Posted on 08/04/2015 6:44:35 AM PDT by ConservingFreedom
[...] Yet many studies suggest that the STEM shortage is a myth. In computer science and engineering, says Hal Salzman, an expert on technology education at Rutgers, "the supply of graduates is substantially larger than the demand for them in industry." Qualcomm is not the only high-tech company to be aggressively downsizing. The computer industry, led by Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft, cut nearly 60,000 jobs last year, according to the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The electronics industry pared an additional 20,000 positions.
[...] As we've reported, the majority of H-1B visas go not to marquee high-tech companies such as Google and Microsoft, but to outsourcing firms including the India-based giants Infosys and Tata. They're not recruiting elite STEM graduates with unique skills, but contract workers to replace American technical employees — who often are required to train their foreign-born replacement as a condition of receiving their severance. This is the scandalous method of cost-cutting used by companies such as Southern California Edison, which outsourced the jobs of some 500 information technology employees, as we reported in February.
For such companies, raising the visa limit is about exploiting a loophole in immigration law to save money — workers on these temporary visas are typically paid less than U.S. employees doing the same work, and more complaisant with American bosses because they'll be deported if they lose their jobs. [...]
It's unlikely that such hard numbers will silence the drumbeat for more high-tech immigration, Teitelbaum says, as long as big tech companies have Congress' attention. "The lobbying opposition is weak," he says. "There's no interest group that's as well organized and financed to say that this is an emperor with no clothes on."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
That’s the only way they can do it.
Four of them, sleeping on cots, in a rathole studio apartment.
“There’s no shortage of STEM workers; there’s a shortage of STEM workers willing to work in Los Angeles (or any other high-cost area) for $33 per hour.”
Exactly. HP pays Chinese workers $16/hour and Indians $36/hr. India is fighting hard to keep the Chinese out of the H-1B program for this reason. HP simply opened offices in China to circumvent the H-1B process.
“Four of them, sleeping on cots, in a rathole studio apartment.”
In 1994 there was an issue on a contract I was on whereby human trafficking was the issue. Turns out six of the Indian girls on the project were living in a studio apartment together, paid by the company, and the company they worked for added three more girls who were Indian slaves/prostitutes. The Indian companies were bringing over sex slaves for the men.
This is the nasty hidden consequence of the H-1B program that has had no oversight of it; sex slaves.
Never before have I seen such concisely-crystallized bullshit! Well done!
Did I mention I am an Indian H1B?
Where's my damn sex slave??!?
“I don’t know about in your neck of the woods but here on the east coast, many H-2B’s over stay their visas and become illegal aliens. Like other illegals they work through firms that hire them out and vouch for their legality.”
And they continue to apply for Green Card status while using an Indian mailing address, although they are still here and illegally working.
After your many lamentations of “I’m screwed”, it was determined you had no need of one.
I would be so screwed.
I am so NOT screwed.
LOL. I KNEW you'd respond that way!
{insert fat, ugly, Indian woman image here.}
{please don't to save the minds of the readers.}
“After your many lamentations of “I’m screwed”, it was determined you had no need of one.”
Unintended consequences can be down right funny!
If there was truly a skills shortage, you wouldn’t see all but the demographically correct people pushed out at 40.
In short, the white guys wouldn’t be walked to the door by 50 if there was a real STEM shortage.
I’ve heard of lots of weird benefits at tech companies, but that’s a new one.
Every industry has its parasite willing to sell anyone anything. Our gas field industry in Wyoming has its share of the oldest profession too; not sex slaves but professionals.
For such companies, raising the visa limit is about exploiting a loophole in immigration law to save money — workers on these temporary visas are typically paid less than U.S. employees doing the same work, and more complaisant with American bosses because they’ll be deported if they lose their jobs. [...]
...
Slaves are no longer owned, they are rented.
How many of them have STEM degrees?
We've been over this before, TGL - your personal experiences don’t trump national data no matter how often you pretend otherwise. What percentage of the national STEM labor force have you hired?
I worked on a contract with DEC and the folks here on an H1-B Visa were a mixed bag of good, indifferent, and poor, just like the situation with a lot of contracts where there were no H1-B workers. There were three guys with a Visa and working while two more were working while they waited on their Visa approval, and three more were working while they waited to have their Visa extended.
Basically, there were three people counted as being part of the H1-B program while in reality there were eight people working in jobs someone from this country wasn't even considered for. I contend not only that there's no shortage of skilled people in the fields the H1-B Visa program apples to, it also makes it more likely that there will be a shortage of people in those fields by suppressing wages.
None the less, people who yell about the free market are all for short circuiting the wage signals that are the trigger for increasing the number of people attracted to the fields they claim there's a shortage in. IOW, people claim to be all in favor of capitalism and free markets but fall all over one another to get in line for the government run abortion of the very market system they claim to be defending.
That sort of abuse is typical of every single Federal program like the H1-B Visa program. People have to be deliberately blind to pretend that while millions of people are illegally streaming across the border the same degree of abuse isn't intrinsic to the H1-B program. People supporting the H1-B program are getting fat and happy by making a buck off of screwing their fellow Americans out of jobs, that's the bottom line no matter what sort of trash they wrap their personal greed in.
After all, the Brits had many a self-rightous argument for forcing China to import opium which proves that those who see nothing wrong with shafting others to make a buck are never short of arguments for why what they're doing is wonderful if looked at properly.
Those who don't learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
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