Posted on 08/24/2015 9:05:16 PM PDT by Jyotishi
There have been many news stories in recent days about Donald Trump's proposed policy on H1-B visas and how that would be bad for India. Trump has advocated raising the minimum wage for H1-B visas, lowering the H1-B visa cap and generally making H1-B visas more difficult to obtain. Trump points out that his competitor Florida Senator Marco Rubio has introduced a bill to triple the H-1B visas and Trump contends that this would lower the average wage because the H1-B workers are willing to work harder for a lower wage because they want to get a green card. News stories in Indian media correctly point out that Trump's proposed policy would hurt the profit of Indian IT companies like TCS, Infosys and Wipro. But actually it may not be bad for India as a country. See, a quarter century ago students used to come to the USA for graduate studies and then they would get H1-B and green card. But now Indian IT companies and also large American companies hire the best talent they can find in India and bring them to the USA on H1-B visas and this continuous brain drain is not good for India.
If Trump's policy to raise the minimum wage for H1-B visas were to go into effect, the students who are coming here will still find jobs because those seeking H1-B in engineering are usually not in the lowest wage categories of H1-B anyway, however the Indian IT companies and large American companies won't be able to bring people from India so easily for software development. So most probably, they will outsource their software development work to India as a way to lower cost. If that happens, then dollar currency is coming into India, and those workers would pay taxes in India and spend their incomes in India, all of which is good. So the profit of Indian IT companies may decrease but on the other hand the Indian economy will improve and more talent will stay in India. And if the minimum wage for the H1-B visa is increased, then it also makes life better for those who do get a H1-B visa.
The reality is that if the talent stays in India and works in India it will help [Prime Minister] Modi's "Make in India" policy which he has been pushing for the last year and a half. When people think of "Make in India" they always think it means hardware, but software is a product too and the profit margin is higher because you have software updates and maintenance which you can charge for. So, when Indian IT companies export Indian workers to the USA they are merely providing manpower and India as a country does not benefit. However if those same Indian IT companies or large American companies hire people to do the software development in India, then that becomes "Make in India". The fact is that H1-B visas are actually a hindrance to "Make in India" and that is the truth whether people want to believe it or not.
In so many other ways as well, if Donald Trump becomes President it may be very good for India. Because Trump is not like any previous US president. Trump the candidate is a genuine 100% self-made American Billionaire property developer who has the larger than life personality to actually win the White House. He is right when he talks of the silent majority supporting him because polls have shown that he draws support across the board from Republicans, Independents and Democrats alike and so he would be a phenomenally successful general election candidate. The reasons are simple, not only is Trump consummately in touch with today's electorate by Twitter and other social media, not only is he demonstrably independent of donations to his campaign but most importantly he is supremely capable of speaking common sense the way no one else can. Trump truly has the potential to win the election and fundamentally transform the USA and world trade.
I don't think any reporter has asked Trump what he thinks of India, but if Trump does everything he says on the campaign trail, it is quite likely that India will benefit. Trump is a businessman and has made it quite clear that China is in his cross hairs. China currently owns as much as 1.3 Trillion dollars of the US national debt and that number is growing and Trump wants to reverse that trade imbalance. China is a member of the UN Security Council and is on trajectory to become the most economically important country in the world by 2040. On the campaign trail Trump has talked about China buying oil from Iraq, China mining in Afghanistan and he repeatedly states that he will promulgate policies to reverse USA-China trade imbalance. In interviews Trump has stated that he will be good at reading the fine print of any trade relationship and using it to the advantage of the USA so it is truly believable that he would be the best US President to deal with China. And of course it is common sense that if Trump can reduce the growth of China then that is good for India.
The Indian economy has grown steadily in the last decade but meanwhile China has become increasingly powerful and the trajectory is alarming. More than ever the world and especially Asia now needs a US President who will take on China and who may understand that helping the other countries in Asia to improve their economies is one way to reduce China's importance in Asia and worldwide. Trump is a businessman who wrote "The Art of the Deal", so if he does become President, then maybe India should think of the right "deal" to help both India and the USA to suggest to Trump.
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I would not like to see the H1b program expanded. I like Cruz but this is one area of concern I have, which I hope he will re-think.
Not while so many people are out of work.
Reporter: How is the Republican leadership treating you?
Trump: I am now the Republican leadership.
Me too. I think it is unforgivably stupid to consider importing more workers when 90+ million Americans are out of the work force.
Stupid?
Evil is more like it.
Agreed 100% with you but what this guy is saying is that if H1-B wages are forced upwards to the prevailing standard and the program not expanded, the companies that now use H1-B workers will just outsource/offshore directly instead of bringing the workers here.
This is something that troubles me - working in IT for 25 years, what I see is lost opportunities for American IT workers - lost knowledge and also growth and openings curtailed because of hiring in India and more recently, the Philippines.
I work for a huge conglomerate and most opportunities now are filled with overseas workers with a few Americans sprinkled in.
Like you, I too work for one of the big IT companies. Their stated goal is to outsource or “best shore” 70% of their workforce. With that plan they can still have the leftover be H1B, right here in the U.S. These IT companies have no patriotic loyalties. I’m all for capitalism but I am very disappointed that American workers are being discarded.
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Ted Cruz ... CANCEL the H1B Visa Program ... “NOW” ...
Contrary to what you’ve been told ... there is NOT a shortage of American Engineers ...
We are being SCREWED by Corporate America (Disney, et al) ...
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If a company is bound and determined to eat its seed corn by lowering quality to reduce payroll, it can't be stopped - but the government has no obligation to make that easier. And offshoring is not interchangeable with H-1B: H-1Bs are indentured serfs of the company that holds their visa, whereas an offshore employee can seek other opportunities; and offshoring requires remote rather than local supervision.
Yes, this is true. And it is also true that engineering companies, not just IT, but all of them, are experimenting with off-shoring their work.
But offshoring has its own costs and problems including cultural problems which will keep some engineering here. They already have mechanisms in place for bringing in foreign engineers which already tends to lower engineering wages. Multiplying that number by a factor of 5 or 6 while American engineers are out of work, or pushed into early retirement, is crazy.
When programmers were making rock-star wages, every other kid wanted to be a programmer. In most countries engineers are the rock stars, and every kid wants to be one. In the US, very few kids grow up wanting to be an engineer. Bringing in half a million H1Bs each year isn't going to do anything to turn that around. Before, foreign engineers were filling in the gaps. Now they are often the whole crew.
Thats another thing. One of the things that has traditionally made Americans who they are, is that Americans know how to do things. "Good ol' American know-how"...
Except that if you bring in people to do your blue-collar work, your own people don't know how anymore, and in one generation the people you brought in are opening small businesses doing what your aunts and uncles used to do.
And if you bring people in to do your white-collar work, in one generation you have lost those skills too. Its happening right now. Where are you going to go to get your auto-body work done? Where are you going to go to get your computer worked on? Same dynamic. People used to cut their own grass, fix their own cars, and Americans used to build their own power plants and program their own computers. When you don't know how to do anything anymore, who needs you?
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