In Turnabout, Disney Cancels Tech Worker Layoffs(nytimes.com) |
In Turnabout, Disney Cancels Tech Worker Layoffs(nytimes.com) |
There are so many loopholes that it seems like the only solutions are to either create a well funded agency/department to oversee this, or to increase the price far enough that H-1Bs are only viable as a last resort.
Now, if the company really needs a worker brought in on an H1-B, they will be very happy and the H1-B queue will continuously clear itself. However, if all they want is an indentured servant, that will get quashed when the green card arrives.
Everybody wins--except for companies who abuse the H1-B program. Which is almost all of them. Which is why you never hear this solution.
If the visa is not attached to the company, then the wage deflation effect will be much more minor. After all, the visa holder could just go to the company next door and get a higher wage if the initial company tries to pay too low a salary.
The justification is that that there is a critical shortage of software developers (at any price? at market rate?) that threatens the US economy, so we should allow corporations to bestow "front of line" privileges on tech workers that other classes of immigrants don't get.
I don't buy it. Why wait a year, why not just award the green card the moment the immigrant shows up. And why require that the immigrant have a job offer from a tech company? In short, why not just let people immigrate, and allow them to enter the job market in response to market signals?
A dental hygenist earns about as much at the median in SF as a software developer. A registered nurse earns quite a bit more. Why not allow immigrants to choose those fields just like US citizens get to? Why force them to study tech fields and work even a year for disney in a tech role to get to come here?
I see a lot of H1B workers that would not fit my notion of "skilled" except for vanishingly narrow fields (those you can master after a week of training).
A good example of this problem currently is nurses in the Bay Area. They are very well paid however there is still a shortage because there isn't enough teaching available. The teachers are of course experienced nurses, so there's no way to increase the supply of teachers without further reducing the supply of nurses.
So while supply and demand will solve them problem eventually, you might have to wait 20 years and in the world of business someone else is going to eat your lunch during that time.
Obviously that would need enforcement, but they already do checkups on some of these things, and if they're paired with high enough fines these outsourcing firms won't risk it.
Its not a coincidence that decades of Visa abuse is ignored, there are bigger forces than these outsourcing companies namely, the chamber of commerce et al.
Edit: wording
At the end of the day, I'm sure this will get swept under the rug and nobody in an Executive position - at any company (Tata, Infosys, Southern Cal Edison, Fossil, Disney, etc) - will actually face prosecution as an individual for manipulating / corrupting the system. However, there may be a job or two lost in shuffling around in order to sign a declaration that "We admit no wrongdoing and promise not to do it again" which ties up the investigation and puts a bow on it. Case closed.
Yet another metaphorical example of how the top tier of "business leaders" and decision makers pander to the top tier of the richest individuals ("investors") and have absolutely no disincentive to continually gutting the middle class and young generation of US Citizen workers who are ridiculously underemployed at this time.
This worker's blog seemed pretty insightful: https://plus.google.com/+KeithBarrett/posts/PWA6BXs7dbS
Taking his comment about revenue focused technology being developed in that office, it doesn't seem like it was a smart business move to lose the experience of the staff they had in place already.
The US has reasonably good labor laws, but weak enforcement and too-small penalties.
So the recruiter inputs "wants senior node.js dev" and the software outputs "10+ years Node.js"
People want to be part of the H1-B program so that they can get out of it--either by green card or by going back to their native country with training that makes them more profitable back there.
Programmers can learn a language in a few months and become professionally proficient in two years or so. It's a lot closer to factory work than rocket science.
Beyond that there are a bunch of 50+ year old guys with perfectly good skills who can't get jobs because they don't fit the common (erroneous) mental picture of a software developer. There's no shortage of IT people in the US and never has been.
It's always about salary. The shortage of nurses could be easily filled if they were raised. Instead hospitals prefer to cut it close, running borderline unsafe units on busy days
The problem, then, is how to allocate those visas without suppressing the market signals that would, long term, bring pay into balance.
All kinds of differences of opinion on this one from reasonably people. I tend to take a very suspicious view point on government intervention to control prices. I look at high level tech jobs, and to me, it looks like they generally require majoring in the hardest undergraduate subjects, and often (sometimes preferred, sometimes required) require gaining admission to top programs with high standardized test scores and GPAs, and finishing grad programs with much higher attrition rates than elite med, law, or business schools (UCSF's medical school attrition rate is below 0.5%, whereas top PhD programs often have attrition rates of 50%. MS programs are harder to find data on - all I could get was aggregate (rather than elite) and it was behind a pay wall, but I believe it was 25-30%).
Although an MS is shorter than a med degree, and a PhD is about the same amount of time (considering residency), keep in mind, we're also talking about a "shortage", so I think it's reasonable to take a generous view of what compensation should be. I'd say people with grad degrees in math heavy STEM fields - even MS degrees, should probably be on a par in terms of salary and career stability with medical specialties before we should be talking too seriously about a "shortage" that wouldn't simply be explained by uncompetitive wages and working conditions. So overall, if it's relatively straightforward to earn over $300k a year with a grad degree from a top 20 engineering school, then I'd be more open to the notion of a "shortage". Otherwise, I'd say that people are just making economically rational decisions to stay out of STEM jobs, considering the skill and academic ability required to get grad degrees in this field.
I know that would cause sticker shock, but I'd say that if the average mid-career industry salary is much below 300k for these degree holders (to say nothing of job stability), I have trouble believing it isn't a crutch to avoid competing for workers who can participate freely in labor markets.
As an H1-B holder you have to jump through many hoops, including constant attention to your command of the language. How does it feel to be judged? :)
More importantly, why would you expect more from a foreign applicant that from a local? The point is there shouldn't be discrimination, in either way. H1-Bs are for specialty occupations that are in high demand to begin with. Not sure what encourages you to be more catholic than the Pope.
> As an H1-B holder you have to jump through many hoops, including constant attention to your command of the language. How does it feel to be judged? :)
I never brought up language issues, that is your hang-up and a distraction from my point. Further, if you think everyone isn't judged, then you are just loopy.
> More importantly, why would you expect more from a foreign applicant that from a local?
Because that is the stated legal purpose of the H1B program. It says that H1B workers have skills that the local programmers do not.
> The point is there shouldn't be discrimination, in either way.
In personal dealings, here we are talking about a government's responsibility to its citizens.
> H1-Bs are for specialty occupations that are in high demand to begin with.
If Disney decides to fire all its IT workers and replace them with contracted H1Bs then I would say the law failed. The purpose of the law is to fill knowledge gaps not add labor to the market.
> Not sure what encourages you to be more catholic than the Pope.
The law states the purpose.
Given that, wouldn't it make more sense for the extra money to go into education? How is contributing to unemployment going to get Americans more jobs?
What about companies that need the skills but can't afford the more expensive workers? If I'm a small startup with a $200k budget for an <insert niche field> expert but there are no citizens with the skills available (at all), paying $220k may not be an option, leaving me with either a loan or without the skills I need.
Unemployment is the result and those budgets are stretched these days. In some place unemployment pays for classes.
> What about companies that need the skills but can't afford the more expensive workers? If I'm a small startup with a $200k budget for an <insert niche field> expert but there are no citizens with the skills available (at all), paying $220k may not be an option, leaving me with either a loan or without the skills I need.
Why do you think its ok to not pay people the market rate just so you can benefit? Perhaps you need to compensate by equity or profit sharing? Why are workers less valuable then your startup?
> This mechanism is to reset to original intent of acquiring talent rather than cost-saving labor (as currently practiced).
completely agree - also looking at folks who come here to be educated getting work visas.
You would never get medicare treatment as only an H1-B worker, since if your unemployed, you cannot stay in the country long enough to be able to use medicare benefits much.
So you effectively pay at %12 tax on your income that you will never see the benefits of unless you immigrate.
Ah yeah;
But IIRC, there are some reciprocating treaties that let me get my money out?
This mentions that for australians it is reduced to 18 months: https://www.dss.gov.au/about-the-department/international/in...
That's false. I think you are mistaken about what an H1-B visa is: it's a temporary, non-immigrant visa that allows people with specialty occupations (and thus in high demand) to work for 6 years in the States.
The skill condition (as determined by a LCA application) to get one is not that you should have extraordinary skills the locals don't (That would be an O-1 visa, or an EB-1), but rather that you have the skills and the degree, and that your employer is willing to compensate you as well as they would compensate a local.
If you don't believe me, here's a link to USCIS: http://www.uscis.gov/eir/visa-guide/h-1b-specialty-occupatio...
I won't deny that there's abuse by big corporations using H1-Bs to hire people that look like seniors but are really junior in skill, but it's cause they skirt the law and have gotten away with it so far. I see no sanctions to Infosys or Tata for selling people with say, Junior Engineer skill as Seniors, but what I see lots of hate towards the H1-B workers. If Disney fired the senior IT guys and replaced them with recent graduates, told them to train them, it would be the exact same situation, only we wouldn't be hearing "they took our jobs".
So as with everything in this country, the suits fuck the little guy over and the little guy blames the neighbor.
No, you do not understand the H-1B http://www.dol.gov/whd/immigration/h1b.htm
"The intent of the H-1B provisions is to help employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce by authorizing the temporary employment of qualified individuals who are not otherwise authorized to work in the United States."
You looked at only the foreign worker part and not the American company part.
Unemployment isn't the result of H1B, it's the result of Americans lacking the necessary skills. H1B is also the result of that lack of skill. Yes the H1B is abused but that's a separate issue to what I'm saying.
> and those budgets are stretched these days
Well you can either increase the budget or reduce the unemployment. One results in unproductive money drain, the other results in more people performing productive tasks.
> Why do you think its ok to not pay people the market rate just so you can benefit?
I'm not saying not to pay the market rate, I'm saying there's no market. There are 10 people with the skills I need in the country. All of them are at megacorps and being paid $200k, which is the same I'd offer. I'm just a small company, I can't compete with a megacorp.
No, the workers had the skills and were doing the job. Its the result of a company wanting those same skills cheaper. Unemployment is the result.
> I'm not saying not to pay the market rate, I'm saying there's no market. There are 10 people with the skills I need in the country. All of them are at megacorps and being paid $200k, which is the same I'd offer. I'm just a small company, I can't compete with a megacorp.
If there are truly only 10 people who can do what you need then that is what the H1B program was for. If the skill is valuable maybe you need to figure out other incentives than salary.
That's abuse of the H1B, something that I acknowledge but is a separate issue. I acknowledge that abuse of the H1B results in unemployment. I'm arguing for the H1B as it was intended.
> If there are truly only 10 people who can do what you need then that is what the H1B program was for.
Exactly.
> If the skill is valuable maybe you need to figure out other incentives than salary.
I can't hope to compete with a megacorp and that's my point. No matter what I offer they can outdo it. My only hope is to find employees outside the megacorp which means employees outside the US.