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How Is Expanding the H1B Visa Program a Winning Issue for Marco Rubio?
There’s a stinging jab at Rubio at the end of this emotional report. (The video is at the link; no embedding option, unfortunately.) We’ve heard these stories before about quality workers being fired and forced to train their replacements but the Disney angle on this one seems to expand the outrage from many different directions.
Is this where Jeb steps in to differentiate himself?
Published in Immigration
It sounded better when Marco was collecting his bribes, I mean campaign contributions. On the good news front a couple jobs opened up at Disneyland Bhopal.
H1-B, at least in my experience, isn’t about filling high-end jobs. It’s about replacing–or backfilling–your SAP SD analyst or ABAPer at two-thirds the salary. I actually discontinued a past firm’s program. The value/performance outcomes weren’t so great once legal fees, onboarding, and inevitable churn are accounted for.
Big strike against Rubio’s discernment if he thinks this program is driving innovation.
The narrative that America has a shortage of qualified high-tech workers is, and always has been, a lie. America has a shortage of high-tech workers that are willing to work for the salary a third world import gets. H-1B’s are an employment scam. It’s an open secret. Every Republican candidate in favor of them are betraying American citizens in favor of corporate donors. Law firms even have seminars teaching companies how to get around hiring a qualified American worker in favor of cheaper foreign labor. At the 1:40 mark, the speaker openly admits the aim of these programs.
Here comes Trump….
It’s not that there are not scientists and engineers here that need jobs, it’s just hard to find them that will work for H1B wages.
I don’t know guys. Tech companies up here (Intel mostly) are really scrambling to find employees. I don’t really see the H1-B program as being all that bad.
Exactly. But until someone starts asking politicians like Marco Rubio, “What is your message to Americans who have lost their jobs to lower wage foreign workers?” it’s not going to change. And the MFM sure as heck aren’t going to ask that question.
Rubio isn’t alone:
http://www.cruz.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=137
Are you in favor, then, of Federally mandated minimum wages?
Eric Hines
Yeah, but that’s not the way the program plays out in practice. Tech companies sponsor relative few H1-Bs. Outsourcing firms, however, make up the 9 of the top 10 sponsoring organization.
That’s quite a leap Mr. Hines.
Perhaps. But you seem to be favoring using Federal mandates to manipulate the labor supply so as to prop up wages. What am I missing?
Eric Hines
A most stinging jab indeed…..
I guess I am not exactly seeing the issue with Rubio’s statements on H1-B Visa prescriptions. The last I checked he intended to increase the overview of H1-B Visa and the number because
1) Roughly 1/3rd of illegal immigrants here came via the H1-B Visa. So more checks and manpower applied to the issue should eliminate the millions getting into the USA that way.
2) Legal immigrants that come to the USA to work are most likely not here to cause harm but to add to value of our society. If any firm is growing then it will most likely need more manpower and immigration can help to meet that demand.
Of course there are the concerns of firms hiring immigrants over natives. I got news, you can blame progressives. When you create a legal system that mandates minimum wages, minimum healthcare coverage, high corporate income taxes, dozens of needless and costly regulations, and other mandated “fringe benefits” it makes hiring immigrants the rational decision, after all firms are about maximizing revenue against costs.
Again, from my knowledge Rubio supports eliminating the minimum wage and other burdensome regulations so that natives can compete with immigrants equally as it ought to be in a free market. So by eliminating the regulatory state of the left and increasing/reforming a more regulated (more border patrol, border assets, and strategic fencing) immigration system you can maintain the competition of our market and allow for America to benefit from the immigration and the fresh manpower and minds it brings. Higher productivity and value from immigration is to the benefit of all Americans, not the least being the consumer.
You live in something called a country. By the way it seems that you are the one trying to manipulate the native labor supply.
Federal Mandates? Where do you find ANY evidence of that?
Yes, there should be Federally mandated minimum wages for illegals, along with heavy fines for employers who violate those wage laws. There should also be a surtax on the wages of non-citizen workers and the companies who employ them to defray the social costs of mass immigration.
So, Mr. Hines, are you in favor of impoverishing American workers for the benefit of large corporations and foreign nationals?
Not so much. I’m not the one applying limits to supply in order to maintain a price.
Eric Hines
Those are two quite different things. You’re conflating illegal behaviors with price floors on wages for legal employees.
No one is arguing that illegal aliens should get any favorable treatment at all. That’s your strawman.
Eric Hines
Please site data that 1/3 is due to H1-B visas. One site shows the estimate that 1/3 overstay all of the (legal) visas, and states “The Pew Hispanic Center estimated in 2009 that 55.8 percent of the illegal alien population was from Mexico and that Central America.
I realize your talking generalities here, but H1B visa holders get much more that minimum wages.
Either am I. Not everyone you find a use for has a right to a resident in the United States. That is part of being a country. A country should control its immigration based on what is in its interest. Are you some kind of citizen of the world?
The issue is not whether there are “tech” people in the US, it is whether they are in the right field, have the right training/expertise, and are willing to move to where the jobs are.
The surfeit of tech workers constantly cited by CIS is heavily driven by engineers laid off from the defense industry because of Obama’s shift of military resources to ObamaCare. I lived through the 1993 “peace dividend” years- layoffs were the norm as firms adjusted to new budget reality. My company laid off around 1,000 engineers- mostly at least age 45, in areas like quality assurance and packaging engineering, etc. The more flexible people, those with up-to-date skill sets in emerging technologies (wafer packaging and nano design, IT security, etc), were retained.
How likely is it that a software firm in Silicon Valley can use a manufacturing quality engineer who knows all about machining shaped warheads in Cleveland, does not want to go back to school, move from Ohio, and knows nothing about how to keep your web site from being hacked by Anonymous?
The alternative to importing software gurus from Bangalore is make/buy- contracting out to an Indian company. If the in-demand skills were readily available and geographically handy, would a company go through the agonies of foreign hiring?
If a person is willing to retrain himself as an expert on wafer design or software security, great. Or should the whole company to move to India?
Apple, Google, and Facebook colluded to hold down the salaries of tech workers for years. There is no shortage of skill workers an actual free market in our industry wouldn’t solve.
H1B programs are also rife with potential abuse. The power H1B companies weld over their workers lives is kinda insane.
The answer for the Disney type situation is to publicize it, and shame Disney. In that particular case, it looks as though they went from in-house to contracting out, basically a make-buy decision. If the employee is good, she should be able to get work with such a software services company.
In my own life, I have gone back to school 4 times, and had at least 4 jobs disappear out from under me- through mergers, bankruptcy, start-up failure, and organization end-game. In each case, I had to find something else, and educate myself to be ready to do the new kind of work.
I see the “Go [redacted] yourself” message is how we want to play it.
Good luck with that.
They are under a consent decree with the Obama “Justice” Dept for agreeing not to hire each others’ employees. A practical effect was that they didn’t bid up labor costs, but that wasn’t the goal, it was a side effect of trying to keep a full work force in places to move with the very fast market.
Bad? Sure. But just because they have sinned does not mean that there is not a real staffing problem.
To some people there are no countrymen, only assets to be used and disposed of, even when they’re neighbors. “Citizenship” is a concept for suckers in the crowd that doesn’t believe in borders or nations, just “free movement of capital and people” that treats “people” as just another depreciating asset to be rid from the books. I don’t know if Hines takes that view, but he sounds callous about the situation. Maybe he didn’t mean it that way.
If I received a salary of $50,000/year here in Fort Wayne IN, the cost of living calculator says I need $75,000 equivalent (50% adder) for the same standard of living in Portland. This is especially true for a breadwinner.
So the Portland (and for Silicon Valley it’s > $100K!) companies get single foreigners on H1-B visa for less, “shove 4+ of them into a 2 bedroom apartment,” but they’re really denying new American graduates (as Fricosis Guy states) a job opportunity. It would be better for all if they expanded into lower cost areas. Using the same calculator, even hot tech areas like Austin Texas would reduce the 75K salary to 55K!
A large tech company starving for employees just opens a subsidiary in India. Also, when they do H1-B visas, it’s likely at a decent wage and directly (rather than via an outsourcing company – although I have only limited anecdotal evidence) and probably lower fraud than other areas.
The bigger visa issue is non-tech companies that have tech groups. As pointed out, they liquidate their tech groups and hire outsourcing companies that in turn hire the H1-B workers. There’s probably more fraud here regarding the availability of US workers. The outsourcing companies probably play all sorts of games so that they do not have to treat the laid off workers as available candidates.
A side effect of trying to keep a full work force? Bullocks. What they wanted was to restrict worker options and clamp wages. What they did was contributed to a workforce shortage. The fact that they chose pretty much only have offices on the West cost further hampers their recruitment efforts. The idea that these companies are willing to move overseas if they don’t get more H1B workers but won’t open a few office on the East cost for potential employees who don’t want to move leagues away from family and into deep blue territory is tough to swallow.
The H1B program covers up more fundamental problems with wages, recruitment, and our immigration policy-a skilled tech worker on a visa for 6+ years with no clear path to citizenship-and is rife with abuses.
On paper H1B might be a good idea, but in practice I believe the bad outweighs good.
Please include the Midwest and the South as other areas for potential employees. ;-)
One of the original H1B purposes was for US companies (like Intel!) with foreign facilities to bring those employees to the US (1-2 years) for training, etc. It was not to replace US workers.