Thread: Why the H-1B visa cap will increase

Shortage Shouters

Bill Gates and employer organizations and spokespersons who maintain that America has a shortage of this or that kind of scientific or technical expertise are noted as “shortage shoutersâ€

Bluecollar, I find the attitude of your latest post to sound culturally very 'Indian' not American. The attitude of resignation and submission to the rich and powerful is something I hear a lot in their reader comments. That sounds very foreign to me.

And, removing all mobility restrictions on H-1Bs, without severely curtailing their numbers, would simply open up America's labor market such that a foreigner could compete for a job in America as easily as an American. This would be an absolute disaster for American workers, as the foreign workers outnumber us so vastly, plus they don't typically have the debts (mortgage, student loans, etc.) that an American worker generally does.

Whenever illegal aliens from south of the border started to amass in a particular line of work, we saw the wage drop dramatically. Many blue collar jobs used to pay enough that a man could support a family on one job. But now they don't, and the jobs are often done by people living packed in a house or apartment (often to the extent of violating local occupancy ordinances) and pooling their meager pay from multiple jobs just to survive. Something similar would happen to every American profession the H-1Bs aspire to if any more restrictions were removed from them. Some say it is already happening in IT, where wages have stayed rather flat since the cap went up in 2000. And if you think the foreclosure crisis is bad now, with all sorts of collateral economic damage, just open the door to billions of foreign workers across the board and see what happens. We have nations and borders for a reason.

America needs to get back to working and making things, not just buying and hiring foreign. India needs to develop itself so it doesn't need to take away the work of other nations' breadwinners.

Indians are the fastest-growing group of illegal immigrants in the United States, stated a Department of homeland Security report in February 2008. The report says there are 2,70,000 unauthorized Indians in the United States - a 125 percent jump since 2000, the largest percentage increase of any nation with more than 100,000 illegal immigrants in that country. The report says though the number of Indian immigrants is low when compared to people from Mexico, the Indian context is appalling as the illegal immigrants mostly consist high-skilled workers. Illegal immigrants from other countries are mostly low-skilled workers. If the trend continues India will only trail only Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala in illegal immigration.

The report quoting experts says virtually all immigrants enter the US legally and then violate the visa terms, thus becomimg illegal immigrants. "They come here as professionals, most often in the H-1B program, and given the fluctuations of Silicon Valley, the business climate, these guys lose their jobs. They get laid off or they wager their hands on a start-up coming in."

"The problem with the H-1B program is, you can't have any significant time between jobs" without falling out of legal status. “Indians made up 44 percent of H-1B applicants in the 2005-06 fiscal year, five times the number from second-place China, the report says. The report says another source is relatives from India who arrive for a visit on a tourist visa and never go home. http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/feb/19us.htm

Jeffrey Passel of the Pew Hispanic Trust estimates that the number of “illegal Indiansâ€

Here's an example of damage done to our job market by importing guestworker labor. We've all seen these fake job ads, tailored to precisely describe the job of a foreign worker who is already here doing the job, with a few disqualifiers thrown in, in case one of our sharp people shows up (so they can avoid hiring the American).

Holders of visas often picked over U.S. workers

By MATT WICKENHEISER, Staff Writer

Monday, September 25, 2006
Telegram Investigation: Foreign Labor

Lisa Perry wanted to leave Washington D.C. and come home to Maine after living there during the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon, anthrax scares and the Beltway sniper shootings.

She quit her job designing databases for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and moved back to the Portland area to live with her parents, returning to Maine after 13 years away. She worked on personal projects and took care of her parents' home for about a year, then started looking for an information technology job in the fall of 2004.

She put out a number of resumes, and one ad in the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram caught her eye. It was for a $72,000 IT position, with applications to be sent to the Maine Department of Labor. She applied for what she thought was a job with the state.

But the labor department was actually forwarding those resumes to a temporary staffing company that had applied for a green card for a foreign worker. Advertising the job was part of the process to ensure that no qualified Americans were available to fill the position.

The staffing company contacted Perry, and she recognized the name: BCC USA Inc. She had seen other ads for jobs with BCC and hadn't bothered applying. Job seekers had to apply by snail-mail, and that was a warning sign for Perry.

"I'm looking for an IT job, a software development job," said Perry. "If I can't apply by e-mail, if I can't find a Web site, it doesn't sound like a very real company."

Software staffing companies that flooded Maine in 2004 and 2005 with labor certification applications for green cards had to advertise the jobs by law. And they also had to interview Americans who potentially fit the bill, and list reasons if the jobs didn't go to them.

According to records released by the state to the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, a number of Maine residents like Perry applied to these jobs and were turned down.

Perry vaguely remembered the phone interview with BCC. At the end of the conversation, she knew the company was a provider of temporary IT labor. She wanted a long-term position with a company, and she wasn't interested in the BCC job.

BCC wasn't interested in her, either.

State records released to the newspaper show that BCC Chief Executive Officer Chinna Rao reported that the company interviewed Perry, and she wasn't qualified because she didn't have experience with a number of computer applications.

"They obviously weren't willing to consider someone who had transferable skills. They were definitely looking for something very specific," said Perry.

"They weren't looking for someone like me, someone looking for a company, a place to call home, to stay a long time."

Perry, who has her master's degree in mathematics from the University of Maine, plus some work toward her doctorate from the University of Maryland, has since found an IT job in the area.

Jack Wallace, of Cedar Falls, Iowa, also applied for the BCC position. He hoped to return to Maine, where he had worked in the early 1990s. He teaches programming at a local community college after losing his IT job due to state budget cuts, and hasn't worked in software for more than two years.

"There just aren't a lot of jobs for American computer programmers any more," said Wallace. "When I got into the business, 20, 25 years ago every company had their own IT staff. They'd have a need, they'd assign a programmer to do it. It was all done in-house.

"Somehow it got away from that. People got the idea that they're better off hiring somebody from the outside to do the work."

Wallace said he clearly remembered his interview with BCC. The interviewer asked him "very precise" questions.

"I remember thinking, 'Nobody's got that type of knowledge, that they would just know that type of detail work,"' said Wallace. "I was put into the situation where I either had to say I've never specifically done that or just come up with some lies off the top of my head; I kept saying 'I don't know' because I really don't like to bluff my way through these questions."

He often had those impressions when interviewing for programming jobs, Wallace said.

"Sometimes I get the idea that the job's wired and they're looking to exclude people," he said. "Sometimes I just get the idea that people expect programmers to know everything."

Because Wallace didn't have all the skills BCC required, he also was unqualified, Rao wrote. Wallace and Perry were two of nine applicants for the job. All but Wallace were Maine-based job seekers.

BCC Marketing Director Karan Manickam said his Massachusetts-based company supplies IT workers to different companies. The applicants were turned down, he said, because the client companies wouldn't accept them.
"That is unfortunately the requirements. The clients have been very specific these days. If they miss one or two skill sets, they didn't want (the contract employees), and they wanted (to pay) low salaries," said Manickam. "I know what kind of feedback I'm going to get from my clients. They need a carbon copy."

BCC and similar software staffing companies are staff-augmentation firms, also known in the industry as "body shops." The firms are essentially high-tech temp agencies, providing skilled computer workers to companies and governments on a per-project basis. They are generally staffed by foreign workers. The firms file immigration papers for skilled foreign workers, bringing them to the United States, and then placing them with clients. They also file green cards applications for foreign workers who are already in the United States.

In the case of the job Wallace and Perry had applied for, BCC was advertising it because it had filed immigration papers to get a green card for a foreign worker. A green card allows a foreigner to live and work in the United States indefinitely.

The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram asked a software expert from Tyler Technologies Inc.'s MUNIS Division in Falmouth to review some of the requirements for the green card positions from a number of companies that applied for green cards through Maine.
The results were scattered, with some of the requirements seeming very reasonable and others not so, said Kirk Cameron, vice president of development at MUNIS. Cameron, a Canadian national, has been in the United States for 33 years and is a green card holder himself. He moved here at the age of 7 when his father got a job with General Electric.
It was sometimes hard to judge whether companies were trying to fill actual positions, or if they had tailored the requirements so only the green card applicants could fill the jobs, Cameron said.

In some cases, the requirements clearly matched a very specific software job, said Cameron. There were also some requirements that Cameron doubted a single programmer could fill.

"They're hitting so much stuff that no one can be good at them all," he said. "In general, there are specialists. Here they're looking for it all in one."

He pointed to one example where the requirements involved experience with programming languages and applications spanning every part of the software life span, from conceptualization through development, quality checking, and even customer support. And those requirements were over several computing platforms, said Cameron.

It's like going to a restaurant, said Cameron, and expecting the hostess to seat you, take your order, cook your meal, serve it, bus the dishes and then wash them.

Staff Writer Matt Wickenheiser can be contacted at 791-6316 or at:
mwickenheiser@pressherald.com

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/ ... 5imm2.html

[quote="zeezil"]Jeffrey Passel of the Pew Hispanic Trust estimates that the number of “illegal Indiansâ€

Originally Posted by BetsyRoss

Bluecollar, I find the attitude of your latest post to sound culturally very 'Indian' not American. The attitude of resignation and submission to the rich and powerful is something I hear a lot in their reader comments. That sounds very foreign to me.

Im culturally practical..Wake up betsy..There are 1000s of boards like this sending 100,000s of faxes to senators. And guess who gets the nomination "Mcnamnesty Cain". What do u think went wrong? May be faxes went to a wrong number.

Even in the greatest democracy the guy who comes to the top is "George Bush" and he gets 2 terms. Think "political connections". The rich and elite influencers shortlist acceptable candidates for them and the public choose between a/b/c/d. The system simply does not allow for a grass roots leader to emerge. You have to be a political whore like bill richardson and align with right people at right times to get to be a policy maker.

everybody has a "circle of influence" urs and my circle of influence ends with this board. Posting articles here and sending faxes prodding people that we know.

middle america is busy fighting more serious problems with illegal immigration, healthcare, bluecollar jobs. Nobody cares or knows what a h1 quota is. Nor are they interested in making sure america's high tech workers get a fat pay while they are scraping the bottom.

like obama says "hope" & "change u can believe in" i would rather stay practical.

Originally Posted by bluecollar

sell ur toyota zeezil and buy a ford. be a guy of actions and not just..words.

Look and know someone before you open your yapper, bluecollar...I drive a Ford Ranger. What exactly is the point of your ramblings???

Bluecollar, I always knew you were an infiltrator, even if only by your spelling. Why do so many Asians spell like they are text messaging back inthe 90s? I was told they think it looks cool, but not in the 21st century.

You are forgetting that a coalition including this board was a major factor in the defeat of CIR.

And it was only true that the average American didn't know or care about H-1B quotas earlier in the century. Now "India" is a four-letter word to middle class America. They may not understand the fine points of visa extensions, but they certainly have figured out where our jobs are going and are worried about it.

This is not about making sure tech workers get a fat paycheck because the vast majority of American techs never did. Washtech.org debunked the notion of 6 figures for techs early on. The vast majority of us never made more than modest middle class salaries, if that, even during the boom of the 90's, and that is one big reason why the Indian cost advantage is eroding much more quickly than Premji, Karnik, Tata, et. Al. had planned for. I know many people who earn a new living in the wake of outsourced work, cleaning it up. There are whole companies devoted to this.

BTW, there is no need for anyone driving a Toyota or Honda to sell it. Those cars have been made in America for years, by Americans. See, protectionism CAN be made to work in a global economy.

It's hard to see how an Asian can be adversly affected by the sellout of American blue collar workers. You are here to be a wet blanket for us, as we say in my diverse neighborhood, you played yourself.

Oh, and it's not just in America where the cost advantage is shrinking: http://sify.com/finance/fullstory.php?id=14628162

May be u will be happy when toyota gobbles up ford and GM goes down in the dust and another european car manufacturer buys it.

yeah drive around as long as they are "assembled" in america. the point im making is a very valid one. every body in this forum has grievances about offshoring but when it comes to their dollar they look for value for money even if it means junking an american icon ford and trading it for a japanese icon toyota.

that toyota assembles itz cars in america is the lamest excuse i have heard for owning a toyota..may be itz a result of overworked guilt machine.

a. if offshoring is a big failure b.if so many are making a living cleaning offshoring mess..c. $$ depreciation is going to reverse offshoring then why the anxiety pills. Let the low quality Indians expose themselves and jobs will comeback. I mean it has been going on for 10 years now surely the paint is about to come off.

we should be worried more about ppl without healthcare, bluecollar jobs, education and american poverty that katrina exposed. surely im allowed to have some bluecollar anger at folks who supported the shipping away of bluecollar jobs by lapping up cheap imports.

personally i think $$ without oil denomination is worth par with many third world currencies. considering the huge debt america has run against rest of the world. (thanks to folks who feasted last 20 years on cheap foreign imports) I would like it to reach its real worth so that all americans can have jobs not just it folks and standard of living is in par with the world.

Originally Posted by zeezil

Look and know someone before you open your yapper, bluecollar...I drive a Ford Ranger. What exactly is the point of your ramblings???

well someone made toyota the no 1 auto manufacturer of the world now isnt it. i know it aint the japanese or the europeans..it was americans who gave that title to a japanese company when ford and gm are trying to make profits.

and according to some ppl itz ok because toyota "assembles" itz cars in american shores.