U.S. Senate's Big Immigration Bill Seeks Centralized Database For H-1B Jobs 251
dcblogs writes "The U.S. Senate comprehensive immigration bill, due Tuesday, will allow the H-1B cap to rise from 65,000 to as high as 180,000. The bill, overall, contains some interesting provisions. It will require the U.S. Labor Dept. to create a website of H-1B job openings that employers must post to. The jobs must be posted least 30 calendar days before hiring an H-1B applicant to fill that position. The bill also raises wages for H-1B workers to make them more competitive, although the amount wasn't specified. One provision that will affect India, in particular, limits H-1B visa use to 50% of a firm's U.S. workforce. The provision may prompt India firms to buy U.S. companies to expand their U.S. presence."
why? (Score:5, Insightful)
So they can encourage foreign outsourcing? Doesn't anyone see this as having a negative impact on domestic unemployment? (as well as a trade deficit effect as they ship their US$ off to India)
Why is this necessary???
Re:why? (Score:5, Informative)
Corporate America's solution to unemployment is importing cheaper labor from other countries. I watched mouth agape as Bill Gates suggested this in an interview when asked about his ideas on how to deal with the Recession. Of course, corporate media never challenges their masters when they make these ludicrous statements.
Re:why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Corporate America's solution to unemployment is importing cheaper labor from other countries.
Oddly enough, they have a completely different view on importing cheaper products from other countries
See DVD region encoding, out-of-country textbooks, software, etc.
Re:why? (Score:5, Informative)
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Laws are for the peasants.
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I feel the same way, and have made my position clear many times.
If $large mega corp$ feels it is in their best interest to outsource jobs in this "global economy" why are our DVD's still region coded?
Please dont give me the "top releases are sent to the US first"... I think the real reason is to prevent re-importation.
This "one way street" stuff needs to end. Either we have a global economy and you should charge $4 for a DVD and $10 for a school text book (same they often charge other regions) or we dont
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If $large mega corp$ feels it is in their best interest to outsource jobs in this "global economy" why are our DVD's still region coded?
Or why can't I buy medicine from the lowest cost worldwide provider?
Why? Rules are of, by, and for those with control of the government.
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So...their idea of dealing with a need for more homegrown STEM candidates (haha, try raising the salary offers a little) is to shoot a nuclear torpedo into their home country's universities' STEM programs? Increasing supply tapers off demand...duh! That's like basic economics...it'll perma-fuck anything at home...it takes like a decade to establish a CS / SE program, let alone the other kinds...less kids attending those programs because of dropping salaries (this includes kids who drop out of the program or
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Don't think this is limited to the Corporate world.
Immigration reform advocates talk a good game of human rights and crap like that but what the really want is cheap labor to mop their office floors and pick their vegetables.
Bottom line is there are plenty of American Citizens that are willing to work all jobs. Anyone who says otherwise is actually saying that that there are Americans who won't work for less than minimum wage (Agricultural) so we should bring in these poor schmucks from other countries to d
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You can only vote for what's offered. That's the beauty of democracy. Corporations are people, but they can't vote. So they get to decide who you may vote for.
Fair, ain't it?
Re:why? (Score:5, Insightful)
So they can encourage foreign outsourcing? Doesn't anyone see this as having a negative impact on domestic unemployment? (as well as a trade deficit effect as they ship their US$ off to India)
Why is this necessary???
Well it might have a positive effect on domestic employment as well.
If it makes US firms use of foreign workers very visible people (and congress) will be able to see to what
extent these companies are using H1B workers in place of US workers laid off.
Right now this is pretty well a hidden level of replacement that no one agency has a good handle on. Immigration may know the numbers, but Dept of Labor only knows about the unemployed.
By making a public website where these jobs are listed, it can be used for in-country job search as well.
Expect the H1B employers to fight this tooth and nail.
Re:why? (Score:4, Informative)
I think this is really the break point for the bigger guys like IBM. That's why it's discussed now.
The horse is long out if the barn. For companies like IBM they have moved "outsourcing" in India to being just like an office across the country. IBM has basically bet the company on US sales forces selling Indian labor. You get a "US contact" for the first few months, but all the work is done by Indians.
I guess if you can admin your server room from your bed at 3am (and still work at 8am) your company can just pay an Indian guy to be awake at 3am and don't need you. The REAL money is in Project Management... Which quite ironically is not part of the MBA track-- to BUILD NEW THINGS? Of course Project Management is the skill of making yourself replaceable.. So the fact IT has embraced it is really going to bite us in the ass.
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For cultural reasons, Americans aren't willing to sanction unlimited immigration. So there is going to be some limit. How to allocate it? Currently it's first-come, first-serve. But why not allocate it by economic benefit? And how better to measure economic benefit than wages?
If one company claims there is a shortage of domestic workers, and offers $60k to hire a foreign worker; a 2nd company claims the same and offers $90k; and a third claims the same and offers $120k; which should get the slot? I would ar
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I have been working with one small company trying to build it up. I have been working there for six months now, and have been paid a little over $2000. Just yesterday the owner gave me an agreement (NDA) he wanted me to sign, which transferred any and all IP I come with to the company alo
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"Just yesterday the owner gave me an agreement (NDA) he wanted me to sign, which transferred any and all IP I come with to the company along with a commitment from me I will not work for any of his customers or competitors for 24 months after termination."
I don't have a big problem with NDA, except I would want a provision to keep something for my professional portfolio.
By the way: if it transfers all "IP" (I hate that term because it's grossly inaccurate) it's far more than just an NDA. A plain NDA is just "non disclosure", it has nothing to do with actual ownership.
The document you were asked to sign was actually a combination of 3 agreements: a NDA, an agreement about copyright or patent, and a non-compete agreement. Generally, these will be separat
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Well, most countries where you get in easily are on the other hand pretty hard to get out of.
Re:why? (Score:4, Informative)
So they can encourage foreign outsourcing?
H1B is already all about out-sourcing. The top 10 H1B employers, accounting for roughly half of all H1B visas, are out-sourcers. They bring people in on H1B, train them up and send them back. H1B is encouraging out-sourcing, not stopping it.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/04/03/176134694/Whos-Hiring-H1-B-Visa-Workers-Its-Not-Who-You-Might-Think [npr.org]
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" H1B is encouraging out-sourcing, not stopping it."
Not only that, but studies have shown that the companies' excuse that H1-B workers are "the best and brightest" is nothing but hogwash. On average, they do not perform up to the level of the average Americans in the same positions.
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So they can encourage foreign outsourcing? Doesn't anyone see this as having a negative impact on domestic unemployment?
No. Any job that can be offshored either has been or will be, because 3rd world countries are even cheaper than guest workers. The jobs remaining here are the ones that can't be offshored so readily.
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Then why are Microsoft, Amazon, Adobe, etc. located in the US? Software writing can be done anywhere in the world.
Microsoft, Amazon, Adobe, etc. are located here because they were founded here, and for all their talk of the joys of globalization, the founders and C-level execs don't want to emigrate to India. The real question is why do they write software here.
"Software writing" is not always something that can be done as well anywhere in the world. It's not like putting bolt A into hole B 400x per hour, where the task is repetitive and well defined. It's often important for people to understand what it's being used
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"Why do you think they write software here? Do you disagree that programmers are cheaper elsewhere?"
They write software here because there are better programmers here. It is that simple.
I've had this conversation many times on Slashdot. Over the last year and a half or so, I have seen a pretty drastic pull back in offshoring of software. On the international job boards I have seen more and more ads for "North America and Western Europe ONLY".
The reason is that the "cheap offshoring" has turned out to be not so cheap. The most common complaints have been very poor quality and late- or non-delivery.
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'cause Ballmer would look stupid in a sari?
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If the job can't be exported, like cleaning hotel rooms, gardening,
Two options (Score:2)
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Well we should be trying to get these people to come here and stay instead of cross training them, and sending them back so the previous employers can just pay them their foreign offshore rates.
Better yet, just eliminate the program completely. The US did fine for years as a tech leader without it. There has never been any justification for it, and with the current job market there's even less.
Indeed (Score:2)
The whole H1B idea has been perverted by greedy companies looking for cheap and obedient labor so much that it should be cancelled. There is already O-1 visa for "Individuals with Extraordinary Ability or Achievement" that is intended for geniuses that can be hard to find in the U.S. Any other needs can and should be filled within the country.
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It's not "free" trade because they can get our wages and their cost of living, but we can't get their cost of living and keep our wages.
And part of the reason why the cost of living is lower in third world countries is because they have lax regulations on pollution, safety, labor laws, etc. It would only be an even playing field if we turned the USA into an unregulated toxic 3rd-world Les Misérables dump, which business lobbyists are pushing hard for.
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The companies using H1-B's are scoundrels that post impossible qualifications, whine to congress about how expensive it is to hire decent talent, and then mop up H1-B's in their place and probably not even screen them anyway.
Wrong Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
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Instead of giving people H1B visas, why don't we just give them green cards, so they have the same employment bargaining rights that US citizens have so it becomes impossible to undercut local wages.
I think you answered your own question :)
In that case H1B visa holders would not be cheaper and who's going to hire them?
A very large majority of H1B holders are brought in as cheaper labor and a tiny minority are hired as "unavailable talent".
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STEM Masters get an additional 15 months of post completion practical training on top of 12 months of practical training period of other fields, They can work legally for any employer for 27 months. Then the employer has to sponsor them for Green card. The masters come in EB2 categ
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Ph D in STEM can already do that.
Thank heavens for that, because almost half of the STEM Ph.D.'s in this country have jobs that justify their degrees. Anything else and we might actually see their pay rising! When that happened back in the 1980's the NSF wisely suggested a vast increase in student visas (with the express and stated purpose of driving down salaries).
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Ph D in STEM can already do that. Science Tech Engg and Math grads can jus apply for green card based on their degree. No employer sponsorship is needed. No offer of employment is needed. They already have full bargaining power.
No offense, but I believe you are just making shit up. Do you care to cite a reference? A number of my friends got a PhD and all they get is OPT which is good for 12 months and requires a (relevant) employment offer to match it those 12 months. My roommate is out of US now, because he had no way of staying here after graduating with a PhD.
You cannot apply for green card based on your PhD degree (unless you come from the parallel universe where common sense prevailed -- as that would be a great idea to allo
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No offense, but I believe you are just making shit up. Do you care to cite a reference? A number of my friends got a PhD and all they get is OPT which is good for 12 months and requires a (relevant) employment offer to match it those 12 months. My roommate is out of US now, because he had no way of staying here after graduating with a PhD.
You cannot apply for green card based on your PhD degree (unless you come from the parallel universe where common sense prevailed -- as that would be a great idea to allow this).
Actually, the OP is right: Reference [greencardforphd.com]
However, the process is hard - the OP made it sound easier than it is. You need to show that you are an extraordinary asset, with skills that are of national merit. You need several reference letters, a lot of top-notch publications (I have heard that you need more than most faculty positions require), and having contacts helps a lot (say, you had a famous advisor with lots of contacts during your Ph.D.).
The process is still quite long, so you might as well get a job a
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The annual allocation of EB-1 visas is approximately 40,000. In FY 2009, approximately 40 percent of allotted EB-1s went to workers and approximately 60 percent went to spouses and children. EB visas also have a country limit of 7% per country (~2800), so China and India fill these up quickly.
EB1 has not traditionally had a long backlog, but now it does. In FY 2013, there were 48,639 valid EB-1 applications, and the pipeline is getting more full.
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The Democrats killed it.
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The more people available to do a job, the less that job can pay, as any one candidate is now competing with a larger number of other candidates for the same job.
I'm honestly much less worried about low-paying jobs being filled by immigrant or migrant workers than I am about high-paying jobs. Low-paying jobs have an artificial floor for how much they can be paid, in the form of the Federal Minimum Wage, even for jobs that arguably aren't worth that mi
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The more people available to do a job, the less that job can pay, as any one candidate is now competing with a larger number of other candidates for the same job.
When you add more people to the system in general, they don't only take up a job, they also create new jobs by spending the money they earn on goods and services that they need. Were that not the case, all countries would have faced rapid increases in unemployment as their population grew by natural means.
This is total rubbish (Score:2, Interesting)
I've been in IT for 15 years and never have I seen a more anti-American approach to hiring than the H-1B visa debacle. I've seen firms literally taken over by foreigners and every American basically leave because it became uncomfortable to work there.
The law should be hire Americans first. If no one in the city or state can be found, create a jobs database like the one proposed and people in other states can apply. Once the company has shown they cannot find a qualified applicant in CONUS, Hawaii, Alaska, P
need to get rid of fake / bloated qualified lists (Score:2)
need to get rid of fake / bloated qualified lists where they can make so that no one will be qualified.
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We have been denigrating, insulting and making fun of civil servants for some 30 years now.
30 years? More like forever. I don't think that's the problem. TPTB make sure that government employees turn a blind eye to this. Any attempt to seriously cut through this garbage would lead to some very nasty phone calls from some very generous "campaign contributors".
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Disagree all you wish. We have gave the farm away. All of these people come over here, work for American companies, go home, start companies, and then compete with American companies. It happens all the time.
OK, I disagree. I'd like to see you name a big non-American tech company that was started by a former H-1B holder.
I'm not talking about tiny littles ones that employ a few people; I'm talking about foreign multinational tech companies. These are the only companies that will ever "compete with American companies" like Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft.
Can't think of any? That's probably because it never happens.
Get off your butts! (Score:3, Interesting)
Instead of whining in a slashdot post go email, call, tweet, or whatever to your senator [senate.gov]! The link I provided is all 100 of them.
If your senator is a democrat tell them how much wages have not went up and how job ads actually state "H1B1 rates in salary and how employers are abusing the system as it was designed to only allow an employer to hire someone at a comparative rate. Never as a way to lower costs.
If your senator is a republican tell them it is an assault on the free market as employers get to choose where to hire, but you do not have the choice to do the same. Mention government interference and tax dollars wasted, then close with the same line I had above in your own words how it is not going as intended.
Also, mention one of the organizations was a fraudalent fake one by Microsoft looking for cheaper workers. Not an actualy organization of I.T. professionals who are lobbying for this as this is self centered and not in the will of your constitutions. Call them too as the staff checks the amount of calls everday and a spike is certainly noticed by the senator.
Remember the DMCA 2.0 law requiring DRM TCPA chips in every computer sold? It was thrown out after we at slashdot put down such links. Senators got so much of an earfull that was cancelled. Slashdot generates 10,000 if not 100,000 of views for stories. So spend 3 minutes and do your part.
Simple solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Why not just mandate a H1B be paid at least $100,000 a year, no exceptions. If they're really so good, they deserve the money and $100k would be a bargain.
Switzerland does exactly this (Score:2)
They've no fixed value like $100k, but must prove they're paying more than the average pay for that job. It works extremely well, a shockingly huge proportion of Swiss residents are foreigners. In effect, if a Swiss company wants anybody in the world they know exactly what they need to do to hire them, no bullshit, just prove you want them by paying them more.
Amusingly, the Swiss immigration law exists at three levels, federal, canton, and local, so theoretically you might encounter really messy local imm
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So this H1B database of job openings... (Score:3)
Can us Americans apply for those jobs?
Won't that be the irony. H1B visas because there are not enough qualified Americans to work those jobs. But I wager, they'll make it so that Americans can't use the site to apply for those very same jobs.
*fumes*
Re:So this H1B database of job openings... (Score:4, Informative)
Sure, but it won't do you any good. Any self-respecting company has legal staff that's seen the "How to not hire an American" video.
Interestingly, you can get links to that video from either DailyKos [dailykos.com] or Free Republic [freerepublic.com] (actually the first two sites in a search) so you can see that the outrage covers a pretty broad part of the political spectrum. Not that our congress cares - we're just the @#%#^! voters and citizens of this country.
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Having said that, many companies find ways to work around this and there are lawyers who specilize in crafting the requirements that pass the muster with the govern
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The main problem is skill fragmentation.
No, you had it right with "companies find ways to work around this". The job requirements are a scam.
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"There are very strict rules about advertising in USA and demonstrate that there are no qualified Americans for the job before the employer gets an H1B."
These rules are not that hard to work around:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TCbFEgFajGU [youtube.com]
Window Dressing for the Gullible (Score:3)
It will require the U.S. Labor Dept. to create a website of H-1B job openings that employers must post to. The jobs must be posted least 30 calendar days before hiring an H-1B applicant to fill that position. The bill also raises wages for H-1B workers to make them more competitive, although the amount wasn't specified.
Pure window dressing. Is there anyone dumb enough to think this will make a difference? The H-1B has had various "comparable wages" and "no American worker available" provisions for years. It's meaningless because it's never enforced, and I don't expect any magic pixie dust in this bill to change that.
One provision that will affect India, in particular, limits H-1B visa use to 50% of a firm's U.S. workforce.
This may actually have some effect, but it's frightening to say that. A crackdown means limiting it to 50% of a company's U.S. workforce? U.S. does mean United States, right?
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crackdown means limiting it to 50% of a company's U.S. workforce? U.S. does mean United States, right?
That will break the model of the current evil consulting firms that exist only to abuse H-1B workers, and have no US citizens employed at all (at the coder level), while having little effect on legitimate firms supplanting their workforce with a few H-1Bs. It's a very cool idea IMO.
Free agents (Score:3)
What should be added is to allow H-1B holders to be free agents in the market.
also force them to give HB1 full benefits at a (Score:2)
also force them to give HB1 full benefits at a level that is same or better then what most of there us workers get.
THANK GOODNESS! (Score:2)
This is a HUGE blessing. I have been working for a company that uses an offshore outsourcer for quite a few years. They suck the brains of the "re-badged" US employees, then let them go, then bring in kids from offshore to perform their jobs. This needs to stop. /sorry, but bitter. //seen too many good people lose their jobs then be replaced by people with no experience. ///this isn't enough.
Not all H1 Bs are bad (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not all H1 Bs are bad (Score:5, Insightful)
I came in as F1, got a H1B, got green card and got citizenship just in time to vote against Rick Santorum. Hip hip hurrey!
But how did your salary compare to that of your American colleagues while you were an H1B employee?
H1Bs are not bad because on one ever stays in US, but because it allows for worker exploitation/underpayment (while on H1B).
Re:Not all H1 Bs are bad (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not all H1 Bs are bad (Score:5, Insightful)
H1Bs get paid good salaries in tech firms, actually, on par with what the native employees are paid - at least based on my anecdotal evidence (as an H1B with plenty of friends on the same). Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Facebook all do that, and they also start green card applications for their H1Bs as soon as they become eligible - which wouldn't really make much sense if the purpose was to exploit the dependent status. Most people which do this see it as an immigration track towards eventual citizenship, and start settling down almost right away - some don't even wait for a green card to get a home mortgage etc.
The places that are really abusing the program hard seem to be the "business consulting" sweatshops like Tata, for whom outsourcing is, essentially, the entire business model and their raison d'etre. Those tend to have predominantly Indian employees, who are not sponsored for green cards, and who are considerably underpaid. Also, since those employees know that they won't remain in the country in the end, they tend to spend money less and save it more, since it will have more purchasing power for them once they return to their home country (so they aren't as invested in US economy, further exacerbating the effects).
Consequently, the obvious solution to this problem would be to ditch H1B as a temp. worker visa, and remake it as a work-towards-citizenship program. This would imply that any person coming to the country on such a visa would has to apply for a green card; and make this process easier and reduce the current (5.5 years and growing!) backlog. It would also be nice to make it easier to switch jobs while still on H1B (I'd say get rid of it entirely, except that you want to ensure that new job has the necessary qualifications - i.e. above prevailing wage, local applicants prioritized etc); most importantly, make it so that changing jobs doesn't reset the green card process, so that employers can't use it as a stick.
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That's good for you.
One of the big things this should allow is more people following your path to citizenship. I think one of the things Americans dislike about the H1B visa program are the number of people who don't stay, or have companies that make it difficult to obtain citizenship without having the companies boot on there necks.
Just look at the GAO report on the issue. The largest employers of H1B visa workers are staffing firms. Quite a few of which use the H1B as a job training visa. Then they ca
Wow more anti-immigration sentiment from slashdot (Score:5, Interesting)
Last time we had this talk, I made this comment
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3620197&cid=43374569 [slashdot.org]
One AC response to my comment was sort of scary...
Yeah, I see a white guy standing in a crowd of filth which probably means now you stink as bad they do. Congrats on being a traitor to your country. It was good of you to post that photo so we know exactly what you look like. After the day the people decide wipe the shit stains off our land, we'll turn their attention to those like you who betrayed their race, for special treatment.
What the fuck? I thought this was a site of thinkers, geeks, not of xenophobic extremists.
Rather than waste time on a lengthy post (I am at work) let me just make one simple point...
100% of H1-B workers that I know wish they could live, work, and pay taxes here. The only issue I take with H1-b is the treatment of said workers. This is a country that once prided itself on harboring the best and brightest from around the world, giving them shelter and refuge in exchange for their knowledge and experience. Now we give them nothing for that.
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I thought this was a site of thinkers, geeks, not of xenophobic extremists.
Unfortunately you can find those idiots anywhere.
The only issue I take with H1-b is the treatment of said workers. This is a country that once prided itself on harboring the best and brightest from around the world, giving them shelter and refuge in exchange for their knowledge and experience. Now we give them nothing for that.
If we give them nothing, then why do they come here?
As far as your other points, you're going too far in playing up the myth of American immigration. First, the vast majority of H-1B's are not the "best and brightest". They may be competent, and reasonably well educated, but that doesn't put one in the "best and brightest" category. I'm good at what I do, but I'm not in that category.
Moreover, "shelter and refuge" are what you give refugees, not hi-tech g
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If we give them nothing, then why do they come here?
For an opportunity to earn more money, and use said money to pay for a better living, and raise the family in a safer society (while also paying for that with taxes)?
You know, that whole "pursuit of happiness" thing...
Money talks... (Score:2)
The reason for more Visas, to me, stems from our own US talent not marketing and/or exposing themselves efficiently and more than likely a reluctance to relocate where the work is..
However, that's not the full truth, it's more often a question of saving money.
For the most part. Also, foreign talent can either be very ex
Same pattern, same BS (Score:3)
First the plutocrats #@&$'d farm workers by claiming "shortage" so they can pay sh$t wages and get slaves, and now they are #@&$ing tech workers using the same pattern.
The truth is (Score:4, Insightful)
We are trying to hire Java developers in Chicago for a salary range of 80k-120k and NOTHING. H1-B or not. The market is very tight.
Re:The truth is (Score:5, Interesting)
Check your hiring process. I've run into times when we can't find anyone because all the candidates HR sent us were unsuitable (the ones we interviewed flunked on the basic C/C++ skills test despite claiming a minimum of 5 years experience coding in C/C++), and yet I knew there were at least 2 highly-qualified candidates that HR hadn't sent to us to review because I handed their resumes to HR myself. That right there tells me that the problem might be not that there aren't any candidates but that HR's throwing them out before they ever get looked at. Ditto for recruiters, who probably use the same process HR does to screen candidates.
I've thought it might be amusing to bypass the HR process entirely, task some of the developers with attending the various techie get-togethers around town and collect qualified candidates that way, then give the hiring manager their resumes directly in addition to sending them to HR. Then if their resumes don't show up, the hiring manager can send them up from his side asking "This candidate looks qualified and we'd like to interview them but they weren't in the stack you sent down. I know it should be there, I had one of my devs run it over to you personally. Can you get back to me about what happened to it?".
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I've thought it might be amusing to bypass the HR process entirely, task some of the developers with attending the various techie get-togethers around town and collect qualified candidates that way, then give the hiring manager their resumes directly in addition to sending them to HR.
I thought this was normal practice in a job search. The best chance of getting past HR is to send it to an employee at the company, no matter how vaguely you know them. There is sometimes a finder's fee to the employee if you get in, which gives them more of an incentive to follow through.
HR is crap. I think the chances have been low for a while that a human actually sees it before a keyword matching process rejects it, no matter how closely the resume matches the job description.
Re:The truth is (Score:4, Insightful)
We are trying to hire Java developers in Chicago for a salary range of 80k-120k and NOTHING. H1-B or not. The market is very tight.
Maybe the problem is that you're trying to hire "Java developers" instead of good programmers. That's a mentality that seems to have become pervasive. There was a time when people would be embarrassed to say they were looking for a "language X developer". I once interviewed at a place where the interviewer started to ask me about a specific language. Then he stopped himself right in the middle and said "sorry, stupid question".
Can't find somebody who knows your language du jour? Hire any decent programmer on a probationary basis. If they're not up to speed on the flavor-of-the-year in a month or two, then get rid of them. If you're not willing to invest or chance a month or two then you're not in serious need.
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Thammoud,
For those of us who are currently looking would you care to share where these positions are posted?
The big issue I've noticed is that getting past HR is impossible because they are looking for key words to filter based on. You could literally replace them with a computer and get better results. The person filtering needs to understand that if you have one year in Java and 6 years with C++ and another 3 with C# that you are have significantly more value then the two or three years of java that they
or you are to picky (Score:2)
or you are to picky about any number of things
Some of the big ones are a BIG list of skills
no contractors / temps aka we don't want job hoppers (even when they may of been on a X month contract and when it ended they moved to a different place / contract due to no fault of there own)
Need X degree (even when out of place AKA CS for IT / desktop jobs) (and some times picky about what school) over experience or even a some kind of more hands on / apprenticeship system.
X years in version X of X tech.
resume bot
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PAY MORE MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Companies have no problem paying sales assholes a lot of money. Maybe pay the people who do the actual work actual money.
Common sense solutions (Score:2)
Tie H1B visas to the local tech unemployment rate and average salary rate for a given field. Don't allow any more H1B visas into a given metropolitan area until average salaries have gone up and average unemployment has gone down. If there is really a shortage than the market will respond by increasing salaries and decreasing unemployment, let the market do it's work. That would get rid of the bogus job ads that are placed for the explicit purpose of not hiring an American.
In other words you can't get H1B v
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Tie H1B visas to the local tech unemployment rate and average salary rate for a given field.
Better yet, just get rid of it. We did fine as the world's tech leader without it for decades. For truly exceptional people there are always things like the 'O' series visas. People have become so brainwashed by the long existence of this program and the constant cries of "shortage" that they seem to think it serves some reasonable purpose. It doesn't.
Now to address some of the needs of the employers.
The employers have no special needs in this regard. Again, they did fine without it for decades. Amazing, isn't it?
"Shortages" are a normal part of a market
Re:Hmmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
Where, exactly, are these alleged companies that supposedly save millions of dollars by hiring H1B workers? I've worked for 3 very, very large corporations in the telecommunications and banking industries that hire H1B workers, and as far as anybody could tell, our H1B coworkers got paid the same amount as everyone else, and actually cost *more* for the company to hire and employ due to greater paperwork requirements.
In most cases, the H1B employees were Indians who went to college (or grad school) in the US, found India's corporate culture to be soul-crushing and demoralizing (regardless of pay), and were denied permanent visas by our dysfunctional immigration system that's almost neurotically-obsessed with family reunification over "twenty/thirtysomething guy who'd view his family's distance and inability to come join him in the US as a perk and bonus".
We should phase out most of the H1B program, and replace it with a policy that makes it relatively easy for single young American-educated prospective immigrants who are unencumbered by wives, kids, and extended families to become permanent residents, then citizens.
Re:Hmmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Where, exactly, are these alleged companies that supposedly save millions of dollars by hiring H1B workers? I've worked for 3 very, very large corporations in the telecommunications and banking industries that hire H1B workers, and as far as anybody could tell, our H1B coworkers got paid the same amount as everyone else, and actually cost *more* for the company to hire and employ due to greater paperwork requirements.
That's because you're working for legitimate companies. There are also companies full of fresh-from-college hires that pay far under going rate and lie to their employees egregiously about the immigration process and how easy it is to change jobs with an H-1B. Taking advantage of people young enough not to know any better isn't an "immigrant" thing, however. My first full time programming job paid $18k - as a US citizen in a big city! I think there's a false belief that it's somehow only the H-1B consulting shops that abuse their employees to pay them nothing - that's just not visa-specific!
From TFS:
One provision that will affect India, in particular, limits H-1B visa use to 50% of a firm's U.S. workforce
That would be a huge change for the better - exactly because it would break the current model of the companies that exist just to abuse the system. Sure, in 5-10 years they'll have a new model, just as abusive, but that will be a good 5-10 years!
What America needs ... (Score:5, Insightful)
What America needs is not what this bill is providing
I am saying this as an American, as one who have funded many startups in America, and as one who have providing jobs to many of my fellow Americans
What America needs are people who are entrepreneurial, who are risk takers, who provide jobs for others
What this bill intends to do is to import even more tech-grunts under the H1-B visas, and to open up the gate for MILLIONS of undocumented aliens, most of them unskilled/low-skilled, lacking in enthusiasm to compete, and they will end up burdening the already over-burdened social welfare system that we have in our country
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Re:What America needs ... (Score:4, Informative)
But that has nothing to do with H1B. H1B foreigners are actually exactly the opposite of those illegal immigrants. They have papers, they have a usable skill set and immigration knows pretty well where they sit around.
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What this bill intends to do is to import even more tech-grunts under the H1-B visas, and to open up the gate for MILLIONS of undocumented aliens, most of them unskilled/low-skilled, lacking in enthusiasm to compete, and they will end up burdening the already over-burdened social welfare system that we have in our country
What nonsense? Agreed H1 B employees are evil - but how are they 'undocumented aliens' and burden your social welfare system?
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2) This bill actually provides separate category of visas for investors. That's also doubleplusgood because of the way the current green card system works.
Re:What America needs ... (Score:4, Insightful)
What America, no, the world simply needs is that work has to pay. Simple as that. The good ol' American Dream has to work again. Get a job, work your way up, take a risk or two, work some more and you'll have the chance to play up in the heavens as well.
As long as it's more profitable to push money around and play the stock roulette (where, unlike entrepreneurial minded people who HAVE to risk it all, you play with a bailout net below you), this country (as any country, don't feel left out, Europe!) will never get back on its feet.
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One provision that will affect India, in particular, limits H-1B visa use to 50% of a firm's U.S. workforce
That would be a huge change for the better - exactly because it would break the current model of the companies that exist just to abuse the system. Sure, in 5-10 years they'll have a new model, just as abusive, but that will be a good 5-10 years!
I doubt it will take 5-10 years. It's just corporate structure. They'll create partner relationships with other companies. The whole contracting business, and H1Bs in particular, are about having employees you pretend aren't employees. Now they'll have to join some labor intensive companies to get US head count up. Eazy peazy.
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You mean there is a option to deport Mark Zuckerberg to his native land of New York and never let him leave?
Where do I sign?
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It's been said that most American workers' wages are not supposed to be significantly below our standard of living, too.
The Job Creators (tm) care to differ.
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As a highly paid worker on H1B, I totally support this law. It fixes major problems with US immigration system (H1B lottery - seriously?) and institutes point-based system to sieve candidates based on real needs.
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Not to mention that "prevailing wage" ain't what it used to be. I was offered a job in the US. I laughed when they mentioned what they're willing to pay. If that's the prevailing wage and you don't even get the social package included in that, you may keep your jobs!