I don't understand why they would compare the average wage of all H1B workers spread throughout the US against that of a particular job title (Computer Systems Analyst) in Los Angeles CA. Wages obviously vary by job title and location. No surprises that wages in CA are higher.
I searched to see what Infosys (1) and TCS (2) actually pay a "Computer Systems Analyst" and found:
- For Infosys, there's only one result for Houston where the salary came out to be ~105K.
- For TCS, it's around 85K-87K for San Franscisco area. Didn't find anything for Los Angeles.
I can't vouch for the correctness of data but the site says they get it from the Department of Labor. Infosys and TCS would probably be using different job titles on their H1B petitions to try and get a lower wage determination.
Can someone explain to me why H1Bs are problematic? They are an immigrant workforce just like the people who cross the border illegally. Yes, immigrants, by increasing supply do have a depressing effect on wages, but, in a global economy, don't we also believe in a global workforce?
People seem to have a problem with H1Bs, but people are happy to enjoy the benefits of cheap fruit and vegetables possible with labor of (illegal) immigrants --farmers, even descendants of immigrants oppose amnesty because that would result in the help actually getting legal jobs which pay more. But here, in the case of H1Bs, people seem to have a strong dislike for them. They are just people looking for jobs like anyone else.
Is the implicit argument we should have a different system to allow a greater supply of tech immigrants but with a more flexible visa, maybe even grant residency status thus eliminating this kind of soft exploitation?
Evidently not, as foreign doctors aren't allowed to immigrate to the US and practice medicine without first going through a costly and onerous relicensing program. As it stands, all foreign doctors, even from first-world nations with statistically better health outcomes than the US like Germany or Japan are all deemed unqualified to practice medicine in the US: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/12/business/economy/long-slog...
The real question is why programmers should be singled out for this kind of treatment when US doctors are the highest paid in the world, price-per-procedure is the highest in the world, and medical bills remain the number one cause of bankruptcy.
Further, a global workforce is only one component of free trade. What about a global retail market? Did you know that there is presently a federal law barring the re-importation of prescription drugs from nations where they're sold for pennies on the dollar? That form of free trade is bad for the bottom line of big corporations, so it is illegal.
You are quite right. People don't care if uneducated or undereducated immigrants come in to the country --except for a few "nationalists". But over all people don't care or actively support immigration, which is a good thing -bettering people's prospects in life.
However, it is quite evident that professionals are _against_ immigration of other professionals because that directly threatens their professional stability.
So, we know immigration, on the whole is good. We know that immigration from poor countries allows those people to better their lives -at the expense of undereducated (blue collar) locals. But professionals don't quite care, actually, we prefer this since it makes products and services cheaper for us. But once the immigration threatens our lifestyles, then on, no, immigration is bad it drives down wages, it threatens quality of work, it allows exploitation and so on. When push comes to shove, we're all protectionists of varying degrees.
Huh? Medical professionals, lawyers, accountants, actuaries, etc. are all license-based professions. There is a very good reason for this, because a big part of the job is about adhering to important laws, regulations, ethics, etc. A big reason for the non-reciprocity (US-trained doctors cannot practice in many other countries, for example) is that these laws and regulations are not universal. There are some reciprocity arrangements in place, but given how bureaucratic the licensing system is, it is just hard.
You don't have any justification for making programming a license-based profession. You wouldn't want that even if you are an American citizen. It makes things significantly harder and more arbitrary when you have licensing requirements (just look at how hard each of USMLE, CPA, bar, CFA, etc. are, even for US citizens). Engineers, for example, can be licensed, but apart from public contracts in civil, mechanical, or electrical engineering, few employers care if you are a 'P.E.'
Lots of people don't believe in a global economy either, and the idea of a global workforce comes at a very bad time.
The last few years, I've lived and worked in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Wilmington. All are shadows of their former shells, hollowed out by deindustrialization. What little remains is threatened by automation. Proponents of technology, and of globalization in capital and labor tell me that it will lead to greater prosperity for everyone. New, better jobs will replace the ones that are lost. We're waiting.
Lots of people say they are for immigrants' rights, but they really aren't in practice. There are ideological forces which on the one hand welcome immigrants into 1st world economies, but then are against globalization --meanwhile, both forces work toward one goal, economically --to bring economic parity, long term. Those forces do cause disruption. On the one hand you have the ebb of some industries here but they are expanding and benefiting destitute people elsewhere in the world. So the middle class is saying, they believe they had a "right" of a middle class lifestyle, moreso than people in other parts of thew world.
We can argue if we think there should be 7 billion people who consume goods at the same rate as Americans, Japanese and Europeans, but so long as we accept an integrated world where we want emigration and immigration and further neo liberal economics, this is the progression we are looking at.
When people bemoan the hollowing out of industries while at the same time saying they support peoples in the third world, something is not right. They are lamenting the loss of their jobs but those jobs are being transferred to second and third world economies helping to build them.
What do we do about the people who aren't able to retool for more skilled jobs? It's an open question. Some day something will have to give. Either we figure out a way to manage that or society will suffer the consequences of inattention.
Tell that to the national governments that make it difficult for me, as an American, to move to their countries. We've got tons of treaties that require free movement of goods and capital but, very interestingly, I think, few that deal with the movement of people (labor) and almost none that make it an easy process (I realize there are zones where this is possible, such as in the EU, I'm speaking as an American).
> Is the implicit argument we should have a different system to allow a greater supply of tech immigrants but with a more flexible visa, maybe even grant residency status thus eliminating this kind of soft exploitation?
I, personally, would prefer a system of multi-lateral "free labor" agreements. If the US wants to let in workers from country A, then those workers should be 100% free to come to the US and work, no strings attached, no industry preferences, nothing. BUT, the same should also be true for US workers who wish to go to country A, otherwise, no deal.
This would create a truly more fluid workforce and, unlike with H1B, would benefit everyone instead of a few big companies and the handful of workers they bring in each year (while hurting everyone else).
We have ~this the other way around: the Dutch American Friendship Treaty allows US citizens to come to Holland and start a business (freelancer is Okay). You need 4.5K capital, sustained, and it renews every 2 years.
That is very interesting, I didn't know about it. I feel like the capital requirement still means that it isn't for "labor" though. For instance, can people using that program get jobs? I wish my country, and others, would lower these sorts of barriers and let people go wherever they can be successful and happy.
>Can someone explain to me why H1Bs are problematic?
Did you read the article? Here are the subtitles from the article and the first line of the referenced article:
- Lower wages
- H-1B is not a bridge to permanent immigration
- H-1B is not about skills or skills gap
"Information technology workers at Southern California Edison (SCE) are being laid off and replaced by workers from India."
Yes, I understand that. But that can be said about any immigrant workforce. Immigrants increase the pool of locally available workers, but, it appears, people welcome the benefits of immigration till the benefits (cheaper products and services) take away (threaten income) from them.
In other words, would we care if Bangladeshis or Siberian Russians displaced Walmart, or farm workers? Probably not. We'd say, yay, more and cheaper products... but as soon as that workforce threatens tech --uh-oh, no, we can't have that. Immigration bad.
Well, yes lots of Americans do care who comes into the country and from where and there is nothing wrong with that. Lots of people also don't buy the cheapest meat, cheapest coffee, cheapest clothing, etc.
>In other words, would we care if Bangladeshis or Siberian Russians displaced Walmart, or farm workers? Probably not. We'd say, yay, more and cheaper products... but as soon as that workforce threatens tech --uh-oh, no, we can't have that. Immigration bad.
Is that suspect? I'm neither for nor against immigration in principle: I'm just seeking to optimize outcomes for me and my in-group.
We have a bias against people acting in their own interests when they have a public trust to act for the good of all. An ethical governor would ignore the fact that his family lives in a certain town when trying to decide where to put the new state prison.
But citizens of a country are under no such trust. It may not make Mexicans particularly happy that we have a giant fence down south, but this is not a betrayal. Foreign nationals are fellow human beings and it's great if I can help them, but I'm not under obligation to do so at the cost of my own or my neighbor's economic well-being.
They are not immigrants with the rights of immigrants. It is absurd that a winner of green card lottery has more rights on the labor market than a skilled person brought to US to fill a skill gap
The problem with H1B is that you are serf to your sponsor. If H1B was instead work visa that once you enter the US, you are free to work for 10 years the situation would have been different.
You are free to move on a H1B as long as you find a new employer willing to sponsor it - Bonus: you don't even need to go through the procedure again with USCIS
The simplest fix would be to give more rights to H1B workers. Assuming the workers are smart enough to work towards their personal self-interest, they'd then switch to places with higher wages for the same job or better work conditions. I can't see how it can ever be OK for my lead to make less money than I did just because he happens to be on a visa.
There's nothing wrong in hiring immigrants. There is however something wrong where virtually every other profession has protection, but programmers don't. So wages will be lower compared to other professions, making it a job where skilled people might want to avoid even though they enjoy it.
You either immigration for every profession or non at all. Not screwing one profession in particular.
The issue I have is not with Immigration, it is with the H1-B System. Because of the limited supply of H1-B's and the nature of them to tie the visa holder to an employer with the carrot of a green card (some day), is ripe for abuse by suppressing wages, which appears to be exactly what is happening. The supply of H1-B's is not necessarily the problem, it is the nature that they tie them to a particular employer. The offer of a "green card" some day, has value or acts as a bonus that citizens cannot compete with, so H1-B's salaries can be lower because the promise of a green card has value.
I find it difficult to understand why these companies would go to such lengths to save at absolute most 15-20% on salary.
Even if there were no legal or immigration costs (which there definitely is), it seems to me they could easily do the same by getting someone from a less prosperous part of the US and moving them to, say, CA. I'm sure this happens all the time.
H-1B is intended to be temporary, 3-6 years. That means no need for pensions and no time to accumulate a great deal of raises or benefits.
I would also imagine it's a lot easier to convince an employee to "go the extra mile" when you're dangling their ability to remain in the country over their head, especially if they're also applying for citizenship.
For outsourcing firms its about institutionalized racism. In India, applicants put who their parents are, if they're married, where they were born, how old they are, height, weight, etc all on their resume. That is the kind of power they have if they only hire Indians. Why would they hire Americans who can sue them for discrimination?
It's also not just about saving money. Modern day corporations (and probably old fashioned ones) are basically extortion pyramids. The entire livelihood of everybody with employees at a corporation depends on having complete control over their subordinates. Why would you hire someone that can quit when you piss them off. Corps hire people for management jobs on visa as well. Its all about control. The thought is you're nothing if you don't have people under control. It's sad that corporations work that way, but that doesn't change the fact that they do.
I just looked at the first 5 candidates sitting in my recruiterbox account (hiring for a position in Delhi). Not a single one listed parents, marital status, birth location, age, height or weight.
You are correct that outside IT, hiring decisions rely heavily on the community. Within most serious IT firms, which definitively include Infosys and Tata, hiring is roughly as meritocratic as it is in the west. That's due to simple market forces - your community is simply not big enough or smart enough that you can hire exclusively from within it.
("Community" refers to a narrow slice of your ethnic group, e.g. Parsis, Gujus or Conkanis.)
> Even if there were no legal or immigration costs (which there definitely is), it seems to me they could easily do the same by getting someone from a less prosperous part of the US and moving them to, say, CA. I'm sure this happens all the time.
This logic seems wrong: if a person moves from somewhere to CA, they should now be paid a CA-level salary. Consider that at any point they can quit, and to every other employer they will look like a regular CA job market participant, so the other employers would offer them a CA-level salary. So you can't, in fact, hire someone from outside CA and have them work in CA at a low salary: they would just quickly move to a similar but higher-paid job.
This logic breaks down with visas that restrict your choice of employers. If your freedom to pick your employer is taken away, then your logic is correct: it would be possible to hire someone in CA at a low salary, without them immediately switching jobs, because they are forbidden from doing that.
The 20% premium that the company collects on the salary is (at least partially) a consequence of this lack of employee's freedom in the labour market. Without this restriction you would expect skill-adjusted salaries to be equal for visa and non-visa employees. It's not even anything to do with immigration per se, just this type of visa.
US companies bring in these consultants tens or hundreds at a time to a single office. If they hired locally for all these positions, they'd have to pay a lot higher than 20% premium. And if they flew in consultants from around the US, they'd be paying a fortune per hour (how many good USA developers seriously consider 100% travel jobs unless they pay ridiculously well?).
It's not about 15-20% for the N workers sponsored.
It drives down wages across the industry by increasing unemployed labor supply. It's a lever to put downward pressure on wages in a macroeconomic sense.
"I find it difficult to understand why these companies would go to such lengths to save at absolute most 15-20% on salary."
They're probably saving a lot more than 15-20%.
I understand this argument is often used to claim that it isn't about wages, it's about availability of someone, anyone to hire. But at what rate?
Suppose you say that you can't hire a developer with a particular in demand skill set. You've posted at what you've determined to be "market rate" for the position, or maybe a bit higher You pick up the phone and call various highly regarded developers at google, apple, and Facebook and say "what would it take to get you to quit your job, this moment, and come work for my company?"
My guess is that the difference between the "market rate" the company is offering and the rate they'd pay if they were prepared to do what it takes to get that engineer to leave google is a lot greater than 15-20%. I wouldn't be surprised if they'd have to double the offer.
I would say, its more about obedience from the employee rather than saving money on salary.
The Indian employees at TCS and Infosys are ready to work long hours and obediently carry out orders without questioning anything, which sometimes helps.
I am not sure about the "obedience" of employees in India. Would surprised if there is a slavery mentality among workers in these outsourcing firms. Its primarily cheap labour. And India produce a vast pool of engineering graduates every year. This is more of a demand supply problem. Have noting to do with caste or marital status. In tech industry, nobody cares about these.
"Find me any company that doesn't have a difficult time sourcing well-qualified Rails developers, or experienced JavaScript experts. There is huge demand, not enough supply"
My problems with this statement is that you didn't mention pay or working conditions. Are they hiring for general talent, offering 200k a year with a nice private office? Are they offering 100k, forcing people to work in a loud open office where everyone can see your screen, requiring that you live in SF where the median priced house is over a mil, and demanding immediate plug and play developer with a a very narrow specialty skill set? I mean, they say they can't hire, but doesn't that mean they can't hire at the price they think they should get to pay?
I do agree with you that one shouldn't conclude a person isn't high talented in software if he or she doesn't have a grad degree. Obviously there are ludicrously talented developers who don't have grad degree, or even any degree of that matter. Software is like that.
A good analogy is the so-called "pilot shortage" among US-based airlines.
There are plenty of pilots around; there just aren't enough pilots anymore who are willing to work for the wages and conditions that exist at the entry level of those airlines. A common figure I've seen quoted is that the education, training and certification required to become an airline pilot comes in around $250,000 total, while the starting salary is often $20,000 or less.
In an ironic inversion of the H-1B debate, apparently foreign airlines in rapidly-expanding markets are quite happy to pay significantly higher wages to snag US-trained pilots.
The problem with pilot wages though is entirely due to the pilot unions of the various airlines. Those with seniority get to pick the best routes and can earn $250-300k. The new pilots however end up working terrible routes and earn 1/10th of that. Overall there is a huge amount of money going towards pilot pay because pilot unions have huge negotiating power. But the unions have determined how to distribute that wealth.
The best routes and best pay are on the long haul, wide body flights. These planes are in the 100s of millions of dollar range. I think it's completely logical an airline would trust their most expensive high revenue flights to the pilots that have seen some shit and negotiated it successfully.
The real reason of the pilot shortage is because the FAA now requires commercial pilots to have 1500 hours of flight time before they can work for an airline. Flight schools will give you 300-400 hours and the rest you have to make up some how. Just like every job these days, everyone wants experienced, entry level candidates.
Not just pilots. The wages in Hong Kong that you can get (source: headhunters approaching me) are literally multiples of US or EU rates. Amongst others I was offered USD 350k + bonus to head a data science team - and all I have is an unrelated engineering degree and three years' experience. This kind of package would be hard to get for a freshly minted Harvard MBA at a major bulge bracket bank...
In finance, I've seen some eye watering packages in China for the same reason, including base salaries of 600k and 750k respectively for someone who was making 300k, at a large institution and a small hedge fund. Obviously, with the local cost of living the difference is magnified.
Personally, moving to Asia was the best career move I ever made; the local economies grow at 15% a year, the local companies grow even faster, and there's a real lack of talent locally vs the ultra-competitive US market. Whenever I can, I try to convince companies here to hire Americans or Europeans remotely or relocate them.
Very interesting. I grew up in Hong Kong and most of my friends are still earning < 100k. Most tech firms don't even have a development team in Hong Kong. For example, Google and Facebook only have a sales team there. Apple and Yahoo are the exceptions but even then the development team is small.
I wonder what company you are working for. As far as I know the demand for tech workers is pretty low over there.
Well, depends what you define as tech. I might get some flak for this but in my experience, the AVERAGE quality of developers in Europe and especially in the US is much higher than in Asia. For example, a majority of the data science candidates I interviewed in Singapore, outside the Haskell community would fit all of the data I provided them with and call that their model (the concept of validation never entering their mind). Similarly, most didn't know what the relational model was and just wanted to use NoSQL methods without justification (mostly because it's hot and would look good on their CV). The exceptions usually already worked in the US, and wanted to come home to their family, so I'm guessing there's a fair bit of brain drain going on. Some specialties which are "harder" to acquire, like dev ops, also help fetch higher levels - I can think of one of our dev ops candidate who was getting 280k USD in Hong Kong managing 100 servers.
I'd say those offers are mostly in the financial industry (obviously) or in big corp (think F500 companies, pharma, etc.) and involved a bit of leadership or specialised experience, not being yet another RoR developer. But keeping up with friends in the US, I find the rates are substantially higher if you can differentiate yourself. YMMV.
Unfortunately most companies/managers don't want to try it. I'm structuring my own company never to have a physical presence beyond the Hong Kong legal offices, but we are a big exception.
Judging by your other comments you're a fan of Thailand so maybe try Lazada, they are hiring a ridiculous number of engineers at the moment, salaries are very high for Bangkok, but the codebase (and politics, just from the size) might be a little painful, and a lot of the development is actually happening in Vietnam, which might be another barrier.
If you want loads of money for boring work, the best way is still to come to Singapore/HK, get any job to get a visa, and gradually contact every recruiter you can. Experienced "leadership capable" developers being rare they'll have plenty of spots, but none of them are going up on websites. The speed at which the market move is staggering, in one occasion I had an offer 2 hours after meeting the company person, and visas take about a week in Singapore.
These are some very interesting insights that you are sharing. I'd love to hear more about this -- southeast Asia seems like an exceptionally lucrative place to work if you are "playing it right." Do you have an e-mail address that I can write a few (short) questions to?
I'm in Fiji. There are American pilots flying for great wages here. Fijian pilots get the shaft though, and only barely get by on their wages.
The Fijians then take jobs in places the americans find harder to stomach (Papua New Guinea, the middle east, etc) and make more than the American expat pilots in Fiji do.
> Find me any company that doesn't have a difficult time sourcing well-qualified Rails developers, or experienced JavaScript experts. There is huge demand, not enough supply
If any of that were true, wages would be going up, wouldn't they? Is there any company that couldn't hire someone by paying higher wages? Why are developer wages absolutely flat?
I find that the supply of brain surgeons for $10,000/year is quite limited. There's huge demand for brain surgeons at $10K, and not enough supply of brain surgeons willing to work for that wage. We've had the job ad ("Brain Surgeon Wanted: $10K/year") posted on Monster for months. Whatever shall I do? If only there was some solution.
> If any of that were true, wages would be going up, wouldn't they? Is there any company that couldn't hire someone by paying higher wages? Why are developer wages absolutely flat?
This is an excellent point, and to add injury to this obvious insult to the IT developer class is the fact that corporate profits are through the roof [1] these days and have, in fact, been growing for years.
Any free, non-manipulated labor market will always reward the workers with needed skills a higher wage to attract talent needed to keep the companies products competitive and the management looking good.
It seems to me, at least, beyond obvious that corporations are using programs like the H-1B, the elimination of positions for developers over the age of 40, and pressure on managers to keep IT workers fearful of losing their jobs to artificially keep wages down.
While I have no comment on the parent article, I have done a lot of market research over the past few years, as part of a potential product to help companies hire better people, faster.
In doing so, I've noticed that there are two primary ways that companies artificially limit themselves to a tiny pool of eligible people:
One: An interview process based on trivia and logic puzzles, not "can this person drive success". This eliminates people that have years of industry experience, but that can't quite remember the solution to Four Knights on the spot.
I have seen plenty of of "unqualified" people that work as consultants, and pull in large sums of money, solving business problems at companies where they could never get through the interview process. These people would have been great hires, but they were forced out due to bad process.
Two: Requiring that candidates permanently relocate, nominally to a city with a very high cost-of-living, without paying a correspondingly high salary. This eliminates people with families, people with elderly parents, and so on.
Money is rarely the problem if the company is otherwise flexible in terms of location. If you want, say, a parent with two kids to move to SF, you're going to need to pony up $160k+ a year. The same person in Boise would likely be happy at half that.
Three: not considering good programmers who don't have experience in the language(s) the company uses. We as programmers know it's not a big deal to learn another language, but somehow this hasn't translated to the hiring process.
Learning a new programming language -- really learning it, and understanding how the ecosystem works -- is a three- to six-month process for most programmers.
Let's say my team needed a new developer for a hardware project. I would probably not hire an experienced Ruby or Python dev that had no C experience.
A few months of hacking C in their spare time on a personal project with an Arduino? Now I'm interested.
Initiative and self-teaching are hugely important traits.
If you read the H1-B requirements, it's supposedly about bringing in talent that's unavailable at any price. Not just seat-warmers who can be billed out with a hefty margin by a "body shop."
People with advanced degrees and unique skills should by all means be welcomed. Sending people back to India after they get degrees at MIT or Stanford is idiotic. But the stated intent of H1-Bs and cheap body shops are not compatible at all.
This article is all about morale-sucking, wage-depressing, quality-destroying indentured servitude that actually takes away the ability of R&D-oriented firms from obtaining H1-Bs for vastly more deserving people.
"Find me any company that doesn't have a difficult time sourcing well-qualified Rails developers, or experienced JavaScript experts. There is huge demand, not enough supply, and very little correlation with the candidate's formal education. There aren't any Master's of AngularJS degree programs."
Any company offering remote work and a good salary.
>But the author here claims that "H-1B is not about skills or skills gap" and cites as evidence the fact that the vast majority of the approved applicants have only a Bachelor's degree. Perhaps he's not familiar with the current state of the software engineering market, where an advanced degree is in no way a prerequisite to become a top-rated engineer?
Sure, you can be a great developer with just a Bachelor degree or even no degree.
But between "they found all this top-rated engineers with mere Bachelors" and "they got some cheaper developers for their gruntwork by shopping abroad" my bet is very much on the second case.
It's what business owners do at every level, including manual labor where "top talent" doesn't matter much if at all...
BESIDES, and this makes your point moot, they pay them less. If they considered them "top talent" they'd pay them as they do American developers, regardless of if they have a degree or not.
There's an even larger issue driving this problem:
As Table 1 shows, Infosys and Tata pay very low wages to their H-1B workers. The average wage for an H-1B employee at Infosys in FY13 was $70,882 and for Tata it was $65,565. Compare this to the average wage of a Computer Systems Analyst in Rosemead, CA (where SCE is located), which is $91,990 (according to the U.S. Department of Labor). That means Infosys and Tata save well over $20,000 per worker per year, by hiring an H-1B instead of a local U.S. worker earning the average wage. But at SCE specifically, the wage savings are much greater.
When the H-1B worker isn't employed directly by the company seeking the "savings" (for example, Infosys or Tata), and instead is employed by a middleman outsourcing company, the worker is essentially a victim of double exploitation. In these situations, wages for the h1B workers become even more dismal. The outsourcing company takes a huge cut of the workers' earnings (which are usually hourly and without benefits) and then uses threatening tactics to essentially "scare" these workers into outputting more in less time, without overtime, etc.
(wile VivekW is not exactly an "Unbiased" commentator).
So as not to keep this ad-homoniem the data comparison is silly
Avg & Median wages On one side vs Specific SoCal wages on the other?
That said some of the criticisms are valid: TCS, Infosys, Wipro & Cognizant are terrible at taking care of their US employees. They very rarely get a chance at a greencard among other exploitative practices.
Unfortunately Ron is sabotaging his own argument by using flaky data & being a tool.
The bitter truth is, workers from TCS and Infosys are able to do the job more efficiently than their american counterparts with a lesser pay. This system as a whole is beneficial for the US economy, I don't think they will change it in near future.
People often conflate H-1B visas lowering wages, with H-1B holders earning less than market wages.
Actually it is possible (and probably) that H-1B holders earn the same wages as their equivalents. The presence of the H-1B workers increases the supply of labor, and lowers wages for everyone. But it happens simultaneously so that at no time are the H-1B holders earning less.
It's interesting to me that in order to deal with this inconsistency, people have basically invented the myth that it's hard to shift jobs while on an H-1B, and thus H-1B holders are like "indentured servants". The reality is for most H-1B holders the job market is no different, as long as they have the visa, which depends on the government, not their company.
It's strange how action which has apparently helped to lift tens of thousands of poor Indian workers out of poverty is portrayed as a "scandal". There's clearly a big labor pool willing to work for lower pay than Americans. Give them a chance at a better life! If Californians dislike foreign workers so much, why are they still allowing people from the midwest to work there? Shouldn't they be throttled too to keep wages high in silicon valley?
>It's strange how action which has apparently helped to lift tens of thousands of poor Indian workers out of poverty is portrayed as a "scandal".
Maybe because it was not intended to "lift tens of thousands of poor Indian workers out of poverty" but to "lower or keep the same american developer wages"?
As if those US business owners give a rats arse about getting "poor Indian workers out of poverty".
If those guys are so concerned about "poor Indians developers" how about paying them exactly the same as any American developer? It's not like they have a lower cost of living when they come to the US. So, do they consider them sub-human or something?
Or maybe they are more concerned for the "I can exploit their poorness relative to our domestic wage demands and screw me fellow country-men".
Oh, and it works both ways: next time some other country with cheaper wages than India developers a decent-ish IT education, those "poor Indian developers" would be dropped like dead weights in a race to the bottom...
>If Californians dislike foreign workers so much, why are they still allowing people from the midwest to work there? Shouldn't they be throttled too to keep wages high in silicon valley?
Perhaps because of this thing called patriotism, a.k.a. "do not piss where you live"...
Capitalism is wonderful. A bunch of greedy business owners can act selfishly and thousands of poor Indians are lifted from poverty.
And yes, you are quite correct - once the Indian developers are no longer poor, capitalism will then attempt to lift others out of poverty. In fact, this is already happening - southeast Asia is the new "cheap" place, while India is becoming midrange on quality/cost.
Perhaps because of this thing called patriotism, a.k.a. "do not piss where you live"...
Note that as demonstrated by this thread, democracy will be far less effective at helping poor Indians/others than capitalism. A bunch of self-interested voters who talk about altruism while engaging in protectionism will do less to help the poor than even the worst bodyshop.
> Perhaps because of this thing called patriotism, a.k.a. "do not piss where you live"...
Serious question - why patriotism for their country in preference to their state, country, city, continent, or planet? I've heard that Texas people don't like the rest of the USA. Perhaps they'd be more inclined to disallow out of state workers because their patriotism is applied at a different level than other Americans?
Or for that matter, while we are drawing arbitrary lines and applying economic protectionism, what's the intellectual argument against bringing back Jim Crow?
If one wants an economic "justification", I'm sure a quick google search can find articles a lot like this one - a quick stats dump with no controls showing that black people get paid less. Look at those greedy employers lowering wages by hiring black people!
Come on. The complaints are about the inegalitarian way market competition is used to drive down wages in specific sectors where workers are politically marginalized (tech rather than law, finance, medicine). People who suffer from this discrimination are not wrong to object to the selective commodification of their labour.
Additionally, the market-based alternative to H1-B is higher wages for domestic staff and expanded (and higher paying) contracting work abroad.
>what's the intellectual argument against bringing back Jim Crow?
Mostly that blacks have equal rights and are people too, so they should be paid the same. You know, like those Indians employers bring in so that can pay them less than American developers...
If they are all for equality and against "arbitrary lines", they can start by paying those immigrant workers the same...
>* Look at those greedy employers lowering wages by hiring black people!*
Only if one believed that black are somehow inferior would that be a logical conclusion.
In any other case, and assuming you're not racist, the problem is "paying less", not "paying black people", just in the case of Indian developers the problem is paying them less than Americans for work they do in the US.
And yeah, back in the day those Jim Crow employers also thought themselves very generous for giving those blacks a job. After all, like those "poor Indian developers", they would starve without it, so they would better appreciate it, even if it's smaller than what they'd pay whites...
Indians born in India are people too, yet people are advocating for economic protectionism against them. (Really, they are - I live in India, so if they weren't I'd be super lonely.)
You drew an arbitrary line at "patriotism" before. Why "patriotism (USA)" rather than "white nationalism" or "patriotism (CA)"? Just your personal preference?
Only if one believed that black are somehow inferior would that be a logical conclusion.
It's unclear to me how it would be a logical conclusion even if one did believe blacks are inferior on some dimension. Could you explain?
>So basically, only thing wrong with Jim Crow is that it is now unpopular? And if it becomes popular again, we should bring it back?
Why, has there been another measure of good in human history? (If one doesn't believe in any divine being handing down laws that is).
And I don't get the "moral high ground in hindsight" thing. If you lived in 1890, statistics say you'd most probably be all for Jim Crow too.
>Democracy is a pretty scary moral philosophy.
Better than the capitalism, which has no morals at all outside what society enforces upon it. If it could sell crack to small children or use people as slaves it would (and it does).
Where the main justification is the BS fabrication that "egotism works for the good of all in the end".
A possible measure of good is "does it harm people" but that ends up excluding everything, so add details like "does it harm people who are powerless to avoid that harm". You can decide right and wrong by yourself instead of just following the mob if you can work out some rules that aren't just a copy of current popular opinion. Popular opinion is actually a fairly poor go at it. It's mired in racism, patriotism, and similar tribal instincts which almost entirely encourage abuse of various classes of people.
Regarding capitalism, of course it needs controls, but on this subject, it's hard to see the harm in giving intelligent people opportunities that will benefit them. Sadly, popular opinion tells us that Indians deserve to be poor because they have the wrong parents (aka, citizens of a poor country).
I'm asking whether the popularity of a policy morally justifies it. I guess you think Jim Crow was morally justified.
Or to take a contemporary example, for reasons I don't understand Indians really seem to dislike Africans. I guess if we get Jim Krishna laws with popular support, you'll favor them also?
Better than the capitalism, which has no morals at all outside what society enforces upon it.
Yet capitalists view Indians and Africans as having "equal rights and are people too", unlike the protectionists.
>I'm asking whether the popularity of a policy morally justifies it. I guess you think Jim Crow was morally justified.
No, I think "morally justifies it" in the absolute sense (which you use it) is BS, since it assumes some pre-existing morality framework.
"Morally justified" only has sense in the "is it acceptable by the moral standards of a society/era". Of course, most people naively only take it to mean "is it acceptable by the standards of OUR society/era", which they consider as some absolute definition of morals.
Fact: for the people of time it WAS morally justified. Heck, slave owners themselves were respectable and celebrated members of society.
Owning slaves was just what one did if he could, just like for business owners today setting shop in impoverished areas not to offer the same wages as elsewhere but to take advantage of poverty to offer lower wages (as if those people are worth less) is "just what you do".
> If they are all for equality and against "arbitrary lines", they can start by paying those immigrant workers the same...
I agree, but it would have to come with granting an H1B to every applicant or having an open door immigration policy. Otherwise it's not paying them the same, it's "segregating" them to India where they have to suffer lower wages. Much like black people not being allowed to work in high paying jobs.
It's amazing that people can believe it's wrong to discriminate against race (accident of birth) while at the same time insist on discrimination against nationality (almost the same accident of birth).
Free market economics is often intentionally misunderstood because it doesn't fit into anyone's ideologies.
The left ignore the benefits of the free market, and pretend that there is a better system out there. They selfishly expect workers the developing world to respect the "right" of the Western middle class to high wages, as if magically other opportunities that don't involve competing with the Western middle class will arise.
The right want people to think that capitalism is magic, because they don't even want redistribution, which mainstream economists believe is something the market cannot do itself, and must be done by the government. The right want people to believe that all government intervention in the economy is equally bad, whether it is fixing the price of rent, providing medical services, or a negative income tax.
That said, I don't think H-1Bs are best used on average paid contractors. I know people earning a lot more money who missed out on the lottery. These people could have contributed a lot more to the economy.
EDIT: Added scare quotes around "right" in response to a comment.
> The right want people to think that capitalism is magic, because they don't even want redistribution, which mainstream economists believe is something the market cannot do itself, and must be done by the government.
The "government" is nothing but a collection of people who have used political acumen, and not technical or business skills, to gain control of a system.
They are really no different from the executives whom control various Fortune 500 companies, so in the long run, it seems unlikely that they will behave in a different matter, or ever put your wants and desires above theirs.
At least market-based systems, as described by Hayek, have some built in incentives to reward those in power to keep those without it happy.
I think you're wrong about the government. It has many caring and dedicated people, who want to make the nation, and the world, better. And I think most politicians truly believe in what they claim to stand for. So stating what the government should do is productive and important, because ultimately it guides what politicians do.
The ideology I support is free market economics with generous redistribution and government services. This has been put into practice in Australia, NZ, Canada, the UK and Scandinavia. The only serious deviation is in the concessions made to the labour union movement, but these have been lessening with time.
> It has many caring and dedicated people, who want to make the nation, and the world, better.
I am 50 yo, and have seen 100's of politicians come and go over my years, and I can count on one hand how many I believe have these values that you mention.
They all certainly try very, very hard to project this fiction, but time and time again, their actions have betrayed them.
My experience, guided by intelligence, tells me that most people who dedicate their lives to politics are megalomaniacs whom are only in it for the power and glory.
Their pay hinges on your belief that they care about you which is why they learn to act. Well acted kindness will always seem better than sincere kindness. Just look at movies if you don't believe me, the good actors there seem more living and real than your average joe on the street. And above all they wouldn't let others write their speeches if they were sincere.
I agree with most of the things you said, except on minor point, which I don't know is a wording issue or not: there is no "right to high wages", at best, it's a privileged.
I searched to see what Infosys (1) and TCS (2) actually pay a "Computer Systems Analyst" and found:
- For Infosys, there's only one result for Houston where the salary came out to be ~105K.
- For TCS, it's around 85K-87K for San Franscisco area. Didn't find anything for Los Angeles.
I can't vouch for the correctness of data but the site says they get it from the Department of Labor. Infosys and TCS would probably be using different job titles on their H1B petitions to try and get a lower wage determination.
(1) http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=INFOSYS+LIMITED&job=COMPUTE...
(2) http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=TATA+CONSULTANCY+SERVICES+L...