11–20 of 72 posts
And indeed, the studies confirm our intuition:
http://hothardware.com/News/Study-H1B-Visas-Lower-US-Program...
But, in terms of numbers, the real money is the more banal "staff augmentation" programmers that you see in "compliance advertisements" in industry trade rags. There is a shortage of qualified COBOL programmers, but you don't hear about training programs for COBOL (back in the 70's clerical staff were trained to do write that stuff, not compsci types). But you do see government contracts paying $30/hour to "body shop" vendors, who in turn are paying Indians $12-17/hr. similar story for people doing business rules in some J2EE thing.
That's a problem, because many of the few million un- or under-employed workers in the US could be trained to do this type of work quickly.
Very basic economics says that a greater supply of people willing to work at a lower wage (as many H1Bs) will reduce the market wage. "Somewhere along the line, the H-1B program got side-tracked. The program was never meant to replace qualified American workers, but it was instead intended as a means to fill gaps in highly specialized areas of employment. When times are tough, like they are now, it's especially impor…
I think there are two worlds here. For folks in the Valley, in NYC, or in companies working at the bleeding edge, you want to fund the best, most qualified people, period. That makes sense, and in the best interests of the country. But, in terms of numbers, the real money is the more banal "staff augmentation" programmers that you see in "compliance advertisements" in industry trade rags. There is a shortage of quali…
Very basic economics says that a greater supply of people willing to work at a lower wage (as many H1Bs) will reduce the market wage. "Somewhere along the line, the H-1B program got side-tracked. The program was never meant to replace qualified American workers, but it was instead intended as a means to fill gaps in highly specialized areas of employment. When times are tough, like they are now, it's especially impor…
That explains why income and GDP keep going down the more people are born.
There's a large body of work from economists in this area. My impression is that the answer seems to be that the effect on high-skill workers is positive, and the debate is over the magnitude of the positive effect. But, even putting that aside, it seems to me that it's hard to make either a practical or a moral case for restricting immigration of engineers more tightly than we do now. First, the practical case: when…
> If we let someone in from a poor country, we're increasing the income of someone who might be below the 50th percentile into the 99th percentile. It's awfully hard to make a case that we should be enriching the richest people in the world at the cost of the poorest. It's not hard to make that case at all. Indians and Chinese prospective immigrants are not part of the American body politic. The American government h…
There's a large body of work from economists in this area. My impression is that the answer seems to be that the effect on high-skill workers is positive, and the debate is over the magnitude of the positive effect. But, even putting that aside, it seems to me that it's hard to make either a practical or a moral case for restricting immigration of engineers more tightly than we do now. First, the practical case: when…
1) What is the percentage of students who get admitted into U.S. schools from foreign countries poor? Are most actually middle/upper class and just prefer to study overseas? I saw the latter as a pretty common scenario in Australia and Canada. 2) If they are poor, why are Chinese/Indians more likely to get into engineering/compsci than other demographics that are more local, such as poor African Americans / Hispanic…
Both the Indians and Chinese are almost certainly poor. At least 95% of India is poorer than the bottom 5% of America, and about 80-85% of China is.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/the-haves-and-t...
Granted, they might be rich by Indian/Chinese standards, but that's a far cry from actually being lower middle class in the US.
I'm not sure it is more likely for Chinese/Indians to enter STEM fields than your various aforementioned demographic groups. The ones who do enter STEM fields are more likely to immigrate to the US, however...
The problem is with some of the foibles of the h1-b visa. H1-b workers cannot compete in the job market the way an American worker can, because to get the h1-b the hiring company has to fork over almost $5k to the govt, to transfer to a new job, the hiring company has to pay $3k (I think), every 3 years the hiring company has to pay another $1k to renew the visa, and at the end of 6 years the hiring company has to start a green card application which costs a lot of time, money and resources IN ADDITION to the renewal fee (again).
Because of that, the hiring company wields extra-ordinary power over the h1-b worker which means that h1-b workers can be used to artificially depress wages.
The fix for this isn't all that complex. keep the h1-b as it is (complete with the yearly quota, which should be adjusted according to demand), and give a green card to the worker AUTOMATICALLY after 2 years, so that they're free do as they please in the market and see what happens.
Engineers know what they should be making and if anyone tries to underpay their workers, they'll have to contend with the fact that they'll be gone in 2 years, at which point they have to seriously ponder if it wouldn't be cheaper to actually train/hire an American to do the job. This would stem the problem of bodyshops bringing in immigrants and underpaying them for donkey years while profitting richly off their labor, and companies who'd apply for h1-b workers would actually need them and pay them fairly.
But the thing this article got wrong (which is the same mistake made by anti-H1B articles) is asking the wrong question (though it touched on it at the end). Is it better overall with immigrant engineers? Is the economy better? Are companies able to do better (therefore providing more taxes) as a result, or able to build better things (such as the google car or glasses)?
Finally, I'll note that moving to the Bay Area does not necessarily result in 5x salary, but even when it does, it doesn't result in 5x standard of living. If I had stayed in Dublin, I'd be on a similar salary (maybe 20% lower), but I'd be earning over 3x the average salary and so be able to have a much higher relative standard of living. The downside of living in SF with a good salary is that everybody has a good salary.
I think there are two worlds here. For folks in the Valley, in NYC, or in companies working at the bleeding edge, you want to fund the best, most qualified people, period. That makes sense, and in the best interests of the country. But, in terms of numbers, the real money is the more banal "staff augmentation" programmers that you see in "compliance advertisements" in industry trade rags. There is a shortage of quali…
Except that legacy system maintenance is like agricultural work. You can't get Americans to do the work.