Americans should get off their dead asses and make sure they're BETTER QUALIFIED than the Indians who are displacing them.
At 1/4 the cost? You know how much 40 rupees is in India? About a buck. And people there make about 1/40th. So what are we supposed to do, work 40/1 harder to compete?
They are not more qualified. A degree from Curry University is not worth the paper it is printed on. They are all theory and no bang.
Friend, that isn’t the issue.
We have gone through a number of H1B’s at work. They are often much lower quality than American born engineers or coders, but they work for cheap. Over all, the quality impact is detrimental to the bottom line, but for the quarterly bonus it looks great.
They usually are.
The law requires companies to make a "good faith" effort to hire Americans, and to hire a foreigner only after they've "proven" that they can't find a qualified American.
So, the way they get around that requirement is to craft a job description that nobody can meet*, announce that there are no qualified Americans available, and then hire a foreigner. The foreigner doesn't meet the job description either, but nobody goes back and verifies or enforces that he does.
*I have personally seen job postings in the IT world demanding, e.g., 5 years experience with a technology that had only been out in the market for 3 years. This is done to justify hiring a foreigner "because there are no qualified Americans".
It is the same reason municipalities are fighting for amnesty. You know, the jobs Americans won't do?
It is pretty naïve to disregard the notion that politicians and corporate elites are in concert to help each others goals.
I work with many Indians. They are qualified, but their stories of H1B status and being beholden to the government and corporations is kind of scary.
The article compared apples to apples; they did NOT compare "women's studies" grads to IT jobs. It was IT to IT.
The sole reason they're doing this is the money. About 15 years ago, CBS News followed the CEO of Cypress Semiconductor around as he tried to implement a mandate of his board to cut labor costs. This was a board directive; previously he had tried to follow it using American workers but the board redirected him to offshore some of his operations. The board was very "not shy" about telling him what they wanted, and that was an Asian operation.
CBS documented this guy's going to Filipino government salesmen (essentially that's what they were) flacking for a new industrial zone being greenfielded in the general Manila Bay-Subic Bay area. The Flip government offered the CEO a young woman pink-collar employee who knew Microsoft Office (she went through the routine, for his benefit, of creating a new doc and saving it, opening and using Access, etc.), and they said she would get, on local prevailing wages, about $4.85/DAY; and they also quoted $8500/yr for software engineers. On top of that, they offered Cypress a tax-incentive package to move some or all of their operation to this Luzon "special tax zone".
So Cypress's board was playing pitch, and the Filipinos were playing catch.
The sole purpose of the whole exercise was to eliminate American wages previously negotiated or merited. It was a giant welsh, ordered by the board for the money's sake.
So it was not a question of Americans' being "on their dead asses", contrary you n/w/s.
When corporations want to hire in from the slums of Campbellpore and Kowloon and sell on Rodeo Drive, American workers don't stand much chance of keeping their jobs.
Furthermore:
Indians in upper management have made statements to the effect that "IIT [Indian Institute of Technology] graduates are much better hires than MIT men; I'd rather have an IIT guy who can hit the ground running; they're much more job-oriented and better-grounded than MIT guys."
I am assured on no weak authority that this is a b.s. line used solely to justify Indian managers' continuing to hire fellow-Indian immigrants, either directly or on wage-slavery contracts from Tata International, over qualified American help which is usually better suited in terms of relevant experience, schooling, and quals.
Lastly, those Americans required to teach Indians probably didn't do so. The one case a friend of mine knew about involved some code writers who had both to compete with and train Indian H-1B hires who would supplant them. No way did the Americans show the Indians all the shortcuts the Americans used to make code run faster; no way did they unbundle the hard-won experience of a lifetime for these mooks. The result was that the Indians' code ran, all right, but it was infuriatingly slow, clunky, and buggy. Top management got what top management wanted to pay for.
So there it is. Weep, weep, occupied ga, for the philistines who once were savaged by Dickens, who merely showed us what those men were like in his novels, and who are now among us again by the operation of Wall Street sophistries about "delivering to the bottom line" and "unlocking the value".
Americans should get off their dead asses and make sure they’re BETTER QUALIFIED than the Indians who are displacing them.
Sorry, did you read the article? The whole article? From what you say in this post and another, I’m wondering. With all due respect, it seems to me that you are making some gross generalizations and stereotyping “Americans” without much to back them up...
Can you provide any statistics that refute those presented in article, or even personal anecdotal observations?
I can get you stats if no one else provides them as this issue has been a hot button with me and my family for several years.
My kids (as well as many other American students) are not sitting on their “dead asses” and they are indeed better qualified than the Indians attempting to displace Americans.
I have 3 adult children in science/technology—1 with PhD, 1 with M.S. (works in IT in San Jose) and one finishing BS with a national qualifying exam required for employment.
They are all bright, and did well in college, yet competition has been fierce. The H-1B visa problem has been brewing for years—only coing to head because the economy is so “soft” and the number of foreign students has increased substantially.
I rather resent your remark as my family and children all “Americans,” are all well educated.