Posted on 01/31/2003 11:36:32 AM PST by JimRic54
A crime against Americans BY REY DAVID Special to The Examiner
I HAVE BEEN a software engineer for the past 15 years, and a good one at that. Seven months ago, my company decided to give my job to offshore software outsourcers from India, and I got laid off.
Unemployment has caused me tremendous hardship. Like so many others in the Bay Area, landing a paying job has become a Herculean full-time job, fraught with tedious daily tasks and crushing frustration.
I have come to accept that there would be difficult periods like this during any business cycle. But I was stunned and aggrieved when I observed a crime being perpetrated at a time like this -- an unconscionable crime against hard-working, law-abiding, tax-paying, patriotic IT professionals like me.
Allow me to explain. There are many job ads I come across for which my skills and experience are ideal. The reason I have not successfully landed one is that, according to at least four of the recruiters I asked, there are around 500 applicants for every job opening. That's an astonishing number. With so many applicants, it would be reasonable to assume your chances of succeeding are not very good.
Here is where I first discovered the crime: I noticed a few ads advertised that they sponsor H1-B visas. I found that the companies who sponsor H1-B visas are invariably owned or run by Indians. There are thousands of unemployed IT professionals in the Bay Area who are U.S. residents and desperately looking for work. And here we see some Indian-owned companies who will spend the time, effort and money to bring people in from India to fill their job openings. That is unconscionable!
I thought that there had to be a mistake. This is the United States of America. Surely the authorities would not allow such crimes to take place. To my horror, I learned it has become a common practice for some Indians to set up dummy corporations, create dozens of bogus job openings, sponsor H1-B visas for candidates in India and arrange a temporary home for these "successful candidates."
These candidates pay their "sponsor" a fixed fee for his "services." They then stay with other successful candidates in an arranged home until they find a paying job for themselves with some bona fide American company.
But why would the companies bother to advertise openings to the public when they have no intention of hiring locally? They advertise to satisfy the INS's minimum requirements for H1-B sponsorship.
This despicable practice may explain why there has been exponential growth in the number of Indian IT professionals in the Bay Area.
I am not being discriminatory or racist. I don't care about someone's ethnicity or skin color. What I care about is behavior! And the fact is, people have systematically taken jobs away from deserving Americans right from under our feet.
The problem keeps getting bigger. I observed that when an Indian rose to a position of authority, he would hire Indians whenever possible.
Friends have shared with me that when they succeeded in getting an interview at an Indian-owned company, the interviewer and almost everybody else in the office was Indian.
My friends would feel like the interviewer had no intention of hiring anyone who wasn't Indian. The Indian companies invited non-Indians to interview only for the sake of appearance, and for state Equal Employment Opportunity reporting purposes.
In any case, some enterprising Indians have learned ways around the law to bring Indian nationals here for profit.
Indian professionals who have been brought in here through illicit means are swamping the IT jobs marketplace. It is hurting hardworking, law-abiding, tax-paying, patriotic Americans like me who are desperately looking for honest work.
And it has got to stop!
Comment: letters@examiner.com
Rey David has been a software engineer for 15 years. He lives in Livermore.
People wonder why of all the one million h1b visas issued about half are for programmers and most of the rest are for engineers or high-tech people of some sort. When the program itself allows people to import any kind of worker and the paperwork costs 2 grand. It is because american programmers understand their own value, they understand the manager doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground, the americans are bold cowboys and very creative, but if they have a manager asshole to work for that they don't like they'll tell him off or else quit. The americans are typical americans. You have to pay them for their value. When the manager throws their labor down the drain with stupid decisions they will screw the manager over big-time. The more talented the programmer the more likely he is to kick the manager's ass when the time comes. The Indians are by their culture deferential ass-kissers. And they can't quit. So, managers prefer them of course.
Everyone who knows anything knows that since 1790 we americans have been the great inventors and innovators in this world. People have done studies and concluded that more than 50% of worthwhile inventions are american sourced. The foreigners talk about our awesome creativity. It is the managerial class that does not understand nor respect the mindset of a person who would do programming. Who knows how much the opportunity cost is that they don't want to use the american sources for these people. It is impossible to measure and the class warfare is such that we are considered racists if we even think about the great track record of american achievement in these fields.
One of the published goals of the NWO types is to reduce America to a third world country. Globalization is to "normalize" the standard of living across all nations. Studies indicate that the "normal" standard of living is not characterized by that found in the United States simply because world resources cannot support the entire planet at our rate of consumption. The obvious solution is to lower the standard of living in the United States to what others "enjoy".
Bear in mind that those changes will not affect the ruling elite. It will, on the other hand, affect you. If you imagine engineering to be a matter of rote, I can assure you that your job is also a matter of rote. If you imagine that you will be an IT manager being paid 20 times that of the imported help, I can see why you think software is produced by rote.
Hear, hear!
I like the way you shoot. Your replies have been "right in there".
Yeah, its getting back to that "United We Stand" talk that is done by rote.
Even in medieval times the kings had crystal chandeliers on golden frames, with stunning artwork adorning the walls. There is, indeed, no concern for the welfare of the Nation or its citizens.
Eventually, however, consumer goods like TVs and computers will sell like hot-cakes ... just like they do in Afghanistan.
I hear you. I've been off for a year, now. Finally began to wise up and quit playing the technical skills game and am playing up my business experience and support skills.
No job yet -- but for the first time, some interest is being shown.
I'll add my two cents. 3 or 4 years ago when all the projections indicated that the U.S. could never fill the demand for programmers, I was in favor of relaxed restrictions on foreigners. Made economic sense to me at the time.
Who could have predicted this bubble-burst (and anyone who claims he did is lying). Add to that the fact that since about 1995 everyone's kid and kid brother went to college for Comp-Sci.
The "rote" jobs are going overseas. Maybe we'll start to get back to the more traditional liberal arts education where people specialize in a field; but also learn about the world outside comp-sci.
Yeah, right. IT is awash with people out of jobs, but the government and industry says we need more? From the article:
First, consider that H-1B is a very limited program. Assuming the 2000 statistics are correct, the maximum number of new H-1B computer professionals who would enter the market is 105,300 (54% of 195,000). The total number of computer professionals in the United States, according to a 2001 Labor Department study, is approximately 2.8 million. This means that the percentage increase in the number of workers available is 3.7%, hardly an increase that would seriously affect salaries.
Now, let's say the unemployment in IT mirrors the rate in the economy in general - six percent. And now you add 3.7 percent more workers competing for the same scarce openings. The impact is then far more profound on those seeking jobs.
H1-B is based on a lie. Until it is based on a truth, that there are a shortage of qualified positions, it should be suspended.
BTW, there was plenty of other B.S. in that Z-D article as well. And the author was, surprise, an owner of a software company who has a vested interest in keeping down IT salaries.
Welcome to FR, and realize that we're a lot harder to bamboozle than the average bear.
Look, the entire H1-B program was based on the premise that there was a shortage of IT workers in this country. But that shortage is gone, and we now have a surplus. I'm not saying kick out folks who are already here on H1-B visas, just curtail the program and not let additional workers in for the foreseeable future, because employers are now using it to drive down wages - and that affects EVERYONE working in IT, both American citizens and current H1-B visa holders.
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