Visa restrictions are just protectionism by another name. And it is very well established that, in general, protectionism is bad for all involved.
Especially for the IT guys from India who get jobs and money which do wonders for millions of poor people back home, people much poorer than most Americans can imagine,
but why would American liberals care, since their concern for their fellow humans is limited to their fellow American humans.
Vote for harsher visa rules people!
I have worked in IT for 20 years and I agree. I got so fed up with it in my last job that I just told any upper management people within earshot that I couldn’t do my job well most of the time because I was completely dependent on slaves that they brought over from the 3rd world and I meant it in all seriousness. I doubt some of them would go to the bathroom if I didn’t list it as an official task on a project plan. They literally could not make any decisions on their own and some powerful people saw that as a plus - it is the opposite at least in IT.
Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t bad people in general and a select few of them are actually skilled at something but it is complete bullshit to believe that the relatively few specialized skills they possess are any better than an average eager American and it is usually far worse once you take the culture gap into account.
I had enough sense to select a job with a mega-corp that cannot be outsourced because someone that knows what they are doing has to be physically present at all times but I still have to work daily with outsourced teams both onshore and offshore. I consider it a success if I can get anything accomplished outside of my own role on a good day. It is like working against a hierarchy of retarded robots that only understand a few commands and it isn’t just me. I tend to have better luck than the senior managers and directors because I have found a few good ones over the years that can fight on my behalf. That is the only hope you have.
What is funny though, especially in the case of India, is that there are some really smart and effective ones professionally that come to the U.S. to live in the medium to long term. Those are the ones that I befriend because they are absolutely brutal to fellow Indians when it comes to incompetence or general slacking. I have asked a couple of very educated and competent Indian coworkers that I trusted to take care of a problem with their country-mates and they did in quite effectively in two or three different languages that I couldn’t understand but I did know it wasn’t good. Problem solved. Thank goodness for the caste system.
H1B Visas are indeed complete bullshit at least in IT. I have worked with people in that program for two decades and it extremely rare for it be legitimate (someone having skills that can’t be filled otherwise). It doesn’t work that way. Think about that for a second. The fundamental claim is that one of the most populous countries in the world that started the internet, most of the web, most social media, GPS, space travel and has a significant percentage of the best universities on Earth simply can’t find people to update web pages or run databases for 50K+? Most of those things aren’t that difficult with even some training.
The program should be reserved for people like nuclear engineers, GPS satellite experts or other skills that are truly hard to find.
In many cases the companies are paying those wages. They just want to pay less. And in the case of Disney, hope that no one else does so that the public can afford their stuff.
The reason there is a law is exactly because corporations have lots of incentive to screw workers. Wages are starting to inch up, and you can already hear the whining.
That same management skill caused them to build a big new store in Neward right before they went bankrupt. It never opened, and it just got torn down.
Wow. Love it when negroes get taught their place as well do you?
Well. You can be the one that fires the American workers to make room for the offshore workers. Because few workers will willingly quite their jobs to make room for offshore workers … though I get the impression you think they should.
No, I think it’s fine if their bosses fire them. I just don’t think you should try and force those bosses to not do so by changing laws to encourage protectionism and make it tougher to find replacements from other countries who are willing to do the job more cheaply, especially when such a movement represents enormous net gains for humanity.
The economic growth in India (and, I’m sure, other third world countries) that has resulted from IT offshoring has helped more people (who were much worse off) than the American software engineers it has replaced, not to mention that even Americans are on the whole better off if work is done by whoever has comparative advantage.
You are aware that H1B visas are for people to come over to America and live and work here, aren’t you? The competitive advantage of lower cost of living doesn’t apply in this case – anyone using an H1B visa still has to live in the US, buying food, clothes, etc. and finding housing here.
IMHO, if US tech companies prefer to hire foreign workers (despite the cultural and language issues often involved), that is an indication of how bad the US education system is. The solution is not to tighten the restriction on foreign workers, but to improve education (especially STEM education) in the US.
Yes, but as noted earlier(by someone disparaging the idea I think), workers on H1Bs are often happy to do it in conditions that allow them to send money back home, and H1Bs are also critical to provide the onsite engagement component that allows the offshoring model to work. In general, wanting H1B visas restricted is just a protectionist impulse that does nothing to help anyone except one special interest group - American software engineers, and in the long run, probably doesn’t help them either.
You’re assuming that the preference is based on the stated reason: shortage of American workers. There’s no evidence that there is indeed a shortage of American workers; there is just a surplus of foreign workers willing to work for half as much (and do half as good a job, which is a trade-off that American corporations have gladly made.)
H1B is only for skilled workers. And there is a shortage of skilled workers in the US, especially those with science and engineering training. If the unemployed Americans don’t have the skills these companies need, while foreign workers do, the fault lies in the American education system.
If there were indeed a shortage of skilled American tech workers, then we would never see layoffs in the tech industry, and jobs going to imported foreign contractors…which we do, repeatedly.
I’m surrounded by IROCs* from India, every one of whom represents depressed salary or unemployment for an American tech worker.
*Idiot Right Out of College
No, the solution is that U.S. workers should be willing to work for third world wages.
Especially when US colleges graduate plenty of domestic idiots.
The term is universal, yes. I first heard it in the '90s, when it was trendy to hire Big 6 consulting firms to come in and analyze your business model, and they would flood your company with fresh-faced ignorami.
How much do they make?
This is a widespread myth perpetuated by corporations looking for cheap labor:
This seems to assume that anyone with a US bachelor’s degree in a STEM field counts as a skilled STEM worker. I have seen many examples that refute this claim - US college graduates who can’t even apply simple trigonometry to real-world situations, etc.
That’s a glib and fast answer. Did you read the article? The circa 400,000 STEM graduates every year is larger than the 277,000 STEM vacancies, Even if some are complete screw-ups, that still leaves a sizeable excess of candidates.
And that’s before you consider the 11 million STEM degree-holders working in non-STEM jobs. If there’s a legitimate death of STEM workers, you’d be able to lure them in, as well.