7 ms·

A loophole in immigration law is costing thousands of American jobs

36 points by hackerboos 12y ago

xxxyy 12y ago
And here we go again with H1Bs. Let me spare the discussion and give a numbered list of options to stick with - I propose everyone just writes his number in his comment. 1) H1Bs are both good and evil. We need reform. 2) US Government sucks. I'm skilled and cannot enter this country. Increase the quota. 3) Immigrants hurt local labor so much I can't stand it. Just throw them out.
curiousDog 12y ago
As an Indian, I really really hope they ban Tata and Infosys (or any other Indian outsourcing company) from getting H1-B visas. The people they bring over are the bottom of the barrel in India and have no interest in Computer Science whatsoever. They suck at their jobs. They can't write a single paragraph in English without grammatical errors. Furthermore, incidents like these will perpetuate xenophobia against the general Indian populace (I already regularly encounter abuse where I live).
- enlightenedfool 12y ago
  Nonsense. There are several Americans who are less skilled at the place I work. Xenophobia can't be stopped by Indians being better workers than locals. The article is about a loophole in law which any corporation would exploit, not just Tata and Infosys. My company (which is American) does it too, in way that isn't obvious. It makes zero sense to ban "any Indian outsourcing company"
  - MichaelGG 12y ago
    > Xenophobia can't be stopped by Indians being better workers than locals But it would. Every case I've encountered where there is a skepticism of Indian workers is due to horrific experiences with such hires. I haven't seen the same applied to, say, Russian engineers. There may be a another reason, like just the sheer population and widespread English usage, but the result is that Indians suffer an unfair bias that other groups don't have. Things like MS shipping a major product made in IDC, with broken English in the dialogs. Or so many outsourced support and development failures. Perhaps it's because bad experiences are noticed because there was an interaction. But good experiences, say excellent code written by anonymous Google engineers, doesn't have any particular nationality associated with it (except American)? So if all tech support and dev was outsourced to Russia, then Russia would have a disproportionate bad rep? It's not fair (or perhaps not even fixable in a fair way), but if more interactions were positive, then there'd be less resistance. I feel bad for having an internal reaction when I start dealing with an Indian, but I try to balance that out by making an extra effort to be sure I'm concentrating on the work. And I know there's tons of far-more-talented-than-me Indians. It terrifies me that this bias might be mathematically incorrect, in addition to being individually unfair.
    - deleted 12y ago
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- CedarMadness 12y ago
  I had to clean up after the mess Infosys made of a client's code a few years ago. It was horrible. There were few comments, most of them made little sense, and the code was a spaghetti mess. A complete rewrite would have been cheaper in the long run. That said, I've seen code written by Americans that was just as bad. The bottom of the barrel anywhere isn't a good choice.
- IndianAstronaut 12y ago
  Where do you live that you encounter abuse?
- sridhar87 12y ago
  "They suck at their jobs.", "They can't write a single paragraph in English without grammatical errors", "The people they bring over are the bottom of the barrel in India ", " have no interest in Computer Science" - Way too many generalizations IMO. There are over 100,000 employees in each of the companies, and of course some percentage of them might be what you describe, but I do have some some good friends who are good coders working there... and both the companies mentioned have billion dollars in revenues - not without a reason.
- shas3 12y ago
  Wow! Being an Indian (assuming you really are) doesn't make it any less inappropriate to make such sweeping generalizations!
- smrtinsert 12y ago
  You get what you pay for. We have great outsourcers but they are well compensated and work for boutique firms. The run of the mill outsources are terrible as you've stated.
- geekam 12y ago
  Companies like TCS and Infosys bring cheap labor mostly on L1 and not on H1. Most of the H1's I know are US graduates and majority are MS/PhD in CS. It is the L1 visa that allows a company to bring in cheap labor because the limitation on minimum salary by the DoL is not as stringent as H1. For H1 visa, a company has to file for labor certification with DoL and they decide what the minimum prevailing wage for a particular zip code, the skillset and the experience is. [1] Having said above I agree that the H1 visa IS being abused but the main issue is L1, not H1. there was about 20% abuse a few years ago and there was a huge crackdown by the USCIS and DoL on those doing that. [1] http://www.immihelp.com/l1-visa/l1-visa-h1b-visa-comparison.html http://www.immihelp.com/l1-visa/l1-visa-h1b-visa-comparison.... See the "Prevailing wage", "DoL approval", "Education requirement"
swatow 12y ago
I agree that it's a loophole, although if it was closed, exactly the same number of jobs would be "lost", because there is a cap. The only difference is that different people would get the H-1B's, which would be good for other reasons. There is an even bigger loophole in immigration law, which is that the government turns a blind eye to illegal immigration from Mexico. However saying so is considered "racist" since anti-racism is constructed to forbid comments about certain groups, and allow them about others.
- deleted 12y ago
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- falsestprophet 12y ago
  It surprises me that liberals generally come down on the side unlimited illegal immigration when the people harmed most are marginalized poor workers who are overwhelmingly disadvantaged minorities themselves (lawful black and Hispanic residents). Ironically, driving down the cost of labor is great for rich people who are generally conservative and oppose illegal immigration.
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  - swatow 12y ago
    It's useful to decouple social liberalism, i.e. that belief that there is no such thing as White culture, and there is no (cultural) harm from large numbers of immigrants from Mexico, from economic liberalism, i.e. the belief that classical economics doesn't adequately describe the economy. When you separate these things, it is consistent for an orthodox economist to promote more immigration from Mexico (not sure how a person could ever advocate for illegal immigration) while being a social liberal. In classical economics, immigrations is (1) good for the immigrant (2) bad for the local workers they are competing with and (3) good for the employers. According to classical economics, the net benefit is positive, and so (with appropriate taxation policy) the overall result is good for the nation. Personally I am orthodox when it comes to economics. The only thing I don't understand is that the liberals apply orthodox economic arguments when it comes to Mexican immigrants, but refuse to apply these same arguments when it comes to H-1B visas. To me it is clear that their real agenda is to promote non-White immigration, but to keep sentiment against Indian and Chinese immigrants as a safe way to express "racist" thoughts.
rhino369 12y ago
The problem with H1-B is that it is temporary in nature and the person gets booted from the country if fired. That depresses wages and is also fundamentally unfair to the immigrant. H1-Bs should be converted into greencards after 3 years. Also, anyone graduating from an America college should get a greencard.
- HillRat 12y ago
  [A]nyone graduating from an America college should get a greencard. I think a new class of non-employer-dependent work visa for foreign graduates of US colleges and universities would be a great idea, if coupled with H1-B reform. For example, there should be reform to wage calculations (e.g., forcing companies to use median or average calculations of the wage bands), a hard percentage cap on the number of H1-B employees and contractors a company can employ (in other words, getting rid of "H-1B dependent companies" under 20 CFR 655.736(a)), and tighter evidentiary requirements under 8 USC 1182(G)(i) regarding good-faith efforts to recruit US workers for a position. Really, though, some of the current legislative brakes should be sufficient to curb some of these abuses. For example, 8 USC 1182(n)(1)(E) seems, prima facie, to be sufficient to deny visas to an H1-B-dependent company which is engaged in displacing US workers -- pretty much the textbook definition of Tata. The fact that it isn't being enforced indicates that there are regulatory problems as well as legislative.
- HarryHirsch 12y ago
  Also, anyone graduating from an America college should get a greencard. No, please, no. We know where that will lead. The so-called "Masters Cap" exists, that's another 20K H1B visa on top of the 65K quota for those graduating with a Masters degree from an American institution. Who could have guessed that that would lead to a cancer of taught masters degrees? These degrees are cheap to put on (just define a few advanced undergrad classes as required for the Masters degree) and come at no extra cost for the university (the class needs to be taught anyway). Boof, it's free money and a guaranteed stream of desperate foreigners. These "let-me-stay-in-the-US courses" need to be killed dead, they aren't even education. Meanwhile any foreigner with an actual degree still gets to jump through extraordinary hoops for the green card.
- 12y ago
jqm 12y ago
I believe having a large technically competent domestic work force is of strategic importance to any modern country. If jobs are outsourced to temporary residents, (especially as wage deflation and reverse discrimination starts occurring), less natives choose to enter the fields or otherwise obtain these skills. They still give the sugar cane industry in Florida large subsidies (even though most sugar is from beets now) because sugar is apparently of such strategic importance to the US. Is one specific kind of sugar of more or less importance than a mass of domestic technical ability? I'm waiting for the day in which societies realize that the importation of low cost labor produces short term benefits... and then much larger problems which last for a very long time. (Edit) The problem (mostly) goes away if immigrants come to be permanent residents and have a stake in the system. I'm very much in favor of immigration/citizenship to the US of talented individuals. Nor are my points on strategic importance a long winded way of saying "they took er jurbs!".
- dogma1138 12y ago
  I some how doubt that people who go to MIT do it to get a six figure job after they graduate. There are plenty of much "easier" ways of getting paid six figures, heck there are plenty of "blue collar" jobs in certain fields which some are even related to engineering (and 40 years ago would had engineers filling those positions) which American's seem to not want to even touch. My GF's dad teach meteorology and welding in Iceland (In Europe and Asia you'll still find that in a Uni), half of his students end up working these days in the states for companies like Caterpillar and the bigger ship yards, their starting salaries are between 80 and 120K and they are crying each year and trying to lobby for grants to get US students into these fields. Oil, Mining, and large scale construction and manufacturing which once were fields dominated by US companies are dying to staff various technical and engineering positions however with the current theme in US higher education they can only get workers these days from E. Europe, Russia and China for the most part. Pushing some graduates out of software engineering and similar studies might actually be good for the US economy in the long run. However doing it trough migrant visa's which take in people who are paid near to nothing and can't negotiate better terms since dismissal is equivalent to deportation is really not the way to go.
kjksf 12y ago
Something doesn't add up in this article. According to the article, 50-60 year olds IT specialist who "install, maintain and manage Edison's computer hardware and software" are making $80-$160k / year ($120k on average). Those salaries seem to be 2-3x market rate for such work. Even the salaries paid to the new, outsorced people ($65-$70 average (sic)) are on the high side for someone who installs software. The article claims this is a "loophole" because H1B is supposed to replace "highly skilled, hard to replace workers" ergo those $120k/year are not highly skilled, hard to replace, which begs the question: how come are they all making $100-$190k/year (https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1671461/sce-it.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1671...)?
- sologoub 12y ago
  The software they work is probably a lot more complex and customized to Edison. The article notes that some systems are involved in emergency response, which would make the system a lot harder to maintain due to the more stringent requirements. To put it differently, think of a system that routes phone calls. Twilio and Plivo are great examples of such systems and are very reasonably priced. BUT you cannot route 911 calls through them[1] because they do not offer E911 support out of the box. Doing so would expose them to liability should their systems fail. Your home landline is required to have this and you pay quite a bit more. (Though if you ask me, WAY too much for what it really is.) Bottom line, critical/emergency systems cost more to run and maintain, with people bearing the responsibility costing more. [1]https://www.twilio.com/help/faq/voice/what-kind-of-phone-calls-cant-be-made-using-twili https://www.twilio.com/help/faq/voice/what-kind-of-phone-cal...
jes 12y ago
I stumble a bit over the concept of American jobs. The jobs belong to the people who are offering them, don't they?
- freehunter 12y ago
  American jobs = jobs in America. Jobs that can be offered to anyone approved by the American government to live and work in the country. Theoretically you could hire anyone. You just couldn't expect them to show up to the office unless the government lets them into the country. If the company doesn't like this, they can let the person work in their own country instead of coming to America, but then that's not an American job anymore. Does that clear things up?
  - jes 12y ago
    That adds clarity, thank you.
evanpw 12y ago
Let's say for the sake of argument that every Indian immigrant displaces one American from their job. Under what moral calculus is that a bad trade? The per-capita income in India is almost exactly 10 times less than in the US. By American standards, keeping someone from leaving India seems pretty equivalent to condemning them to life-long poverty. Can you imagine someone making (with a straight face) the argument that people from Detroit shouldn't be allowed to move to San Francisco to take a better job, because they'll steal jobs from and drive down the wages of SF natives? What's the difference?
- hackerboos 12y ago
  "By American standards, keeping someone from leaving India seems pretty equivalent to condemning them to life-long poverty." That's a bit of a leap. "Can you imagine someone making (with a straight face) the argument that people from Detroit shouldn't be allowed to move to San Francisco to take a better job, because they'll steal jobs from and drive down the wages of SF natives? What's the difference?" Probably the fact that Michigan and California are 2 states within the US and whilst America is protectionist (as are most sovereign nations) against other countries when it comes to labour (with few exceptions like the EU), there are laws that prevent this kind of protectionism between states.
  - Swizec 12y ago
    > Probably the fact that Michigan and California are 2 states within the US And yet, until just 20 years ago, you couldn't move from Germany to France for similar reasons. You had to get a work visa. Just because they weren't part of the same union, even though they are neighbouring countries and you could literally commute from Germany to work in France (or vice-versa) every day if you wanted to.
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  - evanpw 12y ago
    > That's a bit of a leap. If someone lives in India, they are likely to have a standard of living below what would be considered poverty level in the United States. If you actively prevent them from taking a job that would take them out of poverty, how else would you describe that? > Michigan and California are 2 states within the US This is my point. Why is it morally okay to exclude people from India, but not people from Detroit?
putlake 12y ago
This article is bad journalism. I worked in that industry for about 10 years and the way this operates is the company lays off 100 workers and replaces them with 120 contractors, 90 of which are offshore and only 30 are in the U.S. These 30 get, on average, about 60% of the wages (including benefits) that laid off FTEs used to get. However, the client company (e.g. Edison) pays the contracting company (e.g. Tata) roughly the same hourly rate for the on-shore guys. The major source of savings for Edison is moving the work offshore. The 90 folks in India cost about 20% of US FTE. This Google spreadsheet has the math: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1g3upQ7KOlgo8sgKLf4Qdai1yP5fY5x0acTcaK9LgCcc/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1g3upQ7KOlgo8sgKLf4Qd...
mc32 12y ago
A couple of thoughts on this. What's the difference between allowing h1bs and allowing people over the fence along the border? Illegal entry into the country, even if we all for amnesty, puts a dent on the income potential of citizens and immigrants at the lower income levels, who legally enter society... But for the most part, society recognizes the plight of low class immigrants and work to have them legitimized, however, when immigration threatens people in the middle class, they resist. What I'm pointing out is that middle class American citizens are quite in favor of allowing immigration, doing as it does not affect them negatively, economically speaking, once it does, the middle class retrenches. I think this explains why poor American citizens tend to oppose amnesty programs while the middle class typically support it. Typical, I support causes, so long as it does not affect me negatively.
- mjmahone17 12y ago
  The issue is the nature of the h1b: if you lose your job, you're immediately kicked out. This gives employers much more leverage over their employees, allowing them to suppress wages. It's the nature of the h1b, which doesn't encourage people to invest in and make roots in the country they emigrate to, the problem. On the other hand, there's very little evidence that there's a "fixed" number of jobs in the country: allowing more people in likely causes more opportunities, especially if they have children, buy a house, etc. There are a few possible solutions to this, such as: - Make it so once you have an h1b, you have the right to stay in the US for at least 1 year, whether your job is terminated, and make it easy for another employer to take over your h1b. This gives immigrants leverage over a bad employer, in the form of being able to go somewhere that will pay them more. - Make h1bs go to the highest bidders: each company says what salary they're going to give the h1b holder, and those companies paying the most get the visas.
  - mc32 12y ago
    Illegal immigrants can also be deported and have this hanging around their neck throughout their stay. So I don't think it's that. I think the middle class and upper classes say they believe in principles, except when believing those principles will affect their way of life. For example, in SF, kids from areas with historically low scholastic performance are bused into schools with better performance, the hope is that aptitude will 'rub off'. Upper class SFers, are for this, it's socially responsible, but they put their own kids in private schools --the middle class immigrants I speak to, wish they could send their children to schools in their neighborhood, rather than ending up in a random school where performance is suspect.
beeps 12y ago
Immigration laws and national borders aside, this is how an economy works. 'Price' performs an economic function of major significance by distributing resources according to demand (as long as they're not artifically controlled).
beeps 12y ago
Immigration laws and national borders aside, this is how an economy works. 'Price' performs an economic function of major significance by distributing resources according to demand.
sologoub 12y ago
While the article isn't the best written piece I have ready, it as enough facts for me to be outraged as the customer. The rates Edison charges aren't exactly super high to begin with, so me as a consumer saving a few cents here and there isn't going to move the needle. I would much rather see a company that enjoys monopolistic protection from the government be barred from pulling such stunts. Edison can be viewed as a quasi government entity and absolutely benefits from their monopolistic position. In return, their duty should be to watch out for the greater good of the community that funds it, including employment for individuals from those communities. If they were subjected to true open market competition, my opinion of this would be vastly different... but they are not.
abort 12y ago
It is unfortunate whenever I see that anger being directed at the indian worker who is just trying to make a living by working his ass off at a fraction of the pay on contract. The Congress isn't closing loop holes, the companies exploiting this are companies where most of the top management are americans and finally the indian outsourcing companies giving kickbacks to get the big contracts and paying only a tiny fraction of that.
dennisgorelik 12y ago
The article implies that american workers deserve better pay than foreigners and even deserve legal protection that would put discriminate foreigners in order to give american workers their jobs back. There is something deeply wrong with that attitude.
- chrismcb 12y ago
  I don't think there was any implication that the American worker deserves more, or that the foreigner deserves less. Just that is what the rates are. And yes, you can't invite a foreign worker into America to displace an American. Most countries have that rule, what is wrong with attitude of a country trying to protect its citizens?
  - dennisgorelik 12y ago
    1) The title itself claims "costing thousands of American jobs" assuming that Americans somehow deserve these jobs over foreigners. 2) Even if most countries discriminate foreign workers, that does not make it right. 3) Discrimination (if it is not based on skills) is making economy less efficient.
chrismcb 12y ago
What is the actual loophole, the article doesn't spell it out (or I missed it) it seems that if a company is laying off an employee and then replacing the employee with an h1b employee, then the company has broken the law. I don't see the loophole that is being exploited.

36 points by hackerboos 12y ago

xxxyy 12y ago

And here we go again with H1Bs. Let me spare the discussion and give a numbered list of options to stick with - I propose everyone just writes his number in his comment. 1) H1Bs are both good and evil. We need reform. 2) US Government sucks. I'm skilled and cannot enter this country. Increase the quota. 3) Immigrants hurt local labor so much I can't stand it. Just throw them out.

curiousDog 12y ago

As an Indian, I really really hope they ban Tata and Infosys (or any other Indian outsourcing company) from getting H1-B visas. The people they bring over are the bottom of the barrel in India and have no interest in Computer Science whatsoever. They suck at their jobs. They can't write a single paragraph in English without grammatical errors. Furthermore, incidents like these will perpetuate xenophobia against the general Indian populace (I already regularly encounter abuse where I live).

enlightenedfool 12y ago
Nonsense. There are several Americans who are less skilled at the place I work. Xenophobia can't be stopped by Indians being better workers than locals. The article is about a loophole in law which any corporation would exploit, not just Tata and Infosys. My company (which is American) does it too, in way that isn't obvious. It makes zero sense to ban "any Indian outsourcing company"
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  > Xenophobia can't be stopped by Indians being better workers than locals But it would. Every case I've encountered where there is a skepticism of Indian workers is due to horrific experiences with such hires. I haven't seen the same applied to, say, Russian engineers. There may be a another reason, like just the sheer population and widespread English usage, but the result is that Indians suffer an unfair bias that other groups don't have. Things like MS shipping a major product made in IDC, with broken English in the dialogs. Or so many outsourced support and development failures. Perhaps it's because bad experiences are noticed because there was an interaction. But good experiences, say excellent code written by anonymous Google engineers, doesn't have any particular nationality associated with it (except American)? So if all tech support and dev was outsourced to Russia, then Russia would have a disproportionate bad rep? It's not fair (or perhaps not even fixable in a fair way), but if more interactions were positive, then there'd be less resistance. I feel bad for having an internal reaction when I start dealing with an Indian, but I try to balance that out by making an extra effort to be sure I'm concentrating on the work. And I know there's tons of far-more-talented-than-me Indians. It terrifies me that this bias might be mathematically incorrect, in addition to being individually unfair.
  - deleted 12y ago
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CedarMadness 12y ago
I had to clean up after the mess Infosys made of a client's code a few years ago. It was horrible. There were few comments, most of them made little sense, and the code was a spaghetti mess. A complete rewrite would have been cheaper in the long run. That said, I've seen code written by Americans that was just as bad. The bottom of the barrel anywhere isn't a good choice.
IndianAstronaut 12y ago
Where do you live that you encounter abuse?
sridhar87 12y ago
"They suck at their jobs.", "They can't write a single paragraph in English without grammatical errors", "The people they bring over are the bottom of the barrel in India ", " have no interest in Computer Science" - Way too many generalizations IMO. There are over 100,000 employees in each of the companies, and of course some percentage of them might be what you describe, but I do have some some good friends who are good coders working there... and both the companies mentioned have billion dollars in revenues - not without a reason.
shas3 12y ago
Wow! Being an Indian (assuming you really are) doesn't make it any less inappropriate to make such sweeping generalizations!
smrtinsert 12y ago
You get what you pay for. We have great outsourcers but they are well compensated and work for boutique firms. The run of the mill outsources are terrible as you've stated.
geekam 12y ago
Companies like TCS and Infosys bring cheap labor mostly on L1 and not on H1. Most of the H1's I know are US graduates and majority are MS/PhD in CS. It is the L1 visa that allows a company to bring in cheap labor because the limitation on minimum salary by the DoL is not as stringent as H1. For H1 visa, a company has to file for labor certification with DoL and they decide what the minimum prevailing wage for a particular zip code, the skillset and the experience is. [1] Having said above I agree that the H1 visa IS being abused but the main issue is L1, not H1. there was about 20% abuse a few years ago and there was a huge crackdown by the USCIS and DoL on those doing that. [1] http://www.immihelp.com/l1-visa/l1-visa-h1b-visa-comparison.html http://www.immihelp.com/l1-visa/l1-visa-h1b-visa-comparison.... See the "Prevailing wage", "DoL approval", "Education requirement"

swatow 12y ago

I agree that it's a loophole, although if it was closed, exactly the same number of jobs would be "lost", because there is a cap. The only difference is that different people would get the H-1B's, which would be good for other reasons. There is an even bigger loophole in immigration law, which is that the government turns a blind eye to illegal immigration from Mexico. However saying so is considered "racist" since anti-racism is constructed to forbid comments about certain groups, and allow them about others.

deleted 12y ago
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falsestprophet 12y ago
It surprises me that liberals generally come down on the side unlimited illegal immigration when the people harmed most are marginalized poor workers who are overwhelmingly disadvantaged minorities themselves (lawful black and Hispanic residents). Ironically, driving down the cost of labor is great for rich people who are generally conservative and oppose illegal immigration.
- deleted 12y ago
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- swatow 12y ago
  It's useful to decouple social liberalism, i.e. that belief that there is no such thing as White culture, and there is no (cultural) harm from large numbers of immigrants from Mexico, from economic liberalism, i.e. the belief that classical economics doesn't adequately describe the economy. When you separate these things, it is consistent for an orthodox economist to promote more immigration from Mexico (not sure how a person could ever advocate for illegal immigration) while being a social liberal. In classical economics, immigrations is (1) good for the immigrant (2) bad for the local workers they are competing with and (3) good for the employers. According to classical economics, the net benefit is positive, and so (with appropriate taxation policy) the overall result is good for the nation. Personally I am orthodox when it comes to economics. The only thing I don't understand is that the liberals apply orthodox economic arguments when it comes to Mexican immigrants, but refuse to apply these same arguments when it comes to H-1B visas. To me it is clear that their real agenda is to promote non-White immigration, but to keep sentiment against Indian and Chinese immigrants as a safe way to express "racist" thoughts.

rhino369 12y ago

The problem with H1-B is that it is temporary in nature and the person gets booted from the country if fired. That depresses wages and is also fundamentally unfair to the immigrant. H1-Bs should be converted into greencards after 3 years. Also, anyone graduating from an America college should get a greencard.

HillRat 12y ago
[A]nyone graduating from an America college should get a greencard. I think a new class of non-employer-dependent work visa for foreign graduates of US colleges and universities would be a great idea, if coupled with H1-B reform. For example, there should be reform to wage calculations (e.g., forcing companies to use median or average calculations of the wage bands), a hard percentage cap on the number of H1-B employees and contractors a company can employ (in other words, getting rid of "H-1B dependent companies" under 20 CFR 655.736(a)), and tighter evidentiary requirements under 8 USC 1182(G)(i) regarding good-faith efforts to recruit US workers for a position. Really, though, some of the current legislative brakes should be sufficient to curb some of these abuses. For example, 8 USC 1182(n)(1)(E) seems, prima facie, to be sufficient to deny visas to an H1-B-dependent company which is engaged in displacing US workers -- pretty much the textbook definition of Tata. The fact that it isn't being enforced indicates that there are regulatory problems as well as legislative.
HarryHirsch 12y ago
Also, anyone graduating from an America college should get a greencard. No, please, no. We know where that will lead. The so-called "Masters Cap" exists, that's another 20K H1B visa on top of the 65K quota for those graduating with a Masters degree from an American institution. Who could have guessed that that would lead to a cancer of taught masters degrees? These degrees are cheap to put on (just define a few advanced undergrad classes as required for the Masters degree) and come at no extra cost for the university (the class needs to be taught anyway). Boof, it's free money and a guaranteed stream of desperate foreigners. These "let-me-stay-in-the-US courses" need to be killed dead, they aren't even education. Meanwhile any foreigner with an actual degree still gets to jump through extraordinary hoops for the green card.
12y ago

jqm 12y ago

I believe having a large technically competent domestic work force is of strategic importance to any modern country. If jobs are outsourced to temporary residents, (especially as wage deflation and reverse discrimination starts occurring), less natives choose to enter the fields or otherwise obtain these skills. They still give the sugar cane industry in Florida large subsidies (even though most sugar is from beets now) because sugar is apparently of such strategic importance to the US. Is one specific kind of sugar of more or less importance than a mass of domestic technical ability? I'm waiting for the day in which societies realize that the importation of low cost labor produces short term benefits... and then much larger problems which last for a very long time. (Edit) The problem (mostly) goes away if immigrants come to be permanent residents and have a stake in the system. I'm very much in favor of immigration/citizenship to the US of talented individuals. Nor are my points on strategic importance a long winded way of saying "they took er jurbs!".

dogma1138 12y ago
I some how doubt that people who go to MIT do it to get a six figure job after they graduate. There are plenty of much "easier" ways of getting paid six figures, heck there are plenty of "blue collar" jobs in certain fields which some are even related to engineering (and 40 years ago would had engineers filling those positions) which American's seem to not want to even touch. My GF's dad teach meteorology and welding in Iceland (In Europe and Asia you'll still find that in a Uni), half of his students end up working these days in the states for companies like Caterpillar and the bigger ship yards, their starting salaries are between 80 and 120K and they are crying each year and trying to lobby for grants to get US students into these fields. Oil, Mining, and large scale construction and manufacturing which once were fields dominated by US companies are dying to staff various technical and engineering positions however with the current theme in US higher education they can only get workers these days from E. Europe, Russia and China for the most part. Pushing some graduates out of software engineering and similar studies might actually be good for the US economy in the long run. However doing it trough migrant visa's which take in people who are paid near to nothing and can't negotiate better terms since dismissal is equivalent to deportation is really not the way to go.

kjksf 12y ago

Something doesn't add up in this article. According to the article, 50-60 year olds IT specialist who "install, maintain and manage Edison's computer hardware and software" are making $80-$160k / year ($120k on average). Those salaries seem to be 2-3x market rate for such work. Even the salaries paid to the new, outsorced people ($65-$70 average (sic)) are on the high side for someone who installs software. The article claims this is a "loophole" because H1B is supposed to replace "highly skilled, hard to replace workers" ergo those $120k/year are not highly skilled, hard to replace, which begs the question: how come are they all making $100-$190k/year (https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1671461/sce-it.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1671...)?

sologoub 12y ago
The software they work is probably a lot more complex and customized to Edison. The article notes that some systems are involved in emergency response, which would make the system a lot harder to maintain due to the more stringent requirements. To put it differently, think of a system that routes phone calls. Twilio and Plivo are great examples of such systems and are very reasonably priced. BUT you cannot route 911 calls through them[1] because they do not offer E911 support out of the box. Doing so would expose them to liability should their systems fail. Your home landline is required to have this and you pay quite a bit more. (Though if you ask me, WAY too much for what it really is.) Bottom line, critical/emergency systems cost more to run and maintain, with people bearing the responsibility costing more. [1]https://www.twilio.com/help/faq/voice/what-kind-of-phone-calls-cant-be-made-using-twili https://www.twilio.com/help/faq/voice/what-kind-of-phone-cal...

jes 12y ago

I stumble a bit over the concept of American jobs. The jobs belong to the people who are offering them, don't they?

freehunter 12y ago
American jobs = jobs in America. Jobs that can be offered to anyone approved by the American government to live and work in the country. Theoretically you could hire anyone. You just couldn't expect them to show up to the office unless the government lets them into the country. If the company doesn't like this, they can let the person work in their own country instead of coming to America, but then that's not an American job anymore. Does that clear things up?
- jes 12y ago
  That adds clarity, thank you.

evanpw 12y ago

Let's say for the sake of argument that every Indian immigrant displaces one American from their job. Under what moral calculus is that a bad trade? The per-capita income in India is almost exactly 10 times less than in the US. By American standards, keeping someone from leaving India seems pretty equivalent to condemning them to life-long poverty. Can you imagine someone making (with a straight face) the argument that people from Detroit shouldn't be allowed to move to San Francisco to take a better job, because they'll steal jobs from and drive down the wages of SF natives? What's the difference?

hackerboos 12y ago
"By American standards, keeping someone from leaving India seems pretty equivalent to condemning them to life-long poverty." That's a bit of a leap. "Can you imagine someone making (with a straight face) the argument that people from Detroit shouldn't be allowed to move to San Francisco to take a better job, because they'll steal jobs from and drive down the wages of SF natives? What's the difference?" Probably the fact that Michigan and California are 2 states within the US and whilst America is protectionist (as are most sovereign nations) against other countries when it comes to labour (with few exceptions like the EU), there are laws that prevent this kind of protectionism between states.
- Swizec 12y ago
  > Probably the fact that Michigan and California are 2 states within the US And yet, until just 20 years ago, you couldn't move from Germany to France for similar reasons. You had to get a work visa. Just because they weren't part of the same union, even though they are neighbouring countries and you could literally commute from Germany to work in France (or vice-versa) every day if you wanted to.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- evanpw 12y ago
  > That's a bit of a leap. If someone lives in India, they are likely to have a standard of living below what would be considered poverty level in the United States. If you actively prevent them from taking a job that would take them out of poverty, how else would you describe that? > Michigan and California are 2 states within the US This is my point. Why is it morally okay to exclude people from India, but not people from Detroit?

putlake 12y ago

This article is bad journalism. I worked in that industry for about 10 years and the way this operates is the company lays off 100 workers and replaces them with 120 contractors, 90 of which are offshore and only 30 are in the U.S. These 30 get, on average, about 60% of the wages (including benefits) that laid off FTEs used to get. However, the client company (e.g. Edison) pays the contracting company (e.g. Tata) roughly the same hourly rate for the on-shore guys. The major source of savings for Edison is moving the work offshore. The 90 folks in India cost about 20% of US FTE. This Google spreadsheet has the math: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1g3upQ7KOlgo8sgKLf4Qdai1yP5fY5x0acTcaK9LgCcc/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1g3upQ7KOlgo8sgKLf4Qd...

mc32 12y ago

A couple of thoughts on this. What's the difference between allowing h1bs and allowing people over the fence along the border? Illegal entry into the country, even if we all for amnesty, puts a dent on the income potential of citizens and immigrants at the lower income levels, who legally enter society... But for the most part, society recognizes the plight of low class immigrants and work to have them legitimized, however, when immigration threatens people in the middle class, they resist. What I'm pointing out is that middle class American citizens are quite in favor of allowing immigration, doing as it does not affect them negatively, economically speaking, once it does, the middle class retrenches. I think this explains why poor American citizens tend to oppose amnesty programs while the middle class typically support it. Typical, I support causes, so long as it does not affect me negatively.

mjmahone17 12y ago
The issue is the nature of the h1b: if you lose your job, you're immediately kicked out. This gives employers much more leverage over their employees, allowing them to suppress wages. It's the nature of the h1b, which doesn't encourage people to invest in and make roots in the country they emigrate to, the problem. On the other hand, there's very little evidence that there's a "fixed" number of jobs in the country: allowing more people in likely causes more opportunities, especially if they have children, buy a house, etc. There are a few possible solutions to this, such as: - Make it so once you have an h1b, you have the right to stay in the US for at least 1 year, whether your job is terminated, and make it easy for another employer to take over your h1b. This gives immigrants leverage over a bad employer, in the form of being able to go somewhere that will pay them more. - Make h1bs go to the highest bidders: each company says what salary they're going to give the h1b holder, and those companies paying the most get the visas.
- mc32 12y ago
  Illegal immigrants can also be deported and have this hanging around their neck throughout their stay. So I don't think it's that. I think the middle class and upper classes say they believe in principles, except when believing those principles will affect their way of life. For example, in SF, kids from areas with historically low scholastic performance are bused into schools with better performance, the hope is that aptitude will 'rub off'. Upper class SFers, are for this, it's socially responsible, but they put their own kids in private schools --the middle class immigrants I speak to, wish they could send their children to schools in their neighborhood, rather than ending up in a random school where performance is suspect.

beeps 12y ago

Immigration laws and national borders aside, this is how an economy works. 'Price' performs an economic function of major significance by distributing resources according to demand (as long as they're not artifically controlled).

beeps 12y ago

Immigration laws and national borders aside, this is how an economy works. 'Price' performs an economic function of major significance by distributing resources according to demand.

sologoub 12y ago

While the article isn't the best written piece I have ready, it as enough facts for me to be outraged as the customer. The rates Edison charges aren't exactly super high to begin with, so me as a consumer saving a few cents here and there isn't going to move the needle. I would much rather see a company that enjoys monopolistic protection from the government be barred from pulling such stunts. Edison can be viewed as a quasi government entity and absolutely benefits from their monopolistic position. In return, their duty should be to watch out for the greater good of the community that funds it, including employment for individuals from those communities. If they were subjected to true open market competition, my opinion of this would be vastly different... but they are not.

abort 12y ago

It is unfortunate whenever I see that anger being directed at the indian worker who is just trying to make a living by working his ass off at a fraction of the pay on contract. The Congress isn't closing loop holes, the companies exploiting this are companies where most of the top management are americans and finally the indian outsourcing companies giving kickbacks to get the big contracts and paying only a tiny fraction of that.

dennisgorelik 12y ago

The article implies that american workers deserve better pay than foreigners and even deserve legal protection that would put discriminate foreigners in order to give american workers their jobs back. There is something deeply wrong with that attitude.

chrismcb 12y ago
I don't think there was any implication that the American worker deserves more, or that the foreigner deserves less. Just that is what the rates are. And yes, you can't invite a foreign worker into America to displace an American. Most countries have that rule, what is wrong with attitude of a country trying to protect its citizens?
- dennisgorelik 12y ago
  1) The title itself claims "costing thousands of American jobs" assuming that Americans somehow deserve these jobs over foreigners. 2) Even if most countries discriminate foreign workers, that does not make it right. 3) Discrimination (if it is not based on skills) is making economy less efficient.

chrismcb 12y ago

What is the actual loophole, the article doesn't spell it out (or I missed it) it seems that if a company is laying off an employee and then replacing the employee with an h1b employee, then the company has broken the law. I don't see the loophole that is being exploited.