Backlash stirs against foreign worker visas

[BobStackFan4Life]

But amid calls for expanding the nation's so-called H-1B visa program, there is growing pushback from Americans who argue the program has been hijacked by staffing companies that import cheaper, lower-level workers to replace more expensive U.S. employees — or keep them from getting hired in the first place.

The H-1B program allows employers to temporarily hire workers in specialty occupations. The government issues up to 85,000 H-1B visas to businesses every year, and recipients can stay up to six years. Although no one tracks exactly how many H-1B holders are in the U.S., experts estimate there are at least 600,000 at any one time. Skilled guest workers can also come in on other types of visas.
An immigration bill passed in the Senate last year would have increased the number of annually available H-1B visas to 180,000 while raising fees and increasing oversight, although language was removed that would have required all companies to consider qualified U.S. workers before foreign workers are hired.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is among the high-profile executives pushing for more H-1Bs. The argument has long been that there aren't enough qualified American workers to fill certain jobs, especially in science, engineering and technology. Advocates also assert that some visa holders will stay and become entrepreneurs.

Critics say there is no across-the-board shortage of American tech workers, and that if there were, wages would be rising rapidly. Instead, wage gains for software developers have been modest, while wages have fallen for programmers.

The liberal Economic Policy Institute reported last year that only half of U.S. college graduates in science, engineering and technology found jobs in those fields and that at least one third of IT jobs were going to foreign guest workers.

The top users of H-1B visas aren't even tech companies like Google and Facebook. Eight of the 10 biggest H1-B users last year were outsourcing firms that hire out thousands of mostly lower- and mid-level tech workers to corporate clients, according to an analysis of federal data by Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at Rochester Institute of Technology. The top 10 firms accounted for about a third of the H-1Bs allotted last year.

The debate over whether foreign workers are taking jobs isn't new, but for years it centered on low-wage sectors like agriculture and construction. The high-skilled visas have thrust a new sector of American workers into the fray: the middle class.

Last month, three tech advocacy groups launched a labor boycott against Infosys, IBM and the global staffing and consulting company ManpowerGroup, citing a "pattern of excluding U.S. workers from job openings on U.S soil."

They say Manpower, for example, last year posted U.S. job openings in India but not in the United States.

Stanford University Law School fellow Vivek Wadwha, a startup adviser, said firms are so starved for talent they are buying up other companies to obtain skilled employees. If there's a bias against Americans, he said, it's an age bias based on the fact that older workers may not have the latest skills. More than 70% of H-1B petitions approved in 2012 were for workers between the ages of 25 and 34.

"If workers don't constantly retrain themselves, their skills become obsolete," he said.

Norm Matloff, a computer science professor at the University of California, Davis, agreed that age plays into it — not because older workers are less skilled but because they typically require higher pay. Temporary workers also tend to be cheaper because they don't require long-term health care for dependents and aren't around long enough to get significant raises, he said.

Because they can be deported if they lose their jobs, these employees are often loath to complain about working conditions. And even half the standard systems analyst salary in the U.S. is above what an H-1B holder would earn back home.

Such circumstances concern Americans searching for work in a still recovering economy.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/07/06/backlash-stirs-in-us-against-foreign-worker-visas/12266783/

 

[dot com]

The other side of the coin is that we are looting all the good minds from other countries.

 

[awaken]

We need to decide what kind of economy we're going to have. A lot of our manufacturing jobs have gone overseas, and we were told that our future was in the service economy and STEM. Now some of those jobs are going off shore, and H1-B threatens the remaining jobs onshore.

Are we telling our kids to go to college for $250k, major in STEM, take on $30k+ plus in debt, sign up and pay for government insurance you don't really need, and then have your wages suppressed, or job filled, by a non-American who has done none of this? This could dampen the "college is worth it" argument if it grows. There has to be a pay-off eventually in your career.

Oh, and ...

 

[EatLeadCommie]

There has always been a debate over the H1B numbers. In the late 90s, they really jacked up the numbers and it was certainly necessary in part with the dot com and tech boom. I think the main issue is seeing to it that they're actually paid what they're supposed to be paid per the employer's agreement with the DOL (that they'll pay at least the local prevailing wage). There's no enforcement mechanism on that end.

I don't know that the quota needs to be raised, but it would seem to me that with so damn many already going disproportionately to dudes in the computer industry, the problem would be that not enough folks are getting visas in other fields.

 

[dot com]

I don't know that the quota needs to be raised, but it would seem to me that with so damn many already going disproportionately to dudes in the computer industry, the problem would be that not enough folks are getting visas in other fields.

Tons in medicine too. I wonder how the numbers compare to computer industry.

Are we telling our kids to go to college for $250k, major in STEM, take on $30k+ plus in debt, sign up and pay for government insurance you don't really need, and then have your wages suppressed, or job filled, by a non-American who has done none of this?

You can go to plenty of state schools and get educated perfectly for these jobs for way less than $250k. You'd get the same employer health insurance the H1B guys have, and they'd probably prefer to hire you because there's no VISA paperwork to deal with. But first to get STEM educated you'd have to accept the earth is older than 10,000 years and climate change is a thing, and that's a major roadblock for 40%+ Americans.

 

[vadimivich]

As someone who has made or contributed to making a fair number of hiring decisions in the technology field - the number of qualified American candidates was always extremely low. We very rarely had the option of sponsoring someone for an H1B (they were nearly impossible to get), but we definitely did hire people who were in the country after being sponsored before.

I think the biggest deal with the H1B process is who is obtaining them for the candidates (staffing companies and not the end hiring firm) and the pay that they receive in response to that.

 

[WakeandBake]

Tons in medicine too. I wonder how the numbers compare to computer industry.



You can go to plenty of state schools and get educated perfectly for these jobs for way less than $250k. You'd get the same employer health insurance the H1B guys have, and they'd probably prefer to hire you because there's no VISA paperwork to deal with. But first to get STEM educated you'd have to accept the earth is older than 10,000 years and climate change is a thing, and that's a major roadblock for 40%+ Americans.

This.

And you have to have centralized education standards to keep up with global education standards that are currently whipping our asses. The push to decentralize education and let local school districts decide what and how to educate our kids is, IMO, going to keep us behind globally.

 

[ThinkingWithMyDeac]

Tons in medicine too.

Currently working on the hospital floor that I can see, 5 Caucasians , 2 African Americans, 5 Asians, 3 Indians. There are so many foreign workers in medicine, though at least it makes more sense because a lot of them get educated over here so it would be really dumb to waste the resources to educate these foreign workers (your taxes) only to send them back to their country.

 

[myDeaconmyhand]

As someone who has made or contributed to making a fair number of hiring decisions in the technology field - the number of qualified American candidates was always extremely low. We very rarely had the option of sponsoring someone for an H1B (they were nearly impossible to get), but we definitely did hire people who were in the country after being sponsored before.

I think the biggest deal with the H1B process is who is obtaining them for the candidates (staffing companies and not the end hiring firm) and the pay that they receive in response to that.

Out of curiosity, when you say that the number of qualified American candidates was always low, was it mainly a lack of educational qualification, previous training, or previous job experience?

 

[EatLeadCommie]

Currently working on the hospital floor that I can see, 5 Caucasians , 2 African Americans, 5 Asians, 3 Indians. There are so many foreign workers in medicine, though at least it makes more sense because a lot of them get educated over here so it would be really dumb to waste the resources to educate these foreign workers (your taxes) only to send them back to their country.

Are the Asians the nurses? Filipino nurses in particular?

Don't forget the researchers. A lot of the H1Bs are in research positions.