Who Are the H-1Bs? | Hacker News Reader

Who Are the H-1Bs?

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> 63.8% of world's engineering degrees are earned in China.

Weird statistic to use. It's well-known that the majority of engineers graduated in China and India are unemployably bad, and the statistic itself is based on debunked data.

See: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870351550457614..., http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05..., http://www.engineeringuk.com/_resources/documents/Engineerin..., http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2006/06/13/62945...

To provide a counter perspective, even if you consider that the un-employable majority would be 90% (highly unlikely), the remaining 10% equal the total number of engineering graduates from US and that is if you consider that entire 100% graduating out of American colleges are employable.

If you look at this study: http://www.engineeringuk.com/_resources/documents/Engineerin....

A McKinsey study found that only 10% of Chinese engineering graduates were employable, versus 80% of American and German ones.

A Duke study found that the number for the U.S. was more like 130,000 engineers with bachelors degrees. If 80% are employable, that's a larger number than for either India or China.

Also, "engineering" is a very broad category. For example, maybe most of the engineering degrees awarded in China are for civil engineering (after all, it's a developing country with a huge amount of physical infrastructure being built up), and there might not be any demand for H-1B civil engineers in the U.S.

Then, after making claims about engineering degrees in general, the chart right after the engineering degrees chart talks only about jobs related to computers.

Have an indian friend who graduated from a top engineering program. I've never seen someone freak out (for fear of being kicked out of the country) so much between graduating and finding a job.

Moving from job to job is miserable. You have to ensure the company will pay for the H-1B. This has negative consequences because instead of moving to a place where you can perform better, you will often stay at the current employer and get taken advantage of.

I have a number of Iranian friends who are now finishing up their PhDs. Having a hostile and suspicious government to go back to adds a qualitatively different level of stress to the process. With CISPA/SOPA and all the concern over the gradual decline in American freedoms, it's easy to forget that the US is still a comparatively free country. Here, my friends can openly criticize the President or any other member of government all they want without fear of consequences; doing so back home would lead to a different outcome.

Another sad aspect of the whole H1B situation is that, even if they aren't put through abuse at work, these are extremely talented people who often settle for jobs that are more suitable for a bachelors or masters degree holder because they have only a short time to find a large company willing to pay for the H1B, which greatly limits their options. The nature of work available to them is also more restricted. Want to work on military aircraft or certain navigation systems? Too bad.

I have none of these obstacles, not because I am more capable, trustworthy, or loyal, but merely because I was born in the US.

>>63.8% of world's engineering degrees are earned in China.

We have to accept that even though the quality may suffer, the idea of mass producing engineers at least affects the job market. I think that not every engineer from India or China is looking for 'quality work' and they can and many times do settle for jobs that are lesser appealing but still require engineering degrees.

Comparing salaries of H-1B holders with citizens across the entire industry doesn't really provide a lot of information, since they may be concentrated in particular corners of the industry that pay higher than average salaries (e.g., Silicon Valley). It would be far more enlightening to compare salaries by company to see whether a given company underpays its H-1B employees relative to other employees of the same category. Since an H-1B employee can't easily go to a competitor if he thinks he's being underpaid, he has considerably less negotiating leverage than a citizen, which makes it unlikely that he'd earn a higher salary for the same job at the same company.

Also, in my opinion, the pictures and quotes from Zuckerberg and Schmidt at the bottom detract from the credibility of this presentation, making the whole thing seem a lot like propaganda for their lobbying group.

I think one of the keys to this debate is mobility. I know from my field, SAP Consulting, that clients are now able to offer rock bottom rates with the expectation of a "consultant" relocating or living with other "consultants" in order to avoid paying travel expenses.

So while the salary remains the same, the expense equation is different.

This is partly why folks like me lament the H1-B problem because it increased the supply of "consultants" which is frustrating because in the SAP space is very specialized and finding projects is very difficult, double that for regional projects. It sucks because it feels like companies can play on the international labor market yet American workers are limited to the regional ones.

If H1-B's are far more educated than the average American, but only paid slightly more on average, doesn't that mean the H1-B's are underpaid?

thats a poor comparison for the education, the average american isnt doing the same kind of work but the comparison for pay is based on the sectors of employment so they are well compensated. And many h1-bs attend undergrad in their home countries and grad school in the US to make them more appealing to US companies, so they are "more educated" because they have the masters but a masters is only 1-2 more years of school depending on the program so it isnt really a big gap.

I agree the title is offensive and it should probably be titled "Who are the H-1B workers?" or something like that.

Let me also state up top; I am extremely liberal, to the point where I am offended by the current terrible paths to citizenship for undocumented workers. I am not against immigration of all kinds.

With that out of the way let's go through slide by slide:

Assertion 1:

H-1B workers are more highly educated than US born workers because they have a higher rate of Masters and Doctoral degrees than US born workers.

This is assuming that all Masters are better than all Bachelors degrees, and all Doctorates are better than all Masters degrees. Anyone with any experience knows this isn't the case. Some educational institutions are better than others.

I don't know if on average US degrees are better than non-US degrees. But I think this is a weak assertion based on a potentially false assumption.

Assertion 2:

H-1B workers actually do not drive wages down, they actually make ~10% more than US born workers.

This is an exceedingly weak assertion because it is comparing all H-1B workers against ALL US born workers. For low paying jobs H-1B workers won't even be considered. So the US born workers' mean income is going to be lower. H-1B workers will only be considered for positions above a certain pay level, and at companies who are a big enough size to pursue H-1B staffing.

So this figure is very misleading. It should be comparing H-1B workers directly against their US born coworkers at the same companies in the same positions. Or at least, again, the same positions at companies of comparable size.

Assertion 3a-3c:

3a Skill gaps MAY develop or worsen because people are retiring.

Weaksauce. People are always retiring. There are also always more people graduating with CS degrees than ever before. Doesn't hold water at all. Gives itself away with the weasel word "may".

3b. Too few Americans are graduating with degrees in engineering.

Only 6.3% of the world's engineering degrees are earned in the U.S. Oh golly gee. And what percentage of the world's population are we again? 400 million divided by 7 billion = 5.7%. Sounds like we're doing OK to me.

Regardless that has nothing to do with the need to bring in more outside engineers. The question is how many engineering jobs we have vs. how many engineering degrees. And this figure has nothing to do with that.

3c. The demand for computer occupations will grow at an average pace of 25% over the next decade.

Ok. Let's just assume these projections are accurate. So what? 25% more jobs over 10 years, when we have how many new CS graduates every year? Where's that figure? We need both. Quick googling showed ~50k kids enrolled in CS degrees in the US in 2012, and this graph shows we'll need 200k new programmers over the next 10 years. Seems to me we'll be more than keeping up with that demand.

Assertion 4a-4b:

4a. Immigrants started 28% of all new US businesses.

This has nothing to do with the H-1B issue at all. It's just being used to try to skew the next one. But the problem is this figure isn't just about H-1B immigrants, and in fact it isn't at all about them because they are legally prevented from starting any new business, at least until they get their citizenship.

4b. Don't say that H-1B workers take away jobs from US workers because one day H-1B workers may become US citizens, and will start their own businesses.

That's really weak. They're not taking a job because they might one day start a company that makes more jobs? One really doesn't have anything to do with the other. A US born worker who got that job might have one day started a company as well. In fact, they are much more likely than an H-1B immigrant, who is legally not able to do so.

Summary:

This infographic is incredibly biased and clearly made with an agenda in mind.

The reality is that big companies like H-1B workers because they work for less. It's that simple. It's an easy equation for Microsoft, Facebook, Google, et al. Hire the worker that costs the least and will still do the job adequately.

I'm personally in favor of immigration. I think it's great. But it can also be abused and lead to economic devastation for US workers.

As someone born and raised in Michigan, I can tell you first hand what happens when US companies are allowed to run rampant with reassigning jobs to the person who's willing to work for the absolute least amount of money.

It might make sense to increase the number of H-1B visas, but it needs to be based on real analysis of available jobs vs. available US based workers. Not a biased infographic like this, filled with half truths and unrelated figures.

EDIT:

Let me also say that if we were serious about fixing the H-1B situation, our priority would be to treat the people brought over to work here more like human beings and less like indentured servants.

H-1B workers are unable to seek alternate employment if they don't like the situation at their employer who brought them here. They are thus not able to negotiate for better pay or promotions.

Before we go doubling the number of H-1B workers (which is wht Zuckerberg, et al want short of being free to hire ALL H-1B workers), we should fix the program's inhumane rules.

> This is assuming that all Masters are better than all Bachelors degrees, and all Doctorates are better than all Masters degrees. Anyone with any experience knows this isn't the case. Some educational institutions are better than others.

It also assumes that a Masters in India is comparable to a Masters in the United States. This is flat out untrue. Only a small percentage of universities in say India churn out bachelors and masters degree holders that can stand toe to toe with their American counterparts. Everyone in tech knows this. There is a reason why the top Indian candidates attend grad school in the U.S.

The quality of the applicant's educational institution is taken into account by USCIS/DoL. The applicant provides a statement from a US education assessor as to the quality and scope of their non-US degrees.

For example someone with a 4 year Computer Science degree from a disreputable foreign university might only be able to claim equivalence with a US Associate Bachelors in Information Systems degree rather than a 4 year US CS degree.

While it's always fraught to compare educational institutions from across the world, the United States at least acknowledges that it isn't a trivial problem when assessing visa applications.

Would be interesting to compare degrees from different countries with each other, how hard it is to obtain them etc.

The bachelor degrees in Germany seem to be strongly dependend on the university and I've seen quite a few people where I didn't understand how they got through. It seems to be worse with off-shore resources, but this could be just personal experience or the fact that my company utilizes one of the big 4 off-shoring companies (my assumption would be the really skilled people would rather work for software companies or something similar)

Referring to people by their US visa class is, eh, a little demeaning. I’m not a H1-B, B-1 or L-1: I’m your coworker, a tourist, or just plain a human being.

It's just for purposes of making a title shorter. I was an H-1B once, so what?

it's simply sad, that the government is not able to react to the huge demand of foreign workers. Especially that they kick out students which got educated in US universities, just after one year.

There is nothing to argue here really. The two little Wall Street Journal drawn bobble heads of two billionaires borne of the professional class can tell you that. They, the 1%, have their interests, and people such as myself, who work and create wealth, have our interests. Were American workers, or even Indian workers, consulted about how this visa be set up? Of course not. It was created by the myrmidons of the idle class to further their interests.

There is no argument. Do you think these billionaires argue among themselves whether to stuff their pockets or let working people keep the weath they create? This is not like scientists together debating quantum mechanics theories to seek the truth. This is a struggle over how the pie is divided up. People don't state arguments, any statement they make is just one of which faction they're in, a worker creating wealth, or some heir (or proxy of that heir) who owns a lot of Facebook and Google stock. This web site is owned by people proclaiming themselves with the word capitalists, "venture" capitalists. Obviously it will reflect in this way, although there are a lot of programmers who come here and discuss C and Lisp and JavaScript and so forth as well.

Obviously this professionally done graphic has a lot of nonsense in it, and all of this has been debunked over and over, and one can read Norm Matloff and others to see this. I'll just do the first point as more is a waste of my time. The first graphic says "college-educated workers in any occupation, 22-64". Well first off, this is very bogus - college educated workers go into all professions, but H1-Bs go into professions like IT. They don't make the chart showing what the degrees of people in IT and correlated industries are because then more Americans would have Masters. Also it is again in all industries and shows US 41.4 and H1-B 32 for age. I'm sure if you correlated for age, the US age would be younger. And so just as a product of age, more younger Americans would have a college degree as older workers have a less of a chance of having an advanced degree. The chart cheats by comparing H1Bs in IT etc. to all college-edcuated Americans who are in less education focused professions and who are also older then in IT. The rest of the infographic is bogus like this but you can read Norm Matloff and others if you wish.

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