H-1B visa debate: India says it’s a trade and services issue
hindustantimes.com
hindustantimes.com
https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/66kb3c/95_engi...
Jaitley(FM) would have us believe that the 65K are the skilled ones, while they are the ones who just happened to be the bosses pet/bribed ones getting a chance to go on-site & not because of some specialised skill.
Here is the reason: the intent of the H1-B program is to import labor only in the case that there is absolutely no American capable of doing the job. For example, a nuclear physicist that is good at programming computers.
It has been abused.
If India doesn't want to buy high quality goods like Apple iPhones, then they are hurting their population. I'll withhold comment about McD, KFC, PizzaHut.
Some people understand that American is for Americans and some don't seem to understand that. Why should people from other countries who are not US citizens depress wage rates in STEM and compete with Americans for jobs? One reason that Trump won over the Republican and Democratic political elite is that they didn't understand this very basic concept.
Those that want to immigrate should follow the law and go through the proper procedures. Many do. Abuse of H1-B is wrong. Lowering rates rates of American STEM workers is wrong. Competing with Americans for STEM jobs is wrong.
* There are hundreds of thousands of H1-Bs in America right now.
* Most, if not all, of these jobs should go to Americans.
* Non-profits ( virtually all universities and hospitals in the US ) are exempt from annual caps.
* H1-B is frequently used to illegally replace American workers.
* There are so many Indians and Chinese in the H1-B program that legitimately qualified foreign nationals ( ex: PhD degree holders ) from other countries cannot even get into the US.
* Why is H1-B 80% Indian? India surely doesn't have a monopoly on brilliant people.
* If hundreds of thousands of Americans were being imported into India to do jobs for which there were qualified Indian workers, you better believe that Indians would be extremely unhappy about it.
* And here you are, with the expectation that US professionals should welcome low cost replacements with open arms.
* I live and work in Seattle. Nearly every single American citizen I know is opposed to H1-B. Many are too polite/afraid to say anything at work, but most of them would rather the H1-B workers just went home.
The H1-B program was meant to import labor only in the case that there is absolutely no American capable of doing the job: in reality, it has become a means of labor arbitrage.
Make no mistake though, that labor arbitrage is a challenge special to the U.S.
As I have explained in my answer (https://www.quora.com/Are-H-1B-visas-causing-large-scale-une...) and comments (https://www.quora.com/Are-H-1B-visas-causing-large-scale-une...) on Quora, most developed nations make extensive use of labor arbitrage.
Sure, China and India is the center of labor arbitrage, but there are a lot of applicants from developed countries too.
I have spoken with Canadians immigrating to the U.S. because they can't afford to live in Canada; I have spoken with Germans immigrating to the U.S. because they can't afford to live in Germany; I have spoken with Finns immigrating to the U.S. because they can't afford to live in Finland and so on. All have the same story.
The reason being that at their home country, the companies are hiring immigrants from developing countries at lower labor costs.
That depresses wages for that industry and I am not only talking about tech jobs. My Quora answer shows how doctors are similarly affected: https://www.quora.com/Are-H-1B-visas-causing-large-scale-une...
The Canadians/Germans/Finns/etc have an expectation for a quality of life they are now unable to maintain on such depressed wages and hence they immigrate to the U.S.
Here are some more datapoints: https://www.quora.com/Are-H-1B-visas-causing-large-scale-une...
None of them are happy they had to immigrate to the U.S. and the U.S. citizens they likely displaced are not happy about that either.
I hate the exploitation of the H1-B program: but the H1-B is capitalism, free markets and the global marketplace at its best.
The free market does not care if it burns the factory and workers its making money off to the ground.
The free market only looks at one thing:
Profit.
Sure, there is capitalism, but there is also breaking the law. The abuse of the H1-B Visa program is breaking the law since it is only supposed to be used in cases where there is no American qualified to do the job. The law needs changing so that violation means jail time.
The EU has a similar problem with working class and hence BrExit as a result. Cheap labor from Eastern Europe has been displacing the British working class. Of course, the elites like this because it means they have to pay less money for labor and the NHS has to pay less for nurses.
The US has free trade agreements where there are no or low tariffs but not free movement of labor. NAFTA is one such example. The EU as part of their agreement has low-tariffs and free flow of labor connected and that is why BrExit happened.
Even though most Americans are against H1-B the politicians seem to be for expanding the program.
Here is Mark Rubio: http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2015/10/30/h...
Trump won because he was basically the only Republican and along with Sanders the only other candidate that wanted American workers to get paid fairly.
> Trump won because he was basically the only Republican and along with Sanders the only other candidate that wanted American workers to get paid fairly.
Trump won because he made promises that no other candidate was willing to make because they were more experienced and knew better.
Sanders operates on a completely different level. He was the best of all candidates but we don't deserve the likes of Sanders. He will never win the presidency because he's too dedicated to his mission. He's the 60 year old programmer who's been at the company for decades nursing the company's legacy software while the fresh out of college MBA who makes 5x his salary tells him he's missing the bigger picture.
> but there is also breaking the law. The abuse of the H1-B Visa program is breaking the law
My understanding is that none of the companies are breaking the law.
They are surely exploiting the intent of the H1B but their final/end clients are U.S. companies looking to boost their profits by paying less in wages and benefits.
These U.S. companies create the demand for these Indian companies to exploit the H1B.
The H1B story:
U.S. Company: "I have a position for a Senior Bathroom Scrubber in Bumfuck, YZ that pays market rates of $XYZ/yr and sanitation gloves every month"
American Worker: "Those 'market rates' are years old. No way I am working as a Senior Bathroom Scrubber in Bumfuck, YZ for $XYZ/yr and janky sanitation gloves every month"
Subhobroto (worker from India): "Yeah, I have a M.S. from a U.S. University and don't mind working as a Senior Bathroom Scrubber in Bumfuck, YZ for $XYZ/yr if you apply for my green card. Sanitation gloves provided for me every month is awesome!"
U.S. Company: "Ding! Ding! Welcome! We don't have an issue applying for your green card. By the way, we can't promote you and/or increase your salary ever again because reasons A,B,C"
American Worker: WTF!
Subhobroto (worker from India): "Thank you. I know I'm getting paid less than what I would have made if I had better negotiating power but I will have that power after I have a green card and am not a temporary worker anymore legally required to leave the country immeidately if you fire me, so this is just the price of admission. Plus, I'm getting paid more than if I had worked for a company back in India anyways"
End of scene.
Subhobroto and U.S. Company walk away into the sunset (to divorce a decade later once the H1B matures to a greencard) leaving behind an angry American Worker.
Subhobroto is well aware that he and his future generations will be in the same shoes as the American Worker in a few years, but that's for scene 2.
As I show in https://www.quora.com/Are-H-1B-visas-causing-large-scale-une..., this is not unique to the U.S.
You can replace "American Worker" with "German Worker" and so on with no loss in generality.
Feel free to connect with me: https://www.quora.com/profile/Subhobroto-Sinha-1
I am for fairness and global labor arbitrage importing labor through H1-B and other means is inherently unfair. One of the things that really angered me about NYT and WaPo and other MSM is that they were backing Clinton who in fact was very pro-H1B more like Republicans Bush and Rubio while Trump and Sanders were the ones acting more like Democrats being fair to labor. Trump cared not only for STEM / H1-B but also working class (illegal aliens drive down wage rates among working class).
I don't understand your example about bathroom person because I thought the law was that employers had to demonstrate that the skill were simply not available among Americans, regardless of wage rates.
"Hillary Clinton may be more aligned with Rubio and Bush than she is with Sanders on the H-1B issue. While serving as a U.S. senator representing New York, Clinton traveled to Buffalo in 2003 to mark the opening of an office of IT services provider Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). That was 12 years ago, but the H-1B issue was very much a subject of controversy by then. TCS is one of the largest users of the H-1B visa.
The Clinton links to the IT offshore outsourcing industry have continued since then through the work of the Clinton Foundation, where Tata has been participating in its STEM education efforts. In 2011, former President Bill Clinton was paid $260,000 by IT services provider HCL to deliver a speech."
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3008726/it-careers/bern...
Most of the leaders of tech were for unfairness of driving down wage rates of STEM even though many of them are among the world's wealthiest people each worth over $20 billion. Greedy instead of being thankful to their workforce.
Isn't this basically an issue of "no american qualified to do the job" "at the price the market is willing to pay for that job"? It's not unfair to think that these American companies that save costs by using H1-B or offshored workers pass on those savings to customers and shareholders (since so many are public). Their products have an inherent savings because these companies are saving money using the H1B right?
I'm Indian and don't really care either way about this debate, but it just seems to me 'fixing' the H1B issue wouldn't really bring jobs back to the US. These companies are already used to such cheap IT labor and their final product/service pricing reflects that. You think they'll suddenly hire 50-60% more expensive US workers for those jobs? IMHO I think this will lead to more offshoring of jobs and the US will lose more jobs that were atleast situated in the US geographically and contributing to US taxes.
It's called global labor arbitrage. The intent of the H1-B visa law is not to drive down STEM wage rates or replace Americans with lower wage immigrants, but rather to fill jobs for which no American is qualified.
It has been abused.
> "but it just seems to me 'fixing' the H1B issue wouldn't really bring jobs back to the US."
H1-B are immigrants working in America so by fixing the H1-B visa issue fewer H1-B immigrants will be working in the US and more Americans will be doing the work. I feel that those cases like Disney, Southern California Edison, Univ California San Francisco and Abbott Laboratories all cases where H1-B Visa workers were used to replace Americans in America should have the Visas cancelled the the firms prohibited from using H1-B directly or indirectly for 10 years.
Many US firms have tried to offshore computer programming and in many cases found that it does not work. Penny wise, pound foolish.
That's if you assume this work can only be performed in the US. For the difference in costs I'm guessing the companies will find a way to offshore it.
> Many US firms have tried to offshore computer programming and in many cases found that it does not work. Penny wise, pound foolish.
That's anecdotal. Majority of the firms that did outsource work quite well. IBMs largest staff contingent is in India. It's not just programming, analytics, tech consulting, pre-sales, some marketing, architectural work, etc.
There are so many Indians and Chinese on H1-B because they both add up to 40% of the world population and they are culturally inclined towards academics which is why they make up a significant number of students in graduate and PhD programs; not that other cultures aren't, but they particularly are. Also, unlike other nationalities, where folks get a green card within 2-3 years of being in H1-B, Indians have to wait it out for almost 10 years (Source: https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/law-and-policy/bul...). Because everyone on H1-B has to renew their visa every 3 years, the percentage of the Indian H1-B visa applicants shows up as higher.
Legitimate foreign nationals with PhD's don't get an H1-B because of the lottery system used for issuing visas and that is something that must be fixed.
There are 1.4 open jobs in tech for every single American meeting the requirements. H1-B's are filling a need left open by Americans choosing to study non-STEM courses. I am not sure where you get the number that hundreds of thousands of Americans, with programming/IT/engineering skills, are unemployed because of immigrants. Unemployment in IT is one of the lowest in all the industries (Source: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t14.htm) even though there are 5.7 million job openings (Source: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm). It is assumed that 3% unemployment rate is normal and can be attributed to general employee turnover rate.
If there were qualified Indian workers losing their jobs to Americans, I would be unhappy too. But you don't have that problem.
This country is built by immigrants and it always had a steady flow of immigrants. It was Germans and then Irish and then Japanese and then Russians and then Chinese and now Indians. H1-B is the latest incarnation of a process to immigrate. The majority of these immigrants are highly educated, work on a high paying job, pay taxes and help the local economy. If every single American citizen you know is opposed to them being here, maybe you should find yourself some open-minded friends.
And India does often block companies from serving the Indian market if there isn't enough perceived benefit. For instance Apple isn't allowed to open retail stores because they don't want to meet guarantees about percentages of made in India goods available in store.