So, you are ok with blue collar American workers getting affected by the programs like DACA, TPS, illegal immigration etc., but when it comes to your white collar job, you don't like uncontrolled "driving down wages"?
TPS? Like Vietnam war era refugees? I mean, you’re clearly trying to conflate some big differences in immigration...
No, I’m for immigration that’s actually needed—like doctors and specialized researchers. But having worked for an immigration firm an seen what a lot of tech companies are doing, I can assure you it’s not for the benefit of the common man.
I’m for letting immigrants into the country—but giving an unlimited number of visas to companies to bring over underpaid workers hurts everyone.
They should be banned because they are a drain on the wages to the average worker and they’re used to bring over workers they can abuse, intimidate, over work, and under pay while stringing them along for a green card. It’s a scam that only benefits the billionaires.
However, according to this article[1], the number of open positions in Programming and Comp Sci. was about 500k and the US produced about 50-60k grads a year, 85k H1Bs wouldn't be enough to take all the jobs and flood the job market.
Also, from my own experience, I make over $250k as a Software Engineer, stuck on an H1B forever, while people who were born in other countries get to move on to a Green Card, even if they earn less than that. My company interviews hundreds of people, settling for 'good enough' and yet struggles to fill many open positions.
[1] https://qz.com/929275/you-probably-should-have-majored-in-co...
Then train local candidates or do apprenticeships. It’s a lie that local workers can’t do the work. Most h-1b is not the complex work... it’s the QA and grunt work.
The skills gap is a myth: http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-i...
Then why would Disney fired experienced workers to H1Bs? Where the H1Bs that the experienced workers actually trained, more experienced? Clearly not. There is no universe where it could be argued that Disney had a shortage of skilled workers given that they fired the very skilled workers they claimed a shortage of.
> My company interviews hundreds of people, settling for 'good enough' and yet struggles to fill many open positions.
You know how you don't struggle to fill open positions? You raise the salary offered, improve the benefits, the working conditions. Netflix doesn't have a shortage of workers, but Cisco might. Compare the pay differences between those two companies and you'll quickly understand what "shortage" really means. I find it extremely hard to believe there's a shortage of entry level sysadmins, yet you'll find plenty of H1Bs working sysadmin jobs while experienced Americans sit on the sidelines because their salary requirements are too high (meaning, they expect something more than $75k per year in the Bay Area.) That doesn't define a shortage -- those workers do exist but H1B is cheaper.
Of course, there are outliers like those ultra-genius Nobel winner-level people -- however, there's an "O" visa for that category of extraordinary high achiever. Your average H1B is not particularly extraordinary. I've never in my life met anyone working for Infosys that I'd trust to program an alarm clock, let alone trust with mission critical code. However, I've also worked with a few extraordinary H1Bs -- people far smarter than I'll ever be -- but those are certainly the exception in terms of statistics of the visa.
America's education system is pretty poor. It would be nothing without H1Bs. Take it from Michio Kaku[1]: "The United States has the worst education system known to science. Our graduates compete regularly at the level of third world countries. How come the scientific establishment of the US doesn't collapse. If we are producing a generation of dummy. If the stupid index of America keeps rising every year [...] how come the scientific establishment of the US doesn't collapse. Let me tell you something. America has a secret weapon. That secret weapon is the H1B. Without the H1B the scientific establishment of this country would collapse. Forget about Google, forget about Silicon Valley, there would not be a Silicon Valley without the H1B. [...] You realize that in the US 50% of all PhD candidates are foreign born. [...]"
the rest of the video is pretty good too. I recommend watching it.
> There should be a $150k-$200k minimum on bringing over specialized knowledge workers
This is stupid because you are privileging fields that can afford theses wages. Plenty of over fields which are not IT are in need of foreign experts and cannot afford to pay these salaries.
Not going to bother defending our education system since so many foreigners are trying to get into our colleges, I’d say we’re fine. Also, the skills gap is a myth: http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-i...
Still lots of other issues I pointed out.
Also, India uses human resource as a balance in trade. They allow US companies to sell stuff in India in luie of them highering indians abroad (which send a part of the salary back home to their family) or in India. If US applies an America first policy in everything then India has no incentive to allow these companies into India. Software companies are not creating super critical things which can't be replicated, specially by indians who are already working for Google, Facebook, etc who will lose their jobs.
EDIT : Currently there are no tariffs on Tech companies. What are people even arguing ?
Barely. Have you seen Indian tariffs?
Tangent: I feel like those on work visas in the comments here are already outside of the norm that I receive resumes for and I honestly feel for their situation, hope they can stay so long as they choose to, and are paid fairly. Everyone deserves to be treated as equal humans and I feel like this is forgotten all too often.
The United States education system, while it does fail regularly, has taught most educated persons to question and be creative, yet also deliver quality. This is super desirable in this field.
I’ve reviewed a few hundred resumes, and at least a hundred on-site interviews, and I’m still trying to hold out hope for the h1b system yet am continually disappointed at the quality of candidates I’m being fed by the “approved” contract houses at the absurdly ridiculous company I work for. Faked resumes are the norm, as well as listing the fact that a dev has “Implemented UI Table View” as an Android candidate or the equivalent opposite for iOS candidates. (50% of the team I’ve hired are on work visas currently. The one contract house in question occasionally has a dev.)
The contract houses almost wholly refuse to source local talent. At first I thought it was a fluke. From one contract house - I’ve only ever been given two local devs and every other dev has been h1b. I get complaints that our hiring process is too strict because the dev can’t build a rest client app in an hour and a half, or write a method that parses a string and returns a double and an int.
Meanwhile, there are local devs I went to school with, and know of their skill level, who are looking for work.
I don’t think the education system has failed in this case - I think contractor culture of corps and contract house greed has failed us all. Also, the requirements of bachelor’s or master’s degrees has exacerbated the problem with the ridiculous cost of those degrees depending on the US schools chosen. If companies want to profit off local talent, then open up dev shops in other countries. China is the only country that’s potentially prohibitive of this practice depending on your business.
Also, which fields are you mentioning that require foreign “specialist” work that can’t pay these wages? They could apparently pay those wages in 1989. This program was setup to supply the US with skilled workers it urgently needed paying them an equivalent minimum of $121k in today’s money ($60k in 1989, which remains unchanged today).
Which is exactly why the largest block of H1B visas goes to the shittiest companies.
There should be a $150k-$200k minimum on bringing over specialized knowledge workers. Save it for the doctors and medical workers. We can train engineers here.
Plenty of companies like Facebook have to apply for waivers because they claim they are “H-1 dependent” this is simply a lie because they aren’t willing to pay fair wages to hire locals.
I voted for Obama. I believe in immigration. But bringing in hundreds of thousands of workers to drive down wages is bullshit for the average American and only to the benefit of billionaires.
*Bringing some facts:
For example, somewhere between 47% and 85% of H-1Bs are being significantly underpaid compared to their peers, evidence that the program is not being used to bring over workers with "specialized knowledge" as they claim--but to drive down wages. It makes sense though, when you look at the biggest H-1B recipients: http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2015-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx It's mostly the low quality outsourcing shops like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL, and Cognizant. Instead of accepting 65,000 H-1Bs at random--accept the 65,000 H-1Bs with the highest wages. That way we are getting the immigrants with the highest valued skills and stopping companies like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL, and Cognizant that game the immigration system by applying for the cheapest H-1Bs possible.