What else is new?

You increase supply, and demand price drops. Train them up, after 5 years they have to leave (H1B is time limited), so they return home, rehire in their home country at a discount, (well after all living costs are cheaper). Then you've cut your costs.

What's good for American business is good for America, well the business part of it anyway.

Just think, if demand was high, Americans would be trying to get good University degrees and filling those jobs. Instead, USA has become a net importer of IT goods and services.

I think you got it wrong.
Americans have university degrees. Unfortunately, they demand a competitive salary (since getting a degree in US is expensive). Also, Americans tend to leave and get another job if they are underpaid

H1B employees, on the other hand, are forced to take what they are offered or lose their visa and go home.

USA is leading the currency war (able to do it so far, since USD is 'reserve', but everything is transitory), and the objective of a currency war is to inflict damage upon yourself. Destroying your own currency means literally destroying its purchasing power, destroying savings, destroying investment.

However historically all currency wars lead to trade wars, that's because once the participants of a currency war realise that printing money is actually a very simple thing (compare actually to producing something of value), they open the flood gates and it starts pouring down like there is no end. Trade war is the next logical step in this path towards complete self-destruction. That's when tariffs and import taxes and various other legal barriers to entry of foreign products and services (and labour obviously) are elevated ever higher.

They say that the greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing people that he didn't exist. Well, the greatest trick the governments are able to play on the people is to convince them that inflation is good for them but also that there is no inflation.

It's insane how brainwashed the public is, both to believe that rising prices increase economic activity and that money printing is not inflation itself. But that's what it takes for the government to be able to pull this crap and enter a self-destructing currency war - a brain dead population, that believes that shooting itself in the head repeatedly is a good strategy for survival.

This story is related to this same problem, people thinking that their misery comes from the outsiders, from foreign currency markets, from foreign products, foreign labour. That's how wars start - by the mob believing that it is at war with other nations, while in reality the mob is the primary mover and self-destructing mechanism, with complete lack of vision and total lack of understanding that it is its own worst enemy.

Currency war and trade war is not something you want to participate in, it's like they said in the War Games: the only winning move is not to play.

First thing - the Economic Policy Institute is clearly a political think tank rather than a pure research institution. Biased.

I was wondering how would you evaluate the skill of IT workers on a large scale so I looked at the actual article. These are their metrics:

- salary

- rate of patent production

- Ph.D. dissertation awards

- alma mater university rank

- employment in R&D

The data then comes from surveys.

I call BS on this study!

Moreover, once a crop of H1Bs have done their 5 years, gained their experience, and returned to their home country, they become a pool of trained employees who can be hired to work from their home country at wages that are suitable to that country and substantially cheaper than those paid to an American employee - even a new hire in all likelihood. Thus the pool of overseas low-cost employees builds while the number of positions that *have to go* to US Citizens decreases. The former H1Bs are familiar with the working environment and business routines of the US companies after 5 years as well, and so potentially need less training in that regard. This will likely continue to spiral until the majority of US IT jobs are actually being done outside the country wherever possible. I am Canadian, and the same applies here of course after its own fashion. Not all jobs can disappear this way of course but anything that can be done over the internet can - and thats an increasing number of jobs.
When the technology for remote controlled robots being developed in the military spills over to civilian life more completely, you may even see those jobs that require a physical presence here in North America, disappear as well. Right now someone has to physically carry a new system or printer from the loading doc to the office to install it, but when that can be done cheaper by someone operating a robot in Bangladesh, even that might be gone.
Time to learn how to repair robots perhaps (although eventually it will be cheaper to just unpack a new one from China than it is to repair a broken one).
What is in the interest of Big Business, is manifestly NOT in the interest of their employees a lot of the time.

Now that thousands of DOD/NASA/NOAA/FAA/ect technical contractors are going to be looking for work.

If you don't see the difference between technological progress, and distorting the market and lying in the name of profit, then that's your problem.

Bah, bullshit.

It's serious because we are talking about government screwing with the labor market. It is neither open competition (so that H1-B visa holders can at least compete and move job to job) nor is it fully closed so that it is Americans competing internally

Instead, you have indentured servants brought in using the H1-B visa program artificially lowering wages. It is not natural competition or progress in any way.

Anyone who works for a company is an indentured servant. Do you really think companies pay you what you're worth? No. They pay you what they think they can get away with.

Oh please. If you're good at what you do you'll generally get what you are worth. Hint: what you are 'worth' is based on market forces. That includes companies paying what they can 'get away with' and where that intersects with one's skill set and experience.

I certainly think I am paid what I am worth. I do quite well and am hardly an 'indentured servant'.

Who decides what a worker is worth? The market does. Now, when you have government interference that can be skewed. Minimum wage is an example of that. Is a high school kid pushing a broom worth minimum wage? That is open to debate. H1B visas are another example of t his because they tend to tie a worker to one employer, making it difficult for them to 'shop around' for another job, thus lowering their market value.

We have this thing called "government". We also implicitly subscribe to the concept of a "nation" with physical borders and an idea of citizenship of that nation.

As long as we are operating in this framework, the government of a nation should be implementing policies which are to the benefit of the citizens. Importing 20 million illegal immigrants to compete for unskilled labor positions and importing hundreds of thousands of foreign IT workers to compete with citizens for jobs are policies which are detrimental to the vast majority of the citizens.

A technological innovation creates an increase in productivity. Importing a foreign worker to do the exact same work as a citizen doesn't make an hour of labor more productive. It simply increases supply and drives down the price of labor.

There is NO "shortage" of labor, skilled or unskilled, in this country. In fact, we have a vast surplus as demonstrated by the employment picture(the real data, not the BLS BS).

Let's see MS publish an ad for an IT position. $120,000 salary plus benefits. They'd have no problem whatsoever finding skilled applicants.

This is why the companies are able to screw two people at once. They screw the H1B by paying them less than they could make elsewhere, knowing that the H1B has no choice AND they screw the local employee who would have had gotten that job if they hadn't hired an H1B instead.

There's some disturbing news trickling around the employment process market that you have better chance to get a new job *if you already have one*. If you quit, you risk screwing yourself because then if you don't land one you often don't get unemployment benefits either, and then if your resume goes stale then you're shunned. Scary.

Practically all US tech companies are hiring as many visa workers as they possibly can. Keeps the remaining American workers in line.

IMO: it's way past time for US tech workers to organize, and stand up for themselves. If not a union, then a worthwhile professional organization, like the AMA.

I'm already organized, and standing up for myself.

Oh, you mean give over my personal sovereignty to leftist union thugs, giving me another faction to struggle against to try to retain my earnings. No thanks.

You're living in the past.

Today, if you want to start a business, you have to get multiple licenses and permits, make all kinds of protection payments to the local government thugs, beg for zoning "variances".

Merely conceiving of, designing and developing a great software product is the least of your problems... unless it's a new scheme to help the government thugs violate more people's privacy; then the skids are well-greased.

The San Diego/Los Angeles area business/financial reporters used to talk a lot about Qualcomm, BAE, BEA, SAIC, special effects houses, and the biotechs along Mira Mesa and Sorrento Valley. Digital Domain and Rhythm & Hues are dead.

None of them will deign to interview a US citizen STEM worker. We have US citizen Mensa members with multiple graduate degrees right there within a block or so, who can't get the time of day from STEM recruiters. Some have been mostly or totally unemployed for the last decade. The fortunate ones get survival gigs from time to time, teaching the cheap, young, pliant guest-workers with flexible ethics how to program.

The guest-workers have not only "put a dent in the demand" for US STEM talent but have totally undermined it.

We have over 1.8 million US STEM professionals who are either unemployed or involuntarily out of STEM. Employment of production workers in app development (what BLS calls "software publishing") has been flat at a mere 220K for the last decade. Employers no longer fly US candidates in for interviews (though before H-1B they used to do so). Employers no longer offer to relocate US STEM talent (though before H-1B they did). Employers invest much less in new-hire and retained employee training (which used to run 2-12 weeks for new hires and 2-4 weeks for retained employees).

Since 1970, based on US Dept. of Education and NSF statistics, we've added about 12 million US citizen STEM workers to the talent pool.

All we get from reporters is, "Well, I talked with a couple executives with a vested interest in cheap, pliant labor and he said he just couldn't find *anyone* with degrees in math and physics and mechanical engineering and computer science and graphic arts and PR and at least 5 years but no more than 10 years of professional experience in each within a few surrounding blocks who was willing to work for $20-$30/hour on a temporary/contingent basis. And they tried soooo hard. Why they put 2 ads in the BackCreek WV Gazette and the Boondocks Diner, once a month for 6 months and got no 'qualified' applicants, so there must be a terrrrribbbbble talent shortage."

There is plenty of evidence of an on-going STEM talent glut. No evidence of STEM talent shortage has ever been presented. Ever. Not in the 1980s. Not in the 1990s. Not since 2000.