Thread: MD: A Floral Protest Over Job-Based Visas

I would suggest that the paragraph below most accurately typifies the real problem and mechanics at work in the US populace at the present time:

FACT: The U.S. tech industry is having trouble attracting new blood.

The technology industry points out that fewer Americans are enrolling in technology programs at the university level, and that increasingly large percentages of those emerging from graduate programs are foreign born. Almost 60% of engineering Ph.D. degrees awarded annually are earned by foreign nationals, according to the American Society for Engineering Education. To the industry, that's further evidence that more H-1B visas are needed. Yet critics see a self-fulfilling prophecy, as companies fail to retrain older workers and discourage younger workers from entering the field. "Due to both outsourcing and insourcing, many young people are concluding that technology is a bad place to invest their time," says Mark Thoma, a professor of economics at the University of Oregon in Eugene.

Originally Posted by Crikey

Your presupposition amounts to nonsense - we couldn't find enough Americans <usual rant here> ... so we had to outsource to India?
If all corporations are allowed to proclaim their lack of ability to get exactly what they want, and simply send the jobs overseas - I wonder how many corps. will remain to hire any US citizens? And remember, other countries do 'outsourcing' too... The last time I checked the US Constitution, I did not see the one clause or amendment that says every person seeking to hire an Oracle programmer was entitled to find one.

I have to disagree in general here. Microsoft outsourcing a job to India or preferring to hire an H1-B for a (possibly) lower wage is no different from an ordinary American preferring to buy a Japanese car over an American one or even choosing to buy his home online (instead of using a middleman) and thus hurting some American job. Everybody has to make economic choices in life to survive - including Bill Gates - and the fact that some people will be hurt in the short run cannot be helped and in fact is the only way America's economic health and competitiveness will be maintained. Why should any American be prevented from hiring who they want just to protect American jobs? This goes against basic free market principles that have made this country so great in the first place. Robots created by American ingenuity might very well take away jobs in the coming years, should we protest that too?

[quote:1l14q48g]
Just see the signature line for commentary on this line of reasoning...

Yes and the video only illustrates the difficulties faced by legal immigrants aspiring for a path to permanency. Given enough money, one could in theory always find a competent American citizen for any job but if that logic is followed to the end, we would need to stop immigration altogether!

Point 2: There is nothing wrong with competent technical people working in their home country.

No doubt, but there is also nothing wrong with law abiding citizens of the world coming together to work in a mutually agreeable place at a mutually agreeable price. These are economic forces at play and suppressing them will only hurt America in the long run.
_________________
"Our goal is clearly NOT to find a qualified and interested US worker"
Larry Lebowitz, VP Marketing and Attorney, Cohen & Grigsby 5-15-07
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU[/quote:1l14q48g]

I disagree, because those Japanese cars are being made in America, and they employ American workers. Toyota is doing everything in its power to show that it is investing in this country and not just TAKING, TAKING, TAKING.

Dont give me this garbage about big buisness. WE KNOW WHAT BIG BUISNESS WANTS. They want to increase thier margins for their shareholders and CEOS that want even bigger salaries, all at the expense of the American Middle Class.

WE KNOW. WE KNOW, WE KNOW, WE KNOW. keep your propoganda to yourself, it wont fly here.

Originally Posted by BetsyRoss

Ron Hira, an assistant professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology who's on leave as a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, points to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service's most recent report to Congress, which shows that the median wage in 2005 for new H-1B computing professionals was $50,000. That year, InformationWeek's Salary Survey found a median staff base salary of $69,000 and total cash compensation of $71,000.

If you look at the same USCIS report for H1B wages in 2005 for continuing employment in Computer Related Occupations, you will find that the median wage was $68,000 which is pretty close to the median salary of $69,000 discovered by InformationWeek's Salary survey.

So then what could explain the lower median salary for initial H1B employment? One clue is in the fact that companies are recruiting from colleges on H1B. The starting salary reported by UIUC, which is one of the better CS programs for the class of 2005 was $53,000, which again is close to the $50,000 median salary for initial H1B employment.

If nothing else, the fact that salaries for H1B workers rise 36% after they assume employment implies that H1Bs have the ability to secure better working conditions and raises.

Starting salaries for UIUC in 2005

Median Starting Salary (2005)

• BS graduates-$53,600
• MS graduates-$65,300
• PhD graduates-$84,500

2005 USCIS report on H1B occupations

For Computer Related Occupations:
Median salary for initial employment: $50,000
Median salary for continuing employment: $68,000

There is an answer for this sitting out in broad daylight, but I just got back from a long trip to an ailing relative. I'll answer this after I get some rest. I've answered it before.

If HB workers are so smart and capable - and if illegal immigrants are so hard working and are so necessary to America's economy - I wonder why they aren't staying home and making their own opportunities. Why aren't these people working on their own countries. Why must they come here and 'find' work?

Many, many Americans have had to back up and punt and make their own opportunities and jobs since the travesty of 'so-called free trade, illegal invasion and HB imports'.

Stay home and fix things there.

If nothing else, the fact that salaries for H1B workers rise 36% after they assume employment implies that H1Bs have the ability to secure better working conditions and raises.

Whoa, there. There is no such 'fact' - not where salary numbers are concerned. We don't even have an accurate count of how many H-1Bs are here.

Guidelines for how to interpret official numbers:
1. Beware government numbers. You need to check what's being counted and how. Notorious example: the unemployment figures.
2. What do they mean by 'median' - in a number series 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 90, 99, 100, 110, 130, 150, 200, the median value is 90, but that says little about what any given individual is being paid. Actual H-1B salaries look something like this, as a few really are paid well.
3. The wages stated may not be what the employee takes home. Tata is being sued right now because they made their Indian employees at American work sites allow Tata accountants to figure their taxes, and when the refund check came, the employee was expected to endorse the check back to Tata. Scuttlebutt on various discussion boards alleged that this practice was not limited to Tata.

Now, let's see what people in a position to know say about compensation paid to H-1B employees.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) vice president Phiroz Vandrevala even admitted that his company enjoys a competitive advantage because of its extensive use of foreign workers in the United States on H-1B and L-1 visas, according to the study by IEEE-USA, a unit of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.

"Our wage per employee is 20-25 per cent less than US wages for a similar employee," Vandrevala said.

"Typically, for a TCS employee with five years experience, the annual cost to the company is $60,000-70,000, while a local American employee might cost $80,000-100,000.

"This (labour arbitrage) is a fact of doing work onsite. It's a fact that Indian IT companies have an advantage here and there's nothing wrong in that. The issue is that of getting workers in the US on wages far lower than the local wage rate."

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/arti ... 967955.cms

Here's a case where someone actually checked on a hire:

Many of you will remember womenConnect.com CEO Susan deFife, poster woman for the industry lobbyists. The lobbyists put her on the ABCWorld News Tonight story just last week (June 6), for example, highlighting the H-1B she hired. She highlighted the same H-1B in her testimony to the Senate in October 1999, saying:

"Last year, we spent months recruiting for a systems administrator who has the critical role of ensuring our content is presented correctly and on time to our audience. We were fortunate to eventually find Noemi Nieto-Mendieta, a young woman from Mexico who was finishing coursework at a local university. (Noemi is with me today.)"(http://www.senate.gov/~judiciary/102199sd.htm)

Now, I thought it would be interesting to know just how much Ms. deFife is paying this "rare worker" she sponsored for an H-1B visa, so I took a look at H-1B Hall of Shame online database of H-1B applications, which were obtained under FOIA from the Dept. of Labor.

.................................................

So here it is: deFife hired this system administrator for only $35,000! Remember, she said that this woman was a new graduate, and at that time (NACE survey, 3 months after the hire) new IT graduates were being paid on average $45,000 for a Bachelor's degree!

The LCA database is down right now, but later we can go on a brief tour which will be very eye-opening, I promise you.

Originally Posted by BetsyRoss

The foreign car analogy is shaky. The Hondas and Toyotas we buy are often made here by American workers. Honda has announced a new

The point of the foreign car analogy is simple, people buy goods and services based on their self interest and typically do not consider what effect it has on somebody else and that is how it should be in a capitalist free market system like the US, this is what makes it so fundamentally strong and resilient. If Japanese cars were built in Japan and shipped here and sold for the same price, they would be just as popular. There are plenty of other real world examples. Sometimes Volvo has a deal where you can go to Sweden on a three day trip (airfare and hotel paid for by Volvo) and buy a brand new Volvo manufactured entirely in Sweden. You then drive it around Sweden for 3 days and at the end of the trip get it shipped to the USA while you board your flight back. The whole deal is cheaper or costs about the same price as buying other luxury cars. The car is considered "used" at the end of 3 days and so the import duties are very low on entry into the US. I know a few Americans who bought their volvos this way. Anytime I mention this deal to anybody, American or otherwise, their typical reaction is "wow, how cool, I would love to do that if I were in the market for a Volvo". The reaction is never "Well, what about the American car industry worker who is getting hurt by this?".

Companies may prefer to import workers from some planet where life is mechanical and workers don't expect to be paid anything, but that does not make it right. We need visa and immigration reform that helps curb discriminatory hiring preferences by companies, because, Lord knows, they will not curb it themselves.

I do not see it as a question of right or wrong. These are business decisions based on economics and do not reflect any discriminatory hiring preferences. As I said, companies go through the same decision making process that you and I go through when we make purchases. The stakes for companies are actually very high and many (including the biggies like Microsoft) face a grim battle for survival in an ever competitive world, which is good news for us consumers because that is the only way an iPhone is going to get built and become affordable. If companies did not have the freedom to spend their money as freely as we do, eventually they would fall apart which is also bad for all of us. Jobs get created when a company becomes more efficient and invests its savings into further growth. If this efficiency is stifled by forcing them to adhere to rules that do not reflect the underlying economic forces, they are bound to fail.

talent and knowledge. Companies were claiming that ordinary skills, easily found in the American workforce, constituted the specialized knowledge that justified issuing this visa. They wouldn't listen, and then came the crackdown: http://www.mofo.com/news/updates/bullet ... 02002.html It is obvious that we are past due for another.

I do see that there is a perceived abuse but again this is because the laws are out of sync with the underlying economic reality. Its not possible to come up with a perfect law that makes everybody happy and also satisfies the underlying economic forces. Companies work loopholes wherever they can, to gain a competitive edge so that they can make faster and cheaper products for you and me and make a profit. This is the nature of free market economies whether we like it or not.

So much of the weeping and wailing over on Immigration Voice is their own darn fault. So many of them used a temporary work visa as if it were

I agree in a way but what is wrong in educated people voicing their feelings?

me. If I were complaining that the Indian government was framing its laws in a way that crushed my dreams, I'd be laughed out the door.

You are right, that is probably what would happen. And the results are glaring too, India is a poor third world country where the internet and computer penetration compares with sub-Saharan African countries. Hollow protectionist policies all in the name of protecting the working class bankrupted India for 50 yrs. Its only in the last decade or so that it has corrected its antiquated Soviet style mentality. America will do just fine if it stays away from such attitudes.

Finally, your numbers are way off. Between 2000 and 2003 the H-1B cap was nearly 200K AND there were many loopholes. Hires by institutions of

Nevertheless, I do not see any justification for calling it a "mass American worker replacement program". The numbers are tiny no matter how much you fudge them and these are well educated people who are not coming to destroy the American way of life so I fail to see the paranoia. The article you forwarded underscores the point further that there isnt any mass wage depression that has been caused by H1Bs:

MYTH: Offshore outsourcing and foreign visas have sunk U.S. tech employment, and wages have cratered.

There's been huge disruption in the United States--26% fewer programming jobs since 2001, for example. But the tech job market is still robust. There have been corresponding jumps in management and software engineering jobs. Tech unemployment today is the same--2%--as it is for the broad management and professional category that includes 51 million people, according to an average of the last four quarterly surveys by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. At 3.58 million, tech employment is up 8% over the pit of 2004, and back up higher than the boom years of 2000 and 2001. Salaries show signs of growth again after stalling in recent years: The median IT manager compensation is $105,000, and staffer compensation is $78,000, according to this year's InformationWeek Salary Survey of 7,281 IT pros. The typical raise this year--5% for managers, 3.6% for staffers--was higher than it's been in years

Originally Posted by BetsyRoss

Originally Posted by win2lin

If nothing else, the fact that salaries for H1B workers rise 36% after they assume employment implies that H1Bs have the ability to secure better working conditions and raises.

Whoa, there. There is no such 'fact' - not where salary numbers are concerned.

Originally Posted by BetsyRoss

2. What do they mean by 'median' - in a number series 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 90, 99, 100, 110, 130, 150, 200, the median value is 90, but that says little about what any given individual is being paid. Actual H-1B salaries look something like this, as a few really are paid well.

I get your point that the median like any of the other averages (mean, mode) is capable of hiding distortions. But that does not detract from the validity of the comparison.

To illustrate, lets consider two sets of numbers on a 100 point scale where the numbers are distributed around the median with intervals of 5%.

1. 40 45 50 55 60 Median=50
2. 58 63 68 73 78 Median=68

Graphing these two sets of numbers on an X/Y axis will show an identical distribution except that the second set of numbers will be shifted to the right. For both of these sets, the median is an accurate measure of comparison as the distribution around the median does not change. Now consider a third set -

3. 5 10 68 80 95 Median=68

The distribution of the numbers around the median for this third set is significantly different from the first two sets. In this case, the median is not a useful basis for comparision between the 3rd set and the first two sets of numbers as the distribution changes.

Going back to the wage data, unless there is such a change in the distribution of wages between initial and continuing employment, the point holds that H1B employees are making significantly more money over time as indicated by the data for continuing employment.

On your other supporting data, hopefully those wage violations are being investigated by the DOL. That information does provide another clue as to why the median wages for initial employment would be low. If the outsourcers are rotating employees into and out of the country, then their activities would show up in the data for initial employment but not in the data for continuing employment.

Thank you for your comments, and I will address them as soon as I get to a quiet place in my day. There is so much more to be said on what is actually a complex, ongoing issue in American labor law.

Meanwhile, let me add this to the discussion, as I just found it and may have trouble finding it again as there is so much ongoing news on this topic. It's interesting to 'read between the lines' as to who might be the one raising the objections that the DOL was clarifying.

DOL Rule against substitutions takes effect
Sunday, 07.22.2007, 10:59pm (GMT-7)


The Department of Labor's (DOL) final rule to "enhance program integrity and reduce the incentives and opportunities for fraud and abuse related to the permanent employment of aliens in the United States" takes effect on July 16. See 72 Fed. Reg. 27,903-27,947 (May 17). The provisions apply to permanent labor certification applications and approved certifications filed under both the Program Electronic Review Management (PERM) program regulation, effective March 28, 2005, and previous regulations implementing the permanent labor certification program.

The rule's major provisions include:

A prohibition on the substitution of beneficiaries. Effective July 16, this prohibition will apply to all pending permanent labor certification applications and to approved permanent labor certifications. The prohibition does not affect substitutions approved by the DOL or Department of Homeland Security (DHS) before the effective date. It also does not affect substitution requests in progress as of the rule's effective date. The final rule also prohibits the sale, barter, and purchase of labor certification applications and approved labor certifications.

The USCIS announced that it will accept substitution requests it receives until Monday, July 16. Rationale: The rule notes that the DOL for years has allowed employers to substitute a beneficiary named on a pending or approved labor certification with another prospective employee. Historically, this substitution practice was permitted as an accommodation to US employers because of the length of time it took to obtain a permanent labor certification or receive approval of the 1-140. Ongoing concerns about fraud and abuse have been heightened, the DOL said, by a number of recent criminal prosecutions by the Department of Justice (DOJ) as well as/recommendations from the DOJ and the DOL's Office of Inspector General, and public comments concerning fraud received in response to the May 6, 2002, PERM notice of proposed rulemaking.

One attorney filed approximately 2,700 fraudulent applications with DOL for fees of up to $20,000 per application. Many of these applications were filed for the sole purpose of later being sold to workers who would be substituted for named beneficiaries on final approved labor certifications. One commenter asked that the rule be clarified to state that the prohibition against the sale, barter or purchase of labor certification applications does not apply to transfer stemming from legitimate corporate restructuring activities such as mergers, acquisitions, or spin offs.

The DOL said it did not intend this provision to govern corporate restructuring or internal corporate accounting and finance practices that exist independently of the permanent labor certification program. The DOL has determined that further clarification on this question is not necessary.

The DOL said its premise is that substitution in general is no longer needed, both because the new, automated system has significantly reduced processing time and because the backlog of permanent labor certification applications filed before March 28, 2005, will be eliminated by September 30. The DOL, noting that the labor market changes rapidly, maintained that it is consistent with the DOL's obligation to protect the jobs, wages, and working conditions of US workers to require that there be another labor market test whenever the job opportunity effectively changes through the unavailability of the original worker.

The DOL said it understands concerns that, as a result of this rule, H-1B non-immigrants who, after five years of employment, are not yet the beneficiary of a permanent labor certification application might not be permitted by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to further extend their H-1B status prior to obtaining permanent residence. Continuing substitution as an accommodation to "this small group of individuals, a group whose numbers and participation in the program are both speculative, is disproportionate to the adverse consequences of continuing the substitution practice," the DOL said.

The agency also noted that some commenters have suggested that because the American Competitiveness in the 21st Century Act (AC21) increased the portability of H-1B visas, allowing such non-immigrants to change employers, substitution by these foreign workers should continue to be allowed. The DOL, however, said it sees no reason to permit one type of nonimmigrant to continue benefiting over other non-immigrants from the practice of substitution. Substitution has been a distinct benefit to employers and applicants in allowing them to retain an earlier priority date and apply the results of a completed labor market test.

The DOL said it plans to work with the DOJ and DHS to explore appropriate circumstances under which substitution could be reinstated. "We anticipate that there may come a time when all affected agencies are satisfied that there are sufficient anti-fraud protections to alleviate the concerns motivating this rule," the DOL noted. A 180-dav validity period for approved labor certifications. Employers will have 180 calendar days within which to file an approved permanent labor certification in support of an Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker (Form 1-140).

All permanent labor certifications approved on or after the effective date will expire 180 calendar days after certification, unless filed before expiration in support of a Form 1-140 petition with DHS. Likewise, all certifications approved before the final rule's effective date will expire 180 calendar days after the effective date unless filed in support of a Form 1-140 petition with DHS before the expiration date. Rationale: The DOL had considered making the validity period only 45 days, but determined that 180 calendar days provided additional time to accommodate possible delays while maintaining the integrity of the labor market test and the security of the labor certification.

The DOL noted that requiring a retest of the market after the passage of 180 days is consistent with its mandate to protect the constantly shifting U.S. labor market. Some commenters contended that the DOL's argument that a certification grows stale with the passage of time is disingenuous, given the extremely long processing times and resultant staleness of at least some information in applications submitted years earlier.

The DOL noted, however, that the final rule addresses the question of validity post-certification. "While questions of wages and recruitment are adjudicated on an individual basis as applications come up for review in our Backlog Processing Centers-independent of how long each of those applications has been pending-the Department must determine how long it will stand behind those certifications once issued, and when it is appropriate to once again test the market," the DOL said, noting again that processing times and backlogs have been greatly reduced by PERM streamlining and the online system.

(to be continued)

Cyrus D. Mehta

http://indiapost.com/article/immigration/658/

Hey fellow Alipacers -

Just had to chime in a little. First off, I would like to thank those who are more informed than I am for supplying me with the salient facts. I think PhredE is especially astute and BetsyRoss works diligently to bring us the articles we need. I would like to challenge Crikey a bit since he/she seems reasonable enough to listen. I live in San Jose and I meet up with H1Bs EVERYDAY. They are highly visible in these parts. Most are very upstanding people with great intentions, and are unaware of the damage H1B abuse has caused both sides. I have physics and materials engineering degrees, with honors, (which I earned surrounded by H1Bs, many of whom are friends) and I have been looking for 4 years for a job in my field. I am told, if I ever hear back, that I am over-qualified. I am living on my 401K from a previous marriage to another engineer to entered the field in 1995 when the job market was not skewed against hiring Americans. My money is running out, and I will be homeless in two months. I am working "under the table" at various positions because no one will hire me outright. Do I strike you as uneducated and limited in my abilities? For me, the worst part about watching the infrastructure and political system that my family contributed to for generations, being handed to foreigners both legal and illegal who are less qualified than I am, is their all too often arrogant claims that they are entitled to it and this is good for the country. Limited, targeted, justified immigration is, but unfortunately that's not really what we are discussing here. If you would like to help me get a job Crikey, I will send you my resume - you seem educated and well-connected. You will be shocked that I am unemployed, and maybe it will change your viewpoint that there just aren't enough Americans with advanced scientific degrees.