Take A Stand: Vote against H1B, Boycott H1B Companies

Self | November 2, 2002 | FormerLurker

[Red Jones]

What's your field?

You didn't ask me, but I'll answer anyway. I'm a visual foxpro guy. Visual foxpro is a microsoft product, it fills the same niche as visual basic. VFP is an excellent language, but the business world has soured on it. So, the fact that the market's soured on my language is a much bigger problem for me than h1b is.

I'm hanging on in VFP now as I still have 1 good client. But if it were not for h1b I would re-tool myself either in Visual Basic,Oracle or C#. I have an engineering type degree, but not computer related. I'm not a computer geek unfortunately. It took me a huge amount of effort to do the learning curve in foxpro.

So, in my down time (I have mostly down time) I've written my own software that duplicates what I did for my #1 client. I'm planning on selling it, although I've found it is very difficult to sell. If this doesn't work out, then I'll go back to construction management probably.

I'm an example of a person that has been proven to be very talented at programming in that I've completed a couple of projects that were extremely valuable and that numerous others before me had failed on and now I refuse to stick with my programming career because of h1b. I know a guy who is a Microsoft MVP for foxpro, meaning Microsoft gave him an 'MVP' award, a big feather in a person'a cap. And that fellow has spent a lot of the last 2-3 years either looking for a job, trying to sell his services as a consultant or doing nothing. He's one of the very elite is what I'm saying, one of the top 1-2% of all programmers easily. A previous employer of his marketed his work world-wide. Even he had a heckofa time finding a job. Industry says that VFP is outdated, but writing code in VFP results in the same result as writing it in VB, the languages are interchangeable. The industry is all fouled up, otherwise top programmers like me and this other fellow would be kept productive. We should be working constantly because we are the top performers. We've proven it. If you've worked in programming for years, then you know what I mean. Almost all the other guys in our language have been pushed out, and we few left spend much of our time trying tomarket ourselves or plotting our retreat out of the field. Yet we are perfectly suited to building many applications that businesses need. Our language does the job when in thehands of a skilled person just as good as any. So, from my pointof view, it seems industry claims it wants these people, but throws them away when you actually come and provide those skills. It is as much a problem with the managerial people simply wanting a submissive foreigner to dot he valuable work so they can take credit for it as anything.

I came into programming 10 years ago because I had heard there was a shortage of people and I knew I had the talent to dothe job. I wanted a high paying job. I succeeded in a big way. But now it seems all I've doneis learn how rotten my own fellow americans can be in passing laws to take this market away from me. I'll never forget that lesson nomatter what happens to me.

[dirtboy]

I came into programming 10 years ago because I had heard there was a shortage of people and I knew I had the talent to dothe job. I wanted a high paying job. I succeeded in a big way. But now it seems all I've doneis learn how rotten my own fellow americans can be in passing laws to take this market away from me.

Hey, I have 15 years of experience with xBase, Foxbase, Foxpro and Visual Foxpro, in a tremendous range of settings - I've written some really leading-edge stuff, not necessarily from a technical viewpoint, but from innovating solutions for business problems. I was laid off back in January, and had a heck of a time finding a job - but I finally got one as a data analyst, because that was a large part of what I did previously, along with my development and business analysis/design work. I agree that VFP is a good language for certain applications, and that it isn't a big deal to go from VFP to VB or Access. But VFP simply isn't a good database package for enterprise development, with its 2 gig file size limit and the way it processes data - its a bandwidth hog. And the other problem you face is that HR departments simply run word recognition programs on resumes and don't look at far more valuable skills such as total programming experience or business experience. But you probably don't want to work for a company like that anyway.

Emphasize your business and application skills - IMO programming jobs are going to be a dime a dozen in upcoming years - maybe try to get into management. See if you can get a contract position - that can Trojan Horse you into a company where you can prove your worth - find an agency that specializes in contract work, and they can help get you in the backdoor easier than you trying to kick down the front door. And, if you were an effective developer (and it sounds like you were), you had to learn the business for which you were programming - that's probably more valuable now than your programming skills. Look for those kind of companies, and apply there. Also, re-package your resume, and dwell less on your programming and instead emphaisis achievements. And hang in there - I went through some really low times when I was unemployed, but things will get better.

And I generally agree with you about the H1-B program - but IMO sooner or later a lot of programming jobs were going to go overseas if there was no H1-B program. Companies, for the most part, just don't care any more - they pursue the bottom line, and politicians are more than glad to lie for them to help them pursue their goals.

You'll have freepmail, also, in a few minutes - I have an anecdote I don't want to post on the open forum.

[Red Jones]

thanks, that's very encouraging; I think that's good advice about switching to VB. That would be a very easy switch.

I'm deeply opposed to h1b for about 100 reasons. but h1b is not the source of original sin you know. We do have to find a way to recover regardless that we feel very bad that washington passed that law.

[dirtboy]

You have two freepmails.

[FormerLurker]

But now it seems all I've doneis learn how rotten my own fellow americans can be in passing laws to take this market away from me. I'll never forget that lesson nomatter what happens to me.

You're not the only that'll remember that Red. I think there's more than just a few of us that feel that way..

[discostu]

Hey that's real cool how this thing doesn't weed out for companies that don't exist anymore, sure helps make the problem look huge. Also interesting how it includes every single application by a company, even the renewals, to fluff the numbers.

I like the one you posted a couple of weeks ago that gave state by state numbers. Much more useful.

[snippy_about_it]

I know where I work the contractors (AMS,Covansys)didn't layoff H1B first, didn't seem to be the criteria.

[FormerLurker]

Hey that's real cool how this thing doesn't weed out for companies that don't exist anymore, sure helps make the problem look huge.

I didn't see any companies that didn't exist when I used it for my area. I searched on applications for 2001, and the max limit of 500 applications was returned. A significant number of those applications had anywhere from 5 to 20 workers on them..

[discostu]

If you search on Tucson you'll find Integra Technologies International, which went bye-bye Thanksgiving week 1998 (well they laid off all but 2 employees, who were working paying support contracts, and they got sold with the contracts in early '99). Actually it got bought by Ikon Office Solutions in 1996 (but they never could decide what the name of the company was supposed to be after the buy), who did a great job of finishing running the company into the ground then put gave it the Ol' Yeller in '98. For the life of me I can't remember the name of the New York company Itegra merged with that's how we (that's where I started, but I saw the handwriting on the wall and was actually in the process of stealing employees when the axe fell) got the H1Bs in the first place. But I'm betting that company shows up on the list too.

[FormerLurker]

As I said, you need to look at the application dates. You still see enourmous numbers for recent years.

[discostu]

But the way they make the listing it makes things look worse. Over and over in there you'll see the same company with numerous identical listings, probably they're the same thing getting counted twice. As I said when looking at one of your own links ( http://www.nomoreh1b.com/h1-bCostPerState.aspx ) it clear this is only a problem is certain states, oddly enough all Democrat strongholds. And even in those states the depth of the problem is arguable because we have no corolative data between H1B's field of work and the unemployment numbers within those fields. There's a lot of assumptions built into saying H1Bs are responsible for the unemployment numbers, especially given the consentration of H1Bs in tech and the dot-com meltdown (which had its roots in bad business "plans").

[FormerLurker]

But the way they make the listing it makes things look worse. Over and over in there you'll see the same company with numerous identical listings, probably they're the same thing getting counted twice.

Wrong. The multiple listings are separate H1-B applications which can contain multiple workers per application. Each unique listing is a unique applicaion. Nothing mysterious or magical about it.

[Red Jones]

I looked at the data for my city. Some engineering or computer-related companies seem to really rely on h1b a lot and others don't at all. Because some companies have a lot of listings and some are not listed at all.

But what shocked me is all the non-engineering, non-hightech, non computer related jobs that are listed. They have h1b's doing all kinds of things. Even marketing. I saw that 7-11 brought some people in to manage something and by the pay these guys get it seems they're probably managing a store or a store-clerk's boss at most. They've got all kinds of cooks for restaurants. Lots of people taking care of horses, domestic servants apparently too. They've got accounting people, finance people, architects, nurses. A lot of business-people feel it is a perfectly legitimate strategy to create paperwork to document that they can't find an american and then get an h1b to do it instead. They get to pay less than they would for an american and on top of that they get someone who almost certainly will fill the position for 6 years without complaint, without a raise, without job turnover, cheerfully working overtime and being subservient. Because if they don't, then they get fired and then they go immediately home and they let down their whole family in that they don't get to become citizens of US.

It amounts to a huge erosion of a citizen's rights if the job market in our own nation is to be destroyed by importing indentured servants in this manner. The free market and stable economy we have here is what produces this fruit that is the jobs in our economy. And we citizens are supposed to yield that fruit to foreigners?? Did the foreigners build the stabilityin our country that is so valuable? When the leaders in Washington get us into a war will these foreigners step forward and fight and die?? Our wages are driven downward by a government program and then when the government doesn't have the tax base it needs to pay for social security and medicaire, then will the foreigners pay those taxes instead of us??

We have real problems in our economy, but these problems are a lot more related to problems with our government than problems with our people. We need to address the real problems. Giving business a tool for smashing wages down is not solving the problem and that's what h1b is plain and simple. We should all vote against every single politician who supports it.

[discostu]

Are they? Seems odd to me that companies would have multiple identical H1B applications filed on the same day. See I go there and I see 4 listings for DCM ASIC TECHNOLOGIES LIMITED, all for programmer analysts all making $60,000/yr all starting on 2/15/01 all set to expire 2/14/04, all for 30 H1Bs; further down the page I see one for INFOSYS TECHNOLOGIES LTD for 100 employees so I know that 30s not the max for a single filing, don't know if you could file for 120 but I know you could file for 100 on one and 20 on another; further down still I see 3 listings for UBICS INC. all 100% identical again for 50 employees each.

It doesn't make sense for these to be unique applications, they are 100% identical across the board. I think whatever method they're using to cull out this information is duplicating entries, there are too many of the 100% identical duplicates for any other explanation. If it was one or two companies I could write it off as bad paperwork habits, but every search I do in any city going for any time frame gives me at least 1 of these per page. That's gotta be a bad data procedure on their part. Also if you hilight text you'll find there are invisible characters all over the place, when you include that these become unique entires, I think they have something to do with why these dups are showing up. Now I'm a nice guy so I'll assume sloppy code not deliberate falsification of data, but either way the site isn't presenting an accurate picture.

[Dat]

In effect these whiners want welfare by another name. I don't think that they understand that those 'slave wages' they complain about help them more than they think. After all, how much better off are you if you make double your present salary and yet goods cost 4 times as much?

[FormerLurker]

We have real problems in our economy, but these problems are a lot more related to problems with our government than problems with our people. We need to address the real problems. Giving business a tool for smashing wages down is not solving the problem and that's what h1b is plain and simple. We should all vote against every single politician who supports it.

Very well said. And yes, until we force politicians to take this issue seriously, they will continue to capitulate to the whims of industrial lobbyists. If they all get kicked out on their butts and are forced to TRY to find a real job, perhaps they'll see the light. Those who replace them might just realize that it's not a good idea to overlook hundreds of thousands of people who actually go out and vote.

[FormerLurker]

In effect these whiners want welfare by another name.

You mean working is now called "welfare"? The corporations are greasing palms in DC so that they can bring indentured slaves into this country. THAT is in reality a conspiracy to violate civil rights acts I would think. I wonder if RICO could be applied here...

I don't think that they understand that those 'slave wages' they complain about help them more than they think.

It's not wages we're complaining about. It's the wholesale import of indentured servants brought here for the purpose of replacing American workers that people have a problem with.

After all, how much better off are you if you make double your present salary and yet goods cost 4 times as much?

I'd say many of these so-called executives should reduce their salaries to $20/hour. That's more than fair and adequate for their level of education and intelligence. Perhaps then we'd take them more seriously.

[FormerLurker]

The website is down right now, so I can't verify what you said. I doubt you were setting the search criteria properly though, as NONE of the searches that I've performed had any of the characteristics you describe. I'll check back later and see what I can find about the specific case you mention.

[discostu]

Every search I've done shows dupes, most of the criteria are dropdowns, hard stuff to screw up. The examples I listed were a search on computer/ programming, Arizona, put Tucson in the city, leave employer blank, and 2001 for the year.

[fogarty]

Gimme a break! Do you think the reason we are in this mess is because we lack talented engineers? I have a buddy who's got a Bachelor's degree in EE from MIT and a Master Degree from UT. He designs FPGAs and ASICs. His last design was a 20 million gate ASIC. He's been out of work for 8 months. Nobody will hire him at his age and salary history...nobody will hire him for even 2/3 his salary range!

This is all about corporate greed. CEOs didn't want to play by the rules of supply and demand, and coerced Congress to INTERVENE in the talent market. But the market always wins in the long run - unfortunately by the time that happens America as a country will be non-existent. Corporate CEOs and management, selling out loyalty to the country for a extra buck...