Quote from pitz:
The problem with H1-B is that hundreds of thousands of born and raised American scientists and engineers are unemployed. And the ones who are employed, aren't really earning very good salaries. Certainly not salaries that are commensurate with their contributions.
If new engineering grads could walk into any engineering employer and get $100-$150k in starting pay, with gradual increases to the $200-$400k level, then we really wouldn't be having this conversation.
The fact is, right now, there are frighteningly large numbers of engineers who have been displaced by H1-B's who receive subsidized education, have no intention of retiring in the USA, and can abuse the credit system to their advantage. Employers have become so lazy because of the H1-B program that they no longer hire entry-level staff, thus ensuring a complete lack of American managerial talent in the future.
This isn't a trivial or academic issue. Nearly my entire graduating class (in 2002, Electrical and Computer Engineering) couldn't find jobs, and wasn't even getting responses from recruiters. Most still aren't employed, and these people aren't dummies by any means -- in fact, they were subject to strict enrolment quotas in the late 1990s.
Quite right!
I am an engineer. I have two sons that I can not in good conscious advise to go into engineering who are doing it anyway.
The program is a back door subsidy for companies and academic institutions who are some of the worst abusers.
The policy of allowing H1B visa holders to be hired into University research positions as well as foreclosing job opportunities for graduating engineers is resulting in the decimation of our Engineering University programs as well. American student can not afford to work like monks for 4-6 years to get a degree costing 50K that has no job prospects because an H1B who received a free education was employed. However the abuser here is not the employee but the company.
I believe that this program would be shown for what it really is, a destructive wage suppression scam, if they just change the requirements so that they H1B visa holder is the actual holder of the Visa, not the employer, and that they are allowed to change jobs at will as long as they notify Immigration of their status. Get rid of the quasi indentured status of those in the program, and then see what the true demand is.
I have seen my favorite Russian grandmother Angrycat posting here. I notice that she talked of the "entitled" attitude of the American engineers and Financial analysts. I honestly think that is the crux of the matter. Americans have a greater tendency to try to speak truth to power.
In the mid 2000s (and correct me if I am wrong) I remember American financial analysts pointing out that risk models that relied on the calculus of the normal distribution were giving unrealistic risk assessments. There followed a great turnover of quants on Wall Street, where working risk analysts were fired by investment banks and H1Bs were hired. In hindsight I believe that management just did not want to know, and I believe that one of the attractions to Wall Street of H1Bs also was their very lack of mobility.
I have worked with a great number of H1B visa holders over the years. Several were flat out brilliant, and as rebellious and impatient of political engineering and bullshit as the best American engineers. One was Indian, one was Cambodian, one was Russian, a couple were Chinese. But the rest tended to be of the "don't rock the boat" variety. They did not have extraordinary engineering skills, but they were extraordinary non- confrontational to the point of trying to find out what management wanted to hear and telling them that. They were so eager to not tell management what it did not want to hear that a couple of projects went around in circles for months because they could not bring themselves to put their concerns into words, and that was oddly okay the rest of management.
BTW
I have seen capital intensive jobs offshored where the labor content was around 2%, and the US quality was EXECELLENT. I have concluded that these jobs were offshored because of the tax laws that require no taxes be paid if a multinational manufactures and sells offshore until the profits are repatriated to the US. This means that a corporation will pay taxes on items manufactured for export in the US and sold abroad, while they would pay NO US taxes on a product manufactured in say, China, and sold in Australia for instance. Capital Costs are also about half overseas. 3% capital there vs 8% for capital in the US if one can get it. Capital costs and taxes are pretty easy to quantify, so a lot work has gone offshore based on this kind of analysis. For instance, GE manufactures Jet Engines in pardnership with the French Government and gets capital at 3%. Ford manufactres cars in Canada. For Capital Intensive operations, the cost of labor is really not the driver. There are a lot of structural things in our tax code and method of capital funding that need to change to get our jobs back.
