H-1B issues going to court, U.S. WORKERS SAY THEY ARE FEELING BETRAYED

Mercury News ^ | 9/26/02 | Jennifer Bjorhus

[Drango]

For years U.S. engineers have grumbled that foreign engineers on work visas were getting their jobs. Now, for the first time, U.S. workers are filing formal complaints with the government and in court, charging that foreign guest workers are replacing them during the downturn.

[willyone]

This started long before George Bush became president. The law needes to be re written. However with the piss poor news coverage by the lamestream media no one will ever be told of this or other problems.

[Nataku X]

There's no solution. Stop the program, and companies will just move their business offseas. Unionize, and companies will move their business offseas.

After finishing my MS in CompSci, I look forward to a very long career in McDonald's. And I'm not kidding.

[William Terrell]

Outsourcing is the wave of the future. But $18/hr from the agency itself? The only one who can do that are offshore consulting firms who pay their slaves in room and board. Same effect on American workers, don't you think?

You might as well cheer the H1-B workers on. Only, the H1-B's will be spending their money here. The offshore contract workers, which, incidently, do their development offshore, will spend their money offshore.

Like the idea of American technical workers going the way of the buggywhip, do you?

[bvw]

"all the jobs I worked for as H1-b, there was absolutely no work to do - At&T, Lucent, Solomon, Merryl Lynch"

That's the core of it. The H1-B's provide managers low cost/higher markup bodies to (1) aggrandize the managers, and in pass-thru contracts (2) provide the billiable hours to the final customer. These are in jobs that are NOT related to actual productivity -- outside of the general national productivity that spending a paycheck entails. The economic boost these dockets and jobs provide is not to the "work" provided -- which is near nil, as you say -- but comes about when the workers and the manager spend their paychecks.

In jobs where actual productivity is important, H-1B's aren't going to be much of a factor.

[Red Jones]

dfwgator, I don't know whether you're willfully an idiot or just born that way. But what you said reflects not ignorance. Nobody could be that ignorant. What you said reflects profoud bigotry.

There are one million people working inside the US who hold an h1b visa. These h1b people working inside the US cost a lot more money than an engineer in India, Bulgaria or Russia. There is obviously a very large market for hiring engineers and software people inside the US.

The buggy whip market died. Yet there is today and there will be tommorrow a very strong market for hiring software people and engineers inside of the US. You are the marketing expert, no?

Whenever you sell anything you have 4 components of the marketing effort. You have the product or service you're selling. You have the price you're selling it at. You have the communications you do to promote your product. And then you have the location that you sell it at. There is a huge and viable market niche inside the US for hiring software people and engineering people precisely because it is inside the US. A lot of companies don't want to outsource no matter what for a large variety of reasons. To assert as you have that this is not a viable market is absolute foolishness, it betrays simple bigotry of those who advocate this idea, it flies in the face of simple reality that we live with every day.

Outsourcing does not violate anyone's rights. It also does not destroy the market for this type of work inside the US. But H1b does violate people's rights. This country is our country. We should not import foreigners as indentured servants to take our jobs. You are a liar to assert that the market for people working inside the US as engineers or software professionals is not viable.

I guess according to your warped and sick perverted logic when a company has a network of 100 or 200 computers hooked into a server and something goes wrong that you'll call your system administrator in Hyderbad? No, you need someone right there on the spot, not someone in India.

Read the article and put down the crack pipe. It says a fellow is working over 70 hours a week as an ACCOUNTANT with an h1b visa. Are you going to assert that the market for accountants is going the way of the buggy whip also?

H1b is a massive intervention into the labor market by the United States federal government for the purpose of ethnic cleansing americans out of the domestic market. That's what it is, any fool examining the actual workings of this program understands this.

While 50 years ago if a young person went to the university to learn engineering and got a degree he stood about a 50% chance of having a successful career that lasted to retirement in that field today a person with american citizenship status who graduates from an american university with that type of a degree stands less than a 10% chance of having similar success. For software people it is 5%. Most will not even be given a chance. Of those given an opportunity most will be pushed out before too long. This is what we are doing to our own people, it is driven by bigotry as displayed by this 'fellow' dfwgator.

H1b people don't pay social security taxes. Instead, the money that would go to social security goes to the home government's coffers. In other words, for every Indian placed in the US an american is displaced and $45,000 goes from the social security program and to the Indian government to encourage them to run technical schools to place people directly into the american economy. The money we are spending on education in the US is now being directed into the toilet as well as the people we are educating and at behest of our own government.

If we imposed an h1b program for doctors, then within 15 years the doctor profession would be dominated by foreigners and wages would be 30% less for all doctors. If we did this for nurses the result would be the same. The same is true for plumbers or carpenters. Any trade they can do this in the result will be the same. Only bigots single out engineering and software people and seek special rules for that market.

As dfwgator says this market for engineering and software people inside the US is not viable. Therefore, we have 1 million h1b visa holders doing those jobs inside the US because the market doesn't exist, just like the buggy whip.

dfwgator, take you white sheets and your cross burnings and whatever other sick bigotries you have and simply hide them. Do not bring them into polite company.

[Red Jones]

George bush is a big supporter of h1b. When the program was new in late 80's it was supported by 3/4's of republicans and opposed by 2/3's of democrats. However, so much corporate money goes to DNC and RNC over this program that it is now the large majority in both parties who support it. In US Senate a few years ago they had a vote on it where only one Senator, Kennedy of Mass, opposed it. In the House it is like 90% republicans who support it and 80% of Democrats who vote for it.

But Bush is a particular supporter of this program. Bush says you're a racist if you oppose this program. In reality it is Bush who is the bigot on this issue.

I can no longer vote for a any incumbent, republican or democrat, who votes for this program.

[Red Jones]

Carry-Okie; I wonder what you think of this issue, h1b?

[The Irishman]

Thanks for the post. My daughter, who works for Hewlitt-Packard, says employees with twenty years seniority are being laid off. I suspect they have been made "redundant" by the prospect of low paid H1-B "replacement" workers.

Again, thanks for the post.

[Stavka2]

``The real issue here is the shortage of highly educated, qualified U.S. candidates for the jobs for which we experience skill shortages,'' said Intel spokeswoman Gail Dundas.

This is the biggest crock of all. That's why I know plenty of guys in NC who are sitting around skilled and jobless. Sure...what ever, Congress just gets it's pay offs and as usual, screw everyone else.

[Red Jones]

thank you so much for your post.

I want you toknow that while I rail against the h1b program I have absolutely nothing against people who hold h1b visas or who once held such visas. I am not in favor of just sending them home at all. I am only in favor of eliminating new h1b visas.

I recognize that immigrants to US, such as you, frequently contribute valuable insights in that they see weaknesses (or strengths) in our country that native americans don't see. You have some of these insights.

George Bush says that anyone who opposes h1b is a racist. It is people like bush who are dividing our country on this issue and pitting us against each other.

We have become wealthy relative to the rest of the world. We have been responsible for the large majority of worthwhile inventions in the last 200 years on a worldwide basis. We did it by using a free market where the people who provided the talent and hard work to create those innovations and inventions at least believed that they would be rewarded for doing so. This is the free market where people have to work out through voluntary agreement who does the work and how much they get paid. H1b circumvents that process by providing indentured servants.

Read Matloff's research, link in #2 above. It will open your eyes. Matloff has found that a disturbingly large percentage of people who came to america as h1b's and are now out of that program and are citizens cannot find work due to h1b. Matloff has found that an older american programmer who had great success in previous times with technologies today considered out-dated who then goes and gets re-tooled with new technologies simply can't get a job even AFTER re-tooling themselves. Why should americans learn new technologies if the avenues for work are cut off by government decree? Matloff has found the deck is stacked totally against young americans who want to make this a career to support their families.

In the mid 1600's big companies solicited the king of england to allow them to bring people over from england and ireland as indentured servants, for them to work for 7 years for the one employer and then be free afterwards to operate as a free person. This was the beginning of the slavery institution in america. In the beginning they had both white and black indentured servants. Many blacks became free after 7 years of labor for a sponsor. Then the companies solicited the king to change the program, to not use whites any more in this manner and to simply keep the blacks enslaved forever. The king said 'yes'. That is how it happened.

[CanadianFella]

The tech sector is in a big shitsus. Scrapping H1B will dramatically raise labor costs and lead only to further closings, and then the sh** will start piling up so fast you'll need wings to stay above it. Get over the knee-jerk Buchananism and realize how extremely beneficial this deregulation of the labor market is.

[jiggyboy]

Intel and any company that pretends not to be able to find "skilled native workers" is telling a clever lie: When they decide that they want to hire some H1-B's on the cheap, *first* they pick the individual and *then* they write the job application and want ad so that he's the only one that qualifies. It's basically a statement of his resume, as a requirements list.

[glc1173@aol.com]

"There is no worker shortage. There is a shortage of workers willing to do 60 hour weeks for $40k/yr. Deport them all."

Absolutely right. The fastest way to create one job for one downsized native-born American IT worker is to deport one H-1(b) back to India.

H-1(b) is just a way of letting top executives of U.S. firms hire dirt-cheap labor from India without the sacrifice of themselves moving there to supervise them.

IMMIGRATION resource library: public-health facts, court decisions, local INS numbers!

[blueriver]

There's no solution.

There is a solution. We need to do the same thing that China is doing. China does not allow a company to sell it's products in China unless the product is manufactured and developed in China. American's are the world biggest consumers, if we had the same policy companies would be enticed to keep the jobs here. If they choose not to they can kiss the American consumer good-by.

[William Terrell]

The tech sector is in a big shitsus. Scrapping H1B will dramatically raise labor costs and lead only to further closings, and then the sh** will start piling up so fast you'll need wings to stay above it. Get over the knee-jerk Buchananism and realize how extremely beneficial this deregulation of the labor market is.

There's a concern that if this direction doesn't vary significantly, it becomes pointless to go into computer science with a view to software development, database design or any other specialty surrounding the software area. As the older specialists die off, they're not replaced with American specialists.

While this may make operating systems and applications inexpensive in the sort run, it'll athropy the software capability of America and make us dependent on foreign skills.

If the computer products continue to hold the importance in our civilization as they do now, and we lose or seriously diminsh the domestic skills to make them ourselves, we can lose control over our national security and even our way of life.

I think it's wise to maintain selfsufficiency in certain core industries and their skills unless we can successfully encourage every nation in the world to love us and wish us only good fortune forever.

[CanadianFella]

I think it's wise to maintain selfsufficiency in certain core industries and their skills unless we can successfully encourage every nation in the world to love us and wish us only good fortune forever.

How do you decide on what's a core industry. Is manufacturing shoes a core industry? After all, we wouldn't survive long in the winter without shoes, and we can't remain dependant on foreigners to manufacture them, can we?

The real reason for the opposition to H1B is that people seem to think they have a right to a job because of the color of their passport. They forget that jobs go to the best skilled at the best wage price the employer can find, American or not. Hiring H1Bs is good business, not "betrayal". If you can't compete with them for any reason, at least don't lie about why y'all go crying to Congress to get it to keep them out.

[posterkid]

The real reason for the opposition to H1B is that people seem to think they have a right to a job because of the color of their passport. They forget that jobs go to the best skilled at the best wage price the employer can find, American or not. Hiring H1Bs is good business, not "betrayal". If you can't compete with them for any reason, at least don't lie about why y'all go crying to Congress to get it to keep them out.

No, that is not the real reason at all. I've been employed in tech (as a Unix sysadmin, an DBA, a programmer, many things) since mid-1996. I've never lost a job due to an H1-B. The problem I have with it is that once these people are brought over here, they are slave labor. A company will hire them at low starting wages, and after that, they OWN that H1-B until they get their green card or get fired. I've seen many of them exploited by being made to work workweeks much longer than 60 hours. The company doesn't care if he burns out, he can just go back to India and they'll get another one.

Owning slaves IS good business.

The H1-B law is not meant to give jobs to the best skilled at the best wage price. The H1-B law is written to FILL A SHORTAGE THAT DOES NOT EXIST. There are tons of perfectly skilled out of work people in this industry. Of course, Canada and Mexico continue to benefit through our clueless adoption of NAFTA/GATT/WTO, so I'm not surprised you think we should keep bringing people in to undercut US citizens.

[Red Jones]

I appreciate your views; It is not my intention to bash people. But when someone confronts me with bigotry against me i strike back by throwing it back in their faces. It's nothing personal. I realize there are different points of views.

You said that there was at least a possibility that we could be discouraging young americans from going into this. I just want to tell you I thought that was patently obvious about the h1b program years ago.

Outsourcing is a perfectly rational and reasonable model of doing business in many circumstances. H1b is very different. Outsourcing will also not eliminate the market for engineering & software work & system administrator work inside of america as with buggy whip. Anyone who really thinks the government should intervene into the market to enhance an ongoing market trend is traditionally thought of as a fascist. Government should not try to out-guess the market.

The idea that we should have open borders for labor and that somehow h1b is just a reasonable market reform to facilitate this new concept is very much disapproved of by the american population. I am not in favor of our government doing things that the large majority of our population disapproves of.

[William Terrell]

How do you decide on what's a core industry. Is manufacturing shoes a core industry? After all, we wouldn't survive long in the winter without shoes, and we can't remain dependant on foreigners to manufacture them, can we?

Shoes is a very good example. Also steel and a dozen others.

The real reason for the opposition to H1B is that people seem to think they have a right to a job because of the color of their passport. They forget that jobs go to the best skilled at the best wage price the employer can find, American or not. Hiring H1Bs is good business, not "betrayal". If you can't compete with them for any reason, at least don't lie about why y'all go crying to Congress to get it to keep them out.

Americans have every right to first consideration for a job in their own country whether they have a passport or not. And we'll go demanding, not "crying", to Congress to keep it that way. Because it's our Congress, get it?

Are you an American?