They determine who belongs to the "best and brightest" by looking at wages.
An alternative hypothesis is that in an industry where getting a raise means switching jobs the H1B program is successful in suppressing wage levels of foreigners.
Your alternative hypothesis is interesting. I am not sure offhand how it would go. On one hand, as an H1B employee, it is not that hard for you to switch jobs and find a person to transfer your visa. Tiny companies might have an issue but then again, tiny companies don't pay that well (assumption.). After time goes by though, switching jobs can be harmful especially if you are being sponsored by the company for a green card. This is because your green card application process can slow down as you switch jobs (some things will have to be redone.) On the other hand, there is another factor in place: The wait times for green cards are reaching insane levels (25 + years). In such a climate, maybe the person might just decide to switch jobs more often.
While determining one's skill by how much he/she gets paid sounds ridiculous, this makes sense if you consider macro trends, as this article is talking about.
If an industry (like finance) routinely pays multiple times the compensation of another industry (say, engineering) that requires similar skillset, it's rational that more of the top graduates will choose finance over engineering.
No it doesn't make much sense even if you consider macro trends. Bright Chinese or Indian workers will almost always be ready to work for lesser wages than a 'Native American' (if there's something like that) will be ready to work for. There's a macro economics involved here, but it's not what you think.
Trust me, in a country with reasonable immigration laws, like Canada, highly skilled foreign workers do not make less money than locals.
The biggest problem with H1B, which Matloff is critical of, is that it puts foreign worker and local worker in uneven legal grounds, thus unable to demand the same wage.
They are cheaper. Many people are willing to work for cheaper if that means that a company will file for them to stay in the US. Companies exploit this.
The graph seems to be assuming that an immigrant becoming a citizen suddenly makes them America's "best and brightest" and are no longer included in the temporary workers' column. I don't seem them getting filtered out to make the comparison fairer.
They don't have to be better or brighter to make everyone better off. If there are jobs and they fill them: they create wealth for the US economy. There's no fixed sized pie in the economy. They fill a job: the pie increases. Economics 101 for HN
Corporate taxes are less than 10% of U.S. revenue and falling. Not a particularly compelling reason to push for policies that increase corporate profits.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Doc... appears to suggest that the downward trend in corporate taxes as percentage of gdp is in the process of reversing. Also on first glance the numbers going forward do not appear to be very different than the tax revenue paid by corporations for the last couple of decades.
I think parent was talking about the increase in income and consumption taxes as a result of the new worker paying income tax, capital gains tax due to the higher returns to capital, and the increase in consumption all around (resulting in increased sales taxes). Corporate taxes are sort of irrelevant and are arguably double-taxation since corporate earnings will ultimately be subject to those other taxes.
Corporate taxes are not arguably double taxation. They just aren't double taxation, period.
Here is an easy way to figure out if something is double taxation: income that counts once for GDP but is taxed more than once. If I make $100,000 in NY as an Illinois resident, and both NY and Illinois tax me on that income without giving me credit for taxes paid in the other jurisdiction, that's double taxation. My income is only counted once in GDP, but is taxed more than once.
Corporate taxes are just the natural consequence of passing money through a distinct legal person (the corporation) in a system that taxes income to legal persons. Say there is a 10% income tax. I make $100,000. I'm taxed 10% on that, leaving $90,000. I give $50,000 to you. You're taxed 10% on that, leaving $45,000. Total income, for the purposes of GDP, is $150,000. Total taxes collected is $15,000, or 10% of GDP. No double taxation!
So why does anyone create corporate entities? To get the benefit of the corporation being a distinct legal person: limited liability. It's symmetric: the corporation is treated as a separate person for liability purposes, and is treated as a separate person for tax purposes.
wish someone would look at the human side of the story - you give so many years here, have kids who are citizens, you identify with the country and the culture, you came here legally, you worked hard, you are still waiting to call this home (at the current state with wait times upto 50 years)
1. Wait times for an Indian/Chinese born person under the EB3 quota are varied but the backlog as it stands now looks like it might hit 25+ years. I am not offhand sure about the 50 years number but have heard of it mentioned earlier.
2. One becomes a citizen after 5 years of permanent residency. (3 if one is married to a US citizen.)
A few years ago I would sympathize with that; but look, the rules are what they are. When you and I got our H1B, we knew (or should know) what the rules are w.r.t. becoming a permanent resident. If you put all your eggs in one basket, knowing fully well that you're in the India/China/Mexico EB2/3 bucket (assuming that you are or in any country which takes years) and without a backup plan? I don't think you should blame the system. Sure the system needs to improve, but it's not your and my call. Forgive my ignorance about your situation, but we have to be smart about this and stop sulking.
This study appears to ignore non-wage compensation (e.g. stock grants). I know that for me, as a H1B worker who graduated from a US graduate program and working for one of the large companies named, that stock based compensation is a substantial fraction of my total pay.
Can we talk about racism? If you're brown or yellow or black... chances are you don't make the company club (as easily) as well, white people... I've seen it with my own eyes...
If you're not well networked in a corporation, but still work very well, you don't get a higher wage or as much opportunity to a promotion..
non-white ethnicity is a huge network barrier. It's not like people wanna golf with you and then go have a fancy chicken tiki massala or eat injera.
Also, could foreign workers be much more ok with simple lives rather than being ambitious corporate thugs?.. but what's the measure of ambition for higher salary btwn immigrant and native wokers?
If I came from a village I'd settle for any salary. Using salaries for understanding is absolutely pathetic..
> Can we talk about racism? If you're brown or yellow or black... chances are you don't make the company club (as easily) as well, white people... I've seen it with my own eyes...
If we are going to be pulling anecdotes from where the sun don't shine, I can also point at Silicon Valley with a huge number of south asian/chinese immigrants starting companies.
> If you're not well networked, but still working very well, you don't get a higher wage/promotions...
Erm... so ? This is life. Popularity and hard work are not necessarily correlated, learn how to network. It is a life skill. This is like a guy saying that he is a good guy but doesn't get any with a girl.
Maybe they don't care to network.. maybe these foreign workers would rather work and do well in their field than suck * to get ahead?
I'm not saying they can't network, anybody can indeed over come that... but some people, and maybe foreigner workers fall into this category, don't care about the popularity contest.. they're just trying to work
Btw, did you know that women don't make as much as men? maybe female workers are... Salary #'s overlook a lot of cultural things that need to be studied...
This is an interesting line of discussion, but it's really orthogonal to one's race/gender/ethnicity/etc. Some people (like|accept|are willing to play) the "networking game" and some people aren't. In either case, it's a simple truth that a willingness and ability to play that game usually corresponds with more money, more responsibility, etc.
I know it offends the sensibilities of many hackers that something so important should reduce to something so subjective and uncontrollable as human relations, but in the end, we are all salespeople... we're selling ourselves to others, all the time. And choosing not to engage in that is making a choice to do a poor job of selling yourself.
It would be nice if the entire world could just perceive our knowledge, wisdom, skills and experience, and just come to us and evaluate us objectively, but it just doesn't work that way. It's not fair, but who ever said life was going to be fair.
Whether you're Indian or Caucasian, male or female, Catholic or Atheist, or whatever, learning to network and sell yourself is something you need to do if you want to advance and be successful. Now if you're content with your current position, salary, lifestyle, etc., then don't worry about it.
> This is an interesting line of discussion, but it's really orthogonal to one's race/gender/ethnicity/etc. Some people (like|accept|are willing to play) the "networking game" and some people aren't. In either case, it's a simple truth that a willingness and ability to play that game usually corresponds with more money, more responsibility, etc.
Exactly. Most jobs in companies are not ridiculously hard to do, you don't necessarily need to amazingly brilliant to do that. Hell, I was challenged more in grad. school than I have been in any job after that. On the other hand, I get paid shit tons more. The "real world" has a lot of bullshit to deal with like meetings, chit chatting with your boss and getting ahead. I don't think it is good but on the other hand, you would be particularly foolish if you think that the world is a meritocratic system.
> Maybe they don't care to network.. maybe these foreign workers would rather work and do well in their field than suck * to get ahead?
Yeah, I'd definitely rather work and do well in my field than play the popularity game. Oh, and I'm a young white reasonably-good-looking male.
I've been delivering great software for years. But I didn't get anywhere career-wise until I got over myself, stopped wishing the world worked like a meritocracy, put myself out there, and made friends like crazy. I don't care about the popularity contest, but I play the game anyway, so I can get the work I want.
Maybe this game would have been more difficult than it is if I had been a different ethnicity, or from overseas, or whatever. I don't know. I'm not saying it was easy. But just because somebody wants to do good work and magically achieve success for their work alone doesn't mean the world is going to bend the way they want, no matter what their skin color is.
> I'm not saying they can't network, anybody can indeed over come that... but some people, and maybe foreigner workers fall into this category, don't care about the popularity contest.. they're just trying to work
There is this perception (especially in tech.) that "networking" or "social skills" is something that jocks and cheerleeders do. It is claimed that this is easy and doable. If it is so easy and doable, why whine about it? This is how the world works, deal with it or start your own damn company.
How many Asian males are engineers in Silicon Valley compared to females? I bet a lot more. Yet I believe there are more c-level females in tech companies than Asian males.
First, I agree with some of what you said about "simple lives", "measure of ambition", and especially "settle for any salary", and I totally agree that the way this "study" uses salaries for understanding is pathetic. Other commenters elsewhere made even more clear arguments about how H1B might make this effect even stronger.
Second: other commenters have already pointed out that your comment about being "well-networked", while true, has nothing to do with racism. So don't confuse those things.
Third:
> *Can we talk about racism?
Maybe you're content to just vent your frustration, and throw blame around. Or maybe you want to have a meaningful conversation. I don't know you, I don't know your goals. But if your goal is to have a meaningful conversation about racism, or educate the privileged white people about their privilege, you're doing it wrong.
One of the facts of human nature is that people don't want to hear this shit. If you want to illuminate anyone, you have to make a very careful and thoughtful argument, because when you make sloppy mistakes, that gives people the excuse they need to let themselves off the hook. Just look at the replies you got: you said something that's true ("If you're brown or yellow or black... chances are you don't make the company club (as easily) as well, white people") and then you said a few things that were dumb ("I've seen it with my own eyes...", and the thing about confusing not-wanting-to-network with ethnicity), and look at which part got the replies.
If you want to preach the uncomfortable truths, you've gotta be on your A game. And if you play a C game, you just distract the audience, which makes it harder for other people to explain the situation, which means that the racism will continue. As well as all the other forms of privilege, which I notice you didn't much care about (your "btw women" notwithstanding).
Hey thanks for this feedback! I really was on my C game, maybe even my F game. But to defend myself, I didn't have time at the moment I was writing this comment to go in depth or really focus on making a good argument. But thats not a good excuse. Also my goal wasn't to fully educate people, i just wanted to spark alternative explanations and hope people would figure out the fully story for themselves. But you're right, I was doing it wrong and it will let people attack me for the weak things.. My bad, will up my game next time.
Until a few months ago I was on the 6th floor of an office building. There was my office, which was a diverse company (minority woman owned, lots of black, white, hispanic, Asian, etc). Then next to us was a .NET shop. All they do is .NET software for the government. ALL Indian/Pakistani. They had one white guy working for them, and he and I talked on the elevator. He said that the only reason he was hired was because they couldn't find an Indian guy that knew his particular specialty. 2 weeks later I saw him on the street corner, and they had fired him and replaced him with an Indian guy. We shared a floor with this company for years, and they wouldn't even talk to any of the non Urdu/Hindi speaking people in my company.
This is the part where you say that I don't have all the information, and maybe he was a terrible worker. That's also the part where I say that you likely don't have the full picture of the "company club" either. The cultural divide can be huge. My former coworker grew up in Punjab. He was very apprehensive when he tagged along with me on a roadtrip (he loved football) and my wife wanted to drive. He told me "the women in my family don't drive." This is the kind of stuff that makes it hard to get into the "company club."
Sadly enough, I have seen this sort of stuff happen. I have worked in teams which are overwhelmingly South Asian, there are definite situations where they find it hard to have casual conversations in English with American counterparts. They form self-selecting groups and there are conversations which are peppered with Indian languages. Now, this is in someways a reverse company club. I have no sympathy for people who then complain that they don't have enough visibility in the company and don't know how to get ahead in the game.
I am aware of what you have brought up. Racism is very evil indeed.. We should do all that we can to never be racist and work to stop racism... easier said than done
My graduate STEM classes did not have many US citizens. I bet it's the same in most universities. I don't think that H1B workers like myself are brighter or smarter than someone local, but the argument that technology companies are losing jobs to Wall Street as a validation criteria for his hypothesis is absurd. Just because Gates says that we need to keep the "best and the brightest" doesn't mean that we're all Nobel laureates in STEM. We have certain technical skills which cannot be fulfilled by Americans (due to lack of American STEM students in universities). That's all.
This is true for my graduate school experience. On the other hand, I have a rather controversial viewpoint: People trained for four years in an excellent undergrad program are way better than people who came from an incompetent undergrad program and have 2 years of a good grad program. Furthermore, the demographics for undergraduate STEM programs has a huge majority of US Citizens. So I am not super sure there are technical skills that graduate students have that cannot be fulfilled by undergraduate students. I think what has happened is that industry (Computer Science/EE) has become obsessed with people with graduate degrees. I work as a data scientist and most of what is done in this field could be done by a competent undergraduate student with some math, computer science.
The number of Americans in Comp Sci versus English doesn't matter. What matters is supply of Americans with BSc Comp Sci versus demand for Americans with BSc Comp Sci.
There is always a demand for software engineers/designers/programmers. According to recent reports there are 3 million open tech jobs in the US. Assuming a pessimistic 50% variation in that number, you still have 1.5 million jobs. The popular dislike for "geek/nerd" STEM subjects in American schools doesn't help. That's unfortunately a societal problem that needs to be overcomed ("I don't know math", "that's for nerds" etc. fine flip my burger then).
Sure not everyone can or should become a programmer/software engineer. But you would expect a progressive forward thinking society like the United States, who has pioneered most of the technological advances in the 20th century to have a steady flow of STEM graduates, wouldn't you?
This story includes all open jobs which require "high-tech skills", not necessarily being software engineers/programmers, and they don't have a breakdown by job function, unfortunately. Maybe I was misled by the over use of IT and high-tech that led me to believe they meant IT jobs only.
This snippet is from Obama's Google+ Hangout:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Perhaps the most notable exchange during the Hangout was when participant Jennifer Wedel of Texas, whose husband has had trouble finding permanent employment for the past three years, interrupted the president.
Obama had said he had a list of folks looking to hire engineers, her husband's specialty. "There's a huge demand for engineers around the country right now," he added, when Wedel jumped in.
"Um, I understand that, but how — given the list that you're getting, I mean we're not getting that — You said in the State of the Union address that business leaders should ask themselves what can they do to bring jobs to America," she said.
The president had a very personal response which Wedel seemed satisfied with.
"If you send me your husband's resume, I'd be interested to find out what's happening," Obama said. "But the word we're getting is somebody in that high tech field should be able to find something right away."
"I'll have to take you up on that," she replied.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Although he was getting calls from companies he couldn't move away from North Texas:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/04/09/144558/texas-engineer-...
And in typical brain-dead, southern conservative fashion his wife blames H1B's for his inability to get a job (I lived in Texas for over seven years, I know these things first hand).
The interesting thing is the "conversion rate" of US Citizen undergrads to US Citizen grad-students. It's extraordinarily low.
And here's the dirty secret: the best known explanation is that it's economically irrational for a US Citizen to get a graduate/PhD degree in a STEM subject.
Agreed. I talked to Philip a few years ago before I applied to grad. school. On the other hand, I had done an undergrad in EE from an average school in India, it made incredible economic sense for me to come to the U.S. to study C.S/Math. If I had studied those things in my undergrad, I wouldn't have gone to grad. school for sure.
Personally, I think Matloff is rather biased in most of his studies. However, I will say this, I was on an H1B for 5 months or so of my life. I can agree with the perception that one feels like a indentured servant. There is always that worry in your mind's eye that one can get fired and would be kicked out of the country. My company went through layoffs two weeks before my green card interview and that was an insanely stressful experience because I was in the situation where if I had gotten laid off, I would probably have to leave the country. If I left the country, my green card application would have been deemed abandoned which means I would have to start over. If you want real immigration reform, make the H1B visa a portable work visa for 5 years. Of course, this doesn't serve the owners of companies. They would rather have the current situation that probably depresses wages but certainly leads to a situation where the employee can be exploited by unscrupulous managers.
Asking someone else is not useful to you, because there are several buckets into which one can fall, that have different waiting times.
As I understand it, there are two questions of timing: how long will an applicant have to wait until given an immigrant visa number, and how long will it take to turn the immigrant visa number into a permanent residency. The latter is, I believe, consistent across buckets but varies over time, depending on the wheels of bureaucracy. It's a year or two, I think? The former, however, depends on your level of training and country of birth.
The wikipedia page is pretty good, in particular a few sections:
Depending on country of birth, if you have a BSc you're looking at 5-11 years of backlog. If you have a higher degree or 5+ years of "progressive" experience you're looking at 0 years of backlog, except 5 years for Chinese and 9 years for Indians. If you are doing family-based immigration, some category/nationality combinations are only just getting around to applications created in 15OCT98 (Philipinos and Mexicans are worst off here).
Time varies based on country of origin. Each country is allocated a fixed number of spots, and these spots of of similar size for all countries. So, if you're coming from a small country (i.e. Iceland) it's easy. Coming from India/Mexico, then you'll have to wait a while..
I got my green card in 2 months from application to interview. On the other hand, my green card was completely unrelated to the H1B visa. I switched from a student visa to the H1B visa for other reasons. I however did the math to see how long it would take for a company to sponsor me and it was roughly 2 years ( I don't fall into the Indian/Chinese bucket that has decades of waiting..)
I have been in your shoes. It took 6 years to process my green card. And I know people who had to go to Canada after 6 years then come back again to US to continue processing GC.
If there was a real talent shortage and a real Visa need, then we would allow H1-B's to self sponsor. Let the company elicit one visa and employee, and have the Fed gov garnish 5-10k over the first year from the employees' wages. After that he/shes a free man/woman to look where they choose. Stay employed, stay out of trouble, and pay another 5-10k and get an additional 3 years. The visa is tied to the person, which is the way it should be. That's a semi compromise, but I still would keep the # capped at < 100k new per year. As it stands with 8% UE we had an increase of 110k in 2010 to 129k in 2011 , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#H-1B_Applications_App....
Shit Article. Since they're earning less wages (or they're ready to work at lesser wages than U.S. workers) that means they are "neither brighter nor better"?
Instead, foreign immigrants have saturated the market,
pushing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics
students onto other career paths
This is contradictory. If immigrants are no better than american workers, and there is no shortage of the latter, why would immigrants be hired through complicated and costly processes in the first place?
Because once they are hired, they can be treated like modern day slaves. If they lose their job, they have to leave the country. This lack of labor force mobility makes them immediately cheaper. Why pay a competitive salary if you don't have to compete for this person?
Well, even if they are not treated that way, the bondage feels that way. The boldness while doing your job well goes away. We cannot ask for promotions since there is no point. I worked with a huge pay cut for years and today I question if my decision to come to US was a right one. I could have been in any of the other open developed countries instead and would have happily settled down.
> This is contradictory. If immigrants are no better than american workers, and there is no shortage of the latter, why would immigrants be hired through complicated and costly processes in the first place?
For most middling to large companies in the bay, the "complicated and costly processes" are outsourced to law firms that are on a retainer. For them, the whole process brings a matter of calling a number. Furthermore, the processes are not that costly (Say around $10K for an H1B application ) compared to the benefits of having an employee who can be exploited. Now, I am not saying it happens consciously at the company level. However, I am pretty damn sure it can happen at the hiring manager level.
Bingo, study showed that because foreign workers are paid no less than us workers, it is unlikely they are discriminated against. That's a good start. Now it would be nice if they help address the shortage of _skilled_ workers (foreign or not) by reforming the visa system
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 112 ms ] threadAn alternative hypothesis is that in an industry where getting a raise means switching jobs the H1B program is successful in suppressing wage levels of foreigners.
If an industry (like finance) routinely pays multiple times the compensation of another industry (say, engineering) that requires similar skillset, it's rational that more of the top graduates will choose finance over engineering.
The biggest problem with H1B, which Matloff is critical of, is that it puts foreign worker and local worker in uneven legal grounds, thus unable to demand the same wage.
Scenario A Shareholder: $100,000, Native programmer: $100,000
Scenario B Shareholder: $150,000, Native programmer: $75,000, H1B programmer: $75,000
There are good reasons in a democracy to favor scenario A over scenario B. It just depends on the following premises:
1) the income of non-Americans is irrelevant to American policy;
2) we care more about the income of the median American than the aggregate GDP;
3) we don't not care about the standard deviation of income
Econ 101 or not, these are not unreasonable premises.
Here is an easy way to figure out if something is double taxation: income that counts once for GDP but is taxed more than once. If I make $100,000 in NY as an Illinois resident, and both NY and Illinois tax me on that income without giving me credit for taxes paid in the other jurisdiction, that's double taxation. My income is only counted once in GDP, but is taxed more than once.
Corporate taxes are just the natural consequence of passing money through a distinct legal person (the corporation) in a system that taxes income to legal persons. Say there is a 10% income tax. I make $100,000. I'm taxed 10% on that, leaving $90,000. I give $50,000 to you. You're taxed 10% on that, leaving $45,000. Total income, for the purposes of GDP, is $150,000. Total taxes collected is $15,000, or 10% of GDP. No double taxation!
So why does anyone create corporate entities? To get the benefit of the corporation being a distinct legal person: limited liability. It's symmetric: the corporation is treated as a separate person for liability purposes, and is treated as a separate person for tax purposes.
2. One becomes a citizen after 5 years of permanent residency. (3 if one is married to a US citizen.)
If you're not well networked in a corporation, but still work very well, you don't get a higher wage or as much opportunity to a promotion..
non-white ethnicity is a huge network barrier. It's not like people wanna golf with you and then go have a fancy chicken tiki massala or eat injera.
Also, could foreign workers be much more ok with simple lives rather than being ambitious corporate thugs?.. but what's the measure of ambition for higher salary btwn immigrant and native wokers?
If I came from a village I'd settle for any salary. Using salaries for understanding is absolutely pathetic..
If we are going to be pulling anecdotes from where the sun don't shine, I can also point at Silicon Valley with a huge number of south asian/chinese immigrants starting companies.
> If you're not well networked, but still working very well, you don't get a higher wage/promotions...
Erm... so ? This is life. Popularity and hard work are not necessarily correlated, learn how to network. It is a life skill. This is like a guy saying that he is a good guy but doesn't get any with a girl.
I'm not saying they can't network, anybody can indeed over come that... but some people, and maybe foreigner workers fall into this category, don't care about the popularity contest.. they're just trying to work
Btw, did you know that women don't make as much as men? maybe female workers are... Salary #'s overlook a lot of cultural things that need to be studied...
I know it offends the sensibilities of many hackers that something so important should reduce to something so subjective and uncontrollable as human relations, but in the end, we are all salespeople... we're selling ourselves to others, all the time. And choosing not to engage in that is making a choice to do a poor job of selling yourself.
It would be nice if the entire world could just perceive our knowledge, wisdom, skills and experience, and just come to us and evaluate us objectively, but it just doesn't work that way. It's not fair, but who ever said life was going to be fair.
Whether you're Indian or Caucasian, male or female, Catholic or Atheist, or whatever, learning to network and sell yourself is something you need to do if you want to advance and be successful. Now if you're content with your current position, salary, lifestyle, etc., then don't worry about it.
Exactly. Most jobs in companies are not ridiculously hard to do, you don't necessarily need to amazingly brilliant to do that. Hell, I was challenged more in grad. school than I have been in any job after that. On the other hand, I get paid shit tons more. The "real world" has a lot of bullshit to deal with like meetings, chit chatting with your boss and getting ahead. I don't think it is good but on the other hand, you would be particularly foolish if you think that the world is a meritocratic system.
Yeah, I'd definitely rather work and do well in my field than play the popularity game. Oh, and I'm a young white reasonably-good-looking male.
I've been delivering great software for years. But I didn't get anywhere career-wise until I got over myself, stopped wishing the world worked like a meritocracy, put myself out there, and made friends like crazy. I don't care about the popularity contest, but I play the game anyway, so I can get the work I want.
Maybe this game would have been more difficult than it is if I had been a different ethnicity, or from overseas, or whatever. I don't know. I'm not saying it was easy. But just because somebody wants to do good work and magically achieve success for their work alone doesn't mean the world is going to bend the way they want, no matter what their skin color is.
There is this perception (especially in tech.) that "networking" or "social skills" is something that jocks and cheerleeders do. It is claimed that this is easy and doable. If it is so easy and doable, why whine about it? This is how the world works, deal with it or start your own damn company.
Second: other commenters have already pointed out that your comment about being "well-networked", while true, has nothing to do with racism. So don't confuse those things.
Third:
> *Can we talk about racism?
Maybe you're content to just vent your frustration, and throw blame around. Or maybe you want to have a meaningful conversation. I don't know you, I don't know your goals. But if your goal is to have a meaningful conversation about racism, or educate the privileged white people about their privilege, you're doing it wrong.
One of the facts of human nature is that people don't want to hear this shit. If you want to illuminate anyone, you have to make a very careful and thoughtful argument, because when you make sloppy mistakes, that gives people the excuse they need to let themselves off the hook. Just look at the replies you got: you said something that's true ("If you're brown or yellow or black... chances are you don't make the company club (as easily) as well, white people") and then you said a few things that were dumb ("I've seen it with my own eyes...", and the thing about confusing not-wanting-to-network with ethnicity), and look at which part got the replies.
If you want to preach the uncomfortable truths, you've gotta be on your A game. And if you play a C game, you just distract the audience, which makes it harder for other people to explain the situation, which means that the racism will continue. As well as all the other forms of privilege, which I notice you didn't much care about (your "btw women" notwithstanding).
This is the part where you say that I don't have all the information, and maybe he was a terrible worker. That's also the part where I say that you likely don't have the full picture of the "company club" either. The cultural divide can be huge. My former coworker grew up in Punjab. He was very apprehensive when he tagged along with me on a roadtrip (he loved football) and my wife wanted to drive. He told me "the women in my family don't drive." This is the kind of stuff that makes it hard to get into the "company club."
There in lies the problem.
Really? Source?
("I don't know math", "that's for nerds" etc. fine flip my burger then).
Not everyone can or should be a programmer.
I believe there was 60 minutes episode for this. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-25/companies-say-3-mil...
This story includes all open jobs which require "high-tech skills", not necessarily being software engineers/programmers, and they don't have a breakdown by job function, unfortunately. Maybe I was misled by the over use of IT and high-tech that led me to believe they meant IT jobs only.
This snippet is from Obama's Google+ Hangout: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Perhaps the most notable exchange during the Hangout was when participant Jennifer Wedel of Texas, whose husband has had trouble finding permanent employment for the past three years, interrupted the president.
Obama had said he had a list of folks looking to hire engineers, her husband's specialty. "There's a huge demand for engineers around the country right now," he added, when Wedel jumped in.
"Um, I understand that, but how — given the list that you're getting, I mean we're not getting that — You said in the State of the Union address that business leaders should ask themselves what can they do to bring jobs to America," she said.
The president had a very personal response which Wedel seemed satisfied with.
"If you send me your husband's resume, I'd be interested to find out what's happening," Obama said. "But the word we're getting is somebody in that high tech field should be able to find something right away."
"I'll have to take you up on that," she replied. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Although he was getting calls from companies he couldn't move away from North Texas: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/04/09/144558/texas-engineer-...
And in typical brain-dead, southern conservative fashion his wife blames H1B's for his inability to get a job (I lived in Texas for over seven years, I know these things first hand).
And here's the dirty secret: the best known explanation is that it's economically irrational for a US Citizen to get a graduate/PhD degree in a STEM subject.
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science
Discussed on HN:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4213217
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=74590
Asking someone else is not useful to you, because there are several buckets into which one can fall, that have different waiting times.
As I understand it, there are two questions of timing: how long will an applicant have to wait until given an immigrant visa number, and how long will it take to turn the immigrant visa number into a permanent residency. The latter is, I believe, consistent across buckets but varies over time, depending on the wheels of bureaucracy. It's a year or two, I think? The former, however, depends on your level of training and country of birth.
The wikipedia page is pretty good, in particular a few sections:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_residence_%28United_S...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_residence_%28United_S...
In the latter, note the difference between EB-3 and EB-2, and note the bolded footer (b).
EDIT STARTING HERE:
Oh, this helps too:
http://www.travel.state.gov/visa/bulletin/bulletin_5885.html
Depending on country of birth, if you have a BSc you're looking at 5-11 years of backlog. If you have a higher degree or 5+ years of "progressive" experience you're looking at 0 years of backlog, except 5 years for Chinese and 9 years for Indians. If you are doing family-based immigration, some category/nationality combinations are only just getting around to applications created in 15OCT98 (Philipinos and Mexicans are worst off here).
Time varies based on country of origin. Each country is allocated a fixed number of spots, and these spots of of similar size for all countries. So, if you're coming from a small country (i.e. Iceland) it's easy. Coming from India/Mexico, then you'll have to wait a while..
There are definitely disadvantages to be on H1B.
For most middling to large companies in the bay, the "complicated and costly processes" are outsourced to law firms that are on a retainer. For them, the whole process brings a matter of calling a number. Furthermore, the processes are not that costly (Say around $10K for an H1B application ) compared to the benefits of having an employee who can be exploited. Now, I am not saying it happens consciously at the company level. However, I am pretty damn sure it can happen at the hiring manager level.