The theory behind the H1-B Visas is to allow companies to hire non-immigrant foreigners to fill positions that no American can fill. We’re a global economy, and I support the theory behind it. There are certainly times when there aren’t people in the United States that can do the work.
However, lately it seems the news is full of stories of Americans (and permanent residents) that are getting laid off and being required to train their replacements who have H1-B Visas.
On the surface, it seems like this situation is a blatant violation of the intention of the H1-B Visa problem. Under the surface, it also appears to be a violation. If you’re an IT worker, you should be worried. Here’s why:
To keep reading, click here: Is Your Job On the Line? What the H1-B Visa Means to American Workers
Couldn’t comment on the article itself so I’ll leave a few thoughts here.
I work in IT/software dev. Where I am, central Indiana, there’s <<1% unemployment in this industry. I don't know for sure about other markets but I hear the situation is similar.
It is very hard to find people to fill openings. And as a hiring manager I find that candidates know it and leverage it to try to get the bigger bucks. And overall it's not working.
What I see around me is a tendency toward hiring more people at the entry level and training/apprenticing them. So you'll have a handful of well-paid senior people as mentors and coaches and an army of less-expensive entry-level people.
The whole thing about using H1-B to effectively outsource work is just wrong. But I'm not sure it really means that IT people should fear for their jobs, at least not right now. What they should fear for is their salaries. I sense a strong tendency to reduce salaries by basically hiring lots, lots more entry level and paying them below market rate, which should drag down market rate.
I’ve got eyes and can see, I work (when I can get it as a contractor) in IT and I do see that, ABSOLUTELY, the H1B visa system is a scam to get lower wages for companies. Anyone in IT, aside from hiring managers, will tell you so. And those hiring managers who won’t admit it are afraid of telling the truth, just in case their company is investigated for “abusing” the system.
There is also the fact that it is hard for an H1B visa holder to switch jobs – they are stuck doing exactly as the manager tells them to, they cannot say “yea, well I quit!” because that means they would be forced to leave the country. So, the H1B visa holders are exploited by the companies as well.
So, it is a double win for the company – lower wages and employees who won’t/can’t quit.
Oh, and this isn’t a “racist” remark (although, I’m sure some folks will claim that it is). But, I have been to some meetings, here in the USA, in which English is NOT the language being used by most people on the team when talking about issues. The one company I worked at we had team meetings in which the team leader would ask everyone in Tamil and they would answer in Tamil – leaving me and another co-worker in the dark except for what they decided to translate for us! (again, that isn’t meant as a racist comment, I have been to Tamil Nadu in India and loved it there; and nothing against the people, not even the team leader in this case as some of the new hires had trouble understanding and expressing themselves in English. She was simply trying to be most efficient.)
For years, they have called moving jobs overseas “outsourcing.” It has sort of been a joke that the H1B visa system is known by many as “insourcing.” That should tell everyone what they really need to know about the impact H1B is having on the work force.
Personally, I do not see the system changing. The alternative would be for the entire operation to be outsourced and that would mean NO employees in the US paying any taxes. The government folks wouldn’t like that.
I have to disagree with the H1-B workers being “trapped” at a company and forced to take lower wages. The essence of the H1-B visa is that it’s transferable. If an employee wants to leave and get another job, they absolutely can! Many other companies are happy to pay the transfer fee to the H1-B worker and hire them.
After talking with a friend who was a victim of the Disney layoffs, technically, Disney didn’t hire most of the H1-B’s themselves. Disney hired consulting companies (I’ve heard that Cap Gemini and HCL are the 2 biggest ones they hired). Those companies hire the H1-B folks … or just move the work offshore in general.
The same friend says that the current CIO is not a Disney person, he’s a mercenary that just goes from company to company, fires/lays off a bunch of people, and then moves on, leaving a swath of destruction in his wake.
I think right now that is most top executives. Destroy the company if necessary but raise the stock price temporarily.
Oh, just like what Carly did…. A path of thousands of layoffs in her wake. And now she wants to run for president. Maybe she will outsource our government?
Um, no. What Ms. Fiorina did at HP was during a troubling time for the tech industry as a whole. She did lay off thousands; but, so did most other tech companies.
Fiorina took a struggling company and helped to turn it around. Yea, tough stuff had to happen; but, she made those decisions. Should she have just left things to fester? Or should she have taken the steps to try to fix the company? Just so there is no misunderstanding; I applaud the second choice here.
For what it’s worth:
During her tenure, HP saw an increased cash flow.
During her tenure, HP saw a 23% growth. Even though a lot of that might be due to the merger with Compaq, that’s fantastic! Even more so when you consider the tough economic times for the tech industry.
During her tenure the number of company patents also increased. This shows that she wasn’t just concerned about the immediate near future (i.e. quarterly stock earnings) ; but, that she was also concerned about the company’s future.
And the year after she left the number of patents increased even more – which means that she also set up the budget to continue with patent research for after she was gone. That’s, again, the sign of someone looking to the future.
“A path of thousands of layoffs in her wake.” I assume by the language you choose it was meant to show her as a “bad” or “irresponsible” person. But, maybe “thousands of layoffs” is what we need to do with our out-of-control US government?
I work in cyber security so this H1-B trend actually increases my job security. A lot of companies think they are somehow special snowflakes that can evade the rule of, “you get what you pay for.” By taking on H1-B workers companies usually lower the quality of their code and other IT products and all but toss best practices out the window. Therefor there are plenty of security flaws out there which puts security people in high demand.
This amuses me. It probably shouldn’t, but it does.
This is not just IT. It’s been going on in science for about 30 years. There are lots of qualified scientists looking for jobs. In my cubicle area at least half were H1B. Their record keeping (important for science!) was not good because their English was not good.
I also got really sick of having to act like I was part of their culture not mine. I couldn’t be an American woman with independence and opinions because they wanted me to act like their culture.