“Conclusions The lobbyists know that crying educational doom-and-gloom sells. Even though it was mainly “Johnnie,” rather than Arvind or Qing-Ling, who originally developed the computer industry, and even though all major East Asian governments have lamented their educational systems’ stifling of creativity, the lobbyists have convinced Congress that the industry needs foreign workers from Asia in order to innovate.
The facts show otherwise. Most foreign tech workers, particularly those from Asia, are in fact not “the best and the brightest.” This is true both overall and in the key tech occupations, and most importantly, in the firms most stridently demanding that Congress admit more foreign workers. Expansion of the guest worker programs — both H-1B visas and green cards — is unwarranted. “
My 2 cents. Any employer recruiting to fill h1b visa positions should have to pay a fee equivalent to a four year college degree scholarship in the field that they cannot fill locally and the H1b visa should expire in four years- no renewals.
I’m skeptical about this guy’s methodology, simply because most companies will keep their H-1B worker salaries low just because they can, through various subterfuges and dodges.
From twenty-one years of practical experience working in various parts of the IT industry, I can say that in my travelings, the H-1Bs I’ve seen are pretty good. They aren’t really any smarter than the average American worker, but they do tend to be more willing to work harder and longer—and no matter what the law says, they’re doing it for less. The area in which many of them fall short, not surprisingly, is in communication, both oral and written. But then again, a lot of American IT workers can’t write and speak very well these days either!
}:-)4
As a college dropout, Gates himself would not qualify for the policies he advocates for unlimited H1 visas.
Guess he’s not one of the best and brightest.
(Actually, he never was - just happened to be in the right place at the right time when IBM needed a cheap operating system for their new PC line and didn’t want to waste any company resources/programmers on a product line they thought would fail.)
I am convinced that even another “Great Depression” would not halt the flow of H-1b’s. H-1b’s are herion for the corporate cheap labor junkies.
H1B would be unnecessary if industry would spend money educating the American workforce instead of lobbying congress to bring in cheap foreign labor.
The only saving grace to the program is it means the work isn’t shipped directly to India, so the salaries are taxed and spent in the USA.
But it is an insult to the unemployed everywhere in this country (unlike the agricultural worker illegals, who do work that nobody here will do).