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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.

My job (of 5 years) is going to India Friday. I came in extra early to crosstrain my replacement since that is when his schedule ends. I had to take a 1/3 pay cut last year and it still isn’t enough to save my job.

Champion this all you want. My college degree is being devalued because of global market competition.

Now if the software we design, test, and subsequently license was taxed an import duty like any other good, it would be valued into the millions but because it comes via a wire, there is no importation tax.

Bill Gates is a billion dollar marxist but was among those leading the call for such work visas. The money doesn’t help out the bottom line of corportations, it gets pilfered off at levels of upper management.

>> I’ve never seen them to depress my wages or the wages of citizens around me. <<

That’s really funny.

>> Everywhere I’ve worked (Chicagoland and midwest) there is a shortage of IT workers <<

Really, because I work in IT, too. I happen to be smack dab right in the middle of where that trillion dollars of “stimulus” is heading, and am very safe in my job, but I have dabbled in looking elsewhere, and I just don’t see listings. But we’re in a bad economy right now, so that’s not too reliable. It just means I don’t trust your anecdotes either way.

There was a day when meat packing was a job which would bring in about $50/hr (today’s money), plenty to retire on when the inevitable damage to the human body over-ran the ability to work. Then they brought in immigrants, and meatpackers make about $6 an hour.

When my brother worked in construction, he could pull down $100/ hr. Then they brought in immigrants; his old job (he switched careers) would pay about $6 an hour.

I studied IS instead of CS at the graduate level. Why? Because CS salaries were already declining. (It’s harder to offshore IS; CS can do everything via email.)

There are other options, such as attract more domestic innovation by paying better, develop domestic workforces (all the grad assistantships go to people who struggle to communicate). Besides, what’s so terrible about offshoring the project? The same jobs which are low-pay here are comparably high-pay there, so BOTH countries see an increase in per-capita income; we continue a domestic resource development, and they have seed capital to develop their own markets, which we can then also trade with.

>> But the biggest reason for a wide variance in wages is negotiating ability. <<

A-ha... you just said a mouthful. Now, consider the impact of your employer being able to force you to leave your new country at will.

If I have developed a few prejudices, one of the biggest is in favor of Indian people. My wife has a horror story or two, but I’ve never met one I didn’t like. If there’s a flaw in my relationship with Indians, it’s that I rather presumptively figure we’re going to get along great. Another huge source of H1-Bs is Philippino nurses. You want to talk a people who are devoted to Christ, and who are beautifully charitable! If I were to name the people I would expect would be the first in Heaven among my acquaintances, the top of the list would be jammed with Philippinos. Then there’s African priests, who are giving the American Catholic Church a much-needed re-evangelization.

But be that as it may, there’s still a tremendous amount of abuse in the H1-B program, resulting in greatly artificially large demand. I’m not saying scrap the program altogther, but huge reform is desperately needed.