More Visas
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Remove visa limits? Bill Gates talked recently about the difficulty in finding skilled workers and said that if US companies were to remain leaders in technology, then we should allow more foreign workers into the US on H1-B visas.
Huh?
If DOMESTIC companies want to be leaders, they need more FOREIGN workers? I'm slightly confused here. I'd think that if US companies want to lead the way in technology, they should find ways to lead the field with US workers. Not that I have anything against foreign workers, and I'd say that there are quite a few leaders in technology in other countries. However, if the idea is to promote growth and advancement within your country, you should find ways to do that using the people in your country. Upping the temporary workforce with visas just encourages the leaders in other countries to come here for a short time and then go back to their country and build their own companies.
Now not everyone is a patriot to their country, or at least not more of a patriot than a capitalist. I'm sure that lots of foreign workers would just as soon continue to work for the company that sponsored them even if they returned back to their country.
To me, this is another sign that economics and corporate cultures are becoming more important than national borders. And while I don't necessarily trust most governments to look out for the best interests of the populace, I trust corporations less.
Steve Jones
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Steve, I could not agree with you more. With all the layoffs over the past 5 years , there are plenty of IT workers to fill jobs.
The popularity of offshoring and H1-B workers is not due to lack of workers or skillsets but rather saving pennies. These workers are cheap to employ over U.S. workers. Today many CEO's and CIO's come into a company , shake it up, implement layoffs and offshoring. They look good to the board as they cut costs , so they get their large bonuses and move on to the next gig before anything else happens.
Everyone likes to save money , companies, and us as consumers. This all looks good in the short term, but I think the real impact of offshoring will be felt in about 10 years. Enrollment in IT curriculums has fallen at American universities and even Bill himself has toured schools to try and boost enrollment. This is funny since he is also promoting H1-B workers. Lack of new graduates combined with offshoring will result in the U.S. losing it's technological edge. When this happens , we will be dependant on foriegn soils for these products and services. Do you think when we beholden to these other countries for technology that they will still be inexpensive? I doubt it!
You can't blame the other countries as they are just taking advantage of the situation. We have no one to blame other than ourselves.
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yeah i agree too...but i would jump at the chance to work with microsoft or any other multinational/big corporation...even if they are based in America, or europe etc....and im in australia....having said that i think if you cant hire from the local population, then whats wrong with training someone up to meet the criteria...either through education or on the job...Its like those *call centers* you hear about, training people to speak in a certain type of dialect/slang....surely its better to have an actuall person who already speaks like that..thats training gone mad
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Life is far too important to be taken seriously -
I have to disagree with Steve. At least in part.
I'm trying to move to the USA. I'm from Germany by the way.
Due to the insanely restrictive american visa policy I'll probably never find a job over there (which for me is a key prerequisite to move since I'm not exactly rich and havent found the american lady to marry yet
...).I mean its not like I want american citizenship for free or anything. Nor do I want to come over, work for a year or two and go back.
I already talked to a lot of companies and I even found a few who might have been interested in my skills, but most of the time I was told they'd rather hire a local since all the paperwork for visa and work permit is way too expensive and takes way too long.
Ok, you might say that patriotism dictates that you hire someone from your country before you look elsewhere, but hey, I think I deserve a chance...
Oh, talking about foreign workers being cheaper...if I actually move to your country I can expect a salary cut of about 20-30% on average...ok, you might be right that IT specialists from India might be cheaper (btw, they're not very welcome over here as well, for the same reasons you don't like foreign workers over there, but I think if someone wants to move to a country for good they should get the chance to do so...)
Anyways, I'm new here and I hope I didn't start a flame war now
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I also disagree with Steve. In the UK, with the election imminent, immigration is a hot topic. The EU is expanding all the time and has an open borders policy. At the moment the UK has no quotas for immigrants. Many migrant workers come and do jobs that the local population is reluctant to do for whatever reason. The internet is making the IT jobs market increasingly global, there is an IT skills shortage in the UK at the moment, and I believe that if the vacancies can't be filled locally, they will be filled overseas through off-shoring, typically to India where there is a strong cultural and educational base on maths and IT skills. Better I feel that the skills are maintained and the salaries earned and spent locally by migrant workers than offshore.
David
If it ain't broke, don't fix it...
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I think is has been a disaster for the United States to educate and hire foreign students who then move back to their origin. There is no 'undo' button for this transfer of knowledge. It is just a matter of time before all cars and computers are manufactured in China and all software is developed in India.
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Steve, methinks this is a badly chosen topic today. Keep in mind that this is a global community focused on SQL Server, not economics or politics of one single country.
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Frank Kalis
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Webmaster: http://www.insidesql.org/blogs
My blog: http://www.insidesql.org/blogs/frankkalis/[/url] -
A company not only hires people, it pays taxes too. If Microsoft needs more high skilled workers, then Microsoft should be able to hire anyone who meets the criteria, if it doesn't, it won't stay on the leading edge and won't pay the same amount of taxes!
Training local people can't work on a large scale for a company. What if the training fails after all and you don't get that skilled worker you need, then you paid a lot to train someone, you lost time, and the "trained" person too!
I think you always need some kind of mix. And a country wins more than it looses when it lets foreign people (skilled or not) come in for work. The question is more to set the maximum rate and to manage integration (language, culture, ...).
After all, we are ALL migrants, or grand-children of migrants
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The bottom line - it's all about keeping the cash registers ringing constantly - the question to ask is - if you were a company (pick corporate giant) & you could get your job done at a fraction of the cost by outsourcing/hiring cheap (skilled) labor - what would you rather do ?!
Not taking any sides here - curious about responses to this growing trend is all....
**ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI !!!** -
No to more visas. What we need is more affordable education and better encouragement of the younger generation to pursue a career in IT.
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We also need incentives in this country. Threatening an IT professional with outsourcing only makes them work hard enough to keep their job...but with incentives like training, bonuses, vacation, recognition, etc...it will make IT professionals happier, and in turn, work harder and more diligently (I cant spell)
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Actually, there are at least 2 more problems with the H1B visa situation.
One is that there are numerous American programmers, analysists, etc. that are out of work because their training is on a slightly different platform than the desired platform, yet the big companies would rather spend the money to import a worker (and an H1B visa is expensive) rather than retrain existing workers.
Why? I can identify at least 2 reasons. One is legal. An H1B visa worker can be sent home with no legal consequences. The second reason is that H1B visa workers are paid less. Those H1B workers will never progress through the career ladder and draw retirement. The company hires younger workers who have fewer health problems (and lower expenses).
These barriers to employing US citizens can be addressed and corrected by the US Congress. Medical reform can provide universal health care to everyone and reduce the cost to everyone (including employers). The US health care expenses are far and away the most expensive in the world, and that adversely affects the competitiveness of the US Worker. The legal advantages that favor the H!B worker can also be easily corrected. Fixing these problem will reduce the advantages that H1B workers have in the marketplace. Write your congressman!
The other problem with the H1B situation is the lack of reciprocation by the home countries who supply the H1B visa workers. India, for example has a huge food market, yet there are large barriers to the importation of US food products. China is in a similar situation. If we buy thier product (workers), they should buy our product (food).
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I completely agree with Bill Gates for once.
Until recently, the US enjoyed the benefit of being a desirable place to emigrate to. Our body of "US Workers" of whom we are so proud, has included a very large number of immigrants over the past couple hundred years. Railroads, shipbuilding, cities, interstate highway systems, high tech - all built primarily by the labor and brainpower of a constant stream from hundreds of nations into the US. Not only laborers, but also the steady influx of the est and brightest from those nations as they came here to find the open exchange and market of ideas and success that has been our promise.
This nurturing influx is trickling to an end now, as the ready availability of high quality, inexpensive internet connectivity, computers, and voice communication renders a person's physical location on the planet less and less an issue for their success.
Why emigrate through red tape and the pains of leaving family and culture you know if you can accomplish the same things with your superb ideas and brainpower right in your comfy country of origin?
And so, the US is reliant more and more on it's own born and raised brainpower and has less attraction for global genius. Yep, we have fine minds born in the US but simple statistics will show you that there's less opportunity when you get to harness the geniuses born to a population of 300 million ~vs~ having the choice to harness from the geniuses that genetics produces in the global population of 4 billion.
I think the man with the wallet the size of France's who knows a bit about outsourcing and llarge-scale employment has a point to make and it's more warning of things to come than casual observance - if the US wishes to continue to be in the leader's circle in the coming century we must start to make it easier to arrive here for work.
Competent workers aren't threatened by quality people coming in.
There's more than enough work to be done, it's going to be outsourced to outside the country if we don't have the workers in country to do it. Bring'em here and lets all work on it together.
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http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&q=law+of+comparative+advantage&meta=
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Frank Kalis
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Webmaster: http://www.insidesql.org/blogs
My blog: http://www.insidesql.org/blogs/frankkalis/[/url] -
Hiring on visas also reduces the tax base. H1-B and L-1 visa holders do NOT pay taxes while they are here. They do pay into Social Security but get their money back when they leave. They are paid below market salaries and threatened with deportation by the companies they work for to get them to work outrageous hours. These work visas are bad for everyone except the corporations that exploit them.
The visa laws are riddled with loopholes that benefit corporations. The only checks made in the visa application process are to make sure that the application is filled out correctly. There is no check to make sure that the visa worker is actually paid what is stated on the application and there is no security or background check made on the worker. With the 65,000 visa cap on the H1-B that makes for hundreds of thousands of potential terrorists that have entered the country since the H1-B program was started in 2000 (not including L-1 visa holders and the unlimited number of H1-B's granted to educational institutions). Tell me how security conscious the current administration is now. Democrats don't get off blaming Republicans on this one either since Clinton signed the bill that was started during the previous Bush administration.
More information: http://www.zazona.com
[font="Tahoma"]Bryant E. Byrd, BSSE MCDBA MCAD[/font]
Business Intelligence Administrator
MSBI Administration Blog
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