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They could easily hire Americans. They’re just trying import cheap, educated labor that they can have total control over thru the force of a H1B visa. Increasing the H1B quota will only serve as more disincentive to American students to pursue technical fields. This is a PR move only.

>>>They could easily hire Americans. They’re just trying import cheap, educated labor that they can have total control over thru the force of a H1B visa. Increasing the H1B quota will only serve as more disincentive to American students to pursue technical fields. This is a PR move only.<<<

And you have summarized it perfectly.

There’s a lot of this that goes on with visas. A very close Romanian friend of mine came to work in the US recently on a visa, though she went through an agency that helpled her find a job in a restaurant to be “serving customers or other duties.” In other words, they make it sound like they’re waiting tables and helping them find jobs.

Well, they place them in McDonald’s. These are college-educated students with English skills. So McDonald’s gets dirt cheap, extremely dependable labor. And they have that labor trapped so that they can’t leave without giving up their visa via a contract with the agency.

Kind of sad for my friend, really. She wanted a job where she would practice her English, and they threw her into a kitchen with a Serbian, a Cuban, and a Bulgarian. Yeah, living in a new country is great.

I just think about how I found a job working in a French law firm and compare it to what she’s dealing with... Yikes!

They could easily hire Americans. They’re just trying import cheap, educated labor that they can have total control over thru the force of a H1B visa.

I strongly agree. The H1B visa holders work here for a couple of years and return home to turn out knockoffs, run the 'off-shore' operations, and compete directly with American companies. Someone explain to me how that benefits any American in the long term.

Virtually everyone I know in high tech is working for much less than they did 15 or 20 years ago. Senior guys who have kept up their skills plus have all that experience to fall back on are working today for what they earned in the early 90's...and I put the blame squarely on the H1B visa program.

If you search a tech job website like dice.com the whole focus of many job listings is on visa status, period remaining, etc. It's almost like they're saying "Americans need not apply".

This is probably the truth since Microsoft got busted a few years ago for classifying employees who had worked full time continuously for more than a year or two for Microsoft as "temporary" or "contract" workers and when the long-term temporary workers sued to receive the same benefits as permanent employees, they won.

There's plenty of US workers available. Microsoft just wants to go the cheap route. I just loved having a 3 hour conversation with their call center in India recently.

Increasing the H1B quota will only serve as more disincentive to American students to pursue technical fields.

Dead on. Why spend $40,000 getting a technical degree when your employer can hire a cheap foreign import and throw you on the street? I was appalled to find out that my own company had "acquired" a small business in Ohio. The employees were relocated to the Los Angeles area. There was a 5 year contract to deliver a product to the customer of the former small business. One day a group of H1B hires arrived. The existing employees from the acquired business were required to train the H1B employees, then terminated with a small severance. I thought that was urban legend until I spoke with a few people who actually had the experience.