Complaints Filed Over Firms Seeking H1-B Holders 523
Vicissidude writes "Since May, the Programmers Guild has filed 100 complaints with the U.S. Department of Justice, accusing several companies of advertising that they specifically want H-1B workers, a violation of U.S. law. The U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act requires that U.S. jobs must be available to U.S. workers. The complaints stem from ads containing wording such as "We require candidates for H1B from India," and "We sponsor GC [green card] and we do prefer H1B holders," the Programmers Guild said. The Programmers Guild, looking for ads on major online job boards, has so far targeted only ads seeking computer programmers, the guild said. It plans to file 280 more complaints over the next six months."
Some more info (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, one point that makes me skeptical is that I hear about this from the Programmer's Guild again and again. I'm not sure what the Programmer's Guild does, other than make a big stink about H-1B visas. Not that this is, in and of itself, necessarily a bad thing -- but if the H-1B situation was really as cut and dried, criminal and downright treasonous as the Programmer's Guild says, wouldn't there be some other parties chiming in on the issue?
Loving it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bigotry and Cheap Labor (Score:2, Insightful)
Bottom line: We don't need H1-B workers today (Score:5, Insightful)
What this really is... Job tailoring? (Score:5, Insightful)
I know that this "job-tailoring" is done frequently in the industry as a way of getting the exact person you know. Just that if it fits this shoe, it's quite certainly illegal... kind of like saying you want someone who is/not specific race/disabled/etc.
I, for one, hope that the hiring managers who put up such job descriptions get fired, as it's part and parcel of the corruption. Just wish we could fire them for other similar "job-tailoring" activities.
Wants the impossible (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bottom line: We don't need H1-B workers today (Score:5, Insightful)
That was never true. H1-B workers were needed simply because salarys were beginning to rise and industry didn't want that trend to continue.
They took err jeerbs! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't have to discriminate to be cheapassed... (Score:5, Insightful)
IEEE-USA, Unions, Milton Friedman speak up (Score:5, Insightful)
Lots of folks speak up against it.
The hired gun lobbyist Harris Miller loses to Jim Webb [computerworld.com]. Miller ran an unaplogetic pro H-1B and pro-outsourcing campaign. Seems the voters in Virginia don't like Harris Miller's record.
Heck, even Milton Friedman calls it a subsidy [computerworld.com].
War on drugs strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
Confiscate the assets of the businesses illegally lowering wages via violation of the law.
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah-ha! There is the real damage being done to not only our economy, but our society as a whole! The idea that it's ok to fill entry level positions with cheap foreign labor/workers it a cancer on our society. Those entry level positions may not be that important, but you learn a lot in those jobs, especially right out of college. If you can't get real world experience, how will you ever get that "nice job"? Get a friend to tailor a job for you in a position you have zero experience with? Fake it on your resume and hope they don't find out? If you do not have entry level positions for those graduating from college, they will never mature into experience programmers/engineers and we'll have to pull from the H-1B visa holders again for the experienced positions. After all, they were the ones in the entry level positions, they got the experience, so they should get the jobs at the next level too. Soon even the most experienced positions will be available for foreign replacement. And where will you be then? In the unemployment line or busing tables like the rest of us educated types who never got our careers off the ground because there were no entry level positions for us.
Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree with you, but you said... "InfoWorld has been running articles on this H-1B situation for a while. [snip] if the H-1B situation was really as cut and dried, criminal and downright treasonous as the Programmer's Guild says, wouldn't there be some other parties chiming in on the issue?"
Other parties like, say, InfoWorld?
Re:Bigotry and Cheap Labor (Score:4, Insightful)
If a company can spend less to hire someone from India / Mexico / wherever, why on earth should we stop them? Why should they be forced to pay more money to hire someone from the US? This is utterly against the spirit of the free market.
In a completely free market, eventually wages for everybody doing a particular sort of job would end up about the same: as companies send work where it's cheapest, the local economy grows and thrives and the wages there will rise. Now, many things conspire to make markets non-free: sometimes things as simple and nigh unto insurmountable as Geography, sometimes things as ugly as petty politics.
Argue if you want that a free market is evil/bad/wrong. But recognize that any sort of visas and such are barriers to entry, and what you describe ("wages should be high because the skills are rare") is diametrically opposed to that: you are artificially limiting the supply by political machinations, almost exactly in the same way a monopolist can limit the supply of the product they can sell, in order to drive the price up so they can make the most profit.
Re:Some more info (Score:5, Insightful)
Might I suggest going to, say, their web site [programmersguild.org] and reading the plain-English ByLaws [programmersguild.org] page? In particular, "ARTICLE 3 - PURPOSE", which contains a bulleted list of, well, what they do.
but if the H-1B situation was really as cut and dried, criminal and downright treasonous as the Programmer's Guild says, wouldn't there be some other parties chiming in on the issue?
Follow the money... Who benefits by driving down the cost of competant IT work? Hint - not "everybody but IT workers", because when we have money, we spend it as though the apocalypse will happen tomorrow.
As for whether or not companies really engage in such reprehensible hiring practices, you need look no further than the employment section of your local paper. See the tiny, unappealing buzzword-laden ads for experienced coders, paying a third the going rate in your area? Those companies will not get responses from anyone but interns. They can then claim they couldn't find anyone to take the job despite "honestly" trying, and can then hire H1Bs.
Regardless of your opinion of outsourced labor, I don't think anyone would consider such transparent tactics as anything but a legal farce.
wouldn't there be some other parties chiming in on the issue?
While IT people may have extremely well-organized personal lives (social and desktop notwithstanding), we don't tend to organize into larger bodies. The "I" in "INTP/INTJ" doesn't stand for "I likes large crowds".
Re:Some more info-Back slash. (Score:5, Insightful)
And there was I about to feel sorry for you....
that's not very internationalist of you (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:USian Terminology (Score:2, Insightful)
Changes Nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Even though future employers may get a slap on the wrist for the way in which they advertise positi0ons, it will not (and can not) change their hiring policies. All this is going to do is be a waste of time for companies (ie interviewing/processing applications from unwanted candidates) and for the individual applying for the job (writing letters, e-mails, phone calls etc to a company that has no intent of hiring you).
Yes it does suck and is discriminatory, however in the land of free enterprise what can you do? Mandate they hire Americans? Easy solution for the company, off shore the jobs.
Re:Bigotry and Cheap Labor (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bigotry and Cheap Labor (Score:1, Insightful)
Unfortunately, we can't afford the 20-100 year indefinite timespan necessary for globalization to actually bring about equilibrium. After all, you can count yourself sure that the corporations which hire Indian workers and H-1B workers don't want a free market any more than labor does: they just want cheap labor to make very cheap products they can sell for high prices. Ideologues like you are the only ones who actually want free markets - most people actually participating in the market don't.
Re:Don't have to discriminate to be cheapassed... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bigotry and Cheap Labor (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't attack the worker side, because I'm part of it. I simply understand how both sides work, so I know how to play my role to its maximum advantage. I don't make CEO salaries, but I don't have CEO responsibilities. Someday, I may. Then your attack will be sensible.
Also, I would be remiss if I didn't point out that anyone can become the owner of a company. It's not an elite club with massive barriers - it's open to all and sundry who are willing to take the risks. That's not to say it's not a shark tank, because it is fiercely competitive. That's the nature of the willing. Asking everyone to play nice so you can get what you feel you're owed goes against human nature and current economic reality.
Re:War on drugs strategy (Score:2, Insightful)
It's an easy problem to solve (Score:3, Insightful)
just my 2c.
Re:Bottom line: We don't need H1-B workers today (Score:2, Insightful)
Tech is cyclical, always has been and probably always will be if not more so. If they would shut down the visa inflow and send home any taking jobs that unemployed citizens could fill, perhaps the backlash wouldn't be so great. During the downturn I had to take fly-by-night gigs that were away from my family in beat-up offices with shredding carpet that got stuck in the chair wheels. I was often surrounded by H-1B's that were no doubt causing similar situations for other citizen techies.
We need an Alan Greenspan-like figure(s) to regulate the flow and distribution of visa workers. Further, candidate H1B openings should be made publicly available, perhaps on a government website. The "training fee" they currently take in should instead be shifted toward opening up records and monitoring the flow.
Well sometime it's the law that need to be fixed.. (Score:4, Insightful)
So you don't want Indian to come and take jobs in the US? Well think of the consequences:
- The company will outsource to India, and Indian worked cost far less when he Lives in India than in the US.
- If a worker offer a lower labor cost it's a gift to the american economy. The goods will be cheaper, the consumer will save money, invest in other sectors etc..
- If someone wishes a workvisa it means he intends to work, not live on welfare. The intent to work should be a plus for immigrants not a minus...
Protectionism is the most dangerous economic fallacy ever. Come on you're the US, you are liberals, don't fall for that old interventionnist trick.
Re:IEEE-USA, Unions, Milton Friedman speak up (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Some more info-Back slash. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bigotry and Cheap Labor (Score:4, Insightful)
In a truly free market, though, another company will gladly spring up doing the exact same thing, but NOT pay the CEOs a bunch of money, until the other company goes out of business (or changes).
...
Recognize that to economists, everything is a market unless it's coersion.
Unlike Marxist Hacker 42, who I don't think will be comfortable until there's blood in the streets, I'm not going to tell you I have no use for a free market. In fact, my goal would be for as many people as possible to make any rational trades they want, which is probably the outcome you're thinking of when you say "free market."
But you don't get there by removing all the rules. That Econ class should have taught you that all that happens when you remove all the rules is that people take advantage of disparities in bargaining power and information to coerce or fool other parties into non-rational transactions.
The CEO case is a perfect example. The CEOs hornswoggle or pay off the directors, who in turn do the same to the shareholders. Shareholders and employees are left holding the bag. Since there is no incentive for CEOs not to do this, as they profit much more handsomely than they could from simply doing good business, there is no incentive for a CEO to lead your "another company" into the picture.
Thus active public intervention is required to ensure a market where all parties who bargain and inform themselves to the best of their ability realize positive outcomes. The great failing of many people inclined toward a viewpoint informed by classical economics is that they fail to realize this -- effectively embracing a course which inevitably leads to feudalism, not free markets. In this specific situation, the public intervention needed is simply enforced regulation: if Americans won't take your job because you're offering a low salary at which they turn up their noses, that's fine, but actively excluding Americans in order to take advantage of the H-1Bs should be (and is) outlawed.
This is a case where the existing law makes sense and should be enforced, for the sake of a fair and free market.
Re:Some more info (Score:2, Insightful)
The reason the Programmers Guild seems to be out in front is that they do a lot of the data collection and analysis on the H-1B program as well as the legal action.
(In contrast, Wash Tech seems to get better "dirt", such as the M$ "Find Something to Offshore Something Today!" presentation.)
I saw something the Programmers Guild's founder wrote. He said that while consulting at Dun & Bradstreet, he took time off without pay to testify before Congress about H-1B. His coworkers made ribbed him about it with comments that sound like a lot of the one's here. A few months later D&B's CIO put out a memo (available on zazona.com) announcing that everyone was going to be replaced by H-1B workers.
If programmers are going to sit on their butts until their company H-1Bees everyone, American programmers are going to go the way of garment workers.
Re:Loving it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Some more info (Score:3, Insightful)
But it's hard when Free Traitors keep bringing in people to compete with the people already here.
Using phrases like 'free traitor' doesn't help matters. It puts you in the same bucket as the Micro$oft crowd.
Training Damage (Score:3, Insightful)
You seem to be suggesting that companies be allowed to replace/substitute average citizen programmers with top-notch foreign guest workers. Regardless of whether this is "right" or not, it is not the premise that the H-1B program is supposed to be based on. Besides, how are average programmers going to get good with practice if all the jobs are given away to foreign workers? C-level citizens will be forever stuck at C-level because they are passed over for A-level foreign workers. Spot-shortages are necessary for people to transfer out of spot-gluts. This oppurtunity is taken away.
Another thing is that everybody has a different idea of what "best" is. Some companies value good factoring, others value fast copy-and-pasters, for example. A bigger pool allows them to pick people who fit their very specific, idiosyncratic views of what "good" is at the expense of citizens. It is like opening a new jewery store next to an existing one. Half the customers will go to the other store even if the average deals are the same.
Re:Bottom line: We don't need H1-B workers today (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, by your definition, no intervention in a marketplace is ever "needed" since supply and demand will always take care of things.
Now you're getting it - when salaries rise, companies are forced to be more efficient - they could pay me twice what they do (and it is a decent number to start with) and still come out ahead if there was strong leadership in the industry. Most projects that fail could have succeeded or been killed early if only people would learn the lessons from something as old as the mythical man month.
You needed to raise huge sums of VC to pay ridiculously prissy workers who wanted 150k a year and perks out the ass to do no work.
This was never true. The fact is, VCs would demand you spend a certain amount of money every month and get mad if you fell behind. Go ask Jeff Bezos if he paid prissy workers out the ass when he was starting amazon.
This was a short term labor supply shortage and labor demand spike, all wrapped up in one.
Since when? Good people are always hard to find, but refusing to hire older people doesn't help.
There are some local areas where tech wages have started a rapid runup again - apparently this is happening in Seattle now.
Ooh, I hope so. It'd be nice to work somewhere for 2 years and pay my house off.
Re:Who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)
it's just not true... (Score:4, Insightful)
And it is very common to have many positions open you simply cannot fill. In the late 1990s it was even more true.
I remember at that time, see that one department, which was triple the size of most others fit onto a half-floor just like all the other departments. I asked the pertinent people and found that they could fit in that space because 2/3rds of their positions were unfilled.
I was not a hiring manager at the time, but I can say now that it very likely goes like this. You open a position. You get a lot of candidates. You interview the candidates and find none are suitable. You don't even talk money seriously with a candidate until after they pass the interview anyway. And then, the hiring manager doesn't care much anyway becuase it's not like he's paying out of his own pocket.
So, you never rejected anyone due to salary, and yet you still can't find anyone. It's natural then to say "if only we had a larger pool of candidates to draw from". And being able to draw from foreigners can help with this.
It's tough being picky about your candidates, but not being picky creates more problems in the long run.
Restrict H1Bs to people with US degrees (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wants the impossible (Score:3, Insightful)
Once legal abortion is overturned by a solid supreme court majority, the republican party is going to lose power astonishingly quickly.
They are doing all kinds of things their religious base is ignoring until the abortion issue is resolved.
And the democrats are going to continue to lose until then as well.
After it is overturned, I see the reverse being true for at least 20 years.
Re:Bigotry and Cheap Labor (Score:1, Insightful)
I really want to see where this is going, given the fact that I live in the PNW.
Then why have they been failing for 40 years? Why did they fail the Kalapayu 170 years ago?
Interesting, what are these Kalapayu [google.com] you speak of?
Tell that to the Kalapayu, if you can find any. Oh yeah- most of them died off because their economic competitors brought Malaria to Oregon.
According to Google, they never existed. I'll just assume you mean the Kalapuya. By the way, most authoritative sources describe the disease that swept through the Kalapuya from 1830 to 1833 as a fever, not as malaria. Granted there are some that say malaria, but it is far from conclusive. Oh, and don't forget the smallpox of 1782 to 1783 while you're going there.
My people had the Salmon, the Hazelnut, the Wild Sunflower, Wapato and Camas, long before your "free market" ever existed. We should have protected it better. Now, we just have slavery.
If you're claiming to be one of the Kalapuya, you'd think you could spell it correctly. You've managed to screw it up twice. Now, I could see there being variances in spelling, but you'd think Google would have heard about your spelling.
Let them invent their own technology, create their own progress, just as we did.
Interesting. Now, maybe I'm misinterpreting your implications, but here goes: Above you are complaining that my people came and killed most of your people off. So who is this "we" you speak of? You didn't invent your own technology. My people brought your people the wheel, guns, and horseback riding, among other things.
Well, let's see- work 32 hours hunting and gathering vs 40-60 hours in a factory- which is more free?
Work 32 hours a week living in a hut that's too cold in the winter, too hot in the summer, buggy all year and lacks privacy, or work 40-60 hours a week and have my own insulated house, heater, air conditioning, a car, TV, etc. Gee, which one would I pick???
I'm for decentralization- no government, no money, no TRADE.
Exactly how will this lessen suffering and injustice? People die faster? What if I'm the only guy in town who knows about willow bark tea? How do you force me to give it to you? Would you expect it out of the goodness of my own heart? You still have trade, because I would expect you to supply me with what I needed out of the goodness of your heart.
There is *always* trade unless an individual can provide for everything he/she needs and never needs to ask someone else for help. If you really want to delve into it, all human relationships are an exercise in trade.
Re:Some more info-Back slash. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bigotry and Cheap Labor (Score:2, Insightful)