H-1B program: U.S. Companies Hiring The World's Geniuses: 24/7 Wall St.

[agent zero]

This article was on the Huntington Post yesterday:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/10/genius-companies_n_1764250.html

"From 24/7 Wall St.: The story of American business has been about shipping the country’s manufacturing jobs overseas. However, there is another part of the story. Every year, American companies hire thousands of highly skilled foreign workers.

Since 1990, the U.S. Department of Labor has issued visas for these workers through the H-1B program. These visas permit 85,000 workers — 20,000 of whom are required to have graduated with an advanced degree from an American institution — to work in the United States for three years, with an optional renewal for another three years.

Recently, the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan public policy organization, released a report on the demand for highly skilled immigrants in the United States. These requests are measured by the number of Labor Condition Applications (LCAs) that companies file with the Department of Labor. 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the report to compile a list of the top 10 public American companies requesting the most H-1B visas. "


Does anybody buy this idea that the H1B's coming over from India are "geniuses"?
From what I hear they are not even good at their jobs and they produce poor quality work.

It's not racist to defend American workers. To hell with anybody that steals jobs from Americans.

[Skittles]

1. as someone who as worked with those "geniuses"

[OhioChick]

7. May I join you?

[Skittles]

9. OMG they take bullshitting on a resume to NEW HEIGHTS

[agent zero]

22. thank you

I hear they really are expert at bullshitting on a resume.

[progressivebydesign]

12. I'm with ya on that. I worked with one...

she was fired, and I was given her job... and I didn't have the degree. Total fraud.

[Egalitarian Thug]

24. "Highly skilled geniuses"

[Confusious]

2. From what I've heard

It's running 15-1 shoddy/not shoddy.

The h1b system is also abused on a constant basis.

So, yea, it's bullshit.

[SteveSmithCharlotte]

3. What comes after a genius?

If the H-1B programmers I work with are geniuses, then we need a higher description to give average programmers.

But they are $10/hr cheaper----to take four times as long with poor quality.

[Igel]

4. Do I accept that all the H1-B imports are geniuses?

Of course not.

Then again, that's not the claim. That would be "US hiring only the world's geniuses." I'd say that in many fields they're hiring a disproportinate number of the world's geniuses. It's one of the things that made the US great. We (and a small number of other countries) were viewed as responsible for a world-wide brain drain. Such an idea is apparently hopelessly outdated, just like the term "brain drain."

As a grad student I was annoyed that so many of my professors were brought in under exemptions. It meant that when I graduated--not that i ever did--I'd be competing against the foreign-born and not just my peers. Then I advanced to candidacy and pondered the education I'd have gotten from most of my peers had they been my professors 5 years after graduation.

I was suddenly rather glad for the faculty I had. Among the best of the American-born PhDs *and* the best of the foreign-born PhDs.

It's not racist to defend American workers. It can be nativist, of course; it can also be short-sighted, insisting on a mediocre American to help innovate new products and procedures instead of a brilliant foreigner. But it's suspicious when specifically dark-skinned people are always the target of the "they're all lazy and stupid" claims. Some probably are. They're only human.

[Zalatix]

6. It will get to a point where only the top 10% of people will even hold a job at all.

What will the other 90% do in this economy?

[SteveSmithCharlotte]

19. Look at it the other way .....

Do employers replace Americans with foreign workers because they want to promote diversity?

[elehhhhna]

25. scientists in oil and gas --

like petrophysicists, geophysicists, etc. are half-to-MOSTLY foreign-born. I see this in the more "science-y" job categories. They DO perform, they are well educated, and I assure you the E&P co.'s would prefer hiring Americans, but there aren't eno0ugh of us.

IMO, and I have no data to back this up, the countries with NATIONAL OIL COMPANIES (many/most oil producing nations) support educating the brightest and best. They also don't charge 8buhzillion bucks for an undergrad degree, so taking a masters and even a PhD in the US leaves foreign students with less debt than Americans - making post-grad education more "doable".


It's a matter of our collective, national priorities.

[elehhhhna]

26. p.s. they aren't paid less than americans, either

[Ruby the Liberal]

5. Welcome back.

I believe you mean Huffington, not Huntington.

[Kali]

17. Ariana isn't even American, is she?

[agent zero]

23. Nope. Foreigner.

[DCBob]

8. some are, some aren't.

I dont like the H1-b program because it tends to be abused but clearly we are also benefiting as a nation from getting many of the world's "best and brightest".

[Skittles]

10. add "cheapest"

[DCBob]

13. agreed.

[progressivebydesign]

14. We have the brightest and best, they were laid off.

these imports work cheaper, AND they work like dogs with no home life whatsoever. We benefit nothing..

[DCBob]

15. True, but I think most of our "best and brightest" are now finding employment.

Also, not all imports work cheaper since part of the requirement of H1-b is prove they are high skill level so their salary has to reflect that. But I do agree the system is being abused to get cheaper labor.

[elehhhhna]

27. we have the OLDEST, and they cost more to insure. period.

that's te biggest driver for foreign labor. YOUTH.

[twins.fan]

11. The H1B visa is used to hire replacement workers.

Thanks agent zero!!

My comments:

The H1B visa is not used to hire "highly skilled" workers. The H1B visa is used to hire replacement workers. The H1B visa is being used by corporate America to reduce labor costs by replacing well educated, highly trained US STEM workers with cheap, entry level, submissive third world workers primarily from India and Red China.

Read the facts! The GAO published a study for Congress in 2011: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d1126.pdf in which they reported that 54% of the recipients of the H1B visa are "Entry Level" workers. Read the graph on page 58 of the report. It can be viewed at: http://techtalk.dice.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/918iBE2B98F5EE29FE1A/image-size/original?v=mpbl-1&px=-1

In fact there is no category of "highly skilled." The highest rank is a mere "Fully Competent," a lower standard than "highly skilled". Only 6.0% of the H1B recipients were judged to be "Fully Competent." The remaining 94% were judged to be NOT "Fully Competent."

[HiPointDem]

20. bringing in computer support specialists for as little as $24K. $12/hour.

http://www.myvisajobs.com/Computer-Support-Specialists_4-2012OC.htm

[twins.fan]

16. Which is more important? Democratic principles or Democratic candidates?

When Democratic candidates actively oppose Democratic principles, what do you do?

We need to wake up to the fact that our Democratic politicians are actively supporting and benefiting from their support of the H1b visa.

[SteveSmithCharlotte]

18. That's apparently where the rules of this forum go against the common good

Apparently no criticism of Democratic presidential candidates is allowed period and not criticism of Democratic candidates after labor day.

I know a lot of Republicans who worked tirelessly to get rid of America's most corrupt former senator, Spencer Abraham. They did America a great favor.

There are a few Democrats who deserve the same. Apparently we can't say who they are.

[twins.fan]

21. The abusers of the H1B are dumping a lot of money into the pockets of politicians on both sides ...

and who pays the price? US working people pays the price. We have got to put pressure on the leaders of the Democratic Party to support the principles of the Democratic Party.

[kurt_cagle]

28. H1B and Tech Workers

In general, if you are a highly skilled technical worker right now, you have work. It may have required a move, and the pay is not what it was at the height of the dot-com boom when inflation is taken into account, but in many places, technical jobs are not getting filled because there really are not enough people with the right skill-set. That's generally a good sign, because those technical jobs are usually "leading" jobs - they tend to occur early in the process in order to support a larger number of moderately skilled workers later.

Regarding the OP, however, there's actually something of a backlash building in corporate America regarding H1B visas. A number of Indian companies in particular sent people over on H1B visas, and while there, many applied for citizenship. They then formed companies in the United States that were American subsidiaries of Indian companies, applied for more H1B visas, and picked up many "strays" that were abandoned by their host company when the three year window for the visa closed ... in many cases competing directly against the companies that they originally had worked for. Couple that with a burgeoning Indian technology sector in Hyderabad and elsewhere (meaning Indian developers can actually make more staying home), and the bad experiences of attempting to work with outsourcing when a significant percentage of your workforce is eight timezones away, and the result is that "cheap" foreign labor is increasingly more expensive than seemingly more expensive local labor.

BTW, the US has a long history of importing labor at bargain basement prices, and once a population gets established, they tend to bring in others of that ethnic group. African slaves, Irish indentured servants, Chinese railroad workers, Welsh miners, Italian construction laborers, Mexican domestics and farm workers, Nigerian taxi drivers and garage attendants, Indian programmers. Eventually, the conditions that made it favorable for the immigration to occur in the first place die off, and the population then moves out of the ghetto of their particular niche and into the more general populace. Programming can be learned by anyone with access to a computer, and there are few places in the world right now where one could not learn to be a programmer, especially given the web. Are there a lot of mediocre Indian programmers? Yeah. Are there a lot of mediocre American programmers? Oh, yeah. Americans tend to be blind to the fact that this country no longer has a monopoly on computing, and in a number of respects we're falling behind other countries.