The fallacy of talent shortages and H-1B visas

Let us face it. These Indians have been brought by consulting companies (Body shoppers) from India, for two reasons: 1) These are essentially "skilled, but cheap labor" who are nothing but slaves. They will do anything for a living, including 80 hour weeks, working at midnight, talking about work over the phone with their colleagues (like "Hey I got your email", and I am working on that". and things like "line 26 of your script seems to have a problem). And you will hear this at 10 in the night. So these idiots would do the work of 4 persons -  like a business analyst will be a project manager, an architect and a tester, and work for $ 30 an hour!

Have you noticed how defensive they get, when you tell them that they have taken over the country and our jobs? Have you noticed how some of them can NOT get one full sentence in English right, and yet are "Systems Analysts",  "Program Managers", and even "Chief Technical Officers" of IT companies. Oh yeah, now they will call me a racist.......... but that is OK...... I know I am not a racist.   Have you noticed how some of these guys can't pronounce "ZERO"but  call it "JEERO"?

I was in India 3 years back and saw some of these idiots from the IT industry brag about how they run the US economy and how we would be destroyed, without their help. There is also this story going around all towns in India that Americans ( read "white") have less gray matter than Indians - and that is precisely why there are thousands of Indians here in the IT industry.

I blame our Industry here which has shown little or no patriotism. Instead of hiring people locally, they hire these guys from India, simply because they want to save money - that is a shame.  We need to be proud of who we are, and get rid of these vermin.

It is time to send these guys home, where they can live in the midst of 10 % inflation, traffic snarls, massive corruption, and eternal hopelessness.

Infosys senior level meetings : "We will dump 6 million Indians in US and capture their entire IT market and no American will ever come to know about this. We will throw these Americans out of their own country. They don't know what we are doing over here."

How old are you Ms. Bowers? And do you remember a time when IT in USA was run by Americans and the economy was booming and we were told Indians would only be here until Y2K and then go home. "Temporary guest workers" are not only temporary. They've now taken over and are deliberately excluding Americans from IT jobs due to historical reasons.

Hi Ms. Bowers,

Good day and this is an article that states the status on the lack of American Jobs with a high degree of clarity. Being an Asian Indian American and a Non IT professional, I can say, I am unbiased in my evaluations.

Pardon me for my techie type format in the response below: These are the facts that I came to understand since the years of getting my visa transitioned from student, to H1 B and then the green card and finally the grand award of the much coveted US Citizenship.

(1) The Companies hiring H1-B professionals cannot get away with hiring foreigners in the US with lower wages just because the local American Citizen or Green Card holder will not accept similar wages. This is because there is a minimum wage range for the given position with the associated job description. The details are also supposed to be posted for public view on a totally transparent basis. My colleagues, when I was on the H1-B decades ago teased me for knowing what salary I would get paid which was posted on the Advertisement.

So, if the US companies are getting away with hiring workers in the US on H1-B visas, then it tells me that the auditing process of their paperwork has been massaged to show one thing on the paper and in reality paying something else to the H1-B foreign worker/professional.

(2) This means we have an ineffective tracking and auditing mechanism and are unable to hold the employers liable and take legal action to deter other employers from this alleged practice.

(3) Second, if they are truly hiring workers at the wage that we may allege as "low wages" the American professional that is equally qualified is not understanding what the market pays and is unwilling to take the job and rather be unemployed for a longer time instead of taking it and getting the job benefits he needs and then moving on to something more suitable in the near future like any other professional who changes jobs and grows professionally.

(4) There should be a system that shows for every employer on a city basis as to what types of jobs have been filled with H1-B workers, the description, salary and competitive market wages and whether there were truly American professionals available to work on the same job or not. We severely lack such a system or even anything close to it.

(5) One of these military vets enlisted as a technology professional and a team amongst us can design a web based system that would help or encourage employers to voluntarily share their H1-B demographics and then we would know where and when to take action. It is not very difficult to to track this as each city tax database would have how many H1-B workers are living in the city and paying their corporate job related taxes and so we can cross check to see if these corporations are sharing everything they need to or are simply doing a dog and pony show.

Question is how long will we be singing the same song of hiring H1-B workers and getting nowhere? Corporations with power, wealth and name will try getting away with what they can till the the law gets its teeth on them. Until that happens, we will keep sharing our hypothesis and get no change for the unfortunate military vets who after having served our country are going nowhere in their career, let alone living their dreams in America.

Would you like to do something about this? If so, please let me know.

Ms Bowers,

The problem in tech industry is that anyone who knows how to use MS word and search things in google think of themselves as tech savvy. And, if they keep blabbering about IT for few years, then they present themselves as tech writers. Founding fathers of IT always thought of the world  as a global village.Unfortunately, there aren't many Dennis Ritchies left in this world (If you know who he was!).

Dear Ms Bowers.

Did the Indians turka durr?

Warm Regards

And one more thing to note: I read a lot of comments about the cheap labor. Believe me, the Indian technology workers are not paid cheap when they move in to US. I have done technology recruitment in US and I know the compensation paid to American workers.  The IT compensation in India has grown so high that if they are offered low wages in US, they will just move back to India and move to another company with higher pay. It is very easy to draw conclusion without getting into the root of the problem. The only reason that Indian and other immigrant IT workers appear stuck in US low paying jobs is because of the visa regime. They move to US with a decent pay and start their family here. However,  The US visa regime makes it extremely difficult for non-immigrant technology workers to change company or shift jobs. This is the loophole exploited by the companies to stagnate their pay or skill set. Moreover, with kids and family settled in US, it becomes difficult for them to move back or move to a different country by then. If the government had relaxed their insensitive regulations around visa and improved the permanent residency program for "Legal immigrants", the technology job market will become much more dynamic and productive. I personally know a lot of technology people who are extremely talented, can become great entrepreneurs, and they are willing to setup new companies in US and create jobs in America but are unable to do so because of the restrictive visa regime. 

There is one thing in the world that you MUST understand "You can't have your cake and eat it too". If America wants to have leading global financial institutions such as GS, Citibank and have other leading global MNCs such as Coke, Pepsi, Walmart, KFC etc then American companies need to keep their technology cost low. The only reason there is such a clamor about Indian getting technology visas is because it is on your face. If a factory is closed in US and moved to China where there is forced labor and miserable working conditions, no one makes a noise. However, you can see Indian technology workers sitting next to your office cube and that is what makes you uncomfortable. Keep in mind one thing: Making H1B difficult won't stop the flight of technology jobs overseas. Business is always smarter than government and they will find 10 new ways to overcome the limitations. On the other hand, technology immigrants have actually been a boon to American economy. The reason that the housing market in New Jersey - New York region is so strong is because of the demand generated from immigrant technology workers (read Indians). Also, keep in mind that these people move to US when they are at the most productive age and are consumers of American products. Each family buys a car, rent house and most importantly pays full taxes and social security without getting any political or social benefits. Next time you make such a biased opinion, just walk over to the next cube, talk to that Indian technology guy and may be you will discover that he is much smarter than your "Smart looking for job military vet" guy. 

I'm an H1B visa holder , and I get paid in 6 figures because I really bring hardware tech innovation to the States. That being said I deplore the general state of the H1B and the arguments for it. Most of them are low -tech workers under the guise of hi-tech workers doing menial jobs for what would be considered a pittance in the US. Wonder when this will improve. This also creates a stereotype of the H1B worker and a general classification of them as being from India or China. Wish something could be done about this.

... the training to accept low wages and poor working conditions. It makes me sick.

They call them 457 visas, here, and they've been using them to get cheap labour in the booming mining centres as well as in IT and other areas. When we started losing our manufacturing jobs to foreign competition we were told not to worry, because ours was primarily a service economy. Then they started outsourcing the back offices, call centres, customer service, and sales areas. But we still had agriculture.... until China started undercutting our food products and even buying our farmland. For a while we thought we'd always have the lead in high-tech and IT, but now the foreign competition is coming here to take the jobs. So, what have we got left (besides more wealth asymmetry)? The current laws governing these visas -- not to mention free trade -- are economically irresponsible and fundamentally unpatriotic. IT may be the best educated and informed industry to be under threat, so perhaps we should be leading a campaign to save our nations from this blight. (Perhaps if we could find a way to legitimately threaten executives and politicians with reciprocal outsourcing...)

Everything these days is viewed only in the short term. Yes, you can get overseas workers to do the same work for less pay than home-grown workers - NOW - but in so doing the home-grown population is being deskilled - what's the use of studying if the job you're aiming for is going to be outsourced? Once the outsourcing country has been thoroughly deskilled, the overseas workers and suppliers can raise their wages and prices as much as they like and the outsourcer can't do a thing about it other than pay up. Even governments only think in the short term because chances are that in a few years time when there's a general election someone else will have to clear up the mess they make. I sometimes despair at the general stupidity of leaders.of industries and countries - and those who put them there!

The immigration reform bill addresses the issues raised in this article, it's not just an increase in the H-1B cap, there are various additional measures included in it to stop misuse. http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-113s744rs/pdf/BILLS-113s744rs.pdf Read Subtitle B and C of Title IV.

First and foremost, there is a surplus of laid-off and or forced-out retirement senior talent individuals in the engineering, programming and other high tech fields of research & development with the needed skills to fill all of the American labor market needs and more!. But, they are not coming back on the" cheap side" at H-1b visa prices and conditions. For the employers, this is great; they can use the h-1b visa and other less known government programs & gimmick loopholes to bring in foreign cheap labor and thus ... reduce their labor cost by almost 70%. The second benefit is that after ten years of this USA practice, the employers/industry has succeeded in lowering the value of being an employee engineer, scientist, programmer etc.and there is no more job security in these fields to protect them. Effectively, we fired the American worker and replaced him/her with much cheaper foreign workers; just as we replace American goods with cheaper foreign goods, ie China. There is enough laid off, force out and forced-retirement talented-American individuals who are ready and willing to work at their previous or similar levels; but not at the cheap h-1b visa levels. The medical and legal industries are also looking for ability to milk the h-1b visa program. Executive compensation skyrockets at the expense of replacing American labor with cheap foreign labor. In the fortune 1000 companies, it is absolutely about reducing the cost of labor by the process of ... getting rid of good American expensive labor, declare a "shortage of needed people available", and then move forward to bring in good young foreign labor at very low prices with promises of incremental increases for performance over long time periods. The strategy also stops the progressive salary and compensation increases of current workers and new hires; a technique that has put a damper on rising salaries as well as a cap on the value of American engineers and other technical workers. Since 1978, hiring cheap overseas talent and the use of the later h-1b visa programs and their equivalent programs have reduce average yearly cost of hiring the skilled technical and engineering talents by 68%. The value of being an engineer, scientist etc in America today is pretty much reduced being a used car salesperson at Burger King. The American job market is flooded with engineers, programmers etc at the now value of a dime-a-dozen; those who have been or currently being replaced by foreign workers. The medical and science fields are other targeted groups, as the giant companies, hospitals etc of the medical industry etc look to bring in h-1b visa cheap international talent to reduce their labor cost by laying off or forcing talent to retire..

India no longer pays most of it's IT workers a low wage. I hear this lame excuse about the need for the best and brightest by many of the biggest IT firms, It is interesting that we have made outsourcing deals where we enabled training of foreign workers, but those same companies fail to train IT people in the US. There are many older IT people who have stopped certifying and training because of the incessant certifications that expire and the amount of new products with incremental revisions that are packaged with costly training programs. Give me an IT person with 20-30 years experience over a certified "paper" beginning IT worker. The difference: The young IT worker may know something right away but often do not understand what happens when those changes are made. The older IT worker usually understands interaction between systems, data and devices. Downtime is expensive. Experience reduces downtime. There is no shortage of IT workers. H1-B brings over labor that work for substantially less. Some high end H1-B workers are brought in at the expense of others who can perform the same position. The US is #1 in software and H1-B puts that in critical jeopardy. H1-B inhibits the growth of IT workers here in the US. Let's not forget that IT will be used as a tool for gathering intelligence by countries and bringing foreign workers here decreases our National Safety. The H1-B process should be extremely selective and reduced.

In the early 80s my brother in law, a journeyman carpenter, moved to Houston to find work. One hundred thousand Americans were moving to Houston each week; because of job loss and manufacturers closing their doors. Houston was building vast new subdivisions and it appeared to be a good fit for his skill set. But contractors would not hire my brother in law. They did not want American construction workers who knew what they were doing. Contractors wanted cheap illegal immigrant labor that would do what they were told and not question shoddy construction! And unlike American craftsmen, illegal workers accepted living ten or twenty to a house or apartment. But is that fair to Americans who mastered the trades and sought to live the American dream?

Why bother to hire more expensive local people (or even, GASP, train some - didn't businesses used to do that?) when you can import cheap, outsourced workers who won't be around long enough to need messy expenses like long term health benefits or retirement funds.

"An excellent article by Martin Kaste for" The hyperlink refers to the previous H-1B report by the GAO.

unrealistic expectations. The main unrealistic expectation is they think there is such a thing as an ongoing free lunch (something for nothing or very little.) Hence H1B visas exist as a technology smorgasbord. Towards this end job-ads are designed to further the misconception that there aren't qualified U.S. citizens to do those jobs. These can be summed up by the want-ads looking for 5 years of experience with a technology that came out two years ago. See, we can't fill this position no matter how many U.S. citizens we interview! I don't know how [ianh] defines hefty salary for their Irish friends but that isn't really the issue. The issue is that pay for H1B workers is less than what an American would receive doing the same work. And the system is in a bad feedback loop rewarding H1B placement firms to bring in these lower wage workers. My question is have companies spilled these tactics over to other parts of their workforce? Is that why wages are stagnant compared to executive level pay?

Say what's really the problem. (Cause you'll be called Anti-Indian) But we Know the problem is coming from a country next to Pakistan that under cuts our labor.

Does the crying need for H1B visas & lack of 'home-made' STEM workers mean the law of supply & demand has been suspended? If there really was such a need for more STEM workers then the limited supply would drive up price, which would encourage more students to study those fields & more workers to stay in the field, thereby solving the "shortage". Students aren't stupid (most of them, anyway) - they can see just how highly valued STEM workers are by looking at outsourcing, layoffs, etc. In short, corporate America needs to put it's money where it's mouth is.

I am in the UK and it appears that we are suffering the same issues. The recruitment agents are given a set of requirements and the potential employer will only accept people meeting the requirements. There does not appear to be a method of taking what is out there and developing the people. Or perhaps another part of this is people went through the development path of operations, programming, analysis, design and management. Operations and programming are offshore now so new people cannot develop via operations and programming. The other catch is having training and a qualification is not enough so people are falling down by getting qualifications but have no experience of the real world. Those who get through on qualifications alone mess up and make the recruiters cautious making requirements stricter weeding out the good and the bad. Perhaps the US and the UK have to develop a "home grown" initiative to bring local people into local jobs.

The link to the NPR All Tech Considered piece goes instead to the GAO report.