Thread: For those of you who think H1B's aren't a problem

It's funny but I heard people at the college complaining about this same thing.
(i.e. that the H1b professors had a hard time communicating w/their students).

Originally Posted by nntrixie

I don't know about H1B's in the college, but I have heard a lot about students having problems learning because their Professors could not speak proper English.

My daughter had an instructor who was oriental in college. It was a course she had to take to keep her scholarship and she had to pass to keep her scholarship. She could not understand the instructor and when she would ask her to repeat, the instructor was abusive. She talked with her counselor about it and was told basically this was the only instructor for this course, and so 'live with it'.

Originally Posted by neodyn55

Why am I troll? I haven't violated any rules so far. A mod has always warned me when i'm close.

You just lied. That is what makes you a troll.

Everyone in the academic system knows that foreigners are receiving special preferences in hiring using the H1-B system.

Give it up.

Oh, by the way, are you from India?

Originally Posted by millere

There are no staffing companies involved in this. The positions talked about are advertised directly to the community by the university. Sometimes a foreign student will be allowed to stay at a university and work as a research or teaching assistant after he graduates by filling out paperwork that let's him stay and work in the US. I once read that universities are allowed to hire more H1-Bs than the federal cap allows by getting 'additional' H1-Bs so the entire story about the H1-B visa cap is not being told.

There's no government paperwork involved in working as a research or teaching assistant. Graduate (MS & PHd) students are able to do this before they are done studying because they already have a bachelor's degree.

On your second point, academic and research institutions are allowed to hire H1Bs without being subject to the yearly cap. In 2005, about 32000 such visas were granted.

Added later:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teaching_assistant

Millere,

You just lied. That is what makes you a troll.

Huh? You aren't making much sense. What did I lie about?

To recap, you posted:

"Most of the bad ideas seem to start in the Universities. The idea that Mexicans have a right to invade the US is given alot of credibility by university faculty. Foreign students come to the US to study and a majority of our faculty teach these foreigners to hate the US and hate American citizens."

and I said:

Care to source this? I'm a foreign student, and not one of my single professors, nor any of the professors of anyone i know, teaches people to "hate the US and hate American citizens." Are you basing this on hearsay?

I'm still waiting for those sources btw.

Everyone in the academic system knows that foreigners are receiving special preferences in hiring using the H1-B system

What does this have to do with your "professors spread hate" post above?

BTW TAs and RAs are not on H1B, they're on F1 visas.

Oh, by the way, are you from India?

How is this relevant to the discussion at hand?

Anyway, I'm really waiting for the source ... if you can produce it. If you can't, maybe this is a valuable lesson on not posting random things that are likely to offend people, without backing them up.

And please note i'm not talking about the H1 issue here. I'm solely focussed on your "spreading the hate" post. Please attempt not to confuse the issue.

Originally Posted by neodyn55

And please note i'm not talking about the H1 issue here. I'm solely focussed on your "spreading the hate" post. Please attempt not to confuse the issue.

Are you involved with this sort of hatred?

http://seeker.dice.com/olc/thread.jspa? ... 0&tstart=0

Horrifying Story of Indian H1b worker...Everybody beware!!
Mar 5, 2007

H1-B -- “The Dark Sideâ€

Are you involved with this sort of hatred?

You're repeatedly skirting the issue i'm focusing on, the one about professors teaching foreign students hatred America and her citizens, and are trying, rather poorly, to obfuscate the issue by tangential references to problems concerning H1B - and I suspect, trying to bait me by quoting that specific line above.

Once again, can you provide any sort of backing to the following statement you made?

Most of the bad ideas seem to start in the Universities. The idea that Mexicans have a right to invade the US is given alot of credibility by university faculty. Foreign students come to the US to study and a majority of our faculty teach these foreigners to hate the US and hate American citizens.

By your awkward attempts to avoid this central issue, I'm force to conclude that you either do not have backing for this statement, or it is based purely on hearsay or conjecture. Your credibility, therefore, comes into question on this particular issue, and I sincerely hope other members of this forum have not taken your statements to be blanket truth.

To anyone else reading this post: Why am I so insistent? Because I'm a student, and I have had several professors who are totally committed to what they are teaching, and are encouraging and supporting to their students, no matter what their nationality is. Randomly accusing these people, some of whom I'm friends with, of something akin to treason is offensive to me.

Originally Posted by neodyn55

Randomly accusing these people, some of whom I'm friends with, of something akin to treason is offensive to me.

Why are you afraid to admit that you are from India?

How Many H-1B Visa Workers?

July 17, 2007

Chris O'Brien -- San Jose Mercury News

Turns out there's one thing folks on all sides of the often heated debate over H-1B visas can agree:

There's a startling lack of publicly available data about the program, which makes it almost impossible to know which companies are getting the controversial visas and why. And much of the data that does exist is disputed by one side or another.

A list of the top 200 employers of H-1B visa holders for 2006 compiled by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and obtained by the Mercury News illustrates the problem. Of the dozen or so Silicon Valley companies on the list, Oracle ranked highest at No. 9. Cisco Systems was 13 and Intel was 14.

According to the list, Oracle was issued 1,022 H-1B visas in calendar year 2006, a figure that includes renewals of previously issued visas. But Robert Hoffman, an Oracle spokesman, said his company could only confirm that it made 170 new H-1B hires in the federal government's fiscal year 2007, which runs from October to September.

However, according to data from the U.S. Department of Labor, Oracle applied for 737 visas in 2006, up from 264 in 2005 but down from 1,627 in 2004. Hoffman, however, called those numbers "highly inaccurate."

"There's no good data," said Lynn Shotwell, executive director of the American Council on International Personnel, an industry trade group. "We know demand well exceeds supply, but we don't really know what the demand is."

Dispersed oversight

The confusion over the numbers highlights the incredibly complex nature of the H-1B program, which involves three federal agencies. And the lack of real, fundamental data about who is using these controversial visas and for which jobs has frustrated folks on all sides of the debate.

"I think that's pretty indicative of the oversight of this program," said Sonia Ramirez, legislative representative for the AFL-CIO. "There are a number of agencies with responsibility. And in some cases, they don't know how many visas they've issued. And in the end, that weakens the enforcement of the program and protection for workers."

High-tech companies have been lobbying for years to raise the cap on the 65,000 H-1B visas issued every year. Critics who oppose an expansion argue that the visas take high-paying jobs from Americans and give them to lower-paid immigrants.

The comprehensive immigration bill that was recently defeated in Congress would have almost doubled the number of H-1B visas to 115,000 a year, exempting 40,000 people with higher degrees from any restrictions. It also would have accelerated the employer-based green-card system for workers already here, a provision that tech companies favor because it allows them to move current, temporary workers to permanent status and free up H-1B visas for other workers.

How steep is the demand for those additional visas? Here is what is known:

The federal government awarded 124,096 H-1B visas in the fiscal year ending October 2005, the most recent annual totals available. That includes renewed visas, which don't count against the annual cap. It doesn't include the 20,312 applications the government turned down.

Companies filed 119,193 applications for the 65,000 visas that will be awarded for the fiscal year starting in October 2007.

There were so many applications that, after two days in April, the government cut them off. It continued to take applications for the 20,000 visa exemptions for people with master's degrees until April 30.

Reaching the cap so quickly only further antagonized tech companies.

"I think one of the frustrations we have about the government running out of H-1Bs in April is that you have an entire graduation class that's not even eligible," Hoffman said.

Despite the demand, it's hard to know who gets the visas and how they are used.

Complicated process

In part, that's because of the byzantine process for applying and granting the visas. A company that wants H-1B visas files an application with the U.S. Department of Labor. The Labor Department screens the applications, then passes them to the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the office of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Applications approved by the immigration service are then forwarded to the U.S. Department of State, which actually issues the visas.

So who wants these visas? And how badly? To answer that question, the Mercury News first examined a series of databases on the Labor Department's Web site.

Looking at one company, Cisco Systems of San Jose, the data showed the number of H-1B applications filed by Cisco rose from 481 in 2004 to 1,027 in 2005 to 2,283 in 2006. When asked about those numbers, company spokeswoman Robyn Jenkins would neither confirm or deny them.
"There is currently a shortage of technically skilled workers in the U.S., and as Cisco hiring overall has increased in recent years, so has our use of H-1Bs to fill certain highly specialized positions," Jenkins wrote in an e-mail.

But Shotwell, the tech-industry lobbyist, said such tallies are misleading because companies often file multiple applications for a single person or large blanket applications for a number of positions they might not ultimately need because they want as many as possible before the cap is reached.

Still, the applications do show the types of jobs companies hope to fill. At the low end, Cisco wanted a visa for a customer support engineer position that would pay at least $46,900 annually. At the high end, Cisco wanted a visa for a director of manufacturing that would pay from $166,566 to $212,300.

Visa lottery

To get a clearer picture of the H-1B numbers, a Labor Department spokesman recommended contacting the Homeland Security Department, where the immigration service conducts a lottery to award the visas.

Initially, a Homeland Security spokeswoman said the department doesn't release figures on the number of visas awarded to individual companies.

"I don't believe we compile that information," said spokeswoman Sharon Rummery. "And it may be that we don't have any operational use for that."

A short time later, Rummery found a list of the top 20 employers receiving H-1B visas in 2006. The list is dominated by India-based outsourcing companies, such as Wipro and Infosys, which at No. 1 and No. 2 respectively received 3,143 and 3,125 new visas. The only Silicon Valley company on the list was Intel, ranked No. 13 with 613. Microsoft was fifth with 1,297.

But another list circulating on Capitol Hill told a somewhat different story. That list was also from the Homeland Security Department and included the number of new visas as well as the number of renewal visas.

According to that list, Oracle outranked Intel, receiving 1,022 visas in 2006. Intel received 828, as did Cisco; Yahoo received 347; and Hewlett-Packard received 333.

HP spokeswoman Pamela Bonney couldn't offer any guidance on the accuracy of the numbers.

"HP does not track visa applications filed on an annual basis," she wrote in an e-mail. "I can confirm that the employees that have H-1B visas are less than 2 percent of HP's total U.S. employee population."

Last stop: the State Department. A spokeswoman said the department doesn't disclose detailed numbers regarding H-1B visas.


Source: Copyright (c) 2007, San Jose Mercury News, Calif. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

Highly Skilled Immigrants Can't Get Work -- July 17, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - In Peru, Ines Gonzalez-Lehman directed a 14-person marketing team at a high-tech firm. After marrying an American and immigrating legally to the U.S., she found herself making copies and answering phones at the bottom of the corporate ladder.

The immigration reform bill that recently failed in the Senate would have increased the number of visas for highly educated workers. But there remain tens of thousands of skilled immigrants like Gonzalez-Lehman who are here and authorized to work, but stuck in jobs where their experience is wasted.

Learning how their industry works in the United States, finding out about openings, talking up their assets in a way that appeals to an American employer -- those steps, simple to someone educated in the United States, can block the path between a newcomer and work she is well-trained to perform.

"This is clearly an under-leveraged talent pool," said John Bradley, director of human resources at the investment bank JP Morgan Chase & Co. "We're in constant need of a supply of talent and this is a viable, well-trained source that we hadn't focused on in the past."

JP Morgan Chase is among the dozens of companies actively seeking trained immigrants already in the United States through Upwardly Global, a San Francisco-based nonprofit placement agency. The organization, which also has a New York office, is unusual among immigrant advocacy groups in that it focuses solely on well-educated legal immigrants, sharpening their ability to market themselves and connecting them with employers interested in their skills.

Executive director Jane Leu got the idea when she met an Iraqi engineer and a Bosnian surgeon during a visit to a chicken processing plant in New York. Leu, then a refugee resettlement worker, thought they could do better.

"Our system was well-oiled to resettle people into low-wage jobs," she said. "But these people were passionate about their careers."

Tales of educated immigrants stuck in lowly occupations have become part of American lore: The Polish doctor working as a doorman, the Lebanese accountant who drives a cab, the Pakistani engineer who makes ends meet serving tables. New arrivals are added to the roster every day.

Leu says English fluency and what she calls the perception problem -- "when most people think of Bolivians, they don't think engineers" -- are big hurdles.

But the biggest challenge is connecting the newcomer to the American job search system and workplace culture. "An immigrant can know how to do a job, but not how to get that job," Leu said.

Over 1.2 million people became legal permanent residents of the United States last year. Many brought with them professional training, along with foreign languages and the ability to work cross-culturally -- qualities prized by companies that are crossing borders themselves.

But unlike Canada and Australia, which select immigrants with desirable education and connect them with jobs that put their training to use, the U.S. makes no official attempt to integrate immigrants into the economy.

To some observers, that's just as well.

"The market economy generally does a good job of connecting people," said Stuart Anderson, executive director of the nonpartisan think tank National Foundation for American Policy.

That approach fits comfortably within the American appreciation for those who pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

"Here, you have lots of opportunities, but it's up to you," said Jeanne Batalova, a policy analyst with the nonpartisan, Washington DC-based Migration Policy Institute. "The assumption in the U.S. is that if they bring these skills, they must have resources, so they're the ones who need least support."

But advocates say it doesn't work for everyone. Among immigrants who got degrees abroad and arrived in the past 10 years, 42 percent of Latin Americans, 21 percent of Asians and 18 percent of Europeans are doing work that requires no training, according to an MPI analysis of statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Foreigners who studied abroad lack a network of college buddies who would know about openings and get them in the door, Leu said. And they're often ill at ease with American corporate culture and its emphasis on self-promotion and individualism.

In an interview, they might shy away from giving recruiters the hard sell Americans expect, counting on epic resumes to do the talking. But their resumes are often laundry lists of job titles that don't bubble over with the action verbs Americans use to emphasize achievement, according to Leu.

Employers, on the other hand, aren't trained to recognize foreign degrees and job experience.

"In Peru, I was somebody. I was nobody here," said Gonzalez-Lehman, her hands flying up in frustration.

Upwardly Global places immigrants like Gonzalez-Lehman in mentorships and programs that prep both candidates and recruiters. She landed a job in sales at Google Inc., linking Web sites that target Hispanic audiences with advertisers interested in reaching those groups.

"Now I really feel I am an asset, I am productive," she said.

Alcides Hernandez also went from well-connected professional at the top of his field to floundering newcomer without a toehold in a foreign land.

He left a management and research job at El Salvador's largest utility company to be with his wife, whom he met while vacationing in California. He assumed his degrees in industrial engineering, his MBA and his experience setting national price structures for electrical rates in his home country would land him a suitable job.

Instead, he supported his new wife and baby juggling gigs as an electrician's helper, a teller at a courier company, and on weekends, a wedding videographer. He went to job fairs, and got no calls back.

"That was one of the most difficult years of my life," he said of 2002, the
year he moved to the United States. "I had this education. I'd worked hard, moved up. But here I was so far from my goal."

Eventually a day laborer center passed him Upwardly Global's number (also, http://www.upwardlyglobal.com. Leu connected him with a mentor at Pacific Gas & Electric Co. who taught him the jargon and structure of the U.S. utilities industry. Staff helped him shorten and sharpen his pages-long resume. Leu ran him through half-dozen mock interviews, grilling him in cafes and over the phone.

When he landed an interview for a job as an electric rate analyst for the city of Roseville, he knew the industry and its regulations. He knew the terminology. And the modest, soft-spoken Hernandez could project the can-do attitude that would hook his prospective employers.

The day he got the job was one of his happiest since he arrived, he said.

"I'm part of this professional world again," he said.

For immigrants like Hernandez, having a job that fits their qualifications isn't just about getting a paycheck. It also allows them to reclaim their identity as professionals. After securing his position at Roseville Electric, Hernandez was able to build a life here that resembles the one he had at home. He owns his home, completed a second MBA, and has just earned his citizenship.

"This was what I'd dreamed of," he said. "Now I really feel I am part of this country."

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved.



Source: Copyright 2007 AFX News Limited. All Rights Reserved.

I think this Peruvian story only confirms that US companies and their "consultants (Indian and American headhunters) DO NOT FIRST LOOK to US and LEGAL RESIDENTS to fill their jobs.... why? not that they can't find them, they don't want to find them... why? because they have to pay them the PREVAILING US WAGE.... imported newbies can be "controlled"...
corruption worthy of a third world country...