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At this point, with both Corporate abuses from American corporations and the H1-B holding companies along with the frequency with which we've seen the more expe

At this point, with both Corporate abuses from American corporations and the H1-B holding companies along with the frequency with which we've seen the more expensive American work replaced with a much cheaper "guest" worker, I believe we need to ask ourselves, do we not have enough surplus American workers that are unemployed such that the H1-B program might not be necessary for a year or two until we've managed to get the unemployed American workers back to work?

udkl 10y ago
From a cursory glance with my limited knowledge, that sounds like a very naive approach and one which will not pass a vote. The problem is that of lower skilled (not low skilled) but cheaper labour from the body shop consultancies mixed with higher skilled ones in the same H1B pool. As someone somewhere suggested, instead of a lottery, an auction of the seats would in a sense lead to lesser pay difference between the native and outsourced worker. This is just theory that needs to be given a deep though. The bottomline is that the H1B serves as a competitive advantage to the US. Software, now that it is eating the world, is a very important part of the economy... and the US needs to invest in giving it's corporation whatever advantages it can w.r.t technology. The consequence of stopping the H1B altogether would be a shortage of technical workers, leading to the rise in software expenses for companies and maybe resulting in the US & US corporation to lose their technical advantage & leading positions globally.
- johndubchak 10y ago
  Perhaps it is naive however, I did not suggest stopping it altogether, the idea is to merely restore some balance back into a system that seems to have gotten out of balance. The auction is a good idea, but I fear it will somehow be twisted and abused as well.
robotresearcher 10y ago
H1-B visas are for skilled workers. The unemployment rate for skilled American workers is very, very low.
xenadu02 10y ago
One of the best developers I've ever worked with is here on an H1B. He's better than 95% of all the US Software Engineers I've ever worked with. He runs an open source project in his spare time and gives talks to educate the community. He's the kind of person the visa is for and he is paid appropriately for a senior engineer (not a cheap import). The problem is the mostly Indian outsourcing companies. They ballot-stuff the H1B process every year. I talked to an Indian engineer in the US on J1. He said these three companies come to every Indian University and indiscriminately "hire" every single graduate to sign up for H1B, regardless of skill, need, or ability. Then if they "win" they get a to come to the USA, so of course most take the offer. It is implicitly understood that they will work for low wages and in difficult conditions but the goal is not to ask questions or rock the boat and wait until they get a green card. I don't blame the workers but it is clearly an abuse of the system; Infosys isn't hiring India's brightest engineers to import as contractors. They're grabbing as many people with a pulse as possible to ballot-stuff H1B applications. That could be solved by restricting applications to X per applicant, including all affiliated companies and subcontractors. The other H1B scam is that you only have to pay a software engineer around $60-$70k to qualify as "highly paid". I'm not sure what the exact trick in the rules is but the consulting companies can and do pay well below market rates for engineers and it's perfectly legal.
- douche 10y ago
  That low salary figure must be based off of homing them on some non-SF/Seattle/Austin/NYC city. There are a lot of places in the US where making 60-70k individually puts you into the top 5-10% of the populace.
- fractalb 10y ago
  >Infosys isn't hiring India's brightest engineers to import as contractors. Not only Infosys, not a single Indian company mentioned here in this thread is hiring the best. Actually, the best here typically don't opt for the consulting/outsourcing companies.

udkl 10y ago

From a cursory glance with my limited knowledge, that sounds like a very naive approach and one which will not pass a vote. The problem is that of lower skilled (not low skilled) but cheaper labour from the body shop consultancies mixed with higher skilled ones in the same H1B pool. As someone somewhere suggested, instead of a lottery, an auction of the seats would in a sense lead to lesser pay difference between the native and outsourced worker. This is just theory that needs to be given a deep though. The bottomline is that the H1B serves as a competitive advantage to the US. Software, now that it is eating the world, is a very important part of the economy... and the US needs to invest in giving it's corporation whatever advantages it can w.r.t technology. The consequence of stopping the H1B altogether would be a shortage of technical workers, leading to the rise in software expenses for companies and maybe resulting in the US & US corporation to lose their technical advantage & leading positions globally.

johndubchak 10y ago
Perhaps it is naive however, I did not suggest stopping it altogether, the idea is to merely restore some balance back into a system that seems to have gotten out of balance. The auction is a good idea, but I fear it will somehow be twisted and abused as well.

robotresearcher 10y ago

H1-B visas are for skilled workers. The unemployment rate for skilled American workers is very, very low.

xenadu02 10y ago

One of the best developers I've ever worked with is here on an H1B. He's better than 95% of all the US Software Engineers I've ever worked with. He runs an open source project in his spare time and gives talks to educate the community. He's the kind of person the visa is for and he is paid appropriately for a senior engineer (not a cheap import). The problem is the mostly Indian outsourcing companies. They ballot-stuff the H1B process every year. I talked to an Indian engineer in the US on J1. He said these three companies come to every Indian University and indiscriminately "hire" every single graduate to sign up for H1B, regardless of skill, need, or ability. Then if they "win" they get a to come to the USA, so of course most take the offer. It is implicitly understood that they will work for low wages and in difficult conditions but the goal is not to ask questions or rock the boat and wait until they get a green card. I don't blame the workers but it is clearly an abuse of the system; Infosys isn't hiring India's brightest engineers to import as contractors. They're grabbing as many people with a pulse as possible to ballot-stuff H1B applications. That could be solved by restricting applications to X per applicant, including all affiliated companies and subcontractors. The other H1B scam is that you only have to pay a software engineer around $60-$70k to qualify as "highly paid". I'm not sure what the exact trick in the rules is but the consulting companies can and do pay well below market rates for engineers and it's perfectly legal.

douche 10y ago
That low salary figure must be based off of homing them on some non-SF/Seattle/Austin/NYC city. There are a lot of places in the US where making 60-70k individually puts you into the top 5-10% of the populace.
fractalb 10y ago
>Infosys isn't hiring India's brightest engineers to import as contractors. Not only Infosys, not a single Indian company mentioned here in this thread is hiring the best. Actually, the best here typically don't opt for the consulting/outsourcing companies.