Should the U.S. grant more H-1B visas?
Advocates for immigrants and the technology industry say that the U.S. should grant more H-1B visas to allow companies to hire the highly-trained talent they need from overseas. Opponents of raising the cap say that allowing more employers to recruit from other countries will drive down the wages of skilled workers in the U.S. How do you feel about this issue? Make a post.
From Michelle Lee Tillett, Everett, WA What we need is some good old fashion Irony. We as americans should demand congress to issue more H1B visas for higher management jobs and CEO position within these companies. Lets see how the shoe fits on the other foot. If we hire more foreign CEOs american companies can slash their salaries, perks, and bonuses. Just like what is happening now.
From Giorgadze Castro I agree not to raise the cap for H1B visa to promote local emplyment. The question is do we have enough american talents to augment the need of the country for skilled workers? We cannot wait for our babies to learn the skills needed… i.e. healthcare professionals, IT. We need them now. Canada, Australia, New Zealand,UK acknowledge the importance of overseas workers..and they are doing well now.
From Tony After all why companies push for H1B? they want to cut cost in labour. Top desicion makers in all thjese companies are FAT CATs and spending fortune over excecutive saleries and benefits. They are bribed by indian tech companies. They lobby senetors and change the law. Its a huge industry now. This is a mafia rig controlled by top excecutives, indian tech companies and polititians.
H1B visa is for cheap labour, not for the talent. When ever any one said any ting against H1B then millions of Indian H1B aspirants will mob against through the internet. Right now every student in India want to come and work in US and settle down here. This is going to be another invasion plan. If you say any thing against it the minority/racism card will be taken out. Many are really afraid after seeing strange Indian names.
From Igor, Virginia I am a Physics PhD student from one of the top US universities. All you are talking here is: Americans are more qualified than
foreigners, lets look at your students. I had a chance to teach physics your pre-medical and engineering students for a year and a half. I was surprised to see
how untalented the students were, of course there were some very bright students. In my country they would not be able to knock the
doors of the University (a former Soviet country). I was told by my professor to grade the students not too harshly,
at list give them some credit if they wrote their names on the paper ( they were paying $25-$30k a year).
During the lab classes the professor would come and check if students had questions, and if they had he would answer. He required that I answer their questions during the lab and I did. The students would copy it without even trying to understand what I was explaining (I ended up grading myself).
They were only concerned to get good grades. One day these students will meet an H1-B worker and complain why they have the job they want. And also, at least half of the leading Professors were foreigners ( MIT, Caltech, Phystech(Moscow), Harvard, Oxford ), can you compete with them? If they where not as highly qualified, the university would have trouble to attract high quality students. There was no science in the USA in early 20-th century, how it happened she has it now? Immigration of top scientists of the world, it made the USA the most technologically advanced country in the world.
Don't complain, the total number of H1-B visas is just 65000 for 2009, instead keep the competitiveness high!
From Tom, Jacksonville FL No to the H1B visa and to the L1 while we are at it.
From Michael, Jacksonville FL I think we should stop the H1B visa program and start making sure that the American IT workers have jobs first. Then we should start a program to train Americans to work in the IT field. We have done nothing of the sort and we are very short sighted on thinking that Indians, that are not even qualified for the jobs, that lie on their resumes is a better solution. These companies lobby for more India programmers because they feel they can get them cheaper. It takes 4 Indians to do the work of 1 American and it will take several Americans to fix all of the bad code that they write for your company. Been there done that.
From CD, Philly, PA What ever happened to the American dream?
I am on a L1 visa, I have a PhD, I earn $115K/yr and I'm applying for a green card. My company has just opened a new business in NJ and has decided not to apply for any work visas in the US because we think we can find enopugh local talent and it is too expensive (higher salaries, cost of relocation). I recgonise that there is probably abuse of the system by some companies but to say that work visas should be banned is nuts and will only make America less competitive not more. The real problem lies in the drop in population growth, the cost of higher education in the US and the resultant shortage of science graduates from US schools. India and China will over take the US in 15 years not because of low labor costs but because they produce more graduates and because the US becomes more isolationist.
Wake up America!
From Greg Johnson Foreign labor will work for less. If business can't offshore it, they will bring visa holder's here. I know too many talented individuals who have had they job offshored or have been replaced by Visa holders. Statements by companies that their Visa holding candidates will not replace American workers is seldom true.
From Angela Jones, Charlotte, NC American workers go to toher countries to work as well, and nobody complains. This country offers beautiful opportunities to the citizens, but as a teacher, I can see that many Americans prefer to dropp out of school and work, despite the different chances they get to study. International labor is needed because there are many lazy Americans who prefer to get food stamps, and aid from the government instead of keep on studying, work hard and take the opportunities. So the policy is that they receive and receive but what do they do to get a better job? finish their studies, or compete in the labour market? let's face it, the jobs and opportunities are there. Don't blame the immigrants for the lazyness of others.
From JG In understanding the need for "educated tech workers" shame on this
entrepreneur for not looking within the borders of the U.S. Maybe this
entrepreneur should have tried a little harder. Thanks CNN for highlighting
this story on this company–at least this "techie" won't be looking for work
at this used-to-be prospective company!
From Tim H1B quota should be increased.
There are "always" two things: A producer and a consumer. And the good news is BOTH of them want to make/save $$$
Just give a thought who is what in America? or America is both producer and consumer…???
Well in any of the cases; and also to grow the business; more H1B visas make sense; since producers would be able to produce more and more, as local people are just 13% of population who can contribute in production!
Now lets consider the case of Consumers; ofcourse since there would be more production and more competition the costs of the goods sold will come down; and that will help consumers.
Now there is a tiny obfuscation; reflected in some of the listings above: locals are losing jobs against immigrants. Well there is just one liner for this:
"Survival of the fittest"
The great thought given by Charles Darvin and on which we have been believing for years and years and years.
Tomorrow's America should be more and more prosper; disciplines and remain superpower. And for that we need "talent". Doesn't matter from where the talent comes from but all we need are great ideas; which can only come from talent.
…and believe it or not; just because of these great ideas we have been superpower for ages.
Any thoughts?
From Yadgyu, Harkeyville, TX There should definitely be more H-1B visas granted.
American workers have to stop begging for handouts and learn to adjust their skills to meet the job market. There is no reason why corporations should feel obligated to hire American citizens just because a company is located in America. Capitalism works best when labor costs are kept down. If tech companies do not want to hire Americans, then Americans can get jobs in other fields.
No job industry needs protection. There should never be any job security. Corporations should keep costs low so their stock and profits can soar. If the American worker gets left out, it is their won fault. No company can keep affording to pay Americans top wage with top benefits and expect to be competitive on the global scale.
There is no reason why a family of four needs more than $75,000 a year in order to survive. If you need more than this, your family is greedy, wasteful, and lazy. Larger families survived with less in the past. Americans have to stop paying $100,000 or more for college, stop getting $350,000 or more hosues, stop getting $40,000 or more vehicles, and stop wasting money on clothes and entertainment. Americans have to learn how to work for less money and learn how to budget better.
From LD, Columbus, Ohio NO H-1B visas should not increase!! America is exploiting foreign/3rd world countries for cheap labor at the expense of jobs for her own people.
Unemployment rates are soaring (those that report). I'm a technology worker and those jobs are being outsourced and it's horrible. America is being taken without a single shot, by all the corporate greed! There is talent in America, the CEO's and corporate greedy administrators don't want to pay for the talent. If our economy would "deflate" sure I'd work for less, but I have to make a wage to pay for what these greedy oil tycoons want for me to drive a car to my job.
There is so much corruption and white collar crime! Not to mention GAP now using children in foreign sweat shops. They say "retrain", bull crap — our student loan debt to the gov't is soaring! Besides I love my occupation and I'm tired of losing jobs to foreign labor exploits.
Companies today are making it a common business practice to layoff constantly and outsource jobs we as americans are perfectly qualified to do
From Viktor ok,Manteca,CA I dont think that we need to increase H1-B visas. We have to focus on education in this country not turn to other countries to solve our problems.
From Tom, Denver, Colorado I agree with Rex, the need for more H1B visas is a SCAM fueled by CORPORATE GREED to shift legal resident American jobs, by corporations who pay only lip service to keeping their employees educated at the level needed to compete while outsourcing/offshoring those jobs while at the same time paying large sums to lobbyists to get work visa limits raised by OUR elected representatives. Corporations bear social responsibility to "level the playing" field by contributing to on-going education and re-education of their workers. If unwilling to do so, then maximum "life span" of 50 years for all corporations might begin to solve the transfer-of-wealth problem we have seen since corporations were allowed to come into being, as if human, with no mortality. Corporate capitalism may be responsible for the ruin of this nation if it is allowed to shirk this social responsibility just as we have seen them do with health insurance. We are witnessing the beginning of the end of the middle-class.
From Brad Ward, Arlington, TN Ali,
This is a thought experiment with economics. This is an example of what I was talking about earlier and what’s happening in the economy today. We need to get back to the basics and stand up for what is right. Our prosperity in America today depends on getting this right. I need to post it on as many blogs on the internet as possible so that all Americans understand the implications of government intervention in the economy. Here’s the explanation:
Also, keep in mind, that the supply costs include the following: materials, labor, manufacturing processes, etc
BTW for this example, lower supply costs may be anything (not just labor costs) like a reduction in taxes for one seller but not another.
There have always been problems with the free markets when it is influenced by government subsidies to corporations. To explain simply what’s going on, consider this thought experiment:
There are two sellers, #1 & #2, and many buyers in the same market. The two sellers would like to buy their supply to make their product at a low price. The supply includes all inputs to make the product such as materials, labor, manufacturing processes, etc. Ultimately, these two sellers would like to sell their products at a high price and make a profit. Well one day, seller #1 decided that they would like to make more profit but they can’t figure out how to take more market share from seller #2 to increase profits. During a meeting with management, seller #1 decides to lobby the government for a reduction in labor costs to help them be more competitive against seller #2 because their labor rate is too high. The government agrees with seller #1 and decides to increase guest worker programs that essential reduce labor costs. Like magic, the labor rates fall as predicted because of the increase labor supply, and this makes seller #1 happy. Seller #1 can now buy their supply at a lower cost. This in turn, allows their profits to increase because they are still selling high. If seller #2 doesn’t take advantage the resulting new labor rates, then their profit will be lower because they are still buying the supply at a higher price than seller #1. Therefore, seller #2 will see a decrease in profits. If seller #2 continues to be unprofitable, then they will go out of business after some period of time. However, seller #2 wants to stay in business, so they take advantage of the lower labor rates as well. So who wins and who loses? Since the labor rate obviously goes down, then the workers for seller #1 and #2 will take a financial loss.
That’s what happens when the government intervenes. The government basically allowed the sellers to profit at the expense of someone else-the workers. This may not be the intention, but it is certainly the result. Now, let’s consider what happens without government intervention:
There are two sellers, #1 & #2, and many buyers in the same market. The two sellers would like to buy their supply to make their product at a low price. The supply includes all inputs to make the product such as materials, labor, manufacturing processes, etc. Ultimately, these two sellers would like to sell their products at a high price and make a profit. Well one day, seller #1 decided that they would like to make more profit but they can’t figure out how to take more market share from seller #2 to increase profits. During a meeting with management, seller #1 decides to lobby the government for more guest worker programs to help them be more competitive against seller #2 because their labor rate is too high. The government disagrees with seller #1 and decides to not to increase quota on the guest worker programs. Seller #1 is not happy and goes back to management with a different strategy. This time seller #1 decides to improve their manufacturing process to be more efficient and increase productivity. Seller #1 can now buy their supply at a lower cost because they were innovative. In turn, this allows their profits to increase because they are still able to sell high or even slightly lower than before they were innovative. If seller #2 doesn’t become more innovative, then his profits will be lower because he is still buying the supply at a higher price than seller #1. Therefore, seller #2 will see a decrease in profits. If seller #2 continues to be unprofitable, then they will go out of business after some period of time. Well seller #2 wants to stay in business, so they become more innovative. So who wins and who loses? Everyone wins because these two sellers are doing more with less. The results are lower supply costs and increased profits that benefit their shareholders and workers. Moreover, the buyers of their products benefit because the price of their products will ultimately decrease with increased competition.
We’re essentially making a choice between capitalism and socialism today in America. Should the government make rules that benefit one at the expense of another which is common practice in a socialist economy? Now let’s assume that the government agrees with corporations and grants them this subsidy that essentially lowers the living standard of workers and reduces innovation. How long do you think that there will be political stability in America with this kind of policy? America was founding on rebelling against tyranny such as socialism and our freedom is secure because we have fought for it. It is time to rebel again. Have the politicians not learned anything from history or the countries that have socialist economies? We need to get the word out about socialism and the dangers that threaten the American way of life.
From Thomas K, newark,new jersey I am an Indian born US citizen who graduated with a masters in HR and public relations. I work as a recruiter for an "Indian bodyshop".The bodyshop bring people from India and gives them employment.Employment is nothing but a consulting project gained through a fake resume(putting false experience upto 6years) and a phone interview usually taken by more experienced consultants.Here, I expected to run into many experienced H1b workers but I came to know that the majority of the "consultants" where fresh college graduates from India who were faking their resumes and going on projects.Many were getting fired from projects.There are many qualified engineers/IT graduated in America. Many of my fellow graduates ended up as insurance/car salesman or in clerical jobs although they had tech degrees.Here is how its done by "bodyshoppers":They will bring a college graduate from India,make a false resume with 6 or more years,somebody else take the interview and the guy/gal goes on a consulting project.The Tier1 vendors client does not seem to care. I don't mind having H1b visas alloted to qualified individuals but I am against falsifying resumes and they are the ones that are really a scourge and need to be stopped.I don't work for this company anymore.
From Rex Carson H1B is a SCAM that only hurts Americans
A lot of companies are actually laying off American workers and hiring H1B visas at a much lower salary and working them longer hours.
I've heard countless times about the single "developer" or "tech" job opening, and getting hundreds of applications from qualified Americans.
From Jodie Zoeller What your article doesn't talk about is all the tech jobs moving to India and Philippines. My IT skills that have taken 25+ years to develop are
suddenly too expensive for employers in Dallas. I don't know about the rest of the country. Companies like Texas Instruments, EDS and others are moving
tech jobs to cheaper labor abroad. I don't see a good future for Americans in the field of Computer Science or MIS, so why should I promote my field to
kids in high school or college. I think issues like these need to be highlighted. Why does Bill Gates need all those visas if there are people
in the US that have technical degrees like me and can be retrained. Answer we've been out of school too long and make too much money for him to want to
hire us.
Just my opinion as an IT worker of 25+ years in the corporate world here in
Texas.
From globalisation is a curse for lazy These are the figures for no of americans in other countries taking away jobs from others, not including government or people who force themselves into other countries without any permission from anybody I mean military personnel,
ALBANIA Tirana 646, ALGERIA Algiers 793, ANGOLA Luanda 845, ARGENTINA Buenos Aires 27,600, ARMENIA Yerevan 229, AUSTRALIA Canberra 2,500, Melbourne 38,000, Sydney 55,500, Perth 6,800, AUSTRIA Vienna 14,000, AZERBAIJAN Baku 600, BAHAMAS Nassau 7,050, BAHRAIN Manama 1,800, BANGLADESH Dhaka 1,320, BARBADOS Bridgetown 12,000, BELARUS Minsk 190, BELGIUM Brussels 35,328, BELIZE Belize City 2,700, BENIN Cotonou 250, BERMUDA Hamilton 4,300, BOLIVIA La Paz 3,000, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA Sarajevo 1600, BOTSWANA Gaborone 800, BRAZIL Brasilia 7,200, Rio de Janeiro 14,460, Sao Paolo 16,480, Recife 2,500, BRUNEI Bandar Seri Begawan 248, BULGARIA Sofia 400, BURKINA FASO Ouagadougou 329, BURMA Rangoon 332, BURUNDI Bujumbura 46, CAMBODIA Phnom Penh 1200, CAMEROON Yaounde 1,161, CANADA Ottawa 24,300, Calgary 105,000, Halifax 40,000, Montreal 65,000, Quebec 3,400, Toronto 250,000, Vancouver 200,000, CAPE VERDE Praia 1,000, CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC Bangui 91, CHAD N'Djamena 162, CHILE Santiago 11,790, CHINA Beijing 10,000, Guangzhou 3,200, Hong Kong 48,220, Shanghai 2,382, Shenyang 555, Chengdu 800, COLOMBIA Bogota 30,680, CONGO (Democratic Republic of) Kinshasa 440, CONGO (Republic of) Brazzaville 233, COSTA RICA San Jose 19,800, COTE D'IVOIRE Abidjan 2,100, CROATIA Zagreb 1,921, CUBA Havana 2,000, CYPRUS Nicosia 4,175, CZECH REPUBLIC Prague 10,000, DENMARK Copenhagen 9,380, DJIBOUTI Djibouti 50, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC Santo Domingo 82,000, ECUADOR Quito 7,950, Guayquil 5,874, EGYPT Cairo 10,892, EL SALVADOR San Salvador 10,000, EQUATORIAL GUINEA Malabo 30, ERITREA Asmara 356, ESTONIA Tallinn 1,000, ETHIOPIA Addis Ababa 2,190, FIJI Suva 5,288, FINLAND Helsinki 4,700, FRANCE Paris 75,000, Marseille 23,700, Strasbourg 3,050, GABON Libreville 298, GAMBIA Banjul 546, GEORGIA Tbilisi 303, GERMANY Bonn 692, Berlin 14,619, Frankfurt Am Main 138,815, Hamburg 11,754, Munich 45,000, GHANA Accra 3,780, GREECE Athens 65,000, Thessaloniki 7,500, GRENADA St. George's 2,000, GUATEMALA Guatemala City 10,000, GUINEA Conakry 660, GUINEA-BISSAU Bissau 25, GUYANA Georgetown 1,500, HAITI Port-Au-Prince 11,000, HONDURAS Tegucigalpa 10,500, HUNGARY Budapest 15,000, ICELAND Reykjavik 1,730, INDIA New Delhi 1,397, Mumbai 9,400, Calcutta 672, Madras 3,900, INDONESIA Jakarta 6,818, Surabaya 2,240, IRELAND Dublin 46,984, ISRAEL Tel Aviv 18,000, JERUSALEM Jerusalem 76,195, ITALY Rome 40,000, Milan 20,000, Naples 72,000, Florence 36,967, JAMAICA Kingston 7,500, JAPAN Tokyo 45,000, Naha, Okinawa 3,415, Osaka-Kobe 13,484, Sapporo 2,756, Fukuoka 5,695, JORDAN Amman 8,000, KAZAKHSTAN Almaty 3,600, KENYA Nairobi 4,237, KOREA Seoul 30,000, KUWAIT Kuwait 7,710, KYRGYZSTAN Bishkek 150, LAOS Vientiane 293, LATVIA Riga 2,084, LEBANON Beirut 10,000, LESOTHO Maseru 190, LIBERIA Monrovia 220, LITHUANIA Vilnius 1,500, LUXEMBOURG Luxembourg 1,527, MACEDONIA Skopje 800, MADAGASCAR Antananarivo 372, MALAWI Lilongwe 863, MALAYSIA Kuala Lumpur 6,639, MALI Bamako 460, MALTA Valletta 700, MARSHALL ISLANDS Majuro 580, MAURITANIA Nouakchott 100, MAURITIUS Port Louis 320, MEXICO Mexico City 441,680, Ciudad Juarez 63,480, Guadalajara 111,100, Monterrey 29,900, Tijuana 196,000, Hermosillo 80,600, Matamoros 60,960, Merida 49,000, Nuevo Laredo 3,580, MICRONESIA Kolonia 760, MOLDOVA Chisinau 125, MONGOLIA Ulaanbaatar 450, MOROCCO Rabat 1,401, MOZAMBIQUE Maputo 641, NAMIBIA Windhoek 350, NEPAL Kathmandu 1,600, NETHERLANDS Amsterdam 23,707, NETHERLANDS ANTILLES Curacao 6,075, NEW ZEALAND Auckland 14,540, NICARAGUA Managua 5,000, NIGER Niamey 335, NIGERIA Lagos 10,000, NORWAY Oslo 15,000, OMAN Muscat 1,444, PAKISTAN Islamabad 506, Karachi 2,100, Lahore 1,250, Peshawar 375, PALAU Koror 300, PANAMA Panama City 19,700, PAPUA NEW GUINEA Port Moresby 2,468, PARAGUAY Asuncion 2,368, PERU Lima 14,143, PHILIPPINES Manila 105,000, POLAND Warsaw 21,300, Krakow 18,000, PORTUGAL Lisbon 1,072, Ponta Delgada 1,100, QATAR Doha 3,775, ROMANIA Bucharest 13,152, RUSSIA Moscow 8,000, St. Petersburg 900, Vladivostok 348, Yekaterinburg 200, RWANDA Kigali 165, SAUDI ARABIA Riyadh 11,506, Dhahran 13,600, Jeddah 10,883, SENEGAL Dakar 791, SERBIA-MONTENEGRO Belgrade 4,514, SIERRA LEONE Freetown 130, SINGAPORE Singapore 15,000, SLOVAK REPUBLIC Bratislava 850, SLOVENIA Ljubljana 650, SOMALIA Mogadishu 12, SOUTH AFRICA Pretoria 8,100, Cape Town 2,647, Durban 720, SPAIN Madrid 75,596, Barcelona 18,917, SRI LANKA Colombo 658, SUDAN Khartoum 1,479, SURINAME Paramaribo 425, SWAZILAND Mbabane 352, SWEDEN Stockholm 18,000, SWITZERLAND Bern 12,113, SYRIA Damascus 3,856, TAIWAN Taipei 38,000, TAJIKISTAN Dushanbe 117, TANZANIA Dar Es Salaam 1,186, THAILAND Bangkok 16,500, Chiang Mai 1,600, TOGO Lome 329, TRINIDAD & TOBAGO Port-of-Spain 3,200, TUNISIA Tunis 700, TURKEY Ankara 2,010, Istanbul 4,800, Adana 266, TURKMENISTAN Ashgabat 107, UGANDA Kampala 1,350, UKRAINE Kiev 3,000, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES , Abu Dhabi 7,500, Dubai 9,000, UNITED KINGDOM London, England 200,000, Belfast, Ireland 4,000, Edinburgh, Scotland 20,000, URUGUAY Montevideo 3,500, UZBEKISTAN Tashkent 590, VENEZUELA Caracas 25,000, VIETNAM Hanoi 3,000, WESTERN SAMOA Apia 495, YEMEN Sanaa 15,300, ZAMBIA Lusaka 980, ZIMBABWE Harare 2,125, , GRAND TOTAL 3,784,693
reference:-http://www.overseasdigest.com/amcit_nu2.htm
Before stopping H1b's, I want some fairness i.e. let's not do business with any country in the world, let's not get anything in or out of this country, and we can live happily everafter.
From John Fowler, Saint Paul MN I'm in the I.T. biz, and the H1B program is used by companies to drive down wages and to make it easy to kill the careers of current workers whose skills don't precisely match their current needs. They will give H1Bs without current skills the job and have them learn on the job, rather than do the same for workers here to get into new skills. Great people here end up unemployed, and initially, marginally skilled H1Bs come in at low wages and pick up the skills over time. The H1B program is a career-killer for Americans, and a wage suppression mechanism. My employer now lets me do and learn more things and treats me better, only because they now need me. With an H1B increase, I'll get treated like dirt again until my career one-day stops.
From Brian Eargle, Sumter, SC By their shortsighted focus on the bottom line, the self-centered H-1B addicts have squeezed the last drop of blood out of the market, while pushing the capable American work force onto the mercies of society. The mantra of greed is, "Privatize profits; socialize costs."
On the judgment day, the Lord Jesus Christ will judge between American victims and the caretakers of American capital who have axed and ruined and destroyed the lives of American workers. It will not be pretty. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. The punishment will be forever and ever. May God have mercy on your souls. Repent.
From Joe Braun It is nice to see so many people agree that the H1-B visa is a sham along with it's cousin the L1 visa. We have plenty of qualified individiuals here and can easily create more. Let supply and demand rule. If companies want cheap labor then those companies can leave. Good bye. Thanks for playing. Microsoft, IBM, I do not care. Even Toyota hires local citizens for assembly plants in the USA. When it comes to non US software engineers, please keep them OFFSHORE where they belong. US Citizens are better suited to communicating with business customers in this country anyway. It is all about depressing costs. VP's do not like to pay for talent. Just like we prefer cheap goods from China. Companies prefer cheap software engineers from India. But, people are not commodities to be bought and sold. Or are they?
From Ron Gotcher, Sherman Oaks, CA Raising the H-1B quota only makes sense if you want to keep America competitive and avoid a recession. Otherwise, let's keep things as they are and force IT companies to move jobs offshore where the workers are.
The simple fact is that we do not have nearly enough skilled IT professionals in this county. Employers are not going to wait ten years for today's high school students to prepare for IT majors in college, graduate college, and then make themselves available. If the workers aren't here, the companies will move the jobs to the workers.
From Matt Some people have to wake up an realize that market became global many years ago.
Face it, competition is global. I know that it would be wonderful to have $100K+ job secured forever and leave in a small neighborhood, where everybody is happy and smiling.
Well, this is BS.
Practice of importing foreign workers is not going to stop, it's going to continue. Therefore, I would advocate to change in H1b, such that:
1. The CAP (if is still there) is variable depending on the performance in the specific industry over previous 3 years.
2. Visa is allocated using a point-based system. H1Bs have the same opportunities on the market (say like changing employer).
By doing this we get real "best and brightest" and because they compete freely they won't substitute American workers, because of the price, but they might because of the talent.
I think this would be a fare competition.
Also non-tech jobs, which are tied to the language and specificы of the culture are obviously harder to outsource. Ыo don't think there will be H1B doctors, lawyers etc. coming here soon.
Now as far as IT workers over 40 are concerned. Well, they loose the competition actually because their skills are outdated and it's harder for them to constantly renew their knowledge. They want to get 100k+ on low level code jobs knowing Fortran. I'm sorry that's just not going to happen. These workers should move to the upper level: become an IT manager, lead engineer or create their own business and hire agile young people from colleges with modern software skills.
I know a lot of college kids who go to science and who don't. Well, you know what those who don't usually say?
"it's hard! it's too much math".
Those American kids who do go to science and engineering majors would say "I like these gadgets, I want to know how this stuff works, I want to make my own one". When I talked to people in business, medical and lawyer majors most of the time they tell me: "Oh it's gonna be a big investment but then I'll make a lot of money".
Those who want to make a lot of money, who think they're entitled to 100K+ job, that "math and science is hard", that it's unrealistic to compete with foreigners (while they can go to some of the best tech schools in the world!) should check out other careers.
A lot of kids want to become managers, get money the easy way, because they are used to high standard of living and think that is normal and you don't need to do much.
That's wrong.
Over the years USA got used to be a superpower, but if you look back – there were many superpowers before, but then they lost to others with a better social system. The question is whether US is going to survive as a great power in this technological global world. Cutting off best talent from abroad is the best way to see US as mediocre country in the next 50 years.
From Jeff. Miami, Florida YES! There is a shortage of skilled american workers who are clearly not taking the initiative to improve their skills. If internationals are willing to put the work, they Deserve to have a chance to work with an H1-B Visa. Those of you that are on H1-B visas and say "No" are simply afraid that in the future, H1-B holders will excel, compete against you, and beat you to the chase! Stop being afraid and embrace capitalism.
Once again, I say, YES, ABSOLUTELY YES! Capitalism runs this nation, not fear, incompetence and uninformed decisions!
From Craig, San Jose, CA The problem is caused by Indian IT firms who filed over 20,000 visas on the first day. instead of hiring U.S. workers to work here, they use the H1B to get Indian IT workers here to do work American workers used to do.
From Lawk Salih, Centreville, VA It seems like most of us agree that this is corporate America that's trying to replace American workers with cheap foreign labor. Why shouldn't we all start a campaign? A website these days doesn't cost much to let our voices heard.
From Kumaran, Austin, TX Every one, including me knows that the H1-B system is a fraud. And I am a former h1-b tech worker. I am speaking out about it, because I am tired of the US employers who mistreat and fire hard working Americans in favor of H1-Bs. Why should I be tired of it? If they can do it to Americans, then they can do it to anyone. As soon as I ask for a buck more they will do it to me too. So it is time to stop this practice
From IBMer, Tor, Can H1B yes, or no: this it's where this is heading.
As part of this, good ol' IBM is moving jobs to Brazil (from Canada this time, but the US is no different)
see:
http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5i2GvQYHen7AyfilB80CJRytSsHHg
From R. Quinn, Mesa, AZ For the past 10 years I have earned half as much as I used to as a software engineer – since losing my job to an H1B worker. Now I pay half as much to Social Security, state, and federal taxes and my H1B replacement paid nill. Our entire system loses – not just the economy.
From MS, Boston All you need to know, read here -
http://lyrelyrepantzandfier.com/
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/PrevWage.pdf
From pb Pleasanton CA Because of our disadvantage as a high cost-of-living nation, America needs a smart competitive strategy or else we will simple come apart at the seams. Favoring American workers over foreign workers when it comes to hiring for sci-tech-math positions is a good strategy to keep control over precious know-how. The H-1B visa is supposed to uphold this strategy. The American corporations are cheating their home nation (and breaking immigration law) and totally subverting this strategy when they pass over qualified Americans for economic reasons. With H-1Bs in short supply, the L-1 visas are rife with fraud (Wipro and Infosys bringing in contingent workers under the guise of intra-company transfers).
Nothing should happen with H-1Bs until Congress holds public hearings on the labor market interference and rampant lawbreaking that have overtaken H-1B and L-1. New "flex number" immigration law should be written to maintain balance in labor markets (neither employees or employers gaining the upper hand). This system should be based on factual market assessments, such as whether salaries and benefits are rising or falling, and whether the pipeline of college majors coming up is full.
The most important effect we should be striving for in the US is rising pay and job security in the sciences and engineering. This will fill the pipeline with eager, enthusiastic young people seeking careers in sci-tech.
America will then get its mojo working again, and look back and cringe at how close we came to ceding our competitive position to upstarts like India and China.
From Gabriel, Los Angeles, CA Yes. Let's kick the engineers and keep the illegal foreigners that come here to marry US citizens just to get green cards. And let's not forget the Mexicans that work in our houses.
1 out of 4 patents are applied by foreigners. We are so naive to think we can stop this. Either we understand this is a reality and try to adapt to it or we will loose ground. The music industry tried to kill music file sharing and they are loosing. We are facing the same problem now. Plus, there is a lot of talk about corporations but they need to find ways to remain competitive in the national and international market. Sure, let's create the perfect company that hires well paid American employees and I am sure this company will survive and do really well. But how can I do that if a large percentage of students in the engineer grad programs are foreigners? The kind of job I do is so technical that 90% of the Americans I interview have no good background. And I will not hire someone just to be patriotic. Either you are competent and I don't really care where you are from or I am not hiring you.
Thinking companies will not be greedy is naive. We want them to be. That is why we buy stocks from them. We might try to be politically correct but still, at the end of the day it is about money. Otherwise why are you buying stocks? Even the health industry cares more about money than human lives so let's not blame the tech industry. Sure, two wrongs do not make one right but we are blaming the player that is only part of a social structure we all helped create. We have to stop thinking about this utopia and adapt. Raising the numbers is the answer? I don't know. What I do know for a fact is that we will pay a huge price for sending all this foreigners we are educating home. From experience, kick the foreigner engineerings and our future generations that will be in the tech industry will have a hard time. I mean, who will really educate them if a large number of professors are also foreigns?
From Anant, Washington, DC Yes. USA must increase the cap on H1 visas. But what is more important is the way it should be done. I think the British system has more merit than the American system.
1. Granting H1 visas should be independent of the employer. That way, a foreign employee is equal in status to a local employee. He can't take away a job from an equally capable US employee. He is also competing in the open market, and can as such seek a salary equal to the US employee. If he is not a good communicator, he just doesn't get a good enough job.
2. Merit-based allocation – H1 visas should chase talent. Let there be a point based system to determine eligibility. Should Congress think that there are too many immigrants coming in, just raise the minimum points required for an H1. Ensures you get the wheat, and not the chaff.
I think immigration is necessary to renewing the vigor in the US economy. During the tech boom, a good amount of entrepreneurs were Chinese and Indian. A fresh perspective brings about a definite change.
Additionally, skilled, well earning immigrants also spend well and contribute by way of taxes. Will that not provide scope for the economy to grow?
From RichardE, Walnut Creek, CA One major issue is the difficulty of older IT workers to transition to Web or client server work, even after extensive training. What is lost is not just the personal income for the individual, but the loss of overall experience in the economy.
At one point I worked with many people from India who were over qualified for the QA work they were doing. Of course the salaries they were paid were high for India but low for the US.
In addition the educational systems in many countries were based on the more tightly controlled British system — and full of subsidies for poor but bright students.
From Brad Ward, Arlington, TN I advocate rebelling against our government on this issue. It's time for "We, the people" to take this power away from the government. The government should not be the HR department for corporations. This is socialism. Anyone that clearly understands the theory of economics, realizes that the government is subsiding corporations to basically reduce the salaries for techies. This is wrong and we should rebel.
From John Kyl, Cincinnati, OH No more H1Bs. No more foreign students in our univerities. Leave those STEM scholarship to our kids!
From John Kyl No more H1-Bs. No more foreign students in our univerities. Leave it to our kids.
From Andrew, Florida I would like to add to my previous comment. For absolute proof there is no shortage of tech talent, you will notice that in the defense industry, which must hire US citizens for classified work, they don't seem to have any trouble at all filling positions which require EE/CS degrees. My friends that work for a local defense contractor claim that for every tech job they post, they receive several hundred resumes from qualified applicants.
From Andrew, Florida I am stunned that anybody can defend the H1B program. I have an MSCS from one of the top CS schools in the US. I have demonstrated excellence in my profession for 30 years now. I am up on pretty much every new technology and spend a considerable amount of my own money on continually updating my skills. I have designed and built software systems that have ultimately led to the CEOs of those companies becoming very rich. I would put my skills up against ANY H1B worker in this country. Yet after 2001, I went 2 years without a job and the one I have now pays half what I made 10 years ago.
There is no shortage of workers in tech and anyone who says there is, is flat out lying.
Here's one example that I witnessed. At one company where I worked briefly as a temp consultant, they placed an ad in the local paper for developers. Within a week they received several hundred resumes from all over the country. Another developer and I were asked to separate out the ones that had CS degrees from those that did not. We saw many highly qualified applicants. Management (who were Indian) then took those and removed ALL of the non-Indian names from the pile. What they ended up hiring was one of the most incompetent people I have ever worked with. Why? He was Indian and cheap.
Its all about money. Period. And has absolutely nothing to do with the availability of qualified tech talent.
From Anonymous, USA There is no shortage of US Engineers. Companies are only interested in cheap-ass labor.
Study: There Is No Shortage of U.S. Engineers
April 4, 2007
A commonly heard defense in the arguments that surround U.S. companies that offshore high-tech and engineering jobs is that the U.S. math and science education system is not producing a sufficient number of engineers to fill a corporation's needs.
However, a new study from Duke University calls this argument bunk, stating that there is no shortage of engineers in the United States, and that offshoring is all about cost savings.
This report, entitled "Issues in Science and Technology" and published in the latest National Academy of Sciences magazine further explores the topic of engineering graduation rates of India, China and the United States, the subject of a 2005 Duke study.
In the report, concerns are raised that China is racing ahead of both the United States and India in its ability to perform basic research. It also asserts that the United States is risking losing its global edge by outsourcing critical R&D and India is falling behind by playing politics with education. Meanwhile, it considers China well-positioned for the future.
Duke's 2005 study corrected a long-heard myth about India and China graduating 12 times as many engineers as the United States, finding instead that the United States graduates a comparable number.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2111347,00.asp
From jack, phoenix, AZ This country's education system is geared to the dunces. Kids that should be in Gifted programs, have to sit by while others are learning English. And then there is no money for Gifted teachers. Lets pour our education money into Gifted kids.
From Sam Iam, Birmingham, Alabama NO! The H1-B discussion is really a discussion of greedy corporate leaders seeking to lower their bottom line by FORCING US WORKERS OUT OF THEIR JOBS and then hiring cheap (but inexperienced) foreign workers. I work with a large consulting firm, and the people that we hire with H1-B visas are not PhDs, they are cheap, inexperienced brand new college grads who have been of progressively lower quality for the last 6 years. The majority of them have exaggerated their capabilities on their resumes, and so require massive training efforts by the few remaining US workers. Nevertheless, by laying off a US worker and substituing a cheap, inexperienced foreign worker, the consulting firm immediately puts more money in the pockets of the senior leadership, and the US workers who have a lifetime of company loyalty and high work ethic increase their OWN efforts to make up the skills gap.
The H1-B debate is simply about greed, not available skills. US workers, especially those over the age of 40 who are approaching companies' retirement age, are actively discriminated against so that the CEO and senior execs can continue to pay themselves massively overinflated bonuses, and to pay the lobbyists who control the US congress.
From Doug in Oklahoma I started my software career in 1976. I have never been laid-off or fired…. I am truly one of the most fortunate ones. I have spent the last 20 years working for an aerospace company with a high level security clearance. Today a clearance can help to keep your job and is probably worth 50+K year in salary. These are the jobs closed to foreigners. I also have a generous retirement plan and a nice 401K nestegg. I think all my collegues should be provided with similar benefits if we (the U.S.A.) want to retain the talent pool and competitive edge in the world.
After 30+ years in s/w development I am convined that the latest OOPS techniques and quality people can be just as competitive here as compared to India or ??? But most organizations apply poor quality and poor mgmt skills to managing s/w projects…. and then they wonder why so many s/w projects are screwed up and overbudget…..
From Charles Maphis RN, Harrisonburg, VA I spent four years of my life in electrical engineering school and then worked in a manufacturing R&D engineering position for ten years. My career was vectored towards R&D software development. Since my job was outsourced in 2002, I have been unable to find suitable employment. I did work for a few years in electrical maintenance but the factory closed and the work went abroad. Finally, I did something very sensible. I went to nursing school as a non traditional student (i.e. male and older). Of the five male students, three had past computer backgrounds. I really do enjoy my new profession though; but I am somewhat bitter at the turn of events. When young people ask, I explain “The United States used to manufacture its own goods, but now we buy foreign made goods at a big box retail store. The price is better. We no longer design, make, or test the stuff we us. Forget science unless it is biology”. I know that I steering them straight into a good career. Charles RN BSEE, Virginia
From Kim, Cranston, RI NO! Employers searching for qualified workers should invest in American workers! There are several means by which this can be accomplished, here are three: 1) provide incumbent worker training, i.e. increasing the skill sets of the current workforce; 2) invest in our youth by working with the educational system to create training programs which meet the needs of industry; and lastly 3) provide comparable wages. Higher skill requirements = higher salary!
The H-1B visa topic is not a new issue/concern. So while the first two suggestions may not address immediate concerns, think about the amount of time and discussion devoted to this topic. Instead of lobbying for raising the cap, spend time cultivating the existing workforce.
From Unknown, Los Angeles, CA Absolutly YES!
If a person wants to work and live here temporary or permanently, paying taxes to the US Govt., not being a crminal, why not then!?
I am on H1-B now, and I am her just because I want to live here at this moment. It does not matter, If you are Tech, Finance, Marketing or Art major. If you can find a job that you like, and the company wants you, then you should be able to get this job, withough immigration restrictions!
Regarding salary, to get an H1B is not that expensive. It becomes difficult only because of the immigration laws here in the US.
I think Immigration should be a little more assertive about this. They should definitley grant Work Visas to any person that is needed to the US based companies. And it really does not matter what kind of degree she/he has, as long as its needed and in demand by companies here. The working/business world is becoming so global. People are moving all the time, changing jobs, places of living. Its will be much more interesting and more effective and efficient for all countries and companies if they have a positive and optimistic oulook and attitude towards different types of people, with various types of education backgrounds, and diverse cultures.
Its a small world. Let people enjoy and do what they want to do. Of course, if it does not harm or hurt anyone, or anything.
Thanks.
From Alan Rodrigues, Los Angeles, CA I am quite astonished that the debate has gone from H1-B visas to Green cards. Why do we need to incentivize our overseas friends with Green Cards. Is the H1-B not sufficient. I think they are given an inch and they want the whole yard. They should work here indefinitely, which means they apply for an extension every 6 years. THey do this in all the other countries, its only here that we offer them our country up as a Prize for getting a job offer.
From Betsy , Colorado No. Do not raise the cap. There is no shortage of US born technical people, there is only a shortage of CHEAP US born technical people.
From chetan, Flower Mound, Texas This issue is unpatriotic greedy americans Vs America and her development, the choice is yours.
From Lynn, Bellingham, Washington The comments by John and George, are absolutely on the money!!
There is no shortage of engineers in the U. S., there is only a shortage of qualified and capable engineers willing to work for substandard wages and benefits.
As John wrote, pay Engineers as well as Doctors, Lawyers, and M.B.A.'s and you will be able to employ all the engineers you require!!
From Wayne Lusk My experience is that "imported" techs keep wages down. I am nearing retirement and I guess that will open another slot. I'd rather sit on my porch.
From A. Scott Asplund, Anna TX We tax or limit any other item brought into the US from overseas at an artifically low price, if we let the market set the wages for IT people without all of these additional workers coming in, you'd see a lot more IT graduates. It's not like IT is is hot and nasty and dangerous and no American would want these jobs.
From Bright, Kansas Yes. one can increase the H1B quota as we can also get moretalents from foreign nations and at the same time the H1B visa numbers has to be limited for every company. Say as I heard last time just one company filed some thousands of H1B visas. So if they limit H1B's for every company then every employer will have an oppurtunity to hire people instead of one big company filing 20,000 H1B's out of 65000 H1B's.
From Werner, Berlin, Germany I would recommend to keep H1B’s at lower levels, not increase.
When the EU was opened to Eastern Erope, the almost free influx of workers (skilled, but also unskilled) began in certain countries (eg. UK).
I’m living in Europe and work for a big I/T US Corporation, nowadays sometimes called the “Blue Pig”.
This firm has offloaded many jobs from Western Europe to Eastern Europe, and currently
offloads as many jobs from the USA to India and Brazil.
This will take place with our without H1B cap increases.
And finally a prediction: wages in this industry (I/T) will get lower, with or without H1B’s.
More H1B’s will accelerate the wages downward pressure.
From MS, Boston MA "We have never seen such utter lack of competence in the IT world since the onslaught of cheap Indian labor in the late 90’s and right after the Y2K crisis."
Nail -> Head
"who do not happen to have been born in this geographical area called the United States of America."
USA is a sovereign constitutional country not merely a geographic area or a business park.
Everyone go read the facts at numbersusa.com
From Anonymous Though I am not in America, and do not know about the ground realities, what I would like to suggest why dont the government put a minimum wage requirement for h1b holders which is quite comparable to the salary being paid to american citizens. This will ensure that the average salary do not go down. It will also ensure that h1 visa holders are not exploited.
Any takers?
From Chris No. This article is completely one sided and fails to tell the whole truth with a bias which is very detrimental to the working american IT worker. There are plenty of unemployed American tech workers these companies could hire, they just want cheap labor. Check the job boards like Dice.com for Americans looking for work. I have a strong math background, IT degree, graduated magna cum laude, National Merit Scholar, good people skills, programmer skills and yet I have experienced 2 layoffs and 4 delayed start dates since 2000. I've been employed the last 3 years and my current salary is considered middle class not greedy, and yet there is very no real stability in my job as a programmer. I know their were hundreds of people in my Graduating class at my University with IT degrees who have switched professions because the job market is too volatile despite their Math and Tech skills. This so called shortage is self imposed as companies push away qualified american canidates from jobs and the profession alltogether.
From TP,NY Yes Absolutely!
We are a medium size company and we advertised for an experienced IT position and couldn't find a single American citizen. We have one H1B worker in our IT team and he's getting paid equally well as our other engineers (on top of the fees that we have to pay for hiring an H1B) and what he brings to the table is just brilliant!
I don't agree with the statements here about H1B bringing down the wages and availability of American high-tech workers. Being a manager for several years, I know firsthand how difficult it is to find qualified American high-tech workers.
From Avi, Chicago, IL Its a nobrainer for me:
Should we outsource thse jobs to other countries
or have these guys come here on Hib visas where they would actually spend a substantial part of their salaries in America ad thus meaningfuly contribute to the economy and future american growth.
I agree with another post which says that all of us americans today feel that we are entitled to something and most kids today grow up with bloated egos. i am second generation American and maybe have this unique perspective of having seen two points of view.
giving green cards to let these people stay in America and contribute to america
From John, Michigan Pay Engineers as well as M.D's, M.B.A's, and lawyers, guess what no more shortage. Kids don't enter science careers because they don't pay.
From Chris Machielke Basically, the H1-B program is nothing but corporate welfare, plain and simple! A market driven economy only seems to be good if it is helping big corporations. Raise the wages and the employees will come.
At the level of outsourcing that is currently occurring with engineering jobs, it’s no wonder that more students are turning away from the profession. New students would rather be the fat cats sending the jobs, and the middle class down the river. The pay is phenomenal, who can blame them!
From Patrick, Dallas,TX Not only do more visas steal jobs from Americans but OUR technology gets hijacked as well. The H1's come over for awhile undergo training then load all the intellectual property they can fit onto a flash disk and return to their native land. This whole issue lacks sanity.
From Bob Leneker, Centennial, CO Same old cheap, cheap, cheap employers..and some are just plain stupid. I worked for a company, big company with an HR that kept telling me as a manager that they "couldn't find any good people"…I thought this was absurd…so when I went home I got out a telephone book, called votech schools, colleges, community, and several other places and gave them my FAX number at work. The next I had complains about the FAX machine running out of paper.
As Halsey once said, "you(HR)couldn't hit a barn with a bass fidel".
This is a lie, for cheap labor…a lot of technical people in this country are painting houses…unable to work for the $12/hr the companies offer.
From George Vogt, Destrehan, LA Guys,
I'm an engineer with a Mechanical Engineering degree from Columbia University and with 30 years experience. I can't get any interest from companies to hire me and I'm not the only one! There is no shortage of technical people in the US. There is, however, a shortage of CHEAP technical people. This is not about a shortage, this is about PRICE. It's no mystery to me why American college students are not entering technical fields. They can't get paid by American Industry for the extra effort.
From Valeriy, New York, NY Absolutely NOT! And here are at least three reasons.
But bringing inexpensive foreign workers, we are destroying our own talent pool in a long run. What would motivate a prospective college student go into a technology, spent years of time, money and effort and keep on developing his own skills if he can see how quickly the market could be flooded with cheap replacement. And that's how we are only going to compound the problem, spiraling down in a long run, creating tremendous pressure on businesses and complete dependency on foreign workers.
Secondly, it's hard to believe there is such a shortage of skilled tech workers when places like Monster are loaded with their resumes and takes longer again to find a new job for an IT employee. Moreover, during the last recession, the IT people were among hardest hit, many had to leave the industry all together. The effort should be to attract them back. This will increase, the pool of talents, provide financial improvement and stability for the returning workers, which in turn will restore confidence in the field and will attract new graduates.
Equally important, given how much resources a local tech workers invest in their skills, they should be carefully protected. It is one thing shifting around an employee who has just couple of months of vacation training and as such could be re-trained and re-employed quickly and another thing to push out some one who spent 10 years and $100,000 for his education and skills development like I did. We should do more to protect against social shocks like this.
Thirdly, the quality of foreign workers is mostly a myth but the communication problems are real. Many companies put foreign workers through the training and there is absolutely no reason why this training should not be offered to American born workers instead. In fact, I can't remember any foreign workers who started providing a high quality high volume output from the first day on the job.
One blogger rightfully asked whether this should be regulated naturally by the market or whether the supply and demand laws have been disturbed. My answer is that the market has been disturbed. Companies overflood the market with foreign labor, which depresses the wages. From there, the market starts working again and forces domestic workers out of the industry. Meanwhile the foreign workers are getting subsidized education in their home countries and more training by their new employer.
And the quick story that illustrates one of my earlier points. Five years ago, I needed some additional training and I approached a school that provided programs in Oracle. I'm glad the coordinator there was frank enough and told the truce, "You shouldn't take this class. Most of the Oracle/other database people in New York are workers from India. You will not be able to break into a shop because they tend to hire now one of their own. So don't waste your time." I guess many New Yorkers can confirm her observation, can't they?
From Gaurav Goel, Austin, TX The fundamental issue at stake is the notion of labor as a commodity. This works well for those who are contemplating the labor of others, but never when it is about their own labor. I believe it would (and should) be political suicide to increase the H-1B visa quota. Employers, and our government, should recognize the enormous return that investment in human capital brings. Cost is not the only issue of competitiveness, but also quality, speed, and reliability. Shortcomings in these areas reflect the poor quality of management in many businesses, which the rush to increase H-1B does nothing to address, but suppress. It is unfair and anti-free market to simply change the rules of the market in your favor, when the market says that you are investing too little in human capital. Human capital is never too expensive, let the market pricing of labor work as it should. Education and training of workers is key to this nation's future, and businesses cannot simply shirk their responsibility for short term gains.
From T Lee, San Francisco, CA I'm an H1-B worker in America and I believe that the cap should NOT be increased – Education strategies should be put in place and sponsorship/funding of students increased. I am sure there are many Americans who could easily get "highly skilled" but do not do so due to their circumstances.
I also believe that conversion of Workers into Greencards is a very big incentive to lure us here. If that was disallowed, foreign workers would not come here. Maybe some hi-tech jobs would go overseas but not all of them!
1. Decrease H1 visas
2. Disallow conversion of H1 to Green Cards.
3. Increase spend for education.
Thanks – Tim.
From Sam Jones, Dallas Tx No. If you are going to write an article on this subject, at least do the research. Too many of the yearly allotment of H1Bs go to Indian companies where they are used to facilitate outsourcing offshore. Restrict these Visas to American Companies and to foreign employees with advanced skills and degrees. How many Visas did Microsoft and other American tech companies apply for and use last year? How many were used by Indian companies. If you did the research yourself instead of just repeating the talking points put out by the corporate mouthpieces, this would be much different article.
From Muhammad Sheikh, Chicago, IL I am an international student from Pakistan who has been in the U.S. since 2000. I did my undergraduate and am almost done with my Masters in Business Administration. And I am NOT a 'Techie', 'Computer Science Major' or whatever…I am a Finance person.
For the past three years now, after completing my undergraduate degree in Economics at one of the most prestigious institutes in this country, I have still not been able to find stable employment because of the way these H-1Bs are snatched away within a few days of their arrival.
I am not going to offend anyone here but I do feel that American workers have this overbloated sense of entitlement and just like American policies in foreign countries, they seek to allocate blame on others for their failures, instead of their own inabilities.
To get an H-1B worker is not that easy – it requires a lot of expenses that I am sure American firms will happily forego. They are not charity organizations – they only hire H-1Bs because the quality of work outweighs the expenses (be that cost of visa processing, communication inabilities or other cultural phenomenon).
But then, as I said, I am not a Techie. I am not even Indian. The H-1B has to be considered beyond these typical demographics.
Here is my problem. I am not taking jobs from an American or anyone else. I get a position because they like my work and personality. And yet, I cannot work for them because of my visa status. In fact right now, I am employed and I still cannot work at my company because of these ridiculously painful visa restrictions on people who actually follow the immigration rules.
Sometimes I wonder whether I should have just crossed the border from Mexico or something.
Anyways, just remember that those American firms who do not hire American citizens for their 'tech' work might still not hire all of you who think their god-gifted right to a 100K job with benefits had been taken by foreigners…they might just outsource. You are better off pulling your act together…Now or never
From Anonymous Yes! All of you are simply afraid of competition because you dont want to compete. You know that you will be loose the competition in the fair way so you scrutinize a program that has offered many economic benefits. Those of you unemployed, become better at what you do and find a job rather than being so scared of competition. Capitalism drives this nation, not mediocrity!
From Kevin HoustonTexas Hi from Texas,
I'm a SAP ABAP programmer in Texas and I've been working with with many Indians as well as other guys from many countries, 90% of them are from foreign countries like India, China…
The American demand for IT and high tech works are so big that 65,000 h1 is just a very small number, did you guys see how many company had to go to developing countries and hired the labors there?
Did any of you read the book "THE WORLD is FLAT"? Yes, the world is becoming flat and maybe "already" flat, if we (Americans) don't update our knowledge and keep sleeping on the so-called "USA< we are the champion". One day, when you wake up, your job will be taken by another guy living in China or India.
So, what's a big deal here? it's OUTSOURCING, labors working in foreign counties can not bring tax and money for our "beloved" government, and take your jobs away, big companies has to do it because it's cheap, that's it. And also, it brings US dollars to their countries, do you know how much US dollar in cash that Chinese government is holding?
But think about this, H1 workers work in the US, and they have no benefit from the Government, no SSI, no welfare, but they still pay TAX, isn't it good for our countries?
Trust me, if you CAP the H1B Visas, outsourcing is the answer of the solution for US labor demand, we can't change it, but we can to make it better.
When I talk to most native born Americans, they said "I ain't know nothing about Coding, or I rather working in a sale team or Walmart". That's the truth.
Besides, Australia and Canadas has programs for talented people who can stay after they finish their degree, and they can even get PR (permanent resident) if they can prove they have good skills, the US as the matter of fact is LOOSING GREY MATTER and importing so many people who can not speak a single word of English but got married to US citizens.
Time to think about it guys, for a better USA
From Matt, Phoenix, AZ NO, absolutely NOT. Increasing the cap will not help, it is actually worsen.
First, it drives American tech workers wage down and increase unemployment. Who say this won't affect economy? It will turn around and affect the same companies that try to cut cost in the first place.
No one wins except for the foreign workers who later decide to go back to their own country and run their own companies. America high tech companies (or America economy) will be now be doom.
From Jeff, Michigan Absolutely NOT! How many more careers and jobs are we going to give away? It is time to take care of Americans! All NAFTA has done is create more profits for the corporations and more unemployment for the middle class.
From Bharath, San Jose, CA This whole issue is because of brainless people at the top dealing with it.
I am a foreigner who has Masters in Computer Science in US. I spent good amount of money for that.
I got H1-B. I work for 6-7 years and if US do not give GREEN CARD or H1-B ..who cares i go back to my home land.
I got the education, experience and can easily contribute to my country economy if US does not treat me well.
US should be looking at me as a good investment and should make stay here by making green card process easier for people atleast who have done higher degree here. I also contribute so much to the US economy and if they treat me the same way with some other foreign worker imported through this bogus big consulting firms…it is not fair for me.
SO if US does not spare a thought to different people falling under the sam e category…trust me..5-10 years down the lane…you will see the reverse brain drain ( i guess this is already happening )
Salaries issue is BS.
Most of the foreign workers are not good enough at negotiating in the first place. Some do not have proper skill set compared to US geeks. SO their is obvious difference in pay.
Say if you have foreign worker and us guy with the same skill and experience..they definitely get paid in almost the same range.
Brainless people at top should think logically.
If the same continues…it is basically you are making foreign worker much more skillful and expert which he/she would use the skills back in home country.
My 2 cents to the whole BS
From Ben, Minneapolis It is a no brainer to increase the H1B. We have no problem having manufacturing industry in the US compete with the rest of the world through close to 0 tarrif rates. Why should manufacturing companies have to fight the competition with their hands tied behind their backs? Just because the white collared employees are able to kick up a fuss about "dragging wages down"! In a labor market as huge as the US, 190,000 H1Bs are a drop in the ocean. Very few Americans are going in to Science, Technology, Engineering and Math higher education. Most such programs have foreigners. Now to have these people get educated here and then do an OPT/work experience and go back and compete against us? That is really stupid. It is time the politicians did what is right for the country and not give in to these noisy whinners.
From Delaney, NC No need for more. I have been a contractor for a several Fortune 500
companies doing project work. The lesson always learned that I saw after hirings of large numbers of these H1B visa holders is 'you get what you pay for'. Poor communication, lack of real talent.
It may look good on paper, but it ends up costing far more that it was worth with companies picking back up the people they let go to replace them with the H1B's.
From Gareth Frykman Elk River MN I think H1-B visas should be extended to doctors, lawyers and dentists as well. I cant find a doctor who will see me for 5 minutes for less that 100 bucks. A root canal is simply unobtainable unless you are prepared to bid up the cost to uncompetativre levels.
That brings me to government workers. I should think that judgeing from what we are forced to pay for mediocre paper shuffling that there exists a severe shortage of bureaucrats. Alternativley we could be outsourcing government and give the taxpayers much needed relief.
From Craig Tucson AZ No! I work at a place that had all Americans, and some offshore
contracters. About a 10/1 ratio. It is now the opposite, 10 offshore and
one American. They can be easily intimidated into working
extra hours for
free or they may not get "renewed". They also need additional time off
and resources (lawyers) to tend to their H1B requirements. These is never
counted into their salary expense. They often do not celebrate American
traditions, so Christmas decorating was dropped as it was considered
insulting. What hurts the most is statements like "Americans are stupid,
you don't see our country hiring foreigners while our people go without
jobs!" Business is behind it as they qualify all jobs as "Masters
Degree Required". Does a Masters from an offshore country where degrees
can be purchased count? Higher then my BA from an American
University? Thank you for allowing me to comment.
From JM, San Francisco, CA Do not be misled by all this anti-h-1b posting here. These are all IT workers who are just looking out for themselves and not for America. They just want to make a little more money at the expense of ordinary Americans like you and me.
Ususally, these are the same people who never miss a chance to pay for foreign goods that undercut similar American-made goods. We should not tolerate this level of sense of entitlement among these IT workers. I say bring in as many h-1b s as needed as long as they can find a job here. i don't care about IT workers (American or not) but I want my computers cheaper.
From Robert Pressey, Gisborne NZ The only shortage is 20 something, single it workers with master degrees willing to work 80 hours a week for $30,000. Ask any it worker (or former it worker like me) over 40.
From Eric, Princeton NJ Why can’t politicians outsource their own professions (Law Degree professional) to India or China?
From Joe Roberts, San Jose, CA No more H1-B visas. Companies do not want to pay a fair price for American workers. They just want cheap foreign workers.
Politicians should be more concerned about preserving American jobs than with providing cheap workers for business.
From HOUSTON, TEXAS BOTH POLITICAL PARTIES HAVE KNOWN THE TRUTH FOR YEARS, AND THEY ARE OWNED BY THE BIG U.S. CORPORATIONS. THE ONLY REASON FOR THE H1B VISA EMPLOYEES IS FOR CHEEP LABOR. I CAN'T FIND EMPLOYMENT THAT PAYS WHAT IT USED TO PAY..
From Siddhartha, Palo Alto, CA The answer to this question is the same as the answer to – "Does the U.S. economy benefit from increasing the H-1B visa cap or not?". Public policy should be influenced by the social benefit to the country and not the private benefit to individuals. I can understand that from the perspective of American tech workers, more competition cannot be good for wage growth or job stability. Businesses on the other hand would like to keep the supply equal to or slightly more than the quantity demanded to keep wages stable in order to produce more at lower costs. Both are correct from their point of view. From an economic perspective, we should analyze if the U.S. economy benefits from lower prices for the software products. American tech workers form 3% of the work force. Nearly 100% of American citizens directly or indirectly benefit from lower prices for software products. I think it should be an easy call for the public policy makers.
From Caroline, Washington DC I'm a highly skilled H1B worker with Masters Degree and the like in a very specialized field. I make 115K/year and my current position was open for about a year with no suitable candidates applying. I don't believe this is depressing wages in any way and I think this is a genuine case where the company had no other way out. So be careful with generalizations.
From Tom Thousand Oaks, CA Everyone talks about the Coporation. The coporations are made up people who happen to be your neighbor. The decay is within the enterprise. As for the H1B workers, most are trying to make a living like the rest of us. What is needed, is the other countries of the world look within themselves and quit relying on America for a financial bailout…
From LT – Irvine, CA Without a doubt, NO… Do we have to reduce income more in this country for the actual working class. At some point, these same people will be needed to purchase these products, and these (now consumers) will not be able to feed the system. At that point the system (America) will fail. Why are there so many American businesses trying to destroy what has made America what it is, the strongest nation in the world?
From Dave C, Minneapolis, Minnesota No!! I know tech people that left IT all together after Y2K because they couldn't get jobs…and now they try to get back in and they say they have been out too long!!
Also, why do you think american students are studying IT?. Because the perception is their jobs will be outsourced!!!
From Sam – Portland, Oregon Regardless of the number of foreign workers we hire to work for American companies, we need to put more efforts into improving our educational system so that our kids can learn higher levels of math and science at a younger age.
In the meanwhile, allowing foreign workers to work for us actually generates more economic activities in the US as a whole. If you could locate the 100 top scientists in the world, wouldn't you want them to come work for us in the U.S. inventing products for us as opposed to a competitor in Europe or Asia?
Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither is the next generation of the Intel chip.
From Anonymous Sure the "competition for these people … is insane"…. that is for those non citizens that work for much lower salaries.
If we forced the visa level even lower the educational system would be forced to turn out a higher quality product here at home…. and more Americans could earn an acceptable standard of living. I have lived and hired s/w engineers in California and Oklahoma…. I do not see a shortage of truly talented people (when you pay a fair wage).
From allison Jones, germantown, md I came to this country on H1B. Got the GC in 3 1/2 years, now have applied for citizenship.
I do not feel any gratitude towards my former employer. I feel that the visa and gc sponsorship was not a handout. They benefited from it and did it for personal gain.
The world is for everybody. I was surprised when I arrived at how much I had to put up with to get through the process, even now I am not sure if I would do it again. Fortunately it is now behind us.
It definitely was no walk in the park.
From Debbie, Portland, OR Yes. I personally came to the US on H-1B visa as the company I currently work was not able to find a candidate with the right skill set from the local market. This is years ago, I am a Green Card holder now, with a Western European passport. Note that I do not work in IT.
During my years in corporate America I have hired dozens of people, many of them entry level or mid level professionals for analytical work. Often times the pool of applicants is very poor, number of qualified candidates is very small and salary requirements are unbelievable in correlation on experience. We very rarely hire from abroad, but some positions have been moved to other countries to actually get the work done.
H1B is not always about low salaries and ignoring American applicants, it can also be about bringing in fresh talent. Government requirements must have clear rules about salary information etc. This should be one of the best way of bringing new people to the US, the kind of people this country needs.
Note that all H1B's are people with at least college degrees (except for models, which are in the same category, don't ask me why). These are people who will move in, buy cars and houses, travel, shop and eat out, pay taxes, start companies, manage companies and hire Americans. If you feel threathened by this group of people, maybe your skill set is not up to date or your expectations for your value are too high.
The solution is to not hire semi-qualified people for ridiculous salaries, but to move these jobs elsewhere. So by stopping the H1B process we will not create jobs for Americans, and the economy will also take a larger hit.
From Gwen Nguyen, Houston, Texas A BIG YES. American workers should be "rushing to gain the skills" instead of sitting there and complaining and shooing away competitiveness. While foreign workers are fighting hard to gain top scores at college and update the hottest skills in the market, is it fair that they should face discrimination by the people who think they do not have to just because they were born in the US? Living in an almost flat world nowadays, only true talents will be rewarded not the priviledges of having been born on the U.S land. And after all, where did the majority of the so called native Americans originaly come from anyway?
Take Australia for an example. You got to be real good at school, at work, and add great value to the society to be a permanent resident. Why do we spend so much time buzzing over the legalization of millions of Hispanic labor workers but hesitate to raise a few thousands more on the cap of H1B visas to bring in the brains of the world who will also pay tax big time to feed the welfare system that only the Americans are enjoying?
So Americans, if you think you're good enough, let's play it fair.
From K, haque, Phoenix, AZ Congress should not increase H1B visa.
Shortage of skilled worker in USA is a myth created by corrupt businessmen.
From Pat, Kansas City, MO No more H1-B visas>/b>. I've taught in a Computer Science program
for 30 years. I saw how students flocked to CS and IT degree programs in the '90s as salaries skyrocketed.
Let employers pay competitive salaries and the shortage of IT workers will evaporate. Unless we invest in US workers, we'll continue to fall further behind.
Any shortage of IT workers is economically-based and will be short
lived if salaries increase.
From John, Santa Cruz, CA Silicon Valley has only recently regained the total number of jobs which it had in 1997 (zero net job growth in 10 years!). Among the 200,000 jobs (and people) lost during the bust, many are retired/semi-retired/under-employed. Yet companies prefer to recruit lower-cost indentured H1-B servants from overseas rather than rehiring these older american workers. They can then force mandatory unpaid overtime on these servants and threaten them with deportation if they squawk. The H1-B program at a minimum must allow the participants to easily transfer to another employer. It must also end the body-shops which function as temporary empoyment agencies and pay their workers substandard wages. Wages for tech workers have lagged inflation over the last 5 years due to out-sourcing. Many people have left the field due to poor working conditions and no job security. The worker shortage can be easily resolved with better working conditions (end unpaid mandatory overtime) and improved job security (end rampant out-sourcing).
From F.Redding – Los Angeles, CA Absolutely Not … How can it be that in this country we have so much talent out of work in the tech sector?? Rather than propagating the "race to the bottom" in this country, perhaps Hiring Professionals and their Supervisors ought to consider actually paying for home-grown talent of which there are legions.
From John M., Chicago, IL We should not raise the cap on H1B visas. We should start phasing out this program over 5-7 years. At the same time we need to upgrade our technical education programs as well as implement programs to interest high school and jr high students in technology careers.
If we allow an increased flow of H1B immigrants, we will reduce the incentives to enter tech careers for U.S. Students. Who wants to graduate with $100K in debt to compete with $30K per year programmers?
What we need is an H1B program for CEOs and other super high priced talent. Think about how much companies could save if they brought in CEOs from overseas instead of paying Americans these robber baron salaries.
From John Watson This is a charade, a scam really. I work in this field and the problem is not a lack of skilled workers; it is an unwillingness by companies to pay a fair wage to American workers. The IT profession in the US is being systematically destroyed by firms like Satyam and Infosys and the American companies that use their services. There are many qualified US IT workers who are unemployed thanks to H1-B Visas.
From David Wu This may not be a long term solution, but in short term, this is definitely something we have to do.
One important reason that led to the prosperity we have today in America is because of good policy we had for immigration, so that many top talents (of course not every one is as heavy weight as Albert Eistein) migrated from all of the world to this country.
If America wants to continue the prosperity, a few tens of thousand top talent a year shouldn't be a problem, as we always have 10 times if not more low skilled workers illegally get into the country every year.
Because of the global economy and ease of moving around, like the article says, if we cannot keep them here, they will work for our rivals.
Some people mentions it is the greed which drives the company to hire forein talents, I would say it is the greed nature of the capital or say the the money itself that is behind the sceen. A good investment theoretically is mesured by the higher return.
It is the previous prosperity that provides us the higher income than the rest of the world, if we loose the talent to our competitors, we will eventually lose any advantage we have today, 10-20k higher dollar amount will not mean anything if the dollar depreciate enough.
With above said, for those companies trying to hire foreign talents, their choice would be either hire H1B in a small amount that satisfy the need or if it is really in big amount, they would have to move the whole job overseas as you may see so much nowadays. Those companies know their choices and will do what needed to make the investor happy and your 401k may depend on it.
I am foreign born IT worker and first generation immigrant. People like me only represent very small population in the whole work force and we are doing a lot more compare to my fellow americans to get the same return. Compare to the rest of the world, America is a more fair country which respects the effort people make, why this time it is different?
From Stephen,NM I originally come over to the US on a L-1 visa and brought a lot of skill and talent with me. I pay taxes here, I got married here and now have a wonderful young child. I look around and find myself adding more to this great economy than a lot of citizens. I bought a house, a car, invest in my retirement, I buy groceries, support my local charities, pay taxes, and now am raising a child who one day will be successful in the endeavour that they choose. Viva America! The only country where you can choose to be poor or choose to be rich!..and a country smart enough to want to pick the brightest minds from other countries…
From Mike, Montgomery, Alabama NO!!! NO!!! This is not needed. I have seen a lot of foreign workers in Montgomery, Alabama, doing jobs I would like. And most of time doing jobs that are never advertised local. Cheap foreign labor is why companies like and want this.
From Danny Keton, Dallas, TX Hell no! And we should boycott corporations (eg, MICROSOFT) that advocate the destruction of our high technology jobs through outsourcing, offshoring, or hiring H1B's. We as a group (IT) need to get organized and take this fight to Congress, because it looks like we're losing.
From Andrew Dallas, Framingham, MA This drives me up a wall.
Previous to 2001, there were many foreign workers in technology working in the US. As those workers developed business rleaitons, they were able to take work back to their home countries. In 2001 there was a huge boom in offshore outsourcing. Many engineers lost their jobs offshore while our country was recovering from the bubble burst and 9/11.
Years later, many of those engineers were unable to find employment as their skills had not been kept up to date. Further, joobs in the technology (IT/programming) sector have not recovered to points where the jobs are attractive to smart students entering the final years of their education.
So now what is proposed, by business, is that more opportunity is made to immediately employ more foreign workers. Why not look at the only slightly longer term solution of ensuring the jobs are attractive to US workers. This would also help to bring back the brain drain that has been going on for the past few years. I'm all for the capitalist system and feel the US would be a more productive and competitive nation if the easy answer of cheap labor was not an option.
From Jake, Indianapolis, Indiana No. The cap for H-1B visas should not be increased. If anything, it should be decreased so that the college graduates with IT degrees we are producing in this country can actually find work in IT versus waiting tables. When is America going to wake up? Sooner or later, we'll all be peasants working for executives and they'll be the only ones with a good quality of life. The working class people of the U.S. need to fight for their way of life. It is no different fighting for a way of life in Iraq or fighting for it right here.
From Larry Brown, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida What a sickening feeling to read the original "News" story and then to read the FACTS in the feedback forum: Corporate greed, governing officials' greed–what you wanna bet the Visa allotments are upped? The reporters sit at the knees of the Eva Perons running U.S. corporations and the elected officials who do their bidding (for a price, of course) to gather their "Facts" for publication, or airing. Greed wins.
From Wang Yu, Baltimore, MD I strongly believe that my opinion is biased and so is everybody else. In my opinion, H1-B workers are better than outsourcing in the sense that they pay Tax to U.S. Such tax can be used to educate U.S. work force or anything else U.S. people vote for. In fact, any immigrant who is paying tax at above national average should be granted not only H1-B, but green card or citizenship if they choose to do it lawfully, period.
From J. C. Teller In short: Absolutely not. Both my wife and I have over 40 years combined experience in the IT arena, and we've worked as developers, project managers, team leads, DBAs, business analysts. We have never seen such utter lack of competence in the IT world since the onslaught of cheap Indian labor in the late 90's and right after the Y2K crisis.
Many of these Indian H1B developers' resumes are filled with outright lies; they regularly claim they have certification and experience orders of magnitude above what they actually have; and worst of all, in many cases, they are literally impossible to understand because of language difficulties, making project work a nightmare.
Most of this is cultural, unfortunately: In India, Pakistan, and China, there is no concept of intellectual property, and there is also massive corruption that influences everyday life. So it's totally acceptable to embellish by 20% or 50% because everyone else around you is doing it.
Put that same person in an American setting, and the lack of coding quality, understanding of simple American and European business principles, and – most importantly – the ability to act intuitively without any direct management simply evaporates.
The reason for this mess, pure and simple: After Y2K, contractors were charging outrageously high rates for coding and development, and IT departments were reeling from those costs. Rather than solve the problem – hiring only the best workers, training the substandard ones to become better, and simply flushing the rest – the Indians showed up with promises of being able to do the work for 20% of the cost. American CFOs and freshly-minted MBAs saw this as a chance to regain control of these costs, figuring that even if the offshored resource screws it up four times, they were still ahead of the game in terms of cost.
What needs to happen, unfortuately, is a major disaster, either from a security / data loss standpoint, or the loss of a major center of Indian computing. (After all, Pakistan hates India, and vice versa … and they both do have nuclear weapons, right?) And then it's time to call all the junior MBAs on the carpet and start rolling heads down the hallway. I have a bevy of American friends who understand how to benefit from this … and we're just waiting for the show to start. Keep watching – it's gonna be an interesting end to this decade!
From Rajeev, San Francisco, CA If Companies won't find workers they will outsource jobs. So either increase H1Bs or see jobs outsourced and as a result see Americans loose more jobs. Period.
From Rob, Atlanta, GA They should not increase the number of H1B. They should simplify the green card process once an H1B is obtained though. Is it a coincidence that between 2001 and 2003 when H1Bs were at an all time high I was out of work because I wouldn't take a 75% pay cut? H1B workers have severely decreased the pay in the software industry and has forced many talented software developers to seek out other professions. I still do not make as much money as I made in 2000, although I have improved my skill and am considered an expert in my craft. If corporations would stop trying to pay pennies on the dollar for talent, and could properly understand and recognize real talent we would not have this issue.
From Anonymous, Herndon, VA I am an employee on H1 visa working in the US since the last 4 yrs – I believe the h1 cap should not be raised and instead limits should be placed on individual companies that hire the h-1s. If you look at the data published by DOL, its the big outsourcers – both local and international, that buy up most of the H1 visas – that is why small businesses cannot hire them. Also most of the small businesses in the US that actively hire H1s are body shops. Companies like EDS, Accenture, Infosys and Wipro order up 5000 visas each year. This should be limited. Most of these companies are buying H1s to hedge against their competition. If they don't book their H1s, someone else will since there are limited numbers to go around. Moreover, these H1 holders don't stay in the US and settle down – they are here for short stints only to coordinate offshore work. They basically help accelerate off-shoring of jobs and that is the most dangerous thing for the US in the long term.
From jim snitil, Broadview heights Ohio In my ten years in the consulting services realm, I've seen some of the best developers, team leads and business analysts come through the H1B program. That said, some of the worst have come through the program as well, with a much larger percentage of the latter. In Northeast Ohio, some of the best and brightest NON H1B types who haven't left town now find themselves hunkered down in an in-house job, many limiting themselves in terms of professional growth as a fair trade off for a regular paycheck. We seem less concerned about figuring out why our colleges can't get interest in IT for incoming students and we don't seem to care when we layoff IT types with solid skills because what, we'll just get them from China? Thankfully, most H1B applicants don't come with lead based paint, but it is still problematic. Increasing the limit doesn't fix the problem which stems from companies not being willing to pay a fair wage for someone with solid skills. We can all wave the "I need to hire H1B types to be competitive, but then, that kind of illustrates the death spiral we are in if we don't grow some of our at home!
From SAM, Detroit, MI Foreign worker should be allowed H1 visa if they get a MS/PHD degree from the US. 12 years back hardly any foreign workers with foreign degree were allowed H1. Companies got greedy and lobbied for cheap labor. Shortage of IT workers is BS !!!
From Denver, CO Companies that use H-1Bs should be required to pay a 'fee' per head of say $10K that can be used for a scholarship fund in the field of the H-1B worker is coming in on.
Relying on foreign high tech labor is rediculous. There has to another hidden agenda for which foreign labor is being exploited.
It is unfortunate that I have to advise my kids to pursue a career other than in technology. Its bad enough that many of the technical work is sent offshore, its insulting to bring in and rely on foreign workers.
My personal experience has been mixed. I have personally experienced language barriers. Its to the point now that when I call a customer service line, that if the person answering doesn't speak fluent in English, I hang up and try again in the hopes of getting someone I can understand.
H-1Bs is only throwing more fuel on the fire. Why is it other countries can educate people in the technical filed but the USa can't? Answer that question and you might find the source of the problem.
From avinash No!!.
Background: an immigrant working on h1-B for last 2yrs.
Though i am on other side of the road, i agree, H1-B visa people are paid lower, its cost cutting and off shoring strategy.
who benefits: the american corporates who cut their expences. and the Indian, chinese companies who act as middle man and hold the H1-B visa. Half of my contract money goes into their pocket. On the other hand most of the american companies dont want to hire h1-b. they want them as contracters, just to evade the cost!!!!
who loses:
We immigrants are payed less. we dont get social security, even though we pay taxes. no medicare. no benefits. half of our earlings goes to the visa holder.
US citizen, who are suffering this cost cutting.
who is benefitted:
US corporates
offshoring companis
Feds..
If there is short of skilled labours i suggest permanent residency should be increased where we immigrants and the US citizens both play at same field and none of us would be penalized.but it won't hapen. It capitalist country!! no one cares for the common man!!!!
From Holly, Seattle WA I am on H1 (from India) and i myself feel there is enough of H1 already. It would have been good if companies had done due dilience in recruiting good candidates. There is a lot of talent pool already in USA, I dont think adding more will be of any use. I would say utlizing the current H1 pool properly itself would be great. Also companies that are trying to bypass by using L1 and setting shops in Canada , might have a bad effect … most people recruited from outside are usually freshers i guess … Anyways my suggestion, make it 30,000.
From Anonymous Should get rid of H1-B visa and employment green cards and send everyone back to where ever they came from to show American self reliance.
From Kramer, Houston, TX NO!! American jobs are for Americans here. Companies are trying to get cheap lobor and not investing in training the locals if specific skills are needed to do the job.
Computer Science enrollment is going down and down every year in this country. Tomorrow what, our kids will go and work in foreign countries. This is not the America I dreamed for!!
From J Magnano Stroudsburg Pa Absolutely NOT!!! There is no shortage of IT workers in the US. US Companies won't even look at you unless you want to work for 'offshore' wages. This is just forced 'globalization' of American workers to get used to 3rd world billing rates. More lies from a corrupt, fascist administration that loves the corporations and hates the workers.
From Jim, Seattle, Washington We should not add more H-1B visas as we have enough competition for jobs on American soil as it is – especially with more and more jobs being off-shored.
My credentials – I work for a Fortune 500 Financial institution in its IT division, and am as high as you can go without being a manager. (They asked, I politely declined).
I can personally attest that H-1B's ARE driving down salaries in our IT division.
But even more than that, we're off-shoring our division to India, Costa Rica, etc.
I have personally off-shored two departments – basically staying one step ahead of the chopping block.
Today's college graduates have heard about what most of my former co-workers have been going through in an infinite variety of the same story – and that's why they're not going into sciences OR IT specifically.
Why pay $100,000 for a degree in something that's likely to be sent to India to be worked for $1,000/ year?
Why pay that $100,000 to be slotted into a job whose salary has been artificially depressed by the H-1B system?
College students are no fools and THAT'S why they're not going into the sciences.
Hate to be a cynic here – but I have additional bad news. It's called BPO. Business Process Outsourcing.
My company's lines of business have a stack of departments they want to send to BPO – additionally, send it off-shore.
Legal, human resources – whatever. (Personally, I'm a little puzzled about what field to move to once I get the axe.)
But where's the fundamental root-cause to off-shoring? Our tax system where we are not taxing off-shore companies via a sales tax.
There is no incentive to NOT off-shore.
What's the root-cause to our tax system and to the H-1B system? Our corporate (remember I work for a HUGE one) driven government.
How to remove the corrupting influence of money from corporations and rich individuals?
Disallow corporate lobbying and move to publicly funded elections.
From Bob Houston, TX NO. The process is rigged and big money is behind placing ads for workers in the US that will go unfilled – part of the process required to then look for foreign workers.
This process does nothing more than erode wages for American workers.
From Zboy Give American workers jobs back from India! And stop immigration from Third-World Latin nations. Enough is enough!
From chris U MiddleburyCT I do not believe for a second there are not high tech workers out there now, born and educated in the US. I am one of them. Hire me.
If employers cannot find workers in this country to fill the jobs, then maybe they left the field due to layoffs or the lack of high tech jobs.
I firmly believe this outsourcing will only serve to damage the US in the long run.
From Nobel DuBrno Yes. I would rather import foriegn workers than send our factories overseas. At least these immigrant will be paying taxes and spending their money in our economey. We need to adjust to progress created by global economies.
From Pad, Poughkeepsie, NY The demand for high-skilled labor doesn't meet the local supply. Thats the reason why companies are hiring foreign workers on temporary visa (H1B). Needless to say that the professionals in demand are from all disciplines and not just IT. They are scientist, engineers, Professors,etc.
Companies have to do products thats what it keeps them going. If they cannot find local workforce and if they cannot bring in workforce; then they are forced to move the product development abroad (outsource). H1B program also helps US to retain foreign students who graduate from US universities by providing them with temporary work permit. H1B visas does provide value addition to the US workforce by bringing in the best workforce from the world and hence US should grant enough H1B visas to keep the US economy competetive.
From Aaron Schon, Cambridge MA I would add – of course there are co.s that exploit the H1b visa and candidates here on false credentials. Just like there are American programmers who tell tall tales on their resumes and credentials. But the vast majority are well qualified and do a great job for the US economy. I agree the system needs reform to better verify foreign qualifications and salaries etc.
From Ted, Cape Canaveral, Florida Americans are not rushing to get technical degrees they say.
Well, if there was actually a JOB for an american technical worker and a company that wanted him/her I suppose more students would start to enroll.
But rather than work on that problem we put a "quick fix" solution in place that HURTS US LONG TERM! What is the MATTER with our congress????!?!!?!
Where is the STATESMANSHIP of old? How about some GUMPTION to stand up and do what is right, because it is right, and then to do it right.
From Jon Heretic, Stamford, CT I work in IT at a large American company that aggressively sends jobs overseas and hires as many H1B Visas as they possibly can. This is definitely about salary, not about skills. Companies want *cheap* skills, the cheaper the better, even if these cheaper workers often come with enormous challenges, such as poor communication or English language skills, lack of discipline and experience, lack of independent thinking, and awkward timezones logistics.
American companies are still actively laying off at regular intervals (best for avoiding the WARN Act) skilled American workers and replacing them with often less skilled foreign works who will work for a fraction of the cost. Most H1B Visas are not PhDs in the top of their fields but low level, inexperienced grunts fresh out of college.
In an age where CEOs are paid exorbitant salaries/benefits because that is the "going rate" for individuals with their so-called abilities/skills, the self same companies want to pay engineers, programmers and scientists as little as possible, and H1B Visas are a way to achieve this goal. The going rate is too high, in companies view, and globalization is a way to get more for less. If anything, there is probably a glut of American talent in IT.
If American companies really want more Americans to have the skills they need, they need to let the market work for them by offering better jobs to skilled Americans. This means better pay, benefits, and even job security (if you really are a valued skill in your company, why should you need to worry quarter to quarter about whether your job will sent off to India that quarter?). When the market rewards workers accordingly, it is rewarded with talented individuals that would have otherwise gone into law, medicine, MBAs or otherwise. But when companies can find super cheap, lower skilled workers in our global economy, Americans will flee those positions like they are poison and obtain training in fields where the return on their educational investment (easily 9 years post high school for a PhD) will have a better chance of a return.
I can hear it now in the media — "IT – more jobs Americans don't want". For some reason, highly educated Americans hate jobs that suck (low pay, poor benefits,and security), imagine that. Improve pay and benefits, skilled Americans will come. But that is not what is really on here.
From BRUCE ALWAYS THE QUICK AND CHEAP FIX.THESE COMPANIES SHOULD BE TALKING TO U.S. COLLEGES ABOUT PROGRAMS TO DIRECT MORE U.S. STUDENTS INTO THESE FEILDS.
From Aaron Schon, Cambridge MA Most of the anti-H1b responders are textbook examples of armchair QBs, and usually ones who were not hired due to their own incompetence and looking for scapegoats. How many of them have actually run a company or made hiring decisions? They should stop blaming everyone but themselves. I started up a business and interviewed several "American" programmers, very few even passed a basic programming aptitude test. These are people who should not be in the industry at all.
My only refrain to such anti-H1b people is to ask them to startup their own companies and show everyone how to be a noble, benevolent, patriotic CEOs. Then try to hire people – then and only then would they have a real idea of what the situation is. Instead of the stock rants of "cheap labor" , "greedy corporations" and so on – it is supremely easy to be an armchair QB.
From ITan, Princeton, NJ Absolutely not! I have an Indian friend (a fully qualified software engineer) who is a US citizen apply for a job with a US company and his resume was tossed aside because they thought his rate was too high. The next day an Indian recruiting firm calls him and informs him that they can place him at the same company for a quarter of what he was asking for. So no, I don't think we have a lack of highly skilled workers here. What we have is an abundance of American companies who are greedy and only care about the bottom line, not the American people or the economy.
When the visa cap was raised in 2001-2003, the jobs on DICE.com went from 200k to 20k and many of my colleagues were forced out of the industry.
The possible long terms effects of getting cheaper overseas labor will diminish our middle-class tax base to a point where the US economy could start to look very much like the countries we are importing labor from, a third world country model of a population of the very rich and the very poor.
And if Bill Gates was really interested
in helping the situation, why doesn't he start a Microsoft University here in the US and make it affordable for displaced high tech workers, high school kids, college kids, Americans young and old, to learn new technologies. What is that going to do to his bottom line? A billion dollars less??? Hardly. Americans are not lazy. We work more hours and take much less time off then most of our European and Asian counterparts.
From Mark, Woodbridge, NJ yes, It should be increased. those who say no are either not seeing the bigger picture of Global economy or are afraid of competation. Moreover these are the ppl who pay taxes like social security and medicare and get none of those benefits.
From Pete Sawyer, New York, NY Perhaps there is a shortage of highly skilled workers in America. Myself being one of them and being surrounded by lots of them, I find that hard to believe.
It needs to be pointed out that it all comes down to company growth which is always reflected by company profit. It is much easier to be profitable if labor is available at a cheaper price. Basically, companies want highly skilled workers who demand less money. They demand less money because the advantage to be able to immigrate to the US weights far more than their salary. The truth is that a company may attract H1 visa workers and get away with paying them less than American citizens, but not for long. Once the H1 worker qualifies for American residency and its benefits, he/she is going to apply and then move to a company that does not sponsor foreign workers. By doing this, he/she jumps in the pool of American workers making more and open up their H1 visa spot to a new immigrant.
In summary, companies are mistaken if they think the immigrant worker will agree to work for less forever. Once they can join the correctly priced and skilled American workforce, they will leave them. It is a vicious cycle that I can see everyday. Of my 3 H1 sponsored co-workers who managed to get their American residency during the past 2 years, none of the 3 work with us anymore. They all found other jobs within 3 month. They all found jobs like mine.
From Lerry Schaftlein, Richmond VA US companys can not find qualified workers and there is not enough young students getting the degress to fill these positions.
Create an incentive to get American students to fill the positions. There are many children in this country who can not afford university cost. Who can help? Business and the Federal Government. Why don't they? Fill the need right here at home!
From MC, Richmond, VA No, our country needs a middle class to pay taxes, buy houses, educate our children, support our churches, etc. I am a career IT professional, and believe American corporations should hire American labor. Wake up America, the middle class pays your taxes, and buys your products. This H1-B program has a negative impact to the future of an American family for every authorized foreign worker. The H1-B program directly affects real wages, and indirectly affects the reduced opportunities in the IT profession.
From harry, freehold, nj In this article there is a comment about 60% of US granted PhD's going to foreign born students. This sort of statistic is true, I am sure – it was that way 30 years ago when I got my PhD in engineering. My wife is such a student – she came to the US on a Fullbright Scholarship – which is an honor awarded to about 5 students per year in her home country. You can imagine the talent level needed to qualify for that.
What the article doesn't mention is that many foreign born students are now deciding to avoid coming to the US because of draconian requirements put into place by the Department of Homeland Security in regard to reporting, travel, registration, background checks and validation. Rather than submit to these demeaning and invasive requirements these students (often the best young talent in the world) are deciding to either stay at home or go to more friendly nations for their education. You can bet that once they are done getting their PhDs they won't be applying to the US for jobs. They have the pick of the best places in the world to go to, and the US has fallen off that list.
The US had better wake up. The people that are turning away are the future Nobel Prize winners, engineers who will NOT be here to win the Presidential Medal of Technology, and the talent needed to be lead great universities.
The following URL shows how bad the situation is becoming.
In 1983 70% of publications in Physics Review came from the US. Now the number is about 20%.
From Augusto , Baltimore, MD NO!!!!! Like one of above the comments said this is a wages issue.
The truth is, the more a job pays the more people are going to apply to the job opening.
There are enough skills workers here in the U.S.
From Anonymous, Cleveland, Ohio Yes. They should increase the h1B cap to a respectable amount like 150,000. However, to limit the flow of immigrant workers the quota should be limited to foreign citizens who have studies/obtained a degree in US. The idea suggested by one of the readers of having a qualifying exam to determine the eligibility and skill set is a very sound one.This will increase the flow of only highly skilled workers.
As regards to the American fear of H1B visas…In a country of 300 million people. are Americans more affected by 150,000 skilled workers who also contribute higher taxes or 12 million illigal immigrants who enjoy the benefits of infrastructure raised by using the taxpayers money?
Do you want to lead globalization or make way for other countries like China? Choice is in your hands, America.
From TNR, Los Angeles No, Because I am an American Citizen and no one in any other country is offering me a job or visa for me to go there and work.
From Joe, Cincinnati OH The cap should not be raised. Having worked in technology for almost 12 yrs I have seen plenty of examples where H1B workers have been brought in and they have NO skills. Until they enforce the provisions of the law that require they be paid the prevailing wage and that the company cannot find a suitable local candidate, the cap should not be raised. Its open knowledge that most H1B workers are paid at least 40% less than the prevailing wage. I personally know some that were paid even less. Companies justify using H1B visas by publishing false 'job qualifications' that are so narrow and extreme that no one qualifies (even the H1B workers that eventually fill the job!). Pay the prevailing wage and there will be plenty of local workers willing to do the job. Its funny how supply and demand is cited to justify rising CEO pay but it doesn't apply to other jobs.
From A Ganguly , Irving , TX I am H1B tech worker and I think we do not need mpre H1B visas , WHAT WE NEED IS MORE GREEN CARDS. There must be stringent checks on applying for H1b visas and the companies applying them must be throughly scrutinized .65,000 is a good enough number according to me if outsourcing companes do not hog 1000's of H1b's at one go and do not let the others apply at all .
From TNR, Los Angeles With thousands of people loosing their jobs due to job cuts by companies for one reason or another. We do not need more influx of people. We should focus on job security for our current work force and retrain jobless folks in these trades. I am sure there are many thousand people who will be willing to work in this field once properly trained.
From Patriotic Dallas, TX H-1B is just another example of a system being used for a proxy war to keep wages down just like illegals are used the same for labor, all in the name of feeding corporate greed.
As our gov't continues to allow H-1B in, that is just more of reason for our next generation not to enter the IT profession.
If the people coming over on H-1Bs are so much smarter, why is it that they flee their home countries rather than trying to make it better?
If our country has become so dependent on foreign workers, then one must ask why. Why should someone enter the IT field knowing damn good and well that they'll be forced to compete with foreign labor?
H-1Bs isn't part of the solution, its part of the problem!
From sally, san diego, ca Foreign workers are a joke. I work in the IT industry and have seen jobs outsourced overseas. I won't mention the name of any country but there is one in particular that seems to thrive on "test cheating" in school in order to inflate their grades. You think I am joking? Ask anybody that has dealt with anybody from a country that starts with the letter "I". Sorry, if that sounds racist but I am talking form hard experience. Not only do you have incompetency but you also have to go around your elbow if you want to get from your pinky to your thumb. As usual, decisions about outsourcing are made by people in management that are interested in a short term solutions in order to bring up the stock price of the company.
From Stephen Arthur, Smyrna TN American business organizations have been lying for years about shortages of American Tech and Engineering workers. This greedy, self-serving sell-out of Americans to hire cheap foreigners has become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Why would American university students spend years and a great deal of money for a degree in a field that has the likely hood of being outsourced? Sometimes you do reap what you sow.
From Jeffrey R. Cohen, P.E., Keller, Texas I, like many of the people who are posting here, am a pro-immigration engineer working in the software industry. I work with people from all over the world, some are good and some are not so good, just like Americans (as determined by one's passport). I am opposed to allowing more H1-Bs.
There are 2 points I want to make. First, I have seen how the H1-B system abuse foreign-born workers. The company (not the worker) holds the visa. The worker cannot change jobs. In addition, it is not uncommon for unscrupulous employers to offer what sounds like a lot of money, but turns out to be significantly below the going (or even a fair) rate. One large company I worked for routinely paid H1-B employees 20% less than those who held green cards or were citizens. Though this is illegal, our lawyer helped us get around the problem by giving the H1-B employees what appeared to be lower skilled jobs (calling them Associate Engineers even though they had 5+ years experience. A domestic worker with that experience level would have been either a Senior Engineer or an Engineer).
The second point is that we should let the market work this out. We already use the market when the supply is greater than the demand. We accept that salaries will fall (or at least do not increase very quickly) and that people will be fired. If companies need more engineers, programmers, and nurses, they should be forced to compete for them through salaries and benefits. When salaries are high, people will enter the market (that is, go and get the required degree/training to do the job). It may take a few years, but perhaps this hiring lag will make companies less likely to have mass layoffs with the first temporary downturn.
From Bob Hayman,CT Absolutely yes. We need more H1b workers here to make sure we get projects done within our limited budgets. There are US citizens available for these job, but you know what, the high salaries demanded by these workers makes the projects uneconomical. I welcome the decision to increate H1Bs.
If we do not open our job market to foreign workers, beleive me guys, foreign markets like china, india are going to close doors to our products too.
From Peter T, Minneapolis, MN Corporations want H-1B visa workers, because they cost less than American workers who often also have to repay their student debt for the technical education they got. Fewer jobs for Americans means less incentives to study technology, which leads to further complains of the corporations about scarce American workers. I don't want to compete for work with corporate "slaves" who are chained to one job. I am for a leveled playing field where the excellent foreign workers can get Green Cards and are treated and paid as their American coworkers. Such immigration benefits all of us, not only corporations.
From Brad, Minneapolis I have worked in the IT field for over 26 years, as a programmer, engineer, project manager, and manager. In terms of IT workers, there have been some very good times in the US..plentiful jobs with decent wages. That all changed significantly in the late 90's and continues today. It's no coincidence that, that corresponds to the H1B visa program and it's ever increasing quota. Today, it is not uncommon to have people out of work for months (and many times longer) at a time.
The truth is, there are job postings, but usually at a significant pay cut. So, are corporations lying when they say there aren't skilled technical people available to fill their open positions? Technically no. But, that's like saying our government needs to allow more foreign attorney's into the country because I can't find a US born one to take my case for $15 an hour.
So, I say NO to a higher H1B qouta, this is an issue of cost cutting and corporate profits, period.
From Tom, Buffalo NY Short answer, No. We have unemployeed IT workers here in the US, problem is Corp America sees a cheap labor force and they want it regardless of the side effects.
From Sam, Sanjose, CA I am doing lot of study on American history and evolution. I just feel like educating the most un-informed and ignorant people, my 6 golden words are…
"American Business people ARE American Congress".
So do not blame the business, as they are the congress.
From Lee Brown, San Diego, CA Why would young adults in college today take the IT path? With the prospect of having your position out sourced by foreign workers? You really don't go fishing where there are no fish, do you?
From Gene, Seattle, WA I'm absolutely for the H1B increase with just one condition: all 165,000 or whatever the number is should go to replace CEO's, CFO's, CIO's and COO's of the companies requesting foreign-born skilled employees that cost substatially less.
Really, a new highly skilled CEO with international experience with a real (no bogus) resume who'd come from India would be fine with an annual compensation of $500,000 versus an American-born upper-crust Yale grad whos cost to a company could be in tens of millions of dollars. The comapny would immediately save those millions that'd go to the shareholds, R&B, re-training, etc. Isn't that a brilliant idea? The thing is to convince the shareholders that's in their best interests to do this.
Believe me guys, if such would be the proposal, not a sinlgle H1B worker would set a foot on American soil.
…or by the way, replace all lawyers too. Wouldn't be nice to get a divorce that'd cost few a few hundred bucks overall?
From Bob Harris, Ann Arbor Michigan As wages barely keep pace with inflation and middle class jobs vanish, this h1b visa nonsense is just another way to further increase corporate profits. You know that GDP goes up up up but only the top tiers get a piece. Why? Because corporate america is taking the profits and building factories in China. End of story. Hence its a death spiral of fewer businesses to provide a tax base for US schools.
Note – I see lots of commentary from CNN that 'Americans are lazy' despite your organization posting stories that the US worker is the most productive in the world. I suppose this is a way to increase the number of eyeballs.
From Dan Fraser, Costa Mesa CA IT workers? There are plenty of these. Both US and offshore. I find the biggest problem is finding skilled hardware designers. All the US born techies are going into the glamor field of software and next to no one is learning hardware design. Where I work, in our engineering dept of 5 full time people, we have 2 US citizens. The software programmer and one technician. The other three of us, including myself are H-1B holders, who got our visas pre 2006. And we have one part timer who is a US citizen.
Myself, I am a Canadian and we have an Argentinian and an Indian. We are all making full US wages and full US benefits. As well,our operations manager is English and our web site manager is Serbian, also both on H-1Bs.
The programmer from Chicago and the firmware programmer from India make exactly the same wage. Myself, the Canadian H-1B holder am the highest paid person in the department.
The point is that at least in this company, they made a solid effort to hire Americans and we still do. But while we find loads of programmers, hardware people just do not exist. It seems that with manufacturing being 80% gone from the US, interest in hardware design has gone away too.
As a result, I get 2-3 calls a week from recruiters. So while the majority of H-1B holders are IT people, it is in the area of hardware that the need is most dire. Programming can be done offshore but programming needs hardware to run on.
Our development of new products to make in the USA is badly hampered by being unable to get skilled people.
Myself, I have been in the US 6 years on a combination of TN and H-1B visas. I would apply for a green card but the regular immigration system is so bunged up, it is impossible to get a green card in a timely manner. Thus, in 4 years when my H-1B expires, I will return to Canada, taking my skills away. I would love to stay but I have no real choice in the matter.
So yes, the US does need more H-1B visas though abuse where some Indian labor contractors apply for several thousand of them has to stop.
From Mathieu, Oakland CA Don't get angry at the government for letting foreign workers in… get angry at how the government values education for folks here!
In my 12 years as an IT worker I have yet to see a company prefer a foreign worker over a US citizen. The way I see it we have a choice: either we let foreign workers do the world's IT work here, paying U.S. taxes, or those same workers can do the that work in their native countries. Offering jobs to unprepared Americans won't appease market forces… sorry.
From Robert, New York, NY With all the focus on IT workers, no one seems to realize that the H-1B category is for all professionals, including accountants, designers, attorneys, teachers, scientists, to name a few. These individuals are also shut out due to the arbitrary cap placed on H-1B petitions, fixed in 1990 prior to the boom in the IT industry. If the issue in increasing the H-1B cap is focused primarily on the IT field, why not create a separate subcategory for IT workers?
From eric, monmouth nj Importing foreign technical workers is destroying our educational system and has scared students away from the field.
US enrollment in fields like computer science has declined by 1/2 over the past several years because American students can see that there is no good future in that field. Enrollment of women in the field has declined to historic lows. Any time demand threatens to push up wages employers scream bloody murder and push to get immigrants into the US to keep wages down. As soon as the economy slows this results in a big glut and high unemployment in the field.
Also the Department of Labor has released statistics that job growth in the field of programming is likely to be below the average for the whole economy for the next several years. The last thing people currently in that field need is a flood of H1B's competing for these jobs.
If the US wants any chance of restoring the educational infrastructure for these technical fields it must act in a way to attract students to these disciplines. Opening the doors to the rest of the world is not going to get that done.
If people really believe that this field is going to be key to US economic growth they have to be ready to invest in it.
As the economies in China and India grow they will have their own internal needs for these skilled technical people. Already there are shortages in India. As that happens wages go up to what they are in other places in the world. As that happens people won't be as interested in coming to work in the US. If the US cannot educate its own citizens to do these jobs then it will have a REAL problem.
From John Cowie, Alexandria, VA Corporate leaders as well as politicians like to say they believe in the free market, but rigging the system to allow foreign workers is in fact controlling the market, i.e. regulating the supply of labor in order to put downward pressure on the cost of labor. These aforementioned leaders should "walk the talk" on free markets. H1-B visas should be eliminated and the labor rates allowed to float freely to attract students in the US into that field of study.
From Mike M. Boston, MA If the companies are that desperate for foreign high tech workers, get rid of the cap all together and add a 25K per year fee on top of each H1-B workers salary. That money would then go to reduce the cost of college for American citizens.
Then as the number of applications companies file goes up or down we'll discover the real motive for H1-B's.
From G.Y Reston Virginia Absolutly not!!! I'm a foreign born working in US and I have seen that H1b has nothing to do bringing in highly skilled staff. Actually is quite the opposite. A good percentage of people I have been working with who got sponsorship started as juniors and we had to train them.
Working ~10 years in IT sector I fully believe that H1b visas are just for lowering wages of employees, cutting benefits, more bonuses for CEOs and nothing more. Can't believe how Corporate America treats its own citiziens. I think this will hit corporate back in the future…..
From Will, Tampa, FL No! No! No!
This is another sucker punch to American Engineers and scientists.
These companies are LYING! – They only want H1B visa workers because they can pay them significantly less than American workers.
Require that they pay the same wages and watch the "need" suddenly go away.
From Rey NOOO. This is a bad joke. I am really surprised that business want cheap labor.
The article itself has business crying that they can't compete. come on….
Promote growth in the industry by not giving out H1 visas and promoting science/engineering through better paying jobs, and education. Which is the same two ways that India and China promote engineering to their students.
The Congress must stop protecting Businesses over its Citizens. Unfortunately the voice of the people will probably not be heard over the money of Businesses.
From Jeff NO, Becuase it's too difficult to distinguish who is really needed high skill worker, IT service is definitively not a high skill, Lot of indian companies are abusing H-1B to bring cheap labor to work in US as a regular basis. They are mainly in IT service.
From Jun Chan It is interesting that all comments are from US citizens but not H1B workers. I am posting here just to see if CNN actually does some filtering based on the poster.
First before everything, the rally in DC was about permanent resident status, NOT H1B. The reporter and editor of CNN did a really good job twisting the facts.
OK, here is my store as an H1B worker in the US. I came as a student in computer science and earned my MS degree in computer science. After getting degree, I landed a 70k job in Houston in a major oil company as a developer. Two years later, I lost the job during the recession and had to move to Boston for new jobs. I got another job with 70k at a major software company in Boston. Granted, it's much lower than my first offer considering I had more experience and Boston's higher living standard. But I still consider myself lucky to even have a job during the year of 2002, when almost no company sponsor H1B because too many green card holders and citizens were in market.
I worked for that company for 3 years and left. By the time I left in 2005, my salary was raised to 90K, which was not bad in Boston area. I changed two jobs in the last two years. Now I work as a software architect for a major bank with a salary of $135k with bonus.
This is my story, I started working in 2001 with a starting salary of 70k and 6 years later 135k. I am still working on H1B by the way.
So do employers hire H1B's to supress salary? I don't think so. I always earn at least the average of my colleagus if not more.
So do employers prefer H1B's to citizens? Definitely not. There are a hell lots of paper work to hire an H1B worker. During the bad times, almost all job ads has the wording 'Green card holders or citizens only', which was very hurting for a desparate job seeker. Only starting from 2005 openings available to sponsor H1B became more and more.
I have many American classmates in graduate school who were very talented. As far as I know, they all work for good companies with good salaries. None of them to my knowledge lose job due to immigrants. In graduate school, the only thing we all knew was, if you don't need a sponsorship for H1B, job offers will pile up in front of you.
I don't know what kind of people can't find a tech job if they don't need sponsorship? I once interviewed an architect position in a bank which pays 160k. Unfortunately, they won't sponsor H1B whose six years period has less than three years left, so I couldn't take the job. If I had a green card, I'd make much more than my current salary because I can apply for all jobs not only those sponsoring H1B's.
Then why so many Americans can't find a job? It's not just because employers are trying to low ball you, the inconvenient truth is, your skills may not worth as much as you had hoped. Americans tend to blame others for their own failure, and this is displayed to its full extent in all the comments above. It's time to wake up and ask yourself the question, what is the real problem?
From George Lane, Fort Lauderdale, Florida I handle H1B visas for clients across the US, and I can truly state that they would rather hire US workers. It costs a great deal of money, upfront, to bring in a foreign worker.
The problem…they just are not available. I have seen dozens of recruitment efforts for IT personnel result in one, two or three applications from US techs. Then when our clients try to hire them, they don't want to move to Florida. Or they have outdated skills and knowledge in the field, rendering them unqualified without further training.
Here in Florida, we DO have a shortage of math and science grads. Our public schools are an embarrasment when it comes to producing grads with this type of knowledge and ability. They cannot get into top schools with the preparatory training we provide in our US schools.
Recently, we had an immigrant from Colombia come to the US. Her daughter enrolled in a Coral Springs public school…speaking Spanish with just a bit of English. By the end of her first year, she was first in the school in Math on the statewide exams. Her sixth grade math from Colombia's public school system was far advanced beyond what was being taught in our public schools.
We need, as a country, to face the truth. We are deficient in math and science teaching at the public school level. Our kids are not choosing math as the subject to pursue higher education. We are not producing kids with doctorates in math and physics.
Until we change this dynamic, the US needs to bring in those from other countries who will help us keep up in innovaton. We are a knowledge based economy, having shipped all of our manufacturing to China and elsewhere. If we do not dominate the knowledge industry…meaning math and science…we will fall behind the rest of the world.
The H1B is a symbol of our complex failure in this area. It is not the cause, and it is not the panacea. It will, however, help us keep up while we solve the problem.
From Lynn Hunsicker, Raleigh NC i BELIEVE IT IS ONE MORE ASPECT OF THE GLOBAL COMPETETIVE MODEL THAT NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED.
TO STAY COMPETETIVE, AMERICAN TECHNOLOGY REQUIRES THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTESTS.
IT'S JUST A SHAME WE CAN'T PRODUCE THEM HERE!
From Russ Huebel, Texas Sure. If you wish to shrink the middle class, and increase stress, depression and alienation among American workers.
From R. McNealy Atlanta, GA, I have a Masters in Computer Science and have been recently in the job market. Almost all prospective employers are looking for someone with extensive previous experience in a specific area of expertise. If employers would put even a small portion of the money they use looking for someone from outside the country towards providing training to qualified U.S. citizens who only lack experience in the specific desired area of expertise, there would be plenty of local candidates.
From Mr. Smith, D.C. metro There shouldn't be a increase of visa. The problem is the companies are not willing to pay the wage from the supply / demand curve. They look overseas because it's "cheaper".
well you're not going to get more graduates in the tech fields and sciences from our school system, if you keep hiring overseas. It tells the kids that the tech field is for the cheap overseas labourers.
From Dennis, Dallas I am an Indian born American citizen. H-1B visas are extended in large number to people of Indian origin. My position is that we should NOT grant more H-1B visas. There is enough talent here in US, take care of the homeland first and then look elsewhere. I still have friend who lost their jobs in 2000-2001 tech meltdown and they still have not found jobs. So, cut the bull shit that you can't find engineering talent here in US. The companies don't want to pay the engineering talent in US what they are worth.
The companies simply want to hire H-1B to pay them very less and overwork them by giving these H-1B guys the hope of getting a green card someday. The companies can get these H-1B guys, pay them less and make them work 12 hours a day, seven days a week. They cannot get that kind of work out of a Green Card holder or US citizen for an extended duration.
So,the bottom line is that there is no shortage of talent in US for engineering students. Its just an excuse CEOs like Bill Gates and John Chambers use to get cheap labor from India and China.
If they are so, much concerned about lack of engineering talent in US then may be they should INVEST in American education system and introduce programs to encourage more students to enroll in engineering and computer science programs at universities.
Perhaps one of the reasons these CEOs cannot find talent here in US is because they are exporting jobs to the other countries and driving wages down and the kids coming out of high school don't believe they will have engineernig jobs in the future if the outsourcing contiues at this rate.
So, bottom line: if the American CEOs need engineering talent, find it in US or invest the $$ to develop engineering talent here in US.
WE SHOULD NOT GRANT MORE H-1B VISAS PERIOD.
From Menno Aartsen, Fredericksburg, VA This really is a non-starter discussion. There are, in high technology industries, two solutions to the workforce problem: either import the talent that is needed, or outsource the work that needs doing. For as long as the H1B cap does not allow employers to find sufficient skilled staff, the jobs they were to fill will move overseas. From my own 15+ year experience as a hiring manager with a Fortune 50 corporation, there are insufficient US-born technology workers available today. Either solution brings competitive workers to the table, and it may well be that the wage table is lowered as a consequence. This is not necessarily a bad thing – it keeps the IT industry competitive, and allows American technology based products to compete in the international marketplace.
Not adjusting the H1B cap to demand solves nothing. Raising it not only keeps jobs in the United States, but it also increases the American workforce, and the income tax dollars received by local, state and federal governments. This is, apparently, a taboo subject – foreign born workers pay tax the same as everyone else, and that should be a reason to try and limit the number of jobs that go to outsourcers.
Statistics have it that technology workers, foreign as well as native born, are big spenders, improve their local economies, and pay over the odds for services and products. We need to get beyond the petty arguments about who does what, for whom, and where, and concentrate on what is important for the American economy: work, jobs, and taxes, and do what is necessary to promote growth. If that means that American IT workers don't make as much as they did in the 1990s – tough. That's the economy, and we must not forget we increased this industry to the point where we just don't have enough labour to keep growing it.
Menno Aartsen
http://aartsen.net
From Ray, NYC It is very easy to say that foreign people are taking IT jobs away from Americans.
The truth is that they are also creating billions of wealth in the US. Just look at Google, Intel, Cisco. The number of foreigners in R&D are making these companies world leaders.
Either we increase H1B visas or we will see the big R&D centers in India, China, Ireland (yes Ireland).
From Dr. WJ Golz, Phoenix, AZ The "shortage" of American-born scientists and engineers is patently false, a contrivance of US business to satisfy the insatiable demand for cheap labor (vis a vis the child labor of late-18th Century America, the Chineses "coulees" whom brought in to build the railroads and the Mexican-American farm workers whom Cesar Chavez organized). American taxpayers are already subsidizing the eduaction of tens of thousands of foreign graduate students, whom take scholarships and stipends away from American students. Any foreign national with a graduate degree is already exempt from H1-B Visa caps. For a scholarly, referenced discussion of outsourcing and the relationship between American universities and the US Chambers of Commerce, see:
http://www.nae.edu/nae/NAEPubDisc.nsf/weblinks/NAEW-652T2C?OpenDocument
Dr. WJ Golz
From Mallam, Austin, TX YES! I don't understand why we need to limit on how many Educated and Skilled people come to our Country. I am a software engineer and I am not scared by these H1-B visa holders. My experience so far is that, they are talented and I am not afraid to compete with them.
From S Thomas, New York, NY I think that companies should be allowed to hire whoever they want. The plight of the lady who has a company in California was highlighted. Many people here say there are plenty of American tech workers. If there are, then why are the companies going the extra mile to wade through the paper nightmare created by the govt and hiring H1-Bs. The fact is that there is a serious shortage of programmers. How many American born workers can move from state to state every few months as contractors doing short term projects till it gets released? The answer is NON
From David, Des Moines, Iowa NO! Why should IT professionals have to compete with imported workers when no other industry does? Foreign workers are driving American's out of the industry.
If you can't find a worker then you're not paying the market wage.
My advice for Elizabeth Charnock:
Gee Elizabeth, maybe if you paid the market wage you'd find a worker. I can't find a car mechanic for $5 an hour or a lawyer for $20 an hour, can I use the same argument that you use and import a foreign worker at those rates?
American kids would have to be idiots to enter the only fields that requires a higher education and also allows thousands of cheap third world foreigners to be imported and drive down wages. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
From Horace Shells, Norristown, PA. Absolutely not, becasue it hinders US programmers and project managers from getting a job. Also, it lowers the salaries of many of us who have acquired at least 20 or more years experience and now how to fall back.
There should be a law protecting our high tech workers in this country or we will lose out to foreign competition.
H.S.
From Jack Percival, Phoenix, AZ NOT ONE Foreign worker, till ALL US Citizens have JOBS. If we have to Private Tutor those with learning skills, do it. Buy American, Build America, use Americans only.
From Bob Tuttle, New Haven, CT We should NOT raise the H1B limit, but rather create incentives for American workers and American companies to fill this technology gap. It is vital to our national interests that we have a strong technology force, for our economy and our security. I have been a software engineering manager for 20 years and the technology changes rappidly, but we need to encourage continuous skills upgrading for older workers, who have wisdom and project experience but may need some retraining. As a start let's ammend our tax laws so that such skill upkeep is deductible without having to cross the 2% AGI barrier.
From RDS, Marquette, MI The choice is yours. Is it better for you to have high skilled workers working in the US or in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China). Jobs go where the talent is. Case in point, Microsoft opened a development center in Vancouver, Canada because it couldnt bring workers into the US.
For years you, the US, have been preaching to the world about free-markets and capitalism. Maybe you should learn to practice what you preach. People in BRICKs are doing just that.
From Kathleen, Omaha, NE There are quite a few software development companies here in Omaha, Nebraska and I worked for more than a decade as a software development manager. While I have tried very hard to convince American girls and boys to pursue careers in computer programming, we just didn't have enough quality applicants to fill our positions. We need to do a much better job of teaching our kids about computer programming so we have more candidates but until then we need to increase the H1B visas for foreign applicants, or computer engineering and software development, which are great businesses for America, will continue to move overseas. Even if our salaries here continue to stagnate due to global competition, it is still the second highest paid job in America (to Chemical engineering) with extremely good working conditions.
From mike bradley, seattle washington this depresses wages and job opportunities in the tech fields… causes more americans to drop out of EE and other tech studies… and opens the door wide for intellignece agents to obtain access to US tech industrial know how and military technology…
how do you suppose India, Pakistan, Israel, and Red China developed and upgraded their nuclear weapons and missile programs so rapidly?
From George Grant, Virginia Beach, VA A better way to build american competencies would be to raise salaries for science and math teachers, starting in high school, and increase funding for NSF programs, which stimulate interest and competence in science courses. Too many high school math and science courses are taught by faculty without a degree in the courses taught, especially chemistry, physics, and math. Community colleges are increasingly important, since 46% of college students get their start in CC's and many make a career decision before transferring to a senior institution. More support needs to be available for bridge programs (involving research) between the CC and senior institutions before career decisions are made.
I believe that increasing H1b visas appear to be a cheaper solution to congress, but in reality acts to restrain salaries in science and results in fewer jobs for citizens because they are replaced by foreigh imports. Overuse of H1b visas does long term harm to the science base in the US and reduces the number of good paying jobs for citizens. I do believe that many employers find it financially convenient to employ more H1b workers resulting in long term costs to US workers.
From Don Voight, St. Paul MN It is not a question of supply, it is a question of money. Back in 1990 I had the displesure of working side by side with 2 overseas programmers who were paid half of what I was being paid (as a contractor). I wouldn't be surprised if some of the placement companies are resorting to kick backs or 'special discounts' for exclusive contract placements. In addition, some of these conrtactors come to the US with very little experience and get their first business experience in US companies, when we could just be training our onw work force.
From Joe Smoe Programmer NO. Why is it that all we hear when American workers are on the losing side of things is, it's a global economy, let the market take care of it. And when the worker have skills in high demand, and the companies are on the losing side of things, they simply run to the government to change the rules! I've seen most everyone on this board say there should be no increase in the H1B cap. Contact your representatives and let them know you will vote for or against them based on this issue. Don't be quiet about this, don't be PC about this. This is our profession and we need to fight for it!
Of ALL the presidential, Dem and Rep they all support increasing the H1B cap!! Let them know they are wrong. Email and call, they will listen if we make enough noise. Get involved!
Contact your representative and let them know, in this coming election, you are voting based on this issue.
http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml
From Venkat, Knoxville, TN This is total mis-representation of the fact about DC Rally. DC rally was by people screwed by their american dream and waiting for green card for over a decade. Destroy H1-B visas and employment green card and tell them to go back to their country atleast where they can establish their lives again without worrying every day about their kids continuation of education, house mortage etc.
From Anonymous The answer is NO. Additional H1B workers will drive wages down since companies will, in essence, have 'H1B slaves'. What I mean – H1B person depends on the company to keep his visa current and transfers of these visas is difficult. Therefore they are 'stuck' with a current employer who, using this dependency and, most likely, some lack of English, pays them fraction of the current rate.
The second issue – on paper these candidates looks great, but there are no way to validate that their expirience and education are valid and not obtained in the corner drugstore somewhere in Bombay.
Increasing number of H1B is a VERY BAD idea!
From Techie, Atlanta GA The reason American companies want to hire foreign workers is because they are CHEAPER. Significantly cheaper. Whether they are picking beans or answering phones the story is the same. I have been against outsourcing and visas for technology jobs since the wave of American workers started losing their jobs several years ago. It was good for corporations so the US government allowed it. The result is that more and more Americans can't afford healthcare, new homes, and new cars. So corporations who won't hire Americans are now having trouble selling products to Americans and are starting to focus on selling overseas. Eventually, wages overseaas will balance out with US wages and American tech workers will once again be in demend, despite lack of loyalty by our government.
From Rick, Portland, OR The US should absolutely NOT raise the H1-B cap, ,and should actually reduce it.
If these high-tech companies can't get the people they need in Silicon Valley, they should move to Des Moines, or the rust-belt, where there are plenty of American high-tech skills looking for employment.
From Sarah M., Rochester Hills, MI I work in an administrative position for a company that outsources most of their IT needs. The H-1B workers are almost completely useless. I, a person with absolutely zero IT experience outside of college coursework, find myself having to train these people to do the simplest of programming tasks. They think I'm a genius because I seem to know all of the answers. My secret? I type a few keywords on Google and PRESTO there's the answer!
H-1B worker resumes are absolute jokes. Everyone in our company had to draft up resumes to hand into the HR department (never a good sign), and all of the H-1B resumes were eerily similar as far as training and work experience. The American workers had to go so far as to include college coursework, overall GPA's and GPA's within our majors. (I've been out of college for 20 years.) The H-1B's got away with "Graduated with Highest Honors from a Prestigious University."
I kid you not. People think we're making this up. That's our biggest problem. Things have gotten so bad people cannot possibly believe these things are really happening.
And how about the man in my church who's son is trying to form some sort of biomedical company, and can't find any "qualified" Americans? And he tries to get H-1B candidates because no Americans want to work for his pathetic startup? And he complains because the H-1B limits are too low?
Where did we get the idea that we have an inalienable right to hang up Open for Business signs outside our doors and have unlimited numbers of highly qualified candidates pushing and shoving to be first in line to get hired?
From John McLain, New York, NY H1B-Visa's get paid "a lot" less than 10-20k/year. Corporations love them because they are cheap and "must" stay with that company for 6 years until the visa runs out. It's not slave labor, but it's only a small step above it.
As an American citizen I have now become a minority in the IT industry and often suffer from racial discrimination by forign H1-B visa holders that are technical leads on software projects.
From Brad, Denton, TX I am an american programmer analyst with thirteen years of experience. Companies use the H-1B visa to lower wages. I will never vote for any politician that supports the H-1B system.
From DR, NJ It isn't just that there aren't enough Americans graduating in the math and science fields…..
Right – and will increasing caps entice students to sacrifice time and incur great debt when job prospects are uncertain? Isn't it funny how business wants to suspend the laws of supply and demand when it is not in their favor – and notice how quick congress wants to oblige them.
I see over 90% of the recent employees at my recent employers are recent H1-Bs and very few americans are being hired. This is another case of corporations calling all the shots these days.
From aa Like everything in the world, there're bad apples on an apple tree. The question is how many.
How many of the H-1bs DO REALLY receive low wage and are treated unfairly? Any stats? 10%? 20%? 100%?
Obviously it's not 100% because the foreign born friends I know, graduated from top US universities, who work in investment banks and tech companies are VERY WELL PAID.
From Roger, Raleigh NC I have been an IT worker of many flavors since 1980. There has never been a lack of native IT workers at the right price. There is a lack of IT workers who want to work for peanuts. Is anyone surprised? I have met some laid off IT workers who are working at the local retail stores.
This is only an economic issue. Managers do not get bonuses for raising costs and this is a nation run by MBAs and CPAs.
From eprasetya, Petaluma, CA Yes, increase the H-1B visas!
If we want to stay competitive in the IT industry, then we need to do so.
My company has been trying to hire engineers for quite sometime but couldn't because of lack of expertise.
When you look at TopCoder or ACM ICPC rankings, US colleges are not that great compared to 10 years ago.
If we want to hire those smart people from Rumania, China, and Russia, then we need to increase the visas.
It's just a nature of economy. If you're not good, and you don't want to stay competitive, then you will be replaced.
From NicelyEmployed, Columbus, Ohio There should be no cap at all on worker visas.
First, because in a free country, American companies should be able to hire who they want. Well, in fact, even right now they are able to hire who they want, the H1 question only defines where this person is going to be hired, brought to the US, or hired overseas.
Second, it is well oiled myth that influx of labor results in depressed wages.Companies cannot pay a programmenr $100K a year if the programmer creates $80K value. If they increase wages without productivity growth, that would be called inflation. New workers, on the other hand, are like jet fuel for the economy – the influx of workers is creating more economic activity, which results in creation of more jobs.
Third, yes, there is a shortage of professionals in the US, and not jsut IT workers. US unemployment is lower than 5% overall and lower than 2.5% for those with college degree, which is much lower than a natural level of unemployment that allows for better flexibility in the economy. It is simply hogwash that there is a bunch of available talent out there. Don't get me wrong, there is talent out there, except it is employed.
Forth, about half of the H1s go to non-IT workers. Making it a IT issue is simply silly.
Fifth, the numbers we are talking here just make me want to laugh. The whole thing is about 35K of IT workers! You know how many people were coming to the US in the beginning of the 20th century (yes, when your grandma and grandpa came)? A million a year! And the economy was a quarter of the size of the economy now. Yet, it did not lead to lower wages, as real wages were growing like crazy during this period, and it did not lead to higher unemployment, as employment was at all time highs in the 1920s when immigration restrictions started to get implemented.
Sixth, restricting the number of work visas will simply lead to more outsourcing, and, thus, lower economic growth in the US.
From aa If we have no plan to generate more graduates with science degrees, only foreign workers can help.
Don't tell us the America-born high school grads and clueless ITT tech kids are TALENTS.
From Nate, Des Moines, IA This is absolutely about depressing IT wages. And like prior posters, I have seen HB1 workers trained on the exact skills native workers supposedly "lacked."
From Sean, Tampa, Fl NO! The raising of H-1B visas is just another (on a long list)slap on the face of American born Tech professionals. I have the "pleasure" of working directly with H-1B and offshore Indian workers on a daily basis, and it is my opinion that they are not worth the money.
Just the other day, I was walking by a group of foreign workers and over heard one of the older ones say " We are stealing their economy!"
Corporate greed will be the undoing of this country. Welcome to 3rd world status.
From T. Ricci, Canton, MA College studenst enrollment is down in Computer Science in my town at the local college, and do you want to know why? Because the students see all these foreign workers getting the jobs and the IT field is shrinking for US workers, so they study something else. It has become a self fulfilling prophecy. Bring the Foreign workers in so there is no incentive for US citizens to get into a field that is outscourced.
From himanshu,L.A.Cal. I am in India.I can see that those who fear loss of jobs or salary,are not taking global view.Excellence,is in short supply all over the world.Indian companies could not find competent person so they are paying same pay as that in u.s.and elsewhere in developed countries.I recall,H-1B visa fees were to be allocated to training more American workers.If that has not produced results,it is not small company's fault.So,make available what they need,whether it is met from within or outside u.s.American $ is sinking fast and that calls for immediate action.It may be appropriate to draw attention towards The Economist,which has invited oxford type debate on opening doors of universities to those who have merits irrespective of nationality.There is no place for nationalistic considerations in this fast globalised world
From Anonymous There are three issues here
1) H1B Quota
2) Green Cards legal skilled immigrants
3) Offshoring
Off all these 2) is about those foriegn legal immigrants who are already in USA and want to get permanent residency and work here. These will push up the salaries, bring in skilled labor where there are shortages.
From Anonymous, Ft. Myers, FL No way. It's because of this mentality that unemployment is at almost 5%. There are plenty of technical people out there to fill these jobs. The problem isn't the lack of qualified people, but rather the lack of "cheap" qualified people. Big and small business alike expect to be able to recruit well-talented individuals for bargain prices. Why would a business hire a fully qualified american and pay them the livable salary that is commensurate whith their abilities, when they can hire from overseas and offer foreign workers next to nothing in terms of compensation, which they gladly accept as it is usually an increase in pay for the foreign workers. When is our government going to stop keeping the needs of business over the needs of the people. If it wasn't for the people, they wouldn't even be there.
From Patiently Waiting, NJ In response to Eric Burgess – thanks for talking sense! Most sensible comment i've read. Other comments are just fueled by misinformation.
To h1b program has for the most part done good to the economy there is no doubt in my mind about it. It should continue till we have enough home grown talent to keep us competitive… else there will be more outsourcing… no IT jobs and no question of h1b
From Tom Boman, Hannibal, MO Do NOT increase the number of H-1B visas.
As a very wise and cynical person once said…follow the money. The issue is not one of skills, but money.
From Mary Ann Hanudel, Akron Oh Hell, no. My husband, a chemical engineer who changed careers in the 80's to IT, cannot find full time work with benefits. Why? He is 60 years old. He has excellent references but gets turned down time and again once a prospective employer sees how old he is. My husband knows math and science like the back of his hand. And now Congress wants to let these companies hire foreign IT workers? I wish Congress would let us, the American people, testify on Capitol Hill.
From 'Techie', Dallas, TX NO! The U.S. should definitely NOT increase the number of H1-B visas allowed. In fact, Congress should vote to dramatically decrease the number of H1-B visas.
I have been in the IT field for 20 years. I hold two degrees and have held a variety of IT positions over the past 20 years. There is absolutely NO shortage of trained and skilled US born citizens that have the required technical skills for these jobs. There is, however, an enormous shortage of U.S. companies that are willing to pay American technical workers the wages they deserve to be paid for these jobs.
So I say no…do not bail out U.S. companies who have refused to pay American workers the wages they deserve for these technical jobs. Congress should cut the number of visas given by 50% because there are plenty of American born citizens that want to be hired for these technical jobs and have the skills to do the work.
From Anonymous Absolutely! the US cannot survive without foreign skilled talent. Statistics show that only 13% of US citizens graduate in math and science..
From Henry Boo hoo, H1B Visa… Why not save money, time and almost guarantee good labour by hiring skilled workers from Canada through the TN-1 NAFTA Visa program?!
From Thomas Vojta, Rolla, MO There is one question most of you seem to overlook: Do we want these jobs to stay in the US or go overseas. It is obvious that frustrated employers who feel they cannot find qualified people here (for whatever reason) will at least contemplate moving the job overseas.
I agree that ideally our education system should produce enough scientists and engineers to meet the demand, but it doesn't. We can discuss at length why this is the case (why are only 13% of graduate students going into the sciences???), but even if the education system was to change today it would still take 10 to 20 years before these changes would become visible in the job market.
Finally, what's wrong with you people? America is strong because throughout the history, we have been able to attract the best people to come here and (legally) immigrate: people with education and skills, highly mobile and willing to work, just like the tech workers we are discussing now.
From blankstare, boston ma. No,no,and maybe 1 more No. This has nothing to do with skilled workers and everything to do with getting skilled workers cheap. Between outsourcing, offshoring, and H-1B visas, why would ANYONE ever go into the software business anymore?! While the demand is supposedly high, the salaries haven't moved an inch in 5 years. How can that be possible since it defies the basic laws of economics? Easy. The market is flooded with cheap labor.
The middle class is getting pushed out of the technical side of the software business because it's getting harder and harder to make a decent living at it. Sure, when you're a 26 year-old Python programmer who lives with 4 other people in Central Square, 60K is more than you could possibly spend, but it won't get too far when you're trying to buy a house or raise a family. Of course the cheap foreign labor is all an illusion. Having worked with H-1B people quite often, I've more than once pushed software out the door with a grin on my face and my fingers crossed behind my back.
From Hill, Honey Brook, PA Why don't we also outsource CEO's position also. Look how much would be added to the bottom-line
From TonyC, Atlanta, GA NO! The US should NOT increase H1-Bs. Actually, we should eliminate them altogether. My son recently graduated from college with a NON-technical degree. As a freshman, his major was IT. After looking at what is happening with the mass sell-out of the American middle class to India and China, he changed his major.
We have undercut the basic economic principle of supply and demand. If the demand is there, the supply will follow. With the export of technology jobs to foreign workers, we are seeing the quite predictable drying up of supply in our own country.
These are the MIDDLE CLASS, you remember, the ones who make this nation function.
The NFL won't even allow it's members to bet on the opposing team, yet that is exactly what corporations are doing.
From Joe Commodities Yep, VISA FRUAD, it's rampant. All those Sarbane-Oxley certifications, same old stuff. CNN isn't going to talk about the rules of competition, and how one of the most serious of offense, US identity, was circumvented by the H1Bee VISA non-enforcement program. Big amensty for corporations so that they can get a 'Real-ID' act, Sad to know that the US Constitution has been thrown overboard by a weak government.
From Donna Wurster, Dallas, Texas I agree it is all about corporate greed. I am a programmer. I was looking for training to build my skills recently when low and behold I found that this training would cost me about $10,000, but if I was in Malaysia it was free. Is that free trade and competition. We fund free education (foreign aid) in many of the countries that benefit from increases in H1B visas. Our representatives should even the playing field. Besides I don't think we want Russian programmers coding out electronic voting machines. Soon we will be held hostage by other countries because we can not keep our computers running. I wonder if the people who covered up the Homeland Security breach were US citizens.
From Ray, Haddam CT I agree with David below. H1B visas are the fastest way to export high tech jobs I know. We have hundreds of H1B visas issued to our company. Foreign nationals come over here on the visas and train to do our jobs. Then the work follows them back to their country as outsourced work. We even develop software to help them do the job. I don't mind competing on a global market for my job, but where is the competition when our company's will do anything to outsource jobs to save a buck? The FN's are supposed to be here to help us, not steal our jobs…
U.S. companies can find high tech skilled workers here, they just don't want to pay for them.
From S Being on H1B, I would suggest banning the bodyshoppers , rather than increaing the H1B Quota, Bodyshoppers in Silicon Valley and NJ apply for H1B's without even having a job in hand.If you ban those guys there would be a lot of H1B's left for companies like Intel,MS,Cisco.
From Mike Rothschild, Chicago Since it's inception, the H-1B program has reserved millions of positions for foreign workers without ever advertising these position. Are we really supposed to believe that in a country of 300 million people with millions of unemployed American technical workers- we can't find a qualified American?
From Steven, Cambridge, MA The fact that govenors in the United States are backing this effort shows once again how disconnected politicians are from the desires and need of their CITIZENS. Just look at the overwhelming responses on this blog. Improve the education system, make training more available via student loans and other programs. There is no need to raise the H-1B cap. Additionally, what happens when the visas expire. In the case of the company I work for, the "highly skilled" foreign worker took all his knowledge and went back to India, where he started a competing company! Corporations are about profit, not helping America. Raising the H1 limit is a short term band-aid that will hurt us in the long run.
From CS I am a India born US Citizen. I am in the IT field last 16 years. The whole H1B program is abused. This is especially true for the companies owned by foreigners. Majority of HIB workers falsify experience and educational background. Their communication skills are questionable.
I don't understand why wouldn't companies, such as Google, hire Graduates from US Universities and train them, instead of hiring H1B candidates with fake experience?
I notice many folks fail to notice another vexing problem. This one is worse than H1B. The major Indian IT forms such as TCS, Wipro, Cognizant bring IT workers here on L1 or B1 visa.
L1 Visa is abused more than H1B. L1 Visa is for someone for internal company work for a specific IT project. Currently there is no limit on number of L1 visas.
And moreover, H1B visa is suppose to bring people here for temprorary purpose only. But majority of them do not go back. They rather apply for Permanent residency and stay back. Thus increasing supply of IT workers in US.
H1B visa is supposed to be for 'High Tech' workers. Currently anyone with even with any kind of degree, i.e. Liberal Arts, Psychology, from india with fake experience obtain H1B Visa. Many of the companies knowingly committing this act!
From Jim S Columbus OH As a US born IT worker, I can track my salary and periods of unemployment and directly tie them to congressional decisions to raise or lower H1B visa limits. No H1B workers available? Hire an American and the extra money becomes part of the cost of doing business. H1B workers available? Then suddenly there are no qualified Americans and the business is ‘forced’ to hire them.
The reason employers select H1B workers vs. US citizens is simple: cost and having a docile, captive, compliant workforce. I’ve worked for years with H1B workers. Almost without an exception, there is a 30-60 day training period until they get ‘up to speed’ on the technology. American workers can learn just as fast except when they get the required skills, they expect market wages and can take other jobs that are willing to pay them.
For Bill Gates to sit before Congress and tell them he can’t find qualified Americans to work for Microsoft is about as convincing as tobacco executives testifying that cigarettes don’t cause cancer.
From Mike, Valdosta, Georgia Thousands of American jobs were lost with the dot com bust. Many more have been lost with mergers and downsizing. Apparently the only scarcity of workers are those willing to work for below par wages. If there is a genuine shortage then why don't we treat America's brightest youths as we do athletes by offering scholarships and pay for technical and scientific prowess along with those who have the ability to drop a ball through a hoop?
From Dave NO. Hire a US IT worker which the lack of is a total myth and the only reason these companies want more foreign workers is they are cheaper and will cost less in benefits as well.
From Boston, MA First of all software development is not painful anymore, it is not rocket science anymore. There is enough talent available in US. You do not need PhDs or genius to do this job. It is baseless to say that US need skills from outside. Companies want very very cheap labor. Quality of work is very low when it is outsourced.
From Tom, Dallas Texas No cap raises.
Companies claim that they cant find the skillset they are looking for in America. When it probably be more accurate to say we dont want to pay for an American worker who expects to live the American lifestyle. In addition to this you talk of qualifications as a reason to go offshore implying that people offshore are more qualified but the one major complaint about offshor employees is the communications gap. Perhaps when the offshore employee marked that he was qualified, he didn't understand the question and now he can hide behind the No Habla excuse.
From Anonymous Yes, of course it should! This not a bandaid solution, as many have asserted. This country (and many other Western countries) have been cranking out lawyers, MBAs and other non-scientific vocations at hugely disproportionate rates. Even though the average wage for a scientific worker has been rising meteorically the number of Americans enrolled in science education programs has risen modestly. Are Americans too lazy to go into the scientific fields or is it just not sexy enough (or both)? Until this country's youth learns that there is a much bigger need for scientists and engineers than lawyers we'll have to rely on importing the shortfall from other places to maintain our competitive edge. Otherwise, you'll start seeing the entire technology sector moving to other countries where the availability of the appropriately skilled labor is in better supply. People should stop thinking with a protectionist mentality and start looking at the big picture. The lack of a scientific intelligensia will quickly become a national security risk if it's not addressed either by producing more scientists locally or by importing the talent from abroad.
From Robert Kier, Firestone, CO Yes. I support increasing the number of H-1B visas. I am an electrical engineer with almost thirty years in the information technology field. I have never been a member of management. I have suffered layoffs and I have been forced to move more than once and now live 800 miles from my (grown) children to have good employment. I earn a good salary but I don't want to be subsidized by an artificial barrier to other people who do not happen to have been born in this geographical area called the United States of America. I will sleep better at night knowing that I am worth the salary I am being paid. The strength of this nation is based on liberty and welcoming those from outside the circle and who appreciate the bounty inherent in that liberty. Let us step up and be great. Otherwise the future of our nation and world is in doubt.
From Brian Tate Redmond, WA No, we don't need them. I have a good job, but I live less than a mile from Microsoft and have applied numerous times with no call backs. I have a BS and MBA in Computer Information Systems and nearing completion of my doctorate. We don't need these Visa'a when we already have plenty of qualified people in this country.
From Anonymous There's a line in the article that confuses me a little – "The study estimates that immigrants founded one in four of the engineering and technology companies created between 1995 and 2005." If that's the case why aren't immigrants starting more jobs where they are from and creating jobs over there?
From Joe, OC, OH H-1B can be misused and it is getting misused. Definitely there is scarcity of tech workers. We need more, but we need quality Tech Workers. As some one said we need to create a board for Foreign Tech Workers. This board should certify based on the following
1. Credential Evaluation.
2. GRE Subject Test based on their major in their highest academic degree or the job duties. 75percentile should be cutoff.
3. General GRE/GMAT 75percentile should be cutoff.
4. TOEFL/TSE – 75percentile cutoff too.
If a person can satisfy these requirements, you are looking at a bright individual who can make a big difference for the US economy. The quality and the productivity of the workforce increases.
Any one who gets certified by this board, they should not be subject to cap limit.
From Neal, Cordova, TN No we should not. There are only two reasons these companies want them:
1) To pay them less than me (and I have already taken salary cuts just to keep/get jobs).
2) To make them work what ever crazy hours they want them to work (lose your H1B…go back home).
These are facts. I worked for a big phone company that did just this. And, while it was laying off all of it's employees, it was keeping every H1B (how can that be legal?).
From ANTHONY MOSCHETTI NO. WE NEED THESE JOBS FOR OUR KIDS
DOWN THE ROAD. THATS WHY WE SPEND SO MUCH MONEY ON OUR SCHOOLS.ISNT IT?
From Joe Stocks Why not do a sample on the immigration attorneys and the companies which have filled out the legal certifications and see where they're at now, before making a decision ? For example, the IRS states that it takes 3 for a competitive market. Do the employers and the immigration attorneys possess 3 letters of job offers whcih have been declined ? They imply that they do when they sign the certification. A quick FBI audit could locate those 3 reject job offers which happened before the H1B paperwork was certified, but if they don't have those 3 rejected offers then that would mean that the US government is no longer enforcing VISA FRAUD laws and the 10 – 15 year prison terms that it carries. If I were President, I'd audit each one since the start of the program and let the FBI, the DSS, and the DOL earn their paycheck.
From Shane Luzadder, Chicago IL We Americans can no longer get the degrees companies want because the pace of tuition increases has made obtaining those high level skills next to impossible. If the government wants to help companies, and help the economy grow, it needs to turn to educating its citizens so that we remain the most sought after workforce in the world.
Letting foreign workers in is a quick fix.
From Gert Viljoen, Irving, TX With IT work being outsourced to India I do not believe that they should raise the cap. Most big companies are using the H1B visas to bring people to get trained and then takes the IT job back to their country. It took me 4 years to get my green card to work here and now my job is going to India.
From paul orlando, fl Companies want cheap labor that they do not have to train or pay to train and can dispose of quickly. Many US IT workers would like to have the opportunity to move ahead, but cannot afford the training or are labeled as dinosaurs (40+) and not given support by management to advance.
From VG My 2 cents:
H1-B is special skills visa and currently our country has way too many skilled workers out of jobs or victimized by outsourcing. If someone has some great skills say NASA can use him in space program, H1-B for him is fine but not for normal IT jobs. There are a lot of American people willing to learn if given an opportunity. Looks like the Government works for the wall street or 5% of rich people. Middle class go to hell till next elections.
From Rajeev, Banglore Absolutely not!!!
There are plenty of IT skill workers. There is only a shortage of cheap labor.
From Max Weber, Columbia, SC This is one of the biggest falsified systems of government and business. The jobs ARE NOT POSTED IN A COMMON PLACE. Americans have little to no chance to apply for these jobs. Call your state unemployment commission for yourself. These jobs are posted in rarely read magazines and basically and only to hire lower cost persons. There are tens to hundreds of thousands of US citizens with CompSci degrees who cannot find decent work in this field. H1B is a lie but the L1 program is even far worse. It does not even have the numbers restriction. It is what the large Indian consulting companies use.
From Ved, Washington DC Even though the government decides to increase the H1B cap to meet the needs of tech companies, they need to impose a limit on the quota for each country and if required a limit on the number of visas for any company. This way they can invite talent from multiple backgrounds. 90% of the 130,000 H1B applications received on the first day of the fiscal year 2007 belong to one country.
Government should try to be more careful about these small companies who try to get people on H1B visas and provide them as contractors for other companies. Such people are trying to exploit both the employers and employees.
The skill set of any person applying for H1B needs to be properly validated before they are given an entry into the country. Many of these people who don't have any technical background try to use fake resumes.
From Chris Wagner, Chicago IL I've worked in IT as a consultant and as an employee. The only reason companies want to raise the visa level is to avoid compensating skilled American IT professionals at fair market value based on their education and experience. The visas in opinion are a way to keep wages down by diluting the IT worker pool with people that have inferior credentials.
From Rick, Plano, TX So many people have said it so well.
There IS no tech worker shortage.
US Tech firms are laying off US workers and hiring their cheaper H1B
counterparts.
And people wonder why no-one wants to go into the field? Ridiculous. I am a highly skilled tech worker with 20+ years experience, and have not had a raise in almost 10 years. The corporations are continuing their greed and their assault on middle class America, and they are winning. These people requesting more Visas are traitors to their country, as many have said above.
From yoppose Yes, To move towards globalization and to remain competetive in the global market. The people with the right skills will always have a job. The issue of insecurity in the skilled worker sector is due to their own insecure skills.
From Scott, Chambersburg PA Bottom Line is Large companies are trying to find a loophole to bring people from overseas to pay them less then the American worker. I think Americans should write Congress and tell them that we are sick of large companies being able to do what they want to gain more profits while the American worker suffers.
From Tom Donaldson, Brookings, OR Background: I am a retired software developer and a native-born US citizen. For most of my career I worked with software developers from India, Tiawan, China, Pakistan, states that were once part of the USSR, and so on. As is true for native-born US software developers, many of them were very good; some of them were very bad. I feel fortunate to have known most of them.
The need for H-1B workers results from failed educational policies in the USA. H-1B workers have been a relatively low-cost way to get highly skilled technical workers. The major cost savings comes from not having to pay for their education. As global competition for these workers increases, we may simply not be able to use this H-1B crutch even if the number of H-1B visas is increased. There may even be a reverse flow of workers. I know that some folks from India have considered returning to India as the demand for software developers grows in India; even at the lower pay scales in India they could "live like kings" back home.
In the long term we would be far better off improving science/technology education in the USA. This means not just improving how science related topics are taught, but also making such studies more fun and attractive to even the youngest students.
It would be costly to improve public education. The current crop of public school teachers, teaching methods, and administrators are probably NOT up to the task.
I do not expect that the USA will fund the necessary changes to education so that we can have more "home grown" technical workers. Nor do I believe that we can muster the political will to free public education from the grip of the teachers' unions that maintain the status quo.
Given that we we will not restructure education as is needed, then foreign workers may be our only option. In this case, we should not only give more H-1B visas, but we should also actively recruit foreign workers as national policy.
Foreign workers can staff the skilled jobs. Our own kids can staff the more menial service jobs that support the skilled workers.
From Zenon, Cleveland Ohio This is no shortage of American workers with the aptitudes and skills needed to learn the tehcnologies whose shortage the H-1B proponents are bemoaning. There IS however a shortage of American companies willing to bear the costs of hiring and training these Americans (especially those workers over 50 years old, but that's a different issue).
From David, Centennial, CO Instead of raising the H-1b visas, why don't we train our workforce to meet empolyers needs and keep the jobs at home?
From Anonymous No we should not, there is absolutely no shortage of high tech workers, there is a shortage of high tech workers who willl work for 12 dollars an hour.
From federal way ,wash I answer is no on visas ,it is a wage breaker by paying less to foriegn workers.If US would get our schools in order and put money into our kids they would be able to become engineers ,My son is graduating in 3 weeks from college as a engineer and I dont see any of these companys hireing jumping to hire him .So Im convinced its to lower wages as they have done with nafta and our trade with cheaper countrys .Big Biz just wants more profit by bringing them here and paying cheaper.Americans better wake up!
From Robert Zorg Lisle, Illinois I say no! The H1B is all about hiring lower paid workers. Companies needing IT workers can bypass hiring any US workers. This results in hiring discrimination against legal US residents. This program as well as all guest worker programs should be changed so that legal US residents have an opportunity to apply for these positions.
Most of the companies that say they need these workers simply do not want to hire US workers.
In my opinion these companies should be sued for discrimination.
From David, Amherst, NY In remarks to:
Absolutely, the number of H1B’s were 165,000 sometime back anyways, and it did not seem to influence lower wages in the field.
The true reality is IT DOES AFFECT WAGES. Unless you are an owner yourself, you going to say that. Take all the former IT workers who are working in other industry for lower pay. The numbers only shows those who work in the field and not out (let alone the wage change for it). The answer is IT HAS and it shows in all industry where outsourcing has got its footing. Only exception is healthcare but that is happening as we speak.
BTW, I am an owner/partner myself and I see it here in NY, Va, Tx, and all states I have gone… The true answer is government do not want hold companies accountable (while getting more or less paid off) and the company not taking the action to train workers here because it is easier to get replacement workers with no skill to be trained and abuse them for self-interest
From David Carroll, Amarillo TX I am an American software engineer and a very good one. The only job offers that I get are for short term 6 month contracts that pay decent, but I have to move across the country and get no benefits, and no job security making the pay pretty poor. This is because I'm competing with a huge h1b visa community with no ties to any community in this country, and who don't mind moving every 6 months and not having any insurance. We in the IT community don't mind competing with our brethren foreign math and science geeks, but we want them to just be granted citizenship so that we aren't competing at a disadvantage. Note that companies saying they don't have enough tech workers don't want these h1b visa holders to be citizens. If there were a true shortage these companies would want the visa holders to be permanent additions to our society so that the talent pool would be enriched right? They don't, they want a second class citizen for cheap, exploitable labor, just like the farms in the south want transient immigrant labor for farm work. I, like many of my fellow geek brotherhood just want the discussion to be honest, because saying there is a lack of talent really isn't the case so much as there is a lack of cheap talent.
From Anonymous, Boston MA NO!!!!!
Trust me these "skilled" workers in India are not skilled. I DREAD dealing with the "tech people" as they cannot understand english as well as what is the tech problem. IT IS A WASTE OF MONEY!!! IT WILL BE CHEAPER TO HIRE AN AMERICAN TECH IN THE LONG RUN!!!
From Jonathan Murray, Denver, CO Having come to the US as an immigrant engineer 25 years ago and having had the role of finding employment for myself and my peers, I have seen both sides of this problem.
The engineering shortage is a myth. In fact, with so many engineers unable to find work, engineering entrance into colleges has dropped more than 50% in places. Furthermore, larger companies exacerbated the problem when they stopped providing retirement benefits even though their rates to customers, such as the DoD, stayed the same.
The truth of the matter is that off-shore engineering has driven down both engineering quality, salaries and expectations. Most business managers are either unable or unwilling to see this as short term profits are clearly enhanced.
Exceptions provide excellent proof. For example, there is the large wire transaction company who pulled its development program back from India because they saw the complete loss of both quality and innovation. But these exceptions are never publicized.
Those of us who have been in this business for 30 years were blogging on this subject before blogging became popular. But until the shift in power moves away from the MBA back to the engineer not much will change. The saddest truth is that this is exactly what caused me to move from Britain to the US 25 years ago.
From Geoff Crook, Guelph, Ontario Employers have a million-and-one excuses for wanting more foreign workers. The main reason is wages, pure and simple.
Why not retrain US and Canadian downsized IT workers in lieu of applying for more H1B visas – wages again!
From Eric Burgess, Atlanta, GA I'm an american born degreed IT worker, now for 30 years. I understand and see both points of view. On the one hand why should american born US citizens — primararily in IT have an additional competitor in the job market? And on the other our global competitiveness could be at risk. But what is not said is why are we not growing IT workers at home? Supply and demand broken down? or are we as a country simply taking the easy way out and importing what we cannot socially and culturally create? We import doctors when they are certified, why can't we set a bar for foriegn IT workers much like doctors. Why could we not create a certification for foreigners to attain — much like the CDP certification. But add to it things like commununication skills?
From David, Amherst, NY To answer the question: NO! This is a subsidized solution to a fundamental issue of corporate greed and government lacking to level any fair playing field.
I have seen those who stated that they desperately need those H1b Visa worker but they are looking to really TRAIN and fill positions that American tech workers supposively lack. The true reality is that companies are abusing the procedures to regulate and decrease the cost of hiring an American tech workers (and increase the bottomline)
As the demand for high tech employees go up, American tech workers finding a job to fill became scarce. Not because we lack the skills but because we cost $10-20k + benefits more for the position than a H1B Visa employee.
The problem lies in the a simple fundamental. Companies are all about profits and greed. How do you think Intel and Microsoft became big? It was not from developing countries but here in the US from skill sets of American workers. To be what it is (before all the outsourcing and insourcing like H1B Visa), Microsoft and Intel are true stories of American Workers (and some government intervention) in making companies powerhouses.
This has nothing to do with highly train. There has been more non skill level work visa (Level 1 on H1B Visa) brought into the US than those with skills (the number seems to be like 70%). So if we need these highly skill employees, then shouldn't almost all H1B Visa employee be level 2 or higher? Though some companies are truly looking for higher skill set employees, most companies are just wanting to cut cost and get replacement workers into positions that supposively hard to fill. The difference here is not lack of skills but cost…
I have been in the IT sector have seen my salary go down for skills I do have. Not only that, I was forced to train my replacement worker who absolutely had no skills to begin with. I quit on principles and luckily found a local company in seeing my talent. BTW, the company who outsource realize my skill sets are unique and asked me back but I refused. That is what companies continue to do (even when they are highly profitable). They are finding ways to cut corners.
Americans are forced to live on this basis of retraining and being marketable. American tech workers have not complained in learning the new skill sets needed. But companies who desire the skill sets would not spend a dime to help American workers get trained and will do so for those who are insourced in. Nor has these corporations consider investing in the very American workers who made them successful (Just check on all those university contributions, not research, and schooling). They state it is a government issue and not theirs but outsourcing is a government issue but their own issues.
All those retraining programs initiated by governments are well underfunded by those who desire H1B Visa and the burden is placed on the American worker. So in all, it is not about lack of education or skills. Corporations wants the best of 2 worlds. To tell American workers to work crazy with the benefits of H1B Visa worker and Americans have to more in debt to match the skill sets they "lacked" (which is so untrue).
Lastly, the reason why we are not producing enough high skill workers in these fields are not because we lack the education. It is because we can't live on the unfair standard of living as well as companies not wanting to hire American workers. People who desire to be in this sector can't find job. Unless you want them to survive, they are going find other markets to survive. Corporations did this on their own. They want skills workers but do not want to INVEST in workers here. What do you think American graduates going to? Work in an industry where job security is gone, your skill sets are commoditizes with those supposively has skill sets (which they do not) and have to endure the disparate cost of living, and corporation could invest in H1B workers (because the cost to train them is still cheap than an American worker). Why the heck would they want to go into that field? That is the reality.
Corporations needs to be held accountable and responsible for their greed and actions. This starts with eliminating all these H1 visa (BTW, we have 9 already and Bush wants to add 3-4 more). It just shows corporations would rather pay the government to help them get what they want in greed instead of taking responsibility of their actions to resolve and rectify the problem…
So again, Corporations did this on their own and we should no give them their solution to something they created due to their self-interest greed… SO NO AGAIN
From Anonymous No. There are many talented people here that cannot get up to the next level. For example, those with older skills can retrain – sometimes for as little as 2 months and often on the job too. Little training goes a long way, but most companies do not want to invest in such endeavours. Moreover, there is ample data to show that these H1B candidates are underpaid. There are all sorts of scams to undermine the rules, including kick backs from employees to the employers. i.e they show salarys on paper for the sake of the rules. others are being paid in their country of origin… – scams if you ask me.
From John McDevitt, Congers, New York No, Congress should not grant more H-1B visas. This is just a way for greedy corporate America to get workers at lower salaries. These foreign workers lower the salaries for Americans workers, and our standard of living goes down. Corporate America helped destroy the IT and engineering professions in this country by sending the work overseas. Now they are complaining that there are not enough Americans educated in technical professions like IT and engineering. If there is truly a shortage, their greed helped cause the situation they are now complaining about. What's that old saying about you made your bed…. There are plenty of smart, hard working Americans that are doing low paying jobs. I'm sure they would love to get into the IT profession that would pay them more money. Let corporate America train these people. I agree that America needs people in technical professions to remain an economic leader in the world. However, the way to do that is from within, not by bringing in people from other countries. This country has gotten too dependant on other countries for everything. Other countries make the products we use and now Corporate America wants other countries to supply the people who do the jobs here. Does anyone ever listen to Lou Dobbs on CNN? He seems to be the only one out there taking about these issues.
From rick, kokomo, IN "American-born workers do not seem to be rushing to gain the skills that technology companies want."
Is that such a surprise? We're not stupid! There is no point in paying money to get skills that your own government has targeted to destroy!! This is a red-herring. This is about the federal elections being a shame, the President for 2008 has already been picked by the elite that run this country, and greed.
From Bob J, Chgo, IL Do NOT raise the H-1b cap!
Isn't it all about trying to replace Americans with cheap foreign labor??
Go to
http://www.youtube.com/programmersguild
For some real truth on the H-1b issue go to
http://www.eng-i.com/E-Newsletters.htm
http://www.reformus.org
http://www.brightfuturejobs.org
http://www.madnamerica.com
and dozens more!
Why won't Korporate [sic] media give us the truth?
Oooppps then there's Lou Dobb's the ONLY CNN journalist to report facts!
From John Adams, Basking Ridge, NJ The entire H-1B visa issue is economic. Compensate highly skilled technical talent fairly and watch the shortage of us "nurds" disappear! When the dot com bubble burst, people with the skills and talent didn't evaporate, they had to take jobs outside the high tech world. The IEEE USA PACE committee has all the facts and figures to support this allegation.
From Kent McCarn, Winston-Salem, NC If we need to raise the H-1B visas because there is a true shortage of highly-trained talent fine, but many American companies are firing highly-trained American talent and going off shore or bringing in immigrants because they can pay them lower wages. The American technology professionals are receiving lower salaries or losing their jobs while the American executives are receiving unreasonably higher salaries, bonuses and other benefits. There is no loyalty anymore between the company and its employees. I disagree with raising the H-1B visas if the sole purpose is to replace qualified American talent.
From Anonymous Absolutely, the number of H1B's were 165,000 sometime back anyways, and it did not seem to influence lower wages in the field.
From Jim, Bloomington IL I have been working with foreign IT workers for some time now, and quality is a serious problem. There is no way to verify resumes, which are often stuffed with false qualifications. To compound the problem, once companies have gone through all of the paperwork to hire an H1-B, people are reluctant to let them go. This issue is all about cost cutting, not about a lack of qualified American employees.
From Davvid Disilvestri No, We have highly skilled workers in the us to fill all the jobs needed.
I think it is a wage issue….Thanks David Disilvestri
From Pat West Chester PA what about all the unemployed Tech workes in US?
From Jeff Absolutely not. There's plenty of talent here in the US to fill the jobs. Fact of the matter is corporate america doesn't want to pay US salaries when they can get it overseas for half price.
Who wants a 50-60 hour a week programing job for $30k a year? While you might live like a king abroad you're not going to do well here.
It's time for the government to make these companies own up to their obligation to employ the US work force. The CEO can live without his $200 million dollar bonus.
From Don Lee, Hudson, WI No way, there's way too many Americans out of work already because of foreign workers coming here to take OUR jobs and I'm getting sick of it.
From Mike There is no shortage of high tech workers. Employers just want to hire someone cheap from overseas. Salaries for high tech workers are getting lower and lower.
From Jim Revett Palm Bay FL Large corporations are to blame for this problem. They have been offshoring the software development jobs, to try and reduce costs. This naturally leads to a shortage of talent sometime down the road. So, as a student about to enter college, are you going into a technology field? I think not. We (USA) will lose our competitive advantage in technology. This means the jobs we love will be displaced to other countries. We will no longer have the required talent pool, whcich then becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. You will have no choice but to go oversees.
From Joseph Finklestein I have been at IT worker for more than 12 years. As of 2007 even after several raises, I make less than I did 10 years ago although I am much more skilled than I was back then and continue to receive high commendations for my work.
This is not a story about shortage, it is a story about greed by our Orwellian state.
Since our leaders in the USA have gutted our economy over the past 5 years, and cater to the interests of the Global Elite at all costs, they have no qualms with destroying opportunity for highly talented Americans.
Oh well, I guess none of this matters since America is on the cusp of a S**T storm of Capital Flight out of the dollar as it will plunge to new record lows in the coming months. America has become a country drunken with gain, and self destructive policies.
Who knows, Maybe I will be looking outside the US for opportunities myself in the coming years.
From Andrew When will American companies stop making excuses to hire foreign workers instead of Americans? I know this all too well. My company hires people from overseas to come over as managers as if they cannot find people in the US who are qualified to do the job. I know that we have a lot of excellent software developers in our company who could be train to become wonderful managers. But that are passed over because the big bosses want Indians instead of Americans.
It's time to stop making excuses. They just want the cheap labor and more profit above all.
From John Cleary Chicago Ill The USA should NOT raise the level of foreign workers here but should decrease the number by 20%. For years, the goal of many Americans was to get a good education (in high tech fields) in order reap some modest rewards for themselves later in life. Flooding the market with alien labor depresses the US Citizens Wages and deflates the dreams of hardworking and talented Americans. If some companies want to get cheap labor they should go to that cheap labor country and their problems will be solved. Increasing H-1B visas screws the people who play by the rules and rewards the people who try to take a short cut for the fast buck! . I have no self interest in the statements I make, since I have been selling real estate for 20 years (but graduated with a MIS degree in 85)
Don't sellout Americans so easily!
Wake up!
From George, Inola, Okla. The US should, in fact, stop them entirely and all together. As a country the US has already exported our once thriving manufacturing/industrial base to foreign countries. Why should the US now take the same people that were originally supposed to work for this new industrial base in their home country and allow those engineers and technicians to come to the US and dilute or already heavy weight/under employeed engineering/technical base.
From Barb, Denver, CO The H-1B program is so rife with corruption and abuse that it is hard to see how anyone can defend it with a straight face. The lion's share of the yearly cap goes to international bodyshops. The program should be ended. Yes there IS a talent shortage in America, but not in technology or engineering. It's in HR, who cannot seem to 'find' qualified Americans (of course they aren't really looking, are they?) I am an IT hiring manager and I am literally surrounded by IT talent. Whenever I have an opening, it breaks my heart that I have only one job to fill because so many fine people apply. CNN should stop runing nonsensical articles like this. There was never any shortage in America and there isn't one now.
From Bob Haithcock, Middletown, NJ Allowing more foreign workers is akin to allowing more illegal Mexican workers into our workforce driving down wages. Let them pay a decent salary and there won't be a shortage. Companies only want these foreign workers because they'll work twice as much for half the wages…….
From TimVorick,Valrico,FL. Absolutely not!
From Chris, Laurel Hill, North Carolina The U.S. needs to spend more money on educating it's citizens. This can be done simply by reducing the money it poors into useless programs that are poorly designed to help raise the people at the bottom to a higher level of living, education, etc. These types or programs only serve to "feed" the poor on a daily basis. Education is the key to raising one's personal status in a society.
From Wayne, Chicago, IL Amazing. People who complain to the Government to allow more low cost labor into the country are traitors-plain and simple. They do not care for the welfare of the country, only to line their pockets with more cash.
From Kay Rodgers Charleston SC No but hell no, ask all of the unemployed Tech American workers here what they think of this idea, it is just greed on the part of company owners just like it is with the outsourcing. Why should a parent spend thousands educating there children in engineering software and hardware if the jobs are not going to be there for them. This sleaze on the part of Corporations has got to stop or we are going to become a fourth world nation on the bottom of the heap.
From Delgado, Washington, DC Raising the H-1B visas makes perfect sense "if you are a foreigner trying to get into the US work force." I think the government should concentrate in raising the national resources in order to ensure us citizens are equipped with the necessary knowledge, education and experience needed to meet and fulfill the demanding technological and engineering fields. Simply raising the H-1B cap could be "beneficial" in the short term, but this could leave US citizens to fulfill less desirable jobs while rewarding non-US citizens.
From Dwayne Omaha ,NEBRASKA Can you hire subcontractors instead of hiring employees in a service industry as a small buisness? Is this legal , this would save one a great deal of capital as far as providing healthcare
insurance 401k and workmens compensation can you do this as a small buisness is it legal?
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stop the name calling…look I'm not a technical kinda guy, in fact I'm simply an mechanic and I never went to college/higher education or such, but I'm certain that a job is a job no matter who does it. Some do it better than others and some can't no matter how many letters they have in front of their name. Take like my job, lots of folks want me to do their repairs, cause I got it like that…I'm a great mechanic that offers good service and a good price, while other mechanics don't get any work cause they can't repair things like I can, they call themselves mechanics and they have a certificate, but they can't do the work and then on friday they wont a paycheck. I work on commission only. If I dont make I dont take. I hone my skills and fix things other can't begin to understand because thaey don't try…but I promise you that folsks from other parts of the world will learn how to and take these jobs if you don't learn to do them well. So, learn your jobs, work hard and know what your customer wants and dont over price yourself…work more hours if you need more money.DO this, and you want have to worry about someone else ever taken your job because the position will be filled. May the best worker keep his job. p.s. CEO's are smart they can tell whose producing. No free rides. GOTO work. If you don't know then ask. If you think your a rocket scientist cause you know how to write SQL or write software using WYSIWYG then your probably unemployed…its not that hard to do and its certainly not worth what you though to do it…at least not to me and I'm the one your tring to sell your product too, so come on H1B. I'll take some of that….I hope this helps…LOL