“H1B visa represent jobs Americans can’t do. Our public schools have done a terrible job teaching applied math and science...”
Sometimes. Just sometimes. I’ve worked in Silicon Valley for 30 years and have spent plenty of time in the high-tech trenches. I sat in conference rooms and listened to the first sales pitches for outsourcing, well before the word made it into the mainstream vocabulary. Every sales pitch had one thing in common: money. There were no panicked discussions of running out of skilled workers. All of the enthusiasm centered around sending a project to India and getting it done for pennies on the dollar.
The belief that we can only get skilled tech workers from India and China is a myth. I’ve known Chinese and Indian slackers, people who couldn’t tell their posterior from their elbow, who made promises they never intended to keep, that left me high and dry on the day that a project was due and in the position of explaining why THEY didn’t do THEIR work.
I’ve known skilled, talented, educated, U.S.-born tech workers who were replaced with people who would do their job a lot cheaper. If you asked for their help you would GET it, no matter how busy they were. They would MAKE time for you.
I respect your opinion, but the statement “H1B visa represent jobs Americans can’t do” doesn’t reflect 30 years of reality I’ve seen as a man working in Silicon Valley.
Again — I am not talking about technicians and build out. I am talking about R&D. The foreign workers here, in R&D, are making well into 6 figures. They are based here, in the states. They are getting MARKET rate.
If an American kid graduates with an advanced degree in applied math or science, he or she can write their own ticket in development and research. Period. There is more demand than American supply and that is the bottom line.