>The truth, however, is quite different. For example, Clemson’s engineering enrollment has reached almost 5,300 students – an 80 percent increase since 2008!
Enrollment numbers for engineering students are not really relevant. It is the graduation numbers. Engineering programs are notorious for "weeding out" large numbers of students. His salary statistics are scary though.
How much of those salary statistics are just reflections of general trends? An 0.4% increase per year over 12 years compounds to roughly a 5% increase. Given the stats at http://proximityone.com/statetrendsmhi_20002012.htm , we see that only two states had an increase in median income higher than that (and one, ND, is surely due to an oil boom).
What I find more sobering is that the real US median income decreased 6.6% from 2000-2012.
>What I find more sobering is that the real US median income decreased 6.6% from 2000-2012.<
I think your point is very important...
My take is that this can fundamentally be attributed to our (increasingly full) participation in the "global economy"...
For years jobs have been out-sourced "within" countries by a process of competitive bidding...we Americans have done this for years and consider it fair...we refer to it as a level playing field...
Surprise...the global economy dictates that whoever is willing to do a good job cheaply--provide the same benefit at a reduced cost--has a very realistic shot at eventually filling a position...one way or another...
That's what I find sobering...regardless of your country of origin, or your particular skill set there are now many more just like you--equally qualified--who are willing to provide what you provide at a lower salary...
If salaries are not going up, that is a real measure of demand being met. If the demand for engineers of X skill were not being met, the price for those engineers would continuously rise until either they became unprofitable to have or demand was met.
The reality is that tech companies just want to pay people less. Of course they do - every company wants to pay less for the same product. We have equilibrium today where tech workers equalize at a certain balance of supply and demand - if demand rose, supply would increase from more promising STEM job prospects driving more people into STEM - but demand is not rising, since wage offerings are not rising.
It is important that we as a society realize that while most jobs are going away - and through that process, the supply of labor is going through the roof as more and more people fight to survive on the scraps of demand for whatever skill they have are put out into the market - engineering in all its forms remains uniquely capable of maintaining equilibrium above the poverty line.
It is always a battle between the provider and the consumer. As predominantly consumers we are not used to fighting as the provider of a valuable asset. But as the provider we must fight to keep prices high to maximize our own profits - in the same way corporate interests will fight to maintain their own profit margins. They are not your friends, they want to use you as much as you use them as a means to an end - you wanted chocolate bars and coffee, and they provided at prices set by the market. They want engineering talent, and you offer yourself at a price you deem fair, and if you are hired - that was a price set by the market.
Don't let anyone deceive you into manipulating the market for their purposes. They want to drive up supply to reduce their own costs - if they had real demand for talent, it would be met.
Unions don't confer benefits to people not in their union and actually increase costs to them by putting up barriers to entry. Nations can do the exact same thing with immigration policies with respect to citizens and non-citizens.
A union in this case would benefit the majority, but at the cost of people not in the union.
Tighter/more strict immigration would benefit the people in the country in terms of reducing downward wage pressure, but it would remove opportunity for people abroad/non-citizens.
A lot of specialist workers need to get together and rebuild their labor cartels. The pendulum has swung very far from center, and it needs to be pushed back a bit.
As it is now, very few specialists have enough clout to arrest the current momentum, and software professionals, hardware professionals, healthcare workers, and engineers are likely the only ones that wouldn't be scoffed out of the room if they threatened a general strike.
The good times should last quite a few years before the new unions become too corrupt to be worth keeping. But after that, we still might be able to keep the 6-hour workday and obligatory foos-pong tables.
"As it is now, very few specialists have enough clout to arrest the current momentum, and software professionals, hardware professionals, healthcare workers, and engineers are likely the only ones that wouldn't be scoffed out of the room if they threatened a general strike."
..and why would they strike? This group is probably in the top 10% of workers paid in the US.
I find it a little strange that a group that has the most power, money, and benefits even thinks about striking.
I don't think that joining a union would be advantageous to me either. But the words "advocate for themselves as a group" don't necessarily imply unions or collective bargaining. It could mean forming political action groups. If big companies spend a lot of money on lobbyists to put their ideas in front of politicians, why shouldn't their employees do the same?
My impression of IEEE and ACM are that they're more oriented toward academia (e.g., publishing peer-reviewed journals) and less oriented toward the average working programmer. We might do better with an organization that's primarily focused on improving working conditions rather than propagating technical information. I think there's room for both kinds of organizations.
Is that because you personally have such enormous bargaining power (inspite of a flood of STEM workers)?
Or is it because employers always spontaneously pay the highest wages they possibly can and never, ever treat employees unethically let alone break the law?
Or is that because the current political system is so very, very good at protecting the interests of employees or because market forces do it so very, very, well?
Personally it's because every union seems to be either so big as to be corrupt, highly inefficient and far too busy with petty power struggles to ever care about my insignificant problems or so small as to be essentially powerless.
Out of curiosity, what actually cite-able numbers regarding wages and working conditions when comparing organized vs unorganized labor lead you to the conclusion that you will always be worse off in every possible organization even including one not yet created?
None, and I'll freely admit that it's certainly possible that there may exist a hypothetical union where I may very well be better off as a member. I'll also concede that the abstract idea and theory of unions sounds perfectly reasonable to me. It's the broken, imperfect, real world implementations of those ideas that always rubs me the wrong way and that I find fault with.
The internal workings of every western democracy's govenrment vastly exceeds the inefficiencies and corruption of any union I can think of. Yet I don't find being in one so repugnant that I want to leave.
The question of relevance is whether an employee is better off or not. And when organized, employees always enjoy high wages and better conditions.
And, whether organization is personally annoying or not, as a lone individual you will have essentially no power to protect yourself let alone your profession in anyway.
I'm a professional, and as a professional I don't feel I need to coerce people into employing me. If I don't find conditions acceptable I take my services elsewhere.
And I assure you that employers, in a perfectly rational quest to maximize profits, will make every attempt to reduce that option by flooding the employment market with, for example, an excess of STEM workers and thereby oblige you to stay on under worsening or at least flat wage conditions.
Would you join a union if it meant you gained one or more of:
* increased compensation
* accelerated equity vesting
* cap on required hours (no more mandatory crunch time)
* increased vacation time
* protection from your job becoming off-shored
* access to better development tools
* better working environment (offices or cubicles instead of open plan)
* etc.
Put another way: Why do you (and tech workers in general) assume that you currently have personally negotiated the best possible work arrangement for yourself that the company could offer, and that no collective effort could possibly produce a better outcome?
Even assuming a union would bring most of those benefits, it would only be for a short time until the company could move my job to somewhere without a union. There's no protection from having your job off-shored beyond providing good value to your employer.
Beyond that I don't want to deal with union bosses and union dues and the fact that part of my paycheck ends up supporting politicians I don't want in office. I don't want to work in a place where the company can't get rid of underperformers, or where seniority is more important than ability. I don't want to work in a place populated by people who are comfortable working in a union shop.
It's almost as if the tech industry was seeded early on with a reflexive, self-destructive libertarianism that prevents them from thinking of themselves as part of a group. If you were trying to inoculate an entire industry from unionizing early on, you couldn't have done a better job.
Part of the problem is this whole thing of use "STEM" as though it identifies a cohesive / unified group of employment positions. It's too much of a catch-all and there's room for TONS of variance within the overall "STEM" rubric. For example, you could have raging demand for software engineers at the same time you're having massive layoffs among, say, chemical engineers. So what can you say about "STEM" as a whole in that case? Very little.
IOW, precision matters and we should be leery of over-generalizing.
It was mostly just a made up example. That said, I've actually known a few people with degrees in chemical engineering who were complaining about the lack of jobs in their field recently. Maybe that's why that particular example came to mind.
But still, substitute "mechanical engineering" or "civil engineering" or FSM-only-knows what and the overall point remains the same. "Engineers" or "STEM" people aren't all filling the same positions and the people aren't really fungible (at least in the short term, retraining to change fields takes time).
Perhaps that's true in your experience, but 'STEM' also includes jobs as varied as 'actuary', 'geographer', 'dental hygienist', 'soil technician', 'physical therapist', and 'anthropologist'.
I'll add 'string theorist', 'paleobotanist', 'exoplanetologist', 'dendrochronologist', and 'parapsychologist'.
When politicians (or most people, for that matter) talk about needing more people in STEM, they don't usually mean to increase funding for these fields. Rather, "STEM" is short-hand for "the sorts of people who solve problems that are useful for industry, business, and health."
Yeah. There seems to be a paradox embedded in the national conversation about STEM and the job market.
On one hand, various thought-leaders insist that people in the US should get training in STEM fields. Education is the answer, your answer, to employability. It doesn't matter who you are; you can get STEM training and become competitive in the job market.
On the other hand, some of these same thought-leaders insist that the US absolutely must import lots more people from foreign countries. There's no way to train existing people in the US to do the necessary work. It doesn't matter who you are; you can't do it. Step aside. We're replacing you.
A lot of times the people making these arguments are lawyers.
Does it really matter how many H1-Bs you allow every year? Look at how many big companies are opening offices in other cities especially in Vancouver or London just because of visa issues. Limiting H1-Bs is just going to force Facebooks and Googles to open up overseas dev centers. At least a high paid H1-B worker helps the American Economy in some ways.. He/She pays a ton of taxes, buys real estate and hopefully employs other Americans..
This may change with the Canadian dollar dropping down so low. A (very high by local standards) $150,000 CAD salary is only $100,000 USD. US employers would be wise to invest in Canadian offices. Especially near universities like University of Waterloo or University of Alberta that are some of the best engineering universities in North America.
And to be honest, if the choice is between accepting a whole bunch of highly paid Google/Facebook engineers into the country who will pay lots of money in taxes, and accepting a bunch of "economic immigrants" who will cost more money than they contribute, I would accepted the Google engineers in a heartbeat.
My solution? Let anyone into the country as long as they can prove that they are receiving a salary of > 125,000$ /year. Or perhaps just create a fast lane immigration track for companies, where if they really really want someone to be let into the country, then they send the US government a $50k check, to skip everything, and get their VISA automatically approved.
As jaded and crass as it feels to me as I consider it in my own head, I can't help thinking that the US ought to just let people jump forward in the immigration queue based on the amount of federal taxes they have paid.
If you're paying $30000 in income tax every year, which would be lost if you had to return to your home country, there's a really good reason to just hand you a green card. $30k is a significant chunk of a useless government sinecure, after all. And if you make it based on taxes, you can be reasonably certain that it will be recurring revenue, rather than a one-time windfall. And at that income level, you're likely to be a high-expectations parent to a child who will eventually speak English and want to stay forever. So bring the spouse and kids!
As a nation, wouldn't we want to encourage as much immigration as possible from people who will be net contributors to our society? Wouldn't we want to bring their families with them, so they wouldn't be remitting their earnings back to another country? Ignoring all the irrational racism, of course. That might still be a problem.
One side likes high skill immigrants but does not like low skilled immigrants. The other side likes low skilled immigrants and thinks high skilled immigrants are a-ok too. To try to get their way, the low-skilled side says we won't pass your high skilled stuff unless you pass our low-skilled stuff. The other one refuses and you have legislative deadlock that prevents changing much of anything.
That's what I've heard about the problem currently.
Also I wouldn't base it on federal taxes, because people with state taxes will pay less federal tax since the state tax is a federal tax deduction or similar. I would base it on total USA tax load.
The H1-B issue is about pay and control. An H1-B to me is someone that is trapped because of the visa process and can't command better pay or work conditions. I'm not talking about sweatshop conditions, I'm just saying that it is harder to negotiate when you're under an H1-B visa.
I understand people are against "economic immigrants" right now, but last time I checked most of the people that passed through Ellis Island were poor and the United States managed to grow in the last 100 years.
The fantasy that the United States can just flourish with only highly educated people working in tech is not real. We also need people to cut our grass, work on our cars, and clean our hotel rooms.
You can apply to a new green card via the new employer (or any potential employer too). Once you get through to the I-140 stage of your second GC again - provided that the new job is one similar to your previous one - you can use your same place-in-line in the GC as before.
The green card application can get stuck in the bureaucratic backlog for any number of reasons - for years. These delays messes up with your peace of mind in ways you can probably imagine. Internet is full of horror stories about these things. This prevents people from changing jobs, or making any long term plans about buying a house etc.
It is a long-standing request from many people stuck in GC backlogs to not have them go through the _unpredictable_ re-application process, when they switch jobs. This was hinted as part of President Obama's Executive Action on immigration reform.
In a memo[1] dated 11/20/2014, Jeh Johnson (Secretary of Dept. of Homeland Security) stated:
As you know, our employment-based immigration system is
afflicted with extremely long waits for immigrant visas, or
"green cards," due to relatively low green card numerical limits
established by Congress 24 years ago in 1990.
...
To correct this problem, I hereby direct USCIS to take several
steps to modernize and improve the immigrant visa process.
But USCIS has not done anything to improve this situation yet. There is currently a draft rule from USCIS titled "Retention of EB-1, EB-2 and EB-3 Immigrant Workers and Program Improvements Affecting High-Skilled Nonimmigrant Workers" [2] open for comments until Feb 29, 2016. I encourage everyone here to read and comment on this in the next few weeks. You can do it online by going to www.regulations.gov and searching for the eDocket number USCIS-2015-0008 [3].
>My solution? Let anyone into the country as long as they can prove that they are receiving a salary of > 125,000$ /year.
Perhaps the real solution would be to approve H1B visa applications for the top N salaries. You're clearly not experiencing a labor shortage if you're not willing to pay one of the top N salaries.
Does it matter? Of course, otherwise this wouldn't be the contentious issue that it is. If you are the Disney programmer telling your wife and kids that you are unemployed, I assure you, it matters.
To say it doesn't matter if there are 0 H1-Bs or 250,000 H1-Bs is ...
Your "high paid H1-B worker" most likely isn't (see data contained in the referenced article). Outside of a small percentage of very rare individuals or specialists every H1-B is taking a job from a US citizen, who would pay the same taxes or more, is far more likely to buy real estate than rent a nearby apartment for a couple of years, and will almost assuredly un-employ some American than hopefully employ one.
Yes, and all such violations should be reported and dealt with. However, using a fact from a local scope to make an automatic "winning" argument in a larger, more global scope is disingenuous.
How big does local need to be to assert true then for you? The recent Disney accusations seem rather large. I remember reading recently about migrant workers and the job postings being listed in other states to prevent having local applicants. I guess this isn't a black and white scenario. One H1-B can be taking away an existing local job while another instance in another area might not be. "H1-Bs can take away local jobs" would be a true statement if that local scope fact is true but if you're suggesting that "no local jobs are lost to H1-Bs" then you're wrong. Local scope can invalidate a global scope.
Saying "every" as the GP did was wrong. But the argument is which is greater the number of by the book H1-Bs or the the number of H1-Bs that take local jobs. Is there an acceptable level of lost local jobs that makes the gain worth it?
I feel like it is the conflict of setting a guilty man free to never convict and innocent man. "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" but not everyone agrees with that. They would rather catch the ten guilty persons and would be okay with the one innocent suffering. The greater good maybe? I'm not sure either way.
Given as fact that H1-Bs are dominated by the 3 or 4 large outsourcing body shops from India (Tata, TCS, Cognizant, et al) which simply flood the system with tons of names into a glorified lottery, I don't see how the charade that they are all the handpicked highest of the high, unique and rare technical specialist all, can be believed.
Sure there may very well be some Optical Physics Software specialist brought in by MagicLeap on an H1-B or some AI wunderkind by Google or Facebook. Far and away the H1-Bs stockpiled by the outsourcing body shops are bread and butter general skilled folk capable of filling basic roles, Linux admins, Oracle DBAs, Java Webdevs, HTML/CSS/JS, IBM MQ admins, backup operators, IT support staff and what have you. Most of it is coding camp stuff, or basic training on particular appliances that could be done in a few weeks. The diversity in IT camp should be going crazy that these sort of basic entry level opportunities are not being offered to folks that really really need it. C'mon Jesse Jackson get a clue here.
There are many, many, many Disney situations happening everywhere. e.g. Google "Southern California Edison outsource". In S. Fla an ex-fortune 500 corp outsourced many IT positions with same "train your replacement approach" and replaced with H1-Bs and they are not alone. It is rampant in the industry. You don't hear about many of these cases because of non-disparagement clauses in the layoff packages. Amazingly Disney's lawyers (should have outsourced the Corporate Lawyer Department to TCS there Big Mouse) neglected to add this standard clause to muzzle the displaced (fired) employees.
A huge proportion if H1-Bs are used to directly display existent IT workers. Period. Far more the rule than the exception.
Please, read the article under discussion which contains a link to the Center Of Immigration studies. The article under discussion does provide evidence. You may not agree with it, or question its strength, but really hard to deny the article, the statistics it provides and the studies it references provide no evidence.
If the facts quoted in the study do not suffice, let us try a dialogue of rational reasoning. Assuming H1-Bs do occupy job positions, i.e. are employed. Then either the job is only opened if and only if there are H1-Bs around, which doesn't make sense, or not a single qualified US citizen can fill the job. Give the working age population of the US is 204 million[1] this also seems highly unlikely.
Your argument is flawed in several obvious, basic ways. STEM is not a nebulous concept whereby an electrical engineer is the same as a software engineer. All STEM graduates are not automatically qualified for all open positions.
Also there isn't a global consciousness through which STEM grads get immediately notified of all open positions. Not every position is advertised on every single jobs board. And even then, STEM graduates are not automatically going to move to any random place in the US just because there is an open position there.
Lastly, if an employer has an open position, they are not going to wait indefinitely for a candidate to show up. Furthermore, because of the additional legal costs involved in hiring H1-B candidates, they can be more expensive than a local citizen.
> All STEM graduates are not automatically qualified for all open positions.
What does this tautology offer to the topic? Common sense obvious true, not every STEM graduate is universally qualified for every open position. So ... ???
> And even then, STEM graduates are not automatically going to move to any random place in the US just because there is an open position there.
Again, common sense true. So ... ???
> Lastly, if an employer has an open position, they are not going to wait indefinitely for a candidate to show up.
OK, true. So ... ??? Is your assumption then that they would have to wait indefinitely and that no candidate would ever show up? cited evidence of this is appreciated. Links to studies, large amounts of unfulfillable postings are welcomed.
> Furthermore, because of the additional legal costs involved in hiring H1-B candidates, they can be more expensive than a local citizen.
So ...?
Nothing stated above bears any light to the argument (flawed or otherwise), it's just a sequence of common sense things that one can say about a labour market.
This topic's referenced article is specific in its position in claiming there is no shortage of STEM qualified applicants and presents cited statistics and studies. If you have counter data and studies, please present their facts and cite links.
You are confused as to the nature of this conversation. YOU are the one making the claim "every H1-B is taking a job from a US citizen". Nothing in either of the linked articles supports this claim. They all talk about shortages, but not about _qualified candidates_. They are not the same. Even so, I just explained to you how in obvious ways, even if there is no shortage, your assertion can be proven false.
If your argument was US citizens should always be given priority regardless of their skill, I might actually agree with your position.
Your direct quote of what I said is wrong, that is but a clause in a complete sentence. The actual sentence does allow that a small percentage of H1-Bs are being used as intended by the program, but bulk of H1-Bs are not and the H1-B program suffers from rampant abuse and is being used to replace US Workers.
I have asked several times in the overall discussion for anyone to provide any link to any data of any kind which even indicates to any degree that there is a massive shortage of qualified candidates. I have yet to see one.
Given that there is no shortage of STEM qualified people then ipso facto there is no shortage of qualified candidates.
Do you have any evidence at all that you can provide indicative that their is a massive shortage in qualified candidates? Links Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, showing 100's if not 1,000s of positions going begging with no qualified candidates, or HR studies, any published studies, Dept of Labour or Commerce published statistics ... any shred of evidence at all that you can provide a link to?
In a world where there were only a fixed number of jobs, family members immigrating would also 'take jobs', so if people really believe that, they should aim to keep out family members too, since they are way more of them than people in the H1B program. For that matter, they should also get nervous about people who have lots of children, as those children will (in theory) grow up to take more than their parents 2 jobs.
Of course there are not a fixed number of jobs, and keeping families apart is generally viewed as cruel.
Do US Citizens deserve a job more than a non-citizen?
The original article stated that the prof. didn't understand why american politicians were trying to get more STEM-educated/skilled people into the US.
1) Rubio is bought by Microsoft. They're his biggest donor. (or 2nd biggest depending on how you dice the numbers) MS' profit margins would benefit from driving wages down.
2) The job of the politicians of the United States is to make life better for American citizens, not people abroad.
It goes both ways though. I feel pretty terrible about finishing my government sponsored education in New Zealand then ditching for better prospects here in the US. Where the size of the tech sector is limited by the number of engineers, every engineer lost to an H1B is lost exports, lost jobs, lost taxes....
Plenty of people go off to work somewhere else and then return home with a pile of money and skills. So it's not like you get on a boat, never to see home again.
The economies of some countries (poorer ones) benefit greatly from remittances.
Yes, US citizens deserve first crack at US jobs. No other country allows mass immigration of professional jobs - because their citizens wouldn't tolerate it.
Globalism is a political philosophy, not a moral imperative. Here in our country we [citizens] get first dibs on jobs. Our land, our laws. We have every right to enforce that. If the market punishes us for it perhaps we'll change.
You have changed the topic of discussion. I have not claimed some difference from other people or offered an opinion on deservedness, entitlement or anything. I just stated that (modulo special cases, point exceptions) that the bulk of H1-Bs occupy a position that could and would be filled by a US citizen.
when we will get to the "citizen of the world" equality it would be another issue. Right now we have distinct countries with their own citizens and their own support/taxes/infrastructure serving them and that's their own issues to work on.
At the same time, the US getting educated and skilled workers that it never had to pay a dime for to educate. If you look at European countries, a lot of them are trying hard to prevent their skilled workers from leaving for the US.
If anything, these people are coming, paying high taxes whilst receiving only a tiny fraction of the benefits (no medicare, no unemployment, no education cost) etc. They may or may not be driving salaries down (pretty sure if the law was enforced it wouldn't be the case), but you can't ignore the rest.
There's also a lot of statistics on immigrants and children of immigrants founding a disproportionate amount of companies compared to US natives.
saving money on their education cost and getting taxes paid is fine, sure. in the same time you have a local citizen who is out of job. how much money will be spent on him/her (in)directly? from unemployment benefits at first to potential disability eventually, to cover expenses with healthcare or any other payments that would be defaulted.
What citizenry anywhere would say, "You, you over there. Disney programmer. Sorry, gotta put you, the wife and the kids on food stamps. Mortgage? Yea, well just leave keys on the kitchen table. Bank will take care of it. Oh, that goes for the rest of you as well. Yea, the whole department."
What citizenry anywhere would not prioritize their fellow citizens to a decent job, wage and life?
Resident aliens pay the same tax rate, but do not qualify for many of the tax benefit tools (as an eg 401k is effectively useless because it becomes taxable income as soon as the person no longer resides in the US). Additionally one should consider that resident aliens pay significant tax with little hope of ever claiming a benefit, we do not get social security if unemployed (infact we get deportation), medicaid for our senior family members (they have no right to be here) etc.
> is far more likely to buy real estate
This is due to immigration rules. One cannot reasonably buy real estate unless they have some assurance of being able to stay in the time that buying makes sense. That timeline is 5-10 yrs at a minimum. H1Bs and other visas have 3 yr limits on them and can be revoked at any time.
> assuredly un-employ some American
You have little to no proof of this. I would argue the cost of bringing an H1B into the country (>= $10k) should make the existing American employee quite attractive.
I hope you can see that the deck is actually stacked in the local American's favor, and that a protectionist policy just drives jobs out of the country where they cannot be taxed at all.
Even ignoring the cost, H1B candidates need to file their paperwork 6/7 months before starting, which means interviewing 7/8 months before October. And then you get a 50% chance that the application is going to be rejected by the initial lottery.
This doesn't apply to companies "cheating the system" (looking at the consulting companies that apply for most of the h1bs w/ a lower salary), but most real companies that apply for real h1bs would much rather find a similarly qualified US person.
But if the H1-B worker can actually do the same work, what stops Disney from moving all the development to a more immigrant friendly country? Other countries would even give Disney tax benefits to do so..
How did the US manage to grow from 100 million people to more than 300 million without massive unemployment if the number of jobs to go around was fixed?
The lump of labor fallacy is a fallacy. It arbitrarily assumes that any person can work any job just as easily as the next, without retraining. It fails to account for the effects of downward pressure on wages, among other things.
There are nuances to it, but it's a heck of a lot closer to 'the truth' than "every H1-B is taking a job from a US citizen", which is egregiously wrong.
Egregiously wrong can be back of the envelope quantified here.
Image the following thought experiment. Assume that tomorrow morning every H1-B worker poof vanished. Then, on the assumption of egregiously wrong, zero of those positions in this hypothetical world could or would be filled by a single individual of the 204 million working population of US. If egregiously wrong then 60K to 85K good well paying middle class salaried positions would sit begging, unfulfilled and unfillable.
If egregiously correct, than most of those positions would be filled. Care to quantify your belief of "egregious wrongness" by stating how many of those positions you in fact believe can not and will not get filled?
Some of the companies that depend on those people would fail due to the sudden departure of key employees, leaving a slew of people unemployed!
Some of those positions would be filled - eventually. Some of the jobs would be farmed out to other countries.
Also, the people that depend on the custom of those workers (say a bunch of them are from India and eat at a local Indian restaurant as a simple thought experiment) would suffer as well.
The disconnect is in attributing second order effects as completely dominating the first order effects. In the thought experiment where poof the H1-Bs never happened and poof were filled by qualified US citizens, totally different conclusions.
The first order effect difference: I claim effectively all of those positions could and would be filled. The "this is egregiously wrong" position claims that effectively none of those well paid jobs would be filled. I know why people will proactively seek a well paying job. I am not able to follow the position that no one will bother to seek those positions at all. Seems at odds with basic human motives to me.
With regard to the alluded second order effects, multiplier effects.
Consider the Disney situation where "about 250 Disney employees were told in late October that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India."[1]
Sure the local Indian restaurant will prosper. But that is 250 households whose kids can longer afford to go to college. 250 home purchases vs 250 apartment rentals (folks on 2-3 yr visa rent not buy in general). So on and so forth.
On the surface, to me, 250 middle class families with well paying IT positions spins off far more positive effects than what we have now which is 250 US families with significant if not total household income loss, on unemployment etc. In no way is this compensated by having 250, lower paid, immigrants on temporary H1-B visas (again NYTimes phrasing). I see a net-net huge loss, others seem to see a net-net huge win.
> But that is 250 households whose kids can longer afford to go to college. 250 home purchases vs 250 apartment rentals (folks on 2-3 yr visa rent not buy in general). So on and so forth.
Because it's completely impossible for any of these people to find another decent job?
Sorry, don't buy it. I've been through companies folding and so on, and I have a better job than I did then.
Nobody suggested that the probability of at least one of these people getting a decent job down the road is zero.
A huge percentage of them in their 40s, 50s will not get anything even close. Please take some time to become familiar with ageism in the IT industry to understand why this is the case.
What is it that you don't buy? Exactly.
That they didn't really lose their jobs? That they were not really replaced that by the temporary immigrants on H1-B visas that they trained? That most of them didn't find better paying jobs within the week after being laid off? That many of these families will not suffer a huge drop in living standard?
I don't buy that there are no more jobs to be had. I certainly feel for them and don't discount that it's rough, but there's a good market for developers these days.
There's even a good market for developers over 40 - that includes me - even though there are some places where people prefer youth and energy to experience.
I feel like the immigration issue has been made about five hundred times more complicated than is really necessary. We need some high-paid engineers to redesign our laws from the ground up, in my opinion.
I would love to see git-diff type notation on the text of various laws - 'senator so-and-so added this', 'paralegal Y removed this clause' - with commit-messages for each.
He gets cause and effect wrong. The reason why enrollments are so high is BECAUSE of the shortage. An increase in demand for X causes wages for X to increase. This increase in wages causes more people to want to supply X, by joining that field.
Also, the common argument of "There is no shortage for X, people just want to pay less money, than the current, extremely high price of X", is completely nonsensical.
The DEFINITION of a shortage is "I believe the price is too high". Thats how supply and demand works.
Example: Imagine if bread costed 100$ a loaf. Is there a shortage of food, or is it just people complaining that the price of bread is too high?
How else would you even define a shortage other than "the price is too high"?
How else would you even define a shortage other than "the price is too high"?
More people want to buy product or service X than there is currently available in the marketplace.
So, let's say that during the next growing season, some new fungus appears and decimates the US grain crop. That will result in bread shortages. Even at $100 per loaf, there won't be as much bread available as there are people looking to buy it.
That definition doesn't work. If bread was 1 cent per loaf, I bet more people would buy it. So all those people who currently aren't buying bread because it costs a couple of dollars are people who want bread but there isn't enough available. Does that mean we always have a bread shortage? Maybe we do. But then it becomes a useless definition.
If it cost $100 per loaf, there would again be people who want it but can't buy it, just as the situation already is but more of them.
If bread was 1 cent per loaf, bread would be near worthless. The people who cannot afford bread are not economically generating enough demand for bread to have more bread created. Markets do not care how much you intrinsically want something - that is not what market demand is - demand is simply a measure of how much money is willing to be spent on a good or service. The more money seeking bread, the more pressure there is on bread makers to make more, because each loaf is more valuable. If there is no money seeking bread - ie, the poor - then nobody has a reason to make bread, because there is no profit to be made.
Capitalism is literally defined by the perpetual shortage of scarce physical resources. Bread costs what it does because people want it - that means they do not already have it - and are willing to pay so much for it. And the highest bidders get their bread, with the price being set at approximately the lowest bidder who would still get a finite loaf of bread if they were dolled out in sequence of most demand to least, while anyone below that "bid" amount does not get bread.
If bread were market valued at $100 a loaf, it would mean either more people are willing to pay more for the same bread - say, someone wants to buy all the bread and offers way above market price to capture the bread supply - or the supply itself has diminished enough that the lowest bidders at $1 and $10 and $99 were too far back in line to get bread behind all those willing to pay $100 or more.
If something is worth value in market exchange, it means someone wants something they do not have, and are willing to pay an amount of money for it. Demand is dictated by the total amount of money seeking something, and supply is determined by how much of something can fill that demand. And demand can include those seeking loaves of bread for a cent - but it is very unlikely their demand will ever be met, because they offer so little in return.
But, see, in a supply-and-demand market, the price is always too high for somebody, and always not too high for somebody else. So "I believe the price is too high" is a completely meaningless metric.
And, in fact, the same thing applies in reverse from the sell side. They never complain that the price is too high, but some of them think the price is too low - and others don't.
I'd expect that everyone who thinks there's a shortage of engineers is on the employer side. And most of those on the employee side think that there quite clearly is not a shortage.
The actual definition of a shortage is "a deficiency in quantity" (per dictionary.com). Well, that's not very helpful. Deficiency compared to what? Or, deficient by what measure? You can have a shortage personally, compared to what you desire; but for a market as a whole to have a shortage, you have to have something to compare it to. That usually is the state of the market at a time when [it is generally agreed that] there wasn't a shortage.
So if you say, "STEM salaries are twice as high as they were in 1990, even after adjusting for inflation", then you might be able to make a case that there is a shortage. If you say, "we can't find people at the price we're willing to pay, but that price is less than the market rate in 1990", well, my heart fails to bleed for you.
The reason why enrollment is so high is because of the shortage Or because they hear politicians on TV without the slightest clue telling people there is a shortage. Or because they enjoy building things. Not so black and white, is it?
Law and Medicine used to be the the fields that attracted the best and brightest. Now, we have an overabundance of lawyers and the margins are very thin on medicine.
It's just a matter of time until IT is in a similar position and something else becomes the hot new field.
> Also, the common argument of "There is no shortage for X, people just want to pay less money, than the current, extremely high price of X", is completely nonsensical.
Your definition of shortage is nonsensical, and it's easy to prove it:
From MY point of view, there is a shortage of supermodels willing to have sex with me. Everybody would laugh at that being a "shortage".
The same applies in that there is a shortage of engineers willing to work for me for free. Everybody would also laugh at that shortage.
Quantity and quality are not the same thing. The economy needs various quantities of engineers at various skill levels. Within the same field of study there could be a shortage of talent at one skill level and a surplus at another skill level.
Based on my own experience and the experiences of my friends (people who work as engineers for AWS, Google, Apple, Facebook, SpaceX, etc.), there is a big shortage in 'high quality' engineers.
Assuming there is "a big shortage in 'high quality' engineers" can anyone provide links to any AWS, Google, Apple, Facebook, SpaceX, position postings which typifies this big shortage? e.g. Postings which are an exemplar, of requiring 'high quality engineers' but remain open for weeks or months due to the massive STEM shortage? Based on the I-squared Act's proposed increase to a 1/4 million (250,000) H1-Bs there should be 10s and 10s of 10,000s such postings.
This massive STEM shortage debate has been happening for years. The referenced article links studies, presents supporting data (aka actual statistics) and provides direct anecdotal evidence (he is involved in the production of STEM resources). Bluntly I have seen many similar fact based articles and studies on the "there is no STEM shortage" side and can't recall a single peer reviewed study on the massive shortage side. Links welcome.
A single job posting can remain active indefinitely and does not necessarily represent just one open position.
This leads to the situation where an outsider sees one 'job posting' and thousands of applicants while Tech Co sees a shortage because only a few of those applicants are qualified.
Also, there is an incentive mis-match between people who realize there is a shortage and people wanting to prove that a shortage exists. If as a 'high quality engineer' you realize you are a scarce resource, and that makes you a lot of $, why would you want to convince other people to acquire the skills you have – self inflicted devaluation?
This is why the people with the loudest voices on this issue are CEOs and VCs who were previously high quality engineers. They have a clear view, the data, and the monetary incentive to vocalize it – more high quality engineers will increase their $.
> A single job posting can remain active indefinitely and does not necessarily represent just one open position.
I have asked about this already, several times in several postings. At this point, I'll take but one concrete example. Could you post one link, a single link, of one of these (from I assume a huge population) endless job postings from say Google, Facebook, Apple, HP, IBM, ... well from anyone, which represents a huge quantity of unfillable positions with near zero qualified applicants? I am curious for just one example. One.
Of course CEOs and VCs want engineers at the cheapest rates possible to increase their bottom line. Yes, indeed they have both monetary incentive and the means to exercise the political influence towards that goal. I don't see how that provides any proof or even marginal evidence that there is a massive STEM shortage.
If these CEOs and VCs have the data I have never seen it shared. Not one smidgen of detailed HR data.
Again, the original referenced article does offer up evidence of its premise and cites several studies, a PBS documentary, statistics, etc.
I understand you believe there is a massive shortage of STEM people unable to fill countless blackholes of open positions. Maybe this is just too big an ask, can you provide any evidence, at all? A link to a peer reviewed study from academia? Or maybe a link to detailed testimony from Apple's or Microsoft's CEO on capital hill. Any definitive numbers?? Anything at all?
Find almost any job posting labeled 'Software Engineer', 'Software Developer' , 'Software Development Engineer', 'Product Manger', 'Project Manager', etc. for a reasonably large growing tech company. That posting will almost certainly represent multiple jobs.
That single job listing (Engineer at Stripe) represents ALL of their Engineer hires, and likely 100x-1000x as many rejected applications as hires. That posting has been there for years. There are not enough qualified people to fill the role.
There are many, many companies that operate this way.
The guest columnist presenting the case that the STEM shortage is a myth is:
Mark Thies is a Professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Clemson. His research areas include advanced materials, biofuels, and renewable biopolymers.
I didn't read his article as "complaining" and that is a very high bar distinguishing low and high quality engineers you have if he fails to clear it. I thought it substantive citing supporting data and studies for his premise.
This seems like a political hit piece with no real substance.
Salaries aren't going up because employers are conspiring to push down wages[0] and non executive wages in general are stagnating or going down[1]. Furthermore as already stated elsewhere in this thread, STEM degrees have huge wash out percentages so "freshmen enrolled" is just as good a statistic as "college freshman who plan on changing the world". The real problem, which has been repeated ad nauseam here, is that there's a shortage of STEM workers at the wages employers are willing to pay.
"Jobs continued to press the engineering angle at the dinner, saying that at the time Apple employed 700,000 factory workers in China, plus 30,000 engineers to support those workers."
We need the best talent of the world to be a technological leader nation. nonetheless, there is a big amount of jobs that need a good engineer but not a bright mind as Wozniak.
This is how globalization works and we need to keep up or be defeated by a better player at accepting STEM immigration. Let the fear aside, confront the global arena and struggle to keep being leaders of the world.
It's interesting that the two options Steve Jobs mentioned were:
1. Put the factory and the jobs in China
2. Put the factory and the jobs in the US, using workers who are imported (from China/India/et al)
Why doesn't Jobs mention an option to, oh, I don't know, _make a commitment to the millions of people who are already in the US_ looking for work?
And, who better than Apple itself to train up some _existing_ members of the US labor pool in how to do what Apple does?
To the extent that "American" corporations are shells that import manufactured goods from foreign factories and import engineers from foreign societies, I have to wonder whether I give a crap if the US is a "technological leader."
Maybe if some Chinese investors bought Apple and moved the whole mess to Shenzhen, the world would finally get reasonable prices on (and customization of) Apple hardware.
The vast majority of the factory jobs are automatable, and will vanish in time, and have likely been continually vanishing.
That reality would sit poorly with Americans who didn't see it coming, and certainly with those trying to use offshore manufacturing for political support, but that's been the plan all along.
Try to imagine the cost of hiring all those people in the US market right know, economically infeasible.
Now try to imagine the cost of recruiting, hiring, training and __retaining__ the same talent from college recent graduates, again infeasible against the Chinese economics.
Finally, the Apple devices manufacturing costs are low, the margin is high because there is an ecosystem restraining access to the iOS development and such OS is very good. Here or in Shenzhen, they would charge the same.
"there are no worker protections to prevent companies from firing American workers, replacing them with H-1B’s, and even forcing them to train their replacements"
Another name for "worker shortage" is "high wages". You can't fix one without fixing the other at the same time.
If high priced workers are replaced with cheaper ones then all else being equal, it means the company is operating more efficiently. Isn't that a good thing? Good for the economy, good for consumers and only bad for the overpaid workers. What does he expect? That workers who demand more than the market rate should have their jobs protected so they don't feel bad about the economy changing around them? Even at the expense of everyone else?
> That workers who demand more than the market rate should have their jobs protected so they don't feel bad about the economy changing around them? Even at the expense of everyone else?
I demand a market rate of zero. Now do you see the problem?
Everybody loves capitalism--until they're on the receiving end.
The referenced article presents a case that there is no STEM worker shortage and supports it with referenced statistics and studies. You may dispute his data, but he did provide it. Stating a position on the assumption that there is a serious problem with excessive or high wages, i.e. overpaid workers which requires immediate fixing is an odd leap.
What workers are demanding more that the market rate? There is a market rate with a 1/4 million H1-Bs and there is a market rate without a 1/4 million H1-Bs. Any worker which demands more than the market rate will not get it.
And what is the expense of everyone else referring too? It is substantially a zero sum game. Who are the else?
"87 percent of current H-1B holders are paid wages in the bottom third"
I'm going to call bogus on this. The law requires H1B holders to be paid the prevailing market wage, or more, for their profession/experience level. The fact that he's referencing Trump's election platform, and doesn't offer any other evidence of this, doesn't give me any confidence whatsoever.
I'd also like to issue a challenge to anyone who claims that the H1B system we currently have is bad: Please propose an alternate form of immigration system. Please also specify details regarding
1) How many immigrants should be allowed into the country every year
2) How the above number of immigrants should be selected, amongst all potential applicants.
Interested readers can see for themselves what the salaries are using the H1-B data: https://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/performancedata.cfm (select Disclosure Data section, download PERM spreadsheet - haven't checked the latest set but when I looked last year it was pretty easy to understand)
I really hate the H1B issue. It should be open to "high skilled, essential/lacking labor". We have many universities in the US that will grant an MS or similar degree without much substance for a nominal (but not negligible fee).
A simple revamp to the program would be simple:
- Absolutely zero visas (or very few) to any of the outsourcing / bodyshop companies - Tata, etc.
- A company found bringing workers in on a Visa to be trained and then lay people off, the company should face a significant fine.
- Companys have to show if there is on one side a significant downsizing and then sudden rehiring that includes H1Bs, that they didn't offer training and mentorship before laying some of the original people off. IBM and Disney come to mind.
- Keep or impose caps by region. Sorry, we are a melting pot, but certain countries have significantly higher numbers trying to come in than others. The best companies and groups I worked with were diverse rather than monoculture work places.
Personally, I do like the score based system that Canada and Australia generally have.
EDIT/Addition:
- The original mentality of cost being the overarching factor has become less en vogue. Many companies started insourcing again. That said, it's still not wholly reversed most of the outsourcing going on.
I know outsourcing does not equate with H1B wholly, but there are companies that abuse the visas to hire cheaper, have locals train, and fire the locals.
Caps by employment region would be "interesting" since it seems H1B is clamored for uniquely in Silicon Valley, where (as an American engineer) there are really few Americans, which contrasts entirely with other regions of the United States. It seems that is because Americans are averse to the unaffordability of SV, and recognize that unaffordability is a trap for foreigners.
Actually that is a different but interesting take on what I meant. I meant by geographic region of the proposed Visa holder -- these are sorta in place for some, but not others. My main feeling there is that if there are a surplus of people well skilled in a particular country that feel the need to immigrate, maybe there should be a focus on doing something locally to build up a base.
Regionally by US demographic could be interesting. A lot of the insourcing of things like support and call centers are going to regions of the US where costs are lower, but there is still an educational base. Though, surprisingly, some areas like Eugene/Springfield, OR are getting pretty hard hit -- though that may mostly be troubled due to Symantec's financial issues.
As a former H1B the whole system is unfair and a scam.
It is unfair to US workers: Right after I was hired at the very next downturn coworker's were let go but I stayed. I didn't know it at the time but my salary was low.
It is unfair to the H1B worker - you can't switch jobs easily. If you are fired you have to leave the country, it is very stressful. You can't plan your future - why invest for retirement ?
There is a path to a green card but only if employer sponsors at considerable cost.
It only benefits the employers.
If there is a true shortage of tech workers make the system better by allowing full mobility and allowing the workers to directly apply for green card without sponsorship. It could start by demanding employer's pay prevailing wage plus a 25k deposit/bond towards future unemployment or immigration costs of employee + family, and employee is able to switch jobs after 6 months with h1b sponsor
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 242 ms ] threadEnrollment numbers for engineering students are not really relevant. It is the graduation numbers. Engineering programs are notorious for "weeding out" large numbers of students. His salary statistics are scary though.
If you see something on par [or even worse, less than] inflation, there isn't a shortage of any kind.
What I find more sobering is that the real US median income decreased 6.6% from 2000-2012.
I think your point is very important...
My take is that this can fundamentally be attributed to our (increasingly full) participation in the "global economy"...
For years jobs have been out-sourced "within" countries by a process of competitive bidding...we Americans have done this for years and consider it fair...we refer to it as a level playing field...
Surprise...the global economy dictates that whoever is willing to do a good job cheaply--provide the same benefit at a reduced cost--has a very realistic shot at eventually filling a position...one way or another...
That's what I find sobering...regardless of your country of origin, or your particular skill set there are now many more just like you--equally qualified--who are willing to provide what you provide at a lower salary...
We're part of a "great leveling"...
The reality is that tech companies just want to pay people less. Of course they do - every company wants to pay less for the same product. We have equilibrium today where tech workers equalize at a certain balance of supply and demand - if demand rose, supply would increase from more promising STEM job prospects driving more people into STEM - but demand is not rising, since wage offerings are not rising.
It is important that we as a society realize that while most jobs are going away - and through that process, the supply of labor is going through the roof as more and more people fight to survive on the scraps of demand for whatever skill they have are put out into the market - engineering in all its forms remains uniquely capable of maintaining equilibrium above the poverty line.
It is always a battle between the provider and the consumer. As predominantly consumers we are not used to fighting as the provider of a valuable asset. But as the provider we must fight to keep prices high to maximize our own profits - in the same way corporate interests will fight to maintain their own profit margins. They are not your friends, they want to use you as much as you use them as a means to an end - you wanted chocolate bars and coffee, and they provided at prices set by the market. They want engineering talent, and you offer yourself at a price you deem fair, and if you are hired - that was a price set by the market.
Don't let anyone deceive you into manipulating the market for their purposes. They want to drive up supply to reduce their own costs - if they had real demand for talent, it would be met.
A union in this case would benefit the majority, but at the cost of people not in the union. Tighter/more strict immigration would benefit the people in the country in terms of reducing downward wage pressure, but it would remove opportunity for people abroad/non-citizens.
A lot of specialist workers need to get together and rebuild their labor cartels. The pendulum has swung very far from center, and it needs to be pushed back a bit.
As it is now, very few specialists have enough clout to arrest the current momentum, and software professionals, hardware professionals, healthcare workers, and engineers are likely the only ones that wouldn't be scoffed out of the room if they threatened a general strike.
The good times should last quite a few years before the new unions become too corrupt to be worth keeping. But after that, we still might be able to keep the 6-hour workday and obligatory foos-pong tables.
..and why would they strike? This group is probably in the top 10% of workers paid in the US.
I find it a little strange that a group that has the most power, money, and benefits even thinks about striking.
Not to mention, unions/professional associations for doctors, lawyers, etc.
Or is it because employers always spontaneously pay the highest wages they possibly can and never, ever treat employees unethically let alone break the law?
Or is that because the current political system is so very, very good at protecting the interests of employees or because market forces do it so very, very, well?
The question of relevance is whether an employee is better off or not. And when organized, employees always enjoy high wages and better conditions.
And, whether organization is personally annoying or not, as a lone individual you will have essentially no power to protect yourself let alone your profession in anyway.
* increased compensation
* accelerated equity vesting
* cap on required hours (no more mandatory crunch time)
* increased vacation time
* protection from your job becoming off-shored
* access to better development tools
* better working environment (offices or cubicles instead of open plan)
* etc.
Put another way: Why do you (and tech workers in general) assume that you currently have personally negotiated the best possible work arrangement for yourself that the company could offer, and that no collective effort could possibly produce a better outcome?
Even assuming a union would bring most of those benefits, it would only be for a short time until the company could move my job to somewhere without a union. There's no protection from having your job off-shored beyond providing good value to your employer.
Beyond that I don't want to deal with union bosses and union dues and the fact that part of my paycheck ends up supporting politicians I don't want in office. I don't want to work in a place where the company can't get rid of underperformers, or where seniority is more important than ability. I don't want to work in a place populated by people who are comfortable working in a union shop.
If I wanted all that I'd work for the government.
IOW, precision matters and we should be leery of over-generalizing.
But still, substitute "mechanical engineering" or "civil engineering" or FSM-only-knows what and the overall point remains the same. "Engineers" or "STEM" people aren't all filling the same positions and the people aren't really fungible (at least in the short term, retraining to change fields takes time).
When politicians (or most people, for that matter) talk about needing more people in STEM, they don't usually mean to increase funding for these fields. Rather, "STEM" is short-hand for "the sorts of people who solve problems that are useful for industry, business, and health."
On one hand, various thought-leaders insist that people in the US should get training in STEM fields. Education is the answer, your answer, to employability. It doesn't matter who you are; you can get STEM training and become competitive in the job market.
On the other hand, some of these same thought-leaders insist that the US absolutely must import lots more people from foreign countries. There's no way to train existing people in the US to do the necessary work. It doesn't matter who you are; you can't do it. Step aside. We're replacing you.
A lot of times the people making these arguments are lawyers.
Thats what my friend at MS told me, not sure how common it is though.
My solution? Let anyone into the country as long as they can prove that they are receiving a salary of > 125,000$ /year. Or perhaps just create a fast lane immigration track for companies, where if they really really want someone to be let into the country, then they send the US government a $50k check, to skip everything, and get their VISA automatically approved.
What makes that number better than $124,000 ?
If you're paying $30000 in income tax every year, which would be lost if you had to return to your home country, there's a really good reason to just hand you a green card. $30k is a significant chunk of a useless government sinecure, after all. And if you make it based on taxes, you can be reasonably certain that it will be recurring revenue, rather than a one-time windfall. And at that income level, you're likely to be a high-expectations parent to a child who will eventually speak English and want to stay forever. So bring the spouse and kids!
As a nation, wouldn't we want to encourage as much immigration as possible from people who will be net contributors to our society? Wouldn't we want to bring their families with them, so they wouldn't be remitting their earnings back to another country? Ignoring all the irrational racism, of course. That might still be a problem.
That's what I've heard about the problem currently.
Also I wouldn't base it on federal taxes, because people with state taxes will pay less federal tax since the state tax is a federal tax deduction or similar. I would base it on total USA tax load.
I understand people are against "economic immigrants" right now, but last time I checked most of the people that passed through Ellis Island were poor and the United States managed to grow in the last 100 years.
The fantasy that the United States can just flourish with only highly educated people working in tech is not real. We also need people to cut our grass, work on our cars, and clean our hotel rooms.
You can apply to a new green card via the new employer (or any potential employer too). Once you get through to the I-140 stage of your second GC again - provided that the new job is one similar to your previous one - you can use your same place-in-line in the GC as before.
The green card application can get stuck in the bureaucratic backlog for any number of reasons - for years. These delays messes up with your peace of mind in ways you can probably imagine. Internet is full of horror stories about these things. This prevents people from changing jobs, or making any long term plans about buying a house etc.
It is a long-standing request from many people stuck in GC backlogs to not have them go through the _unpredictable_ re-application process, when they switch jobs. This was hinted as part of President Obama's Executive Action on immigration reform.
In a memo[1] dated 11/20/2014, Jeh Johnson (Secretary of Dept. of Homeland Security) stated:
But USCIS has not done anything to improve this situation yet. There is currently a draft rule from USCIS titled "Retention of EB-1, EB-2 and EB-3 Immigrant Workers and Program Improvements Affecting High-Skilled Nonimmigrant Workers" [2] open for comments until Feb 29, 2016. I encourage everyone here to read and comment on this in the next few weeks. You can do it online by going to www.regulations.gov and searching for the eDocket number USCIS-2015-0008 [3].[1] Executive Action: Support High-skilled Business and Workers - http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/14_1120_...
[2] USCIS Seeks Comments on Proposed Rule Affecting Certain Employment-Based Immigrant and Nonimmigrant Visa Programs - https://www.uscis.gov/news/uscis-seeks-comments-proposed-rul...
[3] http://www.regulations.gov/#!docketDetail;D=USCIS-2015-0008
Main problem with H1b is low wages and lack of mobility - lose your job and you're out.
Perhaps the real solution would be to approve H1B visa applications for the top N salaries. You're clearly not experiencing a labor shortage if you're not willing to pay one of the top N salaries.
To say it doesn't matter if there are 0 H1-Bs or 250,000 H1-Bs is ...
Your "high paid H1-B worker" most likely isn't (see data contained in the referenced article). Outside of a small percentage of very rare individuals or specialists every H1-B is taking a job from a US citizen, who would pay the same taxes or more, is far more likely to buy real estate than rent a nearby apartment for a couple of years, and will almost assuredly un-employ some American than hopefully employ one.
There is no evidence to support this assertion.
How big does local need to be to assert true then for you? The recent Disney accusations seem rather large. I remember reading recently about migrant workers and the job postings being listed in other states to prevent having local applicants. I guess this isn't a black and white scenario. One H1-B can be taking away an existing local job while another instance in another area might not be. "H1-Bs can take away local jobs" would be a true statement if that local scope fact is true but if you're suggesting that "no local jobs are lost to H1-Bs" then you're wrong. Local scope can invalidate a global scope.
Saying "every" as the GP did was wrong. But the argument is which is greater the number of by the book H1-Bs or the the number of H1-Bs that take local jobs. Is there an acceptable level of lost local jobs that makes the gain worth it?
I feel like it is the conflict of setting a guilty man free to never convict and innocent man. "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" but not everyone agrees with that. They would rather catch the ten guilty persons and would be okay with the one innocent suffering. The greater good maybe? I'm not sure either way.
Sure there may very well be some Optical Physics Software specialist brought in by MagicLeap on an H1-B or some AI wunderkind by Google or Facebook. Far and away the H1-Bs stockpiled by the outsourcing body shops are bread and butter general skilled folk capable of filling basic roles, Linux admins, Oracle DBAs, Java Webdevs, HTML/CSS/JS, IBM MQ admins, backup operators, IT support staff and what have you. Most of it is coding camp stuff, or basic training on particular appliances that could be done in a few weeks. The diversity in IT camp should be going crazy that these sort of basic entry level opportunities are not being offered to folks that really really need it. C'mon Jesse Jackson get a clue here.
There are many, many, many Disney situations happening everywhere. e.g. Google "Southern California Edison outsource". In S. Fla an ex-fortune 500 corp outsourced many IT positions with same "train your replacement approach" and replaced with H1-Bs and they are not alone. It is rampant in the industry. You don't hear about many of these cases because of non-disparagement clauses in the layoff packages. Amazingly Disney's lawyers (should have outsourced the Corporate Lawyer Department to TCS there Big Mouse) neglected to add this standard clause to muzzle the displaced (fired) employees.
A huge proportion if H1-Bs are used to directly display existent IT workers. Period. Far more the rule than the exception.
If the facts quoted in the study do not suffice, let us try a dialogue of rational reasoning. Assuming H1-Bs do occupy job positions, i.e. are employed. Then either the job is only opened if and only if there are H1-Bs around, which doesn't make sense, or not a single qualified US citizen can fill the job. Give the working age population of the US is 204 million[1] this also seems highly unlikely.
[1]https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LFWA64TTUSM647S
Also there isn't a global consciousness through which STEM grads get immediately notified of all open positions. Not every position is advertised on every single jobs board. And even then, STEM graduates are not automatically going to move to any random place in the US just because there is an open position there.
Lastly, if an employer has an open position, they are not going to wait indefinitely for a candidate to show up. Furthermore, because of the additional legal costs involved in hiring H1-B candidates, they can be more expensive than a local citizen.
>let us try a dialogue of rational reasoning.
Yes, let "us" do that.
What does this tautology offer to the topic? Common sense obvious true, not every STEM graduate is universally qualified for every open position. So ... ???
> And even then, STEM graduates are not automatically going to move to any random place in the US just because there is an open position there.
Again, common sense true. So ... ???
> Lastly, if an employer has an open position, they are not going to wait indefinitely for a candidate to show up.
OK, true. So ... ??? Is your assumption then that they would have to wait indefinitely and that no candidate would ever show up? cited evidence of this is appreciated. Links to studies, large amounts of unfulfillable postings are welcomed.
> Furthermore, because of the additional legal costs involved in hiring H1-B candidates, they can be more expensive than a local citizen.
So ...?
Nothing stated above bears any light to the argument (flawed or otherwise), it's just a sequence of common sense things that one can say about a labour market.
This topic's referenced article is specific in its position in claiming there is no shortage of STEM qualified applicants and presents cited statistics and studies. If you have counter data and studies, please present their facts and cite links.
If your argument was US citizens should always be given priority regardless of their skill, I might actually agree with your position.
I have asked several times in the overall discussion for anyone to provide any link to any data of any kind which even indicates to any degree that there is a massive shortage of qualified candidates. I have yet to see one.
Given that there is no shortage of STEM qualified people then ipso facto there is no shortage of qualified candidates.
Do you have any evidence at all that you can provide indicative that their is a massive shortage in qualified candidates? Links Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, showing 100's if not 1,000s of positions going begging with no qualified candidates, or HR studies, any published studies, Dept of Labour or Commerce published statistics ... any shred of evidence at all that you can provide a link to?
Of course there are not a fixed number of jobs, and keeping families apart is generally viewed as cruel.
Do US Citizens deserve a job more than a non-citizen? Get off your high horse and see you are no more different than other people around the world!
1) Rubio is bought by Microsoft. They're his biggest donor. (or 2nd biggest depending on how you dice the numbers) MS' profit margins would benefit from driving wages down. 2) The job of the politicians of the United States is to make life better for American citizens, not people abroad.
The economies of some countries (poorer ones) benefit greatly from remittances.
when we will get to the "citizen of the world" equality it would be another issue. Right now we have distinct countries with their own citizens and their own support/taxes/infrastructure serving them and that's their own issues to work on.
If anything, these people are coming, paying high taxes whilst receiving only a tiny fraction of the benefits (no medicare, no unemployment, no education cost) etc. They may or may not be driving salaries down (pretty sure if the law was enforced it wouldn't be the case), but you can't ignore the rest.
There's also a lot of statistics on immigrants and children of immigrants founding a disproportionate amount of companies compared to US natives.
What citizenry anywhere would not prioritize their fellow citizens to a decent job, wage and life?
To answer your question, yea, yea they do.
>pay the same taxes or more
Resident aliens pay the same tax rate, but do not qualify for many of the tax benefit tools (as an eg 401k is effectively useless because it becomes taxable income as soon as the person no longer resides in the US). Additionally one should consider that resident aliens pay significant tax with little hope of ever claiming a benefit, we do not get social security if unemployed (infact we get deportation), medicaid for our senior family members (they have no right to be here) etc.
> is far more likely to buy real estate
This is due to immigration rules. One cannot reasonably buy real estate unless they have some assurance of being able to stay in the time that buying makes sense. That timeline is 5-10 yrs at a minimum. H1Bs and other visas have 3 yr limits on them and can be revoked at any time.
> assuredly un-employ some American
You have little to no proof of this. I would argue the cost of bringing an H1B into the country (>= $10k) should make the existing American employee quite attractive.
I hope you can see that the deck is actually stacked in the local American's favor, and that a protectionist policy just drives jobs out of the country where they cannot be taxed at all.
This doesn't apply to companies "cheating the system" (looking at the consulting companies that apply for most of the h1bs w/ a lower salary), but most real companies that apply for real h1bs would much rather find a similarly qualified US person.
This is the lump of labor fallacy at its worst.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
How did the US manage to grow from 100 million people to more than 300 million without massive unemployment if the number of jobs to go around was fixed?
Please stop using it.
Image the following thought experiment. Assume that tomorrow morning every H1-B worker poof vanished. Then, on the assumption of egregiously wrong, zero of those positions in this hypothetical world could or would be filled by a single individual of the 204 million working population of US. If egregiously wrong then 60K to 85K good well paying middle class salaried positions would sit begging, unfulfilled and unfillable.
If egregiously correct, than most of those positions would be filled. Care to quantify your belief of "egregious wrongness" by stating how many of those positions you in fact believe can not and will not get filled?
Some of those positions would be filled - eventually. Some of the jobs would be farmed out to other countries.
Also, the people that depend on the custom of those workers (say a bunch of them are from India and eat at a local Indian restaurant as a simple thought experiment) would suffer as well.
The economy is not a zero-sum game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoHCT2bUjwg
The first order effect difference: I claim effectively all of those positions could and would be filled. The "this is egregiously wrong" position claims that effectively none of those well paid jobs would be filled. I know why people will proactively seek a well paying job. I am not able to follow the position that no one will bother to seek those positions at all. Seems at odds with basic human motives to me.
With regard to the alluded second order effects, multiplier effects.
Consider the Disney situation where "about 250 Disney employees were told in late October that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India."[1]
Sure the local Indian restaurant will prosper. But that is 250 households whose kids can longer afford to go to college. 250 home purchases vs 250 apartment rentals (folks on 2-3 yr visa rent not buy in general). So on and so forth.
On the surface, to me, 250 middle class families with well paying IT positions spins off far more positive effects than what we have now which is 250 US families with significant if not total household income loss, on unemployment etc. In no way is this compensated by having 250, lower paid, immigrants on temporary H1-B visas (again NYTimes phrasing). I see a net-net huge loss, others seem to see a net-net huge win.
[1] Quoted from NYTimes.
Because it's completely impossible for any of these people to find another decent job?
Sorry, don't buy it. I've been through companies folding and so on, and I have a better job than I did then.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/26/us/lawsuit-claims-disney-c... http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-edison-layoffs-2015021...
Nobody suggested that the probability of at least one of these people getting a decent job down the road is zero.
A huge percentage of them in their 40s, 50s will not get anything even close. Please take some time to become familiar with ageism in the IT industry to understand why this is the case.
What is it that you don't buy? Exactly.
That they didn't really lose their jobs? That they were not really replaced that by the temporary immigrants on H1-B visas that they trained? That most of them didn't find better paying jobs within the week after being laid off? That many of these families will not suffer a huge drop in living standard?
There's even a good market for developers over 40 - that includes me - even though there are some places where people prefer youth and energy to experience.
THE MYTH OF THE RULE OF LAW
http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/MythWeb.htm
...and...
HAYEK, THE COMMON LAW, AND FLUID DRIVE
http://www.law.nyu.edu/sites/default/files/ECM_PRO_060886.pd...
Also, the common argument of "There is no shortage for X, people just want to pay less money, than the current, extremely high price of X", is completely nonsensical.
The DEFINITION of a shortage is "I believe the price is too high". Thats how supply and demand works.
Example: Imagine if bread costed 100$ a loaf. Is there a shortage of food, or is it just people complaining that the price of bread is too high?
How else would you even define a shortage other than "the price is too high"?
More people want to buy product or service X than there is currently available in the marketplace.
So, let's say that during the next growing season, some new fungus appears and decimates the US grain crop. That will result in bread shortages. Even at $100 per loaf, there won't be as much bread available as there are people looking to buy it.
If it cost $100 per loaf, there would again be people who want it but can't buy it, just as the situation already is but more of them.
Capitalism is literally defined by the perpetual shortage of scarce physical resources. Bread costs what it does because people want it - that means they do not already have it - and are willing to pay so much for it. And the highest bidders get their bread, with the price being set at approximately the lowest bidder who would still get a finite loaf of bread if they were dolled out in sequence of most demand to least, while anyone below that "bid" amount does not get bread.
If bread were market valued at $100 a loaf, it would mean either more people are willing to pay more for the same bread - say, someone wants to buy all the bread and offers way above market price to capture the bread supply - or the supply itself has diminished enough that the lowest bidders at $1 and $10 and $99 were too far back in line to get bread behind all those willing to pay $100 or more.
If something is worth value in market exchange, it means someone wants something they do not have, and are willing to pay an amount of money for it. Demand is dictated by the total amount of money seeking something, and supply is determined by how much of something can fill that demand. And demand can include those seeking loaves of bread for a cent - but it is very unlikely their demand will ever be met, because they offer so little in return.
And, in fact, the same thing applies in reverse from the sell side. They never complain that the price is too high, but some of them think the price is too low - and others don't.
I'd expect that everyone who thinks there's a shortage of engineers is on the employer side. And most of those on the employee side think that there quite clearly is not a shortage.
The actual definition of a shortage is "a deficiency in quantity" (per dictionary.com). Well, that's not very helpful. Deficiency compared to what? Or, deficient by what measure? You can have a shortage personally, compared to what you desire; but for a market as a whole to have a shortage, you have to have something to compare it to. That usually is the state of the market at a time when [it is generally agreed that] there wasn't a shortage.
So if you say, "STEM salaries are twice as high as they were in 1990, even after adjusting for inflation", then you might be able to make a case that there is a shortage. If you say, "we can't find people at the price we're willing to pay, but that price is less than the market rate in 1990", well, my heart fails to bleed for you.
It's just a matter of time until IT is in a similar position and something else becomes the hot new field.
Your definition of shortage is nonsensical, and it's easy to prove it:
From MY point of view, there is a shortage of supermodels willing to have sex with me. Everybody would laugh at that being a "shortage".
The same applies in that there is a shortage of engineers willing to work for me for free. Everybody would also laugh at that shortage.
As do you have the cause wrong.
The reason why enrollments in STEM are high is because it is one of the last remaining degrees which actually pays back the money spent to get it.
Until they start feeding a quarter million H1-B's into the system a year.
Based on my own experience and the experiences of my friends (people who work as engineers for AWS, Google, Apple, Facebook, SpaceX, etc.), there is a big shortage in 'high quality' engineers.
Assuming there is "a big shortage in 'high quality' engineers" can anyone provide links to any AWS, Google, Apple, Facebook, SpaceX, position postings which typifies this big shortage? e.g. Postings which are an exemplar, of requiring 'high quality engineers' but remain open for weeks or months due to the massive STEM shortage? Based on the I-squared Act's proposed increase to a 1/4 million (250,000) H1-Bs there should be 10s and 10s of 10,000s such postings.
This massive STEM shortage debate has been happening for years. The referenced article links studies, presents supporting data (aka actual statistics) and provides direct anecdotal evidence (he is involved in the production of STEM resources). Bluntly I have seen many similar fact based articles and studies on the "there is no STEM shortage" side and can't recall a single peer reviewed study on the massive shortage side. Links welcome.
A single job posting can remain active indefinitely and does not necessarily represent just one open position.
This leads to the situation where an outsider sees one 'job posting' and thousands of applicants while Tech Co sees a shortage because only a few of those applicants are qualified.
Also, there is an incentive mis-match between people who realize there is a shortage and people wanting to prove that a shortage exists. If as a 'high quality engineer' you realize you are a scarce resource, and that makes you a lot of $, why would you want to convince other people to acquire the skills you have – self inflicted devaluation?
This is why the people with the loudest voices on this issue are CEOs and VCs who were previously high quality engineers. They have a clear view, the data, and the monetary incentive to vocalize it – more high quality engineers will increase their $.
> A single job posting can remain active indefinitely and does not necessarily represent just one open position.
I have asked about this already, several times in several postings. At this point, I'll take but one concrete example. Could you post one link, a single link, of one of these (from I assume a huge population) endless job postings from say Google, Facebook, Apple, HP, IBM, ... well from anyone, which represents a huge quantity of unfillable positions with near zero qualified applicants? I am curious for just one example. One.
Of course CEOs and VCs want engineers at the cheapest rates possible to increase their bottom line. Yes, indeed they have both monetary incentive and the means to exercise the political influence towards that goal. I don't see how that provides any proof or even marginal evidence that there is a massive STEM shortage.
If these CEOs and VCs have the data I have never seen it shared. Not one smidgen of detailed HR data.
Again, the original referenced article does offer up evidence of its premise and cites several studies, a PBS documentary, statistics, etc.
I understand you believe there is a massive shortage of STEM people unable to fill countless blackholes of open positions. Maybe this is just too big an ask, can you provide any evidence, at all? A link to a peer reviewed study from academia? Or maybe a link to detailed testimony from Apple's or Microsoft's CEO on capital hill. Any definitive numbers?? Anything at all?
Here is one example: https://stripe.com/jobs/positions/engineer
That single job listing (Engineer at Stripe) represents ALL of their Engineer hires, and likely 100x-1000x as many rejected applications as hires. That posting has been there for years. There are not enough qualified people to fill the role.
There are many, many companies that operate this way.
Google and Apple have also been convicted of colluding not to poach each other's "high quality" engineers, lest it drive the price up.
Mark Thies is a Professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Clemson. His research areas include advanced materials, biofuels, and renewable biopolymers.
I didn't read his article as "complaining" and that is a very high bar distinguishing low and high quality engineers you have if he fails to clear it. I thought it substantive citing supporting data and studies for his premise.
- intrusive overlay (tick) - prompting to use my location (tick) - huge ugly advert mixed into content (tick)
Salaries aren't going up because employers are conspiring to push down wages[0] and non executive wages in general are stagnating or going down[1]. Furthermore as already stated elsewhere in this thread, STEM degrees have huge wash out percentages so "freshmen enrolled" is just as good a statistic as "college freshman who plan on changing the world". The real problem, which has been repeated ad nauseam here, is that there's a shortage of STEM workers at the wages employers are willing to pay.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L... [1] https://rwer.wordpress.com/2016/01/16/percent-change-in-u-s-...
http://www.businessinsider.com/when-steves-jobs-and-barack-o...
"Jobs continued to press the engineering angle at the dinner, saying that at the time Apple employed 700,000 factory workers in China, plus 30,000 engineers to support those workers."
We need the best talent of the world to be a technological leader nation. nonetheless, there is a big amount of jobs that need a good engineer but not a bright mind as Wozniak.
This is how globalization works and we need to keep up or be defeated by a better player at accepting STEM immigration. Let the fear aside, confront the global arena and struggle to keep being leaders of the world.
1. Put the factory and the jobs in China
2. Put the factory and the jobs in the US, using workers who are imported (from China/India/et al)
Why doesn't Jobs mention an option to, oh, I don't know, _make a commitment to the millions of people who are already in the US_ looking for work?
And, who better than Apple itself to train up some _existing_ members of the US labor pool in how to do what Apple does?
To the extent that "American" corporations are shells that import manufactured goods from foreign factories and import engineers from foreign societies, I have to wonder whether I give a crap if the US is a "technological leader."
Maybe if some Chinese investors bought Apple and moved the whole mess to Shenzhen, the world would finally get reasonable prices on (and customization of) Apple hardware.
That reality would sit poorly with Americans who didn't see it coming, and certainly with those trying to use offshore manufacturing for political support, but that's been the plan all along.
Now try to imagine the cost of recruiting, hiring, training and __retaining__ the same talent from college recent graduates, again infeasible against the Chinese economics.
Finally, the Apple devices manufacturing costs are low, the margin is high because there is an ecosystem restraining access to the iOS development and such OS is very good. Here or in Shenzhen, they would charge the same.
Read that again. That means that for every domestic engineer job (even assuming all were in the USA), Apple created 23 offshore jobs in China alone.
Hmmm.
There's no shortage of available workers, there's a shortage of companies willing to pay well.
"there are no worker protections to prevent companies from firing American workers, replacing them with H-1B’s, and even forcing them to train their replacements"
Another name for "worker shortage" is "high wages". You can't fix one without fixing the other at the same time.
If high priced workers are replaced with cheaper ones then all else being equal, it means the company is operating more efficiently. Isn't that a good thing? Good for the economy, good for consumers and only bad for the overpaid workers. What does he expect? That workers who demand more than the market rate should have their jobs protected so they don't feel bad about the economy changing around them? Even at the expense of everyone else?
I demand a market rate of zero. Now do you see the problem?
Everybody loves capitalism--until they're on the receiving end.
What workers are demanding more that the market rate? There is a market rate with a 1/4 million H1-Bs and there is a market rate without a 1/4 million H1-Bs. Any worker which demands more than the market rate will not get it.
And what is the expense of everyone else referring too? It is substantially a zero sum game. Who are the else?
I'm going to call bogus on this. The law requires H1B holders to be paid the prevailing market wage, or more, for their profession/experience level. The fact that he's referencing Trump's election platform, and doesn't offer any other evidence of this, doesn't give me any confidence whatsoever.
I'd also like to issue a challenge to anyone who claims that the H1B system we currently have is bad: Please propose an alternate form of immigration system. Please also specify details regarding
1) How many immigrants should be allowed into the country every year
2) How the above number of immigrants should be selected, amongst all potential applicants.
A simple revamp to the program would be simple: - Absolutely zero visas (or very few) to any of the outsourcing / bodyshop companies - Tata, etc.
- A company found bringing workers in on a Visa to be trained and then lay people off, the company should face a significant fine.
- Companys have to show if there is on one side a significant downsizing and then sudden rehiring that includes H1Bs, that they didn't offer training and mentorship before laying some of the original people off. IBM and Disney come to mind.
- Keep or impose caps by region. Sorry, we are a melting pot, but certain countries have significantly higher numbers trying to come in than others. The best companies and groups I worked with were diverse rather than monoculture work places.
Personally, I do like the score based system that Canada and Australia generally have.
EDIT/Addition:
- The original mentality of cost being the overarching factor has become less en vogue. Many companies started insourcing again. That said, it's still not wholly reversed most of the outsourcing going on.
I know outsourcing does not equate with H1B wholly, but there are companies that abuse the visas to hire cheaper, have locals train, and fire the locals.
Regionally by US demographic could be interesting. A lot of the insourcing of things like support and call centers are going to regions of the US where costs are lower, but there is still an educational base. Though, surprisingly, some areas like Eugene/Springfield, OR are getting pretty hard hit -- though that may mostly be troubled due to Symantec's financial issues.
It is unfair to US workers: Right after I was hired at the very next downturn coworker's were let go but I stayed. I didn't know it at the time but my salary was low.
It is unfair to the H1B worker - you can't switch jobs easily. If you are fired you have to leave the country, it is very stressful. You can't plan your future - why invest for retirement ?
There is a path to a green card but only if employer sponsors at considerable cost.
It only benefits the employers.
If there is a true shortage of tech workers make the system better by allowing full mobility and allowing the workers to directly apply for green card without sponsorship. It could start by demanding employer's pay prevailing wage plus a 25k deposit/bond towards future unemployment or immigration costs of employee + family, and employee is able to switch jobs after 6 months with h1b sponsor