If Immigration Reform Is Dead, So Is Raising the H-1B Cap 341
dcblogs writes: In a speech Wednesday on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) declared immigration reform dead. He chastised and baited Republicans in Congress for blocking reform, and declared that winning the White House without the support of a growing Hispanic population will become mathematically impossible. "The Republican Presidential nominee, whoever he or she may be, will enter the race with an electoral college deficit they cannot make up," said Gutierrez. If he's right, and comprehensive immigration reform is indeed dead, then so too is the tech industry's effort to raise the cap on H-1B visas. Immigration reform advocates have successfully blocked any effort to take up the immigration issue in piecemeal fashion, lest business support for comprehensive reform peel away. Next year may create an entirely new set of problems for tech. If the Republicans take control of the Senate, the tech industry will face this obstacle: Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee could become its next chairman. He has been a consistent critic of the H-1B program through the years. "The H-1B program is so popular that it's now replacing the U.S. labor force," said Grassley, at one point.
Unpopular opinion ahead (Score:3, Interesting)
H1B is merging with the us labor force, not replacing. The overwhelming H1B workers I know have either become citizens or are eager to do so.
No, they're replacing. (Score:5, Informative)
H1B is merging with the us labor force, not replacing. The overwhelming H1B workers I know have either become citizens or are eager to do so.
No, immigrants are replacing native workers. The Center For Immigration Studies just released a report [nationalreview.com] showing that all employment growth since 2000 has gone to immigrants, legal and illegal. There is no general labor shortage.
Re:No, they're replacing. (Score:4, Informative)
You say "no", but even if we accept the study by a hyper-partisan group with a specific objective of removing immigrants as valid, what you posted doesn't actually contradict what I said.
Now, we can argue to hell and back what constitutes "taking jobs", but the fact that they're trying as hard as possible to be Americans is an important one.
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Okay, and after review of the actual publication [nrostatic.com](not the editorial you linked) there is some highly suspect data point selection, picking just before a minor recession, a major recession, and right now as primary data points for employment information can lead to some skewed numbers.
I won't say I don't accept what's published there. The analysis isn't bad aside from that major point. But it does give me some concern that it wasn't compiled with an intellectually honest intent.
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You are saying that we should give up tacos, sopes, tamales and take up eating "American Food" (whatever that is)?
Re:No, they're replacing. (Score:4, Funny)
On the contrary, I think he's saying we should give up "foreign" foods like pizza and hamburgers and eat more tacos, sopes and tamales instead!~
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All of the foriegn workers I know live in insular communities with others from their region of the globe, and adamantly refuse to let go of the majority of their native culture including language and customs.
You either don't know many, or your selection is otherwise biased (e.g. all of them are from a single culture that's known for resistance to integration).
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Maybe you should give them first dibs because you stole half their country.
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There was a war started by the US for the express purposes of stealing Mexican territory. We can dicker all day, but that's where it stands.
I'm enjoying the discomfiture of Republicans as Latino numbers swell, as demographics accomplish what Mexican soldiers couldn't.
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No one who is alive was a part of that war. Neither side owe anyone anything.
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If you continue to profit from your grandfather's crimes, while the descendants of his victims continue to suffer losses, there is an argument to be made that the crime is ongoing.
Certainly we all exert a certain measure of control over the course of our lives, but the simple fact is that our culture is heavily biased towards capital over labor - a rich man must be rather incompetent to avoid getting richer, while a poor man must be moderately talented just to avoid getting poorer. In such a society can yo
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WTF, can we have EVERYONE in the world come here? That is a big F NO!
You did just that up until late 1800s (when "yellow peril" was the motivation for the first immigration restrictions), and the country didn't collapse.
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Perhaps you should. I think a lot of people would be willing to go with that - as it is, they're usually not getting any social services where they come from (even if they're nominally available on paper), so a chance to earn more and live better by working is already worth the gamble for many.
A more honest approach would be tying the availability of social services to the amount of taxes paid, perhaps after a certain period of time. After all, those social services are funded by the taxes, and if someone i
Re:No, they're replacing. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, immigrants are replacing native workers.
This is the Lump of Labor Fallacy [wikipedia.org]. There is not a fixed number of jobs in an economy. The number of jobs tends to expand when more workers are available. Liberal immigration policies are correlated with lower unemployment. When Poland joined the EU, most current members blocked immigration. The exceptions were Britain and Sweden, which subsequently had the lowest unemployment rates in Europe as Poles moved in, set up households, paid rent, bought furniture, and created plenty of secondary jobs.
The Center For Immigration Studies just released a report showing that all employment growth since 2000 has gone to immigrants
Just because A=B does not mean that A caused B. The number of jobs created would have almost certainly been even lower without immigration.
There is no general labor shortage.
Who said there was? But there are shortages in many areas. For instance, there is a big shortage of non-immigrant farm labor. Do you really believe that an unemployed white guy is going to pick lettuce?
Re:No, they're replacing. (Score:4, Informative)
"There is not a fixed number of jobs in an economy."
There is demand elasticity for labor, but it is not related to availability of labor it is related to demand for goods and services, not availability of labor. The demand for labor is essentially fixed or decreasing without some sort of driver for demand. Immigration can be a source of demand, but it isn't necessarily a source of demand. Since most immigrants send much of their income to their home country they tend to be a net reduction in demand.
The reason unemployment is correlated to immigration is that countries relax immigration requirements when there is a shortage of labor.
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There is demand elasticity for labor, but it is not related to availability of labor it is related to demand for goods and services, not availability of labor.
Not true. A factory is not built where the demand is, but where the labor is available. The goods can be shipped. When those factory workers spend their wages, plenty of secondary jobs are produced as well.
The reason unemployment is correlated to immigration is that countries relax immigration requirements when there is a shortage of labor.
Except that, historically, the fall in unemployment follows rather than precedes the liberalization of immigration. Polish immigration to Britain was an obvious example of that.
Re:No, they're replacing. (Score:5, Insightful)
But there are shortages in many areas. For instance, there is a big shortage of non-immigrant farm labor. Do you really believe that an unemployed white guy is going to pick lettuce?
If the wages available to him weren't un-livably low because he would compete with people who don't pay taxes while taking advantages of social programs...? Yes. The unemployed white guy would pick lettuce. A similar effect is strongly depressing wages in the tech sector.
Being white has nothing to do with willingness to work. Economic realities do, though.
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Do you really believe that an unemployed white guy is going to pick lettuce?
If the price is right, of course they will. Just because you're a lazy bastard doesn't mean everyone is.
That might be true (Score:3)
B
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In the United States, things are a little different than the eurozone. You don't just get handed citizenship, you have to wait for years. Around 1/3rd of our immigrants are illegal, unskilled, and uneducated bumpkins with no meaningful English proficiency. Those folks have no chance of obtaining a loan, business license, or necessary permits, ever. And when you're not a citizen, you're paid in dirt and peanut
Re:No, they're replacing. (Score:4, Interesting)
What you say is largely true. If somehow you could deport all of the people in the country illegally tomorrow it would plunge us into a massive depression from the drop in economic activity.
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It should be noted that population growth is pretty much identical to immigration these days. Absent immigration, population growth in the USA (as in Western Europe) is negative.
Which means that, at best, the overwhelming majority of job growth should be taken by immigrants since they're the overwhelming majority of population growth.
Re:No, they're replacing. (Score:4, Insightful)
Most immigrants are not H1B.
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Well, yeah, if you want to be pedantic. But I'm pretty sure the intended meaning was "immigrant into the already extant nation called "the United States of America."
The exact kind of immigration people rail against forms the majority of most Americans' ancestry. There's nothing special or unique about a longer bloodline history. It's a silly thing to obsess over.
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The thing is that the currently extant nation in question came about as a result of forceful removal of the previously existing nations and people already occupying the land. Immigration by force isn't that much morally better than immigration by sneak is it?
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This is a discussion about H1B workers. They're in the country legally.
if they didn't game the system in the first place then they wouldn't have a sad story to tell
Sadly, this is not always true.
Also I hope you at least feel sorry for somebody who crossed the border as a child (as in, their parents took them).
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The reality is that immigrants, particularly illegals, are the ones performing jobs that others don't want. Hard to believe that not everyone grows up hoping to become the guy that scrubs the toilets and changes the paper towels at an office complex, or installing a new roof in 98 degree heat, but apparently these jobs are always looking for more people even in poor economic times.
That said, H1B was never designed to provide an alternate citizenship avenue. It was meant to allow the US to brain drain the re
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Are these ancestors 15000 years old?
If not, yeah, there was a country already there. The colonists just didn't consider it a "real" country.
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...what sibling said; all you need do is to step inside an R&D or dev department of any Fortune 1000 tech company... it's like the UN in there, and good luck getting your foot in the door w/o an impressive resume or skills that they cannot otherwise import.
The death of College Hiring (Score:5, Insightful)
What it's done is placed a carrot out there to bring on H1-B programmers instead of college hires.
With an H1-B the employer has a lot of power over the employee. They can't move jobs with out sponsorship. It's very easy to knock them out of the country. You can easily classify them in a lower pay band because they have very little recourse. These employees usually get little to know employee development (i.e. money).
With a college hire the employee can change jobs at will. You as the employer are expected to put money into employee development. And in the end they are likely to leave after a couple years to seek greener pastures.
So yes, the H1-B program has done tremendous harm to our country. I consult with many large companies and I haven't seen a intern in a programming department in half a decade. College hires are few and far between. It's a radical change from how things were when I started in the 90s. Simply put business have put their money into short term H1-B and Offshore workers. They stopped putting money into college hires. Now they whine they can't find qualifies workers because they stopped investing in Junior programmers a decade ago.
Exactly! No US novices? No future US experts! (Score:5, Insightful)
Familiar with the Dreyfus model of skills acquisition?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... [wikipedia.org]
Sure you are. It goes like this: Want to be an expert? First you need to to be proficient. Want to be proficient? First you need to have been competent. Want to be competent? First you need to have been an advanced beginner? Want to be an advanced beginner? First you'll need to be a novice. Want to be a novice? Great! Just get started learning by following the rules and doing what people around you do. Experience will let you unwind the stack.
Every profession maps to this. It's a type of career ladder. And what do H1-B's do? They seriously knock out the chances of getting a position on the lower rungs of the ladder. H1-B aren't taking me and other Gen-Xers jobs, they're taking the millennial's jobs. And the Baby Boomers who pissed & shit in the punch bowl that used to hold the American dream don't care enough to do anything about it. They started setting the tone for all this bullshit over 10 years ago and just like everything else, now we're left holding the bag.
Fuck class warfare. I think there's some serious generational knuckle dusting that needs to be applied to those in power in BOTH political parties regarding what's happened on their watch to whole notion of careers they've been selling to the rest of us.
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Re:The death of College Hiring (Score:5, Insightful)
Simply put business have put their money into short term H1-B and Offshore workers.
Which is a symptom of a problem that started many years before 2000. The race to the bottom line really has no limits.
With a college hire the employee can change jobs at will. You as the employer are expected to put money into employee development.
What I've found impressive with the H1-B visa holders I've worked with is the network they have to train them. Some of their resumes are fluff, but you'd never know it because what they don't know they don't just have google there for them but a network of other H1-B visa holders to answer questions and basically provide that "on the job" training they supposedly don't need. That's what college kids also have to compete with, not just low pay and the inability to hop jobs...but a training network.
In order for CS college grads to compete with H1-B visa holders they would need an additional year or so training just for language and technologies they will be using in one specific job (a few java classes on basics doesn't train you in j2ee, php doesn't teach you about phar files or frameworks, a few JavaScript classes doesn't teach you anything close to the insanity business users request front ends to do with it)...then they would need to sign a contract with the employer that states they will not change jobs again for at least X number of years....or get a raise for that long either....or have any benefits....then they would be on par with H1-B visa holders.
They can't compete so they will not get hired. The only way to win this (yes, I have a side because I too used to be a fresh out of college kid and it took me a decade doing odd free jobs to gain the experience you need to get a job now. Today I spend my days teaching H1-B visa holders how to write clean code and solve basically everything they can't figure out.) is to give H1-B visa holders more rights just as any employee would have. Give them the right to play the market just as US employees can. It might seem ass backwards, but fighting change that large corporations profit from almost never works in an oligarchy owned by them. I'll give them that I've yet to meet one that isn't a hard worker (granted they got here for a reason), but in terms of technical ability they are no better or worse than a college grad...and I think we can at least agree there are plenty of them without a job?
Of the college interns I've worked with I was very impressed and they were far far more independent than any H1-B visa holder I've ever met. Granted the interns at my company would have already been at the top of their class though.
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I have a different tact. I typically am brought in with a Coterie of other senior developers at mid-cap companies. Ten of us will usually replace a mix of 30+ onshore H1-B and offshore developers. Basically on-shoring work for companies that have gotten sick of sub-par code that can't perform under load. At my current contract 18 months ago their problem was a back log of issues and enhancements with a 2 year wait time and a web site that crashed under peek loads. Performance is radically better, bugs
R's support lower H1B caps? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:R's support lower H1B caps? (Score:5, Insightful)
Lower cost for H1B ? In your dreams .... (Score:2)
add to that the filing costs, legal fees, and costs associated with other compliance requirements and it's MORE expensive to hire H1B workers.
The real difference is that corporations can treat them like crap and and most of them
Re:Lower cost for H1B ? In your dreams .... (Score:5, Insightful)
> In order to be H-1B eligible a position has to pay at least the prevailing wage for the job title in the region that the job is located. .
That's not really enforced.
The big problem with H1Bs is that they're basically indentured servants (as you note), and it's very difficult for them to change jobs. So the companies can pressure them for more work, via unpaid overtime.
They need to change the system so that H1Bs can switch jobs at any time, with no penalty. If companies are really THAT desperate for workers, they'll pay the filing costs and legal fees anyway, even if there's a chance the employee will leave. If they don't want to, then they're really not that desperate for workers are they?
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Re:Lower cost for H1B ? In your dreams .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Those of you who believe that an H-1B worker is paid less than a domestic worker don't know anything about the requirements of the program. In order to be H-1B eligible a position has to pay at least the prevailing wage for the job title in the region that the job is located.
Not if the "prevailing wage" has already been artificially lowered by the presence of so many H1-B workers. An a regular American work can also do things like quit if the job sucks and ask for raises.
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This is why it seems it'd be much less prone to gaming if it just had a minimum threshold, e.g. companies can sponsor an H1B for salary offers above $100k, but not for offers below that. That would automatically allocate them to areas of the economy that are actually in such high demand that salaries have been driven to high levels.
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Maybe we can quibble over the amount but Trepidity's solution seems solid. How about the rate being something on the order of 30% above the prevailing market wage? See with 30% above prevailing market rate, the price keeps going up... Probably should add something to the effect of max hours allowed to work and salary must always remain 30% above prevailing market rate.
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Well my point is that the justification for the program is that there are areas of the U.S. economy where domestic workers just don't exist: you put out a call, it's alleged, and you get no qualified resumes. One response to that claim is to ask, "well, what are you offering?" If you're offering $60k, my first reaction is to be, well have you tried offering more? If no, then try that first, then if you still can't find anyone, come back and we can talk. A threshold is just a way of codifying that.
Re:Lower cost for H1B ? In your dreams .... (Score:5, Informative)
There may be legal requirements but that does not mean it is being followed in practice or that the spirit of the law is being blatantly broken.
So just hire a senior H-1B worker for an entry level job title. Job titles are meaningless and not standardized.
The real fiction is when companies lie and say that they can not find local qualified workers in order to justify hiring H-1B workers.
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I have first hand experience with it - and it's clear, as the message came from the top to drive down wages... look for foreign workers. Laws be dammed, particularly in right to work states. It's a sad but real truth to this situation of immigration. Is it everywhere - of course not - but I'd wager mostly everywhere.
While not exactly the same, my companies policy is the same. Huge multi-national firm everyone knows. You cannot hire Americans. New hires can only be from low cost countries, not H1B - they work in that country remotely. Being a multi-national company it's not that bad but companies don't want to pay American wages and benefits.
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Those of you who believe that an H-1B worker is paid less than a domestic worker don't know anything about the requirements of the program.
And you, apparently, know nothing about the ways employers game the system wrt advertised job titles vs actual duties. If you had friends who are program managers in large tech companies (I do), you'd know that the reason they are forced by upper management to hire H-1B's is most often explicitly to pay a lower wage. As in being told by the big boss "use H-1B's on this contract because we can't afford Americans."
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Supply and demand. If there are 10 unemployed programers, you can pay them all less than if there are only 2 unemployed programmers.
But yes, working them to the bone and being able to better deal with their off shored counter parts are the main reasons.
Re:Lower cost for H1B ? In your dreams .... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Lower cost for H1B ? In your dreams .... (Score:5, Informative)
Having said that, I've also worked at places that brought in H-1Bs in preference to American workers, even when the domestic workers were more qualified for the position. The reason? Money. At one place I worked (dev group of 14 with 4 domestic workers), the highest paid of that group was at about my experience and competence level, yet was paid less than 2/3 of my salary, and the company made it very clear to all of them that if they didn't toe the line, they were welcome to go right back to the five different nations they came from. Of course, personal experience doesn't mean it happens everywhere, but I've seen it enough to believe that there are a non-trivial number of employers that are in fact abusing the program.
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There's places which hire H-1B workers the way you say. But there's also places that hire H-1B workers by the planeload at cut-rate wages; it is easy enough to play games with job titles to make it look legal.
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So is this theoretical programmer at home, playing poker, because he doesn't like the current wages? Because if he is at a different programming job, and he switches jobs because wages went up in a different employer, there's still an opening, just in a different company.
I for one do not think there are many people refusing to get a programming job because of low wages, but your local market might be very different from mine,
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Exactly - there are plenty of workers here in America that can fill that void - employers are just reluctant to pay the proper price for it.
I'm an H1B worker here... and I get paid enough - just don't tell my manager :)
But a fact is that without H1B I would be working from Toronto, London or home somewhere else in Europe... For the same company, doing the same thing.
All you're going to change is the location of the worlds largest tech cluster... without immigration silicon valley is nothing.
Re:R's support lower H1B caps? (Score:4, Interesting)
You interest in having employment opportunities as a programmer is served by having a large programming industry in your locality.
Anything that makes it easy for people to move to where the programming jobs are entrenches that place as being where the programmers and the programming jobs will be.
If you aren't competing with immigrants, you aren't going to be competing for any jobs, because they'll be elsewhere.
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Anything that makes it easy for people to move to where the programming jobs are entrenches that place as being where the programmers and the programming jobs will be.
I don't buy it. Possibly for other industries sure but not for software developers. It isn't as if software development has huge capital requirements. You don't need a bunch of software firms around you to get a job developing software. The vast vast majority of developers work in firms outside the software industry. Every large retail corporation for example is going to have developers on staff, but exactly none of them will have their own aluminum smelting team. Anyone who needs software can stand u
Re:R's support lower H1B caps? (Score:4, Interesting)
It isn't always, but depending on the kind of skills/work needed it can be. For instance, if you're primarily an embedded or industial automation developer, you're going to have an easier time finding work in an area that already does a lot of similar work, if for no other reason than there are non-trivial costs to running an embedded shop beyond just the software tools.
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Let me spell this out for you since you still don't seem to understand Left-Right politics thing:
The oligarchy in charge introduces a bill that does 2 things:
- raise legal immigration
- pathway for citizenship for illegal immigrants.
Then R's complain the that the D's want to import new voters from people who came here illegally (and continuing to screw people who follow your ridiculous legal immigration procedures).
The D's then argue that the R's are xenophobic, hate immigrants, are heartless
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Asian immigrants tend to vote D, in my experience.
Eastern European immigrants often tend to be conservative both socially and economically and align more often with R.
Re:R's support lower H1B caps? (Score:5, Insightful)
You took a serious concern about importing indentured servants and turned it into a stereotype of a racial stereotyper?
I have no problem with immigration, and I have no problem with corporate sponsored visas to that end. The problem I, and many have, is that an H1-B visa allows you to pull someone in with highly theoretical rights. Given legislation that already makes it so programmers in general are commonly subjected to a de-facto requirement of uncompensated 20-30 hours past 40, you cannot tell me there is a shortage of actual labor. Only a shortage of cheap labor. And in an industry that has cash spewing out of its pores, that's a pile of bullshit. At least right now though, I can use my extra hours to justify a wage significantly above "prevailing". Every person they pull in from a culture that is more used to their people being corporate slaves increases the economic pressure for me to behave like one.
The H1-B needs fixing. If they want to import labor due to an actual labor shortage, import them without caveat. That labor shortage doesn't really exist though.
A whole new set of problems? (Score:5, Insightful)
Next year may create an entirely new set of problems for tech.
Problems like how to treat their employees like human beings rather than disposable trash?
This is great news ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Now maybe the IT jobs will pay a little better and people over 40 can get a IT job.
Just say no to a cheaper, but less productive H-B1 visa holder
Immigration reform (Score:2, Interesting)
So a Democrat is so concerned about the possibility that the Republicans won't take over the Senate, or won't get into the White House; that he, out of the goodness of his heart, tells the Republicans what they need to do to win.
Reminds me of the phrase, "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts".
To have someone in the Senate that sees the H1B program as replacing the American workers, would be a refreshing change from the current leadership that looks for every opportunity to raise the H1B cap, for their K street
h1bs because they dont sponsor for greencards... (Score:3, Insightful)
google cognizant. Lots of forum posts by their employees complaining that the company won't sponsor for a greencard. When you don't sponsor they have to leave. Company I work for refused to spend money on an h1b to continue sponsoring him , but brought in contractors who were L-2 visa holders at an india company instead. they don't want greencard holders. sponsorship costs a little money and once they get a greencard they can get market wages and will quit.
look if companies have been h1b dependent for this long its because the ones they sponsor are not getting converted to greencard and/or quitting when they do because the job sucked. they just want lower wages with worse terms. its so obvious.
rather odd that a guy from Iowa is the one guy seeing it. But go Grassley. If you just give them all greencards to start with.. then you will see the real demand for immigrant workers. cause they can quit.
Too Bad They Both Love E-Verify (Score:4, Insightful)
My personal problem with all this talk of immigration reform has been the consistent desire by both parties to making the expansion of E-Verify [wikipedia.org] a requirement of any bill. To sum it up, E-Verify is a way for the executive branch to block the employment of anyone that the database flags. Or more colloquially, you have to get permission from the president in order to feed and house your family.
One of the biggest problems with e-verify is the false negative rate. Even if you assume absolutely no malice, [washingtonpost.com] you can easily end up on the "no work list" by accident. [cato.org] Note, that's not a false positive - giving people permission to work when they aren't permitted, it is stopping people who have done nothing wrong in the slightest.
Requiring government permission to work is absolutely unacceptable policy in a free society. E-verify is a case where the cure is worse than the disease.
Simplest way to deal with H1 Visas (Score:5, Interesting)
Employers: There is a shortage of good tech qorkers. Give us more H1 visas so we can get the work done.
Employees: These darn foreigners are taking our jobs! They work for much less than us people born in Amerika! (studys show about $13,000 less http://www.workpermit.com/news... [workpermit.com] )
The simplest solution is of course to offer unlimited H1 Visas - at the cost of $15,000, paid by the corporation, before the employee is hired.. (with inflation adjustments so this doesn't become abused).
This solves all real claims of not enough tech workers, it reduces the US budget, and gets rid of the financial incentive to refuse to hire perfectly good American tech workers.
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Is the $15,000 fee paid yearly?
If its not, your outlined plan would seem to give even more incentive to not hire Americans. Just pay the fee once, and then for the next N years keep the immigrant non-citizen workers at a lower wage.
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No, if you make it so that the H1 visa holder change jobs and at any time after the initial $15k fee, then it would be utterly stupid for the initial company to underpay him.
also forced OT pay for H1's (Score:2)
also forced OT pay for H1's As getting 60-80 hours an week work out them of with the idea if they get fired they get kicked out of the USA makes them better / cheaper then us workers.
or what about cost of $15,000 + they must be payed at least 100K + inflation / cost of living adjustments an year.
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>I think your solution leaves out that many of the H1-B visa applicants would be willing to work for less than the $13,000 gap, resulting in lower salaries all around, the same amount of displaced workers, and more exploitation.
I'm not so sure about that.
Remember, once one of these people comes over and works for $13k less for a few months, he's now in the country, so if some other country offers him $13k more, then he can just quit and go to work for the new place. Yes, the pool of workers being larger
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More importantly, there are very good argument in favor of off-shoring, from an ethical stand point, another by a capitalistic standpoint, and another from a political standpoint.
I blame DiFi (Score:3)
Presidency is overrated (Score:2)
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Republicans don't actually need to win a presidential election. They just need to control enough of congress to block or hinder any kind of meaningful social progression.
It doesn't really work in long term, because it then happens on state level anyway. Just takes longer.
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Re:Republicans always want to hurt the economy... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think I probably speak for many on Slashdot when I say, Fuck You
He's speaking for me (Score:4, Interesting)
So yeah, Grandparent's kinda trolling, but compared to what the Repubs are doing it's small potatoes.
Re:Republicans always want to hurt the economy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nonsense. I support eliminating the H1-B program entirely. Poof, gone. I also support streamlining the legal immigration program. Supporters of H1-B don't mind letting "them" do the dirty work, but god forbid "that kind" should move in!
So who is the racist, the guy that welcomes actual immigrants or the guy who wants to churn 'em and burn 'em?
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Very good point. The H1-B program is great for employers, because they can bring in skilled workers and then pressure them to work themselves to the bone because they can't easily change jobs, making them indentured servants.
Somehow, you never hear the Democrats talk about this or work to change it.
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That's one reason I do not consider the Dems to be left anymore. They're at best not as far right.
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^^THIS^^ but to take it a step farther the real solution to the illegal immigration problem is to take away the incentive.
We should do away with all the quotas and pretty much all the requirements. Lets let people show up tell us where they plan to live; agree to drop the federal government a post card with their new address when they relocate and after two years without any felony convictions call them citizens.
Lets let anyone already here step forward and start their two year probation period too.
After w
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You are a fucking idiot. You want to come here, like my grandparents and everyone before them:
1. Go to your home country
2. Go to your embassy
3. Fill out a form
4. If you are smart or rich, you can come
5. When you get here, we will make sure you have no communicative diseases (i.e. Ellis Island)
6. If you are clean, welcome, you are free to compete
7. If you are sick, GOTO #1
That is basic immigration.
Here is H1 logic:
1. Company needs to hire somebody
2. Oops, there is no one with that skill
3. Unfortunately, here
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There is a reason for the H-1B demand, and it is not money, it is skill.
No, there are plenty of skilled workers in the U.S. They just won't work for slave wages and can't be treated like disposable indentured servants or threatened with deportation when they ask for a raise.
H-1Bs sabotage by incompetence (Score:2)
Have you deal with the call centers some time the same people are the H-1B's
Re:"Immigration Reform". (Score:5, Insightful)
>It's a federal civil infraction, legally less serious than minor copyright infringement.
No, it's a crime. Just like copyright infringement.
If the MAFIAA can continue to say that copyright infringement is a crime, then we need to do the same for all civil infractions.
Re: (Score:2)
Copyright infringement actually can be a crime though. Copyright law includes both civil-law and criminal-law elements. Infringement of the civil-law portions is a tort but not a crime. On the other hand, infringement of the criminal-law portions [cornell.edu] is a crime.
Re:"Immigration Reform". (Score:4, Funny)
being an illegal immigrant is not a crime. It's a federal civil infraction, legally less serious than minor copyright infringement.
Whoa slow down there, I don't think it's fair to compare immigration to something as heinous as minor copyright infringement. At worst it's a lesser crime like first degree murder or human trafficking.
Re:"Immigration Reform". (Score:5, Insightful)
I am for increasing immigration and immigration reform but this remark is off base.
Most illegal immigrants are drawn to America for its economic opportunities and are not seeking asylum due to prosecution from back home (political, religious, etc.).
Re:Fighting rearguard actions against change (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does the US need a population infusion? All the new manufacturing in the US is heavily automated; in fact, the big fear now is that increasing automation is going to render many lower and middle-class jobs obsolete. We aren't going to need taxi drivers pretty soon, for instance, because of driver-less cars. The economy's in the shitter (except for the 1%), and good-paying jobs are drying up. So why again do we need a population infusion?
Are you advocating that we start treating workers the way they do in China, where they live in company barracks as virtual slaves and there's no minimum wage? This seems to be what the open-borders advocates are advocating these days: bringing in a giant number of easily-exploited laborers so that corporate profits can be increased.
I thought the Republicans were supposed to be the ones in the pockets of Big Business, but these days it seems that the Democrats are the ones more guilty of that.
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Why does the US need a population infusion?
There's actual a valid answer to this, I'm assuming, rhetorical question: the "locals" are not breeding at a high enough rate to propogate the pyramid schemes that are hyperconsumerism and social security. Well, valid, for some corporatist/politcal definition of valid.
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Why does the US need a population infusion?
America has lots of room compared to the rest of the world (no issue of overcrowding) and we have a slight demographic issue with too many retirees and the associated social security payments.
In a more general sense, it is because we want America to remain a strong vibrant country. That small dip in your paycheck today ensures that your child will live in a great economy.
Routinely the best and the brightest of foreign nations come to the United States. We get the cream of the crop. They come here, build, re
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I don't think US needs a population infusion, but wouldn't you agree that freedom of movement is fundamentally a good thing to be promoted and encouraged?
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Freedom of movement within the US is fine. But freedom of movement across national borders is not.
Why not? What is the fundamental difference?
Or maybe you prefer the US start taking care of citizens of all countries around the world?
Freedom to move within the borders doesn't imply taking care of those who moved (at least, not without demanding the associated duties).
In any case, if your state spends more on its citizens then it gets from those citizens (in taxes etc), then its fiscal policy is broken in any case. And if it does not, then increasing the number of those citizens will not change that.
Just start handing out passports to whoever asks without any kind of selection?
You pretty much did just that up to 1870s or so. Seemed to have worked out fine (in fact, good c
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Are you seriously suggesting that it's better to outsource jobs than to bring people doing them into your country?
At least you can compete with an H1B, since his wage is defined by the US job market (even if skewed by all the restrictions they have). Good luck competing to a guy in India getting paid the local wage.
As to why companies want to bring workers in, that's because despite all the tech that we have, meetings over the phone are still not as good as having the same person in the room. Take it from s