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On a global level, decent wages are apparently not. We still have a large enough economy that we do not have to operate on a global level. We need to internalize our own economy before we allow it to be destroyed by both our domestic and international monopolist financiers. Wage competition with India and/or China is a one way street to economic oblivion for the American working and middle class people. I say we should let these economies train and employ their own scientists and engineers and stop sending them here to under price ours.
1. That was incorrect in the past, but is self-fulfilling as there is no reason for American to major in certain sciences due to globalization.
Self-fulfilling? Over the past 20 years the software industry has expanded dramatically. The initial shortage of well-trained or well-prepared IT graduates forced many companies to recruit Math/Physics majors and train them in house! American students in the 80s and early 90s tended to shun Math, Science and Engineering disciplines. You can see a major underlying reason just by looking at their high school performance and SAT scores. At University of Texas Dept. of Computer Science, the majority of incoming freshmen are Americans; yet after 2 years and a 50% fail through, the majority of remaining students are Asian - mostly Chinese (from Texas, California, mainland China, HK, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand ...), Indian and Korean.
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However, if the H-1B system ended, more students would pursue majors in fields such as Computer Science.
Sorry, that's daydreaming and implausible postulation. The H-1B program has been a product of real world economics and politics in a country where big corporations rule.
Currently at University of Texas, many American students pursuing CS degrees are actually 2nd or 3rd generation Asian Americans - especially of Chinese or Indian descent. Face it, not many American students are willing to spend 10-12 hours a day studying dry Math and working in front of a computer.
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We call this phenomenon capitalism.
Actually what is happening right now is capitalism. What you are advocating is a combination of socialism and protectionism.
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2. False. BTW, where do you think Indians get the math and science they use?
Not sure what you mean. Are you talking about Indians' IT degrees from American universities? I know for a fact that many Indians come to the states for IT education, and want to stay and work after graduation. On the other hand, there is also a huge number of Indians graduating from Indian technical institutes every year. But how does that support your point of view?
Last edited by austinite45; 10-14-2009 at 11:32 AM..
I am a Computer Scientist, and am very familiar with the H-1B sham system for expunging from the workforce, perfectly qualified Americans for low cost labor imported from Third World countries.
There is no "salary review" from the Department of Homeland Security.
The salary review is there, I used to be a H1B. If you can't prove that your salary is same or above the market level, your visa will not be issued on first place and could be canceled. If it has not been done in the past, that's possible, but now the situation is different
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On average, corporations save 66% over American workers by hiring cheap, indentured labor via the H-1b program. Anybody with an H-1B visa making 65k+ a year is doing a job that would pay an American six figures a year and not require 80 hour work weeks.
Your numbers are way off. As I wrote, H1B for IT is maybe 10k persons per year, are you telling me that's 66% of American IT workforce?
Why do you think American would make 6 figures? I agree he would if he had some additional skills, like excellent English communication or social skills or security clearance. If you are replaced by H1B you are doing something wrong. Actually hiring H1B is rather more expensive, since you have to pay for processing, processing will take months, then you have to pay for relocation, tickets etc.
I agree that some frauds have been done in the past by some Indian sweatshops setup on purpose, but believe me, next time you see BMW on the street, imagine a tons of H1B who help to setup it's production here. H1B for IT is very marginal and percentage-wise is way, waay below 1% of IT workforce.
I oppose illegal immigration, but this is not illegal. I think its in America's interest to attract highly skilled foreigners with training in computer science, engineering and mathematics.
I concur.
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Sorry, I think we need these people. My objection is to doing nothing while 13 million unskilled laborers from south of our border illegally just walk into this country. That's the immigration I want to stop, or at least slow down.
Yep. And I think if the Mexican government is short-sighted to take concrete steps to limit the country's ridiculous population explosion, the U.S. government had better force it into action. Unskilled, uneducated illegal Mexicans are not just a nightmare to America's economy, but ecological and social environment as well.
1. There aren't enough Americans with science and engineering degrees to fill those jobs.
2. Many American graduates aren't as good and hard working as imported techies on H1B.
3. Forget immigration controls. Not only are technical/engineering jobs moving overseas, high tech R&D positions are also disappearing fast. Asia, particularly China, has been projected to displace America as the largest market for high tech R&D in as little as 10 years. In 15 years, many well educated American scientists and engineers will be applying for Chinese green card to work in China. In fact, Chinese leaders are already implementing various plans to attract leading Western scientists with high salaries and favorable work environment. Cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong are set to outclass New York, Chicago, Paris, Frankfurt and London in 10-15 years.
See for yourself how Shanghai is developing. Chinese leaders have vowed to make Shanghai the financial capital of the world by 2025.
re. point 2, i can assure you that that is simply not the case. as a software engineer myself, i can assure you that by and large the quality of education that indian software engineers receive is poor and most are no geniuses. yes, the ones graduating from IIT schools are smart, but those are just a tiny fraction of all that come here. i have been told by indian masters students that the quality of the software engineering education that UNDERgrads receive here at even an ordinary STATE school surpasses the quality of education received by MASTERS students back in india.
i have heard stories of how it is only all too common for students there to simply copy the work of the one or two smart students in class and submit it as their own.
and when i was an undergrad at a state school here for computer science, we had a big scandal in the masters program for comp. sci. which had a large number of indian students. alot of them basically would just copy each other's work (sometimes without even changing the name on the paper) and submit it as their own. many had to be failed for such behavior.
as someone else already pointed out, the only people that truly benefit are the corporate elite who pocket the extra profits. the middle class see no real benefit. and the truly culpable in this case are those execs who actually decide to offshore the work.
I oppose illegal immigration, but this is not illegal. I think its in America's interest to attract highly skilled foreigners with training in computer science, engineering and mathematics. The salary issue may be a legitimate concern. However, I don't know what to say. All of us face foreign competition in some form or another. The auto industry faces it from imports. All of our major industries have to deal with the effects of foreigners competing and making better products. It keeps prices low in the USA.
Some other realities:
1. America has trouble graduating enough engineers, computer science majors, and mathematics majors from our four year colleges. I think we need to take a look at why we can't graduate more people from these programs. Something is wrong if they can't attract enough people, educate them properly, and get them into the work force.
2. Highly skilled foreigners allow our businesses to compete abroad much more effectively.
3. If these foreigners create wealth through the application of their talents, its more wealth to be distributed among all levels of American society.
4. If we don't let these people in, they'll go to Canada, China, Australia, or Europe. These countries may leave us behind and become the IT centers of tomorrow.
Sorry, I think we need these people. My objection is to doing nothing while 13 million unskilled laborers from south of our border illegally just walk into this country. That's the immigration I want to stop, or at least slow down.
For crying out loud I already addressed all this in my previous posts.
Self-fulfilling? Over the past 20 years the software industry has expanded dramatically. The initial shortage of well-trained or well-prepared IT graduates forced many companies to recruit Math/Physics majors and train them in house! American students in the 80s and early 90s tended to shun Math, Science and Engineering disciplines. You can see a major underlying reason just by looking at their high school performance and SAT scores. At University of Texas Dept. of Computer Science, the majority of incoming freshmen are Americans; yet after 2 years and a 50% fail through, the majority of remaining students are Asian - mostly Chinese (from Texas, California, mainland China, HK, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand ...), Indian and Korean.
Sorry, that's daydreaming and implausible postulation. The H-1B program has been a product of real world economics and politics in a country where big corporations rule.
Currently at University of Texas, many American students pursuing CS degrees are actually 2nd or 3rd generation Asian Americans - especially of Chinese or Indian descent. Face it, not many American students are willing to spend 10-12 hours a day studying dry Math and working in front of a computer.
Actually what is happening right now is capitalism. What you are advocating is a combination of socialism and protectionism.
Not sure what you mean. Are you talking about Indians' IT degrees from American universities? I know for a fact that many Indians come to the states for IT education, and want to stay and work after graduation. On the other hand, there is also a huge number of Indians graduating from Indian technical institutes every year. But how does that support your point of view?
I don't have the time or patience to reread yet another one of these types of posts *sigh*, but I'll respond to the first portion by asking:
Where is the shortage?
When you have people losing their jobs in tech, and having to take transitional level jobs because there's no work available, how is there a shortage of American employees to fill tech positions?
The salary review is there, I used to be a H1B. If you can't prove that your salary is same or above the market level, your visa will not be issued on first place and could be canceled. If it has not been done in the past, that's possible, but now the situation is different
Your numbers are way off. As I wrote, H1B for IT is maybe 10k persons per year, are you telling me that's 66% of American IT workforce?
Why do you think American would make 6 figures? I agree he would if he had some additional skills, like excellent English communication or social skills or security clearance. If you are replaced by H1B you are doing something wrong. Actually hiring H1B is rather more expensive, since you have to pay for processing, processing will take months, then you have to pay for relocation, tickets etc.
I agree that some frauds have been done in the past by some Indian sweatshops setup on purpose, but believe me, next time you see BMW on the street, imagine a tons of H1B who help to setup it's production here. H1B for IT is very marginal and percentage-wise is way, waay below 1% of IT workforce.
No. I've seen these arguments before and the data you are citing is incorrect.
I worked for Adobe Systems in San Jose, CA from Oct-Dec 2005 in a software engineering group as a contractor. Upon starting work I noticed that the company was jammed to the ceiling with foreign guest workers - mostly from India and China. In IT positions in the company there were barely 15% Americans overall. Our tiny group was mostly Americans because all worked on a niche computing platform that doesn't focus on Windows. Most of my coworkers were Americans and my immediate boss was an American. However, his boss was from India and was apparently new to the company and had only been there about 5 months before I got there. In meetings I would notice that this senior Indian manager would constantly talk about "cross-training". The company had rooms full of foreign guest workers doing nothing but sitting around learning new skills, not developing products. I would notice many of these foreign workers often going to the office of the technical lead in our group to ask him how things were done. The senior Indian manager himself didn't really seem to know what he was doing as I would always hear him asking rudimentary development questions in the project manager's office adjacent to mine. One time I even heard him asking the project manager where he got a prerelease installation CD for Microsoft's upcoming operating system. The answer of course was "MSDN". The project manager was an American also. One would think a highly skilled, highly educated senior IT manager from India would know such basic IT information, but apparently not.
There was also another engineering manager in another group who appeared to be from Viet Nam. She spoke broken English and was difficult to understand at times. I was tasked with writing some software for her group. Upon starting the project I asked her for a project GANTT chart for the tasks I was to work on. A GANTT chart is a standard project planning tool used on all properly run software projects. She didn't even know what a GANTT chart was. Her idea of good software development practices was to send daily emails to developers saying "Oh and one more thing...". She of course went home at 6 every night so she could watch TV while we had to stay until midnight to struggle with the ensuing chaos she created. She didn't know the first thing about developing software. It does make one wonder why we are bringing these people into the country if they don't already possess the skills claimed.
After about two months Adobe acquired Macromedia and it was announced a few weeks ahead of time that there would be layoffs as a result of the merger. I didn't mind the layoffs so much as the way they happened and *who* was and was not laid off. I ended up getting laid off, as did my American boss, as did the American project manager in the office next to me. One other senior American Windows engineer in our group was laid off after being with Adobe 8 years. In a former life he had worked on the Xerox Star at PARC. Nope - no skills there! I guess he is one of the American workers who is not smart enough to work in American companies or one of the highly skilled American workers that companies claim they can't "find". In the end 5 people were laid off from our group. One was of Chinese descent but the other 4 were Americans - U.S. Citizens.
Two of the 4 laid off Americans in our group were REPLACED with two foreign Indian workers from within the company. One took my old manager's job, and one took the Windows installer engineer's job. The new Indian manager who replaced my boss came running around with a big smile on his face shaking everyone's hand the next day with glee introducing himself and telling everyone he would be managing the group "going forward". He could barely constrain his excitement. Both Indian workers were directly promoted to their new positions by the senior Indian manager in our group.
So in the end the senior Indian engineering manager took the merger and layoffs as a prime opportunity to slash Americans from the workforce, and to promote Indians into the same positions. I've seen this happen at nearly every company I've worked at. It's an American worker replacement program. These people coming into the country possess little or zero of the skills claimed. The real goal is to get them into the country, TRANSFER the skills of existing American workers to them first, and then lay off the American workers. This has been the case at nearly every software company I have worked at in the past 8 years. It's a mass skills transference plan on a national level. Of course, the CEOs and executives high up in these American companies are too ignorant and stupid to know that they are being conned, because all they see are the dollar signs from the money the Indians promise they will save. Of course in the end it never works because after 8 years of these shennanigans Silicon Valley is a wasteland of FOR LEASE signs.
None of these imported workers have delivered any of the economic benefits we were promised in 1998 when these programs were increased to mass levels. In fact, the opposite has happened. Instead of keeping the 90s booming economy going, these 3rd world workers have sucked it dry. Silicon Valley is dying and it is because these stupid companies are importing millions of fake workers under fraudulent pretenses and then the workers aren't producing anything. All the 3rd world workers know is "IT is a good way to get rich". So they come to Silicon Valley and the companies collapse. They move from company to company kicking out productive Americans, taking skills and money, and then not producing anything. When the company collapses they move on to the next one. One company after another goes under and the CEOs wonder why they can't make this business model work anymore.
The Indian workers could care less about whether they destroy the companies or not. All they care about is taking. As one Indian worker said "We have to get our money before the Chinese do". Yes, GET is their operative word. CREATE is not in their vocabulary. Meanwhile the very American workers who created the industry are deliberately being kept out of the workforce by managers like the senior Indian engineering manager at Adobe - so that unskilled Indian workers can have "jobs". What is actually happening is that these imported workers are enjoying the benefits of the 20 million jobs Americans created in the 90s long before they got here. The imported workers are enjoying having those jobs now but they are not maintaining them nor are they creating new ones. They are getting a free ride coasting on jobs Americans created. Meanwhile the very American workers who GAVE them these jobs are being kicked out of their own job market by the imported workers themselves. That is the way 3rd world gratitude works I guess. This entire thing has been a fraudulent racket from day one.
There are plenty of IT jobs in America - it's just that Americans are not being allowed to work in them and ones who are working in them are having their skills stolen from them and then they are being kicked out of the industry they have created. This is happening all over America on a huge scale. Americans can't find jobs because they are being deliberately excluded from their own job market by racist Indians who will only hire other Indians for positions in IT. Our government is either complicit in the process or else they are too stupid to know they are being conned also.
The fact that nearly none of these workers possess the skills claimed and the fact that they are being given skills from existing American workers means that these guest worker programs amount to fraud. They are intended to deceive the American people. Intent to deceive is fraud. All guest workers imported since 1998 should be deported immediately and the jobs be given back to American workers. Laws should be passed that impose criminal penalties and jail time for any American executive that participates in such acts of fraud. Imported guest workers who engage in such behavior should be banned from ever entering the country again.
Now you know the truth about these fraudulent guest worker visa programs. Greedy CEOs and executives are giving away America's most important economic engine to unskilled, uneducated 3rd worlders just so they can save a few bucks right now. These programs have been a total disaster for California's economy and for Silicon Valley. They should all be ended immediately before they destroy the U.S.
Here's another letter forwarded to me:
I worked for Cisco Systems of San Jose, CA for almost four years. I was the last American to work in the Oracle Database Administration department of approximately 25 individuals at this site. Almost all of the remaining DBAs are from India on H1-B visas. Other technical departments have extremely similar demographics and it is obvious to all that only Indians need apply for technical positions. Several times, I attempted to submit resumes of qualified candidates only to be told 'they wouldn't be a good fit' - and this was without interviewing or even looking at their resume beyond their names. I understand that even Indian US citizens were turned down for interviews when they mistakenly told Cisco representatives that they did not require sponsorship. I was given a PIP (Performance Improvement Plan), ironically enough, shortly before I had told several people that I was planning to leave the company soon as well as around the same time I sold a number of my stock options, a practice strongly discouraged by management as options become invalidated if an employee is terminated, saving the company large amounts of money. At my going away lunch, virtually the entire department, except for my manager who had also gotten rid of the earlier American DBAs, came to the lunch. I had very good relations with my Indian colleagues who could undoubtedly speak on my behalf as to my dedication, skills, and conscientiousness. When I was terminated, I was given a termination package but no reason was provided, despite my repeated requests. The best the PIP could do, was to say I did not answer my telephone by the third ring. The plan was followed but no matter what, I was told that it was not good enough. I was told that if I protested or considered legal action, my termination package would be revoked. If I was not planning to relocate, I would have pursued the company regardless as I was without doubt, discriminated against and very openly. Additionally, I was several years older than my manager as well as several years above the average of the generally younger group.
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