Silicon Valley Pushes for Immigration Reform for Its Own Purposes

[Damajin]

If you think that Average Joe Voter doesn't matter, then what is the point of talking about anything? Your overlords will decide everything for you, bow before them!

The study you linked is interesting to read, but if you just blindly follow one study because it aligns with your beliefs, then there is little intellectual value to be had in talking with you on this topic.

So basically more of your passive aggressive nonanswers here because frankly you've got nothing but feels arguments.

The average joe voter doesn't matter because the policies aren't decided by voters, that's the great thing with all these social issues for the elite: gives the masses a team to join up with and fight against the other side while they rush off to steal all the money and opportunities.

Again, learn to read. You're basically trolling at this point because your arguments keep getting tossed in your face and all you've got to go off is your "this is my different way of thinking" schtick.

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Wait, so tech companies want more skilled workers becuase US ones aren't good enough and thats... bad?
Should you not just go back to school or something if this is a problem for you?

Except the US ones are good enough, they want foreign workers because they can pay them shit and work them to the bone under the implied threat of revocation of their H1B.

[vecnuh]

The problem with what you’re saying is the automatic assumption that they’re better employees when the only thing that is actually certain is that they’re cheaper. Your whole point is far too case by case specific to use as any kind of guiding principle, whereas to the tech CEOs the cost factor is the only principle, or more accurately said the one on which all other principles ultimately depend on for any kind of consideration. As was noted they’ll take a slight productivity hit if the cost savings more than make up for it over the calendar year.

Well that a pile of cap because a H1b worker cannot be the lowest paid person compared to other same positions in a company BY LAW, when they hired first H1b it was higher than the lowest paid native person, so the chain begins

[Aggrophobic]

So basically more of your passive aggressive nonanswers here because frankly you've got nothing but feels arguments.

The average joe voter doesn't matter because the policies aren't decided by voters, that's the great thing with all these social issues for the elite: gives the masses a team to join up with and fight against the other side while they rush off to steal all the money and opportunities.

Again, learn to read. You're basically trolling at this point because your arguments keep getting tossed in your face and all you've got to go off is your "this is my different way of thinking" schtick.

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Except the US ones are good enough, they want foreign workers because they can pay them shit and work them to the bone under the implied threat of revocation of their H1B.

Yes, and? You'd rather they moved the company somewhere else?

[Damajin]

Yes, and? You'd rather they moved the company somewhere else?

If they're going to just hire foreigners and fuck over the citizens then wtf does it even matter if they move somewhere else? This implied threat of moving the company elsewhere doesn't mean shit to the average citizen whose jobs are being replaced by H1Bs anyway, and it's not like every corporation in the country isn't using every single dirty trick in the book to scam out of paying taxes so really at that point what benefit exists to accommodating them?

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Well that a pile of cap because a H1b worker cannot be the lowest paid person compared to other same positions in a company BY LAW, when they hired first H1b it was higher than the lowest paid native person, so the chain begins

What law is that and where is it actually being followed?

[May90]

"You don't believe my opinion, so you won't believe facts!"

Oh, well that makes PERFECT sense.



You claimed that companies needed a lot more workers. So many that even the H1B visas aren't enough. So yeah, I would think that companies would be pretty desperate to find new talent if that were the case, I know that in any place I've ever worked we got pretty desperate to find people if we were short handed.

Of course, we all know that no one is actually that short handed and that it's all bunk.

That's true, the current numbers of H1B visas being granted is not nearly enough to realize the companies' potential, and, again, many CEOs will back it up with their words, and even actual lobbying attempts to increase the number of H1B visas issued. Look at any leading IT company, you will see a lot of people from all over the world there, many starting up exactly on an H1B or some other visa. Do you know why? Not because they are cheap - look at their salaries, if you think that. But because when you have a pool of potential workers the size of humanity, rather than just your country, you end up getting the best of the best. If someone overseas is better at coding for this particular type of tasks than anyone you've managed to find in the US, then you better hire that someone.

Really, I'm surprised we are even having this discussion. Is this really something some people don't understand?

[vecnuh]

If they're going to just hire foreigners and fuck over the citizens then wtf does it even matter if they move somewhere else? This implied threat of moving the company elsewhere doesn't mean shit to the average citizen whose jobs are being replaced by H1Bs anyway, and it's not like every corporation in the country isn't using every single dirty trick in the book to scam out of paying taxes so really at that point what benefit exists to accommodating them?

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What law is that and where is it actually being followed?

Dept of labor and yes you cannot even file H1b before you go through them. look up their website, it's called prevailing wage determination.

[Damajin]

http://www.epi.org/blog/new-data-inf...-h-1b-program/

New Data Show How Firms Like Infosys and Tata Abuse the H-1B Program

Outsourcing by the thousands

The outsourcing companies involved in the Southern California Edison (SCE) scandal I wrote about last week—where U.S. workers were replaced with H-1B guestworkers—are Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services. These two India-based IT firms specialize in outsourcing and offshoring, are major publicly traded companies with a combined market value of about $115 billion, and are the top two H-1B employers in the United States. In Fiscal Year (FY) 2013, Infosys ranked first with 6,269 H-1B petitions approved by the government, and Tata ranked second with 6,193. As with the SCE scandal, these leading offshore outsourcing firms use the H-1B program to replace American workers and to facilitate the offshoring of American jobs. Because of this, it’s likely that Americans lost more than 12,000 jobs to H-1B workers in just one year. FY13 H-1B data I’ve analyzed, acquired through a Freedom of Information Act request, reveals new details about how firms like Infosys and Tata are using the H-1B nonimmigrant visa program. Spoiler alert: they don’t use the H-1B visa as a way to alleviate a shortage of STEM-educated U.S. workers; they use it primarily to cut labor costs. But the other main arguments proffered to support an expansion of the H-1B program are easily debunked with even a cursory look at the H-1B data.

Lower wages

The principal reason that firms use H-1Bs to replace American workers is because H-1B nonimmigrant workers are much cheaper than locally recruited and hired U.S. workers. As Table 1 shows, Infosys and Tata pay very low wages to their H-1B workers. The average wage for an H-1B employee at Infosys in FY13 was $70,882 and for Tata it was $65,565. Compare this to the average wage of a Computer Systems Analyst in Rosemead, CA (where SCE is located), which is $91,990 (according to the U.S. Department of Labor). That means Infosys and Tata save well over $20,000 per worker per year, by hiring an H-1B instead of a local U.S. worker earning the average wage. But at SCE specifically, the wage savings are much greater. SCE recently commissioned a consulting firm, Aon-Hewitt, to conduct a compensation study, which showed that SCE’s IT specialists were earning an average annual base pay of $110,446. That means Tata and Infosys are getting a 36 to 41 percent savings on labor costs—or saving about $40,000 to $45,000 per worker per year.

Adding insult to injury, Infosys and Tata have a history of getting in trouble for paying even lower wages than they are already legally allowed to pay. In 2013 Tata paid $30 million to settle a wage theft dispute involving 13,000 foreign workers, and Infosys paid a record $34 million to settle a visa fraud case after it committed “systemic visa fraud and abuse of immigration processes.” As a general principle, companies that behave like this should not be allowed to benefit from the U.S. temporary foreign worker programs, much less be the top two beneficiaries of them.

H-1B is not a bridge to permanent immigration

The proponents for H-1B expansion claim that the H-1B program is a stepping-stone to permanent immigration. But the vast majority of H-1B workers at Infosys and Tata never get on path to legal permanent residence (often referred to as getting a “green card”) and citizenship: In FY13, Infosys only sponsored seven H-1B workers for permanent residence, and Tata sponsored ZERO H-1B workers, while the U.S. government approved 12,432 H-1B visa petitions for these two companies alone. (See Table 2) In other words, the H-1B workers Infosys and Tata hire are being used as temporary, cheaper, disposable labor, not as a way to permanently introduce talent and innovation into the American labor market.

H-1B is not about skills or skills gap

Proponents of the H-1B repeatedly argue that the program injects much needed skills into the labor market, which are presently lacking in the U.S. workforce. They claim the H-1B is used: 1) to recruit and hire the “best and brightest” workers from around the world; 2) to fill skills gaps in the U.S. workforce; and 3) as a way to retain talented foreign students with advanced degrees who received their education and training in the United States (this is a favorite canard of President Obama). H-1B data and the SCE case show that none of these arguments are even remotely true.

If American workers are training their foreign replacements before they get laid off, then it is quite obvious that it’s the American trainers—not the H-1B trainees—who have the superior skills. Are H-1B workers being brought in because they have extensive formal training, like an advanced degree? The answer to that is a definitive no. The vast majority of Infosys and Tata’s imported H-1B workers hold no more than a Bachelor’s degree. During the FY10-12 period, 78 percent of Tata’s and 85 percent of Infosys’s H-1B employees held only a Bachelor’s degree or less. Finally, there’s also no evidence that Tata and Infosys are using the H-1B to retain foreign students who studied and earned an advanced degree in the United States: Only 1-in-206 of Infosys’ H-1B workers held an advanced degree from a U.S. university, and even less of Tata’s H-1B workers did, just 1-in-222. (See Table 3)

All of the evidence makes it abundantly clear that the H-1B visa is being used to displace U.S. workers employed in decent-paying middle class STEM jobs. U.S. immigration laws are supposed to protect U.S. workers from being displaced, and they grant the Secretary of Labor ample authority to investigate egregious abuses of the H-1B program like the one at SCE, which is why EPI Vice President Ross Eisenbrey has called on Sec. Perez to investigate. Thanks to the reporting by Computerworld and the L.A. Times, there is now clear and credible evidence to justify the Secretary’s attention in this case. If the investigation finds willful violations of the H-1B program, Tata and Infosys should be debarred from using the program. Ultimately, a major substantive reform of the H-1B is required—but as the L.A. Times has editorialized in light of the SCE scandal—“Congress needs to fix it.”

There's 3 tables provided within the link that show the differences that are being highlighted here. It's utter trash to act as though these H1B people aren't being exploited and that citizen workers aren't being displaced in favor of increased exploitation.

[May90]

Again, anyone that has actually looked for jobs in the tech fields knows that this is bullshit. If there were a legitimate shortage, it would be easy to find jobs. As it is, jobs often have hundreds or even thousands of applicants.

You know what a REAL shortage looks like? That friend of mine that I mentioned in the other thread who sat around jerking off for a year and a half doing nothing, then when he felt like it finally went and applied to an electrical engineer job locally that had a position open for some time and instantly got hired for ~$100k.

That's what job seeking looks like when there's actually a demand in that field and an actual shortage. Tech is nothing like that right now, and everyone who isn't either naive or carrying an ulterior motive knows it.

There is no shortage of workers... There is shortage in the worker pool, however, limiting the quality of staff you can have. You can just close all borders, and sure, IT industry won't die out; it will do much worse though than it could otherwise.

And come on, there are 300+ million people in the US; there are around 65,000 H1B visas given yearly, that is a negligible number, it is less than the population of my small city in the middle of nowhere. They DO NOT cost you jobs significantly.

[Aggrophobic]

If they're going to just hire foreigners and fuck over the citizens then wtf does it even matter if they move somewhere else? This implied threat of moving the company elsewhere doesn't mean shit to the average citizen whose jobs are being replaced by H1Bs anyway, and it's not like every corporation in the country isn't using every single dirty trick in the book to scam out of paying taxes so really at that point what benefit exists to accommodating them?

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What law is that and where is it actually being followed?

Forcing them to use workers that cost too much won't help either though. That would simply kill off the company.
You just have to work harder for less. Deal with it or get a better education. It's not hard to get a job in the US of you actually spent a few years in school, you know.

[Damajin]

Dept of labor and yes you cannot even file H1b before you go through them. look up their website, it's called prevailing wage determination.

There wouldn't be data showing people being vastly underpaid if this was in effect.

[May90]

snip

And here is another study claiming the opposite:

http://www.heritage.org/research/rep...better-economy

So, why is your study right and my wrong? Riiiiiiight, because your study agrees with you and mine does not!

No one said to "close all borders".

Seriously, do you even understand the topic being discussed here? The way you sound, you think this is some kind of "build the wall!" discussion or something, and it's not about that at all.

I gave an extreme example to illustrate the point. Why so mad all of a sudden?

[vecnuh]

There is no shortage of workers... There is shortage in the worker pool, however, limiting the quality of staff you can have. You can just close all borders, and sure, IT industry won't die out; it will do much worse though than it could otherwise.

And come on, there are 300+ million people in the US; there are around 65,000 H1B visas given yearly, that is a negligible number, it is less than the population of my small city in the middle of nowhere. They DO NOT cost you jobs significantly.

In addition, the H1B, H1B1, and E3 programs require the employer to pay the prevailing wage or the actual wage paid by the employer to workers with similar skills and qualifications, whichever is higher.

https://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/wages.cfm

I don't know what sites you look here is the actual law

[Damajin]

There is no shortage of workers... There is shortage in the worker pool, however, limiting the quality of staff you can have. You can just close all borders, and sure, IT industry won't die out; it will do much worse though than it could otherwise.

And come on, there are 300+ million people in the US; there are around 65,000 H1B visas given yearly, that is a negligible number, it is less than the population of my small city in the middle of nowhere. They DO NOT cost you jobs significantly.

The size of the population is irrelevant man, again with the feels arguments. If you were going to take the feels route you should be talking about the people who've been displaced by H1B workers and have been forced to train their replacements before they got the boot, because that's happening quite a bit. They cost us jobs, period. That you think it's insignificant is your own personal view and bias.

[vecnuh]

"The Heritage Foundation"

Sigh.

In addition, the H1B, H1B1, and E3 programs require the employer to pay the prevailing wage or the actual wage paid by the employer to workers with similar skills and qualifications, whichever is higher.

https://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/wages.cfm

I don't know what sites you look here is the actual law

[Polyxo]

I have mixed feelings about h-1b visas. I don't have a problem at all with workers from foreign countries competing legitimately for quality positions. However, I am speaking from being formerly in a tech position that's a bit harder than most, so it wasn't that threatened. I do have a problem with the trend of trying to lay off quality engineers, and replace them with hordes of low level IT guys. That not only loses the jobs of quality engineers, but it often torpedoes the company. Still, the MBAs don't realize you can't replace one engineer with 3 IT guys and get the same result.

[May90]

In addition, the H1B, H1B1, and E3 programs require the employer to pay the prevailing wage or the actual wage paid by the employer to workers with similar skills and qualifications, whichever is higher.

https://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/wages.cfm

I don't know what sites you look here is the actual law

There are many more factors than this, too. I don't know all the details, but, as someone who might be applying for H1B eventually, I found that employers in small/medium companies are very wary of considering helping people with H1B application process. There are a lot of bureaucratic hoops and financial expenses coming with it.

The size of the population is irrelevant man, again with the feels arguments. If you were going to take the feels route you should be talking about the people who've been displaced by H1B workers and have been forced to train their replacements before they got the boot, because that's happening quite a bit. They cost us jobs, period. That you think it's insignificant is your own personal view and bias.

You are talking about the negative impact on the economy...dismissing the size of the population as irrelevant??? "Feels"? "They cost us jobs" is a void statement, as there are many more factors at play than just "one worker came, took my position, he cost me a job".

"The Heritage Foundation"

Sigh.

Dismissing the source? Okay. *shrugs*

[Damajin]

Forcing them to use workers that cost too much won't help either though. That would simply kill off the company.
You just have to work harder for less. Deal with it or get a better education. It's not hard to get a job in the US of you actually spent a few years in school, you know.

I could care less if it kills off the company, which frankly it isn't likely to do at all. Everyone and their brother knows it's about fattening up that profit margin and nothing else. You're being deliberately obtuse as the people applying for those jobs already have plenty of schooling, they just get kicked to the curb in favor of cheaper foreign workers.

And here is another study claiming the opposite:

You're going to use a Heritage Foundation link? Are you fucking dense? It's hysterical to see you clinging to a hardline Republican think tank study when all you do is bash them in other threads. Whatever justifies your POV though right? Next you'll link me a Chamber of Commerce study and say that's legit too huh?

[May90]

You're going to use a Heritage Foundation link? Are you fucking dense? It's hysterical to see you clinging to a hardline Republican think tank study when all you do is bash them in other threads. Whatever justifies your POV though right? Next you'll link me a Chamber of Commerce study and say that's legit too huh?

Yeah, I think we are done here.

[Damajin]

There are many more factors than this, too. I don't know all the details, but, as someone who might be applying for H1B eventually, I found that employers in small/medium companies are very wary of considering helping people with H1B application process. There are a lot of bureaucratic hoops and financial expenses coming with it.


You are talking about the negative impact on the economy...dismissing the size of the population as irrelevant??? "Feels"? "They cost us jobs" is a void statement, as there are many more factors at play than just "one worker came, took my position, he cost me a job".


Dismissing the source? Okay. *shrugs*

Yes, the size of the population in the context of this thread is IRRELEVANT. Totally meaningless.

It's not a void statement at all, it's 65k individual statements being made annually. But again it's amusing to watch you play the part of corporate puppet.

[vecnuh]

I could care less if it kills off the company, which frankly it isn't likely to do at all. Everyone and their brother knows it's about fattening up that profit margin and nothing else. You're being deliberately obtuse as the people applying for those jobs already have plenty of schooling, they just get kicked to the curb in favor of cheaper foreign workers.



You're going to use a Heritage Foundation link? Are you fucking dense? It's hysterical to see you clinging to a hardline Republican think tank study when all you do is bash them in other threads. Whatever justifies your POV though right? Next you'll link me a Chamber of Commerce study and say that's legit too huh?

And sir you ignore the actual law, and go after Heritage foundation, well played