let the American firms make offers to hire him. That is not how corporate America wants it done. They want H-1 applicants. The process works like this. Google secures 100 H-1 VISA. Google HR calls their handlers in China and ask them to recruit 100 Chinese IT workers for a fee. The Chinese handlers fill the 100 slots with Chinese tech workers by offering to do their paperwork to come to the US. In return they work for the US company on the H-1B application for seven years at a salary that is 1/3 of US worker he will replace. During those seven years, the Chinese worker cannot take better offers and jump companies. The Chinese worker is told make their American employer happy and do not ever get fired before the 7 year term is up, otherwise someone in his family in China owes the handlers for the application costs. Debt collectors will come to family home with hammers (ie someone will have his legs broken). That is H-1B in a nutshell. The US already is paying for the fact they did not learn how to pick their own cotton, now US software companies are repeating history with their own version of slavery. For free trading freepers remember this when the PLA builds high tech weapons and sink the ship that your son or grandson is serving on. Wonder how they learn to make such good electronics and the software that guides it??? Corporate capitalist bastards.

I have been hiring H1B for 20 years. I have never heard of this. I normally hire people who have come to America on education visas. They are in the united states before I interview them. I test every applicant. Americans rarely pass the test. An American with good technical skills usually moves above programmer very quickly. And will be six figures in no time. But I need programmers.

The test is simple. Can you query a SQL database. Can you debug a line of code. If you notice and fix the other obvious flaws in the line of code and query the database in an efficient manner we hire you. We don't care if you speak English. We need a hundred more like you.

H1B lasts 3 years and you can renew for another 3 years. At sometime in the process if you are an employee in good standing we apply for a green card. That process can take three years. All the visas cost the company over $5000. The worker has to pay something as well.

All employees are free will. We do not pay anyone but the employee. And we HAVE TO PAY THE RATE THE GOVERNMENT SETS. Which is now $80,000 in Chicago. Its the law. If we don't do it, we can be sued. And worse, we will not be able to hire H1Bs anymore. The employees can get another job at anytime. The visa can be transferred if the employee quits to work somewhere else.

For an H1B or green card we have to post the job with the pay. If anyone can pass the test we have to hire them which we do. But we still hire the H1B candidate as well because its so hard to find good programmers.

I would love to hire Americans instead. They speak English.
I don't have to pay for the H1B and green card process. And I can explain things easier to them.

I think what you are describing could be true of contract programmers. We never use them. I don't think its true. But I could not be sure. And in that case the company providing the contract programmers would be breaking the law. Also, it could be true for the outsourced programmers who live in China and India. Who knows what happens there. But both those cases would go away if more programmers were available.

Let me just say that bad programmers are worth less than nothing to me. They do bad work which has to be thrown out and replaced. And in the process many testers and project managers have to double their efforts and time. Don't try and tell me that there are lots of Americans you can train. Your wrong. Its like hiring someone off the street and making them the starting pitcher for a major league team.

If you want to hire Americans, start by firing teachers. Most teachers have soft degrees, English, history, education. These people cannot teach math above the 5th grade. I know they do. But they do not do it well. Americans should be learning calculus by Freshman year. That means algebra and geometry before high school. And they should take logic or programming starting in 5th grade as well. Our teachers generally suck at this. And of course they should. Since they have never taken a real math class after high school.