US Bill to make life easier for H-1B visa holders

TIMES NEWS NETWORK NEW DELHI: ^ | THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 07, 2002 | URMI A GOSWAMI

[USA21]

US Bill to make life easier for H-1B visa holders

NEW DELHI: It is now official. On November 2, US President George Bush signed the department of justice Authorisation Bill which will make extension for H-1B visas easier.

It will also make it possible for more Indian doctors to live and work in the US once their academic programme is over.

The extension of H-1B visas will particularly benefit the IT sector. This is good news for Indian H-1B visa holders, as nearly 50% of them are working in the high-tech sector.

This provision will allow those whose labour certification applications have got caught in official backlogs. For the industry, the advantage lies in the fact disruption that affected important projects because of the loss of key employees will be avoided.

Prior to this law, extensions were possible, but applicants would be required to file a labour certification sometime during their fifth year, and that an immigration petition, the next step in the long line to permanent residency, be filed before the end of the sixth year as well.

The idea behind this provision as it appeared in the American Competitiveness in the 21st Century Act (AC21) was to protect foreign nationals and the sponsoring companies from lengthy delays at the Immigration and Naturalisation Service.

However, the immigrant petition could not be filed until the labour certification was been approved. The labour certification is approved by the US Department of Labour. The provision in AC21 was not useful to protect H-1B visa holders from these delays.

Under the new law, those in H1-B can apply for extensions without regard to the ability to file an immigrant petition by the end of the sixth year. The law thus protects foreign nationals from delays originating in the department of labour.

It also recognises the fact that those foreign nationals applying for extensions are already well valued by their companies, have significant ties to the US and do not pose a threat to jobs of US workers.

The Conrad State 20 programme which has been extended will make it possible for more Indian medical graduates to avoid returning to India after completing their course of study.

All they will have to do is serve out three years in an area designated as facing a shortage in qualified doctors. Prior to this law, the number of waivers permitted was 20, it has now gone up to 30. The programme has also been extended till '04.

US immigration law requires foreign medical graduates to return to their country on completion of their course for at least two years before they can apply for a non-immigrant or permanent residency status. There are, however, certain programmes under which this requirement may be waived.

The conditions of the waiver require foreign medical graduates to serve three years in rural areas in the US.

This increase is particularly welcome after the United States department of agriculture (USDA) ended its J-1 waiver programme in the aftermath of September 11 attacks.

The closing down of the USDA waiver programme had drastically limited the number of foreign doctors available to serve in areas designated as “medically underserved area”.

It had also reduced the opportunities available to foreign doctors to avoid returning to their home countries.

[Drango]

...do not pose a threat to jobs of US workers.

OH PLEASE! What are they smoking?

[Arkinsaw]

How many Americans are of the opinion that we have enough IT workers for awhile? About 98%? Do we need a bunch more IT workers? Is IT really hot and expanding right now?

[MelBelle]

I'm an IT worker in California and the company I work for is studying to send our jobs TO India. Offshoring is the new buzz word.

[lizma]

A fews years ago I was listening to a computer show on the radio. Industry was clammoring for Indians. Reason- better English skills.

Study sees IT worker shortage in 2002


By Tiffany Kary
Staff Writer
May 6, 2002, 9:35 AM PT


After a year of massive layoffs in the tech sector, hiring managers now say they may be unable to fill as many as 600,000 tech jobs in 2002, according to a survey by the Information Technology Association of America.

"We were pleasantly surprised by the optimism of hiring managers," ITAA president Harris Miller said. "It's been a tough year, but the worst is behind us."


Despite the pool of approximately 2 million U.S. programmers, the survey of more than 500 managers found that many will be unable to find qualified applicants.

The number of technology jobs in the United States shrank about 5 percent last year, falling from 10.4 million workers to 9.9 million as the economy contracted. The majority of those laid off were technical-support workers, even though software programmers and engineers represented the largest category of IT workers, making up 21 percent of the total work force.

But for the rest of 2002, managers said they anticipate a shortage of IT workers at both high-tech and non-tech companies. The managers said they expect that more than 1.1 million tech jobs will be available, but they predict they will be unable to fill some 578,000 of those positions. Part of the discrepancy arises from a consistent "gap" between supply and demand of IT workers of around 50 percent during the past three years, despite the fact that demand fell off during the recession.

Residents of California's Silicon Valley, which was seen as the heart of the tech boom, may not be so lucky.



IT industry says more jobs are coming
Harris Miller, president, Information Technology Association of America

Play clip

Demand for IT workers in the West fell the sharpest, down 71 percent between 2000 and 2002. In 2000, 237,000 jobs out of 456,000 openings went unfilled. This year, managers predict that 131,000 IT jobs will be available in the West, with 62,000 going unfilled.

The reason may be a sharper decline in jobs at high-tech companies as opposed to non-IT companies. Since Silicon Valley is home to many tech companies, it has been hit harder.

The study by the ITAA, an Arlington, Va.-based association of high-tech employers, showed that IT companies laid off around 15 percent of their tech workers last year, and non-IT companies shed only 4 percent of their tech workers. A February study by The Boyd Company, which advises companies on location planning, also noted that San Francisco was suffering an exodus as high-tech companies are relocating to cheaper areas such as Baltimore and Canada.

The study advised job seekers that the most fertile ground for IT jobs are companies with more than 1,000 employees, and that the most needed programming skill is C++, followed by Oracle, SQL, Java and Windows NT.

Another place IT workers may find luck is with employers that specialize in outsourcing for non-tech companies, Miller said. As traditional companies like banks start to put new projects back in the budget, "more and more are realizing that outsourcing is the way to go."

[Luis Gonzalez]

Using programmers from abroad actually creates jobs here. The option of outsourcing programming overseas will cost jobs here.

Place yourself in the position of a small software company.

If an American programmer demands $200,000 a year, and an H1B worker is willing to do the same job (they are damned good these Hindu programmers) for $80,000, that gives me $120,000 to hire more employees to market and sell my software.

In turn, this will create more business for my company, and will generate more jobs.

The other option is to farm out my programming needs to other nations.

I could still expand my business, but the $$$ would be out of the country.

The thing about the doctors having to serve three years in an "underserved" or "rural" area in order to qualify for an extended stay is great.

[Political Junkie Too]

H-1B visas are not for workers looking for jobs, they are for jobs looking for workers. If the job goes away, so does the worker.

-PJ

[lelio]

Are you in the software business? Where do you get your dollar amount figures? Have you ever dealt with using offshore programmers?
There's a reason why programmers are paid a lot: because the job usually requires a lot of thought and understanding of the problem. And being close to the situation so you can talk to others. Take those things out the situation and put everyone in a timezone 8 hours away and you're just asking to have your project go way over on time.
So I would prefer that companies offshore their programming projects. They're bound to fail, and then they'll bring the project back.

[johnboy]

when are we going to see the headline: "US Bill to make life easier for [american engineers and it workers?]"

guess the only important constituency is outside our nation's borders.

honestly, i just don't get it. seems like we're killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

[Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit]

Thank you for explaining how the economics of this works.

Economic theory is not democratic, therefore it is irrelevant what the American people think is reality in our economy because the masses cannot understand macro-economic theory.

As you pointed out, by bringing in skilled labour that is willing to work for less money, capital is freed up to be used for other purposes. It is true, the affect of these visas is to lower wages. But, it also sets the stage for the economy to expand, because when there is a shortage of skilled labour, it is impossible to set up new businesses or offices, etc. Thus, the US is preparing itself well for a growing economy. Seems pretty smart.

Of course immigrants without skills are the ones who both takes jobs and lower wages for Americans. But that is another story.

[Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit]

Sorry lelio, Luis is right. All labour follows the laws of supply and demand. If the demand increases, so do the wages. If the supply increases, wages fall. Sure it takes a lot of specialized education to be an IT expert, but the only reason they get paid extremely high wages is because they are in high demand. If there were more of them and hence more competition for jobs, wages would go down.

Look at academics. To get a PhD. in history takes a lot of specialized education as well. But there is a glut of them and they are a dime a dozen so they get paid squat.

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

PiNg
Next comes the blanket amnesty !

[anniegetyourgun]

Bingo. As one who has many years of experience in the field, this is necessary when we end up with too many jobs chasing too few workers. Healthcare example: LPNs, NAs, PTs.

[Dr Warmoose]

The farming off of the the $200K jobs to an H1B for $80K (using your numbers) has great immediate economic benefits for everyone but the domestic programmers, since this forces them to become more competetive with a third world labor pool since the H1B's consider the 80K an enormous amount of wealth compared to their native lands. This is what globalization brings - a natural leveling off of economics which is great if you hate western culture, your neighbor, and this country in general.

Granted, the advertisers and the media partners will appreciate the extra work; customers the lower price; everyone involved with supporting the foreign worker (housing,food,clothing,govt'svcs,entertainment,etc); and those from "home" who appreciate the money being sent to them. Everyone is happy except we are now exporting another strategic skill as those entering the domestic job market are now attracted to advertising, banking, legal, and other non-exported gigs that don't suffer yet from cheap foreign labor as high-tech has. (and as empirical evidence shows, this is what displaced high-tech is doing now, as law schools are filled and overflowing)

Now lets explore where this migration from domestic workers to foreign workers ends up. As more and more foreign workers representing a particular nation add up, the cultural and language barriers will tend to tip towards the foreign worker. In time, because of the US government's penchant for plundering profitable companies, the whole operation will be placed in a more tax/regulation free environment which will be a boon to real-estate developers and to the support structure ~there~, and will give us even lower wages, and displaced workforce here. The only ones who benefit are investors, and those who tax investors (investing produces nothing, but leaches off the labor of others - which is great if we are investors - until the labor uprises like the coveters comprising the Demoncat party show every sign of doing)

This is where things gets interesting. When businesses locate overseas, they lose the protection of contracts and law here in this country, and their businesses may be taken over by a government, or through uprising, or economic turmoil, or through war. If enough businesses relocate, then it becomes a US interest to protect those investments (like the oil interests in the Middle East).. Voila! You have another potential Iraq in China - for when all your high tech is in foreign lands, your domestic talent has moved on to other things (like oil roughnecks have moved on) the country becomes dependant on those who China is menacing and once again security is compromised as a whole new client for appeasment, loan guarentees, and military protection has been created and America's soverignty has been, once again, been irretrievably compromised.

That is what the big picture brings - temporary price benefits, for the long term loss of revenue, talent, sovereignty, wages, and security. If you hate America, this is the course to take. Make America a non-exporting country as the talent pool will move to jobs that are not exported (read:more lawyers and teachers) and use US taxpayer money to train the world to be our future puppetmasters.

Then what industry will be targeted for destruction next? Steel is gone, textile is gone, cheap stupid trinkets are gone,appliances are going,and the five mile long trains stacked with containers are still streaming full from the ports and empty back to the ports. True the manufacturing sector bothers the environmentalist, and we would like for all those blue collar workers to have high-paying jobs. But when turning non-polluting, high paying, high-tech jobs over to another country, where is the benefit? Wasn't this supposed to be the ideal enterprise here?

I guess the future of America is to spend all of our time sueing each other, or teaching others how to sue.

[Luis Gonzalez]

"Are you in the software business?"

I am in a business that uses specialized software. Asides from that, I also know a lot of programmers, including three immediate neighbors, two of them H1B visa holders.

"Where do you get your dollar amount figures?"

The numbers matter little, I was using some simply to illustrate a point, but there is a huge gap in the salaries of native-born programmers, and the salaries of H1B visa holders, which is why we use so many of them.

"Have you ever dealt with using offshore programmers?"

I use tons of software, some of which are products of offshore programming firms, and there is no discernible difference.

"There's a reason why programmers are paid a lot: because the job usually requires a lot of thought and understanding of the problem."

Are you insinuating that this thought and understanding is somehow related to the programmer's nationality?

"And being close to the situation so you can talk to others. Take those things out the situation and put everyone in a timezone 8 hours away and you're just asking to have your project go way over on time."

My next-door neighbor, an H1B visa holder working on an international website start-up for a major US corporation. His "blackberry" is always on, and he will work through the night with his overseas servers as they go online in each new country. Software support is a 24/7 thing these days. The last time that I had a software problem with my PC, I called the manufacturer's 800 number to get some assistance, and was taken care of by some guy in Costa Rica. I called after midnight EST.

"So I would prefer that companies offshore their programming projects. They're bound to fail, and then they'll bring the project back."

That's what the American auto industry said about the upstart Japanese auto manufacturers back in the 70's.

[FR_addict]

This is simply not true. There are many "out of work" American willing to take much lower wages, but are not being given the opportunity. The jobs have all been shipped out of the country. Kickbacks are often involved in this decision.

It is a very short-term solution. The American workers left have very poor morale. They know it doesn't matter how well they do their jobs, they are likely to lose their job in the next wave of layoffs in favor of the offshore worker. This is so short sighted, but it is a way for the top execs to continue raking in their bonuses with a short term stop gap. Using off-shore workers will be detrimental to the companies in the long run and the execs know it, but with their millioin dollar bonuses, they don't care.

[FR_addict]

This article is mainly from the companies' point of view, however, it point out "We're at the point where there's a much broader set of projects that can be accomplished offshore," says Herbet, including custom development and technical support."

It also says "The Future of Offshoring" is irreversible.


Are Tech Jobs Headed Offshore?
by Allan Hoffman
Monster Tech Jobs Expert
Who will be working on tomorrow's IT projects: US-based tech professionals, or techies based in India, Russia or other countries?

That's the crux of an increasingly heated debate among coders, CEOs and others with a stake in US and global information technology projects. Hiring overseas technical talent -- sometimes called "offshoring" -- is seen as a disturbing trend by many North American techies, while technology executives see it as a way to get more results from shrinking IT budgets.

More on Offshoring

This article is the first installment of a three-part series about offshoring and its impact on North American IT projects and staff.

Part two, appearing in two weeks, will examine how tech outsourcing overseas might affect the careers of onshore IT workers and how techies can respond.

And part three will feature what Monster members and others think about the offshoring trend. Is it a threat to IT careers or an opportunity for advancement? Post your comments in the Tech Jobs message board; some may be used in the article.

Why Move Tech Work Offshore?

Companies choose offshoring for a simple reason: They want to save money. Marc Herbet, executive vice president of Sierra Atlantic, an application management firm with headquarters in Fremont, California, and a global development center in Hyderabad, India, says it is possible to "achieve pretty dramatic cost savings, in the one-third to two-thirds range" with offshore projects.

Executives cite other reasons for moving tech work overseas:

• Software development projects can run around the clock, with teams in the US handing off work to colleagues in India or elsewhere. Parts of India are 11.5 hours ahead of the US, says Sean Chou, CTO of Fieldglass, a software technology company with 15 developers working in India. "We can do nonstop development, and we don't collide with each other's schedules," he says. "Bug fixes can be resolved with handoffs."

• Specific expertise may be more readily available overseas. "We outsourced, because we had skills over there we couldn't find in the US," says Vivek Wadhwa, CEO of Relativity Technologies, a Cary, North Carolina, firm with clients such as FedEx and Morgan Stanley. According to Wadhwa, the particular combination of mathematics and computer science skills needed for his company led him to hire programmers in Russia, where 50 of the company's 110 employees are located.

Programmer attitudes are another issue, adds Chou. Some US programmers have an "I'm too good for that" attitude about some types of work. "You don't really have that jaded attitude in India," he says.

Which Tasks Get Moved?

Technology leaders characterize the bulk of the work sent overseas, typically to India, as being maintenance, data conversion and other "grunt work," according to one CEO.

But offshoring is evolving quickly. "We're at the point where there's a much broader set of projects that can be accomplished offshore," says Herbet, including custom development and technical support. With three-quarters of its 300-person workforce in Hyderabad, Sierra Atlantic has worked on a variety of projects, including the latest releases of Oracle Process Manufacturing.

"There's a significant piece that stays in North America," says Andre Nadeau, executive vice president and chief strategy officer for CGI Group, an IT services firm with 14,600 employees, 500 of them in India. In a typical project, 20 to 50 percent of the work stays in North America. "If it's maintenance, you can send 80 percent to India," he says.

Of course, not all projects are seen as appropriate for offshoring. Asiff Hirji, formerly the CTO of Netfolio and currently a vice president with consulting firm Bain & Company in New York, points out: "It's less likely that high-design, high-touch, high-creativity projects will be moved offshore."

Logistics

According to Hirji, companies have several options if they choose to send work offshore:

• A company-owned center in India or elsewhere.

• A joint venture with a firm in another country.

• An outsourcing model, where the work is performed by a vendor overseas or with overseas operations.

In turn, these options influence the way work is handled on projects. For instance, Chou sees his workers in India as "an integrated part of the development process." Other firms use overseas centers as a way to execute projects against detailed specs.

The Future of Offshoring

Where will this trend lead? And how quickly? According to a survey conducted in early 2002 by Gartner Dataquest, demand for offshore outsourcing remains "immature" in the US, but growth will be steady. The survey of US-based companies with 1,000 or more employees found 5 percent were currently using offshoring or planned to do so in the next 12 months.

"Up until September 11, the trend was accelerating very quickly," says Nadeau. "There was a pause, a hesitation, because of that." But, he says, "in our discussions with clients, it doesn't seem to be an issue anymore."

"We're just at the beginning of a long-term trend," says Herbet. "It's all supply-and-demand, and it's on a global basis. Labor movement across the world has become freer and freer. Even if you don't import the labor, you can export the work. The trend is irreversible."

[PhilipFreneau]

It is a very short-term solution.

Not to mention the long-term effect on our national security and culture.

[FR_addict]

Another article on the off-shore trend:

Slowdown sending tech jobs overseas
The Wichita Eagle ^ | Monday, October 21, 2002 | Jennifer Bjorhus -- Mercury News

Posted on 10/21/2002 9:51 PM Pacific by Willie Green

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.

The U.S. economy might be stalling, but at least one niche is hot: shipping technology jobs offshore.

The economic slowdown is speeding up the export of jobs, experts say. As executives face smaller budgets and more pressure for profits, they find it much cheaper to send work to contractors overseas. More U.S. companies are following Silicon Valley's lead by shifting engineering and other technology-related jobs to places such as China, Ireland, India and the Philippines to cut costs.

The drift of jobs is worrying engineering groups, renewing fears that white-collar tech jobs in the United States are going the way of blue-collar manufacturing jobs: over the border and across the seas.

A major engineering group has asked Congress to investigate whether the offshore trend, combined with U.S. companies importing foreign engineers on H-1B visas, is partly to blame for high unemployment among U.S. engineers.

About 200 of the Fortune 500 companies now ship software work overseas, according to Stephanie Moore, an outsourcing expert at Giga Information Group in Cambridge, Mass. Fortune 1000 companies are quickly following. Moore estimates that global revenue from offshore software work will hit $7.68 billion this year, up 20 percent from 2001. Forrester Research estimates that corporate budgets for offshore software outsourcing will probably more than double by 2004.

Valley technology companies pioneered the concept of going offshore for tech talent more than a decade ago, along with General Electric and Microsoft. But now the practice is becoming common outside the technology industry.

The list of companies contracting for offshore tech services reads like a corporate ``Who's Who'' list: Target, Visa International, Gap, Boeing, Citigroup, Nordstrom, Bank of America and, of course, Oracle, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft.

San Francisco brokerage Charles Schwab last year moved part of its information technology division to a contractor in Bangalore, India, where about 150 people do programming for Schwab's internal computer networks and Web site. The move followed a 25 percent companywide layoff. Schwab spokesman Greg Gable said the layoffs included an unspecified number of contract engineers in its tech division.

Franklin Templeton Investments in San Mateo, too, has shifted about 20 percent of its tech work to service providers in India and elsewhere.

Even the state of California has contracts worth $76.6 million with five tech services firms that outsource some tech work overseas, according to records maintained by the state's Department of General Services. A department spokesman said he didn't know whether the work on those contracts was being done overseas. The state has no rules about it, he said.

Some experts say the growth in offshore tech services is less about increased U.S. demand than about aggressive marketing by Indian firms. Some of the biggest are Infosys, Wipro Technologies and Tata Consultancy Services, all based in India.

U.S. tech services companies are also in on the game. Tech consultants such as IBM Global Services; Accenture, a Bermuda-based Arthur Andersen spinoff; Electronic Data Systems; Computer Sciences; and PricewaterhouseCoopers are all racing to set up overseas operations. Many go to India. Other hot spots include Ireland, the Philippines, Eastern Europe and China.

Although most of the overseas software work remains basic maintenance and applications development, vendors are moving up the value chain to software architecture, strategy and systems design. The Philadelphia Stock Exchange recently hired Cognizant Technology Solutions, which has a New Jersey headquarters and 10 development centers in India, to build new software architecture for its computer networks to run the exchange in real time.

Back-office work is moving overseas even faster, experts say. India's leading software association expects the country's sizable share of back-office work, such as handling customer service e-mails and payroll processing, to surge more than 60 percent this year.

Shifting work to low-cost areas is a way to rein in costs in a tough market, executives say. Tech executives surveyed last fall by Forrester reported saving 25 percent on projects by going overseas. A software engineer fresh from college in India might earn $5,000 a year, compared to about $50,000 in the United States.

Not everyone agrees on how big a threat the drift poses to U.S. engineers.

Norman Matloff, a professor of computer science at the University of California-Davis, argues that the actual number of software jobs being shipped overseas is a fraction of the country's total. And it will remain small, he argues, because nothing beats face time at the soda machine for finishing engineering jobs right.

Still, the increase in overseas outsourcing is making hard-hit tech workers anxious.

The jobless rate for all engineering doubled in the second quarter of this year, from 2 percent to 4 percent, and increased even more for computer scientists and electronics engineers, according to the IEEE-USA, the U.S. arm of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Some unemployed engineers express a deep sense of outrage and betrayal. Echoing critics of globalization, they argue that companies are selling out technology jobs that were supposed to be the future of the U.S. workforce.

Labor experts say no one knows how many engineering jobs the United States has lost because of the recent uptick in offshore outsourcing. The bigger issue, some say, is the U.S. tech jobs that fail to materialize because of the overseas hiring.

``It's worrisome,'' said Terry Oldberg, a Los Altos Hills engineer and organizer for the Programmers Guild. ``We're not organized to fight it.''

[11th_VA]

Gosh - first the Concurrent reciept article, and now this. Two positions the White House is on the the wrong side of in two minutes.