The Programmers Guild, a professional society | Hacker News Reader

The Programmers Guild, a professional society

programmersguild.org

2 pointsomouse5 comments

This organization has a pronounced anti-foreign worker stance. Since almost all of my colleagues are not American and are here on visas, I cannot support this organization.

I think their anti-foreign worker stance is more about anti-artificially-low-salaries and anti-screw-hiring-local-workers-who-are-available-to-work: http://www.programmersguild.org/docs/stephanie_job_11sept200...

This page further explains their position: http://www.programmersguild.org/h1b.asp

The problem appears to be companies are firing local workers in order to hire foreign workers. The foreign workers are no longer a supplement to the workforce, but are used as a replacement.

The people themselves aren't the problem, the problem is the companies doing the hiring and cost-savings calculations.

Not a problem, you are completely entitled to your own opinion on this.

That said, it's a real charge to say that they have a pronounced anti-foreign worker stance. This organization is clearly opposed to the H1B visa, but that doesn't necessarily translate into being anti-foreign worker.

Is there a specific press release or position that you disagree with? If so, would you be willing to articulate your objections to it?

My colleagues - researchers - that are not here on student visas are here on H1-B visas. Those that are on student visas will eventually need H1-B visas after they graduate. I take their objections to be anti-foreign worker.

I'm having a little trouble understanding your position. Do you feel that any individual or group that advocates a limit, even a high limit, on the number of immigrants or guest workers who can come to the united states each year is "anti-foreign worker?"

Keep in mind that even without the H1B visa, the USA already takes in about 1.2 million immigrants legally each year. I also believe the principle objection to the H1B is that it specifically targets a few professions, causing a greater disruption to engineers/scientists (and potentially discouraging young Americans from entering these fields). Many people who are opposed to the H1B visa are not opposed to more general immigration.

Anyway, thanks for responding. As you can probably tell, I take a dim view of the H1B visa. I do think it's important to have a healthy (but limited) infusion of talent from other countries, but I think that we need to ensure that it is not overly concentrated in a single field, and I do believe that it is reasonable to enforce absolute limits to the number of people who can come to the US each year. I believe that this position is more pro than anti-foreign worker.

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