The idea that H-1B workers are paid less is idiotic. Especially if the employee is from Harvard.
You may be saving tens of thousands of dollars if you outsource the job, but hiring an employee to work in the USA is different.
You may be saving tens of thousands of dollars if you outsource the job, but hiring an employee to work in the USA is different.
As mentioned elsewhere, his salary was posted on the bulletin board. It was $48K at the same time I was being paid $80K. $32,000 fits my definition of "tens of thousands of dollars".
The problem with the H-1B discussion is that H-1Bs are heavily bimodal. You have the highly paid foreign workers that Google, Facebook, et al like to hire. They're paid very handsomely for their work, and generally work in areas where the job market is healthy, giving employers disincentives to abuse their position.
Then you have the barely-paid foreign workers that Wipro and Infosys try to bring in, who are legitimately abused by their shitty employers and have their legal status wielded over them as a weapon.
The main problem is that nearly everyone involved in the discussion has only seen one side, and vehemently deny that the other side even exists. If your industry experience has been with a lot of the Wipro, Infosys type, you will foam at the mouth about the evils of H-1Bs. If your industry experience has been on the Google/Facebook/Microsoft side, you will patently deny anything bad exists, because in your world it really doesn't.
This is also why the H-1B discussions never go anywhere useful. The loudest people in the room are convinced that their reality is the only and complete reality.
Let me counter your points, but I will do my best to keep it short. Mainly because I've done my research, and I don't feel like having a forum argument with someone that obviously thinks they are superior with their labeling people like me...the "loudest in the room".
1. "They're paid very handsomely for their work"
Can you show me the article where H1B's are paid 10%/20% or more over the prevailing market rate of their greencard holder/American peers for a given title at a given company? I'd love to read that. Visas are for skilled labor shortages. We all know in economics 101 when demand exceeds supply, prices go UP...not even or down, but UP. We are in agreement or not there?
In the meanwhile let me offer the first article to refute the exact argument of why companies say they need H1B's in the first place.
http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/01/study-stem-immigrants-are-n...
Let me offer a second, as I feel generous: http://lionoftheblogosphere.wordpress.com/2013/07/24/the-cas...
Hello potatolicious, in a field of obvious shortage, wages are FLAT, did you catch that? FLAT. That doesn't sound "very handsomely" to me.
2. Now on to your second point "In what ways do the business models of Wipro, Tata, and Infosys resemble what is being described in the blog post, though?"
The discussion here is clearly based on "kenjagi And there you have a step-by-step blueprint on how to undermine the efforts of local talent pools to stand out in favor of saving tens"
Kenjagi, I wish I could've put the way you did. Brilliant, you got 40 comments from one sentence, that's what truth brings.
We have an immigration system with endemic issues around fraud. Do we need an article to further prove that. Here's the first one off Google, I didn't read it, I know it'll confirm my argument here. I can send you 40 more if you like. Just send me one where the H1Bs are paid so generously over the local talent due to shortages.
http://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/us-senator-introduces-...
So we have a system that's broken, in any normal circumstance this would force a state/city/or country to investigate the issue, and possibly freeze the program. Most definitely not increase the program, as what we have currently happening, but then again Google/Microsoft/Apple/Amazon are writing the laws. Let's try a simple question, do Google/Microsoft/Apple/Amazon want to pay more for labor? Yes or No? Let me know what you think. I'm expecting yes, from your comments.
"resemble what is being described in the blog post" If you don't think this suppresses wages for US citizens, green card holders, and Visa workers, startup or not, you have no idea how labor markets work.
Visas, suppress wages for the people here and the people that come here. We are in the same boat.
I don't expect a reply, maybe you will talk down to me again, I don't know. In the outside chance I do get a reply with refuting evidence, I will gladly bring in the other 40 or so articles further supporting my case. I can bring UE data in, but that would rather shatter any argument you have left. I'll bring that last.
"The main problem is that nearly everyone involved in the discussion has only seen one side"
Don't assume what I know and what I don't know, because you are dead wrong. I've been researching this for the past year.
Your reply has nothing to do with potatolicious's point, which is that there are companies like Google which don't hire foreign workers for the sake of underpaying them. That's not the business model there.
What you're talking about is different. If increased supply of high-quality workers pushes wages downward a bit, that's not an act created by Google or other individual employers -- that's a macro effect you get even when they're paying any given foreign worker the same that they'd pay a local worker.
No, they just wrote the law to:
" increased supply of high-quality workers pushes wages downward a bit"
That's whats in Congress today.
Can you give me the citation where "there are companies like Google which don't hire foreign workers for the sake of underpaying them"
Can you show me just one article where the H1b's are above a prevailing wage? Or that is the actualy truth?
Why would I link to an article. In what, a newspaper? Is that supposed to be taken seriously? Like the article you linked with their joke chart bracketing all H1B's at all levels of age and experience in a comparison with all native workers at all levels of experience?
You literally linked to TechCrunch and a blogspam. And expect people to take you seriously.
And a prevailing wage in what, exactly? In the set of good software developers? In the set of all software developers? In the set of everybody working in "IT"? Your demands aren't even well-specified.
And if they were well-specified, would you have a convincing argument? No. Because it's not a problem that the foreign workers arrive in the same distribution of skill level that existing workers have. Only if you're selfish would you see that as a bad thing.
Whether a person can leave the job or not with their visa still doesn't address the overall premise that visas suppress wage growth.
At the very minimum these articles site a study, and there are more than 1.
And what about NPR? You should read that, and put your bias aside.
What you think and feel I am sure is valid, but has little value in the context of the overall immigration problem and argument.
I still don't see how you know Google pays above or at market rate.