Business Week published a front page article, Work Visas May Work Against the U.S. Indian outsourcers file the most applications for temporary H-1B visas. Are they using them to train staff for jobs abroad?.
In Peter Elstrom’s article, the connection between technology transfer out of the United States, trade, offshore sourcing and guest worker Visas are correlated. Quote:
Outsourcing Conduit…
But a review of new information from the federal government suggests that the companies benefiting most from the temporary worker program aren’t U.S. companies at all. Rather, they appear to be Indian outsourcing firms, which often hire workers from India to train in the U.S. before returning home to work. Data for the fiscal year 2006, which ended last September, show that 7 of the top 10 applicants for H-1B visas are Indian companies.
That brings us to some most disturbing questions: are foreign offshore outsourcing companies manipulating the US Visa system for a comparative advantage in trade? Are they using the H-1B to facilitate technology transfer and know how out of the United States? Are offshore outsourcing companies using the H-1B to simply train workers, on US technology, in the United States, then sending the workers back home, along with the jobs, in order to enable transfer of critical technical expertise out of the United States?
Another Clue, President Bush said in talking about trade with India, “We’ve got to expand what’s called H-1B visas”. Yet, Under the H-1B program, employers do not have to search for Americans, and can prefer an H-1B [visa holder] over an American citizen or green card holder.
Even for jobs in the United States, by law, offshore outsourcing firms do not have to bother considering a green card holder/US citizen for the position. There are many such job postings which state “H-1B Visa holders only need apply” on American technical job boards. This fact is yet another indication that the H-1B Visa program is being used for technology transfer. Americans are simply cut out of the entire loop, except when potentially forced to train their replacements.
Let’s examine the WTO, GATS mode 4, known as Movement of Natural Persons by trade. From Debunking the Myth of Mode 4 and the U.S. H-1B Visa Program
Lori Wallach and Todd Tucker, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, March 2006.
Currently, misunderstandings about the H-1B visa system are being exploited by service industry and U.S. government representatives to try to trick other countries involved in negotiations on the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) into making offers regarding “liberalizing” their countries’ service sectors in exchange for promises of new U.S. immigration rights for foreign workers.
Yet for obvious financial interests, Wipro’s Badiga says
the H-1B visa program allows Wipro workers to get valuable experience in the States and be more effective at serving customers in the U.S.
Yet adding insult to injury, Billionaire offshore outsourcing Wipro Chairman, Azim Premji :
those [Americans] who complain they are not getting jobs, their jobs are getting displaced, are going to be on the fire list anyway because they were not doing their jobs well enough
Now, how can someone insult Americans from Stanford, Georgia Tech, MIT, the best engineering schools in the world, strive to study at these very US schools, yet claim Americans aren’t good enough while he makes billions by offshore outsourcing American jobs?
Here’s a quote Dollars and Sense:
Trading in People
Since guestworkers already face such abusive conditions, it is fair to ask how GATS could possibly make it worse for them. GATS is unlikely to change the circumstances of individual guestworkers. However, it worsens the exploitation of guestworkers as a whole in two fundamental ways. First, the draft GATS agreement erodes even the limited legal protections that are available to guestworkers (whether documented or undocumented) today and blocks the evolution of progressive national and international legal instruments to protect migrant workers’ rights. Second, by making it easier for employers to hire guestworkers, GATS could greatly increase the number of exploited migrant workers worldwide.
Economist Paul Craig Roberts wrote Economists In Denial; Blind To Offshoring’s Adverse Impact.
Many American software engineers and IT professionals have been forced by jobs offshoring to abandon their professions. The November 6, 2006, issue of Chemical & Engineering News reports that “the percentage of American Chemical Society member chemists in the domestic workforce who did not have full-time jobs as of March of this year was 8.7 percent.” There is no reason for Americans to pursue education in science and technology when career opportunities in those fields are declining due to offshoring.
My ultimate question on the H-1B: how come none in Congress right now, especially Democrats claiming to be supporting the US Middle Class, are sponsoring or co-sponsoring the The Defend the American Dream Act of 2005? This bill stops some of the more blatant abuses by corporations using the H-1B. From the statistics, clearly using the H-1B for technology transfer, i.e. the trading of people[jobs] to gain a trade comparative advantage also needs to be addressed. Why would any Democrat, anywhere even consider raising the H-1B Visa cap with such obvious abuses surrounding this program, plus being used as a technical expertise transfer vehicle which enables the offshore outsourcing of jobs and adds to the United States trade deficit?
H-1B, a temporary Visa, is not an immigration issue, as so often mistaken. The H-1B and L-1 are guest worker Visas and clearly due to the above evidence and abuses described, H-1B is also a trade and an offshore outsourcing issue. Like other global labor arbitrage vehicles, H-1B is clearly a threat to US national security and economic interests. Like it or not, the WTO sees people as services and it’s clear nation-states and multinational corporations wish to trade us like cattle via WTO, GATS mode 4.
Indian Outsourcing Industry Set to Jump 33% to $31.3 billion.
You are doing a tremendous service with this. This issue needs to stay front and center.
It is absolutely amazing that the Repubs talk about training ex-manufacturing workers in IT, and then turn around and support the import of high-tech scabs thru the H1-B visa program.
The program is tremendously troubling.
Feel free to spread this stuff around.
As much as it pains me to say this, we have Democrats more than willing to sell out US STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) professionals too.
It’s why it’s so important to raise awareness, we need Democrats to be Democrats and stand up for the US middle class. The fact that we have a massive trade deficit
and the US is being sold off, piece by piece, is yet another component….so it’s beyond workers and the middle class, it’s also American economic future or lack thereof.
I call them the Corpocrats, ya know, DLC Dems or Dems “sponsored” by big corporate money or AILA and so on,
and the Corporate Republicans, Bush Corporation being at the head.
This is a tag team. I suspect that “Robert Oak” (what a nick, puhleaze) and “dataguy” are sock-puppets of each other, or close allies on this propaganda effort. Don’t be fooled.
In the interest of fairness, I have just observed that both of their UIDs are lower than mine, so I was wrong to leap to the assumption that they were recent sock puppets.
I wish we could edit comments. I apologize for this comment.
I got VERY angry to be accused of writing for hidden financial reasons. I NEVER do that, which is one reason I’m not rich.
And, no, we are not sock puppets. We do agree on the problems with H1-B visas, however.
Last year the House Government Reform Committee held hearings about the delays in visa processing. There was no mention of displaced IT American employees, of course. So, the assumption that American business needs more immigrant workers went unchallenged.
One of the witnesses, Microsoft’s Kevin Schofield, spoke of delays especially in India, and how that helps to harm the “competitiveness of our national economy.” For “Microsoft and other major U.S. employers” the visa problems hamper their efforts “to recruit the most talented possible work force.”
The State Dept.’s representative said that long delays for H-1B visas in India are because (1) the demand spiked up so quickly in the high-tech sector; and (2) H-1B processing is more time-consuming, the questions more complex, pertaining to whether the applicant is “really qualified for the particular high-tech job… and will they be directly employed in it or benched to be loaned out in a body shop type situation…”
How a consular determines whether someone is qualified for a high-tech job is as mystifying as how s/he determines that an elderly widow like my daughter-in-law’s mother, is lying about her intentions for a short visit.
I’m sure the lost manufacturing jobs in Silicon Valley won’t be returning. I just don’t know who in Washington gives a hoot.
In the ’60s and ’70s, primarily American talent built the computer industry. In the ’80s, the Internet was invented by CERN (European), but most of the work was done by Americans to popularize and develop it.
hamper their efforts “to recruit the most talented possible work force.”
Now that the Internet is up and running, apparently American companies cannot survive without foreign scabs.
How did we survive to this point, in which American talent has almost single-handedly developed the computer industry? Why, now, is all the talent foreign?
I’m a U.S. immigration lawyer. I don’t have time for a full response right now, but I have read this whole screed, and I want to fire off a quick “bullshit!” This is nativistic fear-mongering that sounds just like Lou Dobbs or Tom Tancredo.
The big picture, and the truth, is completely the opposite. We need MORE H-1B numbers, MANY MORE, not fewer.
And by the way, I have a super-specialized law practice and don’t do H-1Bs nor any other kind of employment-based immigration work. But I have seen this kind of fear-mongering lead to all kinds of harm to my clients and their families.
Since processing all of these Visas is your bread and butter, thus when other professionals speak out, it’s going to hurt your personal pocketbook, you come along and spread misinformation. Yet you specialize in precisely the legal loopholes documented to offshore outsource jobs and labor arbitrage Americans.
Perhaps you should into actually representing Americans and labor versus corporate interests and the cheap labor lobby in order to make a living.
You are destroying your own shallow argument. You obviously did not even read my note. I do not “process visas” and I never handle H-1B or other employment-based cases and this issue has no impact on my pocketbook one way or the other. And I made that clear in my note. You are the one spreading misinformation.
I never represent corporate interests. I’ve turned down huge offers to do so. I solely represent individuals, most of whom are U.S. citizens. I always side with the side of labor.
You are making an extremist right-winger argument. This is a leftist web site. Maybe you should go over to Little Green Footballs.
From your foaming at the mouth here, I suspect you don’t really understand the bogus charts you took such trouble to cut and paste. Did you get them off Norm Matloff’s web site?
I just got home after a long commute, and I was planning to do a careful refutation of your preposterous arguments. But after this unwarranted and inaccurate personal attack, forget it.
We know the law, see:
Dr. Norm Matloff, University of Michigan Law Review
And we also know that the AILA lobbies Congress for as many complicated Visas as possible because it is their money maker.
Ah, just as I predicted, you’re a shill for Matloff.
And you have just given me a troll rating for telling the truth. I predict you will not be long at this site. I’m troll-rating all of your comments.
I was a bit dismayed to see some of the good people at this site fall for your propaganda. It is just one lie after another. Moreover, it is racist trash. You claim that Indian companies send foreigners to get “training” in the United States, as if they were stealing from the United States. That is one lie after the other.
The H-1B is not a training visa. It is available only to professional workers with at least a bachelor’s degree.
The H-1B is not a computer worker degree. But this campaign by loser American programmers is harming thousands of American companies and American families.
My father is a computer professional who got an M.S. in Computer Science in his late 60s. He worked in the field until he was almost 80. He had to learn new skill sets every few years. I have no sympathy for all the loser American programmers who blame their lack of success on foreigners. It is a vicious lie. And it is really perverse to claim that the argument is pro-labor.
I would love to rip up your silly and illogical charts, but you don’t really care (you’re just disseminating propaganda you don’t understand) and I don’t really care either.
Wow, that is simply the APEX of AD HOMINISM. Maloff, from what I have read, is a reasoned and thoughtful guy, who doesn’t buy the crap shoveled out of Silicone Valley about the great need for a lower pay scale for IT (that’s the main interest in broadening the talent pool, of course).
What is the problem in being a “shill for Maloff”? What’s next, you have “a little list of 537 supporters of the known nativist and opponent of foreign talent, Norman Maloff”? We’ve been down that road; it has a bad ending.
I have communicated with Norm Matloff via email many times. He is a very fair and honest person who has been watching American computer sciences students decline rapidly in numbers due to job loss and imported labor.
“I have no sympathy for all the loser American programmers who blame their lack of success on foreigners. It is a vicious lie.”
Frankly, I have considerable difficulty understanding why you have adopted such an unfair, prejudiced view of American information technology professionals given that your own father was apparently an engineer. You seem to believe that the only American IT pros critical of H-1b/NIV programs and offshore outsourcing are inferior (“loser”[s])
I also find it more than a bit outrageous to insult the intellectual integrity of Dr. Matloff. He has written a number of scholarly, informed papers and given testimony before Congress re. the H-1b program. He is recognised for an expertise in this area. Grapple with his claims/findings, if you like but don’t insult readers by claiming he needs “shills”.
What a pile of crap. We do not need more immigrants. We need jobs for Americans to go to Americans.
These are the new middle class jobs,and we do not need a whole bunch of scabs, helped out by scabby immigrant lawyers, to come in and undercut the wage market.
Not a good idea.
I agree. As a capable, bright and hard working but middle aged American former programmer, I can say that Robert is CORRECT. The cheaper foreign imported labor does nothing good for THIS COUNTRY. It does help the exporting countries – their programmers gain skills, training and experience while Americans are laid off, lose their homes and their futures.
Labelling this diary as “nativistic [sic] fear-mongering” without supporting the accusation and then rushing off to claim that the U.S. needs “more H-1b numbers” is unimpressive to say the least.
I see a tremendous amount of detail in this diary with supporting links. Nowhere is there evidence of anything “nativisitic”.
Produce your evidence if you have any!
I request that people remove their recommendations on this really stinky and racist propaganda diary.
you’re going to need to do a better explanation than that this for us to understand why you feel this way.
I am not qualified to judge and ad hominem attacks aren’t educating me.
I thought at this point I should state some facts, for others reading this post.
The research from this post comes from an EPI research (think tank of the AFL-CIO) and some from myself. Some of the work comes from the IEEE, a professional society for engineers.
Norm Matloff is a Democrat, registered, active. He also is highly respected in the legal community and is also an expert witness on labor law.
I am a Democrat.
This issue has been adopted by a series of Democrats, Jim Webb being the most prominent.
Our group, are all Democrats and we started per the request/suggestions from some Kerry campaign staffers and most of us volunteered for the Kerry campaign in 2004.
Please observe that he initiated the ad hominems and that he initiated the troll ratings.
You may not have seen this crap before, but I’ve had to endure it for years.
One of the more clever techniques of the nativist/racist/restrictionist/anti-immigration forces, which are mainly funded by Richard Scaife (yes, that’s true) is the co-option of liberal groups. They have tried to take over the Sierra Club, for example, with the argument that immigration leads to littering, as I would mockingly characterize the argument. They are trying to do the same thing with organized labor, and with many other leftist groups.
This is not one person’s diary. This is organized propaganda.
You will notice that I predicted that he got his stuff from Norm Matloff’s web site. A few notes later, he cited Matloff’s web site–and obviously hadn’t read that note of mine, just as he hadn’t read my earlier note.
I’ve been crossing swords with Matloff for years. If you’d take a look at his site (as cited in this thread) you might begin to understand.
Tonight I truly don’t have the patience, but as a thought experiment, try to read this diary carefully, trying to imagine, just for argument’s sake, whether the various buttons being pushed aren’t for propaganda purposes, rather than sincere and well-grounded arguments.
This is much ado about nothing. The H-1B program, in fact, has an insignificant impact on U.S. labor markets in any sector, and that is definitely true for IT types. I don’t have any love for the Indian “job-shops” that this diary is complaining about, but the reality is that the impact is not significant. I’m not going to take the time to look up conter-evidence, but you can find it at http://www.aila.org and many other places. This is my field, so I’ve been reviewing everything for over 20 years.
I’m angry that he claimed I’m contesting him for economic reasons. That is a cheap, prickish argument. The reality, of course, is that people like him who distribute these canards often ARE acting for economic reasons.
Supported by money from Scaife and his cronies, the anti-H-1B push (which has been going on for years) is lead by a bunch of crybaby American computer engineers in their 30s and 40s who hate their lives in the cubicles and blame their miserable lives on dark-skinned foreigners who they imagine to be cheating them out of better jobs. It is truly pathetic.
I have read Matloff’s material at length. At one point, years ago, I sympathized with some of it, but I’ve come to believe it is all quite thoroughly false.
In the late 1990s, during the great tech bubble, American IT firms were screaming about a great lack of labor. The H-1B cap was raised for a few years (2001-2003) to 195,000 per year. See, for example,
http://www.americanlaw.com/h-1b.html .
Since then, under pressure from the nativist types, the annual number has been locked at 65,000. This is a nation of 300 million with more than 100 million workers. Sixty-five thousand a year is nothing.
But the reduction in the cap to 65,000 has tremendous harmful effects on thousands of American employers and American families. As a homely example, in 2003 I was able to hire an employee to be a law clerk on an H-1B. I did not do this for evil reasons of money or control. I interviewed about 15 job applicants, all of whom were U.S. citizens except the person I hired. The person I hired was hired because he or she is a wonderful person who I judged to be ideally suited to the job, and I pay MUCH more than the prevailing wage, and pay all my employees, whether U.S. citizens or not, much more than I am required to do. I deeply resent the efforts of these anti-H-1B propagandists, because under the current cap on H-1Bs, it would be virtually impossible for me to get another H-1B employee to assist me–and I am going to need some new employees soon.
the joys of being an administrator. I can’t judge the validity of your argument right now. I think you put a heavy weight on yourself when you throw a word like ‘racist’ around. How am I to react to that on a complicated issue I am not familiar with?
All I can say is that you need to back it up if you are going to make the charge. It’s not fair to me to expect to drop whatever I’m doing to see if I can find out enough information to decide for myself.
Nonresponsive, BooMan. I did not ask YOU to remove recommendations. I asked my friends in this community to remove their own recommendations, hoping they’d credit my arguments. I did not ask you to get involved.
I’m well aware of the weight attached to the “racist” epithet, and that is my considered opinion of the root of this anti-H-1B propaganda.
What have you just done here? You said: back up your charge. I spent 10 minutes writing a long note trying to give some of my main reasons. You obviously did not read my note, but responded: I’m sorry but I don’t have time to read your response; but you have failed to back up your charge. That is a load of crap!
Your last sentence: “It’s not fair to me to expect to drop whatever I’m doing to see if I can find out enough information to decide for myself.” Huh? Say what? YOU asked me to back things up and then say you’re too busy to read my response??? When I never asked you to get involved in the first place??? Weird, man.
you called this a racist diary. That’s a potential violation of the rules against personal attacks. If the community should unrecommend it because it is racist, then shouldn’t I just delete it?
I don’t think you can call it racist without creating a burden for yourself to make a very strong argument. Maybe I would agree with you and would delete this diary, but your response did not provide me with anything but your impressions and opinions.
You put me in a difficult position by making these accusations. If you’re right, then I should delete the diary and even possibly ban the user. So, you definitely asked me to get involved whether you meant to or not.
But I can’t tell whether your argument has merit or not without doing research. Do you see what I am saying?
Okay, I had not seen that perspective.
I do not want my opposition to depend in any way on my belief that there is a racist animus behind this brand of propaganda.
I do not wish to put you in a difficult position.
Since I cannot edit comments, would it help if I retracted the accusation of racism? I am willing to do that, and hereby do that.
I do believe I could provide a fairly good that this kind of argument is racist, but I do not wish to trouble you with all of it tonight. Moreover, please note that I did not accuse Mr. Oak of being personally racist, and I do not hold that belief. As you might have noticed from my comments 10 days ago on the suggestions for new rules for the site, I’m clear in my mind about the difference between attacking the person and attacking the ideas. I do think Mr. Oak is peddling ideas that are inherently racist, but he may well not realize it.
I hope that’s satisfactory. The last thing I wanted tonight was a mini-flamewar. I regret that you don’t comprehend my reasons for my fierce objection, especially since I’ve gone to considerable trouble to express them.
http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/noH1bSurge/
This is a current action item by the AFL-CIO on H-1B.
I have no idea what in God’s name this guy is talking about, but I’m pretty sure the KKK or whoever wouldn’t let us in their groups. I don’t think we’re all the right color, sexual orientation and a few other things.
Anyway, thanks for stepping in Booman,
for this is a critical labor issue and we’re trying to spread awareness…which is what the diary is all about, global labor issues and trade issues.
I’m stepping out to the store for a moment.
Here is what would make me happy.
Robert- please retract the accusation that he is a shill.
Arminius- please retract the accusation that this is a racist diary pending a well-sourced argument for that assertion.
</solomon>
It is obvious from his note above that he hasn’t read a word I’ve written here. It is painful that he is ignoring my comments about the way this hate speech is being peddled as pro-labor.
He also just called me a KKK member. I should think that would trouble you as an administrator.
I did retract above the accusation that this is a racist diary, although I do believe that there is a racist (in particular, anti-South Asian) animus behind this brand of propaganda.
Oh strike that last weaselly sentence. At BooMan’s request, I retract the charge of racism. Period.
But I don’t think Mr. Oak can deal with my other arguments. He has made no attempt to do so so far. All he has done is to attack a mental stereotype of an immigration lawyer, having no knowledge whatsoever of the actual work I do or the man that I am.
He called me a shill.
Little does he realize he is ripping apart research that happens to be the speciality area of Dr. Ron Hira, an Indian American, which I find very amusing here, although I believe Dr. Hira would not be so amused.
I pointed out the AILA is lobbying heavily for more guest worker Visas for it is in their financial interests to do so, and they also attack those labor activists discussing them on the blogs. I think that’s about as mean as I got.
For further amusement, here is the real author of the Defend the American Dream Act of 2005, sponsored by Bill Pascrell (D-NJ 8th) – H.R 4378, 109th Congress.
This is a picture of Sona Shah. I can tell you not only did she write this bill, she also probably would not be amused at being called a racist.
“Some of my best friends are Negroes.” Oh, Puhleeze.
I already retracted the racism charge.
Your post here is ridiculous. If you want to pretend to be so precise: (1) give some proof that an Indian American named Hira is responsible for your bad arguments; and (2) explain why showing a picture of Sona Shah is related in any way to this diary or my posts???
You say: “I pointed out the AILA is lobbying heavily for more guest worker Visas for it is in their financial interests to do so, and they also attack those labor activists discussing them on the blogs. I think that’s about as mean as I got.” But of course, anybody can read the actual thread above, which isn’t very long, to see that that is NOT what you did–you made those specific charges against ME, even though I had previously mentioned that I don’t even do work in this area.
Your thinking is shoddy, your reasoning is shoddy, your examples are shoddy, and your writing is shoddy. But since I never do ad hominems, I’m sure you’re capable of better. And no doubt you think you’re on the side of the angels on this one, but you’ve been duped.
Please call a truce and come back to make your arguments without assuming bad faith. Both of you. This thread is flamed already and nothing is going to be settled tonight.
As I said above, I was preparing to do a thoughtful, point by point refutation of this diary, but I erupted in anger after being falsely accused of improper financial motives by someone who hadn’t bothered to read what I said.
I have just reread this diary, and I wish to state again that I think it is an astonishing, albeit rather sophisticated, blend of half-truths and distortions that makes the mind ache to counter. The Indians are competing with the Americans. Yes, we don’t get to ruthlessly exploit all the foreigners forever. But that is miles from claiming that this means that Americans are being traded like cattle and slaves. I remain insulted by what I think is this diary’s intellectual dishonesty, while at the same time I regret I haven’t done a better job at refuting it.
BooMan’s plea for truce is welcome and I will say no more. I added this last note for the night for one main reason (I’m burying my lede). I’m unhappy to see, after going to Mr. Oak’s links, that he is apparently an African-American programmer, which means I have committed the unforgivable sin of accusing an African-American of having racist ideas. Since I don’t want to be a forerunner on breaching that particular shibboleth, let me just say I’m sorry about that.
I suspect Mr. Oak and I agree on most issues. I’m sorry for the rancor on this one.
What does that have to do with anything? He has never brought it up in any sense, positive or negative?
He has always argued economically and from a jobs policy standpoint. Thus, bringing race into the discussion is mystifying.
True, and a sockpuppet. But he has backed down on these accusations, or at least most of them. What say we all give it a rest?
Since then, under pressure from the nativist types, the annual number has been locked at 65,000. This is a nation of 300 million with more than 100 million workers. Sixty-five thousand a year is nothing.
Yep, you would make a lot more money if a lot more immigrants came in.
When a person argues from self-interest, that isn’t bad. It is extremely self-righteous to convert SELF-INTEREST to the PUBLIC INTEREST, and that is your argument.
I have already explained several times that I have a unique kind of practice and would not benefit from an increase in H-1B numbers. You’re fighting a straw man.
Supported by money from Scaife and his cronies, the anti-H-1B push (which has been going on for years) is lead by a bunch of crybaby American computer engineers in their 30s and 40s who hate their lives in the cubicles and blame their miserable lives on dark-skinned foreigners who they imagine to be cheating them out of better jobs. It is truly pathetic.
There are literally LITERALLY thousands of computer engineers who have had to, on pain of losing severance pay, educate their replacements. I wonder if you can understand this – you are going to lose your job, and they will pay you $10,000 (all the money you get for the forseeable future) if you will train the replacements, from India, who will take over your job.
Crybabies, eh?
What a jerk you are, buddy.
Yes, crybabies. Suck it up. Nobody has a right to a job. Start your own company.
tax breaks to outsource jobs? tax breaks to import scabs?
You have funny ideas.
Scabs?
You have no fucking idea what you’re talking about!
I don’t think that I’ve heard anyone here or elsewhere on the intellectual side of the anti-outsourcing movement claim any single American had a “right to a job”.
Actually, it was Carly “the Outsourceress” Fiorina at HP who used this infamous terminology to attack American IT workers.
Carly used H-1bs to facilitate the offshore outsourcing of thousands of American IT jobs because it cut the corporate labor costs. There was no question that the American workforce was competent. It was a matter of whacking jobs to improve the profit margin — and Carly’s financial rewards.
Mark Hurd carries on a similar practice at HP today. And, HP uses H-1bs on a permanent basis in preference to hiring American IT workers.
You’ve completely evaded central issues re. the so-called “non-immigrant visa” (NIV) programs which have been raised in a variety of venues and documented in articles at leading information technology/business publications.
NIV workers have been used as tools for the offshore outsourcing of high tech and general white collar work previously performed by competent, well-educated, and diligent Americans. This practice has become widespread since at least 1999. And, NIV programs are being used as a means of permanently utilising non-citizen labor inside the U.S.
This situation reeks of injustice — blatant labor arbitrage.
It is you sir who injected the claims of racism into this discussion. For my part, race is not a factor. I work with people of all races and, in fact, engage in political activism with Sona Shah — an Indian-American. What unifies many of us who are involved in anti-outsourcing activism is the obvious injustices institutionalised by corporations, business lobbyists and willing American politicians.
The history of the H1-B visa is interesting. Back in 1996, an important IT guy suddenly realized that, in 2000, a lot of programs were going to break. That’s due to the well-known Y2K problem, in that literally hundreds of millions of lines of code had to be reviewed to ensure that the change from 1999 (often encoded in programs as 99) to 2000 would not break the program.
In some cases, it wasn’t important.
In Wall Street, not fixing Y2K would have been CATESTOPHIC. All financial computations would have been totally screwed up, and this would have caused a MASSIVE FINANCIAL DISASTER.
Thus, for 5-6 years, a huge number of IT people were needed, and we did not have them.
So, for a temporary increase (note the word “temporary”), the H1-B visa was created to increase the labor supply and solve the Y2K problem.
Y2K came and went, but the H1-B visa program did not die. That’s because an enormous infrastructure of people was invented to work with the H1-B visa bearers. This group included lawyers and IT HR professionals.
Why does HR love H1-B IT workers? Well, it’s pretty simple – if you have an infinite supply of well-trained, young, undemanding workers, you don’t need to pay for training of your old current workers. You just fire them, complain that they are “no longer competitive” and hire one of the new shiny workers. Then you go to Washington and get your paid congressperson to increase the H1-B supply, to ensure that the supply of cheap foreign labor is never going to decrease, which ensures that you, the employer, never have to actually do any training.
The fact is, the “talent” in foreign IT is much more to do with their age, their currency in skill set and their lack of moveability. You come in on an H1-B and you are a virtual slave.
I have hired many H1-Bs and many Americans. The H1-Bs, almost all Chinese, are of varying quality. The Americans are pretty much all better. That’s due to the INITIATIVE the Americans take, and their ability to understand the language.
They aren’t here for anything more than the opportunity of having several children. HINT-CHINESE 1-CHILD POLICY.
They are, in fact, no more talented than Americans. They are a little more willing to work hard, and I grant them that. But we are offering them an out from their own repressive social policy, and that’s the real deal here. It’s not foreign talent, by any means.
I’ve read through the above & looked at a number of the referenced sources. What a shame that people’s buttons got pressed. The resulting conflict made other people scramble to get out of the sand-box.
Organized labor should be removed from the discussion. The AFL-CIO has its own agenda, which does not necessarily reflect the diverse views of all union members. Calling people “scabs” and implying that all lawyers who support an increase in the H-1B cap are financially rewarded for it is not helpful.
Broadly depicting opponents of the H-1B program as crybabies (and worse) had the predictable outcome. It’s true that people have had to train replacements, either to work in this country or to work in facilities opened up overseas.
That perhaps some Chinese women came here, THEN married and had more than one baby has absolutely nothing to do with whether the program should be eliminated (it won’t be, get real) or whether the cap should be increased.
With a little Googling I found a lot of discussion about H-1B visas these past couple of days. That’s not coincidental. It smacks of organized campaign.
Whether or not a company saves money in the long run under the H-1B program has no simple answer, because people have moved on to other employment, and the total paid for employees includes raises, bonuses and benefits measured over years.
I saw no macro perspective. The experience in one area on the East Coast will differ from the experience in one-company towns on the West Coast, and whether or not software engineers are involved.
For the purposes of raising the cap, should there be a distinction drawn between H-1B visas for high-tech and those for other industries and professions?
What effect is there on the debate by:
(a) the numerous layoffs
(b) the multinational character of the big firms
(c) the availability of training/education?
Is it worth continuing?
On the comment about Chinese women having babies, my point is that these people are here not because they are the “best and brightest” but simply because they don’t like it at home. Fine. However, we have no obligation to create an environment favoring foreign workers at the expense of current native workers.
The point was that the program is being sold as filling a critical need which cannot be filled domestically. In fact, there is no such need. Currently domestic workers are just as capable as foreign workers, just as technically sophisticated, just as hard working.
They are here for their own PERSONAL reasons, and it has nothing to do with a BURNING TECHNICAL NEED THAT CAN BE FILLED ONLY BY FOREIGN WORKERS.
That’s my point.
The number of H1-Bs should be drastically cut.
Dataguy:
You are so right! HERE in America we have skilled programmers wanting work!! We don’t need to import even one more worker.
There should be NO VISAs at all. We have so many Americans who are looking for work and are ready to be trained, re-trained etc that we have NO LABOR shortage. And the wages of programming have dropped so much that today’s salary is the same as salaries were in the late 1980s. What other field has had this occur? Did the attorney field billing rates drop to half what they have been? If not, I guess we need to import some cheap attorneys from India because we surely don’t feel like paying a decent wage to anyone these days.
latanawi, thank you for this intelligent post.
I do agree there should be more of a macro perspective. I’m sorry that I helped this thread degenerate into a flamewar, after I was infuriated to be falsely accused of acting for hidden financial reasons.
Let me use this post here, which few will probably see since the diary has fallen off the front page, to issue a correction I’ve been thinking about this afternoon. I said in the thread that the H-1B program has had no adverse effects on any labor sector. On further thought, I’m not sure about that, although I continue to suspect that it’s true from a macro perspective. I would be open to more tinkering with the H-1B program, perhaps even including a five-year ban on H-1Bs for IT positions, or something like that.
But I strongly want several kinds of guestworker programs to continue. I think that’s just plain right, because I believe that all human beings have a God-given right to work wherever they want. And as an employer, I want to be able to hire whomever I wish.
The issues are complex. Obviously the debate will have to be postponed. The testosterone was flying out of the screen so fast, I had to get up to wash my face at least three times.
But did you take a cold shower?!
You believe that all human beings have a god given right to work anywhere.
Me too.
Except, I believe that it should be true first for lawyers. Whereever you get your law degree, you should be able to work anywhere, and there should be no state bars. All states should have the same bar exam. And the US should have the same bar exam as Mexico, as well as China. That way, all of the incompetent, lazy, scumbag lawyers (present company doubtless exempt) would be driven out by hard working foreign lawyers.
But you little scumbag lawyers (again, present company exempted) are in a protected profession, where you get these little guild rules to protect you from the thousands and thousands of far more qualified chinese lawyers out there. With this little protection, you feel free to make your bucks helping millions of others come here to destroy the labor market for other qualified people.
Lawyers! Can’t live with ’em, and can’t live with ’em.
Long on invective. Short on reason.
ok, I think what we have here is someone, ignoring their own ethical code that is required of all attorneys, to be truthful and objective, instead using a well planned public relations strategy to claim anyone who is not for “open borders” or “corporate controlled migration” is a racist, xenophobe.
I’m pretty sure I know who you are, B., but I’m not going to violate blogging ethics by outing you.
But, may I say, more to embarrass you. What kind of an attorney ignores objective statistics and evidence and prosecutes the messenger? Maybe that will work with less than the “best and the brightest” of juries, but on the blogs, I think not, try as you might.
You are also plain acting outside the norm of professional behavioral codes at this point.
Blatantly name calling individuals and groups bringing to light labor economics issues, statistics and facts you do not want known and thus try to bury the evidence in name calling, inflammatory rhetoric is juvenile, more appropriate behavior in prison (your mama?) and most assuredly is not in alignment with professional behavioral codes affiliated with your profession.
blogging ethics demands that you don’t publish initials or any other potentially identifying information. You need to back off on this. I have almost tolerance for it.
That attack is outrageous. You are in no position to lecture people here on whether they are acting unprofessionally. The bell rang. Take your anger elsewhere.
But attacking an expert, PhD, Professor, who is also a statistician and calling him a racist, which is so obviously not true if one even bothers to read his professional bio, is outrageous. In research or any professional setting one can argue merits of research and papers, but personal attacks are taboo and that is what he is doing.
Robert, although you may find it impossible to believe, I am a peace-loving, religious Christian. I apologize sincerely to you for my angry comments last night. I feel strongly about this issue, for many reasons that I tried to express, but I also realize that you also feel equally strongly, for comparable reasons. Let us bury the hatchet.
You are correct that a lawyer has an ethical obligation to be honest. As you probably know, since you have obviously discovered my identity (which I have not deeply buried), I am well known as an expert on legal ethics, and I genuinely take that very seriously.
I do not believe I said anything untruthful in this thread.
It is terribly false to say that I am part of some coordinated public relations campaign. I’m not much of a joiner or politician. I’m acting entirely on my own. I have GREAT passion about these issues, because I have a STRONG sense of justice, given to me by God I believe, and I am VERY ANGRY about the injustices against foreigners that I see so frequently in this country.
Since you have discovered my identity, perhaps you noticed the article my wife and I wrote about the Biblical (and Koranic) reasons for protecting foreigners.
The rest of your post is, frankly, just not written very well, and I don’t see anything to respond to. I do suspect that it may be your own average ability at coding, practical politics, and business administration, that leads to your career problems, not some outside enemy such as Indian programmers. You seem to have a classic case of “kick the dog syndrome.”
I’m sorry you have blown off all the many apologies and reasonable statements I made in the thread. I don’t think you really read much of anything I wrote; in contrast, I read your illogical diary more than once.
I think that many Americans are also seeking justice, Arminius. They are not acting out of hatred. And ascribing the worst of intentions and dismissing reasonable claims of past injustices does nothing to faciliate reasonable debate.
I have found in my past 3 years of political activism, many elected officials and “business leaders” have reacted to my writing with gross indifference, misrepresentations, lies, equivocations punctuated with slanderous personal attacks.
There is widespread evidence that American IT workers are frequently the victims of injustices. They have been thrown out of work because corporatations find them too old, too costly and unwilling to work 12 hour days. Their families have suffered. These displaced Americans have not somehow “retrained” and been “made whole”.
There is no real lobby for American workers; there is a potent, well-financed lobby for widened offshore outsourcing and importation of foreign workers. When the press covers this issue a decidedly pro-business slant is apparent in most cases. So, American workers are, at every turn, met by indifference, denial and accusation. Such a paradigm is not conducive to justice or even reasoned debate.
You’re unreal, you just insulted me, made some (very wrong) assumptions on what I do for a living and also previously insulted a well known expert.
As far as your “expertise” or ability, on that score I saw no endorsement or reference. I did see the public chastisement for falsely name calling a highly esteemed researcher and expert.
I should let this drop. You have been completely unable to engage A SINGLE THING that I have taken many minutes to express in this thread.
I am unimpressed by your intellectual abilities, but perhaps your brilliance shines out in special, protected environments.
And a warning. Don’t go further with outing my identity. Try to pretend that you’re really a Democrat.