Comment Re:The truth (Score 1) 523
It's a non-immigrant visa. It allows these folks to get a taste of the American experience for 3 years, send the money home, and get some experience they take home when they leave.
H1B visa is a dual-intent visa where-by the person can get sponsorship for permanent residency from the employer. So if they like the taste then they can stay too.
When your Unemployment Insurance is running out because it's taken more than 6 months to find a job in your profession, one in which you're told there is some pressing shortage of labor, thanking the loyal citizens of other countries who are competing for the same jobs on an unlevel field may not be topmost in your mind.
If we compare job levels during irrationally exuberant boom times of 1999 to job levels during the recession of 2002, we'll find "unemployment insurance" running out not only among programmers but among every other field. This year it took us 1 month of interviews to hire a IT help desk and our top candidate got another job, we got the second best. It took us 2 months and 2 rounds of hirings to get a System Admin and he destroyed our Exchange server within a month. Talk about getting quality candidates. In both cases we didn't call any foreign candidates and salary was not a constraint.
Given that one must be PE, CPA, member of the bar, etc. to work in those fields, there is little to wonder about.
So certifications/memberships are preventing foreign workers in all of these other professions and IT is the only one that doesn't require certifications/memberships so that's why we have so many foreign workers? So let's have such requirements in IT too and let's see how many of the 100,000 unemployed actually can make it through. Most IT jobs are highly skilled and anyone with half a brain who wishes to be in IT shouldn't be able to just because he wants to.
H1-B is not about brilliancy! It's about run-of-the-mill programmers paid "prevailing" rates which are considerably less than the market rate for good programmers.
It IS about brilliancy, when thousands of candidates from the rest of the world compete for 65,000 visas only the brilliant few can get them. There may be some who do run-of-the-mill programming jobs but that doesn't discount them as run-of-the-mill, its the visa program that ties them to an employer and doesn't give them an opportunity to go for cutting-edge jobs. They can't change employers as projects change. Disconnect the visa from the employer and you won't see many of them doing run-of-the-mill jobs at "prewailing" rates. There may still be some who come through contacts but the market will take care of such low quality workers.
Why wouldn't they want to come?
More than 30,000 people left US as more opportunities open up for them in their home countries. Here's one NY Times story
H1B visa is a dual-intent visa where-by the person can get sponsorship for permanent residency from the employer. So if they like the taste then they can stay too.
When your Unemployment Insurance is running out because it's taken more than 6 months to find a job in your profession, one in which you're told there is some pressing shortage of labor, thanking the loyal citizens of other countries who are competing for the same jobs on an unlevel field may not be topmost in your mind.
If we compare job levels during irrationally exuberant boom times of 1999 to job levels during the recession of 2002, we'll find "unemployment insurance" running out not only among programmers but among every other field. This year it took us 1 month of interviews to hire a IT help desk and our top candidate got another job, we got the second best. It took us 2 months and 2 rounds of hirings to get a System Admin and he destroyed our Exchange server within a month. Talk about getting quality candidates. In both cases we didn't call any foreign candidates and salary was not a constraint.
Given that one must be PE, CPA, member of the bar, etc. to work in those fields, there is little to wonder about.
So certifications/memberships are preventing foreign workers in all of these other professions and IT is the only one that doesn't require certifications/memberships so that's why we have so many foreign workers? So let's have such requirements in IT too and let's see how many of the 100,000 unemployed actually can make it through. Most IT jobs are highly skilled and anyone with half a brain who wishes to be in IT shouldn't be able to just because he wants to.
H1-B is not about brilliancy! It's about run-of-the-mill programmers paid "prevailing" rates which are considerably less than the market rate for good programmers.
It IS about brilliancy, when thousands of candidates from the rest of the world compete for 65,000 visas only the brilliant few can get them. There may be some who do run-of-the-mill programming jobs but that doesn't discount them as run-of-the-mill, its the visa program that ties them to an employer and doesn't give them an opportunity to go for cutting-edge jobs. They can't change employers as projects change. Disconnect the visa from the employer and you won't see many of them doing run-of-the-mill jobs at "prewailing" rates. There may still be some who come through contacts but the market will take care of such low quality workers.
Why wouldn't they want to come?
More than 30,000 people left US as more opportunities open up for them in their home countries. Here's one NY Times story
