And I mean no offense to anyone who's here on a work visa. You are sad pawns in an evil game.
How do you expect this to not be offensive? Drop the fake courtesy.
While we are laying out anecdotal evidence in support of our causes let me just say that when I got a job straight out of college I had better offers than most of my American classmates. I for one was not a cheap replacement for domestic labor.
Even if that were the case you can't talk about the broken H1B system without talking about the broken Green Card process. Give people an easy path to a GC and they have no reason to work below market wages. But if you simply do not want to complete with people who happen to not be born in your country then that's a different issue.
I'll admit, the path to a GC is equally broken. And I genuinely feel bad for most immigrants here in the US. Sure, they might have it better here than they do elsewhere. Why else would bright folks leave the comfort and familiarity of their home to work here? But still, it seems like indentured servitude most of the time. Believe me, my sentiments were not superficial.
Why would bright folks in the US leave the comfort and familiarity of their home to work elsewhere in the US? Or if you think that's a false analogy then keep in mind that there are plenty of European, Kiwi, Aussie, Canadian etc. immigrants to US as well.
There are plenty of reasons to leave the country you are born in, and not all of them implies that you had it worse before. Wanting to get away from comfort and familiarity is in itself a reason to emigrate.
As an immigrant co-founder who has created 2 jobs and is hiring to create 2 more right now, I promise that some of us are creating new jobs, not stealing them. Exhibit A: http://awesm.jobscore.com/list
(I'm hoping the above job link does not count as spam in this context, but I will edit and remove it if so)
You got me there, but I still assert that the vast majority of immigrants aren't founders hiring Americans, and what's happening in Silicon Valley simply doesn't hold true many other places here in the US. In my part of the country, I'm actually much more frustrated with undocumented illegal immigrant labor than I am with student- or work-visa immigrant labor.
That's looking at it the wrong way. Look at the percentage of immigrants who are creating jobs, not the percentage of job-creaters who are immigrants. Or net jobs created by immigrants. Or something.
Percentage of immigrants who are job creators, versus percentage of native-born citizens who are job creators would be interesting. To be worth it to the economy, immigrants don't need to create more jobs than they take, they just have to be better at it than native-born people.
I'm also an immigrant founder (actually not really an immigrant because I want to go back to Spain eventually). I have not created any jobs yet but I can assure you I've invested WAY more money in this country than I took out of it.
My girlfriend also works here and it's going to take her years to get back the tens of thousands of hard-earned euros she invested in her Master's. I have many friends in that plane.
You're right. I lost it there, and it was uncalled for. Edited to remove it. I still believe the points I made hold merit, though. Immigrants aren't "stealing" our jobs, but corporations who choose to employ them in large numbers are not "creating more jobs" by doing so.
on the one hand, corporations can take advantage of an immigrants sponsorship needs to lower wages / increase demands on their labor. you definitely seem to sympathize with immigrants on this point.
on the other hand "us native minions" (as you termed it) have an interest in artificially reducing the availability of skill in the labor market. some of your tone makes me think there's also an element of this in your stance?
i can't agree with the idea of restricting labor on the basis of the coincidence of where someone was born. there might be a sociological argument to be made when considering unskilled labor from less developed countries - but how can anyone justify restricting skilled labor, and movement between countries with socioeconomic parity (us/canada/eu/japan/etc.)?
I sympathize with the immigrants. I don't have an interest in artificially reducing the availability of skill labor. I have a really big problem with leaving our own people out of a job because corporations would prefer to hire immigrants for less.
Really, though, my overall complaint was that this fluff piece tried to say "Immigrants create more jobs" when statistically speaking, they often take more jobs than they save, and only on very rare occasions actually create brand new shiny jobs that help the unemployment situation.
My anger doesn't even remotely apply to the cream of the crop, the genuine masterminds who come here to work their magic. Whether they're founders or very senior level hackers. Most of them aren't being underpaid here, and they're not contributing to the problem. They're not par for the course, either.
I can testify first-hand that the way the current H1B green card application process is structured actively discourages long-term investment in the US by H1B visa holders.
Given the possibility that you have to leave the US if you lose an H1B job (unless you can find a new one immediately), that makes you less likely to buy a house or a decent car that you will have trouble unloading if you have to leave on short notice. And I have deliberately shifted savings into cash vs. a 401k plan because I can take the cash with me when I leave.
Your position is called a 'lump of labor fallacy' by economists. A job filled by an immigrant still creates demand in the local economy (for housing, food, etc.) which in turn leads to more job creation. It's not a one-dimensional tug of war between jobs and unemployment statistics.
> My anger doesn't even remotely apply to the cream of the crop, the genuine masterminds who come here to work their magic. Whether they're founders or very senior level hackers. Most of them aren't being underpaid here, and they're not contributing to the problem. They're not par for the course, either.
so what would your argument be against just an average programmer, say from japan, being hired to work at a company in the bay area?
I've been in the US since mid-2006 on an H1B, and making $100k+ annually. However, I'm currently in the final stages of applying for residency Down Under and am planning on leaving the US w/ my wife and son in early December. The reasons are partly family related, but also because I am fed up w/ feeling like an indentured employee under the H1B system.
I making more at my current job (~$130k/year) than I ever have and likely will for a while. However, in many other ways it's a very poor fit and long-term I believe it's a professional dead-end. But since I am currently applying for a green card through this job, I am stuck in it until I get the green card which could take anywhere from 2 - 5 years. If I get another job in the US (which I would have no problem doing w/ my skill-set) or lost this job I would have to restart the green card application process, losing at least 1.5 years. On top of that my wife cannot legally work in the US until I have my green card. She is a high-school teacher with 10 years of experience in international schools in Asia and, ironically, has a master's degree in education from an American university (although the course-work was done in Asia).
So I can definitely sympathize w/ Americans who feel that H1B workers like myself are undercutting the American IT job market--because we are! H1B jobs hold out the eventual promise of a green card, but in the meantime if you're in my situation you have to put up w/ a lousy job and pass on better paying and more interesting jobs. For some that promise of a green card is worth it, but for me it is not, so we're pulling up stakes so that I can practice my craft as a free man.
My girlfriend is Japanese on an H1 visa for a Big-4 accounting firm Japanese practice. We've had a couple of scares that she might not get the H1-B due to quota limits (fortunately, last year nobody was hiring so there was no lottery). They run a straight-out lottery every year, and back in '08, they ran a lottery, and over 150,000 people applied, and through random selection, only 65,000 people from the 150K pool would be selected. But the H1-B program is by no means as easy as you think it is.
And you know what? H1-B labor isn't cheap. My girlfriend is paid $10K more because she speaks Japanese and can communicate with Japanese clients. You actually have to prove to USCIS that you are paying at least market rate, if not more than market rate because of a shortage of labor. I hire people on a regular basis, and I am very familiar with the H1-B process, having seen two of my team members being forced back home because they failed to proceed with the process from the quota lottery.
Again, it's not a binary problem. There are obviously abuser of the H1-B program, and there are businesses, even industries, that benefit from immigrants. You know what really pushed US innovation forward in the last 50 years? I believe immigrants pushed US innovation more than any thing else. Charles K. Kao, a naturalized American, made the US his home and won a Nobel last year for his work in optics during the 70s. Sun Microsystems founder is German, and so is Peter Thiel. William Boyle of Bell Labs. Londoner, now American, Jack Szostak of Harvard Medical School. Taiwan immigrant David Ho for his work in AIDS. Hell, Einstein was a US immigrant.
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[ 0.20 ms ] story [ 64.4 ms ] threadHow do you expect this to not be offensive? Drop the fake courtesy.
While we are laying out anecdotal evidence in support of our causes let me just say that when I got a job straight out of college I had better offers than most of my American classmates. I for one was not a cheap replacement for domestic labor.
Even if that were the case you can't talk about the broken H1B system without talking about the broken Green Card process. Give people an easy path to a GC and they have no reason to work below market wages. But if you simply do not want to complete with people who happen to not be born in your country then that's a different issue.
There are plenty of reasons to leave the country you are born in, and not all of them implies that you had it worse before. Wanting to get away from comfort and familiarity is in itself a reason to emigrate.
(I'm hoping the above job link does not count as spam in this context, but I will edit and remove it if so)
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2010/09/economic...
My girlfriend also works here and it's going to take her years to get back the tens of thousands of hard-earned euros she invested in her Master's. I have many friends in that plane.
> ... a bunch of H1B toting immigrants ...
on the other hand "us native minions" (as you termed it) have an interest in artificially reducing the availability of skill in the labor market. some of your tone makes me think there's also an element of this in your stance?
i can't agree with the idea of restricting labor on the basis of the coincidence of where someone was born. there might be a sociological argument to be made when considering unskilled labor from less developed countries - but how can anyone justify restricting skilled labor, and movement between countries with socioeconomic parity (us/canada/eu/japan/etc.)?
Really, though, my overall complaint was that this fluff piece tried to say "Immigrants create more jobs" when statistically speaking, they often take more jobs than they save, and only on very rare occasions actually create brand new shiny jobs that help the unemployment situation.
My anger doesn't even remotely apply to the cream of the crop, the genuine masterminds who come here to work their magic. Whether they're founders or very senior level hackers. Most of them aren't being underpaid here, and they're not contributing to the problem. They're not par for the course, either.
Given the possibility that you have to leave the US if you lose an H1B job (unless you can find a new one immediately), that makes you less likely to buy a house or a decent car that you will have trouble unloading if you have to leave on short notice. And I have deliberately shifted savings into cash vs. a 401k plan because I can take the cash with me when I leave.
so what would your argument be against just an average programmer, say from japan, being hired to work at a company in the bay area?
I making more at my current job (~$130k/year) than I ever have and likely will for a while. However, in many other ways it's a very poor fit and long-term I believe it's a professional dead-end. But since I am currently applying for a green card through this job, I am stuck in it until I get the green card which could take anywhere from 2 - 5 years. If I get another job in the US (which I would have no problem doing w/ my skill-set) or lost this job I would have to restart the green card application process, losing at least 1.5 years. On top of that my wife cannot legally work in the US until I have my green card. She is a high-school teacher with 10 years of experience in international schools in Asia and, ironically, has a master's degree in education from an American university (although the course-work was done in Asia).
So I can definitely sympathize w/ Americans who feel that H1B workers like myself are undercutting the American IT job market--because we are! H1B jobs hold out the eventual promise of a green card, but in the meantime if you're in my situation you have to put up w/ a lousy job and pass on better paying and more interesting jobs. For some that promise of a green card is worth it, but for me it is not, so we're pulling up stakes so that I can practice my craft as a free man.
And you know what? H1-B labor isn't cheap. My girlfriend is paid $10K more because she speaks Japanese and can communicate with Japanese clients. You actually have to prove to USCIS that you are paying at least market rate, if not more than market rate because of a shortage of labor. I hire people on a regular basis, and I am very familiar with the H1-B process, having seen two of my team members being forced back home because they failed to proceed with the process from the quota lottery.
Again, it's not a binary problem. There are obviously abuser of the H1-B program, and there are businesses, even industries, that benefit from immigrants. You know what really pushed US innovation forward in the last 50 years? I believe immigrants pushed US innovation more than any thing else. Charles K. Kao, a naturalized American, made the US his home and won a Nobel last year for his work in optics during the 70s. Sun Microsystems founder is German, and so is Peter Thiel. William Boyle of Bell Labs. Londoner, now American, Jack Szostak of Harvard Medical School. Taiwan immigrant David Ho for his work in AIDS. Hell, Einstein was a US immigrant.