10% unemployment but H1B visas accelerating

[gwb-trading]

Quote from dealmaker:

H-1B visas addresses the needs of the country if, there were qualified citizens; they would have been hired. Do you realize how much it costs companies just to process H-1B visa applicants paperwork? Perhaps a more appropriate topic would have been why more American teenagers/ college students don't study math and sciences.

These students have just seen their 40-50 year old parents laid off from IT, programming, research, pharma, and other math/science positions -- and replaced by H1-B people imported from India to do the same work at less than half the pay.

Do you think that any sane student in the U.S. would go into the math or science field when this is obviously their future?

 

[jd7419]

Quote from gwb-trading:

These students have just seen their 40-50 year old parents laid off from IT, programming, research, pharma, and other math/science positions -- and replaced by H1-B people imported from India to do the same work at less than half the pay.

Do you think that any sane student in the U.S. would go into the math or science field when this is obviously their future?

Whats your point? No industry is immune, no degree is safe, prediction is futile, now until utopia hits things will get worse for all workers with occasional optimistic times hitting every so often.

 

[RewriteQuran]

Capitalism is NOT zero sum.
Globalization is zero sum.

 

[Random.Capital]

H1Bs in tech, both SW and HW, make great money and aren't depressing anyone's wages.

The real problem with IT is that it's no longer really "tech", it's a trade not much different than airplane mechanic or dental hygienist. And it's that commoditization that is putting pressure on wages.

 

[dtan1e]

u r missing the forests for the trees, its the bailouts that causes the unemployment to go exponential not any indians or others

 

[rew]

Quote from Random.Capital:

H1Bs in tech, both SW and HW, make great money and aren't depressing anyone's wages.

The real problem with IT is that it's no longer really "tech", it's a trade not much different than airplane mechanic or dental hygienist. And it's that commoditization that is putting pressure on wages.

Magically, we can increase the supply of labor in a field without increasing unemployment or suppressing wages. In what alternative universe? Businesses hire H-1b workers because they're cheaper than hiring native labor. It follows that wages are indeed being suppressed.

 

[syswizard]

Quote from rew:

Magically, we can increase the supply of labor in a field without increasing unemployment or suppressing wages. In what alternative universe? Businesses hire H-1b workers because they're cheaper than hiring native labor. It follows that wages are indeed being suppressed.

Exactly...this is true economics 101 at work here.
You've got to make comparisons with other professions:
Relative to Lawyers, CPA's, Doctors and other service-oriented professions, a profession in IT has really seen a huge decline in real wages over the past 10 years.
Again, that's relative.
12 years ago, the cost of a lawyer for me was 4:1 - 4 days after tax wages for the fee for 1 lawyer for 1 day.
Now that number is 8:1 !!!! WTF ??

 

[misterno]

same goes for nursing

There are thousands of unemployed nurses in USA and yet there are thousands of H1Bs given to foreign nurses

Corporations are sucking the blood out of us and we can not do anything

 

[syswizard]

Quote from misterno:

...and we can not do anything

Wrong. Join OWS.

 

[Random.Capital]

Quote from rew:

Businesses hire H-1b workers because they're cheaper than hiring native labor. It follows that wages are indeed being suppressed.

I'll try to be clearer.

The reason the job is even H1B-able is because any monkey can install a Cisco switch in the the server room these days. It's not a rare, or valuable skill anymore.

THAT is the root cause.

The H1B thing is just a symptom.