Cisco Said to Be Cited for Bias Against U.S. Workers
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Further, the recent actions making harder for "body shops" like Infosys are actually helping big tech companies win more visa lotteries. This means the recent action that was supposed to help American workers, is actually causing the best jobs to shift more to immigrants and less to Americans.
The whole visa and immigration system needs huge reform. I am not anti immigrant but the immigration system disproportionately hurts American software engineers and American tech. You don't see many visa holders working in sales and marketing, or teaching, or law, mostly just software engineering (at the high end) and then migrant farming and illegal immigrant factory workers (at the low end).
Consider these 2016 numbers from USCIS [1] (Can't find 2017 data. Wonder why). All of the Indian body shops pay sub-$90K as their average salary whereas all of the top domestic sponsors are paying significantly more. I'm sure the medians are even worse. So all a US company has to do is play the contractor shuffle and get cheaper labor. Also note that there are no listings for people with master's or doctorate degrees. H1B is clearly not being used for its intended effect.
[1] https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/Re...
That good for the employer, not good for workers.
(I think most people on this forum would agree H1B needs reform ?)
For example, opportunities like say going to Recurse Center, or having the freedom to have a decently long sabbatical etc. even with a 6 month emergency fund are not available. The other thing is no freedom to pursue any other job, i.e working on a startup idea during the evenings or weekend, or writing a technical book etc. for money is not allowed.
There are certainly issues with the H1b system, i.e. the lottery, low salary cap, multiple applications per person to game the system etc, but employer stickiness is not one of them, at least for people who are qualified.
The major problem is due to long wait for green card for people from China, and almost impossible wait for people from India. My friends who were not born in these two countries have been able to get a green card within about a year, after getting an H1B, while I am looking at a more than 20-30 year wait.
The fact is if we want to truly attract the best and brightest we need to give them citizenship and pay them for their superior skills.
As it is now we aren't attracting the best and brightest but the slightly skilled and willing to take a gamble and endure the cruelty of our immigration system. These are typically young people which exacerbates the agism problem in tech.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/07/22/the-talent-myt...
It’s a form of indentured labor that should be forbidden.
My grandparents were all skilled blue collar workers who needed a sponsor and a medical exam to enter and eventually get citizenship in the 1940s. There’s no reason that skilled labor from anywhere should not be able to immigrate here on the same terms.
No H1? No problem, move the function offshore.
People are selfish, so I don't blame them for want to close the door and keep the outsiders outside so they can have a bigger share of the pie.
But don't expect to see that happen either, companies nowadays are much more powerful than individuals and they are very nimble, they will go to places where cost is lower, this won't change a bit, it is in their blood.
So to immigrants coming to US, don't really put much hope in spending decades waiting to get permit to not in living in fear of throwing out. Doesn't worth it. And the resentment towards immigrants is worsening everyday, unless you happen to have certain skin tone. So earn your bucks, and save more, when the time comes take your life and skill elsewhere, life is too short to just wait in vain and hope for the best, act swiftly and you will be happier ;)
If this was the only thing it would have gone offshore more than a decade ago. The reason is hasn't gone offshore is because the results are terrible for a number of reasons, with precious few success stories. It is a tried and failed technique to cut software costs.
Also, even now India exports $100B+ worth of software services to US. It is not as if every project offshored is producing "terrible results".
Paying maximum viable cost for minimum viable output is the type of outsourcing that you're thinking of. India, Eastern Europe, etc is full of smart people capable of doing pretty much anything. Being located in California doesn't give you super-powers.
Companies should obey the law, or leave and be prohibited from operating in the jurisdiction (China does this successfully).
Edit: My apologies for reiterating this here (I mention it in a child comment), I don’t want to be verbose but I also don’t want to comment all over the place and risk a throttling flag: If you are a company and relocate, a country has many tools at it’s disposal to retaliate, and they should be used when necessary (see how the US almost drove ZTE to insolvency).
A company only exists because a nation state allows it. That formation can be revoked at any time.
That is almost always threatened and almost always never happens.
As toomuchtodo suggests, this lassez-faire culture with business needs to stop. Every year it's a different scandal, we need to stop tip-toeing around business. They rely on a nation's education system, transport, internet infrastructure etc, they didn't come from nothing. China and India in these respects are doing very well, and I'm sure their citizens are thankful.
What? There has been a huge amount of offshoring in the past few decades. Not sure you can say it never happens.
But why, or perhaps more importantly, why should this be the case? Why should citizenship (which is itself an arbitrary legal distinction made by the government) mean a person is more deserving of anything than non-citizen residents? It's not like naturalized citizens did anything to earn their citizenship.
[1] https://www.usa.gov/become-us-citizen#item-36212
> The decision to apply is a significant one. Citizenship offers many benefits and equally important responsibilities. By applying, you are demonstrating your commitment to this country and our form of government.
> Support and defend the Constitution. Stay informed of the issues affecting your community. Participate in the democratic process. Respect and obey federal, state, and local laws. Respect the rights, beliefs, and opinions of others. Participate in your local community. Pay income and other taxes honestly, and on time, to federal, state, and local authorities. Serve on a jury when called upon. Defend the country if the need should arise.
https://www.uscis.gov/citizenship/learners/citizenship-right...
People ought to have a vested interest in the place they work, and live. I know of no better way to do that than citizenship.
This is just like the NIMBYs. Work to deny people the opportunity to become "stakeholders," then use your success in doing so to claim their needs don't matter.
The birth lottery is a poor indicator of deservingness. This behavior, on the other hand, is bright-as-day proof of its absence.
Concern about the "challenges" of too many brown people in your country is usually just called "racism."
If you have nothing to offer a country, why would that country accept you except under extenuating circumstances (ie political asylum)? You must be able to contribute in a meaningful way.
EDIT: Shifting from a biological to a cultural explanation for why certain racial groups have inferior/unacceptable behaviors doesn't diminish the level of racism. Country of origin dominates any measure of individual assimilation w.r.t your chances in the immigration system, so it's not clear that shifting the rhetorical justification changes anything either.
Of course that country still exists. We're all sitting here benefitting from it while we kick the ladder on everyone else.
Maybe not, if the selection process were primarily concerned with individual merit. But it isn't. We decide which races to allow as residents or citizens, then throw the individuals into a lottery, with good odds for white countries and bad odds for brown ones. Discriminating on ancestry or proxies for ancestry (like nationality) to keep underprivileged groups down and privileged groups comfortable is immoral. So is denying others the same opportunities benefitted from merely because they came later.
Would your own family tree's entrypoints to the US pass your test?
You have no idea what these people go through, my heart breaks every time I see one with a family and the thousand yard stare they have because they’re clearly being exploited.
Why do you think there is so much 'business' going on between larger enterprises and government at many levels? It's all to keep them around, not because it's the best fit. Take Amazon, they want to build an office, so all states and counties and whatever else you have in local government bends over backwards to try and reel them in.
I think you're referring to a different program than the H1B system.
Citizens have absolutely no interest in enabling and empowering corporations unless they serve the community in some way.
Ergo, if corps serve only the benefit of shareholders and not really consumers or anyone else ... and the population derives no benefit ... then those people would vote to disable the very concept of incorporation, after all, why do they want these things around?
Clearly a case can be made for hiring some foreigners.
And more apt - if Cisco can benefit a lot from hiring people from India, it may be better for everyone if they are actually hired and working in India proper.
It's very reasonable for companies to consider locals for jobs 'all things being equal' ... even though they never are :)
Citizens have absolutely no interest in enabling and empowering corporations unless they provide them with a beneficial service/product(s). I seriously doubt most citizens/consumers understand (or care about) the philanthropy implied by your statement. Do you really think people around the world would stop using google because they prefered to hire non-local folks? Some super small minority of folks (the 'locals') might care, but the vast majority of their customer base would be none the wiser.
> and not really consumers or anyone else ... and the population derives no benefit ... then those people would vote to disable the very concept of incorporation
No, they'd go bankrupt because their business model didn't include a viable way for them to survive.
Remember that hiring foreigners doesn't just mean 'work' - it means bringing them into the country and all that entails.
Here's what H1-B actually works if you hire "the best": you hire people who are way overqualified for the job, and pay them peanuts while they are on H1-B. "But H1-B requires that they are paid no less than US workers" you might reasonably object. There's a loophole for that: just hire them at a way lower job ladder level than an American would consider adequate, and don't promote them as much. It's not like they have much of a choice anyway: they can either work here or GTFO to their country of origin within 2 weeks.
I liked Trump's proposal that only the highest paid positions get H1-B visas. That way economic incentives essentially turn H1-B into an auction for the truly great people, and make life easier for fresh US grads. I'm not sure what happened to that proposal. It was probably smothered in the crib by FANG lobbyists.
Full disclosure: I'm a former H1-B, now a naturalized US citizen.
Add a tax on any imports that do NOT put people first, but use the proceeds to fund efforts to improve the lives of all.
Ah, wonders of the free market. ;) Do you honestly think Google/Apple/Microsoft/Facebook/etc hire foreigners because they have to pay them less? The legal costs of hiring and maintaining them easily adds up to 20-30k $ per year.
Yes, without a doubt.
That kind of "loyalty" is easily worth 20k-30k for a lot of companies.
Clearly you can see there is a difference between what a company needs to do to keep an H-1B employee from leaving the country, and what they need to do to keep a permanent resident employee from switching jobs?
They spend far more money and time upfront getting the person the visa and in the end there is nothing preventing them from either going home or tranfering to a similar role at another company.
So if there was a law that said they can't go home or change jobs, then you would accept that it might be worth it?
But if that were the case there's still nothing preventing them from dying right?
Hopefully from this example you can see that an employee who is much more likely to stay for x years, is more valuable despite the fact that they aren't guaranteed to stay for x years.
If you could pay $30k extra for an employee that is 50% more likely to stick around for 5 years, most companies would jump at that chance.
Per year? No it doesn't. An H1B is valid for three years, renewable to six. Unless you're doing something strange there is no cost for the other years.
You think salary negotiations are somehow immune to those same price pressures when we are dealing with the ppl who mow lawns, pick produce, and clean bathrooms?
You may be mistaking illegal immigration with legal.
I grew up next to an orchard that almost exclusively used Jamaican guest workers to pick apples and other fruit. Same thing with horse tracks, etc. There is no farm operating at any significant scale that isn’t using migrant labor, mostly legal.
Just to be clear: people on H-1B are not immigrants as it is a non-immigrant visa. They only become immigrants if and when they adjust status and get a green card at which point none of the limitations you listed will apply anymore.
But that process takes years--during that time all of those limitations do apply. And once they do apply, changing employers can reset the application process, adding yet another disincentive to changing jobs.
Also since tech salaries are so much higher in the US than nearly anywhere else, most H-1B workers want to stay in the US for a significant length of time (even if they don't plan to stay forever)--during that time it is harder for them to switch jobs than it is for permanent residents.
> everyones
Why aren't foreigners in the category of "everyone"?
You seem to forget that there is citizenship.
Sales maybe not as the skill required for sales is very hard to measure (maybe thats why).
Marketing: High level marketing executives are transfered to US regularly. Also I maybe wrong but they can come under the artist visa if they are related to anything artistic and don't need H1B.
Teaching: High school salaries are pathetic and high schools wont even apply for an H1B. A lot of professors in good universities are immigrants. A lot researchers in Top universities are also immigrants.
Law : The problem is that you have to do your law degree here to get entry into law, but I have seen a lot of immigrants doing that.
Not in your list but Medicine: A lot of people are in medicine as well even though they have to take an exam (? or something) to see if they are trained according to US standards.
Tech has most number of immigrants because large tech companies are headquartered in US, thats it.
For example, a lot of doctors go to UK, because demand and NIH.
I know a lot of mechanical and chemical engineers being hired by Schlum (even though its technically not a US company).
Go to any US university and you will see a lot of immigrants in any technical fields training and have pretty good jobs lined up for them after graduation.
Cry me a river. Do you also complain about internal migration towards cities like San Francisco and Boston. It's the same principal at play. Tech workers from all over the US flock to cities where the wealth is. Tech workers from around the world flock to the US because that's where the wealth is. It's not because we like stealing your job.
Developing software is an investment and the people that fund the investment seem to prefer (at least the core of the team) to live nearby. But if you put a hard-stop on immigration. Or if it gets too expensive for people to live nearby, they might just start looking for the talent wherever it is like @dhh.
Bring it on.
The Visa lottery system keeps workers locked into lower paying wages that what they could get as full citizens under the same exact circumstances.
Big tech can leverage deportation against you because you can't "walk away" from a job offer with as low risk as an American could.
"No immigration restrictions" and 100% immigration restritions are both better solutions than the status quo.
I personally believe more lenient immigration laws will help everyone.
FYI - you can switch jobs in H1B. I don't live in the USA, but everyone I know who is from my home country (India) and is on a H1B and in tech, have switched jobs atleast once (mostly between FB, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, Microsoft and Amazon).
OTOH, if you're talking about L1 Visa (which is NOT a lottery system), then everyone I know who is on L1 (interestingly they are all at Amazon and Microsoft), then I agree - none of them have switched jobs so far.
The H1B cap is ridicolously low. 65.000 a year for a country that has 350 million people, in a 7 billion world.
The immigration debate suffers from overgeneralisation. Illegal immigration is a different problem from legal immigration. And short-term skilled migrants are unlike long-term skilled immigrants. Short-term migrants, i.e. those with no intention of staying in the U.S. long-term, probably depress American wages. Skilled immigrants aiming for residency, and certain classes of unskilled illegal immigrants, appear to add net value.
(Exhibit A of our system's self-destructiveness are international students at American universities being refused residency on graduation.)
However over the last 20 years, most immigration, of both kinds, have been about one thing: reduced labor costs.
At the risk of downvotes, I’m going to include something Steve Bannon said on MSNBC last night about legal immigration. He made this point that it makes no sense for America to keep letting the best and brightest of the world in / draining them from everywhere else. Why aren’t we refusing the really good immigrants if anything? Those are the people we want in their home countries setting up fair and stable systems. Having them here is, after a certain point, kind of greedy.
Also free trade was supposed to fix this by also requiring companies to adhere to strict safety and labor laws, which would make labor prices more even. It never happened.
Steve Jobs' father was a Syrian immigrant [1]. It is doutbtful that Steve Jobs--or Elon Musk or Satya Nadella--would have been as successful in their original countries as they've been here. As a species, we all win from giving our best and brightest access to America's stable institutions and rich economy.
More to the point, I find it difficult to believe Steve Bannon suddenly cares about other countries. His line about the overabundance of brown-skinned executives in Silicon Valley is telling enough.
You mean to increase them. Thats the only point of restricting immigration, to increase the salaries of a few, at the cost of the many.
You cannot categorically say that all international students are "highly skilled" or even "skilled". Some are, some aren't; and I'm saying this as an Indian citizen on H1B in the United States. There has to be some kind of vetting period instead of handing off a green card right after graduation. I bet if the tables were turned you won't see anywhere close to this kind of generosity.
Regarding Cisco (downvote me if you want) not a lot of people do "skilled" work; Cisco is a sales machine and does not care about engineering. Fixing bugs (and passing them off as features) from companies which were acquired, doing busy work, attending 2-3 hour meetings, middle management malaise with paper pushers, maintaning status quo (it's 2018 and they still use gcc 3.3) etc. is not what I would define as "skilled" engineering work. It's mediocrity and that's what they want to maintain.
If they're that critical companies should pay a premium. If not, I guess it's not that big a deal.
Also, New Zealander working on getting his Greencard: it's a real bummer seeing what some of the bigger tech companies have done with the H1B visa in the past 10 years. They've really abused it and ruined it for everyone.
Also, you cant get an H1B for sales. Ask the U.S. Government about that, they put that restriction.
We will build the most fantastic firewall ever made, and we will make the foreign engineers pay for it!
Software engineering has the lowest unemployment of any major job category in the world. Beyond it being the right thing to do, making it easier for people abroad to work in the US with the same level of freedoms granted to citizens (including the “right” to get poached at a higher salary) would only help the industry and those within it
Another thing: if software engineers weren’t afraid of unionizing, then companies would have a hell of a lot harder time slowly replacing you with cheaper counterparts. Demanding equal pay for equal work, no matter where your coworkers came from, attacks the core of the problem
I'm happy to work with people all over the world, I don't need to see you face-to-face every day. I really enjoy seeing people a few times a year, but that's only because I genuinely like them and I enjoy spending time in meatspace with them. But I never felt like my job was impaired by having people at different time zones. If anything, it was awesome! I'd put up a PR before going to sleep and by the time I went in to work the next day it would be ready to merge. If any serious discussion had to happen, we'd just use video chat to resolve big issues.
What benefits would unionizing provide? I'm not actively against it, but I don't see any clear reasons to be in favor of it either.
Given that companies are consistently and fiercely fighting off unionization should be a tip off. In any case, some examples:
* Better pay and benefits. The US is miles away from Europe in this issue because of this very reason.
* Not having to talk to HR when you're experiencing various problems on the job.
* Having influence backed up by actual power.
* Solidarity.
I don't mind talking to HR. You should always hire a lawyer if you're having any serious discussions anyway, so I don't see in what way a union would help me. If your HR department won't let you discuss something without a lawyer present, that's a clear sign you need to leave immediately.
Your power is that you have an influential position within the company, and if you leave it will cause them to have to hire someone and teach them all the intricacies of your industry. This takes a lot of time and it's incredibly expensive.
If an engineer is fired for a bullshit reason (i.e. I don't like em), other engineers will speak up if they think it's unjustified. I'll also make sure to publicly express my criticisms of the company so nobody within my social circle will seriously consider joining.
Maybe a union makes more sense for a larger company, but so far I'm unconvinced by your points. Like I said, I'm not against unions, but I'm unclear as to what benefits I'd get for joining one.
> I don't want
> I don't mind
> I'll also make sure [..] within my social circle
> what benefits I'd get
A business usually consists of a group of employees, some may benefit more than others, clearly you may be in the others category. But maybe some of your colleagues aren't as vocal or brave as you, or maybe they can't afford to risk losing their job etc. That's solidarity, not tweeting about something after-the-fact for the benefit of your own social circle.
That said, the highly skilled, strictly individual-minded person clearly have benefits to reap too. Comparing with most West-European countries, like:
* 5-6 weeks of paid vacation annually.
* Paid sick leave.
* Months of paid parental leave.
>* Paid sick leave.
>* Months of paid parental leave.
I believe these issues should be legislated rather than negotiated. I believe that is how it's done in the majority of Western Europe as well.
As for remote work: I’m 100% good with that, but I also believe people shouldn’t be constrained from living in the general area they would like to if they have the means. Also , a lot of people simply don’t like remote work in the first place, and there can also be similar wage depression effects (and other political issues) that can make it a less-than-ideal situation
After being in Germany and also working with them I am really impressed by the union and the strong labour laws that they have. Really helps in the work life balance for them and how I really wish my country had it.
One of the things that makes this difficult for software is that there's not a clear way of defining "equal work". Every company has its own leveling system that may or may not reflect the actual value of the work being performed, and sometimes employees justifiably exceed their designated level's salary.
That's because unlike software engineering, all of those other jobs rely heavily on [natural] language and cultural fluency.
If this number seems low, thats because it is. They probably "employ" another 70,000 contract workers, many of which are also on visas, but since they're not on the "official" payroll they don't show up. That they were cited at all for the 1600 visa workers in the first place is astounding to me.
Used to work there. I was always surprised at the volume of contractors and contracting companies were embedded within the ranks.
From what I saw in a documentary the Dutch farmers heavily optimize pretty much everything they can, not only through automation.
Just saying there's other considerations too. I get that these practices mean that it's likely a better burrito, but it's wrong.
So yes you're not helping that individual. In fact you're damaging that individual potentially a lot. But you're helping far more people a little bit.
The issue is that it really isn’t prevailing wage.
A portion ($1500) of most H-1B application fees goes towards funding scholarship and training programs. This is called " ACWIA fee" - see [1] and [2] for details.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Competitiveness_and_W...
[2]: https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/Re...
They will keep the 4 DoL skill levels used for H1B and put caps at each level. The extra twist is it will be in the shape of a pyramid where there are fewer highly skill slots but enough for the Google's, and then a lot more for the lower levels. So that company that was continually denied their $55k level 4 "senior dev" in Dallas in the lottery is now high enough in the auction to win.
Highest salary wins. No low level people would get it, as it would be bidding accross the board. If you aren't willing to pay that scientist 150K, then you lose the bid to the software engineer hired in the Bay area.
But sometimes the best value for the host country is to get an immigrant doctor that's willing to go to a rural area for less pay than the big tech engineers.
It is in America's interest to suck up economically productive people from all over the world. This is solved by the wage lottery system
It is also in America's interest to increase the number of skilled service providers in rural areas. One policy to solve this might be solved by targeted wage subsidies that are tied to working in certain areas.
There's no need to couple these orthogonal issues together. It doesn't matter whether the rural doctors are native or immigrants. That said, the policies compose well: Wage subsidy + actual wage might win the visa auction, modulo the quantity of subsidy and the demand for medicine as a skill set.
Really, they don't care what happens as long as the cap is increased.
When driven only by greed, all methods to get more money are always acceptable... unless you are caught.
The problem is visa law, not companies following that law.
For foreign employees, ending a program of indentured servitude that dangles the prospect of citizenship in front of them while providing substandard pay and limited mobility.
For foreign governments, bringing talent back to their countries rather than cash, enabling the development of their own businesses and growth of their own economy.
You mean increase income disparity. More foreign software engineers would lower the median salary of a software engineer in the us, which is in the top bracket of earners. Increasing the salary of software engineers increases income disparity between those and the median.
Also, i thought the point was to make an ethical one, not a money one.
> For foreign employees, ending a program of indentured servitude that dangles the prospect of citizenship in front of them while providing substandard pay and limited mobility.
Oh why thank you. Did you ask foreign employees if they like your idea of banning them from the US for their own benefit?
> For foreign governments, bringing talent back to their countries rather than cash, enabling the development of their own businesses and growth of their own economy.
If you have a concern for the well-being of foreign governments over the interests in the US, you can advocate or better measures than punishing foreign people.
It's usually both, when we talk about screwing others in a legal way. But we have to keep the big picture in mind. For people to live together, they need to perceive society to be kind of fair. Otherwise they don't have a problem burning it to the ground... by e.g. voting for a moron to govern them in hope for change.
Having reasonable pressure on prices (including wages) to improve the economy is beneficial to society. Citizens having to compete with people that show an uncomfortable similarity to slaves (especially the dependency on employer aspect) seems beyond that.
The solution is not complicated. With the anti-immigrant rhetoric pouring from the current administration, I'm surprised that blatant h1b visa abuse is still rampant.
$150k cap across the board ensures that all industries are kept honest. A bidding system can be added on top of that, if needed, but this extremely simple fix would ensure that the system fulfills the original goals it was created for, while adding no bureaucratic overhead.
If the prevailing wage is calculated based on an average, you will find big business will get lower payed workers bundled in to the industry average (i.e. apple has retail staff, most companies have call centre staff, all have janitorial staff, etc) and the "prevailing wage" will be significantly lower then it should be.
If its based on job title you will just find every visa holder will have a "lower" job title (i.e. Junior rather then senior) that gives the companies a way to pay less.
Thats before factoring cost of living between various locations.
Special interests will ensure that the prevailing wage is drawn sufficiently lower then it should be.
I think it has to remain a static value (adjusted for inflation) that is quite high (e.g. $180k->$250k AUD for Australia), enough that anyone who a company will pay that much would almost certainly be a world class employee, and if someone is worth that much, then I can't see how they wouldn't be a benefit for both the country / economy, employee and the competitiveness of the company. I have no issue with this being an unlimited visa class, and should be able to be streamlined for a much quicker approval (i.e. has the company signed an agreement that they are paying $X per year?, if yes its approved pending health and security approval).
This allows companies to hire the best in the world, while not allowing them to drive down salaries with similarly skilled employees. Additionally if there is a shortage it will ensure there is some pressure to train / develop employees, innovate, automate, etc, but providing a pressure relief if needed (if supply and demand becomes unbalanced enough that people are willing to pay $180k for janitorial staff, then economically they are needed).
So anyone who desperately needs someone on a visa can get them. Low-end body shops go away and a bunch of industries that are being cheap don't get their visas. This is called a good thing.
There are many sectors where hiring managers want degrees and other certifications and pay minimum wage or damn close. Then they complain about worker shortages.
This is all solved by higher pay and better conditions, but people want to bring in indentured servants as it's easier. As someone who has run businesses and bootstrapped, that's utter BS.
How about remove the quota limit and put a minimum salary of 60k?
And I agree that $150k is probably on the low end for tech, but I wanted to name a conservative amount which takes into consideration pay across all industries. Whatever we do, we should __Start__ with that, and then further modify requirements/restrictions as deemed necessary.
I don't know how easy/difficult would it be for companies to move from equity based compensation to normal salary though, if something like that is implemented.
Alternatively, the USA as a country could put some effort into education, so as to be self-sufficient in available, skilled workers.
But you're simplifying things - do we really know that lack of cheap Indian H1-B or L1 workers is what's killing Cisco? No. We don't even know that Cisco is being killed. They just gave $10+million dollar bonus to the CEO, as we learned elsewhere in these threads. That suggests robust health.
Between OPT and H1B the relationship between tech and immigration is grim.
It is a race to the bottom and the big tech companies at playin with fire. The societal damage is currently unquantifiable, but for an astute observers and people with common sense it’s not good.
Often the biggest Perk for Indians to work in the US is not even money, its to get exposure to the first world infrastructure and overall industry scene. Even if you don't make much money, you return to India with heavily scaled up ambitions.
Where does this money come from? This should be budgeted somewhere, so I don't understand how this is "hidden" from others.
Also, if you knew this they probably didn't do a good job of "hiding" it, did they?
1,600 visa workers for Cisco seems really low though. Anecdata, but my company hired a VP from Cisco and from that point until they left we made a lot of hires, but not a single American that I am aware of.
One of the foremost would be that an American company should support the livelihoods of the American people, especially as long as other countries like China wouldn't allow an American to work so easily in the reverse situation. It's just a natural tribal instinct, also, to care more for the welfare of your neighbor than someone across the world.
I'm not commenting on the validity of those arguments, though, as I think a core part of America's success is being unusually open to immigration.
And people who are living and working in America are American, they may just not be citizens. Citizenship is itself an arbitrary legal distinction made by the government. The vast majority of citizens received their citizenship by being born in the country rather than by any effort or merit on their part. So the claim becomes "an American company should support the livelihoods of people born within the borders of America," which I think is pretty clearly an arbitrary claim that needs a lot of explanation before I'll accept it as reasonable.
> It's just a natural tribal instinct, also, to care more for the welfare of your neighbor than someone across the world.
We're talking about work visas, which means those people move here and thus become your neighbors, so you'd have to extend that "natural tribal instinct" defense beyond place of residence.
Since when? I have literally never heard this. This is a patently absurd claim to make. Just because someone lives here does not mean they are "American", unless you think that all of the inputs to national identity are vapid, meaningless attributes that are completely transferable.
>We're talking about work visas, which means those people move here and thus become your neighbors, so you'd have to extend that "natural tribal instinct" defense beyond place of residence.
Just because someone has moved in next door does not mean they are now "part of your tribe". This has never been true throughout history, and it will not magically become true today regardless of the outcome of this immigration debate.
It absolutely is used exclusively to refer to citizens by an overwhelming majority of people who would use that term. Attempting to split off "citizens" from "natives and inhabitants" is a naked attempt at trying to redefine a word that carries significant meaning to further a specific agenda.
>...citizenship is an arbitrary legal distinction
Says who? It certainly doesn't seem arbitrary to me. There are considerable responsibilities that come with being a citizen. Men have to register for the draft. You can be called for Jury duty. This isn't arbitrary.
>...and other inhabitants that the government should not protect or care about.
I don't think anyone here is arguing the (American) government "should not protect or care" about non-citizens, but that claiming they shouldn't put American citizens first is dubious at best.
I am saying that the choice of legal definition of citizenship is arbitrary, not that it is poorly-defined. Legal definitions vary a lot from country to country. Again, I’m saying it’s a bad choice for the threshold at which a government should protect and care about an inhabitant of its jurisdiction.
> claiming they shouldn’t put American citizens first is dubious at best
That’s precisely the claim that I’m saying is extremely dubious. How is it reasonable to say that people who fit the precise definition of citizenship in US law (usually through no choice or action they made) should be prioritized over other inhabitants of the same country? I agree that this is a common belief, and I’m challenging people to justify the belief.
I'm curious. Where is this new belief that "Citizenship" is a concept that needs to be blown up coming from? It appears to have become quite common over the last couple years. It has to be coming from somewhere.
As for the necessity of making distinctions regarding obligations to the state, how is that relevant, particularly to job prioritization? Other than perhaps military conscription and some tax laws, I’m not aware of many significant differences in obligations between citizens and non-citizens, and especially of any with any relevance to job prioritization.
> Where is this new belief that "Citizenship" is a concept that needs to be blown up coming from?
I haven’t expressed any such belief, nor do I hold it. I just see no good reason for a government to prioritize citizens above non-citizen inhabitants, especially for job availability.
Because the "inhabitants" can just go home, while the Citizens are stuck here - this is their home.
>Besides, this seems like a bizarre argument for why citizens should have “first dibs” at jobs.
This is literally what a sovereign government is supposed to do: provide for and prioritize the needs of it's citizens. If your contention is that anyone should be able to come here and be afforded the same protections we'll just keep talking past each other (which I think we already are). It sounds like, by extension and since you don't consider "Citizen" a meaningful distinction, that "inhabitants" should have the same voting rights as Citizens. This is a recipe for chaos.
>I just see no good reason for a government to prioritize citizens above non-citizen inhabitants, especially for job availability.
Then you've missed a lot of reading on what the entire purpose of Government even is.
I highly doubt that most immigrants who come to the US to work are buying and maintaining a second home, and are instead making America their new home.
> This is literally what a sovereign government is supposed to do: provide for and prioritize the needs of it's citizens.
This is precisely the claim I am disputing and looking for some justification. “Most people believe this” is not a very good justification for anything, so I’m challenging people to question why they believe it and why it’s a reasonable desire. “High school textbooks say that governments should do this” is also not a great justification in my opinion.
Americans can flee to Canada or any number of other countries which open their doors to us, just as the draft-dodgers did when the "social fabric of the nation-state broke down."
I agree it's weird to blow up citizenship as a concept. We should be talking about making citizenship actually possible for the people who are committed to it, not locked away behind quotas and waiting lists.
My guess is this being a counter reaction to today's "build a wall and screw the others" mentality displayed in politics.
I do understand people are tribal. I also care more about people closer to me. But nowadays our lives are highly interconnected and profit off each other, thus i need those to do well as well. The problem is overcoming the prisoners dilemma of short term tribal benefits vs long term global benefits. The focus on citizens over others seems a obstacle to that.
Especially these days, where those "others" seem to be a great political scapegoat for all the other problems slowly breaking down the fabric of our society.
In that way, if globalism is to be fixed, internet companies need to be both held accountable in and outside of US. If they pay fair share to hire local people and pay taxes in the country they operate, I believe US won't have this ridiculously high salary for tech workers. In short, tech salary being so abnormally high and jobs concentrated in US is the symptom of globalism. Once fixed, the tech workers salary will be more evenly distributed across the countries, immigration problem will be fixed as a result of that.
As internet industry is plateauing, the technology is becoming ever more commoditized everyday, and the policy makers are finally doing the job to act on it, I am staying optimistic that the redistribution of tech workforce from US to the world will finally happen.
The internet has no boundary, that is just a globalist fantasy. It definitely should have boundary, as the tax and economic activities created alike. GDPR is a very welcome move, and it is taking effects, I would expect more systematic approach coming after it.
Also, what is market value and fair? Does the immigrant have a thick accent? A slighlty incompatible culture? A lower quality education?
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-06-25/cisco-chi...
As to "deserve", American citizens also paid the taxes that supplied the infrastructure, education system, legal system, police, etc that allows these companies to grow. That aside, America is a sovereign country, and no one but its citizens has any right to expect it to act in their interest.
Malthus pokes its head.
The workers get paid a fraction of what they produce. Thus the whole society is richer the more workers you have.
Do you really believe americans would be richer if 90% of its population were to be decimated, leaving the survivors with the highest paying jobs?
It's a hardened belief that jobs are a zero-sum game — and from this arises the idea that every skilled immigrant takes away a job from a U.S. worker. This isn't true. More skilled, educated workers will actually add to the economy — and grow the economy.
Some companies abuse the system, and the abuse must be stopped. But immigration of the best and the brightest is what made this country a superpower, and must be encouraged.
See also: http://paulgraham.com/95.html
There will always be competition for the cream of the crop. Pointing out the situation for that competition says almost nothing about the rest of the market.
I also participated in this!
We needed to hire a few people at a smaller Cisco site for a project in a less than favourite BU. Recruitment reached out to me after my rec didn’t find any fits in a week and the pushed a couple candidates my way. As these candidates required sponsorship, we knew that we could probably retain them for less and for longer. I don’t have anything against Americans, but if I can get someone who is better educated, will not jump ship in 18 months, and will do more for less then I’ll jump all over that.
Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
By this logic, why not enslave children and teach them CS. The argument against cisco is the "players" are clearly trying to CHEAT "the game". H1b's are for finding talent when there isn't any, not for finding workers that won't "jump ship". The freedom to jump ship is why America is great.
Eventually, {specific H1B subgroup} made up a significant portion of the company as they always continue to hire more of {specific H1B subgroup} at the expense of everyone else. During a downturn several years ago, there was a tremendous layoff to try to maintain profitability.
Most of the old guard, almost all the older higher paid Americans that didn't make it to the VP level, got axed.
You reap what you sow.
If you made the race to salary, you can remove health benefits, PTO, stock, restricted bonuses, etc etc to artificially increase the number which would in the end harm the worker as well, since he will pay a higher tax rate for the shenanigan.
They should be punished to the fullest.
IT companies would love to launch entire new products and divisions and recruitment is their bottleneck.
I also wonder how long it takes wage suppression to propagate out into lower demand and shrinking GDP growth.
Cisco has 70,000 employees. Pay them all $5,000 more and it's $350 million every year (Cisco of course can in fact afford that).
Cisco's CEO made $16.7 million in 2017. $1.2m in salary, $2.5m in bonus, $12.8m in stock. He's the highest compensated executive at Cisco.
Bloomberg writes article about Cisco's bias for hiring h1b's over US workers.
I mention my anecdotal experience with Bloomberg where nearly everyone I interacted with was not US born and had thick accents.
I thought the irony was funny. Don't twist my words.
I didn't see think of them as american because we clearly did not share anything in common and had trouble communicating with each other.
Side note: My grandmother is a US citizen, but she only knows how to say "Hello" and "thank you" in english. Bringing in citizenship feels disingenuous.
EDIT: Citizenship comment is regarding this conversation and not the article itself. Sorry if it seemed like an attack.
>Labor Department investigators recently concluded that Cisco Systems Inc. discriminated against U.S. workers by favoring immigrant visa holders for job openings, sources familiar with the probe tell Bloomberg Law.
>The DOL’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs determined that the technology firm secured visas for foreign workers instead of hiring U.S. citizens for certain jobs and paid the visa holders at a lower rate than their American counterparts, according to the sources.
>Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
> The DOL’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs determined that the technology firm secured visas for foreign workers instead of hiring U.S. citizens for certain jobs and paid the visa holders at a lower rate than their American counterparts, according to the sources.
As for pay: an anecdote. I manage a team that includes some H1-B visa holders. The visa holders are paid quite well relative to most workers in America, like most tech workers are, but they are definitely paid less than their peers on my team (a situation I work hard to remedy at raise and bonus time), but not so much less as to necessarily draw focus from regulators. It's more like the pay discrepancy between men and women (except not quite to that degree).
As for mobility: ask any H1-B holder who has worked at a company with massive layoffs whether they felt more or less anxiety than people with less restrictive visas, greencards, or citizenship.
For the Infosys companies, I could see lower wages as a driver.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXiC4wqn7EU
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Free Trade, Immigration and Robots, Oh My!
One of the biggest threats America faces—we are told—is the assault on our workforce: the loss of American jobs to immigrants, to foreign competition fueled by free trade, and even to technology that will make all kinds of jobs obsolete. In this talk the Ayn Rand Institute's executive chairman, Yaron Brook, argues that this fear is entirely misplaced—that a proper grasp of the virtue of productiveness shows that far from fearing and opposing free trade, immigration and robots, we should be eagerly embracing all three.
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