31–40 of 75 posts
How about we just make the immigration process sane? #vastoversimplification
A good start would be to remove the H1B program in its entirety and allow specialized labor to get a work permit (with the intention to be citizens) and not be tied to a company. Graduates of our public universities should be the first to get these slots.
This is where it starts to get complicated, because if you change the rules only for a small segment of the workforce (such as proposals to staple a green cart to STEM degrees but not dentistry, law, MBA…), you may end up creating market distortions that reduce the attractiveness of engineering or software relative to the other fields highly educated people can pursue (provided those people already have the right to live and work in the US). When you consider the skill it takes to be a good software developer and what they could earn in some other field, I don't think that the evidence supports claims of a particular shortage.
Take a look at the US News Best Jobs salary data some time, and focus on salaries in high cost regions like SF. You'll find that while programmers are reasonably well paid, in SF they earn only a bit more than dental hygienists, and quite a bit less than registered nurses. I also think that career stability and long term prospects may actually be much better in other fields. In short,I think that the aversion to software development among people who already possess the right to live and work in the US may be rational and market based, and that getting the government involved will simply forestall the market signals that would get more people interested in this field. Pay and work conditions (you make about as much as you would have with an associate's degree in a health related field, work in a giant open office with back visibility, in a company that may discard you when you get older, perhaps demanding that you train your replacement) need to improve to get more people into programming. Why should we tinker with the immigration system to allow business as usual, when clearly something needs to change?
Just to be clear, I do think that openness to international engineering talent is a critical factor in any countries workforce, and I do favor some kind of skilled immigration program. My big difference is that I also see a potential risk to the domestic pipeline through these market distortions.
Do the wages of the people outside of the border count? Theirs would be going up, due to a more liberal immigration policy. The idea that such a bill would “lower engineers’ wages” seems to be selective in which engineers we are talking about.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have some familiarity with the "job shops" that hire a lot of H-1Bs, they do advertise for jobs in the US but I will say that the basic business model is something like "charge the customer $120 an hour and pay somebody $35 an hour to do the work" (Now there is some overhead, so this is not as bad as it sounds, but it is pretty bad.) One thing that is fairly shocking is the low pay rates for people with skills that…
My questions is why can't someone else offer these same programmers >$35/hr and steal them away? What's the friction in the market preventing this?
The customers are mini planned economies (aka corporations) with a the standard host of principal/agent issues - CYA behavior (shifting liability for poor decisions), kickbacks, etc.
http://journal.dedasys.com/2014/12/29/people-places-and-jobs...
Short version: opening things up to people willing to work, and lifting the restrictions on H1B workers are the best options, morally and economically.
Excluding people who happen to have been born in the wrong place, or the wrong color, or female or whatever, is a bad idea.
If you can't compete with foreigners working in your field, you can't compete.
I'm concerned with the indentured servitude we're putting H1Bs under, but not with the fact that they're working here instead of China or India. There isn't a "shortage" of STEM workers in the US, but that's no reason to support protectionist policies.
I am a member of the IEEE Computer society (and not the ACM) precisely because IEEE opposes H-1B expansion. This is not necessarily a "litmus" test for me, but it is a sign that the IEEE is sticking up for engineers and not the financiers of tech industry.
You mean "a scheme to deflate artificially high engineers' wages"? If you can't compete with foreigners working in your field, you can't compete. I'm concerned with the indentured servitude we're putting H1Bs under, but not with the fact that they're working here instead of China or India. There isn't a "shortage" of STEM workers in the US, but that's no reason to support protectionist policies.
The US currently accepts 1.2 million immigrants legally into the country every year, and the engineers among them are most welcome to work here with minimal licensing and red tape (this isn't the case for foreign lawyers or doctors). The question is whether the US government should go out of its way to increase the percentage of immigrants who are STEM workers (actually, even that would be an improvement over the terms of the H1B, which empowers corporations to decide who should and shouldn't be allowed to live and work here).
As it stands, I'd say the deck is stacked against engineers relative to other professions in the US. This is probably why people who have the right to choose their profession in the US are reluctant to go into STEM - it's a rational response to market distortion caused by uneven regulation.
There’s no doubt the promoters of the bill are self-interested, and one should read the fine print, but: the notion of excluding workers that are on a different side of a border, in order to “protect” wages, is deeply immoral. Do the wages of the people outside of the border count? Theirs would be going up, due to a more liberal immigration policy. The idea that such a bill would “lower engineers’ wages” seems to be…
So I agree that we should let whoever wants move to the U.S. I'm in favor of open borders. But I also acknowledge that more people living here will mean more competition for jobs, and therefore more of a culture of employers treating employees as disposable.