[opusprime]

There is yet another side to this issue, and that is the H1B visa program. Not only are we shipping white collar jobs overseas, we are importing tens of thousands of Indians to take American jobs at home. While I respect these individuals, they are now doing the majority of the software development in the United States, and they are all here on H1B visas.

The H1B visa program should cease immediately, or at least until unemployment is back below 4%.

Full Disclosure, I work for one of the companies mentioned above.

[StatesEnemy]

Full Disclosure, I work for one of the companies mentioned above.

But for how much longer...?

[Question_Assumptions]

They need to stop giving out new H1B and L1 visas, but I don't think it would be good to try to cancel the existing visas.

[snippy_about_it]

The H1B visa program should cease immediately.

I agree completely. We have very few jobs left and importing workers doesn't help.

Something our government and big business should take a serious look at. After all, if you take all our good paying jobs away, who is left to pay their salaries via taxes and who is left to buy the products the companies makes.

They are biting the hand that feeds them, the American worker.

[angkor]

I know of a company holding 60 H1-B visas effective 2 years ago. Those visas represent the entire development staff in Silicon Valley and Austin, all making $55 to $65K annually (which in not the going rate for Sr. Software Developers in Silicon Valley).

So after 2 years of a 100 percent H1-B dev staff, what do you think management did? They looked at every other employee (customer support, sales engineering, etc) and did a mass layoff based solely on compensation level. That is, if you make more than $X, you're fired.

Funny what H1-B labor does to management thinking.

[harpseal]

There is yet another side to this issue, and that is the H1B visa program. Not only are we shipping white collar jobs overseas, we are importing tens of thousands of Indians to take American jobs at home. While I respect these individuals, they are now doing the majority of the software development in the United States, and they are all here on H1B visas

I agree and every manager that has filled out the paperwork for an H1B visa in IT should be in jail alongside whoever ordered him to do it. I actually will give a pas to the perjurers who swore that no Americans were being displaced and no Americnas were available to fill thejobs if they rollover on their supreiors who ordered tem to do it.

[SauronOfMordor]

On another thread, the H1B figures were disclosed. H1B visas are good for three years and can be renewed. The total visa approvals for the last three years (and thus the number of visa holders here) is 786,383 visas. This is much more than the total IT unemployment/underemployment figures. Per US dept of labor statistics, the TOTAL number of IT professionals in the US is 1.8 million. Granted that not all H1B's are in IT, but I think most are. THERE is your cause for IT unemployment right there