Wow... as a VISA immigrant, who had a VERY hard time getting through the visa process, this kind of silly american opinion is quite irritating.
When a company lays off 20,000 people, those are _not_ the same people as the ones coming in on visas. They are probably very low skill engineers. The people coming in on visa's (have you met any?) are usually way more skilled than their american counterparts. America is _winning_ by exercising this brain drain.
>These are designed to serve high-skilled immigrants but often >enable the importing of Indian and Chinese guest workers to >replace an older, more experienced, but more expensive >domestic workforce
Come on. Really? All the young indian and chinese talent I meet is way above average.
>this kind of silly american opinion is quite irritating.
I'm not sure accusing the other side of holding silly opinions is the best way to start a debate
>The people coming in on visa's (have you met any?) are usually way more skilled than their american counterparts.
This may be your experience, but it hasn't been mine. Sure the ones working at Google are exceptional, but in my experience, companies outside of the top tier are using H-1Bs to recruit indentured servants who are tied to the company under penalty of deportation.
>Come on. Really? All the young indian and chinese talent I meet is way above average.
There are plenty of other anecdotes to refute this. I've worked with (and went to school with) many very talented and exceptional young indian and chinese programmers, but they weren't above average as a category.
First, when a company lays off 20,000 people there is generally little regard for who the individuals are. You see this over and over again. Except for the very top performers who end up protected, these are usually projects / divisions / etc. getting killed en masse. Sometimes people have the opportunity to spend a few months interviewing to obtain another job in the same company, but not always.
I've not been out of work for a moment of the 22 years since I left school, and have no problem with the Visa programs, etc. I personally believe we all benefit from opening up competition for positions.
Having said that, what I've seen is that looking strictly at technical ability I would say that Visa employees have in general been no better and no worse than the average US employee, but when it comes to "soft skills" are typically much worse off (and not just communication because of language barriers, but in other areas as well). They've fared no better when it comes to upkeep of their skills. They've fared no better when it comes to "leveling off" and hitting a ceiling where they no longer advance in terms of salary, etc. Like the typical US worker, they get married, have kids, get a social life, and generally stop improving their skills. By that point most have green cards and/or citizenship.
All of the companies I've worked for are large prestigious companies, some of which have set records for number of resumes received per month in the industry at different points in time, so again your experience might be different if you're talking about IT shops or start-ups.
You seem to over-generalize your own experience here, did you miss the Disney story?
You may also find comment like this one useful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9370415
When a company lays off 20,000 people, those are _not_ the same people as the ones coming in on visas. They are probably very low skill engineers. The people coming in on visa's (have you met any?) are usually way more skilled than their american counterparts. America is _winning_ by exercising this brain drain.
>These are designed to serve high-skilled immigrants but often >enable the importing of Indian and Chinese guest workers to >replace an older, more experienced, but more expensive >domestic workforce
Come on. Really? All the young indian and chinese talent I meet is way above average.