Posted on 10/05/2006 6:35:43 PM PDT by Coleus
Sona Shah didn't need flow charts or fancy diagrams to make her point during a U.S. Senate subcommittee briefing earlier this year. She just needed her cell phone. First, she dialed the number listed in a "Help Wanted" ad for a computer programmer. Then she let everyone listen to the ensuing conversation.
"I said, 'Hi. I'm an American citizen. I'm looking for a job,'" Shah recalled. "They said, 'No, that job's been set aside for an H-1B employee.'" The staffers at the legislative briefing were stunned. "There were audible gasps," Shah said. Those are the kind of tactics the 34-year-old Montclair woman has used in her crusade to reform the H-1B visa classification, which she says U.S. employers have used to turn Indian immigrants into underpaid indentured servants -- and to deny American citizens jobs.
"You have to stand up for the rights of both sets of workers as long as there's this degradation," said Shah, who was born in India but raised in the United States. "We love India. We want to see India prosper, but we don't want it to see it happen at the expense of the American middle class." Supporters of the visa program say it is people like Shah who stand in the way of progress, denying American universities, high-tech companies and others the best brains needed to keep the U.S. economy humming.
H-1B is reserved for temporary workers who come into the country to fill specialty occupations at the request of a U.S. employer, with about half of the 65,000 visas issued annually going to people in the computer industry. "There are an estimated 10 million people in the domestic IT work force," said Jeff Lande, senior vice president of the Information Technology Association of America. "So maybe 30,000 of those come from H-1B.
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
Are there any AVAILABLE jobs willing to sponsor an H1-B? My boyfriend needs one!!!!
That depends on certain things. Like if he's French.
mark
How could anyone be surprised? This has been reported over and again.
What happens much of the time is that a foreign graduating student is hired to do a job. He is a satisfactory employee, and the employer wants to hire him permanently so he does the advertising necessary to do that. It's not the way the system is supposed to work, but you can see why the employer wants to avoid the hassle and cost of interviewing an unknown from outside when he already has the right fit.
The libs who run American industry are a bunch of Euro-fascists.
Nope, he's Indian. He went to grad school here, got a job and an H1-B with a non-profit, and gets paid peanuts. He wants a better job. However, it's hard to get an H1-B job with a "for-profit" company because they (the jobs that give H1-Bs) are in such high demand.
His ultimate goal is to get a green card, and then become a citizen. He wants to be an American - he loves this country. (And he wants to get the green card BEFORE we get married, not as a result of it.) He's doing things the right way, not the illegal way. The whole idea of amnesty for border-jumpers depresses him to no end, because he feels his hard work is for nothing.
LIE LIE LIE LIE LIE.
What were the H1-B quotas in the earlier part of this decade? 250,000 per year?
Does this a**wipe think he can pull this lie off and we don't notice? I was one of the hundreds of thousands of IT workers looking for a job in 2002 as the H1-B program still brought in a quarter-million new workers. They can kiss my arse running before I agree to raising it back up without the old games they used to play about pretending to give American workers a chance while structuring the job requirements so that they excluded American IT workers.
My best friend growing up was from India. I spent more time with his family than I did with my own for a couple years. Wonderful people. I'd rather have an Indian immigrant for a neighbor (as long as they're Hindu, Christian, Sikh or Buddhist, not Muzzy) than any one else.
I engage people to do computer programming for a small company. American programmers who are available to small companies aren't very good and cost A LOT (I know, there are brilliant American programmers; but as far as I can tell, they all work for Microsoft, Intel etc. I've never actually found one that will work for a small company and believe me, I've tried).
Granted, the programming we required is very demanding--it's not just another web database or java application. So we need really good people. But we have had nightmares with programmers we have hired out of America. The last one almost took my company under.
At this point, we would just stop programming if the only option were American programmers because there is no return on that investment, even if they did the job they were hired to do.
Result, I am engaging Bulgarians who do a really professional job at spec'ing the job and writing the code for less than half the price charged by American programmers who don't finish their jobs or kludged them.
The reality is, world supply of programmers has outpaced demand and American programmers are overpriced. American programmers got used to $75,000 starting salaries and developed a sense of entitlement during the 90's. At those prices and with those attitudes they are uncompetitive.
I would suggest that, before whining, they go out and hone their skills, their attitudes, and their prices and they would find small businesses flocking back to them. I would love to employ someone local. It makes my life so much easier. But I'm not ready to risk another American programmer after the repeated bad experiences we have had.
I am a computer programmer and have worked at a number of small companies that developed complex software products. The people I worked with were, with maybe two exceptions (and one of those was H1-B), extremely intelligent, capable and professional developers who produced very high-quality products while being paid reasonable salaries. I'm sure that the companies that employed these developers felt they were getting their money's worth.
I guess what I'm getting at is, I think your story is perhaps atypical of the normal small company experience. Or perhaps your company is trying to get by on the cheap and not willing to pay a reasonable salary for quality personnel.
Hee hee, if you mean "over here" to the US, he already is (legally). He's one of the most brilliant, hard-working people I've ever met. And you're right, Indian people are generally awesome.
If an Indian business does a better job at the services I provide or is as good at a better price, then I'm out of business. I own a small business. I'm not a globalist--if I could eliminate foreign competition, I would. I'm like any capitalist, I would love to have a monopoly of some kind--against any competion, foreign or otherwise. But I don't.
I provide services internationally and have to be able to compete internationally. I have no choice. I have to be price competitive and I am.
Would my ox be gored if I went out of business? I hope I'm a bigger man than that. Nobody's entitled to a $75,000 a year job. Nobody's entitled to have their business stay in business. Nobody's entitled to have the world stay the same for their entire career and to have demand for their services increase steadily throughout their life.
Learning a skill for employment is risk taking just like going into business. It's just that businessmen are more honest with themselves about the risks they take. If you train to make swords, guns come along and make you obsolete. If you train in COBOL, along comes Java and C# and you are obsolete. You either adapt or whine.
Anyone who expects guarantees in life is a democrat or a foolish republican. Do I wish it worked another way? Sure. Does it? Nope. So no sense complaining. As my wife says when disappointment happens, "Suit up, show up, and shut up about it."
Maybe. But we were paying somewhat above average because we needed better than average programmers. In the US, we are 0-3. Overseas we are 3-3.
Your concept of a 'reasonable' salary is slippery, though. If I pay american programmers twice what my competitors are paying overseas, the american programmers have to be twice as productive as their overseas competition or I cannot stay cost competitive. If anything, American programmers are less productive than the overseas programmers and their attitudes have not been good. It's that simple.
Maybe I just got a bad sample. But I'm going with what has worked. I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
globalism presupposes the obsolesence of nationalism, ethnocentrism and many other political ideologies that ultimately cause people to align against abstract concepts like "free trade."
Moreover, how come Mexicans who come here illegally can buy property in the U.S., but Americans who LEGALLY emigrate to Mexico cannot (or at least not without significant restrictions). It's all hypocrisy, the same way the Saudis who act indigant about the treatment of Muslims abroad is ridiculous given the fact that Saudis don't allow Bibles into the country.
We live in bizarro world.
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