Another Wave of H-1Bs on the Way

Business Week ^ | 03/31/2008 | Moira Herbst

[Kid Shelleen]

U.S. unemployment may be a concern, but tech companies are telling Congress they need more skilled workers from overseas. With the Apr. 1 application deadline for H-1B specialty worker visas looming, tech giants like Microsoft (MSFT), Oracle (ORCL), and Google (GOOG) are stepping up efforts to raise the cap on the number of visa workers they can have access to each year. Microsoft's Bill Gates argued in Congress (BusinessWeek.com, 3/12/08) for the second straight year that there's a severe shortfall in U.S. science and engineering talent, and predicted that for the fifth straight year the cap for worker visas would be reached in only one day. Days later, bills to aggressively raise the visa cap reached the House floor

[Gorzaloon]

Microsoft's Bill Gates argued in Congress for the second straight year that there's a severe shortfall in U.S. science and engineering talent,

There is a severe shortfall of 35-Cent-a-Gallon gasoline, too.

If, however, you would consider paying prevailing prices, then you can have all you want.

[pnh102]

Gotta keep those wages down!

[muawiyah]

When it comes to educated folks they can't be turned on and off like refined gasoline. There's about a 30 year lag time involved, and next thing you know you are out of business.

I disagree with the "Ph.D as serf" visas. They should simply apply education standards to applicants for regular immigration. No need to bring in another field hand when we need an engineer you know.

Another thing we might do is create "illegal alien quota setasides" for the educated. For every 10 illegal aliens we ship out of the country, 1 additional illegal alien can be brought in provided he or she has a college education from a certified institution.

Bill Gates and his buddies could hire on the illegals cheaper than they can any H1B serf.

[TLI]

If, however, you would consider paying prevailing prices, then you can have all you want.

Absolutly dead on correct.

[avacado]

"Microsoft's Bill Gates argued in Congress that American salaries are too high and that he needs more H-1B visa workers to suppress wages."

[ikka]

Part of this is that Tata Group, not an American company, applies for so many, then doesn't use them all.

Having it set up that the waivers are distributed over twelve months, and only valid as the H1Bs actually arrive in the country, would be far more equitable.

[FreeAtlanta]

As an software developer, I can testify that this does keep my salary down and reduces opportunities.

[deuteronlmy232]

But, we have such a great public school sytem, how can it be that we need to import skilled labor?

[poinq]

This is true. And is a very small part of the housing crisis. After 9/11 the number of highly skilled, highly paid immigrants fell dramatically because congress limited the number of H1B visas. After a few years those immigrants would have bought 500,000 middle class houses. But they were not allowed in the country because congress was holding them hostage with Mexican illegal immigrants.

Because these immigrants had to stay in China and India, so did many of the related jobs. When a programmer stayed in India, so did a software designer, and a tester, and a help desk person, and a manager.

[poinq]

The wages for programmers don't go down. They go to India. By far the largest group of H1B immigrants are programmers.

[poinq]

Microsoft starts at over $60K for a kid coming out of college with a programmer degree. The government mandates that H1B workers make anywhere from $60 to $80 depending on education.

[poinq]

You had 3 years of picking your job. If you are a .NET programmer you could easily get a job. Most good programmers with 5 years experiance in a city like San Fran or Chicago make $90K to $120. Kids out of school with a CS degree get $60k to $75K.

[poinq]

Microsoft pays high wages. And there is no way they can get all the programmers they need. So they have offices in India.

One of the biggest problems is that the H1B visas go to a few outsourcing companies from India and China. Five Asian companies get more than half the visas which they use to hire Indian programmers and ship them to the US to learn a trade and then ship them back to hold the job in India. These companies should not get any visas.

[Gorzaloon]

When it comes to educated folks they can't be turned on and off like refined gasoline. There's about a 30 year lag time involved, and next thing you know you are out of business.

Some of this is caused by Guidance Counsellors and other trying to guess future market demands.

"Aerospace Engineering!"

Then in a few graduating classes, there is a glut.

"Electrical Engineers! We need millions of them!"

"No, forget that! CHEMICAL Engineers! That's it! Plastics!"

"No, Software!"

[Moose4]

Right there with you. I’ve actually gotten out of mainframe development with COBOL (yeah, I know, dinosaur) and moved into quality assurance, and even there, there’s a lot of downward wage pressure because of H-1Bs and offshoring. I don’t actually get upset at the guys with the visas, they’re just trying to come over here and work to better themselves. I get pissed at the body shops and clients that use every dirty trick in the book to avoid paying prevailing wages and get these guys to do $70k/year work for $40k/year.

}:-)4

[rstrahan]

My son got “outsourced” by a company, who brought in H-1B visa workers to do his job. It’s not about a lack of talent. There’s thousands of unemployed tech people in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area alone. It’s about the ability to cut overhead and benefit costs using foreign workers.

[Gorzaloon]

Microsoft starts at over $60K for a kid coming out of college with a programmer degree. The government mandates that H1B workers make anywhere from $60 to $80 depending on education.

Is this something new? About five years ago I worked with a bunch of them from India..But at a place that was nothing like Microsoft, of course.

[Moose4]

The law is, basically, that the H-1B workers are supposed to make roughly the same wages as a permanent employee in that position. In practice, companies use any number of strategies to get around that, I’ve seen it firsthand. A former employer of mine would open up a particular position similar to mine for an H-1B, but list the position four pay grades lower than I was. They would pay the prevailing wage for a “programmer”, but the responsibilities of the position fell closer to my title of “lead programmer/analyst.” Plus a lot of times, those workers are actually working for a contracting company; the company gets the money, then pays the worker a fraction of that, the rest being profit.

}:-)4

[oldbill]

Enough of Bill Gates.

Gates is proof that luck beats skill every time.

Gates invented nothing. He bought the rights to DOS’ prototype, then got lucky when IBM decided to get into the PC business and needed an operating system real quick. Rather than develop one, they bought Gates’ and called it IBM-DOS but also allowed him to co-market it under MS-DOS. He was able to piggyback MSDOS sales to others because IBM became the biggest seller and every other hardware developer was forced to use MSDOS for application program compatibilty.

Windows was a copycat improvement after Xerox had developed a graphic interface years earlier.

Very little innovation has come from Gates. Someone else did it first and he copied it, or he bought out the innovator. Watching the Congress pander to him last week was disgusting. American immigration policy will be driven by a college dropout who couldn’t understand a LaPlace Transform or Bode Plot and couldn’t locate Ellis Island on a map.

If Gates really wanted to help the unfortunate, he would use his billions to set up a college scholarship program for American students to study in thsoe science and engineering disciplines he says there are shortages in (there aren’t), and stop worrying about global warming and African corn.