IEEE: New H-1B Bill Will "Help Destroy" US Tech Workforce 484
dcblogs writes New legislation being pushed by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) to hike the H-1B visa cap is drawing criticism and warnings that it will lead to an increase in offshoring of tech jobs. IEEE-USA said the legislation, introduced by a bipartisan group of lawmakers on Tuesday, will "help destroy" the U.S. tech workforce with guest workers. Other critics, including Ron Hira, a professor of public policy at Howard University and a leading researcher on the issue, said the bill gives the tech industry "a huge increase in the supply of lower-cost foreign guest workers so they can undercut and replace American workers." Hira said this bill "will result in an exponential rise of American jobs being shipped overseas." Technically, the bill is a reintroduction of the earlier "I-Square" bill, but it includes enough revisions to be considered new. It increases the H-1B visa cap to 195,000 (instead of an earlier 300,000 cap), and eliminates the cap on people who earn an advanced degree in a STEM (science, technology, education and math) field. Hatch, who is the No. 2 ranking senator in the GOP-controlled chamber, was joined by co-sponsors Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) in backing the legislation."
Bipartisan (Score:5, Insightful)
See? They do work together! They are a team! The majority wants this. Don't even try to argue with them.
They do it for us! (Score:5, Insightful)
US Jobs Policy:
Step 1: Export tech jobs overseas to increase corporate profit
Step 2: Throw all low-skill immigrants back across the border
Step 3: Now US tech workers can get jobs doing lawn work, picking crops, and nannying.
Re:They do it for us! (Score:4, Insightful)
That is not what the eventual immigration compromise will be.
Republicans will get their H1B's to help the corporations. The Democrats will get some form of amnesty.
Our(IT workers) wages will go down and taxes go up as millions of millions of new citizens taking free healthcare and other government benefits.
It's bleak, the worst of both worlds.
Re:They do it for us! (Score:5, Informative)
Wait, where can I sign up for this free healthcare?
Re:They do it for us! (Score:5, Informative)
According to the best estimates out there, the US pays substantially more for Medicare fraud [economist.com] (even excluding Medicaid fraud, which is something state governments would handle) than for unreimbursed care [340bfacts.com]. But don't let reality interrupt your little fantasy of how the world works.
Re: They do it for us! (Score:5, Insightful)
They'll vote for either the right-wing, pro-war, pro-Wall-Street, pro-surveillance party or the other right-wing, pro-war, pro-Wall-Street, pro-surveillance party based on the only issues separating the two: abortion and gay marriage.
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US Jobs Policy:
Step 1: Export tech jobs overseas to increase corporate profit
Step 2: Throw all low-skill immigrants back across the border
Step 3: Now US tech workers can get jobs doing lawn work, picking crops, and nannying.
Step 2 needs to happen so we can put our own uneducated unemployed to work. And before you start saying the current illegal immigrants in the country pay taxes I'll counter that with the fact that the current uneducated unemployed will not only pay those same taxes, but will also not be sending money to family out of country. This will both lessen their burden on the system (more/some income means less/no government aid) and increase the tax revenues for state, federal and sales.
Re:They do it for us! (Score:5, Insightful)
What happened to the American Dream (TM) where immigrants were welcome if they worked hard and tried to make their fortune in the New World? Seems like a lot of people who benefited, or people whose ancestors benefited from immigration now want to pull up the drawbridge.
Re:They do it for us! (Score:4, Insightful)
What happened to the American Dream (TM) where immigrants were welcome if they worked hard and tried to make their fortune in the New World? Seems like a lot of people who benefited, or people whose ancestors benefited from immigration now want to pull up the drawbridge.
Corporate America and the oligarchs decided that they wanted *that* slice of the pie as well as the one they already had. The American Dream is exactly that; a dream.
As a Minnesotan I've backed Klobuchar but I am extremely disappointed that she is supporting this.
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There is a difference between immigration and hiring US citizens then there is to hire foreign workers from another country...
If there is a problem, then maybe fix the immigration and citizenship process rather than doing an end run around the whole process and makes what is essentially an "exception" to the rules to allow for it. As it is, the American Dream (TM) is being killed, where immigrated US citizens can't get a job in IT because all the work has been farmed out to cheap foreign imports.
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Step 2: Throw all low-skill immigrants back across the border
low-skill immigrants don't usually come on an H1-B Visa. In many cases they are working here illegally.
Step 3: Now US tech workers can get jobs doing lawn work, picking crops, and nannying.
I might hire those US tech workers to do my lawn, if they'll take less than an illegal immigrant. I'm assuming working at a desk all day doesn't make them particularly qualified to work in the fields or do a proper job on my lawn.
Re:They do it for us! (Score:5, Funny)
I'm assuming working at a desk all day doesn't make them particularly qualified to work in the fields or do a proper job on my lawn.
On the contrary, many Silicon Valley tech workers have a lot of experience with grass.
Re:They do it for us! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure that as a tech worker I'm making more net income than most master electricians and master plumbers. For those who aren't running their own business it isn't even close. And I'm never hip-deep in actual shit, only metaphorical shit.
Bribocracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, majority of campaign contribution dollars...
Re:Bribocracy (Score:5, Insightful)
How much effort does it take to do some research and verify whether a 10 second political ad is truthful?
If the power belongs to the people with the money to pay for TV commercials, it is only because the voters have voluntarily abdicated their power.
Like Alexis de Toqueville said (probably apocryphal):
In a democracy, the people get the government they deserve.
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“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”
H.L. Mencken,
Re:Bribocracy (Score:4, Interesting)
How much effort does it take to do some research and verify whether a 10 second political ad is truthful?
In politics, "truth" is very flexible. For example, it is true that the Obama administration has reduced the number of annual drone strikes by 80% (over the past five years, in Yemen). It is also true that the Obama administration has increased the number of annual drone strikes by tenfold (over GWB). Likewise, Obama has both increased deficit spending by $1.3T, and reduced deficit spending by $1.2T (although even these numbers are suspect, depending whether you consider 2008 spending to be "Bush's budget" or "Obama's budget." This is one of the reasons you'll hear a lot of percentages and deltas in political ads - they can avoid telling you the denominator or reference point. They can choose a reference that makes their point, regardless of whether that reference is reasonable or relevant, and technically be truthful.
This is the reason no one believes a politician, unless he's saying something they already thought was true.
Re:Bribocracy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bipartisan (Score:5, Insightful)
Bipartisan today means bought with the same corporate money.
Whenever the two parties work together today, that will be the reason.
Its called capitalism folks (Score:2)
So when a "disruptive" technology forces down prices for Taxis (Uber, etc), Hotels (airBnB etc), Music (Spotify, etc) Software (Linux etc) Banking (Bitcoin) I see that the old guard are like "Buggy Whip" makers and they have no automatic right to be profitable or in business.
So here is a shock, if that applies to the businesses it must also apply to the workers.
Capitalism applies to wages just as it does to anything else, if you can buy it cheaper elsewhere, do it.
Re:Its called capitalism folks (Score:4, Insightful)
Did any of the other areas have a congress that was actively importing cheaper labor?
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Did any of the other areas have a congress that was actively importing cheaper labor?
No, but the POTUS is actively trying to give every semi-skilled American worker competition from anyone who chooses to illegally immigrate. Does that count?
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Uh, a federal bill giving benefits for importing low cost workers isn't free market, dumbass.
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"Uh, a federal bill giving benefits for importing low cost workers isn't free market, dumbass."
No, it's a federal bill taking out limitations for importing low cost workers. It IS free market, dumbass.
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Re:Its called capitalism folks (Score:4, Insightful)
This also fails as a "free market" because the labor that's being undercut isn't able to move where costs are lower. It's not a "free market" if corporations can import talent but individuals can't move out of the resulting disaster area.
If Republicans destroy Ohio, I can move to Pennsylvania.
I don't have that option with this particular "free market".
This should make India & China very happy (Score:3, Insightful)
Considering the way China and India are growing, many of the brightest graduates that are turned out from state-subsidized universities are better employed at home.
There was a time in the last 2-3 decades where a highly qualified engineer from these countries had no choice but to emigrate to the states to have a career. This is increasingly no longer necessary. Making it harder for people to move to the US will have the beneficial effect of halting the brain drain in these countries and keeping the brightest minds home.
Since when has E in STEM stood for 'Education'? (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyone else notice this: STEM (science, technology, *education* and math)
Pretty sure that should be Engineering...
More US workers == offshoring?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Explain to me how allowing more foreign workers to come to the US under H1B visas will increase offshoring? Surely not allowing people to work here is going to cause work to be sent overseas, not the other way around.
Every H1B worker I've met (including myself) wants to get a green card so they can live and work in the US permanently. At which point they are just as much part of the US tech workforce as a citizen who was born and raised here.
It's a badly written article/summary (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't change the fact that the basic point (the death of American IT) is correct. If you can bring anyone in with an "Advanced STEM" degree then India will just open more schools to rubber stamp 'em. Race to the bottom.
Re:It's a badly written article/summary (Score:5, Informative)
It's using the phrase "offshoring" to mean Americans losing jobs to cheaper foreign workers in general. Probably because by now everyone understands that "offshoring" == "bad". It doesn't change the fact that the basic point (the death of American IT) is correct. If you can bring anyone in with an "Advanced STEM" degree then India will just open more schools to rubber stamp 'em. Race to the bottom.
except that's not what the law says. it's an advanced STEM degree from a U.S. institution. to qualify for the H-1B cap exemption, you have to have been awarded a degree from a U.S. higher ed institute. this drives immigrants to come to the U.S. for schooling and become invested in the U.S.
the law also requires H-1B employers to meet prevailing wage levels set by the DOL, so that U.S. workers are not undercut. enforcement has been admittedly shoddy, but has gotten much better in recent years. (the fines against Tata and Infosys being two of the better known examples).
Re:It's a badly written article/summary (Score:5, Informative)
...except that's not what the law says. it's an advanced STEM degree from a U.S. institution. to qualify for the H-1B cap exemption...
The Indian body shops already have set up diploma mills in the US to rubber-stamp master's degrees.
Re:It's a badly written article/summary (Score:5, Informative)
...except that's not what the law says. it's an advanced STEM degree from a U.S. institution. to qualify for the H-1B cap exemption...
The Indian body shops already have set up diploma mills in the US to rubber-stamp master's degrees.
you're...you're claiming that employers are laying out large sums of money to set up diploma mills to intentionally hire foreign nationals?
the Dept. of Homeland Security has a pretty high standard on what they deem a valid higher ed institution. they rely on AACRAO standards [aacrao.org] in their determinations. that weeds out a lot of the diploma mills.
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Can you name one? Being an immigrant myself I have not heard of this so called foreign companies sending folks here to study so that they can misuse them later. DO you know of any specific cases where that has happened. If you do than I will back you to complain USCIS about such illegal practices and have it stopped.
1) You can't complain about it to anyone because there's absolutely nothing illegal about it. And yes, somewhere around here I have a (virtual) pile of the resumes.
2) Just advertise a paid internship on MonsterTrak (now MonsterCollege I guess)--you'll be flooded with lame-ass resumes from students at these "colleges". They're really distinctive: limited coursework in C# or SQL Server, work experience that's a joke, and a "thesis" subject that might pass muster for a high-school AP class but is not even remo
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It's not about formal wages, it's about all the other abuses of workers' rights.
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Are you, then, against free market forces? If the labour market wants cheaper workforce more than it wants quality workforce, who are you to interfere on this true example of free market in action?
I'm fine with free market forces. They can go ahead and pay me $36k for my 25 years of experience. Along with that, they can go ahead and make a 6,000 square foot mansion cost $50k and a car cost $8,000 etc, so that we can afford to compete equally.
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"You're delusional if you think the USA has anything even near a "free market" to begin with."
You are just evading the question. Are you, then, against free market forces?
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And the business can get away with paying them half of what a local is worth. My last job was at a company that heavily abused H1-Bs, eventually I was let go once they found another cheap Indian to take my place, even though really I was more than twice as productive than the H1-Bs they already had. Of course though I was free to leave whenever I wanted, they can hold the threat of deportation over the heads of these people so of course they were all Yes Men while I could afford to be honest.
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"And the business can get away with paying them half of what a local is worth."
A resource is worth whatever provider and consumer agree to be its price.
Maybe instead of "what a local is worth" you should say "what a local values himself", not the same thing.
Re:More US workers == offshoring?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: More US workers == offshoring?? (Score:2)
Better yet, how about a green card and a path to citizenship? We want educated, productive people in this country. We don't want them here mining out wealth and sending it to another country.
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At which point they are just as much part of the US tech workforce as a citizen who was born and raised here.
Except for starting from a significantly lower pay base, and being capable of initiating chain migration.
Whether those are good, bad, or indifferent things depends on your point of view. But they are different.
You need to think like a PHB (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Bring H1-B over to be trained and work.
2. Send back.
3. Open up foreign branch.
4. Reduce costs -> increased profit.
Model 2:
1. American company gets H1-Bs.
2. Sells services as "American" company (really important to government and politicians.)
3. Charge "American" fees.
3. Reduction in costs -> Increased profit.
I'd also like to point out that Hatch was the one who forced to FDA to reduce regulations on the supplement industry so that instead of having to prove their products work, the FDA has to prove they don't. And with state laws of Utah, there is a reason why the supplement industry is based in Utah. (see Bigger Stronger Faster [imdb.com]
Meaning, I'm not saying he's corrupt, unethical, or anything like that. Or that he is a disgrace to the Senate and epitomizes everything wrong with our Congress and legislative system in the US and how they are all in the pockets of big business.
Nope. Not me.
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And what if you don't get the green card? Then you will go back home, and be the ideal candidate for offshoring the job you care currently doing -- although at much lower wages.
Understand, I *want* you to get the green card too. We should just issue more green cards faster to tech workers if we need them. If there is an H-1B program, it should be a fast track toward permanent residency.
Concentrations of tech workers *create* jobs. That's why Facebook moved from Boston to the Bay Area. Boston has plenty
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As someone who works at a company that has branches all over the world (including India) and employs people from all of the world, I've never seen this happen. Instead everyone who comes over on an H1B starts their green card application process as soon as they can, with the aim of staying in the US permanently.
Have slashdot commenters ranting about H1Bs ever actually worked at a tech company? Or tried to hire someone in tech recently? The idea that there is some huge untapped pool of US workers that are be
When can we get H-1B replacements (Score:5, Insightful)
for senators? They may be cheap enough for ordinary people to bribe.
math? (Score:2)
It increases the H-1B visa cap to 195,000 (instead of an earlier 300,000 cap),
Now I aren't no math genius, but ... increases?
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Re:math? (Score:5, Informative)
For whatever reason, the summary chose to describe this bill in relation to a previous (failed) bill, rather than current law. The number that would have been meaningful in that sentence is the current cap; wikipedia [wikipedia.org] indicates that it's 65,000, with caveats about a system of loopholes permitting an increasing figure over time.
Re:math? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unemployment can be bad (Score:3)
Well, considering that I don't have a job, 65,000 seems like 65,000 too many.
Are you "competing" for a tech job. Do you have an MSc in CS from an internationally recognized institution?
I put "competing" in quotation marks, because my inbox has emails from a lot of recruiters who just wants to talk (they aren't all job offers).
Actually, if you happen know your way around open source projects and has some experience with js, linux, python, node, aws and release engineering, + a non-empty resume; feel free to drop me a line...
Either of 11.5M unemployed Americans I suspect most peop
Why all the complexity? (Score:2)
They want frightened slaves (Score:2, Insightful)
Why not outsource the government as well? (Score:2)
eliminates the cap on people who earn an advanced (Score:4, Interesting)
Great. It's bad enough that the Indian body shops have set up diploma mills in the US handing out master's degrees for a little C# work and writing some database queries so that they can brag "x% of our programmers earned master's degrees in the US". Now that bullshit will get them around the H1-B cap as well.
Re:eliminates the cap on people who earn an advanc (Score:4, Insightful)
Fees and restrictions (Score:4, Insightful)
This article [uscis.gov] lists some H-1B employer fees. Let's increase that by $50,000 per year per "guest" employee. That should cut down on the number of employees who are brought here in order to save on wages.
However, some non-American hiring managers will want to hire only people from their own countries, because of feelings of patriotism for their countries. So we should have a law that states that "guest" hiring managers must hire at least 50% Americans, and that each year, the lowest starting salary of Americans that he/she hires must be higher than the highest starting salary of the non-Americans that he/she hires.
It's a Huge Problem for College Grads (Score:3)
We are finally to a point where economics are forcing companies to put serious efforts into college hire programs and workforce development of college hires. I consult with many large companies as a programmer. Up until recently I went nearly a decade without seeing a programming department have college hires.
If you were to remove all caps on H1B companies would go back to facing a decision between hiring a college grads that need professional development or H1B workers. The college hire could choose to take a different jobs years later. The H1B worker is far less likely to change jobs because they risk deportation if they fail to secure a sponsor (a fact that does not go unnoticed by employers).
IEEE-USA's position is STEM workers should be afforded Green Cards accommodations (most likely capped) thus not be beholden to employer sponsorship. I personally think any change to H1B or Greencard programs should be dependent on the majority of college hires finding jobs post graduation.
Additional information (Score:5, Informative)
They took mah job! (Score:5, Insightful)
What did you say when shiny gadget manufacturer #1 announced that workers had better learn to "run against the robots"? And when shiny gadget manufacturer #2 exploited underage workers in dangerous sweatshops in China? I haven't read any comments about "unions turning the IT sector into another Detroit" on this page, but instead I now learn that government regulation is in "the true spirit of America, because it's againt slavery". If selling stuff in Spain but paying taxes to the British Virgin Islands is not only moraly acceptable, but even a duty, because it's in the interest of the investors, then why would hiring IT developers from abroad be any different?
Capitalism is about making money, and that's it. It's not a philosophy, it won't make your lives better by itself. And rightly so. It is a government's job to ensure that the interests of those making money proceed in harmony with the interests of a nation as a whole; to which extent is matter of debate. When the government turns out as an expression of those with the most money (bi-partisan agreements...) rather than the choice of informed voters, we'd better learn to love the "invisible hand" and wait for its positive effects on the economy to trickle down on us.
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Looks like my post failed catastrophically at communicating what my point of view is.
Re:ah so both parties f-d us (Score:4, Insightful)
They're like workers in the US (and everywhere):
Precious, precious few talented and useful ones, hordes of shitty ones
Re:ah so both parties f-d us (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. Just like here. Except less expensive. So actually not just like here. See how that works?
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Yeah more people get fucked to make billionaires richer.
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Re:ah so both parties f-d us (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank you. Enjoy France, Greece, or Canada (Score:3)
>. I am leaving this fucking country finally
Thank you. I do think you'll find France, Greece, or Canada better suited to your political tastes. Really. I hope you enjoy it, wherever you go.
If by chance you find that France or Greece sucks , you cant get a job there and stuff is generally screwed up, and you decide to come back here, please understand what that means. It would mean that you've seen the actual results of the policies you espoused and decided that you DON'T like the results. If that ha
Re:that's a theory. Tx technology before shale (Score:5, Insightful)
That article expresses one theory. Of course it doesn't mention the fact that the economy in Texas has been besting the national average since long before the shale boom. Since right about time we started electing Republican governors, of turns out.
But saying it doesn't make it so. You cite no metric, or evidence, or source to support - or even clearly define - your claim.
Lets take a look to see if this is real, or good old Texas bragging.
Since the current Republican hold on the governorship began with Bush in 1995, lets look at an actual chart of Texas relative performance [aneconomicsense.com]. What we see is that the ratio of the Texas per capital GDP to that of the overall U.S. sank after 1997 (it did worse than the rest of the nation) and did not recover to its same relative economic performance until 2010, with the recovery occurring after 2006 --- or just at the time oil shale arrested Texas's declining oil production.
So no, your claim is a fantasy.
I charted the data and like looked anxiously to see which party had better economic growth. It turned out that both parties had years of high growth and low, all over the place. The chart made one thing very obvious, though. Economic growth had ALWAYS improved under every Republican administration, and always got worse under every Democrat administration's budgets. No exceptions.
My, my, my. What a nice little story. Full of angst, with a surprise, and to you, heart-warming ending.
It is a shame we have only your word that you didn't just, you know, make this all up. You cite no specific figures for any administration, or overall figures, that could be easily checked to see if you did any of the math correctly. I guess you figured that everyone would have to perform (I won't say "replicate") the whole analysis to check to see if you aren't just blowing smoke.
Problem is, lots of other people have done this exact same analysis, and consistently come to the opposite conclusion. Just try Googling it. Look for example at the Conservative British economics journal The Economist [economist.com]. Their analysis is interesting because they find it embarrassing to admit and look for ways to turn a silk purse into a pig's ear.
Re:ah so both parties f-d us (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, voting for Obama solidly makes you part of the problem
BOTH PARTIES contribute to the problem. This is not a party-line issue. This story body and TFA point that out: bipartisan bill.
Given the political parties in power there is no good way an American can vote to fix the problem. Both parties listen to the money from businesses who like the cheap slave labor H1-B provides. Who wouldn't want to hire workers for 1/4 the money that cannot leave for another company that pays better?
As a resident of one of the states mentioned in the story I've written my senator in the past about not raising the limits, and just seconds ago wrote again, including my own sad story of a layoff after training my own H1-B replacement in 2012 and learning that he was being paid about 1/4 of my salary, below the poverty line. Not that writing to the senator will do much good as I've written in several times before and only get a form letter "Thank you for mentioned your concerns. They are important. I will now ignore them. Signed, Senator Moneywhore."
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You're new here, aren't you.
No (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Protectionism never works (Score:5, Insightful)
Being anti-H1B isn't protectionism.
Re:Protectionism never works (Score:5, Insightful)
( Being anti-H1B isn't protectionism.) Especially when other countries aren't just throwing their gates open to Americans. Last time I showed up to do a project in Canada I had to lie about the scope and they were clearly less than thrilled about my arrival. All developed countries that I'm aware of are at least moderately, if not highly cautious of allowing foreign workers. A playing field that isn't totally level, in this case is better than the alternative. We're busy telling our young people to go to college and get STEM degrees. We owe it to them to protect the jobs we are telling them are there and for which they are needed. I'm all for a robust global economy were all workers can earn a living in dignity, but not at the cost of losing the American middle class.
Re:Protectionism never works (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is not necessarily foreign workers, but foreign workers that we don't actually need. Corporations are lying through their teeth when they say they can't find local workers to do the same work here. These are not all foreign workers showing up to do advanced R&D, most of them are doing very basic grunt work much of the time only they do it a lot cheaper. These are basic mainstream jobs, but the rationale being used to push this is that these are highly specialized jobs that are so arcane and rare that we need to import an additional 195,000 of them or else the economy will collapse.
If it really is so very difficult to find American workers then one would logically expect the corporations to pay MORE than the prevailing wage in an attempt to find these amazing workers. Everything would be fine I think if the person next to you who's entering data into ActiveDirectory is paid double your salary because there was no one anywhere in the country who is skilled enough to do that job. But that's not at all what happens. Congress is not raising the numbers because there are so many above average workers who are so good that we're willing to pay a premium in salary to recruit, they're raising the numbers because on average they'll be cheaper than local workers.
Of course there are exceptions. But foreign workers should be the cream of the crop, above average, for jobs requiring actual skills that are proven to be in short supply, and paid at *least* the average prevailing wage and benefits. There should be severe penalties for any company which falsely states that they can not find workers already within the country who are able to do these jobs.
Re:Protectionism never works (Score:5, Insightful)
You forgot the fact that the cost of goods and services will never drop in half to match the salary drops. That equals profit. Why would they drop the profit?
Does apple drop the cost of the goods because they use cheap slave labor instead of making the products in the expensive US?
So enjoy your 10$ loaf of bread. It now only takes you 3 weeks to make that.
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Re:Protectionism never works (Score:5, Insightful)
No it isn't. HIB is a slave status. Being against a slave status is not protectionism. It's classic American patriotism (Common Sense).
You are trying to conflate immigration in general with the HIB underclass status and they simply aren't the same thing.
If they're worth importing, they're worth treating right.
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That's funny because I have personally managed to out earn an H1B with a PhD (if not several) simply because of my status as a full citizen. I am free to bargain with an employer. I don't have to worry about deportation if I am too demanding.
Now that's the "good side" of H1Bs (abused talent).
The bad side is mediocre no talent sleazebags that are just used to lower labor costs. I've seen that variation on the H1B system as well.
Your "situation" could be much better. You could have an actual green card.
Also,
Re:Protectionism never works (Score:5, Insightful)
This has nothing to do with protectionism. Nobody is saying not let foreign software into the country.
As for foreign labor, I have no objection to bringing foreign labor in. My objection is kicking that labor out after it has gained experience. If there really was a tech worker shortage, these are the very workers we'd want to stay.
What this does is create a pool of offshore labor that's familiar with the work being done *here*. The obvious purpose is to use the immigration system to assist companies that want to relocate work overseas. And there's nothing special about American tech people; anything we can do can be done in India or Ukraine. That's fine, but I don't think the US government should be in the business of making it attractive for companies to move jobs overseas.
It's something so irrational (if we were to assume for the moment that the US government works for the welfare of the American people) there isn't even a word for it. It's the mirror image of protectionism. It's self-predation.
Re:Protectionism never works (Score:4, Funny)
What this does is create a pool of offshore labor that's familiar with the work being done *here*. The obvious purpose is to use the immigration system to assist companies that want to relocate work overseas.
That doesn't makes sense. Sure you could imagine companies wanting to make off-shoring easier, but what possible motivation does a group of senators have for shipping US jobs overseas?
Re:Protectionism never works (Score:5, Insightful)
It's hard to understand how disconnected they are from us and our daily concerns. They're representing their interests and the interests of everyone they know and meet. Senators, and the people who hang out with senators, don't have to worry about being outsourced. "Outsourcing" is something that makes people's business more successful and their bank accounts bigger. Why would you oppose it?
Or, if you're feeling cynical:
They're connected now, if they weren't already before. When the US turns into a third world shithole because of their actions, they'll be the feudal lords or safely relocate to a less distasteful locale. (Or at least they hope that's the case. Or they know they'll be dead before any sort of collapse and don't care what their lifestyle costs the chattel.) If they aren't so pampered and surrounded by sycophants to see the outcomes of their actions, they're just-world believers and think the displaced workers probably deserved being laid off.
Re: (Score:3)
Sources for all these magical wages? Wherever I've been I don't see the tech giant directly hiring the H1Bs. Instead they hire a contracting firm, and the contracting firm brings in an army from India and China.
And as for some of the companies on the list like Microsoft, they beg and plead for more H1B workers, but last year in July, September, and October they laid off a combined total of over 25,000 Americans with a corporate ban to not rehire any of them. [slashdot.org]
Somehow those 25,000 workers cannot do the job
Re: (Score:3)
Your theory would work if the cost of living in all of these countries was the same but it isn't.
Fact: Free Trade doesn't work (Score:5, Informative)
There's more than one way for us to create situations that are "not what this country is about." The question at hand here is, is the value of the ideal of the free market for everyone, everywhere, regardless of consequences, more important than the idea that we here in the USA should be able to afford homes, transport, healthcare, safe neighborhoods and so forth. Your assertion of inflated wages is also questionable: how appropriate wages are has to be measured against cost of living, maintainance of a healthy lifestyle, home ownership, and so forth. The costs and social limits here are demonstrably different than in, for instance, China.
Protectionism has its place, and isolating the economies of strong countries from those of weak countries is one of them.
At this point, having seen the actual long term effects of our free trade policy, I am entirely for putting protectionism in place hard. If you want access to the US market, you live here, you mine it here, build it here, bank here, design it here -- period. We are resource rich in every way: we have raw materials, we have manpower, we have land, we have a potentially useful educational system and we have an ethos that matches job ethic with reward. Most importantly, with high trade barriers, we have the required market.
If we did this, we'd have our own semiconductor industries, our own electronics manufacturing industries, and so forth, for every category you can think of.
"Free trade" was put in place last century with good intentions and yes, a very American outlook, trying to extend the way we thought outside our own and operated borders. But that's not what happened. Only some of the economic mechanisms made it out. So now we have countries mostly unlike us in the sense that they have an ethos that matches job ethic only with the most basic day to day survival -- and they use that to severely undercut us. It's cheaper to buy prescription eyeglasses from China, ship them across the ocean by air and then across our own country, than it is to buy them here. Same for batteries, radios, displays, computers, iPods and tablets, jewelry, tech jobs, pretty much you name it.
It's not just price as a per-hour thing; I don't require a high per-hour wage, and I know some others of comparable skill who don't either. None of us are employable, though, based on various combinations of basically economic factors like age, health, family size and the like. None of this makes a significant difference when the hire doesn't have to be insured; that's another economic advantage which going outside the country for labor provides.
Look at Bethlehem, PA. At Detroit, MI. At Butte, Montana. Once you really see the wreckage caused by free trade, its very hard to have any confidence it's actually the right thing to do. Nice idea, yes -- but like many ideals, when put into practice, human nature alters the deal, Darth Vader style.
I say put the walls up, give it 20-30 years, or whatever it takes for our economy to recover from the miss-step, then slowly begin to let other countries in with a carefully crafted tariff system that normalizes their prices with the prices here. That way, competition is based upon quality. Not the wages of Chinese or Indian peasants living in hovels.
To indulge in a little metaphor, we offered our hand, and they burned it instead of shaking it. Time to pull it back. That's just the sane response. Right now, all we're doing is standing there, arm out, fingers burned off, waiting until the figurative fire burns our arms off to the shoulders. It doesn't help one bit to stand around saying "but our intentions were good!" Sure they were. But the intentions of corporations are not. The only way they are actually like people is that they act like sociopaths and
Re:Fact: Free Trade doesn't work (Score:4, Informative)
Increasing the wages of an auto-worker from 115k (average $55/hr) to 230k/yr doesn't mean that the price of the automobile goes from 30k to 60k. Wages are currently appx 10 percent of the cost of an automobile.
If you really believe that doubling wages doubles the price of goods, you don't know much at all about manufacturing.
--
BMO
Re:Fact: Free Trade doesn't work (Score:4, Informative)
How do you think prices are determined? Where do you think costs come from?
As someone working in manufacturing, I can tell you. Materials and expendable supplies.
Re: (Score:3)
How do you think the cost of materials are determined? Every step from procuring the raw materials to refining the materials at various stages incurs costs in the form of the labor of the people doing the procuring and refining. The cost of the machines used in these processes come from the labor costs of the people who supplied the materials for the machines and the machines that made those machines.
It's easy to split up production costs into labor and materials if you don't dig any deeper than that, but
You're ignoring rent seeking and externalities (Score:3)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R... [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... [wikipedia.org]
People who claim ownership of the natural resources (including land underneath buildings) or of financial assets used to capitalize businesses may never have done any more work than cozy up to some King hundreds of years ago to get a "grant" of land, or, alternatively, (legally?) bribe some politician to get special monopoly or tax preferences, or something similar. Those "rents" can form a substantial part of many costs, and have little to d
Re: (Score:3)
Opposition to the creation of an underclass is not "protectionism". If we really need them then fine, bring them over. Just bring them over as full EQUALS.
Given them green cards the moment they land or forget about it.
They won't do that of course because it doesn't get them what they want. They want indentured quasi-slave labor. They don't want real professionals.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Do the legislators really believe that, in doing this, US tech workers won't be negatively effected?"
Of course not. They really believe that, in doing this, they the legislators will be positively affected by means of their corporate patrons.
Re:Politicians do the bidding of those who pay bri (Score:5, Insightful)
Politicians do the bidding of those who pay bribes
That's only true if the people watching (i.e. the voters) aren't paying attention. If we got together and voted out anyone who accepted bribes, then politicians would learn quickly.
If voters actively looked for the campaign platform of the person they voted for and ignored ads, then politicians wouldn't need contributions.
But we live in a world where people don't take democracy seriously, but vote anyway. Welcome to democracy, we (collectively) get what we deserve.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The ones responsible for watching the politicians are the press, and they've shown that they're not objective and can't be trusted.
Oh please, the press reports on it, people just don't care. It's YOUR responsibility as a citizen to know what's going on. The bribing is almost all in the open. It's not like politicians are hiding it. Blaming the press is just a lame excuse, it doesn't absolve your from living in a crappy government made by you and your fellow-citizens.
They ALL take bribes (Score:3)
They ALL take bribes. They just euphamistically call them "campaign contributions" to avoid jail time.
Re: (Score:3)
Once we've lost the ability to fix the problem, people will begin to care again. Apathy is caused by life being easy; fixing the problem of people not caring is going to be very painful.
Re: (Score:3)
This benefits non "whites" (Score:2)
The anti-white platform of the Democrats push most of the white majority away and into the arms of the GOP.
Has life gotten better for NON-WHITES when they were under total Democrat rule? Nope.
The Democrats aren't anti-white, they are pro-elitists. They are pro GIANT companies, of which the government is one example.
The GOP can "get away" with raising an HIB cap because the way in which it is raised will not hurt the middle class much at all. I can't see it hurting any technical people I know much, since
Re: (Score:3)
The entire sector is in for a shock in the next dozen years.
Very advanced software will be generating applications ingesting the requirements via speech recognition. Most programmers will loose their jobs. Thanks to Edward Snowden, NSA is finally getting off their asses and plugging the super user security hole they have suffered under for decades - developing tech to automate and eliminate the vast majority of sys admins. That tech will be filtering out in about 10 (?) years or so.
Good luck indeed.