Mother Jones: How H-1B Visas are Screwing Tech Workers
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/silicon-valley-h1b-visas-hurt-tech-workersEstablished in 1990, the federal H-1B visa program allows employers to import up to 65,000 foreign workers each year to fill jobs that require "highly specialized knowledge." The Senate's bipartisan Immigration Innovation Act of 2013, or "I-Squared Act," would increase that cap to as many as 300,000 foreign workers. "The smartest, hardest-working, most talented people on this planet, we should want them to come here," Sen. Marco Rubio, (R-Fla.) said upon introducing the bill last month. "I, for one, have no fear that this country is going to be overrun by Ph.D.s."
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Of course, the big tech companies claim H-1B workers are their last resort, and that they can't find qualified Americans to fill jobs. Pressing to raise the visa cap last year, Microsoft pointed to 6,000 job openings at the company.
Yet if tech workers are in such short supply, why are so many of them unemployed or underpaid? According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), tech employment rates still haven't rebounded to pre-recession levels. And from 2001 to 2011, the mean hourly wage for computer programmers didn't even increase enough to beat inflation.
The ease of hiring H-1B workers certainly hasn't helped. More than 80 percent of H-1B visa holders are approved to be hired at wages below those paid to American-born workers for comparable positions, according to EPI. Experts who track labor conditions in the technology sector say that older, more expensive workers are particularly vulnerable to being undercut by their foreign counterparts. "You can be an exact match and never even get a phone call because you are too expensive," says Norman Matloff, a computer science professor at the University of California-Davis. "The minute that they see you've got 10 or 15 years of experience, they don't want you."
CrispyQ
(36,461 posts)It felt like I got my tech credentials on the very day the dot com bubble burst. I worked a short while at a Whole Foods IT department. Great benefits, but they give you a laptop & a smart phone & you pretty much work all the time. While I was there, there were 4-5 open positions, in our department, that they never filled. Once in a while, when they felt our morale was getting low, they would bring a few poor schmucks in for interviews, but they never hired anyone. It was just to give us hope.
When you read the ads, there is no way one person can qualify for what they list as requirements.
Then there's this:
The smartest, hardest-working, most talented people on this planet, we should want them to come here," Sen. Marco Rubio, (R-Fla.) said upon introducing the bill last month.
Asshole. Why aren't we cultivating the "smartest, hardest-working, most talented people on this planet" in this country? Oh, yeah, that's right, we are, but we've saddled them with so much student debt, in our 'everything for profit' society, that they graduate with tens of thousands of dollars of debt & can't afford to work for H-1B visa wages.
OhioChick
(23,218 posts)midnight
(26,624 posts)people in America from their jobs... In Wisconsin we have Act 10 that allows some unions to unionize and other not to i.e. teachers...
LittleGirl
(8,285 posts)I graduated at age 45 with a BS in management - not technical certification for the specific reason of wanting to get off the certification treadmill of re-certifiying every time Microsoft decided to upgrade their software. Their software kept me employed until I graduated and then boom, my job disappeared (to HQ) and I was left with nothing, no promotion for my degree either. I haven't worked since.
gulliver
(13,180 posts)The big problem with H-1Bs (and L-1s) is the people who have them have no bargaining power with businesses. If foreign tech workers are going to be here at all, then we should just let them immigrate and become citizens. If businesses need the tech workers so badly, they won't mind bargaining with tech workers who can't be exploited over their immigration status.
Tech workers with green cards and a path to citizenship (in the same numbers as H-1Bs and L-1s currently allowed) would actually raise the prevailing wages in the country. And it could be structured so that it would be a huge brain drain on the very cream of the crop in India and other countries. That would make it less desirable to outsource, because the outsourcing providers would have even less competent people than they have now. Moreover, permanent citizen tech workers don't have to leave, so they won't go back to India, taking their acquired expertise with them.
I could obviously go on. Citizen tech workers help our local economies by buying houses, products, and services here. As a bonus, Indian Americans vote overwhelmingly Democratic.
Somehow, I think Marco Rubio would have a problem with this concept though. Like all Republicans in the pocket of big business, he is not interested in tech workers so much as he is interested in exploitable ones who have to take lower pay.
about 10 years to late on this one.
If they can't H-1B visas they'll just ship the job overseas.
Welcome to the new job market.
-p
grilled onions
(1,957 posts)why do they have the knowledge to train their replacements? If I was a company big wig and thought a certain group of workers were total non starters,didn't know their job etc I surely would not have them show the ropes,skills,instructions to the H-1B Visa group!
If ever there is a group worthy of replacement let's start with the "rubios" who surely cannot be the smartest,hardest working,most skilled in D.C.
I love the way they talk tough when they know they are not the ones who can ever get replaced. How would they feel if it was their job on the line?