Comments on: Hardly a great time to talk H-1Bs. Still, it's time

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.

[kimb1]

Charles,

SEE THIS:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10787_3-10113016-60.html

How do you reconcile last week profiling a 39-year old American IT worker who was laid off and trying to find work, with this one-sided article supporting more H-1b workers? Why haven't Oracle, Microsoft, Google, and the other employers who are claiming there are a shortage of American IT workers snapped up this guy?

Doesn't it make you wonder if something is fishy?

[lmrapp]

The mistake here is that the reason that so-called "high tech" companies are complaining is because they can pay these folks lower wages than they have to pay Americans. If Congress simply required that the pay scales were the same, the problem would be solved.

[bot_feeder]

Cooper, your ignroance is showing.

H1-B is not about admitting the "best and the brightest", it is a program to lower wages in tech and other fields by glutting the job market, not of the "best and brightest" but of people of average ability.

By the way, I believe there is another immigration program that is actually for the purpose of admitting foreign nationals who excel in their fields. That is not H1-B.

If you want to get your facts straight, the first thing to do is to solicit the opinion of a variety of people rather than just propaganda hacks for companies like Microsoft.

[bot_feeder]

you say

"now let's think about the long term"


Yes, let us do so. Is it a good long-term strategy to staff America's workforce of college-educated professionals with foreign nationals while relegating American kids to opportunities like burger flipping?

Sounds to me like a recipe for civil war.

[TomMariner]

Not to be Xenophobic, but every one of the countries from which we get the most H1b workers has restrictions on US workers freely working there. They are, as we should be, encouraging their citizens (born or naturalized) to take these future demand jobs.

So if the intent of the immigration type is anything other than permanently discouraging US citizens from training for these "high demand" technical jobs, we have to tie some sort of local incentives to the brain importation. Do I want those bright immigrants, once they have gotten advanced degrees and been trained by eager corporations to take that knowledge back to their native lands -- No. But in a land like ours where the "professions" seem to attract the best and brightest because of the pay and prestige, we need help convincing our kids and grandkids that engineering or computer majors may get them a great car and great future than law school.

Or we can just abdicate any hope of repeating anything like the bright young engineers who got us to the moon forty years ago. Before we decided that tech was not cool and forgot how to get back to the moon.

[CoolMower]

Problem is, we can't fool these kids. They see their older siblings and relatives having a hard time finding work in these fields, or being replaced by foreign H-1b imports. Just telling them that it will be rewarding will not be enough, we must show it by lobbying against bringing in cheap foreign labor.

Corporations do not see past the next quarters numbers, so they fool lawmakers that they will take their jobs overseas if they can't replace the US workorce with the cheap foreign labor so next quarters numbers will look better than last quarter's.

[kribor]

The myth concerning the shortage of American IT workers has been exposed for years by the IEEE and the ACM. Corporate interests have ALWAYS wanted to increase the number of H1-B's every year so they can displace American workers with cheaper foreign labor. You even have a foreign worker in this thread confirming that foreigners come here to make more money. Given the way that corporate America has been looking to the American taxpayer to bail their sorry butts out, I think that it would be totally legitimate to require any company requesting bailout money to only employ American workers.

Besides that, most tech firms already have development facilities offshore anyway. Why don't they just stay in their own countries. I've done enough projects myself delivering work over the wire to know that there is no need for these people to be coming here when they can work from Hyderebad, Bangelore, St. Petersburg, or wherever.

Finally, since these are the "best of the best", why don't they go home and make their home countries a better place for their people. And while we're at it, since (as many of these foreigners like to come on boards like this to claim) they're so much better than we lowly Americans are, can we stop sending them foreign aid now?

[maddogwri]

how insane are you
The government is not corrupt but the business people are
they Gov is responding to the people that talk to the
this is what happens when you run Gov like a business
GW's borthere Neil is alobbyist for the Chinese Gov
so what is the surprise, Neil is a convicted crook, embezzoler
GW is a national traitor stop buying thie chinese crap and part of the problem is solved

[ChondroPy]

Its obvious that this so-called editor has missed the whole concept.
We Americans have been forced to deal with these H1B visas for years
now. We have already cut our rates, but to cut them even more
will do more harm to this country than good.

First of all, Americans that cut rates to keep a job give the corporations
the idea that they were right all along in the stance that we were
charging too much for our IT expertise. Ever think that we are charged too
much in the supermarket or the car showroom? Congress has created this
glut in the IT industry based on false information. So, who put these
Congressmen in office aka "gave them a job" and who pays their salary
and retirement? Answer, the AMERICAN VOTER and TAXPAYER!

My answer to this H1B lie is to stick it out and don't cave in to
the likes of this editor or his corporate buddies. Maybe he will
find his job outsourced someday and will learn our pain. Its
funny how people think when they have a job.

H1B visa holders are here for ONE PURPOSE ONLY, to bring in cheap
labor and help reduce rates and salaries! Congress was paid off
well by lobbyists to do this! Meanwhile, India, China,etc continue to plot
on the total takeover of the American IT industry as our economy CONTINUES
to stay weak! WAKE UP CONGRESS! You are paid to
represent Americans!

[VOMIChairman]

With all due respect to Seagate CEO, Bill Watkins, and the rest of my colleagues---not just in Silicon Valley but also irrespective of where they may be located---I respectfully disagree with the notion that we should lift all caps on H1-B visas or any of the other insane proposals and suggestions they have been trumpeting over the years. Americans are suffering and we need to get our heads out of the sand.

Addictive Behavior

US employers are behaving like crackheads or heroin and nicotine addicts who think that the way to cure their illness and craving is to get more of it in some sort of sanitized version, e.g., methadone or a nicotine patch, instead of taking stock that they have a serious problem and the time has come to muster up the courage and willingness to QUIT. I know it will be hard and painful at first but there is no other way to really recover and avoid falling into a precipice.

Plenty of US Talent

I refuse to believe that we don't have enough Americans in the US who are smart or ingenious enough and willing to work; or that Americans just don't give a hoot about technology. As the former head of a national executive search firm for about 18 years, ....................

Here is a link to the full article I wrote titled "H1-B Visas in the Midst of a Global Economic Meltdown: Talent Shortage or Cheap Labor?":

http://virtualorganizationinstitute.com/h1-b-visas-in-the-midst-of-a-global-economic-meltdown.pdf

Pierre Coupet
Founder, CEO & Doctor of Virtual Organization Management
Virtual Organization Management Institute

[VOMIChairman]

Under what pretense are we going to bring in foreign labor?

[semockr]

Bill NumbNuts Watkins doesnt have a clue about who built the high tech industry in
the USA. He needs to follow his best&brightest (not to mention cheap) grads to those foreign shores, preferably Bombay. Let him dodge bullets & bombs for a while until he
catches on about this.

[aintnorainbowdorothy]

This IS realy a bad time to talk about H-1B and L1 workers. Millions of Americans have been given pink slips with more to come. Unemployment is actually higher than stated with only those that are still in the job market are counted. Not those who have given up, or that worked for themselves and closed shop all the while deciding to not enter the jobmarket not being counted. In addition, as was the case during the Nixon administration when the decision was made, those in the military being counted in the unemployment figures. Real unemployment figures are understated, for a good reason. The government always undercounts one thing and overstates another.

So there are 65,000 H-1B visas given each year. What a truely paltry number when considered in the big picture. Everyone wants to believe that only Silly Valley companies get these people. But they also work in other industries. I know of a car salesman who was here on an H-1B. When it ran out, the dealership, one of the most respected in its state, sponsored him as a student so he could get his PhD, and not in the computer business either. They also paid his tuition, books, etc., on an annual scholarship. The company gives five a year, and after talking to the general manager, I found that that in the 20+ years the scholarships have been given, he is only the fourth from a foreign country to get one of them. He already had a MA in Psychology, wanted to get his PhD, and then teach High School, not in his home country, but the United States with the goal of becoming a citizen.

The point is quityerbitchin. The number of Visa's are paltry. And yes, many of them go to Silly Valley, but quite a bit of them go to other industries. These other industries benefit from the visas, want the person to stay with the worker wanting to stay and become a citizen. They pay taxes, pay into the Social Security pool and get nothing out of it.

I work as a Security Consultant, something those of you complaining might consider, not necessarily in that field but at least as a consultant. The pay is considerable. And the hours are what you as a person want to work. I make good money, work when and if I want to, pay Income and Social Security taxes and enjoy a pretty decent standard of living.

And no, I am not one of those who came here on an H-1B visa. I'm American educated, have advanced degrees in Quantum Physics and Mathmetics, 41 years in the computer business.

My answer to those of you complaining, I say get a life. There are jobs that pay well and are going begging for lack of qualified people. Consulting is not a bad deal for those of you who know your business, and not just in the computer field. Get a Teachers certificate and educate those American's that read at the average level of a fifth grader and cannot add, subtract, multiply or divide without the help of a computer or don't know how to use a slide rule.

Slide rule you say? Yes, if the power goes out and the project needs to be finished, then a slide rule is a good thing to know how to use, instead of whining that your computer is nearly finished, but the backup power is gone.

As far as I'm concerned, those who complain the loudest have the least skillsets to get a good job in hard times, and that's through experience. This isn't the first time hard times have hit and it won't be the last.

Get a life. Go into a different field, become a consultant in the field you work in, get off your lazy butts and become a real person with something else to do than compain.

[BobN34]

"So there are 65,000 H-1B visas given each year. What a truely paltry number when considered in the big picture. "

there's nothing in your post but attitude and lies

65,000 - base H-1b
20,000 - so called 'masters only; h-1b
unlimited - educational, research & non profit h-1b, even if deployed from a for profit body shop

about 23,000 F1 student visa OPT straining program raised to 29 months (6 months short of an H-1b)

TN visa was raised by homland security from 1 to 3 years, so anyone from Mexico or canada who would have used an H-1b now free that up for India - in 2005, mexico and cananda used 40,000 h-1b visas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:H1b_demographics.jpg

then there's L1 visas, which is at lest 50,000 per year, could be much higher

then there's years where immigration department just ignores the cap by 10,000 or so

so the true number of guest workers is at least 3 times the 65,000 figure you quote

please dont judge people with an arguement based on lies

[CoolMower]

aintnorainbowdorothy,

Your post shows an example of the fraud of the H1-B visa. Car salesman is not a profession where there is any claim that qualified US workers people cannot be found. There was definately fraud involved. H1B was not necessary to fill that job.

By the way, what is a "Security consultant"? is that a fancy name for security guard? What does quantom physics have to do with that?

[CPCcurmudgeon]

"My answer to those of you complaining, I say get a life. There are jobs that pay well and are going begging for lack of qualified people."

You are not taking into account those individuals whose careers were going fine until they were replaced by people on "guest" visas. Some of them even were required to train these "guest" workers. They were not even given a chance to bid competitively on the work. Why should people be forced to switch careers when they are perfectly capable of doing the jobs they were doing? And since some of these people were training their replacements, an argument could be made that they were actually "better" than their replacements (at least at the jobs that the replacements were being trained in).

Another factor to take into account is the overall cost to society of a productive, unemployed worker. People all across the educational spectrum have lost jobs in both this downturn and the bursting of the dotcom bubble. I know of people who were Stanford professors, Caltech PhD recipients, heads of engineering divisions, etc. that were laid off. That alone should raise questions about the need for additional "guest" visas, with so many highly qualified, educated people out of the workforce. The fact that some of them actually lost jobs to "guest" workers makes it even worse. Society pays the cost of these arguably productive people when they have to apply for unemployment benefits, etc. Arguably, there is no need for these people to be unemployed, because (1) they were perfectly capable of doing their jobs, and (2) they hold the credentials that the companies who claim they can't find qualified people are looking for.

I'm not arguing that everyone is entitled to a job. However, I'm pointing out that these people who are losing jobs are actually capable of doing those jobs. They are just being put out of the workforce, sometimes to be replaced by "guest" workers, because government policy has permitted this to happen. In other countries, the very countries that these "guest" workers come from, it is far, far harder for a non-citizen to get employment.

[contactsamv]

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. Americans are such cry babies!! For all the people complaining about foreign workers "stealing" jobs from Americans for lower wages:

Why is it that we can afford to have a 4-bedroom house, 2 cars, send our kids to college, afford vacations, have Plasma TVs etc..... and AT THE SAME TIME not have our homes foreclosed or be drowned in debt by accepting these so-called "slave" labor wages you guys keep talking about???

I have a lot of smart, well-educated, financially responsible colleagues, who are Americans that don't complain about their wages. It seems to me as though most Americans don't need advanced degrees in IT related fields... stop blaming the economy and losing your job (because you ask for wages so that you can spend more than you earn) on H1-Bs. Do yourself a favor and enroll in Financial Planning 101.

[Ruadhagen]

I see both sides on this one - I'm a Canadian married to an American. I worked in the US for the past four years, first under a TN-1 visa (under NAFTA), then as a permanent resident. Is H1-B the program abused? I don't doubt it. But does the lack of talent in the US (or any country for that matter) hamper companies? Yes.

There is a concept in economics of a "comparative advantage" - some geographic areas have advantage imbued by the distinct attributes of the local environment, the people, etc. The US has several such centers, including Silicon Valley (software, hardware), LA (entertainment), and New York (finance). Cutting off access to talent is a surefire way to arm competitive regions and undermine the USA's comparative advantage in these regions.

Could this be prevented by increasing output of engineers/scientists in the US? Sure - but how long will that take? You can't cut off access to the fuel without stalling the engine.

The terrible truth that no one wants to seem to confront in these comments is that the borders are increasingly irrelevant. Good talent can move pretty much anywhere these days - in my case, a Canadian citizenship, an Australian citizenship, an Irish citizenship, and an American wife gives me the opportunity to live and work in over 30 countries without restriction. But that is fairly rare.

More common, however, is how digital work is increasingly moving back and forth across borders unhindered. Restricting labor from entering a country is a stopgap protectionist measure that delays the inevitable - talented workforces are increasing the world over, which means that salaries for this talent will fall in the long run. The question is whether or not this talent will create markets and opportunities that ultimately benefit those here, or abroad.

[CPCcurmudgeon]

65000 "guest" workers is hardly restricting labor. That should be more than enough to cover scientists doing cutting-edge research. There is no need to import people to work in car dealerships - find someone who lost their job due to US auto industry cutbacks and hire them.

[tlchester]

Today, many American workers are excluded from consideration because companies are using programs that select candidates based on lowest cost. The 'best and brightest' in the profession are NEVER CONSIDERED for the position. In turn, the guest workers are included in the pool of candidates while the Americans don't make the cut because our compensation is higher. We are never considered for open positions. From what I have seen in my professional experience, the foreign novices are far from the best and brightest. They are simply the cheapest and easiest to control.

[dslaw]

Bryan @ 3:22, 12-12-08.

Your parents did well on $15/hr. Now depending on your current age, back in their day and making $15/hr, it could have been 1975, 1965, 1955, 1945... Especially in the 1950s and 1960s, $15/hr was a terrific amount of money to be making. Check out the cost of living during those time periods in the area they lived and worked at.