Why H-1B Visas are Bad for America (Big Business Scam Alert!)

FrontPage Magazine ^ | Robert Locke

[WRhine]

More on the H-1B scam -- corporate welfare designed to displace American workers at taxpayers expense ...

I agree. Thanks for posting this article.

[sinkspur]

H1-Bs are on the way out.

The next wave is companies simply outsourcing projects, and then entire departments, offshore. India, Malaysia, the Phillipines, South Africa are all prime sources of IT talent.

I'm selling these resources, and they're ready to go.

And companies are talking to us, seriously.

[Dave S]

It's insulting to the intelligence that there's a supposed shortage in the tech fields, layoffs are widespread in the tech fields, and yet companies lobby for MORE H-1B's in a recessionary period.

Are these people being layed off skilled in the languages that the companies want? If someone is skilled in doing web pages and the company needs someone to write in C, I dont think there is a fit.

Rather than depressing salaries in the field, H-1B may be bringing them down to what the market would have been if there werent these artificial shortages caused by borders.

[Torie]

Are we headed back to a subsistence economy here in the US sink? Should I buy a farm? Who will be able to afford lawyers when all our jobs go overseas except those derived from mother earth?

[sinkspur]

All our jobs are not going overseas.

Programming is going overseas. Project managers, systems analysts, trainers, will always be staffed here.

But line-by-line coders are a commodity. The low bidder, here or offshore, will always win.

[koba]

I went to Hyderabad, India, and saw the high-tech center there. Bill Gates is donating $20 million more to improve it. Microsoft, Oracle, and many other big companies are already there. A large amount of medical transcription is done there, and it has become a major industry in Hyderabad. The information is sent to India, processed there, and sent back to America. The companies are making serious efforts to send more and more work there, just as the manufacturing industry here made serious efforts to leave the U.S. and go someplace else, like Mexico.

[Torie]

That's a relief. I don't think popular culture producers, or the finance industry, or almost everything else that is high value added is going overseas either. The key is high value added. That is what drives higher per capita incomes. Mass produced textiles don't. Cheers.

[Reaganwuzthebest]

popular culture producers...

More and more of that is going out of the country too. Hollywood is taking production to other countries like Canada and Mexico for cheaper workers and costs. And...the ever popular cartoons like the Simpsons are not drawn here anymore either. That's being contracted out to the Phillipines and other countries in Asia.

[Torie]

The creative stuff is still all in Hollywood (writing, special effects, creative ideas, actors, producers, etc). Where stuff is shot is an increasingly smaller share of the pie.

[nunya bidness]

Who will be able to afford lawyers when all our jobs go overseas except those derived from mother earth?

Plumbers.

[WRhine]

The emerging pattern in American society has a sinister resemblance to the decadent sheikdoms of the Gulf, which can't pump their own oil without massive foreign labor: Americans handle the financial and marketing side of things while we let foreigners do the engineering and the hard stuff. The national-security implications alone are chilling.

This is the emerging pattern and it does not portend good things for the future. Hey, I'm all for cutting regulation and taxes on business (like no taxes at all on business) but I don't think our government should be in the foreign recruitment business when the welfare of its citizens should be its primary goal. After all isn’t this what we pay taxes for?

[UnBlinkingEye]

Let us hoist Allman_Brothers_Rule on her own petard:

To: UnBlinkingEye; JoeMomma; First_Salute

I am white, and I own an IT business, amongst others. I hire the best people in front of me, always. Part of being the best includes "interpersonal skills," which frankly means "whites only."

I know hundreds of other IT business owners; some of their companies are big, and some are small. They all feel exactly the same way. All would rather hire a white guy, even if seriously stupid, dumb, or underqualified, as opposed to an Indian guy who is brilliant and well educated. They (including me) will even invest the money to train the dumb white guy, sometimes spending months throwing money down the drain, while they would not even shed one single dime to train an Indian guy.

My point is this: Quit whining, you are spoiled and fat, and probably dumber than a bunch of rocks, because if you can't even beat an Indian H-1B VISA guy, you are probably too dumb to work anywhere within the United States in Information Technology.

Maybe you should go to France or Britain, where their IT industry is "booming." NOT.

In closing, get a clue, because it is the Indians that have built, are currently building, and will (hopefully) continue to build the greatest IT powerhouse in the United States that the world has ever known. Although I agree that there should be strict limitations on the amounts of Indian H-1B VISAs entering the country, I am not totally against them either. If we lose them, you had better start learning how to shuck corn or make wine like the French. Join the 21st Century, please. This is America.

6 posted on 1/22/02 6:34 PM Pacific by Allman_Brothers_Rule [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]

ABR unplugged.

[sinkspur]

Dell, GE and IBM have opened call centers in India.

My little company is working with Indian nationals who will guarantee answering times, call times, and a revenue enhancement, along with dialect suppression and 95% college-degreed customer service representatives.

The Indians are impressive, hard-working people. The biggest problem, as this article indicates, is working with the Indian government. We have an Indian national running our outsourcing business, and he's wired into the Indian government at all levels.

Lots of palms to grease.

[WRhine]

Rather than depressing salaries in the field, H-1B may be bringing them down to what the market would have been if there werent these artificial shortages caused by borders.

Oh yes those awful borders. Maybe we should invite the whole world to the U.S. China, among other nations of course, would love this. They could do what they can't do militarily. Send in a billion of their own, set up their colonies like the Mexicans and just take over by their sheer numbers. You neo-cons never think past abstract platitudes that have no bearing in reality.

[koba]

That pattern has been going on for thirty years, it is just increasing now. Go to most aerospace and computer companies and 30-50% of the engineers and programmers who work there will be people who were born outside of the U.S. Many of the older American engineers are heading towards retirement, so these numbers will probably increase. In the colleges, 60% of the young (under 40) professors in engineering and computer science were not born in the U.S.

[Torie]

The trick for the welfare of a nation is to get the productivity of the people up to a level where it will pay for the cost of the government corruption. When that happens, the middle class takes off, and you know what the middle class thinks of government policies that reduce its standard of living. The pressure for something akin to more efficient government kicks in. It is happening in so many places. It is one primary reason why I am an optimist.