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The bottom line is this. If there's a pool of cheap skilled labor, the jobs will find it. Either the labor comes here and the jobs stay here, or the labor stays were it is, and the jobs go there. This is especially true with jobs where there is not merchandise crossing borders to tariff. Given that choice I'd rather have the bodies here and the jobs here than visa versa.
What I would do, is not let the employers treat the foreign workers like indentured servants. I'd actually give them an expedited ability to get a green card and get citizenship (and, yes, I know there will be people who don't like this idea.)
Why do we even need H1-Bs for IT jobs when we have thousands of qualified Americans who can't find jobs in that field? You do realize that once Indians get green cards and are in a position to hire employees, they blatantly discriminate against non-Indians.
If we ever get to the point where American IT job applicants are fielding several offers and jobs are going unfilled, then revisit the whole visa program. Until then, put an end to the H1-B and L-1 visa program given all the visa abuse that is going on.
Why do we even need H1-Bs for IT jobs when we have thousands of qualified Americans who can't find jobs in that field? You do realize that once Indians get green cards and are in a position to hire employees, they blatantly discriminate against non-Indians.
If we ever get to the point where American IT job applicants are fielding several offers and jobs are going unfilled, then revisit the whole visa program. Until then, put an end to the H1-B and L-1 visa program given all the visa abuse that is going on.
Can't find, or won't take? Large numbers of graduates don't want to be entry level and do scrub work anymore and work their way up. Unfortunately, that's not how the corporate world works. Not everywhere is silicon valley where six figure opening offers are common. I know several graduates who are unemployed, not because they haven't been offered a job, but because the ones they've been offered are "beneath" them. So instead they continue to suck off of mommy and daddy's teat.
Last I heard, a good solid wage for a programmer in India was $12,000 (this may be well out of date by now.) The same programmer in the US is likely $80-120K, or more. They're just too expensive. The H1Bs split the difference at least, and the jobs and the taxes they pay are here. Give the disparities, that's the best we're going to do. If you keep the H1Bs out, the jobs will migrate offshore. Look what happened with manufacturing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BOS2IAD
Why do we even need H1-Bs for IT jobs when we have thousands of qualified Americans who can't find jobs in that field? You do realize that once Indians get green cards and are in a position to hire employees, they blatantly discriminate against non-Indians.
If we ever get to the point where American IT job applicants are fielding several offers and jobs are going unfilled, then revisit the whole visa program. Until then, put an end to the H1-B and L-1 visa program given all the visa abuse that is going on.
The bottom line is this. If there's a pool of cheap skilled labor, the jobs will find it. Either the labor comes here and the jobs stay here, or the labor stays were it is, and the jobs go there. This is especially true with jobs where there is not merchandise crossing borders to tariff. Given that choice I'd rather have the bodies here and the jobs here than visa versa.
What I would do, is not let the employers treat the foreign workers like indentured servants. I'd actually give them an expedited ability to get a green card and get citizenship (and, yes, I know there will be people who don't like this idea.)
I see your point in the 2nd part though I'd argue first part isn't really true, when I was working in IT some of the companies I was with tried to move their divisions to India (or occasionally Philippines) for cheap labor, and in every case it was a total disaster and wound up costing more than if they'd just stayed in the USA and paid American salaries. It's very difficult to co-ordinate operations with American Hq from overseas, plus time-zone differences, cultural differences, bad infrastructure causing hold-ups, and generally just bad code out of India that had to be re-written and corrected over and over again by American staff. Part of reason labor is cheap in India is they're getting infrastructure up in many places and both training and infrastructure aren't yet up to par, but that's also a reason businesses wind up in trouble when they go under illusion they just can use slave labor there and get equal results. On top of that, security and info protection is a nightmare in India, a couple of the companies who did that lost critical customer data because data safeguards in India were so poor, and got sued into bankruptcy for it. That's why some of the more short-sighted or even corrupt tech companies want to import the slave labor from abroad into the US, because supposedly they get US infrastructure and supposedly US data protections but for 3rd world wages and cheap labor. Not how it works in practice of course, a lot of data breaches in the USA have been from disgruntled, horribly underpaid H-1B's struggling with US cost of living and exploitation, and the code is usually just as terrible as outsourced, but that's the idea.
And besides, even if was possible to get equal work with Indian cheap labor compared to US jobs going to US citizens, that doesn't mean United States is under an obligation to just open the flood-gates in such a short-sighted way. There is no natural law or obligation demanding open borders for labor or complete unrestricted capitalism, and no reason that business "has to" seek out the cheapest labor, in fact historically and today, no country in the world has ever operated that way. They put up barriers for foreign cheap labor and even though maybe some extreme libertarians might want to argue this is "getting in the way of the free market", it's just seeing the long-term picture. If it were as simple as business always seeking out the cheapest labor, then US working conditions and salaries would deteriorate further and further in a race to the bottom to third world levels. And of course, in the real world, so would the quality of the work. The problem, some businesses think they can profit in the short term by gaming the system, not hiring Americans and going for foreign slave labor instead on things like the H-1B visa. The reason this is hated by Americans (and by other citizens in their own countries) is that this inevitably destroys an economy and nation in the not-too long term.
If you put pressure on American jobs and wages to fall to 3rd-world levels, then Americans quite quickly won't be able to afford American cost of living, consumer demand collapses with wages and soon, all those companies like Disney, H-P, FB or Microsoft who thought they were so clever by firing Americans and hiring slave labor from India, no longer have any customers who can afford their product. (This is already happening-- the USA now has dangerously high, record household-debt levels, higher even than before the financial crisis last decade, it's because Americans' wages no longer can afford things there so debt fills in the gap, which is obviously leading to another crash).
The CEO's of these companies probably know this, but they're just thinking about short-term profits and figure that when the s-- hits the fan down road, some other guy will be left holding the bag. The people themselves and policy-makers in countries are well aware of this which is why almost anywhere in the world, they restrict the flow of labor so that at the very least it doesn't suppress wages, and citizens can afford the local cost of living. Even India does this-- Indian businesses owners who ex. hire slave labor from Bangladesh nearby, are thrown into prison and their assets seized by the community. In SE Asia you can come in and work as a foreigner, but must be paid the prevailing wage or higher. Same in Europe. Using foreign labor to reduce incomes is frowned upon everywhere in the world because it's widely known it leads to a race to the bottom and 3rd-world society. The US is the only country that even allows this kind of thing at all with the H-1B and the more and-more abused L-1 and OPT programs which started legit but have become more abusive, and it's only because of a corrupt political system that allows fans of indentured servitude like Mark Zuckerberg to basically buy our politicians and discriminate against our own citizens. Any other country, and such business and politician traitors would be tarred and feathered, at a bare minimum.
Re: Post #224^^^^I ran out of rep or else I would have repped you.
Cheap labor is not so cheap after all.
My husband is retired now but he worked in IT. There were many times he had to clean up messes made by H1-Bs.
Even many call centers have come back to the USA. Some companies even use Americans who work at home. For example, I called The Vitamin Shoppe on 2 occasions. After the call ended, they sent me an email. In the email, was a photo of the customer rep and their first name and what state they lived in. They asked me for feedback. The first rep I talked to lived in SC, the second one in MI.
Can't find, or won't take? Large numbers of graduates don't want to be entry level and do scrub work anymore and work their way up. Unfortunately, that's not how the corporate world works. Not everywhere is silicon valley where six figure opening offers are common. I know several graduates who are unemployed, not because they haven't been offered a job, but because the ones they've been offered are "beneath" them. So instead they continue to suck off of mommy and daddy's teat.
I trained a lot of kids out of college in IT and I almost never saw this, in fact the only time I did was with kids who had rich parents and trust-funds and felt they didn't have to work because they really didn't have to. I've otherwise never seen cases when people simply turn down entry-level jobs out of college expecting a rainbow, and that goes for college kids and the outrageous practice of laying off older workers due to age discrimination and being "put out to pasture", seeking new jobs. New graduates know there's learning-curve in IT and programming, and so they start somewhere, get experience and work their way up.
To extent that wages have been dropping for such jobs or are clearly out of touch with costs, a big part of that is the ongoing abuse with the H-1B visas pushing wages down below cost of living levels. I've seen positions advertised in Austin and Denver-- neither of which is cheap to live in anymore-- offering little more than $35,000 for 60-hour weeks as programmers or even sysadmins and demanding 5 years of experience for what are supposedly "entry level" jobs. That's just outrageous, nobody can afford the costs of a city like that on such a low salary for such a demanding job even if "entry level", in fact such jobs only 10 years ago were offering twice that salary even when costs of living were a lot lower. Even worse when such "jobs" are being posted in insane expensive cities like New York, Boston, LA or SF, it's outrageous that kids with at least decent credentials and skills couldn't even make a living wage at such jobs and even when they do apply, their applications are just ignored. Many of these in fact are basically fake jobs ads with the expectation that no Americans will be taken, just an excuse to hire slave labor from overseas desperate for a green card.
That's one of the reasons US labor policy has gone totally insane under both Democrats and Republicans, with the student loans' debt Americans have, it's more urgent than ever that grads have high paying jobs or at least, a career ladder when they start entry-level and can work their way up. The H-1B indentured servitude visas and abuse of L-1 and OPT just make that even harder, and it's creating a massive group of indebted young Americans, and this will kill the US economy in a few years because there won't be any demand, and the millennials and Gen Z kids aren't having any kids because they can't afford them. There's nothing special or very smart about the US obsession with cheap labor, as with anywhere else it's OK in the short term but it kills a country in the long term, and we're making the same mistake as other great countries that strangled their economies in the long term with this policy.
Re: Post #224^^^^I ran out of rep or else I would have repped you.
Cheap labor is not so cheap after all.
My husband is retired now but he worked in IT. There were many times he had to clean up messes made by H1-Bs.
Even many call centers have come back to the USA. Some companies even use Americans who work at home. For example, I called The Vitamin Shoppe on 2 occasions. After the call ended, they sent me an email. In the email, was a photo of the customer rep and their first name and what state they lived in. They asked me for feedback. The first rep I talked to lived in SC, the second one in MI.
Totally agree with you on this, and your first sentence is a great sum-up for the reality that too many US business managers, and maybe the MBA culture just don't get. Of all the places to cut costs, labor-- at the very least, the labor of the people doing the actual work (those CEO's getting $15 million salaries for corporate junkets could probably use a pay cut)-- is the dumbest place to do it. You break morale at the company, get progressively worse results over time, and you damage the broader society because all those laid-off, more and more underpaid workers can't afford products anymore. But US business is obsessed with the short-term stock price so they don't think about the longer term, while the slow gnawing away of morale and quality gets less attention, with a manager's successor paying the price. The US economy is already being strangled by it. What GDP growth there is from debt spending because salaries aren't keeping up with US costs of living, not to mention GDP is inflated by crazy healthcare costs here, unemployment rate is a joke (convenient to just not count the 100 million working-aged Americans not in the workforce), and most of the "job creation" is going to cheap labor hires like H-1B's and at least some L-1's being paid slave wages, not Americans getting a living wage.
It's good that at least some companies are wise-ing up and bringing things like call-center jobs babck to America. I like what the Vitamin Shoppe is doing with sending the picture of the customer rep to demonstrate they're hiring American workers for those jobs instead of slave labor in or from India on an H-1B, they'll win a lot of customer loyalty for doing that.
Why do we even need H1-Bs for IT jobs when we have thousands of qualified Americans who can't find jobs in that field? You do realize that once Indians get green cards and are in a position to hire employees, they blatantly discriminate against non-Indians.
If we ever get to the point where American IT job applicants are fielding several offers and jobs are going unfilled, then revisit the whole visa program. Until then, put an end to the H1-B and L-1 visa program given all the visa abuse that is going on.
IMHo this is the most reasonable course of action, and it's common sense. Every other country strictly regulates the supply of labor for obvious reasons, it's the most basic determinant of a living wage. You can't flood a country with surplus labor if the available jobs and salaries don't support it or making a living for a country's own citizens, despite some short term gains in things like home buying, long term the economy just collapses because consumer demand contracts. Europe does allow Americans to work and move there, in fact a lot of kids I've mentored have moved to Europe to work and settle and in my experience recently at least, they tend to do a lot better than the ones staying in the US. That's partly because they have universal healthcare there and low cost of free college and childcare, yet at the same or even slightly lower than the US because they don't have anywhere like US military or healthcare costs. But it isn't just that, they do better there because by law, in Europe, South America or Asia if you move there, you must be paid the prevailing wage. So there's none of this dumb new feudal indentured servitude like we now have in the US with the H-1B visa and the recent abuses of the L-1 visa, OPT program and other programs that started off with good intentions, but have been corrupted into a modern form of slavery and servitude that also ruins the local economy, increases household debt and guts consumer demand.
Re: Post #224^^^^I ran out of rep or else I would have repped you.
Cheap labor is not so cheap after all.
My husband is retired now but he worked in IT. There were many times he had to clean up messes made by H1-Bs.
Even many call centers have come back to the USA. Some companies even use Americans who work at home. For example, I called The Vitamin Shoppe on 2 occasions. After the call ended, they sent me an email. In the email, was a photo of the customer rep and their first name and what state they lived in. They asked me for feedback. The first rep I talked to lived in SC, the second one in MI.
I work in an SV company with scientists, engineers and tons of IT people. Literally 90% are foreign born and on work visas. Even for this area is fundamentally absurd to think 90% of your STEM people need to be on visa "because you couldn't find qualified Americans to work."
I heard my boss was promising raises verbally to many of the visa people and then later rescinding these offers knowing well enough they can't do anything. Us Americans had no such issues.
I don't mind AT ALL working with foreigners as many are friendly and very smart but at the very least they shouldn't be abused by management. But they are, and they're forced to work copious amounts of unpaid overtime and almost always in practice make less money at least where I work.
The best solution to this problem is to either regulate the program better or end it all together and just hand out green cards directly to new foreign hires.
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