Americans Won't Like Hearing The Real Reason That Silicon Valley Is Pushing So Hard For Immigration

[xchrom]

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-real-truth-about-the-stem-shortage-that-americans-dont-want-to-hear-2013-5

Americans Won't Like Hearing The Real Reason That Silicon Valley Is Pushing So Hard For Immigration Reform


***SNIP

They argue that in order to meet these needs, since there aren't enough American STEM majors, they have to look elsewhere and recruit foreign-born talent to fulfill their demand for STEM-trained workers.

But the thing is, there isn't really a STEM shortage. There are plenty of graduates of technical fields in the U.S.

There is a different kind of shortage, but the American people won't like to admit it.

What there is, is a shortage of ultra-elite American-born talent, and Silicon Valley wants to hire the very best in the world. The view from Silicon Valley is that a lot of the U.S. talent, while bountiful in number, just doesn't stack up.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-real-truth-about-the-stem-shortage-that-americans-dont-want-to-hear-2013-5#ixzz2V3fcJpBL

[peacebird]

1. Bullhockey. They want slave labor, because these workers typically are willing to work for a peanuts

just to get into America, and are stuck at that job til their green card comes through. Which the company can delay by dragging their feet. My last company hired a large number of these folks, and while yes, they were all nice and good workers they were not better than the American born talent. Except in that the Americans could afford their own apartment, while the foreign born staff lived 4 or 5 in an apartment.

[Andy823]

6. I agree

The number one issue for bringing in more workers from other countries is MONEY! Always has been and always will be. The big corporations only want larger profits, and lower wages is the way they get them.

[bhikkhu]

21. From the article, average pay is $80k per year?

Not to argue anything else, as the article makes its case very well, but $80,000 a year is far from peanuts.

[peacebird]

31. The cases I am familiar with are paid half that. Can't speak to those listed in the article....

I only spoke of what I know personally with H1B visas....

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

33. if the median wage kept pace with inflation since the 70s it would be 90k

so a highly trained, and skilled software developer should be making around 150k right now.

but considering how rigged our politics and markets are, we are lucky to be making 80k, and if they have their way it would only be around 40k.


Robert Reich

If the median wage had kept up with the overall economy, it would be over $90,000 today — and tax revenues would be more than adequate to cover all our needs. If the wealthy were paying the same marginal tax rate they were paying up to 1981, tax revenues would be far more.

source...
http://robertreich.org/post/51726367160

[alittlelark]

34. Then you don't live in Silicon Valley

A dumpy 1 bedroom in San Jose is 2K/mo... Houses less than 500K are very rare. Everything out here is expensive.

That said, the 80K average is not what I'm familiar w/ for the HB1 visas... 40-50K is what I've seen.

[bhikkhu]

36. That is true

...very low cost of living here in southern Oregon. 30k is a pretty comfortable living here, and nice houses are 100-125K.

I've always wondered why businesses would locate in the bay area and surroundings, as all their costs are so much higher.

[alittlelark]

47. Stanford, Berkely, and a few other good schools

w/ graduates that stick around.

[HiPointDem]

2. absolute bullshit.

[xchrom]

3. i honestly don't know what 'ultra elite' is in the tech world.

or even if there is such a thing.

[HiPointDem]

4. whatever it is, it's not the majority of h1b holders.

[DotGone]

45. True. Ultra-elite do not make entry level wages which is what the majority of H-1Bs make

[alittlelark]

48. I live in this world.... the 'ultra-elite' are 1 in 10,000

....'in the ether' types - all want them, but they pop up rarely... often in random places.


It's an excuse for underpaying H1B visa ppl.

[HereSince1628]

5. Stereotypes are rather like program defaults...they replace thoughtfulness

Being discriminated against based on a stereotype is a very common phenomenon, it's experienced by millions of Americans in various forms 24/7 fifty two weeks each year.

[FarCenter]

7. Elite software developers are to software as elite authors are to literature

Consider the Manhattan Project. It was staffed with many of the best graduates of the best US and European universities.

[elehhhhna]

8. MANY H1B's are foreign students coming out of US universities

so how does he explain THAT?

[FarCenter]

13. The ones they are looking for come out of US graduate school programs with advanced degrees

Typical history would be:
- took extensive tests to get into a top home country university BS program,
- graduated from BS program in top 10 percent,
- gained admission to a top US graduate program in the specific discipline, and
- graduated in the top half of graduate students.

[elehhhhna]

16. yep - you forgot "paid full rate so got preference in acceptance"

[FarCenter]

17. That would mainly be for those who come for undergraduate programs

Lots of foreign graduate students have research or teaching assistantships funded by the US.

Some post docs come with funding from research organizations in their home country.

[HiPointDem]

35. you have only to look at the h1b stats in tech to know what bullshit that is.

[Recursion]

14. That's the basis of his argument

People want to hire the (generally better, he claims) foreign students who go to school in the US.

[treestar]

41. The US having good schools, attracting the smartest students from the other countries

I'm not sure it's great for our economy is they go elsewhere, either. We have always prospered from brain draining the world. Among the best students, there will be Americans too, but other countries don't get those students from anywhere (generally).

Brilliant people who are from, say, Tanzania, don't have much to return to. Naturally they want to stay in the first world, so they can contribute. Why let them go to some other place and let that place prosper? That's how it seemed to work.

[FarCenter]

42. An objective of the foreign student programs was to train leaders for developing countries

The idea was that developing countries would send us their best and brightest, they would get great US higher educations, and then they would go back to the country of origin to form the political, managerial, and professional cadre to assist in their country's development. It probably didn't work that well for scientists and engineers, since the sending countries didn't have the business infrastructure to make use of them when they went back. A lot of times they wound as bureaucrats in some government institution.

Obama's father would have fallen in that category. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama,_Sr.

Keeping them here sort of defeats that "foreign aid" objective of the programs. However, it wouldn't apply to places like India or China or many of the other countries any more.

[treestar]

44. That applies probably to very few

Those that come on their own aren't going to want to go back.

But if they are indeed brilliant, we lose nothing by keeping them.

Einstein came here. It's not so simple as to say we should have left his "job" open for an American. Many Americans got jobs because of him instead. Looking at it that way, it is not this evil plot against Americans.

[Honeycombe8]

9. Hmmmmm. Interesting. I wonder if that's true? nt

[midnight]

10. "it's difficult to understate the positive economic benefits that additional high-skill immigrants

bring." "The issue is, saying that there is a STEM shortage to justify all of those benefits runs the risk of the argument losing credibility. "

"Even more, it's difficult to understate the positive economic benefits that additional high-skill immigrants bring. Each new immigrant provides an economic stimulus by virtue of paying taxes and spending money in the American economy. There's also the incentive that high-skill immigrants have when it comes to starting new companies and patenting new innovations.
It makes a lot of sense to increase the number of high-skill immigrants to the U.S.
It makes even more sense to hand them green cards — permanent visas — rather than the temporary six-year H-1B visas that Silicon Valley wants, but that's another issue entirely.
The issue is, saying that there is a STEM shortage to justify all of those benefits runs the risk of the argument losing credibility."

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-real-truth-about-the-stem-shortage-that-americans-dont-want-to-hear-2013-5#ixzz2V3fcJpBL

[baldguy]

11. Maybe if we didn't have conservatives gutting science education in our schools...

[Laelth]

12. What an awful comments section BI has!

You have to special-click on various links to see the comments of "non-insiders," and the "insiders" appear to be nothing more than apologists for corporate greed.

The "non-insiders" sound like sane, concerned, knowledgeable people, but their replies are hidden by default.

I find that rather vile.

-Laelth

[L0oniX]

15. Warning: Computer repair used to pay 35k ...now it's 15k. Same thing will happen...

with these so called hi tech jobs. Shit too ...I was on IRC Undernet most of the 90's thru to only a few years ago. We had a channel of people who all knew high tech from self learning who got hired with 60k jobs. Our scorn to others was always RTFM and STFU. Many in our group showed up in jeans and ACDC shirts to get the jobs. The industry was desperate to get anyone with real skills. We taught each other about hosting, web design, linux, unix, hacking, firewall ip tables, routers ...real old school shit. Many of us bought up lots of domain names in advance of what we knew was going to happen ...some made a fortune selling them. We used to set up servers and then try to hack into each others boxes ...finding vulnerabilities. We were programming using C. We didn't need no stinking high tech education degree.

Bottom line is that this is all bull shit to get lower pay workers.

[Egalitarian Thug]

18. It already has, although the process is not complete. I've been listening to the lies

quoted in the OP for over 15 years. It hasn't ever been true, but it did allow all those billionaires to become billionaires. Too Big To Prosecute didn't start with the banksters.

[ljm2002]

19. There are very few H1Bs...

...who fall into the "ultra-elite" category. Just as there are very few Americans, etc., who fall into that category.

If tech companies were truly looking to fill a shortage of ultra-elite talent, they would not need to increase the number of H1B visas; they would merely need to ensure that those who came in on the current number of visas were indeed in the ultra-elite category.

But of course they won't do it, because that is not the real reason they are pushing for more immigrants to hire.

Whatever else you can say about the high-tech industry, it is still a business enterprise, and decisions like this -- especially where they are pushing the government for specific policies -- are ALL about the bottom line.

Now if they don't get only ultra-elites right now, and if we have more than enough STEM graduates in the US right now to fill the open positions, then what does that tell you? In what way does hiring more H1Bs help the bottom line?

On edit:

Oh yeah: In the future please include "Warning: Graphic Image" in the header. Thanks.

[Uzair]

20. An A+ really is different from a C+

The truth hurts, and that's the truth.

The reality is that Americans are not achieving to the same high standards as foreign born students. Sure, you can have oodles and oodles of people who have degrees, but how many of those degrees are C+ students? There's always going to be a normal distribution of ultra high achievers to average to below average. But the vast majority of those A and A+ students? They're from India and China and all over the place everywhere else, while the majority of the C+ students are the home grown ones.

I see it all the time, and it's absolutely true. We live in a culture of mediocrity. Just do the minimum amount possible to pass the test. Don't actually WANT to LEARN the material, just get a satisfactory grade.

[xchrom]

22. You left out an a+ from 1 school = c+

From another.

[DireStrike]

24. So are there any statistics to back this up?

Sure, your generalization sounds fine. Where'd you hear that, though?

[Laelth]

27. The United States has the most productive workforce on Earth.

Are you suggesting that we're hard workers but lazy students? I don't buy that for a second.
It's much more likely that some rich jerks just want to improve their bottom lines by hiring more people who will work for low wages under oppressive conditions.

-Laelth

[FarCenter]

29. Productivity doesn't say much about the quality of American workers

Productivity is essentially sales divided by number of employees. But it is also driven by a high capital investment / employee in the US.

And if your business is automated warehousing and distribution for moving imported goods from container ports to store shelves, you can get a very high revenue per employee without much employee expertise.

[HangOnKids]

39. The only truth in your post is in your header and first sentence

The rest of your post is your opinion. Just because you "see it all the time" means jack squat. You might want to put your magic 8 ball away dude.

[treestar]

40. The US is used to getting the A students from everywhere

The US has its A students and they will get jobs. The US employer is used to being able to brain drain other countries for their A students rather than take US B or C students, but there is some truth to the idea that the presence of more A students leads to more jobs for US B and C students. Just keeping the foreign ones out won't make the B students any better.

On the other hand, grades aren't always a perfect indicator about who will do well in the real world. There is an old saw about law schools - the A students become law professors, the B students become judges, and the C students make the money. Now, how true that is may be impossible to prove!

[nadinbrzezinski]

46. It starts earlier than college

Our kids are way behind other kids in STEM...and we have shitty discussions about Algebra I in seventh grade.

For many abroad our first and second year college courses are HS level work, and it's getting worst.

We need another Sputnik movement.

[DireStrike]

23. I see nothing in this article supporting the claim that american talent is sub-par. -nt-

[xchrom]

25. it isn't -- they're talking about some 'global elite'.

which i don't know what that is or what it means.

[DireStrike]

26. In neither case is the article coherent!

I wish we could pass laws requiring propaganda to be labeled as such.

[patrice]

28. I bet this is more about new development models than it is about talent.

Way less testing, more one-size-fits all development templates for basically beta software that's pretty hard on your market, results not only in fewer meta-developers producing more stuff, but also more mis-match between very specific idiosyncratic customer tweaks and what generic development templates have produced at a given point. Hence, the perception that we need super geniuses to solve these problems (because they are doing some important fundamental engineering steps AFTER the fact, instead of before dysfunctions occur).

[Yavin4]

30. If corps want "ultra-elite" STEM workers, then why aren't they hiring from Northern Europe?

That's where you'll find them.

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

37. Are you kidding, many of the best high-tech companies in the world brightest's brains got their

degrees right here in the U.S. and that is where most of them still live today.

but as you noted, this article isn't about truth, it is about corporate propaganda.

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

32. More corporate BS. It is all about the money, numb-nuts even let it slip out in his article

Corporate America does not want to pay the salary that the market demands, so what do they do, they try to cheat, and bring in ringers, from abroad who will work for much less.

and 'our' leaders are helping them do just that.

[Laelth]

38. Spot on. n/t

-Laelth

[nadinbrzezinski]

43. I partly believe it

STEM is not a priority until college...period.

Other countries do heavily invest in it much earlier.