H1-B suspense will end this month

[OhioChick]

AHMEDABAD: On March 27, the US Congress will meet in Washington to debate on an issue which is likely to make or break the dreams of thousands of Indians seeking H1-B visas to the US. Immigration reforms form an important part of a 300-page Bill proposed by Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter.

The reforms,which propose to increase the H1-B visa cap from the current 65,000 to 1,15,000 per year for skilled migrant workers, will be in focus during the Congress meet. If passed, the immigration reforms would do a world of good to Indians, particularly those in the IT sector.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshowindia/1454190.cms

[FloridaPat]

1. And destroy and attempt by any American to have a job in computers.

There is no lack of US employees. I've been out of work for most of the last 2 years. I have friends out of work. The last two projects I was on had about 1/2 Indians on them. The gov't isn't interested in retraining those of use stuck with their idea that only Indians should work in IT. These are high paying jobs folks. The money that could go into social security. The Indian companies also want to not pay social security taxes since their people won't retire here. Why is our government getting rid of jobs for US citizens?

[Singular73]

2. I work in technology...look at it this way...

Scenario 1: Increase H1'B's

Work gets done. Workers may stay here. Taxes are payed.

Scenario 2: No H1'bs

Work gets outsourced. Workers pay no taxes to US.

Which one is better for the country?

The only scenario where H1's are bad is if they are used specifically to bring down wages in the US.

I don't think thats the case. In the grand scheme of things, 100,000 people coming into the US to work in IT is nothing...

Trust me, employers HATE dealing with H1Bs...its really their last resort.

[Lethe]

5. it's harder to outsource IT than programming

because most companies still have their offices, computers, networks in the USA....they need ITs to work where their offices are

programming you can just farm out to anywhere no prob

[RagAss]

12. They're talking about 1 million...not 100,000...

[varun]

3. H-1Bs pay social security, Federal and State Taxes

and they cannot recover their taxes when they go back to their country. So they are actually supporting the US Social Security, without taking anything out of it.

[OhioChick]

6. It's simple...

U.S. companies do not want to spend the money to have qualified seasoned programmers, developers and application architects fill the positions of large projects. Managers at these big companies get large bonuses for cutting costs on projects. CEOs and CFOs tout large Return-On-Investment (ROI) projections by figuring project staff salaries at 1/3-1/4, and 1-2 yrs. related experience, against an individual with 10+ years related experience. Filling a project with 20 H1-B developers, as opposed to 5-6 highly skilled professionals appears on the surface to offer a go to market date in a fraction of the time it would take under the other staffing model.

When companies are consistently burned by this model, and the final ROI does not yield the expectations... the reason often is that the staff did not have the necessary skill set required for the project, communication gaps, etc...

When the project reaches the time line over-run period of these projects, individuals such as yourself... out of work developers that are strapped for cash, and willing to work for less money just to pay the bills you've incurred by having to take a minimum wage job at the local Home-Depot for the past 2 years since after being laid off. Now you are put in a somewhat senior position on the project, usually end up working 60+ hour weeks picking up the slack of the less skilled workers. When the project completes (if it completes), bet your bottom dollar that everyone in a management position will blame the cost overruns on your wages; bet that the time line expectations will NOT be blamed on the managers not picking the right team for the project in the first place.

I've seen way too many projects based on this thought process fail over the years. Currently, you will hear companies state that there is a lack of IT talent in this country... that "they must offshore the work or import workers from other countries to meet the staffing needs of these projects." These are, in many sectors, the same companies that let go of all their IT staffers not too many years ago. Do they really think all the talent evaporated? Maybe the workers that they let just a few years ago would rather work at a lesser paying jobs(or different industry all together), not only out of self pride, but also that their current company offers more job stability?

Companies state that the colleges are turning out less and less individuals to fill the IT demands. This is true. 4 years ago when these young adults were starting their higher educations, companies were laying off IT workers in droves. Anyone that was in a computer science tract, quickly changed their major... Since corporate managers can never put them blame on their poor judgements, the current lobby push is to state that America is not producing any talented IT workers.

Our elected ass-hats in D.C. are buying (or are being bought) right into this line of thinking. Big business lines the pockets of this big government, plain and simple. If anyone should have their job duties outsourced or replaced by a H1-B visa replacement... It's the CEOs, CFOs, COOs, managers, as well as all of our elected officials. It really is about time for another tea party!

on edit: spelling correction.

[Lethe]

7. great post! you are right, thats the way it is

if there is a "lack of IT talent", it is because all of us have become disgusted at the practices of these companies who view high-tech workers as disposable, and have moved on to more lucrative, stable, and fulfilling careers.

you would have to either really love IT/programming, or just be a little soft in the head to go for an IT/CS degree nowadays. I mean, a while back, AP was running stories about once a month about how high the unemployment was among IT workers.

What these people don't understand is that the world is not being built with bricks and mortar anymore. The world is being built with trillions of lines of code. To reduce the quality of the workforce writing the code is to invite disaster.

[OhioChick]

9. it is not limited to just IT...

Look at the layoffs in manufacturing positions, most recently in the auto industry. I remember the days where people would proudly put "Buy American" bumper stickers on their cars manufactured by one of the big three... You put one of those on your car today and and all that shows the world is your own ignorance of where the parts of your vehicle were actually manufactured and assembled. (Pretty much about equal to displaying one of those "W - Our President" bumper stickers)

So, the unemployed IT workers are now taking up jobs at the local Home Depots and Walmarts, in stores that are 95% stocked with Chinese imported product. Products are all lesser quality knock-offs of a product that sometime ago was manufactured on-shore.

Your banking and credit card information is being processed some place in India by someone that now has the job your neighbor did last year. Your questions on your health care are being answered by someone 11 timezones away, reading a boilerplate response off a sheet of paper, goes by the name Ranjiv, but is trained to tells you his name is "Jimmy", to give you a warm and fuzzy feeling.

There are more invitations for disaster at play right now than the lines of spaghetti code running the back office systems of corporate America. I cannot blame China or India for taking these jobs away from American workers... I blame America for giving them away in fulfillment of their quest of greed. Companies want to yield more profits for reducing production costs. Americans only want to pay 5 dollars less for a electronic device at Walmart. Congress gets donations/gifts from lobbyists if they promote issues that will yield bigger profits to big business.

No one group can be blamed for this downward spiral.. everyone played a part. Look at the drop in voter turn out percentages over the past 20 years of elections, and that is just based on the actual registered voters. But nobody has a problem bitching about who's in office!

Disaster has already received his invitation to this party, it's up to us to stand up and let him know that all of his friends are not welcome too!

[Lethe]

4. i feel sorry for american IT workers

cause they are screwed now. There is no shortage of american IT workers in the first place. The IT job market is incredibly competitive. I know of several companies around Austin that are hiring full time IT/programmers with bachelors in CS at mid $20,000's. This is ridiculous considering how expensive getting a 4 year degree is. An MIS/CS bachelors degree isn't worth the paper it's printed on.

if companies don't like hiring H1-B visas then why are they constantly lobbying congress to raise the cap?

and why is Ted Kennedy one of the main backers of this bill?

[OhioChick]

8. Ted Kennedy's reason...

for supporting this bill is this:

"The Bill also requires that US employers make reasonable efforts to recruit U.S. workers before hiring foreign workers."

Reasonable effort: is usually posting the position in a local classified, or online for 2 weeks, and attempt to interview individuals meeting the qualifications of the position.

This also restricts the term of these visas to 3 years as opposed to the current 6 years. I don't agree that this is a great solution, but it is a small (very small) step in a better direction.

It does not address the fact that wages will still continue to fall for IT workers, and there will still be no incentive for our young adults to be directed towards a career as an IT professional. This bill also applies a $500 tax for processing fees for each H1B staffer... small peanuts in my opinion.

[FloridaPat]

10. And who's going to enforce the attempt to be "reasonable"? The

Reasonable Police? The gov't isn't even checking to make sure companies hire legals. And big deal on the restrictions. They're not kicking anyone out after their 6 years is up. Another law not enforced. And that $500 is suppose to help retrain people put out of work. The unemployment office won't even talk to me. There is no help for retraining. Maybe I should just give up and run for congress. IT and Iraq vets running everywhere.

Lou Dobbs said a great line on Bill Maher Friday - during the 90's there were lots of IT workers and technical workers. They were thought of as smart. As of 2001, American workers are now thought as stupid. Nothing changed except who was in the White House.

[Singular73]

11. Heh, its not that

What employer's do is take Suujan's resume, list every single accomplishment he has done, and make it an absolute requirement for the post, no matter how absurd.

Same as government contracts.

[FloridaPat]

13. There's that too. In other words, the new bill does nothing for

the American citizens - again. Whose side is the US gov't on? Oh yea - corporations.

[OhioChick]

14. You are correct...

this is done very often. last year I was asked to match skills to an individuals skills for project requirements. This persons H1B was up for renewal. The paperwork was submitted to my manager, where he fudged the numbers even more, along with the help of the HR department. Required number of years required for the position are matched up with the number of years/months the individual has. This paperwork was then further reviewed with the legal department to make sure that the government will not question anything... finally it was submitted to the government and the position was posted in the local newspaper classified ads.

I'm not sure it would be easy to do this for someone that did not already work at the company for a new position, unless they hand picked someone. But if a company is hell bent on hiring only H1B workers... this could be done very easily.

I do not work at this company anymore.