Microsoft: 'To fill 6,000 jobs, we'll pay $10K per visa'(theregister.co.uk) |
Microsoft: 'To fill 6,000 jobs, we'll pay $10K per visa'(theregister.co.uk) |
It cost me about $5000 of my own money and a year and a half of my own time to become a permanent resident of Australia, with no advanced degree and no cash reserve needed. That route is literally impossible for potential U.S. immigrants. You either have to marry your way in, play the greencard lottery, have a PhD, or buy your way in via an investor-class visa.
The alternative, if you can get one, is an H1-B visa that ties you to a single employer who's free to take full advantage of your situation for half a decade. And this is what Microsoft wants more of.
Out of curiosity, how much does it cost a company to takeover an existing visa?
This notion that we have to hire over-seas is not correct at all and while I am all in favor or the immigration of foreign skill/knowledge/work ethic into the US, to call it a 'crisis' is nothing more than a publicity stunt to pull attention away from the fact that they are outsourcing jobs when they could be paying that money into the local economies.
Corporations understand Marx much better than workers ever did.
Companies don't hire people on H1B to save money, but because they are starving for talent.
EDIT: Sorry, didn't understand that you referred to the employee's salary with the 50K. Are you assuming that H1B employees are payed less in general?
And of course, the foreigner is locked into the company for X years, whereas a local can piss off after three months.
Note: I say that as an Italian-born UK resident who looked into the US visa system and found it, er, suboptimal for everyone involved except corporations.
Of course they are unable to fill positions at a given salary level. It's quite hard to find tomato-pickers at slave-like wages.
There is some sense in the idea that the native population should be protected against unfair competition, but there is no evidence that this is the issue - Microsoft (and many other tech companies) legitimately can't fill these jobs, so there's literally no downside to opening the floodgates [of eligible H1-Bs].
Lets draw a new political circle containing everybody/anybody who can program. Lets call it New Abrainica. Let them all have free visas wherever they wish on the planet. How does this hurt anyone? Oh sure, temporarily some lame spot will have trouble getting someone to move there to work. But now they can also move the job to where the programmers are! Or get remote workers.
Hey, this already sort of happens. So what's the real issue? I'm not sure, but this conversation keeps coming up.
But wait, that means all you need is gcc, emacs, git sometimes ssh and internet connection and Paypall (sic.) account? How could they sell all that disconnected from reality, bloated crap they produce, spending billions per year?
The answer is quite easy - in order to get 200+k salaries and bonuses managers must maintain this bloated hierarchy and fabric-style sweatshops. Otherwise, who needs them?
But the real question is - why we still care about MS? Who cares about old Nokia phones or Delphi or Java or things like Novell Netware?))
I had a H-1B visa once upon a time, but I never moved to the US. The company wanted me to, but I preferred London to Santa Cruz. Didn't stop me working for the company remotely, paid out of their UK sales office. Now I don't know what proportion of H-1Bs are like that - a global search to fill a local position - but it's definitely non-zero.
(The reason I'm pushing back on this is because I don't want HN to be a happy home for the same sad sack of devs Slashdot hosted when I last frequented there some years ago; "dey took our jerbs" was a constant refrain any time H-1B came up.)
But the first five times being told that the company has no matches for me.
Meanwhile, the company complains it can't find engineers.
How do you know what skills Microsoft needs and why do you assume they pay slave wages?
But do you know anyone that's actually employed like that?
I know several
- None of them get payed less than their colleagues
- They are usually already at the "top of the chain", it's difficult for new/better job opportunities to show up. Inside the US it may be more difficult, surely, but they have no problem leaving the job and going elsewhere (and H1-B is a little less restrictive in swapping jobs than some work permits in Europe)
One of the main issues today is the time it takes to apply for a Green Card, some of them are in their nth H1-B renewal now with little perspective of getting a Green Card
Today there's Glassdoor (and others) and not knowing if your salary is competitive or not should be a factor in accepting a job overseas.
Especially in SW engineering good labour != cheap labour.
In other words: basic economics disagrees with your assertion.
Microsoft could invest 40-50k a year into people who qualify for retraining either in house or at local universities and still come out ahead.
You brought up the fact that there are 12 million workless, as a counter to Microsoft's desire to hire H1-B labor. If that's not to suggest they could fill those positions, what's the relevancy?
> Microsoft could invest 40-50k a year into people who qualify for retraining either in house or at local universities and still come out ahead.
Uhm, 40-50k a year is more expensive than full-time Harvard tuition. That does change the argument a little bit.
Whilst that may be okay if you're in your early 20s or from a country with very limited options, for an older person with greater skills living a relatively good life (e.g. a high-level contractor in South Africa) it's not particularly appealing as the cost-benefit analysis isn't very positive.
Ironically, these are probably precisely the people you want emigrating to your country - people with a proven track record who are ready to settle down and want to create a future for their immediate family, spending and investing everything they earned in the same country -- not young people who have nothing to lose and will probably send the bulk of their earnings back out of the country to their families in poorer nations, and who will potentially bring the rest of their (non-skilled) family in on family visa arrangements. (Of course this is somewhat a generalization, but I think on average it holds true.)
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Criticisms_of_the_pro...
This basically buys Microsoft six thousand wage slaves, in the very most literal sense of the term.
But just don't throw away the H1-B system altogether
Historically, H-1B holders have sometimes been described as indentured servants, and while the comparison is no longer as compelling, it had more validity prior to the passage of American Competitiveness in the Twenty-First Century Act of 2000.
And in the section on American Competitiveness in the Twenty-First Century Act of 2000:
Because of AC21, the H-1B employee is free to change jobs if they have an I-485 application pending for six months and an approved I-140, if the position they are moving to is substantially comparable to their current position. In some cases, if those labor certifications are withdrawn and replaced with PERM applications, processing times will improve, but the person will also lose their favorable priority date. In those cases, employers' incentive to attempt to lock in H-1B employees to a job by offering a green card is reduced, because the employer bears the high legal costs and fees associated with labor certification and I-140 processing, but the H-1B employee is still free to change jobs.
If I were 21 again - no brainer. Unfortunately I'm nearly 30 and would be setting myself backwards if I did it now. It makes more sense to spend time establishing myself locally and using that to put myself into a more favourable negotiating position with a sponsor in the future with respect to emigration. Alternatively I may choose a country with more sensible emigration policies (e.g. Australia, UK if they reinstate their highly skilled migrant quota) and then the US loses out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Permanent_Residen...
Your first link does indicate that the backlog for EB-3 category applications is 6-9 years. So in that time you presumably must be working and wouldn't e.g. be able to start your own company (which is something I'd want to do by age 35), and you'd still be at the mercy of companies who know you're an emigrant so they can pay you less. It doesn't look like you can apply for residency in the EB-2 category as a programmer unless a masters or above is a requirement for the job (i.e. Google is hiring you).
Overall the situation for older migrants is still not very good and while the US would be my first choice it still seems better to emigrate elsewhere or to wait until I'm more established and I qualify under a category with a much shorter backlog (after which it's another 5 years for naturalisation, whereas in other countries you're looking at 5-7 years TOTAL).
One serious potential problem: apparently the old employer can revoke your I-140 (if you change companies) and you lose your priority date if that happens. [1] Also all of this assume your sponsor is going to file the I-140 on your behalf. What if they promise to do it and then don't? You're still at their mercy.
[1] http://www.immigration.com/faq/us-green-card/form-i-140#t101...