Anti-H-1B senator (R) to head immigration panel, says tech worker shortage is a 'hoax'

[Newsjock]

Source: Computerworld

The biggest enemy facing U.S. Senate Republicans in raising the H-1B cap are Senate Republicans.

The Senate's two top Republican critics of temporary worker immigration, specifically the H-1B and L-1 visas, now hold the two most important immigration posts in the Senate. They are Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who heads the Senate's Judiciary Committee, and his committee underling, Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who was appointed by Grassley on Thursday to head the immigration subcommittee.

... Sessions, late Thursday, issued a statement about his new role as immigration subcommittee chairman, and said the committee "will give voice to those whose voice has been shut out,” and that includes “the voice of the American IT workers who are being replaced with guest workers."

Sessions last week accused the tech industry of perpetuating a "hoax" by claiming there is a shortage of qualified U.S. tech workers.

Read more: http://www.computerworld.com/article/2873670/anti-h-1b-senator-to-head-immigration-panel.html

[hollysmom]

1. well that is good news to my pre-retirement younger friends.

[elleng]

2. Should be, imo,

but we should be providing suitable education to fill these needs. AND doing what's necessary to see to it that salaries are reasonable, meaning not enticing those from elsewhere with unreasonably low wages.

[dballance]

55. Elleng, we are already providing suitable education to fill these needs.

As the Senator says, it is a hoax that there are not qualified US citizens for these jobs. This is a subject on which I actually agree with a Republican Senator.

Our universities turn out tons of qualified people every year. Those people are just not as cheap as overseas labor. Corporations would much rather import people who have no expectation of a decent salary and benefits rather than employ a US Citizen who will demand a decent salary and benefits.

[elleng]

57. Yes, that was part of my point,

'not enticing those from elsewhere with unreasonably low wages,' however that happens, like Corporations, Off with their HEADS!

[GummyBearz]

69. Here here

Second that,

-Gummybearz, PhD engineer with many under employed friends in the field

[KG]

48. LOL. this is satire, right?

[dilby]

3. Here is the issue.

The tech industry is so huge it's hard to say there is a shortage or non shortage. I know in my specific tech field getting American candidates has been almost impossible due to colleges in the US not offering the proper courses. My company has offices in Europe and Asia and we have no problem filling positions in those countries but in the US we are short staffed and its because we lack qualified candidates.

[JDPriestly]

4. Your company should train its employees to do the work your company needs.

It's called investing in your company and your staff. Used to be routine here.

[dilby]

6. If we made gromets that took a day to learn then yes you would be correct.

Unfortunately we are very specialized and it takes on average 6 months for someone who has the proper skill set to come up to speed. Someone with 0 skill set would take years to come up to speed. Entry level for my job is $80,000 a year. However colleges are focused on churning out engineers who fill majority positions and not those that fill out niche positions that my company needs. And my company every year invests in colleges because it's a great recruiting tool. We have paid internships that are in the $17-$20 an hour range and we get interns from all over the country.

[JDPriestly]

7. Why do you think that studnets in other countries are learning these special skills while ours

are not? That does not seem believable to me. So please explain how that is possible. Is your company training foreign students in the skills it needs?

[dilby]

9. Trust me, American workers are cheaper

Than English, Swedish, French or Japanese. The issue is those countries are on the forefront of delivering media via cellular devices and have schools dedicated for producing engineers who specialize in video compression. In the US we have kids who are still learning reel to reel and tape decks.

[ND-Dem]

15. reel to reel and tape decks. uh-huh, sure.

[kcr]

28. I know. Reel to reel? Pull the other one n/t

[seabeckind]

43. And what's the problem with learning reel to reel?

It is learning the transition from what was to what is. Going from analog to digital.

When I was in graduate school and computers were replacing the old card equipment, one of my courses included that equipment.

And sure as hel, my first job, couple years into it, I ran into some work that needed to be done on that equipment cause they were still in use. The equipment engineer probably started before electricity and the company was keeping him alive.

In my case the company guy who did it retired and the company needed to keep the equipment going until they could replace the technology. Got a tidy little bonus for that work. And since I proved to be adaptive got an even better job.

The point is that unlike the 21st century millenial model where everybody gets the latest and greatest regardless of cost or quality, out in the real world...

[ND-Dem]

47. the problem is that someone has an interest in pushing the myth that american workers are

stupid and trained on 60-year-old equipment, while indian workers are clever and trained on all the latest technology.

it's ridiculous on its face, but the hidden motive behind the ridiculous talk is evil.

[jeff47]

53. Golly, I wonder if underpaying your American workers

has anything to do with your recruitment problem.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

77. What recruitment problems?

It sounds as though his company is doing just fine recruiting people, they're just not people in America.

The idea that there is a moral duty to employ people in the USA rather than people, say, here in the UK, strikes me as one unlikely to catch on outside the USA...

[jeff47]

82. It must have taken a lot of effort to misread it that badly.

If you're hiring people to work in your US office, and hire people from another country via an H1B visa, we might have a reason to be annoyed that the government is handing out those H1B visas.

For example, I could not get hired by your UK office without quite a bit of effort. Perhaps that situation should be mirrored, instead of it being easy in one direction and very hard in the other?

[cap]

39. Sorry but people CAN be trained

Back in the 80s we took English majors, mathematicians, musicians, philosophers, you name it, and we trained them. IBM ran us through a compressed program with all the basics: programming language, software architecture, quality assurance, software management, deployment, software design and development, and had us coding. In addition to gaining skills, more importantly, we were molded into the IBM mentality. So we did things the way they wanted us to. We were designing and coding immediately. We did high reliability (5 9s) satellite systems. Another specialized niche.

In your case, hire mathematicians, physicists, anyone with a strong math background, maybe some artists and musicians who have had some programming background. Train them. You will be surprised.

Remember ENIAC was built by housewives.

[ND-Dem]

49. the poster a/o his company obviously have an interest in hiring cheap labor and pushing down

the cost of labor here on the backs of American workers.

he doesn't need or want your advice because he profits from promoting these myths.

[JDPriestly]

64. I came back to the US in 1980, read a manual and could do amazing things on a computer in my

office. I had never touched a computer. No one in the office knew what to do to this thing that had been donated to our nonprofit. People can learn anything if they put their minds to it.

I'm not the only person who started with no understanding of computers and learned how to use them. A person with some background in programming can learn new programs. My daughter does it.

[Xithras]

13. IT is a collection of niches.

Part of the problem is that a company may only have one employee position that fills a particular niche, because that's all they need. A large company may have an entire floor full of programmers, but it's not an uncommon situation to have each of them programming for a different system, or a different aspect of a system, or even in an entirely different language than all of the other programmers on the same floor. Quite often, there simply isn't anyone around to train them. Even more often, when a position DOES open up, it's because the one person who previously filled that niche has left, and they need a new person to step in and fill it NOW.

I work for a very large IT consulting company. We have one guy on staff who's entire skillset is doing assembly code optimization for software originally written in high level languages for massively secure financial systems with very high speed processing requirements (aggregate processing of transactions for international financial institutions). He's an H1-B. Why? Because it turns out that a shockingly small number of people on the entire planet have all of the skillsets needed to fill that position, none of the people with those skillsets in the SF Bay Area were looking for work, and no Americans elsewhere in the country with those skillsets were willing to relocate to the Bay Area for $165,000 a year with a $50k signing bonus, fully paid relocation costs, $1500 a month immediate housing credit available for up to three years, and a $100,000 housing credit after 24 months (basically, work here for two years and they'll give you $100 grand to help buy a house, or take a lower cashout alternative). The two months of paid vacation and full bennies didn't do it either. W

The guy in the position now is a Chinese H1-B that we poached from from a position at Citibank in Singapore. Training an American simply wasn't an option, because none of us have all of the skillsets required, and the previous programmer gave us two weeks notice before walking out the door. We needed someone who could do the job right away, because we couldn't.

That's one example. I can give you hundreds more if you'd like. In IT, there is typically an expectation that a new hire can hit the ground running, because more often than not there is a NEED for the new employee to hit the ground running.

I do agree that the H1-B system is often abused by employers simply looking for cheap labor, and those abuses need to be stopped. But it's also true that it's a field where a position can go unfilled because the particular arcane skillset an employer is looking for simply doesn't exist in the local talent pool.

[JDPriestly]

16. Your company should have hired an American, had him work on a contract for a specific length

of time and trained a back-up so that if the guy that was hired left when the contract was up, the back-up could take over. Right now, your company could be training an American to back-up your H1-B visa guy. There is no excuse for the poor thinking and planning on the part of your company. If you had an H1-B visa person filling the job, why wasn't your company doing as i suggested -- hiring and training an American back-up and then pinning that person down with an employment contract while training yet another back-up to take over if trhe first one breaks the contract or decides to leave at the end of the contract.

A company as sophisticated as yours appears to be should be able to plan and control and invest in its training and its AMERICAN employees just like it plans and controls and invests in protecting its patents and its security.

No excuse. Sorry. Hire American is going to become a watchword. At least it should.

[ND-Dem]

50. another person/company with an interest in promoting the import of cheap labor. don't expect

consistency when they push their bullshit rationales for it.

[Xithras]

58. We advertised the position for SEVEN MONTHS without a single qualified American applicant.

Contract or full time, we didn't have a single applicant with the skills needed. In the end, the company had to hire a headhunter to find the H1-B we did end up hiring, and to poach him away from his current employer. If we could have found an American capable of doing the work, or even that we were able to poach away from a current employer, we'd have hired him or her.

[lancer78]

59. What I am wondering

is what your company is going to do when this guy wants to go back home? Or when his parents get old and sick and he has to return to fill out his family responsibilities? I hope your company has enough good sense to have an American working along with him.

[JDPriestly]

63. Where did you advertise it?

In seven months, a person could have been trained or learned the programs you needed him/her to know presuming that the person already had a good background in IT.

An H-1B certification is valid for the period of employment indicated on the Labor Condition Application (LCA), specifically the Form ETA 9035, for up to three years. (H1B visas under the Chile / Singapore programs are generally granted only in 1 year increments. )

http://www.immihelp.com/visas/h1b/h1b-visa-requirements.html

What will your company do when the three years are up? Will it just disappear the job? What is it doing now to train an AMERICAN to take the job?

Excuses! Excuses! We can do better.

[Xithras]

70. That, I don't know.

Position advertising is handled by HR. Most of our employees (including me) are recruited directly, so I don't know where the company actually advertises its positions.

As for this particular position, I believe that the guy is working on getting his green card. One of the reasons he was willing to be poached was an interest in immigrating to the U.S. anyway, and he already has family in the SF Bay Area. Based off a few conversations I've had with him, I have some reasons to believe that he's going to bail anyway once he gets that card (some of the financial corps in New York will pay far more than we can), but he's telling management that he'll stay for a while and they believe him. Who am I to argue?

Yes, we should be training a potential replacement for him right now, but I can identify at least two dozen other roles on my floor alone that are in the same position. Heck, my own position has no real redundancy., I'm a bit less specialized than some of my co-workers, but I mostly do media codec and streaming work, which isn't a niche that's overflowing with available talent either. Still, if my position opened up, they probably wouldn't resort to an H1-B to replace me.

[JDPriestly]

73. So we get to the real problem which is that we have an utterly disorganized economy.

Our corporations do not work with our schools to make sure that children learn the skills they will need in the workplace. Charter schools have not changed that. On-line courses cannot do the job.

We need a system similar to that in Germany in which companies can hire apprentices. I don't know whether it was you or another DUer who said his company offers internships. Well, why not TRAIN interns to do these jobs, to learn the programs so that you have more flexibility in your workforce and a more loyal and enthusiastic workforce.

Honestly. I really think that American companies are very poorly managed and organized in many respects with regard to labor relations. This is not altogether the fault of any one company.

We have a history of contentious labor/management relations in our country. Labor is totally excluded from decision-making, from identifying key organizational problems. The relationship between employees and employers is viewed as hierarchic to the point that the employee is just a pawn to be sacrificed in the interest of saving the king and queen. That fundamental relationship has to change in our technologically demanding society.

Why would anyone want to train for such a specialized job if that person feels that the company that wants him to spend his money on the training will then owe no commitment to him as an employee? Will subscribe to no loyalty to him as a human being?

The attitudes that companies that hire H1-B visa personnel have toward our country and toward the American people are very damaging to the fabric of our society.

As for the immigration aspect, if the company wants to hire a person and that person wants to come to the US, let the company sponsor the person for a green card and a path to citizenship if the person decides he/she wants to stay. We do not need H1-B visas. They cause a lot of problems. Europe hired a lot of "guest workers.' They were treated like second-class people. It is not good for a society to do that. It is a huge mistake to treat some people as less than deserving to stay in your country. And when those people have children, the children are confused about where they belong in the world.

I oppose H1-B visas. I do not oppose immigration or immigrants.

[pnwmom]

78. On purpose. They want to treat employees as throw-away parts.

When the particular spot an employee's been filling is no longer needed, it's cheaper and faster to hire a new graduate than to retrain their long term employee.

[pnwmom]

76. Why didn't you re-advertise with a higher salary?

You were trying to save money, and your access to H1B techies is why you can.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

79. The obvious response is "why don't you give more of your money away?"

Good for you if you do, of course, but that's precisely the question you're asking.

[pnwmom]

84. So employing Americans at market-based salaries is giving money away.

That IS the thinking of those who falsely promote a need for more H1B visas.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

85. No, employing Americans at non-market-based salaries is giving money away. N.T.

[pnwmom]

86. It isn't market based when you encourage the employers to hire

H1B workers because they're cheaper. A market-based salary would be whatever salary is required to get qualified US applicants.

You appear to think "market based" should include the whole global market. And in that case, we might as well forget about even having a minimum wage.

[Xithras]

87. Blame capitalism and free trade.

The problem is relatively straightforward. Over the past 15 years, most major corporations have either completely eliminated their IT departments or scaled them back enormously, handing much of that work over to consulting companies like the one I work for. We basically offer backoffice IT solutions to companies that no longer wanted to run their own, or who don't want to keep the more specialized (and expensive) talent in house.

We provide those services to our clients under contracts. When those contracts expire, the clients generally seek proposals from multiple other similar companies offering the same types of services. We're also competing head to head with outsourcing firms around the world who can do the same job for a fraction of our costs. Simply because we're in the United States, we are already at a cost disadvantage compared to some of our competitors and have to keep labor costs in check in order to stay competitive at all. It's true that we could have offered him a higher salary, but rising payroll costs would put the entire client contract in danger. If that happens, the job and 100% of its wages and profits are probably heading off to India or China, and out of America completely.

The reality here is that overseas competition and the need to compete with multinational consulting companies limits our wage schedules even when the worker is located here in the United States. Our corporate clients, both American and overseas, have no particular loyalty to American consulting companies and are more than willing to send those jobs out of the country if they no longer believe us to be the "best deal". Companies like ours have to strike a balancing act...we have to offer sufficient wages to attract workers, while at the same time keeping labor costs under control to avoid pricing ourselves out of the market.

In an ideal world, these companies would just hire these specialized workers themselves and companies like mine wouldn't exist. In a better world than we have, companies wouldn't look overseas for consulting services, and American companies could more readily pay American workers more attractive wage scales. In our world, American IT companies have to fight tooth and nail for every contract, and free trade shoulders more blame for IT wage stagnation than greedy managers or H1-B visa's do.

[One_Life_To_Give]

89. That is a more honest answer

Saying that you can't afford to pay more than an equivalent employee in Bangalore, Manila or Shanghai makes sense. It's an honest answer even if we don't like to hear it.

[4Q2u2]

26. You see a problem but...

How much money could a company charge others if they had the only IT person who could sovle very specific problems. So it would be more than cost effecxtivce and beneficial to train people. Start an apprentice program with High Schoolers(The way business did it for a couple thousand years), set a training Interships with Tech Schools. There are other alternatives, Niche or not.

[seabeckind]

36. I have to take issue with this

I read it yesterday and it has been scratching at me ever since for a number of reasons.

Your "search" for someone to fill that position resulted in no one in the USA who could do it. But the statement should have included the phrase "at that time". Perhaps 6 months before there were a number of candidates, before that there may have been even more.

Had your company advertized in the universities that such skill were needed, I'm sure that any number of potentials would have gotten the education. Believe me, what you described isn't ignored in the educational circles, it just isn't one of the mainstays because of the lack of opportunity. I learned skills in my graduate courses that had little practical application in many of my jobs but that background gave me an edge -- eg, writing a compiler from scratch.

The biggest problem I have with your argument is that you were caught flatfooted. That is ridiculous to a large IT consulting company. The first rule is if it's important, back it up. If it's real important, back up the backup.

That includes people. It especially includes people.

And then there's the fact that this person worked on a contract for a customer. I don't think that speaks very highly for the competence of your company. You weren't caught flatfooted -- they were. I wonder who your MBA management blamed.

I think your company cut corners to increase their bottom line. What did you bill this $165k out at? And how much was the H1B really paid?

I find this a very weak argument for H1Bs.

[Xithras]

65. That's something we really debated about.

If we'd left the position open longer, I'm sure we would have found someone. We actually did discuss reaching out to Stanford, Berkeley, and some of the other local universities with comprehensive CS programs to see if there were any students who might be interested in working on the requirements for this job, with the promise of a position after graduation. In the end, we just didn't have enough time to go that route.

The biggest problem I have with your argument is that you were caught flatfooted. That is ridiculous to a large IT consulting company. The first rule is if it's important, back it up. If it's real important, back up the backup. That includes people. It especially includes people.

You are 100% correct and that's probably by biggest gripe about modern IT consulting companies. In order to get the contracts you have to price yourself more competitively than in-house labor. In order to do that, you need to be hyper-efficient with per-employee productivity numbers, which means eliminating redundancy wherever possible. That kind of system leaves little room for backup employees, and does leave us flat footed when a critical employee leaves on short notice. Ultimately, this is a problem created by the current consulting-oriented model that has dominated the enterprise IT market for the past 15 years, and isn't something that those of us lower on the food chain can do much about.

[FormerOstrich]

40. Someone is blowing smoke...

Do you really believe there is only one person that understands assembler code? Granted, it probably is difficult to attract mainframe programmers from the newest graduates.

High speed processing requirements/aggregate processing is not really niche.

You can frame the job description to fit a very narrow population. That certainly doesn't mean there isn't a large population that can do the job.

Seasoned IT veterans have mastered more languages than most have ever heard of.

I don't have time to respond to all the points I'd like to make.....but seriously...there is nothing new or unique here.

[Xithras]

60. ASM mastery was only one of the requirements.

I was only giving an example, and wasn't advertising the job requirements.

The software he optimizes for our banking clients handles billions of dollars worth of transactions per day, so there are a ton of other security and data integrity skill requirements that go along with it. Because he's optimizing code written by other programmers in higher level languages, he also needs to have mastery of all the higher level languages being used so that he can understand the intent of the original programmer when reviewing code. Not "know" or "know how to Google", but be a freaking guru at them.

FWIW, I've been a programmer for over 25 years and worked as an adjunct CS professor for a number of them. I know that we have a number of developers here, but I'm certainly in the top few when it comes to the number of languages and skills possessed. I, with all my experience, really don't have the skillset to do that job properly. Passably? Sure. I could probably figure it out well enough to write code that works. Can I guarantee that my skills are good enough to optimize code capable of handling tens of thousands of financial transactions per second, handling billions of dollars worth of ACH transactions per day, without losing a single penny? I certainly wouldn't bet my career on it (and to be clear, this is a job where one fuckup gets you sued, investigated by the feds, and blacklisted for life). Can I pass the criminal background checks, personal family interviews, drug tests, and other things needed to pass the bonding and insurance requirements for that kind of work? Not a chance. Hell, I've posted enough crap on DU alone to disqualify me for the position.

[One_Life_To_Give]

45. When Oil Rig Eng's avg 175K you offer only 165k and in one of the highest cost of living places?

For that specialized a skill set I have to ask why are you offering so little. A good Cardiac Surgeon makes over $400k. Certainly someone as specialized as you describe comes close to that.

[Xithras]

61. Do the math again.

$165,000 + signing bonus + housing allowance + $100k housing bonus at 24 months. That works out to over $498,000 in compensation after 24 months, or $249,000 a year for the first two years.

[jeff47]

54. So pay more.

What do you think happened "back in the old days" before H1Bs? Companies paid more.

You're looking for a senior, highly skilled developer in one of the most expensive parts of the country.

You're offering the money I can get in a much, much less expensive part of the country.

Of course I'd never apply for your job, even though I have the skills to do it.

Your post is a demonstration of management failure. First, your company did not have a transition plan for losing a critical employee. Second, your company believed that they could dictate salary instead of the market dictating salary. Third, they compounded the mistake by putting in a time-limited employee who's already demonstrated they'll easily abandon their employer, and still don't have a transition plan to deal with the inevitable result.

And lastly, you actually think that assembly is rare. It isn't rare, it's just expensive.

[pnwmom]

74. If that were true in general then IT salaries would be going up as a result of the shortage.

But they're not, despite your example.

If you were offering qualified Americans enough to relocate to the Bay, they would. But you'd rather hire someone cheaper from China.


http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-myth-of-americas-tech-talent-shortage/275319/


Companies like Microsoft often claim that America is suffering from an economically hobbling shortage of science, math, and computer talent. The solution, they argue, is to let employers fill their hiring gaps by importing tens of thousands of educated guest workers beyond what the law currently allows. Much as farmers want to bring in field workers from Mexico on short-term visas, software developers desperately want to bring in more coders from India.

SNIP

Could it be that schools aren't teaching their students the right stuff, that despite their fancy credentials, today's grads lack the programming chops or logical prowess needed to succeed at a Google or Microsoft? Not so much.

In industries where talent is scarce, economists generally expect wages to rise, as desperate companies go chasing after what few qualified souls they think can do the job. That's exactly what's happened to oil and gas engineers over the last decade during the energy boom, for instance. But while there have certainly been anecdotal accounts of Silicon Valley firms tossing outrageous sums at elite college students, in the big picture, programmer salaries have been stagnant ever since the dotcom bubble went bust more than a decade ago. The pattern holds whether you look at the national data, or just at traditional tech centers such as Silicon Valley, the Route 128 corridor outside Boston, Dallas, or Austin, where you'd expect competition for talent to be hottest.

SNIP

Often, it comes down to a matter of age: Companies frequently save money by hiring a young, less experienced immigrant instead of an older American who would command a higher salary. And because the bureaucratic hurdles make it difficult for H1-B holders to switch jobs -- particularly if they're stuck in line waiting for a green card -- guest workers have notorious difficulty bargaining for promotions or raises. They also can't go off and start their own businesses, as they'd lose their visa. Unlike green card holders, they're professionally chained in place.

[pnwmom]

5. So train these tech people in the specific areas you need. That's how it always

used to work. Anyone with a technical degree is capable of expanding their knowledge base.

This could also be a matter of how you're screening your applicants. Using very specific search terms in a computerized search can fail to turn up very qualified applicants who could easily shift their focus.

[dilby]

8. It's not how it works at all.

Asking someone who develops iPhone apps to start learning the latest .h265 codec is pretty much like asking a Spanish teacher to learn Japanese and become a Japanese teacher next year. Yeah it's possible with years and years of investment and training but it's a bad investment.

[pnwmom]

11. Yeah, but asking someone who developed one iPhone app to develop another one

isn't such a stretch.

My husband's company is in the process of shedding thousands of experienced, well-paid tech people because they're rather hire new graduates in non-union states. All this talk of shortages is just another way of driving salaries down.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-myth-of-americas-tech-talent-shortage/275319/


Companies like Microsoft often claim that America is suffering from an economically hobbling shortage of science, math, and computer talent. The solution, they argue, is to let employers fill their hiring gaps by importing tens of thousands of educated guest workers beyond what the law currently allows. Much as farmers want to bring in field workers from Mexico on short-term visas, software developers desperately want to bring in more coders from India.

SNIP

Could it be that schools aren't teaching their students the right stuff, that despite their fancy credentials, today's grads lack the programming chops or logical prowess needed to succeed at a Google or Microsoft? Not so much.

In industries where talent is scarce, economists generally expect wages to rise, as desperate companies go chasing after what few qualified souls they think can do the job. That's exactly what's happened to oil and gas engineers over the last decade during the energy boom, for instance. But while there have certainly been anecdotal accounts of Silicon Valley firms tossing outrageous sums at elite college students, in the big picture, programmer salaries have been stagnant ever since the dotcom bubble went bust more than a decade ago. The pattern holds whether you look at the national data, or just at traditional tech centers such as Silicon Valley, the Route 128 corridor outside Boston, Dallas, or Austin, where you'd expect competition for talent to be hottest. S

SNIP

Often, it comes down to a matter of age: Companies frequently save money by hiring a young, less experienced immigrant instead of an older American who would command a higher salary. And because the bureaucratic hurdles make it difficult for H1-B holders to switch jobs -- particularly if they're stuck in line waiting for a green card -- guest workers have notorious difficulty bargaining for promotions or raises. They also can't go off and start their own businesses, as they'd lose their visa. Unlike green card holders, they're professionally chained in place.

[Lancero]

41. Actually, in your example it is how it works.

Studies have shown that it's easier for someone to learn a new language if they are already bilingual. Hell, it's easier now then it's ever been to learn a extra language with all the resources available.

Most people don't because they have no reason to. Give em a reason to learn a new language and they will.

So, either your case would work a lot similar or you just chose a piss poor example.

[Retrograde]

67. But your Spanish teacher already has part of the needed skillset

put that teacher in a Japanese immersion environment for a year and he or she could very well handle the basics of teaching a foreign language - and will get better with time and practice. The basics of design are like the teaching ability - they're pretty standard. The particular implementations are what vary.

(I've been in the computer industry since the 1970s, and imho the biggest change is that programmers are sloppier these days, since the emphasis is on hiring new grads with all the buzz words on their resumes instead of veterans who'd have the wherewithall to say they've seen those mistakes before.)

[treestar]

32. Has the company gone to the colleges to tell them about this?

Sounds like a plan to me.

[proverbialwisdom]

10. Why isn't this receiving DU recs? Read the comments at the article.

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2873670/anti-h-1b-senator-to-head-immigration-panel.html

<>

Many people who graduate with STEM degrees don't get jobs in the field. An Economic Policy Institute study last year found that the supply of STEM graduates exceeds by 2-to-1 the number of graduates who get hired.

94 Comments

http://watchdog.org/184003/obama-tech-immigrant/
http://www.revealnews.org/topic/labor-and-employment/

http://www.revealnews.org/article-legacy/job-brokers-exploit-indian-tech-workers-on-taxpayers-dime/
http://www.revealnews.org/article-legacy/job-brokers-steal-wages-entrap-indian-tech-workers-in-us/

THIS STORY (x2) WAS PUBLISHED WITH
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[pnwmom]

12. Thanks. K & R.

[ND-Dem]

14. good for them; there are some honest republicans.

[seabeckind]

38. Broken clock

Blind squirrel

Every once in a while a conservative will do the right thing but most times it'll be for the wrong reason. Oh well, I guess we should be happy for what little we get.

[L0oniX]

93. It's always the darkest just before the light. Where ever you go there you are. It just goes to ...

show ya ...you never know.

Some of my fav bar talk phrases.

[roaminronin]

17. Im a actually pleased to hear this

Especially considering the source. We have well educated professionals being laid off at 40 that would be happy to learn any skills required. Invest in American workers.

[woo me with science]

18. K&R. He is correct.

[Orsino]

71. But he is cheapening the word "hoax" for future GOP talking points...

...by applying it to an actual hoax.

[Man from Pickens]

19. "IT worker shortage" has always been a blatant lie

There's never been any such shortage. H1-Bs are a labor-dumping exercise designed exclusively to degrade wages and working conditions of American IT workers (and, for that purpose, it works).

[Scuba]

20. I wish Hillary would take such a stand.

[pampango]

21. Take our 'allies' where we can get them but these two guys are crazy on almost every other issue.

Rated 0% by NARAL, indicating a pro-life voting record.
ated 20% by the ACLU, indicating an anti-civil rights voting record.
Rated 0% by the HRC, indicating an anti-gay-rights stance.
Rated 11% by the NAACP, indicating an anti-affirmative-action stance.
Rated 100% by the US COC, indicating a pro-business voting record.
Rated 14% by UFCW, indicating a pro-management voting record.
Rated 0% by the LCV, indicating anti-environment votes.
Rated 0% by APHA, indicating a anti-public health voting record.
Rated 0% by SANE, indicating a pro-military voting record.
Rated 100% by USBC, indicating a sealed-border stance.
Rated A by the ALI, indicating a strongly anti-amnesty stance.
Rated 0% by the AFL-CIO, indicating an anti-union voting record.
Rated 100% by the AU, indicating opposition to separation of church & state.
Rated 0% by the ARA, indicating an anti-senior voting record.
Rated 0% by the CTJ, indicating opposition to progressive taxation.

http://www.ontheissues.org/senate/Chuck_Grassley.htm

Jeff Sessions is a member of the Tea Party Caucus.

Rated 100% by USBC, indicating a sealed-border stance.
Voted NO on comprehensive immigration reform.
Rated 0% by the AFL-CIO, indicating an anti-union voting record.
Rated 100% by the AU, indicating opposition to separation of church & state.
Rated 0% by the ARA, indicating an anti-senior voting record.
Rated 9% by ARA, indicating a pro-privatization stance.
Rated 0% by the CTJ, indicating opposition to progressive taxation.
Rated 5% by the LCV, indicating anti-environment votes.
Rated 20% by the NEA, indicating anti-public education votes.
Rated 27% by CATO, indicating a pro-fair trade voting record.
Rated 0% by SANE, indicating a pro-military voting record.

http://www.ontheissues.org/senate/jeff_sessions.htm

[TheKentuckian]

24. What do issues like abortion and immigration have to do with these visas?

We don't get a vote on committee chairs and nobody will be voting for either clown so what is the point of your post?

[pampango]

27. My point was these guys are crazy. Immigration is related to these visas but not the other issues.

Their positions on other issues shows they are conservative nutjobs even if they happen to be right on a particular issue or two.

Countries like Canada issue more immigrant visas for specialized skills rather than short-term work visas. The advantage is that legal immigrants are covered by the same labor laws that govern Canadian citizens so there is little room for exploitation like the is with H1-B visas. Immigration is relevant to these visas.

Sessions and Grassley are opposed to immigration, as well.

[joshcryer]

52. Anti-immigration + H-1B is consistent.

It's not that they're against H-1B for "concern over Amreican workers." It's that they hate brown people. The fucked up part is that they would never make laws to close foreign tax loopholes, which is the primary reason for offshoring.

[TheKentuckian]

62. So what does any of that have to do with these visas? No shit they are crazy

are you worried that folks here are going to support their campaigns or something?

What do you do? Can we give your job away too because all you seem to post about is ways to give our jobs away given our present structure to foreigners and gutting wages by hook or crook and excusing it by pointing to countries with different circumstances that we are not only in no way replicating but working overtime to strongly encourage them to assimilate ours.

[treestar]

33. Whether or not there is a shortage is debatable

But no one has that debate. Individual American tech workers of course don't want the competition or for the value of their labor to go down. Indeed, Republicans Senators will likely not have looked at it on labor statistic grounds, but will jump to anything to prove them foreigners aren't needed.

[jeff47]

56. Actually, no it isn't debatable.

If there actually was a shortage, we'd see salaries shooting up, lots of poaching between employers, and large number of graduates getting jobs in their field.

We don't see any of those.

[treestar]

75. That's an argument, at least

does it have any statistical back up? No one wants to really figure it out, because they simply wish to believe that it's that simple.

[jeff47]

80. Yes. Supply and demand does not only apply to goods.

If there's a shortage of oil, oil prices go up. If there's a shortage of bananas, banana prices go up. If there's a shortage of software developers, what do you think happens to the 'price' of software developers?

You could also look at what happened to salaries at the beginning of the dot-com boom, before H1B visas were massively expanded. Salaries went up a lot. And virtually everyone with a computer science degree had a computer science-based job 3 years after graduation.

[treestar]

90. Why would the salaries simply go up?

The business might not expand, as it does not have to. It may not be able to afford to, but it can if it can import workers.

If I am paying 10 programmers $500000 a year and have more business, I have to hire more programmers at 50000 a year. I can't just start paying those programmers more for the same work. I'd have to forego the new business. Supply and demand is not that way for workers.

If we have a shortage of nurses, which we did, we did not pay nurses more. That wouldn't get us any more nurses.

[jeff47]

92. Why would the price of oil simply go up?

Yet it does.

Some people drive less due to the higher price. That's the same as the businesses that do not expand. That lack of expansion is a break on prices, but it doesn't stop the rising price completely.

I can't just start paying those programmers more for the same work

Actually, you can. See, you can actually put larger numbers on their paychecks. Believe it or not, it is physically possible.

Whether or not you can afford to do so is a much larger, more complex question. But just because you can't afford to hire more does not mean the "going rate" is what you want to pay.

Supply and demand is not that way for workers.

Of course it is. Why do programmers get paid more than fast food workers? Lots more people can do fast food jobs. The supply is much larger, so the wage is much lower.

That wouldn't get us any more nurses.

Yes, potential income never factors into people's choice of profession.

[FormerOstrich]

94. I think not.....

American (IT) workers don't fear competition but would like a level playing field.

It isn't a "foreigner" (implication of racism) issue. It's about the big boys manipulating things...

Such as "gentlemen agreements" to not recruit.....http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/24/us-apple-google-settlement-idUSBREA3N1Y120140424

Or IT firms that won't hire American workers.....http://www.computerworld.com/article/2692372/former-infosys-recruiter-says-he-was-told-not-to-hire-us-workers.html

The IT firms which employ mostly if not exclusively H1B visas negotiate with companies for filling their "contract" work. There are very few full time IT employes anymore. The jobs are created as short-term to hire contracts. US workers can't even get an interview.

American workers which aren't represented as well in the IT firms are frozen out.

[IronLionZion]

22. If there was such a shortage,

they should raise wages and companies should invest in training or partner with schools for more internship/co-op opportunities.

There are other reasons companies prefer foreign workers, and it has jack shit to do with skills or even salaries. It's about putting people in their place and having power over them through fear.

I oppose it for other reasons. I found myself blocked out of lots of government clearance jobs because racists act as if I'm not American. It's very frustrating to be brown in consulting/contracting. Don't worry, the jobs in defense and intelligence sectors are solidly behind the white wall for that unofficial reason.

[FLPanhandle]

23. There has never been a shortage.

Look at IT layoffs. They hire H1B's and layoff more expensive US workers. Bill Gates made a fortune paying congressmen to increase H1B workers and layoff off US workers.

[Mass]

25. He is right. There are plenty of tech workers who could be hired if companies accepted to train them

new techniques. May be the government could help them.

Companies refuse to train them and prefer to hire young foreign workers they can pay less than these older American workers.

[abelenkpe]

29. It's always been a hoax

I've worked for companies that lay off older experienced award winning educated workers who them turn around a few months later and claim they can't find enough workers while ex employees struggle to find work. Corps claiming this are and always have been full of shit liars looking mainly to replace labor with less expensive workers.

It's all about lowering labor costs.

[n2doc]

30. Good.

If we are going to have obstructionists running the Senate at least obstruct some harmful things.

[Agnosticsherbet]

31. Worked for a company once where all of the programers were on H-1B visas.

The owner could have hired trained citizen programmers, but those on H-1B's were paid less than the going rate.

I think that in this one thing, Sessions is dead on.

[hootinholler]

34. Why isn't this a Democratic position?

[Orsino]

35. Did Grassley and Sessions not receive their checks?

Why the honesty on this issue?

[GoneFishin]

37. Even a nutty, insane, right wing, batshit crazy, broken clock is right twice a day. nt

[magical thyme]

42. good news.

It burned my butt that tons of perfectly good tech writers and former friends of mine lost their careers while my creepy Australian boss's British girlfriend was overpaid as a tech writer at EMC, and they lived in a *rent-controlled* brownstone in BackBay through all the years of a Boston housing shortage.

The worst part was listening to the right-wing Aussie's constant whining and sniveling about how awful America is. Just effing leave, already. Leave our homes and our jobs to us.

[on point]

44. Actually this is great because the 'shortage' is a hoax by corps

That only want to drive down wages. Not only is there no shortage, but these corps are deterring STEM college students who see no future in outsourced and undercut jobs. A self fulfilling prophecy

[Throd]

51. The hoax extends beyond the realm of technology workers.

[OhioChick]

66. New H-1B bill will 'help destroy' U.S. tech workforce

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016111941

[Skittles]

68. I've seen that lie repeated right here on DU

and I am CONVINCED the only people "believing" that lie are the people who profit from pimping off American jobs

As far as a repuke seeing the light, we all know that only happens when they or their family are affected somehow - good, whatever it takes

[Thav]

72. There IS a shortage of qualified tech workers...

"Qualified" meaning being willing to work for $15,000 a year.

Highly trained or experienced IT workers cost money. A lot of businesses still see IT as a cost center, and will do as much as they can to cut their costs there.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

81. "Workers of the WORLD Unite!" Is still a damned good idea.

[1StrongBlackMan]

83. Great ...

Perhaps, here is an area that we all can agree ... Bipartisanship would not be a bad word!

[Yavin4]

88. Can't multiple things all be true at the same time?

1. Some tech companies abuse the H1B visa program.
2. U.S. tech workers could be re-trained for other needs but are not because it's easier to abuse the H1B visa holder.
3. There is a shortage in some areas of IT due to legacy systems, arcane programming languages and machines, or the latest technology is not being taught right now in schools. So, for these limited cases, an H1B is needed.

It is a vast, broad field. I work as a PM in a technology related field, but I don't program, administer a DB, or work on a network of servers, but it's still deemed IT.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

91. At the university where I taught between 1984 and 1986, computer science

was one of the largest majors, and computer science faculty were saying (with a mixture of pride and envy) that their recent graduates were getting hired by major high tech firms at salaries larger than their own.

OK, someone who graduated between 1984 and 1986, assuming an average age of 22 at graduation, would be 53 to 55 years old now. I wonder how many of these former computer science graduates, who did exactly what everyone told them to do, have now been thrown on the scrap heap.

Do you think their children, who have seen their parents begging for even short-term contract jobs, are going to go into IT?

It's just nonsense that someone with a computer geek frame of mind can't learn new things. Learning a computer language is MUCH less difficult than learning a human language. Comparing it to switching between Spanish and Japanese is just silly. It's more like switching between Danish and Swedish (and if you've watched "The Bridge" on Hulu Plus, you know that in this Danish-Swedish co-production, the Danish and Swedish actors each speak their own language and understand one another quite well, and I'm told that Norwegians can understand both.)

[AnnieBW]

95. Egad, I agree with Grassley and Sessions!

I need to take a shower!