I have a problem with H1-B, because it depletes the American workforce and suppresses wages.
But it’s a long swim from India to the USA.
I’m not entirely kidding. A lot of people overstay visas, but an alien from India likely at least entered the country legally.
I’ve worked beside many Indians in IT, some with papers “in progress” which means they have diddly now, some with H1b, some with green card, some naturalized citizens, some ??.
I’ve never seen them to depress my wages or the wages of citizens around me. Everywhere I’ve worked (Chicagoland and midwest) there is a shortage of IT workers. Based on the many recruiters emailing me for IT jobs in an L from Washington DC to FL to AZ there is a shortage of IT workers there also. (Curious even in boom times I never get recruiters from the NE or left coast.)
Due to this shortage of IT workers, the IT managers have 3 choices:
- Offshore the project to India
- Kill the project.
- Bring in immigrants of whatever immigration status
All 3 happen. A shop will have budget for 3 projects and is unable to staff them up. So it offshores 1 project, kills 1 project and then consolidates the few people it could find for the 3 projects into the third project to staff it locally. I only have a job in option #3 as I don’t plan on going to India.
There is an extremely high variance in IT wages. Some of it is based on technical skills. Much more is based on communication skills and that is where Indians make less. I sit in meetings with them and don’t have a clue what they are saying. It isn’t only me, Indians from different parts of India don’t understand each other. In the meeting I tell them “email us what you just said”. Then we’ll understand it.
But the biggest reason for a wide variance in wages is negotiating ability. With both Indians and the rest of us, some have the ability to negotiate a high wage; others of us don’t. That has nothing to do with one’s immigration status except that lack of communication skill sometimes impacts one’s negotiating skills.