A couple of pro-H1B articles by Americans
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Yeah, I figured someone would slam me for the utopian tone. It was deliberate but I think it probably completely obfuscated my own position on H1B visas. It was probably a mistake on my part to jump up to a 50,000 foot level when the entire thread is basically a ground-level scrimmage but I was in a philosophical mood. FWIW, I don't really delude myself that what I outlined as an ideal will ever actually happen given the politics involved. While I do support legal immigration of talented workers I don't really feel that I can support raising the limit on H1Bs. I'm well aware that the goal of many, if not most, H1B holders is not permanent immigration and that many of the companies that hire them are doing so disingenuously. Although I take your point regarding the relevance of my post, I did think I was clear that I would prefer that high paying IT jobs in America primarily go to Americans, whether they be immigrants or current citizens. I didn't use the word "immigrants" by accident or in ignorance of its meaning although I realize now that it may have appeared so in the context of this thread. FWIW, I was attempting to counter others who seemed to me to be confusing temporary H1B workers with all foreign born workers which, IMO, would be throwing out the baby with the bath water.
cjbauman wrote:
FWIW, I was attempting to counter others who seemed to me to be confusing temporary H1B workers with all foreign born workers
Well, I for one, have only talked about H1Bs. and I believe I would have reacted quite differently to your post had you made it clear what your goal in talking about immigrants was. Hell, my ancestors had to immigrate into this country twice: back in the 1750's and then again after we got kicked out to Canada when our side lost the Revolution. :laugh:
Jon Information doesn't want to be free. It wants to be sixty-nine cents @ pound.
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cjbauman wrote:
First off, I believe that America was built by talented, hard-working immigrants that were willing to come to this country and become Americans. We would never be as strong as we are without them and I believe we should continue to encourage participation from like-minded individuals. It saddens me that a large number of Americans seem to feel that we can afford to turn these people away. Criminals and terrorists should certainly be discouraged but not hard-working folk who are simply trying to find a better way of life.
I am rather certain that throughout most of the US's history there have been protectionists policies in any number of areas. And those policies were often supported by newly arrived immigrants and those that weren't newly arrived as well.
jschell wrote:
I am rather certain that throughout most of the US's history there have been protectionists policies in any number of areas. And those policies were often supported by newly arrived immigrants and those that weren't newly arrived as well.
Sorry, I'm confused about whether you're making an argument or chiming in with additional points. Either is certainly valid; I'm just having difficulty understanding your reply in the context of my post. All I can say that seems at all relevant, is that many real historical actions/events cause sadness.
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cjbauman wrote:
First off, I believe that America was built by talented, hard-working immigrants that were willing to come to this country and become Americans. We would never be as strong as we are without them and I believe we should continue to encourage participation from like-minded individuals. It saddens me that a large number of Americans seem to feel that we can afford to turn these people away. Criminals and terrorists should certainly be discouraged but not hard-working folk who are simply trying to find a better way of life.
I am rather certain that throughout most of the US's history there have been protectionists policies in any number of areas. And those policies were often supported by newly arrived immigrants and those that weren't newly arrived as well.
jschell wrote:
I am rather certain that throughout most of the US's history there have been protectionists policies in any number of areas.
I suspect you are right. Ironically, protectionist policies also used to be supported by big business, not, of course, because they wanted to insure a fair wage and high employment, but so they could out-mansion-build each other in Newport.
Jon Information doesn't want to be free. It wants to be sixty-nine cents @ pound.
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jschell wrote:
I am rather certain that throughout most of the US's history there have been protectionists policies in any number of areas. And those policies were often supported by newly arrived immigrants and those that weren't newly arrived as well.
Sorry, I'm confused about whether you're making an argument or chiming in with additional points. Either is certainly valid; I'm just having difficulty understanding your reply in the context of my post. All I can say that seems at all relevant, is that many real historical actions/events cause sadness.
cjbauman wrote:
All I can say that seems at all relevant, is that many real historical actions/events cause sadness.
I imagine that all historical events of any significance do; even those we celebrate. However, given a choice, I'd much rather make the H1B countries sadder than America.
Jon Information doesn't want to be free. It wants to be sixty-nine cents @ pound.
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jschell wrote:
I am rather certain that throughout most of the US's history there have been protectionists policies in any number of areas. And those policies were often supported by newly arrived immigrants and those that weren't newly arrived as well.
Sorry, I'm confused about whether you're making an argument or chiming in with additional points. Either is certainly valid; I'm just having difficulty understanding your reply in the context of my post. All I can say that seems at all relevant, is that many real historical actions/events cause sadness.
cjbauman wrote:
Sorry, I'm confused about whether you're making an argument or chiming in with additional points. Either is certainly valid; I'm just having difficulty understanding your reply in the context of my post.
The quoted text to which I replied made the implied suggestion that in the past there was less or no protectionist policies. That is not the case.
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ViswanathKari wrote:
Just eat them
I bet you do - with a nice curry sauce?
ViswanathKari wrote:
don't confuse that phrase for an Indian war cry
Congrats you insulted the Native Americans, too. Anything else you hate about America?
Jon Information doesn't want to be free. It wants to be sixty-nine cents @ pound.
ROFL!! I absolutely loved the way you magically read my mind. You're the sole surviving artist in the post-modern youniverse.
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ROFL!! I absolutely loved the way you magically read my mind. You're the sole surviving artist in the post-modern youniverse.
Read your mind? This presupposes you have one. The jury's still out on that. But if it's established that you do, I assure you that not reading your mind is high on my list of precepts to live by.
Jon Information doesn't want to be free. It wants to be sixty-nine cents @ pound.
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Vivic wrote:
You mean, you never look around for a better job?
Never had to lie so I could hold more than one visa at a time to do it.
Jon Information doesn't want to be free. It wants to be sixty-nine cents @ pound.
One doesn't have to lie. If I have a H1-B visa and I interview with another employer, that employer has to get a fresh H1-B for me before he can hire me. H1-B visas are employer-specific. So, I continue working at my current employer while a fresh visa gets processed by the new employer. That used to take a minimum of three months. In the meanwhile, I might interview with yet another employer and have another H1-B visa in process. Nothing wrong, illegal, immoral or fattening so far! ;P If and when an alternate offer comes along, my situation might be such that I have to decline it but I would have an H1-B approved for that employer. This was the situation for quite a few Indian programmers in 200/2001. In fact, by the time the new visa gets approved, the employer might have lost a client and not be able to hire me. Nobody knows how many of the 115,000 H1-B visas in 2000 were duplicates. The employer has to report termination of an H1-B employee to Immigration but INS (or whatever it is called now) didn't update its books to say a visa was freed up and so available for somebody else. So much of the statistics on H1-B employees is so skewed as to be totally unreliable.
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cjbauman wrote:
Sorry, I'm confused about whether you're making an argument or chiming in with additional points. Either is certainly valid; I'm just having difficulty understanding your reply in the context of my post.
The quoted text to which I replied made the implied suggestion that in the past there was less or no protectionist policies. That is not the case.
Ah! Thanks for the clarification! FWIW, I intended no such implication but I can understand why you saw one where none was intended. So much for intentions, eh? The historical reference (allusion, really) I made was intended to be to the role immigrants played in building the country rather than to any resistance that there may or may not have been to their participation at the time. I seem to be having a real problem expressing myself clearly today...
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Read your mind? This presupposes you have one. The jury's still out on that. But if it's established that you do, I assure you that not reading your mind is high on my list of precepts to live by.
Jon Information doesn't want to be free. It wants to be sixty-nine cents @ pound.
Atta boy oakman. *chuckle
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One doesn't have to lie. If I have a H1-B visa and I interview with another employer, that employer has to get a fresh H1-B for me before he can hire me. H1-B visas are employer-specific. So, I continue working at my current employer while a fresh visa gets processed by the new employer. That used to take a minimum of three months. In the meanwhile, I might interview with yet another employer and have another H1-B visa in process. Nothing wrong, illegal, immoral or fattening so far! ;P If and when an alternate offer comes along, my situation might be such that I have to decline it but I would have an H1-B approved for that employer. This was the situation for quite a few Indian programmers in 200/2001. In fact, by the time the new visa gets approved, the employer might have lost a client and not be able to hire me. Nobody knows how many of the 115,000 H1-B visas in 2000 were duplicates. The employer has to report termination of an H1-B employee to Immigration but INS (or whatever it is called now) didn't update its books to say a visa was freed up and so available for somebody else. So much of the statistics on H1-B employees is so skewed as to be totally unreliable.
your original post said: "they had multiple H1-B visas from several different (usually, Indian outsourcing) companies and could jump sjip at the first opportunity." Now you tell a very different tale. Somehow, I think your first post contained a more general truth than this latest revision.
Jon Information doesn't want to be free. It wants to be sixty-nine cents @ pound.
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I can't speak for the original poster, but I'll put forward my own proposition. A H1B's who is a better candidate that the US applicants taking jobs is good for the local and national economy because it a) as a higher probability of making a better product b) which in turn generates more revenue, which increases company and economic growth, allowing positions to open up to the lesser skilled US workers. I have no proof, but it sounds reasonable enough to me. Which is similar to what the original blog posters were on about. They found better suited overseas applicants, but the difficulty or impossibility in employing them made the less-suitable US applicants the only option, to the detriment of their business. It strikes me that hiring an employee that is unsuitable could potentially be very bad if the cost of training was too high for the business endeavor to survive. On the flip side it could be very good if the employeer trains them the employee hangs around. - Phil
It's really very simple...how much money are you going to make for the company that is hiring you? If you provide enough value, they will pay. But the problem is that just the fact that you can program well doesn't create that value. No. The software must do something new AND very valuable...much more valuable than what you can get out of a box. Basically, all the huge innovative strides have been accomplished. It's the difference between the guys who invented and developed the (insert favorite world-changing invention here) and the guys that work on the assembly line producing it. Which one are you? From what I can tell, most programmers are the assembly-line variety, albeit it's an intellectual assembly-line. You may be highly skilled, but what differentiates you from the highly-skilled welder working in the Ford plant? When you get right down to it, not much. You even share the same mindset :) The reality is simple. it doesn't require an intellectual pissing contest to get to the bottom of it. All it requires is for some people to face the facts. This is the real world, and 'the system' is not broken. It's the same as it has always been. For the record, I'm an American, and I'm tired of the whining.
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If you're going to make the argument about the part not representing the whole, then you can hardly suggest that any given company hiring H1-B holders won't pay qualified locals market rates. Some companies may be taking that approach, some may not. US citizen programmers might pay more tax if they indeed earned more, but since you don't cite any of the studies you mention, that's up for debate as a proposition. Funds sent overseas are only a bad thing on a micro-economic basis - overall, the more dollars floating around the world, the better for the US economy.
citation: http://www.cis.org/articles/2005/back1305.html[^] If you read this, it should make it clear than many (not necessarily all) employers pay bargain basement wages to H1Bs, and end your "debate," all in one fell swoop. As to your proposition that dollars going to folks overseas is better for the U.S. economy than dollars being spent in this country - what are you smoking and can I have some? :laugh:
Jon Information doesn't want to be free. It wants to be sixty-nine cents @ pound.
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It's really very simple...how much money are you going to make for the company that is hiring you? If you provide enough value, they will pay. But the problem is that just the fact that you can program well doesn't create that value. No. The software must do something new AND very valuable...much more valuable than what you can get out of a box. Basically, all the huge innovative strides have been accomplished. It's the difference between the guys who invented and developed the (insert favorite world-changing invention here) and the guys that work on the assembly line producing it. Which one are you? From what I can tell, most programmers are the assembly-line variety, albeit it's an intellectual assembly-line. You may be highly skilled, but what differentiates you from the highly-skilled welder working in the Ford plant? When you get right down to it, not much. You even share the same mindset :) The reality is simple. it doesn't require an intellectual pissing contest to get to the bottom of it. All it requires is for some people to face the facts. This is the real world, and 'the system' is not broken. It's the same as it has always been. For the record, I'm an American, and I'm tired of the whining.
I reckon that is a great overview. It's not warm and fuzzy, and paints an accurate picture. - Phil
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your original post said: "they had multiple H1-B visas from several different (usually, Indian outsourcing) companies and could jump sjip at the first opportunity." Now you tell a very different tale. Somehow, I think your first post contained a more general truth than this latest revision.
Jon Information doesn't want to be free. It wants to be sixty-nine cents @ pound.
In the first post, I provided my viewpoint as their manager and the one who was subject to pressures to pay more money than my budget could afford. In the second post, I explained how one gets more than one H1-B visa... sometimes intentional, sometimes not so. If you think your current company is shaky, or the job was misrepresented to you, or you don't want to work 60-hour weeks despite getting overtime pay, etc., you apply for another job and have a second H1 visa. I know people for whom companies get H1 visas in India but do not send them to the US because the contract didn't come through. Those guys also might come on a different company's H1 and thus have two H1 visas stamped on their passport. Most companies are legit when it comes to visa status for their employees. The company I worked for was raided by INS and we got a clean bill of health. The business is too valuable to risk it on a couple of shady visa deals.
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John Cardinal wrote:
Yup, exactly right. The bitching heard in response to this kind of thinking comes primarily from the underemployed who, as is typical for most people, prefer to point the blame at others rather than look closely at themselves
You really have no idea what is going on, do you? Well, you just keep telling yourself that, right up until you're asked to train your replacement.
Jon Information doesn't want to be free. It wants to be sixty-nine cents @ pound.
Oakman wrote:
You really have no idea what is going on, do you? Well, you just keep telling yourself that, right up until you're asked to train your replacement.
I've always been one of those people that never had a problem getting a job or keeping one. I'll leave the fear mongering and paranoia to those that are much more deservedly accustomed to it. ;)
"I don't want more choice. I just want better things!" - Edina Monsoon
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Lol @ Oakman!! I gotta hand it to you for vehemently sticking to your stance. Somewhere along I read that you were in the army. Kudos! So you're the friendly neighborhood gun totting trigger happy fire Klan punk, who has an "all trespassers will be shot, survivors will be shot again" warning sign in his front yard. NICE!!! -- modified at 15:33 Tuesday 10th July, 2007
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Most folks who come to the US from India on H1-B visas come from a middle-class background and do not have to support their families back home financially. The cab drivers in New York or Chicago are the ones sending money home to their families and they are not here on H1-B. The vast majority of remittances to India come from blue-collar workers employed in the Middle East. Just like low-skilled Hispanic immigrants working as domestics or agricultural workers in the US repatriate money to Mexico/Central American countries.
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Before you start quoting Microsoft's party line and call bullsh!t on me, I suggest you learn a little history. M$FT, since the 1990's, has agressively pursued hiring on the cheap. At first that meant contractors so they wouldn't have to pay benefits and now it means H1Bs because they are the cheapest type of programmer around. M$FT is building their campus in Canada to punish the US for not granting their desire for unlimited H1Bs. They would have had to build the campus and increased their staff-size regardless. But this way they get to spit in Lou Dobbs's eye.
John Cardinal wrote:
Every thing about the h1b visa program points to it.
Do you have any clue as to how badly the H1B program is being abused? Its so rampant that it's being used as one of the reasons MSFT and Oracle, etc want the brakes taken off the number that can be brought into this country.
Jon Information doesn't want to be free. It wants to be sixty-nine cents @ pound.
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As a parent with grown children I personally think it's just as big a mistake to solely blame the parents for the child's choices as it is to solely blame society, which I don't but I realize that that may not have been as clearly stated in my earlier post as it should have been. I was trying to say that I think any shortage of good, qualified American developers is a systemic problem and that one aspect of that problem is that we've created a situation where more respect, attention, and rewards appear to come easier and faster to folks in professions that I tend to lump together and call "entertainment". I believe, right or wrong, that this contributes to the confusion young people experience when it comes time to make choices regarding their careers. Do you shoot for the glossy, sexy option or go with the plodding, geeky option? Again, this is a matter of perception but think about what's being sold hard every day to this demographic. I think all too many of them are looking at the former option and that can't be laid entirely at their parents' feet.
Oh I fully understood your point, I just think that there are far too many parents throwing up their hands and saying "what can I do?". My parents taught me to be indpendant and think for myself and it resulted in good choices and bad ones but I can honestly say that the society I grew up in had zero influence on my choice of career. I was the only guy for many miles around that had any interest in computers or electronics or science at all. Oddly enough I've been watching this show called "The dog whisperer", odd because I dislike dogs, but it's extremely interesting to watch the psychology involved. Basically people have a "problem" dog and this guy comes in who had a very deep and masterful understanding of dog behaviour and psychology and the relationship between owners and their dogs and how it's influencing everything the dog does. Inevitably he gets results fast and in every case he is actually training the owner, not the dog. In nearly all cases he's teaching the owner how to be a "pack leader" that is to say the assertive member of the relationship, not the passive one. The person who sets boundaries and limitations, dogs respect and respond positively to that big time and so do children. It's a little microcosm of parenting in modern society. Those same type of people can be seen in action as parents: "What can I do he gets it from playing video games / watching tv / school / bad friends etc etc etc" In other words the finger is pointed at everything under the sun with the single exception of themselves. The big picture is that the U.S. and most of western society has had it so easy for so long that a sort of critical mass of excess and entitlement and laziness has creaped in almost entirely un-noticed and now the inevitable consequences are being seen. Out the window are personal responsibility, hard work, ethics etc etc. It's a cycle, things will get crappy, people will regain their sense of purpose and all the other things they've lost and work their way out of it, in a few decades things will go to hell once again etc etc. We just happen to be at or very near the peak or trough depending on your point of view.
"I don't want more choice. I just want better things!" - Edina Monsoon