raw deal more on Tech: A 'hostile environment' for US natives????

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Rushabh Doshi <radoshi () cs stanford edu>
Date: May 5, 2005 9:14:10 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Re: [IP] more on Tech: A 'hostile environment' for US  
natives????


Dear Prof. Farber,

I wonder why the H1Bs get such a bad rap (I am an H1B holder myself).

From an H1B's perspective, things are stacked against us. We're on a 6
year death-timer, after which we cannot stay here any longer or have
to play visa games with the INS. We cannot apply for any government
jobs that require any sort of security clearance. A lot of companies
will hire permanent residents (green card holders) or citizens only.

We're not "stealing" jobs away from our American (or green-card-holder
and above) counterparts - we compete for the same jobs at the same
salary levels. We don't work for less money because a company is
sponsoring an H1 visa. If anything, we get the raw end of the deal -
we pay regular tax, but don't get to vote (taxation without
representation, some countries went to war over this), we pay
social-security taxes but don't get the benefits if we leave.  Most of
us make major remittances to family back home as well. Which is all
_fine_ with us.

Outsourcing jobs to India or China or anywhere else hurts H1B holders
just as much as any citizen or green-card-holder. In fact, it
probabaly hurts the H1B a lot more - given two candidates who are
equal in all respects, a company is more likely to hire a citizen /
GCH since they don't have to bother with the time and money hassles
involved in dealing with the INS.

H1B caps and making the Green Card process more difficult will only
hurt the US in the future. Our countries have been complaining of
"brain drain" for a long time. The reason is obvious: the brightest
and smartest students in our countries aspire to come to the US for
education. After they're done, the next steps are a good job, a green
card and eventual citizenship. What do you have in the end? - a nation
that constitutes some of the brightest minds from the planet.

Now you make it very difficult to get a green card and kick people out
if they don't have one. India and China and other countries that once
complained of brain drain should rejoice - they're going to get some
of their people-capital back. Not only that, US employees should fear
their jobs even more - the people that you just kicked out are going
to go back and become part of Indian or Chinese or other native
companies that are not interested in doing simply "outsourced" work
but a company that competes on a global scale with the likes of
Microsoft and Oracle. After all, its the internet, and moving a few
"bits" of your product across the wire to your market is not very
expensive.

The US immigration policy is (seemingly) all screwed up. The US makes
it incredibly hard for a normal, hard-working,
never-done-anything-wrong person to become a citizen and does
everything it can to make that person go away. Having a somewhat
looser immigration policy in the past has helped the US become the
giant that it is. Tightening this policy and kicking people out is
like tightening the noose around the giant's neck (bad analogy, but
I'm not very good at those).

Thank you,
-Rushabh

PS: These opinions are strictly personal and do not represent those of
my employer or of anyone other than myself.

On Thu, May 05, 2005 at 08:09:00PM -0400, David Farber wrote:

> Begin forwarded message:
>
> I find this pretty interesting, in light of the fact that I'm a hiring
> manager in San Francisco and have had job posts out for the last 4
> months
> and *almost every single one* of the people who've responded are H-1Bs
> looking for work.  (most of them have existing jobs and are looking  
> for
> new ones).  Transferring an H-1B from one employer to another is *not*
> subject to the "cap" by the way, that's just for new entrants (people
> convering from other visa types like F-1 Student Visas or entering
> directly).
>
> I would say almost 90% of the resumes I get are like this.
>
> What's more, i'm on the CS Dept. advisory board at a major East Coast
> university and their enrollment in CS (all students, *including*  
> F-1s),
> dropped something like 75% from the peak 2 years ago and is up a bit
> from
> there this year it looks like.
>
> This is *exactly* by the way, what happened when I was a CS/EE
> student in
> 1976.  The huge layoffs of the end of the Vietnam War told everyone
> "don't
> go into Engineering".  So there were several *very* small classes  
> after
> that (I was in a year that was a little uptick after the smallest
> class a
> year or two before).
>
> However one thing was different then - no engineering  
> outsourcing.   So
> what happenned was there was a shortage of new grads in 1979/80 when I
> graduated.  The result was I doubled my salary every 18 months for the
> first 6 years I was working (from $18K in 1978 at my first job to over
> $60K only 4 years later).  This was great, I bought a house, etc.
> Everyone I worked with did the same thing.
>
> However that won't happen this time, because instead of raising
> salaries,
> companies are going to outsource the jobs to Asia.   Its happening in
> big
> numbers just a few miles from here, where Oracle lays off thousands of
> people while hiring thousands in Bangalore.
>
> For the most part, the people layed off *do* find jobs, because our
> economy generates *so many* of them.  Be glad we don't live in Europe,
> where new jobs are created less often than blue moons.
>
> An interesting and as yet uncovered *anywhere* that I've seen fact is
> that
> its become much harder for an H-1b to get a Green Card now.  Major
> employers (like Oracle I hear) have dropped getting green cards for  
> H-1b
> employees becuase of it.  (New regulations went into effect this year
> apparently, the new system is called "FAST" or soemthing like that.)
>
> In any event, this is going to flush a lot of 4-6 year H-1b people
> out of
> the system, and soon.  I'd expect to see major drops this year and
> next as
> people "time out".  You can't stay on an H-1b beyond 6 years.   That
> will
> cause *a lot* more demand for new ones.  The fact that the caps are  
> down
> may cause a major population loss in the Bay Area over the next few
> years
> (Santa Clara County already has a major population loss since the Dot
> bomb, this may extend that).
>
> Interesting times,
>   -jcp-
>
>
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--
Rushabh Doshi
http://keeda.stanford.edu/~radoshi


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