Hardly a great time to talk H-1Bs. Still, it's time
What with pink slips being handed out all over this country, now is probably the worst time for any political leader to urge a rethinking of our H-1B policy to lift the 65,000 annual limits on foreign guest workers in specialty occupations. It's not the sort of political stance that will play well in Peoria - or in many other places in the U.S. these days.
But it must be said: Maintaining the status quo on H-1B is the best news that China, India, Russia or any other would-be economic superpower could ever want to hear. The reverse brain drain returns smart people with advanced degrees to their countries of origin. And in the increasingly hot, flat and crowded world that the New York Times' Tom Friedman describes in his latest book, these are the sorts of folks every country will covet.
What we're not talking about here are rank-and-file jobs that come and go, depending upon the whims of the business cycle. This is the next generation of superstar engineers and entrepreneurs, who clearly will leave their mark. The only question is where.
"The current rules are nuts," adds Bob Muglia, a senior executive at Microsoft.
In particular, he pointed to the process in which foreigners, who get educated in the U.S., wind up getting exported back to their home countries. "It's crazy," he said, drawing a distinction between "highly-trained people and migrant farm workers."
His is a common refrain among tech types. This was the second consecutive year in which the federal government got swamped by applications well in excess of the annual 65,000 limit for H-1B visas within days of opening the visa window.
Barack Obama surely must be getting an earful about this from trusted tech advisors, like Google's Eric Schmidt and Xerox's Anne Mulcahy. What's more, computer industry executives, who have long chafed at numerical ceilings on the H-1B, are likely to take a more assertive tone after the new administration takes office next January.
That's the only way to get the ball moving. They haven't been happy with the situation for quite some time and in conversations, it's clear that their frustration is at the boiling point.
"It's the most ridiculous thing that I've ever seen," says Seagate CEO, Bill Watkins and the vice chairman of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. "We train them and then don't let them stay here? Come on. More than half the companies in the (Silicon) Valley were formed by immigrants. You don't see that happening in the last three years."
Nobody's going to win a popularity contest by advocating we let more foreigners receive U.S. jobs. But now let's think about the long-term. For Watkins, a strong proponent of "getting "American companies to identify with America," the deadlock on over H-1Bs is yet more proof of rules and regulations which ultimately work against the country's economic self interest.
Seagate CEO Bill Watkins
"I've been moving operations offshore because that's where my grads are," he said. "It's a ridiculous situation that we're in."
Last spring, the SVLG traveled to Washington D.C. to make its case. Unfortunately for SVLG, its timing wasn't the best. Congress was then more concerned about illegal immigration and the fairness of bringing "cheaper" H-1B candidates into the country. The upshot: Nothing got done. f
For what it's worth, here's what they were asking for.
• Raise the H-1B cap and allow it to fluctuate to reflect market demand and unemployment rates
• Exempt US advanced degree graduates from the H-1B cap
• Apply existing 20,000 H-1B set-aside to foreign university advanced degree STEM graduates (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics)
• Increase the employment-based Green Card cap to reduce and prevent future backlogs
• Exempt US advanced degree graduates, as well as foreign advanced degree STEM with US work experience from the Green Card Cap
• Exempt from the green card cap those spouses and children of green card recipients
Once again, their timing is bad. The most recent employment report was abysmal the news isn't likely going to get much better anytime soon. I think an H-1B rethink is a good idea but try selling that one when unemployment is nearing double digits. When it comes to long-term thinking, most of us usually fall in with the short termers.
Charles Cooper has covered technology and business for more than 25 years. Before joining CNET News, he worked at the Associated Press, Computer & Software News, Computer Shopper, PC Week, and ZDNet. E-mail Charlie. 
I've worked in the Valley for 25 years. I've met and worked with hundreds of foreign nationals. I can only think of a handful of them that I would classify as 'superstar engineers'. The vast majority of them are no more talented than my typical American colleagues.
So why do CEOs and managers crave H1-B workers? Simple
1) They are willing to work (at least *be* at work) long hours because oftentimes they have few responsibilities/connections/interests (families, etc) outside work.
2) They have to put up with whatever crap, unfair treatment, etc management heaps on them, because if they are fired or quit, they risk losing their H1-B status and being sent home.
3) They are willing to work for less money.
As the IEEE has said many times, if there is a true shortage of engineering talent in the U.S, the law of supply and demand dictates that salaries would increase. But they really haven't.
If we Americans want more of our children to become scientists and engineers, the best incentive we can give them is higher salaries and more job security. If the typical engineer made as much as the typical lawyer or doctor, many more of our brightest children would opt for careers in science and engineering. But that won't happen as long as our CEOs continue to both import engineers and export engineering jobs.
Actually the salary, as adjusted for inflation, for IT workers, has dropped substantially over the last 25 years.
It has been clear, in several U.S. Government reports that the h-1b system is used to fill in low-level IT jobs, allow open discrimination against U.S. citizens, and fascilitate (indeed start and enable) the offshoring of millions of U.S. jobs.
It is clear that more than 1-in-5 h-1b employees are not qualified, and have stolen the job from a more qualified U.S. worker because the h-1b applicant committed fraud on U.S. Government applications.
http://www.hreonline.com/HRE/story.jsp?storyId=148129535
I have interviewed several h-1b candidates, 2 in particular from Google stick out. One was a supposed to be a Unix expert, but could not answer a simple question like how kill a running process on a Unix server. The other said she was an experienced Java Web developer, but didn't know what a WAR file was.
It is also clear, that this program is being used to move whole IT departments overseas. And that is exactly what Pfizer is doing right now. Pfizer is abusing the H-1b program, Pfizer is using H-1b program to remove jobs. If you want to stop the Brain Drain, stop the H-1b program, and by doing so save jobs in Connecticut. More H-1b workers, just means more jobs shipped overseas, and nothing points this out more clearly than the Pfizer scandal.
http://industry.bnet.com/pharma/1000472/pfizer-is-focus-of-probe-into-use-of-immigrant-rd-workers/
Listen, right now every CEO has the idea, because it is fashionable (CEO's are truly birds of a feather on most issues, including h-1b, greed is the main reason), to layoff 10% of their workforce. And most of the layoffs include Software Engineers. Not allowing the U.S. economy to rehire it's own native workforce, is just plain not-human. Basically, talk of raising the h-1b cap at this time, is what you would expect from selfish predacious hyenas (actually it's an insult to hyenas to even compare such dirt-bags to hyenas).
Further, IT companies (Such as Google, Microsoft, CISCO, Oracle...) companies use proxies such as Infosys, Satyam, and numerous small employment companies. (Companies that openly discriminate against U.S. citizen, and that advertise that only people who can be sponsored for h-1b can be hired, americans are not given the chance to even compete for a job in their own land). The actual number of h-1b workers used by Google, Microsoft, CISCO, Oracle is actually much higher than they officially report. And American Citizens can't get these jobs, are never given a chance to compete for these jobs, because these companies use the small discriminatory head-hunter agencies to keep the jobs ads away from U.S. Citizen.
Raising the H-1b cap, clearly, will just complete the Brain Drain circuit and allow companies to move all their operation overseas. If you want to continue the decline of the U.S. economy, then by all means raise the h-1b cap. If you want to really keep jobs in the United States, then you know that the H-1b program is the true source all U.S. brain drain, raising the cap will only allow the free flow of all U.S. technology to places outside the country.
Just check out http://www.programmersguild.org/, for more information, and articles from Official sources, and respected news organizations, that prove the reality that the H-1b program has to go (or be subject to extreme reform) in order for the United States to keep jobs in the United States, and to end the discrimination against the U.S. workers, and the unfair hiring practices of companies such as Google, Microsoft, CISCO, Oracle through their proxy head hunting agencies they rely on for cheap, indentured workers.
You speak the truth!
Thank you.
Unfortunately, thanks to the damage being done to our education system by such brilliant policies as "No Child Left Behind" (obviously designed by someone who was held back at some point - but not long enough), we may end up there eventually. If you really want to think "long term", how about giving up on a policy that will lead to the United States of India or Mexico or Timbuktu and instead focus on fixing a policy that is leading to children in the most "developed" country scoring on or below par with children in 3rd world countries.
Thousands of citizens and legal residents have been murdered or otherwise victimized, under the illegal local government 'Sanctuary' policies. Read the facts at www.judicialwatch.org, www.numbersusa.com, www capsweb.org and www.americanpatrol.com Only here can you read about the illegal immigration invasion and the consequences of OVERPOPULATION.
I'm almost certain you are prostituting your position in order to get more advertisers or perhaps looking for another job. You can't seriously believe that we need more H-1b visas. And given that the top sponsors of H-1b visas are offshoring firms, you can't possibly believe other countries will benefit by lower H-1b numbers.
You win the worst IT journalist award. Congrats. Last time I checked this is a capitalist country. If you want more people to pursue this occupation, pay more. That's how capitalism works.
My view is, even Americans should be able to get jobs in America.
Just go to Wikipedia, look up H-1b. There is a chart indicating which companies and which nations are the top recipients of H-1b visas. Restricting H-1b visas will create more jobs that pay more money in the United States. You have nothing to fear but fear itself. Industry is using fear tactics so you don't think critically about this issue.
It is sad but true that the H1B worker program is nothing more than indentured labour. It allows employers to take advantage of workers who initially fear for their visas and later get trapped in the endless cycle of backlog filled permanent residentship process.
H1B == CHEAP LABOUR = LOW SALARY + EXTRA HOURS = SWEAT SHOPS.
Undoubtly, there are bright people all over the world. And some of them come to the USA on the H1B programs. Unfortunately, the H1B program is only designed to attract the best and the brightest in theory. In practise, the majority of H1B/L1 are simply exploited by Indian and American companies alike to keep wages low and feed corporate greed.
Mandate minimum salaries and qualifications for H1B workers, allow them free movement to switch jobs the moment they reach American soil and enforce "American first" to minimize exploitation of these visa programs.
I was called into my manager's office today and told that everyone in the company is taking at least a 10% paycut , and that we are laying off about 10% of our staff. There is absolutely no reason in the world why there should be any H-1Bs imported at all this year -- not until the mass layoffs start.
These calls for expanded H-1B numbers is essentially a call for unlimited replacement of American jobs. If these guys get what they want, then every member of Congress should be thrown out on thier ears.
And guess what... companies want the foreign workers not because of the cost, but because there aren't enough "white boys" to fill the jobs they have. I've seen this over and over again here in the Midwest. No one ever wants to talk about that part. Sure, I'd love to hire a bunch of corn-fed Midwestern good ol' boys, but so few of them have the skills to do the jobs we need them for!
I had to recently turn down a job in Wyoming that paid great money - $105 an hour and a 12 month contract. The problem is that they wanted me onsite 5 days a week for 12 months and to pay for all travel/lodging costs. There are no direct (or regular) flights so commuting is impossible (8-10 hours each leg to travel). I would however agree to rotate weeks onsite, but they wouldn't. You guys need to be more flexible, that's the bottom line. Most people won't uproot their family every 12 months and move to some random rural town around the country. If I were single I would probably be in Wyoming right now.
I totally believe it's a demand and supply process. And the fact that there are hundreds of foreign workers employed by our company makes it hard to believe that all these jobs were fillable by American workers and that they preferred foreign ones. On the other hand I've been teaching in university as well, and most of those students that I have taught have landed jobs by the time I finished my masters degree. I don't think I am cheap labor with respect to my position, but may be I am cheap labor in comparison with people who have been in their position for 10 years doing pretty much the same thing and getting paid 10 times what I am getting paid. In such case, any sane employer will prefer me to the 10 year "experienced" guy. And in such a case, it doesn't really matter whether you're foreign or not, if you can do the job with 1/10th the cost, you will get, regardless of your nationality.
It could be just my personal experience. My company could be different, but I believe that's the case for any respectable company, and I believe that the notion that all foreign workers are "Cheap labor" is false especially in the high tech market.
With that said, I am with Americans regulating and choosing whatever is best for America, and I respect American law. For me it's an opportunity to gain experience, improve my income, and working with very skilled people. It's an opportunity that I've taken, just like the hundreds of thousands of Americans working outside the shores of the US. If the opportunity seizes to exist, I'll look elsewhere for another opportunity.
- the economy crash
- executives who made millions making bad bets (like AIG), get over a hundred billion in taxpayer welfare checks then phone in demands from more from posh resorts
- auto executives come begging for welfare in private jets
- unemployment rise to the highest level in 25 years (today)
- An Illinois governor selling the president elect's senate seat like a pez dispenser on ebay
Americans are no longer blind to what an absolute SEWER the morals of our business and government leaders wallow in.
After giving trillions to business to 'save jobs' and seeing huge public works programs proposed for jobs, proposals that very well could bankrupt this country, you have the nerve to propose stuffing foreign workers into a program proven full of fraud
How you can look in the mirror, I'll never know. You judge the skills of American tech workers when your only skill is shining shoes of tech executives
- by kimb1 December 11, 2008 9:47 AM PST
- Oracle VP Hoffman is a key lobbyist for more H-1b. Larry Ellison is among the richest men in the world, squandering his weath on the largest yacht in the world, private fighter jets, and who knows what.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (58 Comments)Follow me on this: When Oracle says they need "skilled" H-1b from overseas rather than hiring new U.S. grads and training them, they are expecting some other employer to have hired a new grad and given them the on-the-job training. Oracle and Microsoft can afford to establish high intensity 3-month "boot camp" training programs that provide the skills needed by Oracle and Microsoft. They could subsidize this, and draw many qualifed Americans if these programs reasonably led to careers at these companies.
But instead Gates and Ellison find it more cost effective to "lobby" Congress to increase the flood of Americans - even during the worst recession in 50 years. These people have no shame. Clearly the problem is that Gates and Ellison are TOO CHEAP to hire and train Americans. (Neither company typically attends career fairs at CSU campuses.)
Someone please explain why Congress should not suspend th H-1b program and tell Gates and Ellison, "I think you have the resources to privide the training to hire Americans rather then expecting employers overseas to bear the expense of training your workforce."