>How about the US workers stop complaining and start COMPETING.

Oh, I just love it when I hear that tired old chestnut. It doesn't apply to lawyers or doctors. In fact it doesn't apply to a whole bunch of workers but it seems to attach mostly to IT people!!

It just goes to show that IT people rank as the most expendable workers of all and are regarded as nothing more than commodities.

It's about wage, stupid.

I love how "Not Norm" mentions the exact amount the American wants, but doesn't mention how much the H1-B is working for. Did "Not Norm" not mention the H1-B salary because he's too embarrassed to pay a McDonald's wage for someone with a degree?

He might as well say, "If an American wants to spend $150,000 on an education and ask for $30,000, which can barely support a family, I'll be glad to hire him."

Talk about entitlement -- sure there are *some* American developers who have an over-inflated sense of self-worth, but all should be "entitled" to a fair U.S. wage.

(The following mentions well-known differences in culture. These can be discussed without being "racist" and do not apply to any particular individual.)

H1-B's are not without their sense of entitlement either. As I recently was told by an Indian CIO who doesn't hire Indians in the U.S. -- it's well-known that Indians (most H1-Bs in technology) tend to rush to management because anyone that is not managing others is considered a low-brow because of the sense of hierarchy in the Indian culture (OTOH, Americans are proud of being "flat" organizations).

This is one reason why American engineers tend to be better than their Indian counterparts overall -- Americans, in general, pride themselves on their craft and tend to work and learn to become better engineers. Indians are less likely to take the pride in engineering; they tend to want paths to management. (This does not apply to any particular engineer, nor does the idea that Americans feel "entitled" apply to any particular American.)

I agree fully with "Not Norm." Everyone seems to want everything, want it now, and not have to sacrifice or work for it. This attitude, if not changed, will ruin this country. We have turn into a bunch of whiners and cry-babies.

If you look at the culture differences that is what makes this more believable. In these other cultures, they make about 10% less per day than they would in America. I tell you what -- If, say Brazil, was paying their IT people 10x more than IT people were making in America, you bet I would go their and work my butt off, for 10x more money.

H1-B to US, like most things, "it depends." If the job is pure in-the-cube programming, most of the time the skills and the experience of the H1-B are a better value. The real difference comes with communication skills. If the job requires interaction with the business or management of relationships in addition to technical know-how, 90% of the time a native English speaker is preferred.

In DC, H1-B is a headache -- the fed govt rules are forever being debated and non-US citizens on contracts seems to be an art more than a science.

If educational institutions do not spin off enough competitive graduates, the H-1B pro should have the chance to get the job. This is the rationale support by the H-1B policy.

Competition is everywhere. It is globalized economics. It does not matter where it comes from BUT how you go ahead with it.

The problem with the H-1B visa holders is actually two-pronged. Despite the lip service to being better qualified, the only reason employers hire them is because they are "cheaper."

As to qualifications, I have seen just as many comments by both employers and employees that they are not as qualified as other tech-workers. In fact, the truly highly qualified Indian H-1B candidates are actually few and far between as the top schools in India only produce so many of these top technicians each year. The rest, are churned out like so many cogs and their work shows it.

The movement of many professional jobs offshore has spurned an ongoing decrease in the number of Americans interested in making IT a career choice. Today, the numbers of new students entering computer science courses and those of the other sciences has dwindled to such an extent that few really qualified Americans are entering the workforce in IT.

This trend is the direct result of a change in the 1980s among university students in their perceptions of making money as more important than creativity. This was reported on in the major journals at the time as a disturbing trend among the young and was an outgrowth of the Reagan era.

Eventually combined with the offshoring frenzy of the 1990s and currently this original budding trend has gained a tremendous amount of reinforcement.

As to the employers of IT workers, they have only themselves to blame. Business people are most often very narrowly focused on their endeavors and as a result tend to ignore the more important aspects of running a firm. This is why so many companies experience infrastructural problems in the long-term.

Offshoring is a going to become as much a growing infra-structural concern as much as less available American IT technicians. And this trend is already beginning to be seen with rising wages in the favorite offshoring countries and more interest in having such technical personnel work for the betterment for their own countries.

Unfortunately, American management is often too late to the table and provides little insight when it comes to the recognition of the seeds of their own failures...

Mr. Watson just made the point and confirms that H-1B visa holders are not just better, they are cheaper! Companies wanting to bring H-1B visas people into the U.S. always claims that they can't find any qualified persons. We all know the real reason... MONEY. They are cheaper than the American counterpart. U.S. Congress should maintain the current level of H-1B at 65,000. It is good for the U.S. and good for the IT industry.

Brian Watson here. Just for the record, in response to the comment immediately above this one, I didn't confirm that H-1B holders are "better" or "cheaper." I reviewed a reader's response and asked others to weigh in. The comments so far have been quite interesting -- please keep them coming!

I think we will see a significant correction in the upcoming years. I am not sure if this generation will learn an important business principle that was much strongly held by prior generations and that is: you don't go out of town to get a better deal (save a buck). You may save a buck on that resource but you take $7 dollars away from the customers who support you. I am sure my posting will take a beating, but think about it. I held a party this weekend, and I heard people say, "They better fix this, and they better fix that," and "auto workers this," and "auto workers that," and "our home values are this." Well, look around, how many of the dollars that you are spending are going back to a local family that would aspire to buy your home. Not many anymore. So Not Norm, go ahead and expand your personnel with offshore resources. I do not know what you sell, but I hope Chinese people like to eat it, wear it or drive it because the U.S. economy is going to slow down to a halt until some $'s start staying local.

USA techs compete better than any ... how about we offshore your ass?

The United States is in one of the worst recessions and millions of Americans are losing their jobs. To say that we need to IMPORT more workers is absurd. For every "best and brightest Ph.D." (as Bill Gates says America needs to stay competitive), there are 10,000 programmers that come here and do nothing more than code. That only serves to depress hourly rates across the board. Cancel all H1-B and L-1 visas NOW!

For those of you that are scratching your heads about L-1 visas, they were originally designed for intra-company transfers by multinational corporations. The employee who holds the L-1 visa is authorized to work only for the U.S. entity. Unlike the H-1B, there are no numerical limitations on the number of L-1 visa holders who enter the U.S. annually. An alien admitted as the spouse of an L-1 is eligible to work in the U.S.

The L-1 visa has been twisted by Tata, Infosys and Wipro to bring their IT workers from India and then farm them out as consultants. While that is ILLEGAL, there is not enough oversight by the State Department to prevent this.

Try to challenge me on this... but read this first:

http://www.businessweek.com/careers/content/mar2003/ca2003036_6655.htm

There are many arguments for not hiring American workers. (1) They are too expensive. (2) They have a sense of entitlement and have bad attitudes. (3) They are not qualified and so on and so forth.

I think these arguments are bogus. The only reason companies want to hire H1-B visa holders is to get slave labor.

If companies trained their existing IT workers in newer technologies we would not have a shortage of trained workers. We don't need a MS in CS to write C code.

The quality of American workers is far, far superior to those from the low-wage countries. Yes, the American worker is better. I know from experience. Incorrect English, inability to understand problems, inability to work with customers cause delays and reduce productivity.

In my humble opinion the U.S. government should shut down the H1-B program completely and that will force companies to train and use American workers.

By the way, I came here on an H1-B. :-)

I've said it before on this forum and I'll say it again.....

I am an experienced IT professional that can actually speak English...25+ years exp, MBA BBA degrees... CISSP, MCSE, CompTIA, Project Mgmt+, Network+, Security+, all paid for by me in 2006...before, so as to keep getting screened for jobs...now I'm overqualified!

What exactly is it that 'Norm' and his brethren find so unappealing about me that despite multiple hundreds of job applications in the past 5+ years, I very seldom even get a response?

Employers only want 'cheap,' so the top 10%ers that CIO primps for and the fun folks in the GWB admininstration and Wall Street can take yet more of what little is left for the American worker...

Signed

My post-IT job: cleaning pools

I also think we'll see a correction. A big one. People are now waking up to what's been going on.

Something not often mentioned: a huge problem with outsourcing and H-1B visas is that private information of U.S. citizens is being handled by foreigners. Is anyone stupid enough to believe that Chinese and Indian (or Israeli or Russian) intelligence services and corporate spies, etc., aren't siphoning off and studying our most sensitive personal, corporate and government data? Health information? Financial transactions? Social security numbers? So in addition to devastating U.S. IT jobs, we're also exposing private, sensitive data belonging to our citizens, companies and government to people and organizations that should never access it. Unbelievably stupid, and should never have been permitted.

As a professional database programmer of many years, I just have to say that Steve Naidamast is 100% correct in his assessment of H1B IT workers. Truly qualified individuals are few and far between. I will give you a real-world example: I was recently asked to do a technical evaluation of a job candidate from India who had two master's degrees in computer science. I asked him to describe the process of database normalization and to define third normal form. I expect that no one outside the IT business has any idea what that means, but to those of us in the business, these are fundamental concepts that are taught in every computer science curriculum in the U.S. For someone who was supposed to highly qualified to not even know what I was talking about was simply unacceptable. Frankly, when I interview offshore candidates, this level of 'competency' is the norm and speaks volumes about the quality of higher education in some other countries.

As was mentioned in another post, the Indian H1B worker does tend to push for management. This creates another problem in that the people they hire tend to be equally unqualified.

I know this sounds like a racist rant, and I do apologize for that. Neither am I opposing the whole H1B program. I am just trying to say this is what it looks like in the real-world trenches.

I work with several people who came in as H1-B workers and they are very good and I have respect for them. These people come from the highest levels of candidates from their respective countries and have learned another language to come here. Everyone knows that to go to school or work in the U.S. is considered gold on your resume. The present H1-B level of 65,000 should not be increased. I think we need to sponsor more U.S. citizens with full scholarships in CS and maybe sponsor less foreign students until we can get enough qualified applicants in CS. There are plenty of IT jobs out there. We need to have better training as early as possible. Many students are ready out of high school to start in IT who should co-op at U.S. companies and also go to school at the same time. (U.S. Companies should send IT professionals to local colleges to be sure the training is adequate to get jobs). You can't tell me with over 300 million people in the U.S. we can't properly train enough qualified IT workers to get the available jobs ? This is absurd...

What a patently bigotted line about U.S. workers:

"who has an extreme sense of entitlement and wants to pull down $60K straight of school"

There are a lot of stereotypes about U.S. workers that simply are not true; this is certainly one of them.

People in the United States have values and work ethic. If anything, that work ethic is stronger in the current generation than ever before.

Back when India was deciding whether it should go Communist or not, and China was Communist, the people in the United States were working the computer revolution.

And I see that same spirit in the everyday actions many of our recent (U.S. Citizen) hirees.

Jeff in MI is ABSOLUTELY CORRECT and cites a basic principal of economic development -- when you buy something (anything) from outside your own local/regional/national economy, the money is $GONE$; in most cases gone permanently to help build the economies of less wealthy nations. Most of our money these days goes to fuel (Red) China's economy. There is a limited amount of wealth in the world, essentially it is a zero-sum game.

But I have an idea: let's hire H1-B EXECUTIVES -- they have GOT to be less expensive. It doesn't help our economy, necessarily, but it DOES bring competition to those who are its biggest (most highly paid, and most 'entitled') proponents.

As a person in a hiring capacity and managing over a dozen IT professionals (programmers, networking, analysts, etc), I have interviewed plenty of candidates (over 100 in 2 years) and reviewed even more resumes.

Here are my hiring criteria:
1) Can this person do the job? Is he/she truly qualified? Unfortunately some candidates are not worth the paper their degrees are printed on.

1-b) Part of being able to "do your job" is to communicate effectively, work hard, often over time when needed (come on, we're in IT), and dedicate time towards continuous self-improvement.

1-c) I despise firing someone or subjecting my staff and I to a poor working environment. Being in a small IT team, it's crucial that the person hired can carry their weight, contribute, communicate effectively with others, etc.

2) What else can this person bring to the organization, e.g. excellent interpersonal, business, management skills, etc? (Value-added)

3) Is the asking salary within the range I can actually afford for this position? Is the salary a good VALUE for what the person and quality of work I will be getting?

4) I am seldom 100% sure that this person will work out, and is not just BS'ing me the whole time and somehow manages to fool me on the answers and hands-on test. So, I usually ask if the candidate is willing to:
a) work as a temp/contractor first.
b) start at a slightly lower salary, with a 90-180 day review period and salary adjustment.

Really, all I'm looking for is a person who will do a great job, "get it done," not whine or moan or complain about everything; HARDWORKING, intelligent, dedicated, and has the motivation and desire to achieve something greater for him/herself and the organization.

Now, how does this relate to the H1B vs Citizen debate? The CITIZEN has a HUGE advantage. What many people don't realize is that it is a giant pain to hire someone and apply for H1B. That process alone costs thousands of dollars, no guarantee of success, and often delays the start date for months/over a year. Also, the H1B candidate must be paid no less than 5% below the prevailing wage, based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If you try to screw someone over, you will get caught or the application will be denied.

I would hire the American candidates if all else is equal (which often it is not).

Salary may seem like a big deal, but honestly I would gladly pay someone 10% or more if they are that much better. The quality and timeliness and other factors far, FAR outweigh a few thousand dollars a year.

Unfortunately, I can relate completely to what someone said earlier about the American's sense of entitlement, lack of motivation, lack of qualification, etc. It's true, and I find it affects the younger crowd more. I laugh at some of the salary demands...

"I don't know this language very well, but I can learn, meanwhile pay me $60k to start plus bonus. Oh and I got lots of friends so weekends and nights are off-limits."

For people who cannot land a job and are qualified: get your foot in the door one way or another. COMPETE! Take a lower title and salary, negotiate for a quicker review, work hard, show your motivation, show that you have savvy tech and business skills.

And if this applies: check your resentment, self-entitlement and negative attitude at the door.

It's not ONLY the cost!! It's the very deep-footed -- and now probably impenetrable -- stronghold U.S. companies, Indian companies and US immigration law firms have in Washington, DC!!!

The only way this can be stopped is through an act of congress. Since Indian firms and U.S. firms are wealthy and powerful, and U.S. trade negotiations take place behind closed doors, where agreements are made and inked, away from the eyes of Americans, who have a legal right to know and a right to approve or disapprove of having a door closed in their faces, that there is something to hide, because the U.S. trade representatives we send to India (mostly, China or ??? will be next) know that American IT pros will disapprove!!!!!!

The only way to stop it, is for our next president to say "STOP!!"

We can whine till the cows come home, because congress, U.S. companies and U.S. immigration law firms will simply turn a deaf ear. Just like they have been all along. What's more... if someone doesn't say "STOP!!" who has the power to really execute on that command, what we say simply won't matter!!

As far as U.S. IT talent?? U.S. firms and U.S. immigration law firms all know very, very well... there's IT talent aplenty right here at home!!

I've been on implementation teams where the U.S. company will DEMAND that at least 50% of the team is made up of H-1Bs or L-1 internal employees.

Oh yeah, STOP!! the L-1 program. Those beautifully crafted visa legalities are abused even more than the H-1B program.

The U.S. companies, Indian companies and U.S. immigration law firms have such a massive control, even our politicians simply turn a deaf ear!

Hey!! Wake up!! They're going to simply ignore you!! Get it!!

To get even more frustratedand angry, go to youtube and listen to some of the Lou Dobbs spots.

This problem has no straightforward solution. I will explain it from the point of a H1B worker.

When you work on visa, you are aware that to stay legal he/she has to maintain his job.

That makes him accept lower wages and at times work more because their visa is tied to their employer who knowing the situation fully well, keeps on exploiting. The employer has his own obligations to the shareholders, who keep asking for better dividends. How will the employer keep producing those asinine margins, over and over again without cutting costs in the workforce. As Thoman Friedman said in his book, we all love Wal-Mart when we shop, but we all hate them when they come and destroy local businesses. The problem with money is that it has no country, no religion and all of us love it so much, we won't complain till our job is on the line.

The average U.S. IT guy think he is entitled to a bigger salary because of the cost of education and being a native. The argument about education does not fly though, because expensive education is no guarantee for talent, ask Steve Jobs, Bill Gates etc. If education is expensive, then fix that area, why make it as a yardstick to get paid better. Being native should be a criterion, and the current law does asks for paying at least the fair wage. The fact that U.S. guys thinks that wage to be beneath him/her leaves the employer with a cheaper H1B worker. To fix that the U.S. guy should shed their guise of Prima Donnas, and treat IT as just a regular job.

As for expertise and pride, there is some truth in pride but it is overemphasised. If you take the fear out of the H1B worker he/she will also start taking more pride in his/her work. The reason the U.S. worker takes so much pride out of his work is because besides money that is what drives them. And no fear is bigger than deportation, ask those who have to face it with families, it is heartbreaking. The pride thing I find sometimes a bit too much, because the fact that the Americans were able to innovate so much is not because they are super talented, it is because they know how to work in a collabrative manner. That is why they have achieved so much and made so many big companies.

The solution for H1B guys is to give them free hand to choose their employer for their legal term. The reason why so many people become immigrants is not just because of U.S. such a sought for place, it is also because they know that their turn will come once they are out of that visa cycle. Imagine the kind of pool that will be create. Many people will think that it will drive the wage lower, or flood the market with all these free agents, but at least it will be a level playing field. Right now the market is on the side of the employer, and trust me they won't change the law for H1B. Why would they kill their cost efficient cow.

That is why I think a fairer comparsion would be to compare U.S. IT pros with people who have got the GC. Then we are comparing apples to apples. Leave the H1B worker alone, he is under pressure from his employer who sucks the life out of him, the INS who hounds him for deportation, the American worker who thinks he is taking his job besides the regular prejudices and immigrant worker faces in the workplace. The stress is too much to find pride here.

If we are going to consider people and their jobs as commodities to be imported and exported, why not H1-B HR personnel?

Ok, let's start by saying this: this is the land of opportunity... OK
Yes, some do request more money from here in the states! I have worked with both Americans and H1-b workers.

Let's start by looking at what you have stated -- work harder for less? Now this is the American way because all want more for nothing. However, I somewhat disagree with this statement based on this: if business owners were not so greedy, then we would not have this to talk about.

So if you take what it takes to run a business and divide it up among you workers, how would it look then? I understand the business side and needs but let's be honest: it's hard to compare a 3rd world living to American living!

Bringing over these workers is OK, but do what you are suppose to do and when they are finished working for you as their sponsorship, they go home and if not they should close your business doors. It's your responsibility to do that. You are not comparing apples to apples but then again you are the smart business person, right! They should not be allow to stay here and for pennies, take jobs from other that are trying to make a living here. We don't have a place to send our money for more of a value or someone else to run and live! If you want take your company to the 3rd world and set up shop, see how far you get then. But no, you can't and won't - just run things from America and steal the American dream from others!
I grew up in an orphanage and made something of my life and work extremely hard to get here and to stay here! My father that I got to know later in life owns his own business and paid the workers what they are worth to his business instead of worrying about getting bigger materialist things for himself! Most of the IT companies forget who put the bread on the table during the first hard times of the business!

So you see, every empire implodes from greed! Read up -- all have and all will!

I'm not here to make decisions for either side but I can tell you there are just as many Americans out there to work as you complain about money and profits! Take a look at USA now, and see the problems we have all over. Don't be blind by the side set of money over American life!

There are many shades to this argument.
[1] Not all H1Bs are good.. some are pretty terrible. Communication is a huge issue.
[2] Not all tech jobs require good consultants. Some is just grunt work. There is a *need* for low-wage tech workers too.
[3] On average the U.S. citizens we hire produce twice if not more than H1Bs. H1Bs usually train on the job and have poor communication skills.
[4] It takes about 4 or more years in the U.S. for a H1B to catch up to a U.S. citizen in productivity.
[5] H1Bs are more productive in their native environment, while interacting with engineers from their country. They need a network to sustain their momentum. H1Bs are not good self starters, only some are. Choose carefully.
[6] H1Bs are expensive to hire. There is a 4k upfront cost and no way of know if they will stick around long enough or even join.
[7] H1Bs also have a sense of entitlement based on the "degrees" they have, not based on their productivity. Gone are the days when you could hire at 50K. The starting salaries are at about the same as U.S. citizens + H1B fee. Better to hire U.S. citizens.
[8] H1Bs disappear on the job, are not reliable on long-term contracts, always on the look out for a better deal.
[9] U.S. citizens are more responsible and ethical.
[10] H1Bs imported by Indian outsourcing companies are virtual slaves; they get paid peanuts. They are always looking for another job. They are recruited in India/China and sent here on assignments. They are not in direct competition with U.S. citizens. They are on projects already in execution and lost to U.S. sompanies.

One thing I have not observed in these postings is the problem related with the bottom line. In order to be able to pay an employee's wages a company must, at the very least, break even. If all the company does, however, is break even, the stockholders will close it and take their money elsewhere. American companies must compete in a global market; to sell their products, their prices and quality must be at least as good as that provided by their competition. If they aren't, they wont be able to sell either home or abroad and will go under.

CEOs and CIOs are under constant pressure to do more with less, which translates to far-shore outsourcing, H1-Bs, layoffs and the like. It's unfortunate, it's downright ugly, but it is often the only way to keep the company afloat and profitable for the stockholders. And the stockholders have no qualms about moving their money to other countries if they prove to be more profitable.

It is a question of greed, but lets face it: Nobody invests his money for patriotism or charity -- they invest it to make more money.

As long as America shows the investors that it is a safe stable and reasonably profitable place to operate, they will stay. The moment this cease to be the case they will run.

Limiting or canceling H1Bs only serves to send American-trained professionals back to their home countries, which allows those countries to better compete with equal quality and lower costs with American companies. So that's not a viable solution.

So, given the above, the differentiation is return on investment. A worker, whether foreign on H1B or American, has to prove that he is giving his employer more value for his work than what he is being payed. Otherwise he will be replaced with someone who is. Granted, that its unfair that the replacement criteria is almost always to replace with someone who is willing to work for less, and thus yielding better ROI.

Complaining about what should be, in a perfect world, won't solve the problem. Working very hard and giving high value for the money will. But this becomes increasingly difficult if you consider that American colleges are turning out considerably more foreign graduates than American graduates. And many, though certainly not all, of the American graduates are not willing to work harder to give that value because they "have the (fill in the blank) given right" to obtain more money and work less hours because they are American.

There lies the catch-22: companies need to turn in a profit or they will fold. Foreign workers are willing to work hard and cheap for the opportunity of having a job. Many American workers are not willing to work as hard, and certainly not as cheap. But we want to keep jobs in America for Americans.

Thank God the country is financially, politically and socially stable, otherwise the main reason to keep what jobs there are here would be gone. Or is it?

I don't think many folks commenting here are facing the historical precedence nor their own culpability here.

To create the national railroad - didn't have H1-B - we just had influx of folks willing to work for "cheap." Fast forward to today and we all now shop at places like Wal-Mart, who claim they can only bring in "profitable" goods from other countries. Why - because we all (even those out of jobs or in lesser jobs) want as much as we deserve (or can grab) for as little as we can.

How does this play into IT? Simply, IT is now a commodity! And anyone who has ever bought something understands that when something approaches commodity status, price is the only criteria. IT is now a commodity and price is the only critical factor.

Unless there is a change in the the world condition (like full-scale wars since that tends to galvanize cultures), price now rules all and it might be better for everyone to "come out" and admit that. Mr. "Not Norm" is simply following this simple rule (very Darwin-like) and presuming that he is OK but that he can decide what is commoditized. I would only ask that I get a seat next to him when his management team comes to him and says - YOU HAVE BEEN REPLACED BY A CHEAPER ALTERNATIVE!

They won't say that, of course, because that is somehow wrong and could get them sued, so to placate him they will of course offer him a package that will include training his cheaper replacement. After all, other cultures are very good at innovation so they will get there soon.

When that happens, "Not Norm" will be complaining like those who have been replaced for cheaper alternatives while he shops at Walmart for cheap -- ensuring that his job will never "come back" and he too will learn to "clean the next level up's pool."

Some simple rules and logic have been lost on many generations (and it is most interesting that some of them ironically are becoming part of the green movement). Family and friends are first, local is next and planning for the worst while enjoying what is currently works.

NOT - I deserve it all now and will let someone else pay for it.

Can you say $700B... For starters...

Maybe the H1-B folks will be able to cover that bill -- since my current wage will not...

This is going to be the biggest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind and I am very proud to play my part and pay out my little share.

I just hope my "cost" in all of this will result in enough of a lesson that future generations learn the real cost of the carpet-baggers (CEOs, board of directors, etc.) and that they can figure out a way to return to a reasonable society where the stratification of wealth is more evenly distributed amongst all those who create it.

If that happens, then maybe I can say that this travesty was worth it...

Unfortunately, this issue goes deep - "Not Norm" is clearly in the game for the quick buck and has no concern for his children or the American dream for Americans. He sells the American dream to H1B's for the lowest bid, meanwhile leaving the Americans on the sidelines.

By outsourcing his labor via H1B, he has sold his soul for a buck vs. "doing the right thing" and running a respectable business. A disposable mentality leads to disposable employees, disposable products, no pride in your company or its products.

Build a business that not only delivers a good product but gives back to the community and your country -- hire Americans. Then, invest a little in your employees by COACHING them and molding them.

H1-B and L-1 are old news... passe...

In 1980s Congress created the H1-B program and set the quota at 65,000. In 1998 with the advent of the Y2K, Congress was urged to increase the quota to 90,000 followed by another increase to 130,000 the following year.

In 2001, yes 2001, Congress was further urged to incress the H1-B quota to 195,000.

Congress is slow to act and are not interested in its constuents who voted them into office.

In 2001, we suffered from high energy prices which caused many dot-coms to go bust -- and laying off 100 of thousand IT workers. Only the H1-B visa holders were guaranteed jobs during this time. The main reason? Low costs.

In 2003, Congress allowed the H1-B visa to return to its 65,000 quota limit. They also corrected some loop holes in the L-1 visas as well.

As for "Not-Norm", he/she may see recent college graduates -- who btw have spent thousands of dollars to gain a degree -- want a salary higher than what would be expected for the amount of experience. But to ignore the many IT professionals growing in their years to say these folks are unqualified because they dont have post graduate degress shows how naive the CIO is with business.

There are pluses and minuses for outsourcing, offshore nearshore, or even local. What will this CIO do when his outsourcers start increasing its bill rate in order to find these highly qualified candidates?

I learned long ago what goes around will definitely come back around!

The race is about finding the best brains for the best price anywhere on the planet to maximize profit. This has always been the basis of competition and capitalism.

Technically speaking, H1B or local talent is only a sidebar conversation in the big picture.

Unfortunately for us here, the loss of high-paid IT jobs is a loss. Education is expensive, cost of living is high, and health care also costs more.

The H1B jobs will only exist here for as long as the employers can bake these skills wherever they have moved their R&D and development operations.

IBM, Microsoft, Dell, HP, Oracle...all have massive and still growing offshore operations.

They have overcome the pain and adapted to cultural differences in reestablishing operations abroad.

Did you notice, while the employees here are losing opportunities, the profits of corporations is skyrocketing?

What is an IT professional to do?

- Stay on the cutting edge of technical innovation in your area. Obtain certification, participate in industry standards developments, write critique, suggest best ways to use new technologies.

- Teach, preach, publish and establish a name brand for yourself.

- Embrace the reality of numbers: employers are required to seek lowest cost/best ouput, U.S. costs will never be at par for standardized/commoditized work, corporations are advantaged to go abroad (tax breaks).

- Take charge: parlay skills and experience into a solid career. Teach abroad, seek foreign assignments, mnage offshore teams, save company money, deliver higher value to your manager and employer.

Professional employment offers no care or loyalty and can still be ethical and moral. Others are protecting their own future. You are responsible for your advancement!

It did not used to be this way, but it is so now. We can dwell in lofty ideals or act now and advance.

Some have commented that H1B employees jump ship frequently, while we should focus on coaching Americans and molding them...

My personal experience is the inverse.

Citizens can work anywhere. No legal limitations, no H1B approval process, legal fees, etc. They come and go as they please.

H1Bs, on the other hand, can only work for the company that went through the lengthy and costly process of obtaining the H1B for that employee. (H1B is tied not only to the employee, but also to the employer - it's a "1-to-1" relationship.)

Loyalty is a personal trait so I'm not even going to talk about that. However, H1Bs are NOT more likely to jump ship. This is because:

1) H1Bs cannot easily get another job. Imagine interviewing and telling the employer that you'll work for them only after a few months processing time and a high processing cost.

2) H1Bs, from my experience, are more appreciative to the employer that hired them, because they know that this employer took the risk of not getting the application approved, spent legal fees, and patiently waited to bring them onboard.

3) H1Bs usually realize that they have to compete/work much harder to achieve the same degree of success as their American counterpart; as such, they work their butts off to solidify their position in the company and to move ahead in their careers.

4) An individual can only be on H1B status for 2 x 3 year periods (6 years total), afterwards unless he applies for a different status or other unusual circumstances, they have to LEAVE the county. Now think about this: Do you think jumping from one company to another will increase or decrease your chances that the company you're with will apply for permanent residency/other status for you?

After 20 years in a Fortune 5, and ten years contracting for Fortune 500 companies, my conclusions are that it's all about poor management.

Thirty years ago, managers started out technical, and those few who could manage were promoted into management, and in large companies they received rigorous training to make sure they knew how to manage. Now companies provide no training except "How to Deal with Downsizing." Now managers don't understand anything technical and don't know how to manage either.

The primary symptom of poor management is the fad management strategy of trying to treat humans as a commodity. We no longer hire people, we rent "resources," and the results show it. If you see humans as commodities, you don't even try to train them and retain them at any level of the company. Humans are, unfortunately, poor at playing the part of commodities, especially American workers, so they lose out to those prepared to act as slaves, which is what commodity humans are.

Because managers no longer have any technical expertise, they have no clue in judging quality work. Judging quality was always difficult, but without years of experience, now it is impossible. And so American workers are frequently viewed as "recalcitrant" or "uppity" when they are actually asking to be allowed to produce quality work (and thus keep their bosses out of trouble in the future).

And not being able to judge quality work, it is even more impossible to judge future quality work, so hiring decisions cannot be based on quality, but can only be based on wage costs.

And so the rush to cheap labor. Because they don't know how to do it any other way.

A few technical notes:

H1Bs typically cost 30% less than Americans, due to age discrimination (replacing 40+ year olds with 25 year olds), and replacing experienced, competent workers with beginners with faked experience (hiring managers don't know any better...). L1s typically cost 50% less than Americans because there are no effective limitations on them. Offshores typically cost 80% less. They are paid 90% less, but the contracting agency takes a 100% addon.

No amount of training or retraining will ever overcome those numbers in the mind of a hiring manager who can only count wage costs.

Congressional actions raising quotas and allowing huge loopholes in the laws resulted in replacement of American workers with cheap labor, and only congressional action can repair the damage they have caused to our future.

ET has it right. It's a non-trivial matter to get an H1-B transferred and it can take anything up to a couple of months to complete the process. That's an overhead that a citizen or permanent resident doesn't have to deal with (nor should they).

As a result H1-B holders tend to job-hop less frequently and are much less able to take advantage of a fluid job market.

I have direct experience of this because I am, myself, an H1-B holder and transferred when my previous employers went out of business. I probably don't fit the commonly-held stereotype trotted out repeatedly on this forum, however.

The present H1B program is flawed. Its intent is to permit employers to find talent in tight job markets.

Several problems:

1) H1B hires, by statute, are to be hired at prevaling wages. Often, H1B hirees are paid less than market wages.

2) H1B workers are often "abused" by sponsors
I can attest to first hand knowledge of an H1B worker, whose sponsor paid him very low wage (U.S. rate), billed a much higher rate albeit the billed rate was still below prevaling U.S. wages.

3) H1B visas should be alotted based upon strength of the economy. The German model should be examined, where the number of H1Bs permitted to enter is scaled to the strength of the economy.

In short, the program is intended to augment staffing needs, not compete with existing labor pools.

IMO, there are both too many "not norms" and too many "wet behind the ears" entry-level folks seeking wages equivalent to seasoned pros. There again, the college tuition debt-loads of many recent grads dictates the wage a recent grad must make to pay down that debt.

Is there an easy way out??
First: Scale back H1Bs permitted into the states. The economic landscape dictates this.
Second: Ensure that "prevaling wages" apply to what H1B hirees receive directly in their paycheck.
Three: Increase funding of public universities to improve affordability.

One set of suggestions for H1B applications:

There is not "a" prevailing wage -- there are four, from "entry-level" up to "fully competent." At present, most applications are for "entry level," but we should only allow H1Bs who are at least fully competent.

Based on my experience, I believe the Dept. of Labor statistics are skewed to the low side by giving too much weight to small employers who pay less, rather than to Fortune 500 companies that pay higher wages and that also employ more H1Bs. They should be forced to weight the stats to the real world.

At present there is a lottery for H1Bs, which begs corporate applicants to game the system by submitting as many applications as possible hoping to win by the law of averages, and to emphasize IT jobs where the standard discrepancy between H1B wages and American wages is greatest and brings employers the greatest savings. But the H1B is for nearly any job which requires a bachelor's degree, and other occupations should be permitted to feel the same joy at seeing their jobs replaced as us IT folks.

An effective solution would be to use an auction system, rather than a lottery, where those willing to pay the highest wage would get their application approved. This would effectively deal with Bill Gates, et. al., who claim they are not looking for cheap labor but looking for "the best and brightest." If they are not lying through their teeth, then they should be looking for workers who would be paid at the very highest wage rather than an entry level wage (typically 17th percentile), which would be much more fair to the H1B and most American workers. And the wage level should *never* be less than "fully competent."

The auction should also be round robin by geographic area and by occupation, so that all areas and occupations should have an equal chance.

About H1B job hopping: Transferring a H1B visa *is* a trivial process -- costs about 3 to 4k.

I've known some (H1Bs) that always have 2 or 3 H1B transfers on hand. Greater insecurity breeds a greater need to safeguard -- to preserve oneself. While a citizen laid off can rely on unemployment benefits or simply chill, a H1B who's laid off or other wise loses his job has a fast ticking clock. Either find a new sponsor or hasta la vista baby! Or so the law says.

Hiring H1B is fraught with risk too; there are upfront expenses and the very real downside of a no show. At least citizens have the courtesy of calling to decline an offer.

It's also very difficult to check references with H1Bs... have to rely on a very through interview.

Not all are bad; some are darn good. The good ones with skills are the reason H1B program was instituted. As with most things in life, 80% garbage, 20% gold. It's unfortunately a numbers/cost game now. We're at a point where the lowest bidder from across the glob can undercut here, his cost of doing business pertains to different...cheaper economy. Big businesses love getting something for nothing or very little.

Larry and Bill with sell their mothers for a buck-fifty. It's up to the Congress to stop them.

When the cost of education is the same as say in India or China, this then will be a fair market.

Microsoft is the largest employer in India. Bill Gates has lobbied to raise the H1B quota because he claims he can not find the talent in the USA. If the claim is the American tech worker is overpriced, lazy, entitled, etc., is there any reason why Bill Gates has $55,000,000,000? Do the math....

I don't think tech's complaint is our inability or unwillingness to compete. It's that we are asked to compete when noone else has to.

The same country that asks techs to compete at a global level has affirmative action and doesn't even ask minorities to compete at a national level. The same country that denies whites and asians admission to law/med school based on skin color imports millions of foreign-born workers when they choose the third best paying profession--IT.

And then, when we hire an attorney or put our kids in school or get our hair cut--what wages do we pay? H-1B wages? No. American wages.

We have to MAKE H-1B wages, but PAY American ones. That's what we object to.

We don't live in India. And if we did, programmers would be some of the best paid people in society.

We object to the deliberate distortion of wages that makes one of the most difficult professions in our country into one of the lowest paying. Treat everyone equally--make EVERYONE compete--and our complaints will stop.

The simple reason that Not Norm hires H-1B visa holders is that he enjoys paying slave wages and holding indentured servitude over their heads. He says that they work harder -- I guess he doesn't have some of us Americans that are putting in over 70 hours per week working for him.

Congress is getting ready to bail out the fat cats on Wall Street while they stick it to the middle class with a H-1B increase. How are you supposed to compete with cheap cheap labor when the H-1Bs are living 10 to a house and living on meager rations?

I can't do that in my town -- I have a family to raise.

hmm lets see here -- maybe with the current banking fiasco we should look at outsourcing the CEO positions at some of these big companies. I am sick and tired of hearing how they bend over the people that actually do the work at their companies. The same buttheads that pull down a six-figure income complain about a IT pro trying to get $40K-60K starting out of school yet with the same amount of schooling they expect $70K-80K yet their salary will contiually rise even if they run the buisness into the ground. I totally understand keeping cost low, but insead of doing at the average workers' expense, maybe they should start at the top and look that, hey, we dont have to relearn anything while the IT worker is under constant schooling/retraining after graduation.

Given the current economic crisis, the H1B program should be scrapped or at least put on an indefinite freeze. Current H1Bs should be retracted. The ONLY reason H1Bs are hired over Americans is because they are dirt cheap. That's it. Any other whining about them being better qualified is someone trying to rationalize cutting the throats of his countrymen.

I've been an IT professional for over a decade, and I've never once ran into an Indian who I thought was technically better than an average American tech worker. Plus, many times they're impossible to understand.

Contractors don't hire illegal aliens from a 7-11 parking lot because they're better drywallers than an American; they do it because they get a bigger piece of the pie. It's no differed with H1B "Tech-sicans." Not better, just cheaper, and bringing us closer and closer to third-world wages.

As in most things, there is truth in a number of the different comments above.

A few observations about resources:

I've hired a lot of engineering talent both in the U.S. and abroad, a balance of both domestic and international. I don't think you can generalize a particular nationality as some have done above, but there are some working differences between a U.S.-based position and those in other countries.

One thing I have found in almost all immigrant workers from any country is a real burning desire to succeed, stronger than most native-born and educated people. After all, they are the ones who uprooted their lives in search of something better, which is a huge step. This isn't a surprise, it's been the case for as long as the USA has been a champion of accepting other people into the workforce and eventually the culture.

It's also not a surprise that people who grew up here want more time for their own lives, family, etc. They are at a different point in their socio-economic lives; in almost all cases they've lived a more prosperous life. I've found that eventually the foreign-born workers slow down a little, but still have that sense of a little extra dedication and effort found missing in so many native-born workers.

We can learn a lot from observing, and while the native born workers don't want to hear it, many of you do just enough to get by, and really don't do that extra little bit. Partly that's workers' fault, and partly an issue of management.

On the other hand, I'm not a big fan of outsourcing valuable R&D-based talent to other places. All that does is reduce our ability to develop and function on the leading edge of technologies.

While the global economy continues to evolve, America needs get/stay on top of development and innovation -- the cornerstone of success. Many of those successes will be built on the team-building of native and immigrant minds working together to build the better product. And that, in turn, enriches the American experience and wealth in some many areas.

I help run an engineering department (HW & SW) of ~50 people in North America. We're a start-up, highly agile, hopefully competitive.

Several random points, from my perspective as someone who sometimes hires (and sometimes doesn't) H1B employees:

1) The wages I've seen for highly talented H1B employees aren't that different than for non-H1B employees. When interviewing and looking for strong talent, you're not really saving money. When looking for mediocre talent, the story may be different.

2) I've been to multiple job fairs at universities in the area. It has been virtually impossible to find students entering the workforce who are not H1B. At the latest university job fair, for example, I received 64 resumes for two entry-level jobs. Of those 64, 62 were H1B from India or China, 1 was Nigerian, and 1 was from North America.

3) Don't mean to offend anyone, but what we do is not the most difficult profession in the country. Exaggeration deflates an otherwise strong argument.

4) Anyone who has done offshoring knows it is not cheaper or faster. It is a pain, threatens intellectual property, more often than not runs late and over budget, etc. For the right project it can succeed, but for 'normal' projects for companies with actual timelines, it totally sucks.

5) I've never heard one complaint, about anything, from an H1B employee. To me, its scary -- they'll take anything quietly without objection. They have an actual great fear of losing their job and they act that way, which is where the "slave" labor comes in. They'll put in more hours than most others (on average). I'm not saying the output is higher, but the hours are.

6) The balance of international labor costs have shifted with the incredibly weak dollar. The difference between U.S. and international labor is much closer thanks to our incompetent economic leadership.

So let's keep giving U.S. jobs to people who neither pay taxes, buy American products, or do anything to help our economy. H1Bs aside, the whole offshoring thing is out of control. If 'Not Norm' wants to help continue the plight on our economy with this kind of stupidity, then I hope he has to eat beans or become a greeter at Wal-Mart when this wave of inequity hits home for him.

We need to keep American jobs in America and for Americans.

"H-1B grad with an MS in CS who wants less money, is more qualified, and works harder?"

I have to work with a bunch of (Indians)...not sure where you're getting yours but if you have found the golden cache of them, then cool for you. I just hope you realize the repercussions of what you're doing 'Not Norm'.

I've been made -- as the British say -- "redundant" 3 times over the past 10 years. Twice, I was replaced by H1B or offshore workers. This past February I just missed being "offed" again and now instead of having two skilled on-shore developers, I have 5 in India.

Net result: longer dev time, poorer quality code, and more work for me, but we've cut costs.

What cracks me up is when one of the current crop of H1B consultants complains to me about being replaced by a cheaper consultant from China!

Call it Karma.

NordoniaNate:
"Bill Gates has lobbied to raise the H1B quota because he claims he can not find the talent in the USA. If the claim is the American tech worker is overpriced, lazy, entitled, etc., is there any reason why Bill Gates has $55,000,000,000? Do the math...."

Have you been through the Microsoft interview process??? When Bill Gates says "There's not enough U.S. talent." What he means is, the workers we've screened aren't an absolute perfect fit for us. When you interview with Microsoft, the process is designed to place you in what they deem to be the best fit for you. They ask you cracked-out questions and in the end they may not offer you a interview for the position you thought best fit you. Picture this... you've been a .NET developer for 8 years, you interview with one of Microsoft's quacks and they decide you'd be better as a children's book author. DONE. Your career with Microsoft will never go any further because you were born to be an author and despite how good you are at programming, Microsoft's quack that interviewed you disagrees.

The reality here is the ONLY reason U.S. companies hire H-1Bs is to save money. It's the reason they outsource to India, Ukranine and Pakistan. The workers here are 20-50% less and if you ship overseas the ratio is 8-10 to one.

The quality is not as comparable. I have been responsible for the products for both startup and the fourth-largest software co. in the world over the past 20 years and the number of bugs, time in QA, customer satisfaction, time to communicate and implement changes and fixes is 5 to 7x of that when the functions are performed in the U.S. by engineers for whom English is their native language.

The real costs are generally not calculated, and when they are, what you will find is that to make this effective the work needs to be architected here and the baseline done overseas with final assembly and QA completed in the U.S. And you must have a U.S.-educated but resident country native team member running the show overseas as well as a counterpart in the U.S. to interface with product management.

We need to be real: cost isn't everything, and you have to look at the total cost as well as customer satisfaction because with them you don't have any money.

This is not black-and-white discussion.

H1Bs are not needed for low-skill IT jobs. It is better to hire locals. The companies like TATA, Accenture, Infosys are killing a program that was built with good intentions.

But when the question is global competition, you need the global talent. Can you imagine Microsoft, Google or Motorola dominating their markets with local hires? If they did, they would be the new Ford and the GMs on the stock market. One in every 10,000 is genius in some field, according to the statistics. Naturally there are more genius people from India and China. Why not getting all those genius people here? They will definitely create more jobs for the Americans. A genius is not always a genius in science and math; America needs genius people in sales, social sciences, etc., to dominate the world. The whole university research system is built on this idea (Score 800 in GRE, get a free MS degree in Georgia). If some malicious intent wants to cut the talent arteries, that is a suicide. Stamp a green card for every ivy school PhD grad, what do you lose? Well, H1Bs are not needed; all we need is gardeners, maids and the fruit pickers...

Outsourcing companies are exploiting the H1B program. Stop them first. They fill the all quota. Allow American businesses to hire H1Bs to stay competitive; otherwise the whole market will be full of Ford looking companies (In the meantime, Ford is doing great overseas).

Don't worry, those hardworking immigrants will create the prosperity you need for the boat and the Disney vacation. They are not very different than your ancestors who built the nation you are living in.

I have been forced to consider H1B candidates in my hiring. In trying to fill SAP positions (programming), I am not getting American citizens as candidates. In terms of the salaries, part of the process is a prevailing wage review with the labor board. We are not allowed to pay our foreign workers doing the same jobs less than their American counterparts without a TON of justification. If an American candidate is qualified, you are supposed to hire the U.S. citizen first. In 10 applicants, I only had one that was an American citizen. For my 3 open positions (1 which was open for over 7 months) I hired the American guy and 2 h1B candidates. My H1B candidates are paid what I would pay any candidate for this position. Working in public sector, my salaries are not that high to begin with, which is probably why I am not getting too many citizens in the market at the moment. I am just pleased to attract talent and a willingness to work. I do find that some companies are doing a disservice to the H1B candidates in their hiring practices, but I can assure you that should they be audited, there will be issues.

I run a small IT services company. I agree with most of that most H1B and workers in India are NOT qualified to compete with U.S. workers. Workers in India lack the critical-thinking and analysis skills

The only reason we hire Indian workers is because their salaries are low. Did anyone remember a simple economical rule: "You always get what you paid for."

You all "incorrectly" have made assumptions that H1B workers come from China, India or some other country where English is a second or third language.

There are many many H1B workers from Canada and the UK. Last time I checked they spoke English very well, were extremely knowledgeable in their chosen areas of expertise, worked like dogs and were not always a minority "color."

Just because you are on a H1B doesn't automatically mean you are from India or China.

One popular misconception about H1-B program seems to be that the money is going out of the country. Actually, H1-B is way better than farming the jobs (manufacturing or IT) out. The H1-B people (and their families) come to U.S. and spend most of the money here. As most of them are engineers/professionals, want a house and a car, earn decent salaries, they actually contribute to U.S. economy. Stop H1-B and the jobs will go offshore with most of the spending with it.

One of the reasons of the high growth of U.S. economy from 1998-2000 could also be ~195,000 H1-B along with their families moved to U.S., bought cars, homes, furniture and helped keep the economy moving.

I am not bashing the U.S. workforce or praising immigrants, but the fact is mature immigration does fuel the economy.

Has anyone thought about this?

Glad to see that many are commenting on this issue. It is too bad that most of the hiring managers posting are full of it.

The reason for hiring H1Bs are $,$ and $. When are we going to wake up as a country and realize that when we no longer have a strong middle class, we will no longer have buyers for our products, NO MATTER HOW CHEAPLY WE CAN PRODUCE THEM?

What is wrong about being for your country? Every other country looks out for its workers and protects their jobs.

This is all the result of decades of offshoring to temporarily get cheap goods. Now we are beginning to see the long-term effects of these policys. BTW, I have found that I can get the work done just as cheaply by American workers when the true total costs of offshoring are considered. That being, re-doing the work, correcting the work, time spent preparing detailed work requests to the point that you could just as easily do the work yourself versus the effort to detail in exacting detail what is required for the offshore source, etc.

I have all native workers on my team. They work very hard and do not whine. Their age also varies from entry-level to many years of experience. However, based on my past experience, this is an aberration. The biggest problem is not pay but attitude and entitlement. Comparing apples to apples on skills is very difficult anyway, and I have always hired a native IT professional with the right attitude when there is a choice. Unfortunately, there is often not a choice.

Finally, all qualified native IT workers are gainfully employed and doing very well. The hassle and cost of sponsoring a H1B is not trivial and most employers avoid that if they can. The whiners are either not qualified or have a bad attitude, which can be detected in seconds during the interview. One of these attitudes is to be not able to work in a mixed team of H1B and native workers and asking for special treatment because they are not H1B. These are elitists who just don't want to associate with the dark-skinned people who cannot even construct a proper sentence or would eat out of a lunch box instead of mingling in the cafeteria or the nearest tex-mex eatery.

We have 3 domestic economic workforce problems overlapping.

1) The need for domestic companies to compete globally and generate shareholder value and return on investment. This is important or companies do not exist. The need for technology's version indenture servants has created profitable American companies but are we willing to examine the ethical considerations. Historically, yes, but both suffrage and slavery took years and massive amounts of political capital to overcome. Slavery gave you a cheaper workforce still, but what is the right thing to do? Obviously not. The influx of international workers should be encouraged but also controlled to affect the supply and demand curve for domestic workers.

2) The current domestic workforce's need for a fair living wage. This is being undercut by the over-reliance on international workers that are trained at much lower costs than American workers.

3) Speaking of training American workers, if we don't do something about this we will lose an entire generation of technology workers that will refuse to go through college accrue the debt involved with that process and come out with a job that is less stable and compensated than managing a Burger King.

Okay, I currently work in IT, and have been in IT for the last 10 years. Everyone here is worried about sounding racist -- let's just say it how we see it.

I've probably worked with dozens of very diverse H1B workers (Indians, Chinese, Pakistani, etc.). Most of them are some of the nicest people I've ever worked with.

That being said...

For anything other than grunt work (especially anything that interfaces the customer), the foreign worker is usually severely handicapped due to poor English communication skills. This is an enormous problem that has numerous negative effects on the work process and product. There's simply no way around it. Ever have a foreign waiter that couldn't get your food order right? Well that's just a dinner -- try dealing with one when you're spending 1 million dollars designing software.

As far as foreign workers holding high-level degrees -- again, I've worked with these "highly educated" foreigners and I've never, not once, been impressed. In fact, most recognize that the foreign undergrad and graduate programs to be severely lacking.

As far as the foreign worker being more hard working, I've never experienced it. My personal experience has shown me that they typically work less and less is expected out of them. It doesn't take long to realize the poor language skills severely limit productivity. After a while they get less and less of the important work because of it. Some say they even use that ability to their advantage to do less. I don't know.

Those in the trenches know what's going on. On paper, it might look good, but in practice, it's a mess.

Is there any difference between hiring a H1B-holder engineer for a lower salary and buying stuff made in China by $1/hr workers?

In today's world, a U.S. worker with a U.S.-centric attitude and skill set may not bring to the job the multi-country, outward-looking perspectives that are increasingly relevant to the success of the U.S. itself and U.S. companies. Often the H1B worker will be multilingual and multicultural, while U.S. workers often are not. Our U.S.-centric perspective is not adequate for delivering export-ready IT capabilities, nor for working on teams that span multiple countries. Also, some technologies are rolling out faster outside the U.S., notably IPv6. Anyone managing a career needs to invest in emulating some of the characteristics of the H1B visa person.

There are many good observations and comments on this topic...H1B discussion is a small part of a bigger problem.

It is important to understand how a company can survive in the global marketplace. We have seen the great GMs, Fords and Chryslers going down and Toyotas, Nissans, Hondas and Hyundais increasing market share. The reason is cost reduction by efficient processes and relatively cheap labor. Do you think Wal-Mart would have been such a huge company without outsourcing or buying products from outside U.S.? Tell Walmart not to hire any non-USA citizen and sell products that are ONLY manufactured in USA...and see where it will be in the rankings after 2 years...

Let us not talk about who is more ethical...we have all kinds of people in both areas. Coming to IT...in 99% of the companies IT folks are highest paid compared to any other department. So, it is the first target to cut costs.

Population in USA is 300+ million. How many of them are in the age group that is eligible to work? What are their preferences? How many of them are interested in working flipping snadwiches and burgers like a Mexican Immigrant? How many of them are interested in working like a H1B doing coding for years together? How many of them are ready to work overtime and still not charge company? It is the attitude of a person towards finishing the work on hand...and to some extent making companies get used to exploit their weakness and commitment.

Companies are forced to cut costs to meet the demands of customers and in a intensely competitive market. We look for best product at lowest cost. We buy products in Amazon if we see 10% less price and no shipping cost. Who do you think takes the hit of margin? It is either the manufacturer or the dealer, not us (consumers)

If H1Bs are such a bad thing, how come companies utilized hundreds and thousands of H1Bs since years and effectively increased their bottom line? Look at companies like GE, how they effectively utilized outsourcing and held their place in highly competitive market by investing more in innovation and new products.

Guys, all said and done, the discussion stops at the bottomline. Can anyone show a solution that can stop outsourcing, stop using H1B, stop using products manufactured outside USA, stop hiring low wage workers (slaves) and still compete in the global market place and become a leader in the industry?

One need to think globally in this economy -- we can have a World Series played with only teams from USA, but cannot become a world leader selling only U.S. consumers and buying only U.S. labor...unless something drastically changes which is unimaginable.

Last but not least: the $700 bilion is shared by everyone who is a taxpayer -- including H1Bs.

We have to take the macro view. If no one hires American grads in a particular field (such as computer science), no students will major in that field. I don't blame "Not Norm" for having that view, I blame the system for allowing so many H-1Bs and the blatant abuse of the law.

Does this country want more science and engineering students... or not?

The comments about U.S. workers being lazy and wanting too much salary are a ploy to hold down wages and it is contributing to problems in the economy. One of the reasons Wall Street is imploding is due to bad loans. The reasons people are vulnerable to bad loans is that they need money for housing and they don't have enough income to purchase a house. Wall Street's insistence on holding down salaries is like sawing off the limb you are sitting on because unless there is enough money for people to make purchases outside of Wal-Mart, there won't be any money going into corporate coffers.

In 25 years in the IT world, I've worked all around the world with Americans, Brits, Europeans, Australians, South Americans, Sri Lankans, you name it. I've also spent the last 12 years in the U.S., including experience working with H1Bs from India. There are good people and there are bad people, in terms of skills, in all nationalities. The average H1Bs have a bad reputation because they were led to the slaughter as Indian companies promised a pot of gold and American companies fell for it. The ability of most H1Bs I have encountered is poor-to-average at best.

At the end of the day, it boils down to the profit line and greed in American companies: bigger, better, faster, cheaper. There is no longer genuine consideration for employees. Companies are doing everything they can because they have become dependent on what they have -- not what they can achieve in the future.

Globalization and cheap labour have also killed any American innovation. Three months in Switzerland, France and the UK earlier this opened my eyes as to how far advanced Europe is compared to the U.S. in terms of skills and capabilities and IT success. Protectionism, proprietary technology, and fear -- yes fear -- because so many companies know they are losing it.

Of special note: the prosperity of American IT professionals has DECREASED. Unless you're one of the lucky ones, rates have stayed the same or even fallen over the last 10 years. Working as a consultant (with a successful work record), I am still being offered the same rates as I was 10 years ago! $50 an hour if I'm lucky, while in Europe, I can get $100 for the same role and less stress (and the cost of living is nowhere that much difference). Not only has compensation dropped, the number of skills I'm meant to have for the same pay has increased. Companies are looking for people that can do everything while paying them nothing. Do you expect your dentist to polish your nails or serve you lunch or put a new exhaust on your car?

I'm a Brit, here for 13 years on a green card. I co-founded a software company in 2003, and ALL the design and development has been kept here in the USA: 100%. I believe in my community, for it supports me at the end of the day.

Topgun:

"The reason for hiring H1Bs are $,$ and $."

Once again the nail has been hit on the head. Right now Service Master is outsourcing 500+ IT jobs to India. When you get down to the bottom line, this is all about cutting costs and lining the pockets of the higher-ups. I've got family that plays golf weekly with an executive board member and they frequently discuss how the process is going. Basically the executive leadership was told to cut expenses any way possible and if they hit their numbers, they will receive handsome bonuses and other compensation. The company is setting up to go public and they want to look really good on paper so their IPO comes out strong.

Since I work for the company I hear both sides of the story. I get the truth from the golf course and I hear the utter bull in management meetings about "coping with downsizing" and how employees are going to be much more valuable since they've been through the outsourcing process. That's utter bull to consider an employee more valuable because they've been fired before. Right now we have 2 in-office H1Bs that are great. However, we just hired another offshore .Net guy (that makes 5 now) and my initial meeting with him was laughable. I couldn't understand a word the man said. I had to get one of the inner-office Indians to translate what the man was saying and several pieces of their conversation wasn't even in English. How do they expect me to explain our architecture to a person that can't communicate. I tell my boss what's going on and he says, "Whatever, they don't cost ***t, we will just get another."

There seems to be a misunderstood simple fact. It is illegal to apply for somebody's H1B on salary base. In the process of obtaining one's visa, the company must prove to INS that they couldn't find a qualified American individual, regardless of the possible payment. This is provable by following, tracking and documenting the hiring process, showing everything from the job offer to the resumes and testing procedures. While is not impossible to adjust the system in various points to skew the result, from here to cynically declaring that "they're more cost effective, and they're often more talented than American applicants," it's quite a distance. The first part of the statement should be disregarded, from a legal standpoint, and INS should take notice. And the second is -- to say the least -- interpretable. What does "often" mean in the above statement? "More often than not"? "Sometimes"? I'm going to call it BS and translate it as an "easy American way to make a buck." While not necessarily wrong, it's just a short-term stunt.

KK :
"Last but not least: the $700 bilion is shared by everyone who is a taxpayer -- including H1Bs. "

That's one of the few positives about the H1Bs. I was an IT manager for a construction company that readily employed illegal Mexicans. These mexicans rotated stolen SSN's and names so they could get free health care and abuse the American tax system.

Since I was a "geek" way back when being a "geek" wasn't cool, I feel justified in giving my thoughts on this issue.

I agree a lot with Steve Naidamast. Employers want to pay for someone qualified enough at the cheapest price they can get. Anything else is just a good arguing point.

I'm not surprised that the number of Americans entering computer science courses and other sciences has dwindled. It's a lot of hard work. You get paid just as much for easier stuff. "Let the over-brained idiots without a lick of common sense do it." Besides, kids in college have just gotten away from momma and daddy telling them what to do and when to do it and they want to taste their freedom.

However I disagree with the assessment that this trend is a result of the Reagan era. I don't care what the major journals said: this was prevalent in schools before the Reagan era. I was told before I entered college (in the late 70's) that "the Sciences are the hardest field for the least monetary reward." I saw many math, science and engineering students change their majors after the first semester of college. So I tie this trend to the culture of the 70's, and don't forget the influence of parents and their attitude.

Onward...
I agree with John Doe -- U.S. firms need to train their current workers. I am convinced that today they just keep that ad out there -- Position Open, Senior IT Expert in (whatever they use) -- just in case there is someone out there recently disgruntled and wants to jump ship. If they get a resume they like, the position is (really) open.

What Jeff in MD said bears repeating:
"Private information of U.S. citizens is being handled by foreigners. Is anyone stupid enough to believe that the Chinese and Indian (or Israeli and Russian) intelligence services and corporate spies, etc., aren't siphoning off and studying our most sensitive personal, corporate and government data? Health information? Financial transactions? Social security numbers?"

I agree with EMJ, let's hire H1-B EXECUTIVES. Nothing less than C-level, of course. Will 65,000 be enough? Hey, they will "work harder for less pay." Wish I had that idea...

I could go on, but I gotta wrap this up. Our kids need to quit thinking that they will be the next Michael Jordon and hit the books. Our execs need to bite the bullet and pay IT what it's worth.

Guys, don't forget that H1-B visas not only for IT people. If we didn't have H1-B visa holders we would have crazy shortage of doctors in under-serviced areas.

It is simple: the H-1B/L1 employer lures the H-1B/L1 employee with a compensation package that includes the significant value of an American soil lifestyle -- a no-cost item for an employer.

The native/naturalized American NON-employee correctly views this American soil lifestyle as a right (and responsibility).

Assailing Americans for failing to credit prospective employers for their rights when valuing a compensation package is downright insulting.

Those hired to hold down costs -- often 70% wages in technology -- must attack wages and wage earners any way the law allows (or rather fails to prohibit). Thus we have the constant drumbeat of specious arguments assailing any prospect of change.

No nation that favors non-citizens over its own as a permanent strategy in critical infrastructure will survive. I am all for fair competition -- so long as it is fair. H-1B/L1 programs are not even close. Stop all new H-1B/L1 program activities. Within 6 months, let all current H-1B/L1 holders telecommute, pay U.S. payroll "contributions," and meet OSHA & environmental standards. Then we will see how "competitive" they truly are and more importantly how competitive are Americans.

I'm an IT manager working for a top P&C insurance co. in the US. Many of us, both developers and managers, are about to lose our jobs as my company expands the IT work being done in India. It looks good on paper because India workers ARE cheaper than American workers.

What's important to note is that my company establishes and publishes salary scales by position and geographical location, all determined by market salary studies, cost of living per location, etc. So I disagree that American IT workers are demanding, lazy and overpaid when these big U.S. corporations are the ones determining what our fair market salaries should be and putting measures in place to ensure their employees' salaries fall within these guidelines! So they determine what we all should be making, then turn around and send our jobs elsewhere because they don't want to pay us the salaries THEY set because it will impact their bottom line! If it didn't cost so much to live in this country, put gas in our cars, put our children through college, etc., then we could afford to work for less! Many of us who will lose our jobs are also long time customers of this insurer... I wonder how losing customers and market share will affect my company's bottom line? Seems like it's all a big catch-22 to me.

One other point I'd like to make is that the value of the IT staff isn't limited to paychecks or even technical skills. Technical aptitude is individual, not determined by skin color or nationality. In my experience in the insurance industry, Americans clearly have the edge in having the subject matter expertise that is often a critcal component to effective technical analysis and development. I have seen costly mistakes by Indian developers because they don't have the business knowledge of the products they are programming. Even with detailed tehnical specs, it can be very challenging to ensure accurate interpretation of the requirements. Also, turnover is high among the offshore resources, making it difficult to build the SME within that resource pool.

What a lot of hiring companies do not realize about the differences between hiring American/Native/Naturalized IT professionals is the cost of living in the U.S of A. Years ago I overheard as an apartment (federally subsidized yet) maintenance person, a bunch of retirees saying, "You know those Japs work for only $3.50 an hour and how Americans if they didn't work for $15.00 an hour things would be better." I interjected myself into the conversation and said to the old timers, "You know if Americans had: housing subsidized, subsidized eye glasses, medical subsidized, sometimes schooling subsidized, even groceries subsidized, American citizens could work for less too! When everything is out of pocket, the American worker cannot work for less!" Some of the old-timer retirees said they had not thought of that. That the American worker has to pay for his own needs, most needs are not subsidized like they were for Japanese company worker. This is just a little anecdote out of my life, but seems to apply here.

What I am saying about H-1B visa holders here is that H-1B visa holder are entitled to programs that American/Native/Naturalized workers are not. And let's not forget American and American-based foreign companies get certain writeoffs in taxes that they would not get if they hired American/Native/Naturalized. I think if some of these IT subcontractors were honest and say right up front that the government allows tax writeoffs for H-1B visa holders and that is why they will not hire American/Native/Naturalized IT workers. The H-1B visa holder is no more a harder worker then the American/Native/Naturalized IT worker. I know for a fact that a company headquartered in Mumbai, India, houses their H-1B visa holders in sub-standard housing and charges exorbitant rent for doing so. This comes out of the H-1B visa holder's pocket.

Talk about H-1B visa workers? I can go back to my school days when I worked as tutor for the school, the only people that qualified were foreigners. I feel another anecdote coming on! As stated I worked as a tutor in CIS courses. I had one memorable student that would have me start out his programming assignments, then rush me to complete it for him. So one day I turned to the student and told him that I was not being paid to do his homework for him. He turned to me and says to me, "Yes, that would be what you are being paid to do." I went to the supervisor of student tutoring services (whom I knew well) and told her what the student had just said to me and that I would no longer tutor that student. She agreed that the student would not be able to use tutoring services for CIS courses. If this is what we are competing against when it comes to H-1B's, then we are competing against ourselves because we are just training someone unwilling to learn when we have citizens willing to do the work for the H-1B visa holders.

To summarize what is going on is that the American/Native/Naturalized IT worker is every bit as competitive as the H-1B visa holder. Even more so because the American/Native/Naturalized IT worker understands the English language, therefore less re-work has to be done because there is less error in the language when the receiver/listener has a good command of the English language in the first place. Tell me, is it cost effective when you have to hire four or more interpreters as well (three Indian languages, two Chinese languages) to get the H-1B visa to understand what is needed?

What a joke!

This is MY FREE SPEECH MESSAGE AND OPINION:

As far as I am concerned (I by the way have a BS, MBA background, over 30 yrs in IT and know the details of our betrayal), companies/managers that hire H1B visa people are guilty of being un-American, are NOT true Americans, should not have the right to live/do business here, and enjoy our beautiful country and are trading away (our country, our freedom) what we won in WWII and other conflicts.

U.S. citizens have been BETRAYED by big (and small too) corporations who hire H1B visa and illegals, and by their government that condones it and actually encourages it (look at the "background" of our Congress.... tied to big corporations? of course).

Americans must DEMAND:
1 - corporations and THEIR "SO CALLED GOVERNMENT" invest in re-training Americans: we are competent and creative and CAN DO ANYTHING!
2 - stopping of corporations (call, write, vote on your proxies, sell your shares, legislate) that are short sighted by selling our country out, paycheck by paycheck, balance sheet by balance sheet, as they "save" a few bucks NOW, and give away our country
3 - recall of legislators that EVEN SUGGEST increasing or continuing H1B visas or hiring of illegals
4 - IMMEDIATE revoking of H1B visas

If you disagree, I DARE YOU TO SUPPORT YOUR POSITION here or by calling me.

If you agree, then I invite you to join me in doing something peacefully to change the laws, practices of corporations and government etc.

WE ARE BECOMING A COLONY?THIRD WORLD COUNTRY: this is hastening it.

Eugene (510) 410-5812
Viet Nam era vet/Officer

I agree that most IT services have been commoditized and it is this commoditization that drives hardware, software and wages down and under values IT as a strategic instrument for fiscal growth. With the commoditization of IT comes the undervaluing of IT workers. We are now seen as assembly line workers; necessary for continued operation, but not important to company strategy. Frequently we are seen as nameless and faceless human resources that are managed much the same way companies manage their supply chain for other resources. It is this supply chain mentality that provides the fodder for both sides of this debate.

With commoditization come requirements to source IT resources driven more by cost and less by value. After all, commodity values are relatively similar; why not seek the lower cost? The lower cost is found in the H1-B and L-1 programs. Business savvy, creativity and strategic thinking are not considered for this sourcing model. Feet on the ground and seats in the IT worker chairs at the lowest cost are all that matter. This short-sided and short term vision grows profits now and helps the geniuses in the C-suite meet their ridiculous double-digit growth rates demanded by their spoiled and impatient shareholders. However, it does not provide for long term strategic vision driven by IT enablement.

I have spoken with and read articles from several CIOs on this topic. The reoccurring theme is that anyone can learn technical skills. It is non-technical, business oriented skills that are harder to come by. Yet when the budgets are drawn up there is no room for grooming and training IT workers to reach that next level. Instead, management opt to outsource and lower short term cost. I say short term here because most outsourcing efforts cost more in the long term.

The same uninformed financial experts that see IT this way are in the same group that have pushed our economy to its breaking point with short term, greedy practices. They were not making enough profit by lending to qualified (A-Paper) borrowers. They saw a chance to greedily gain more money in the short term by lending to unqualified (B-Paper and even C-Paper) borrowers that could not weather the economy downturn and housing bubble. It should come as no shock to anyone that a few ignorant "captains of industry" are making such misguided decisions based solely on near term profits and not long term viability. According to Rick Page, "Hope is not a strategy." However, it must have been when these lenders made such reckless decisions. Lending to unqualified borrowers and hoping that they do not default while ignoring the very statistics that label them as unqualified are careless practices that are fiscally unsound and border criminal activity.

When companies realize the potential for IT to provide value added services and help develop competitive advantage, companies erect barriers to erosion that are difficult to compete with (just look at BOA). H1-B and L-1 programs have a place in this landscape, but it is a much smaller place. Viewing IT as a participant in strategy formation is contradictory to the prevailing notion that all of IT is a commodity to be traded on a cost basis. I submit that as more companies employ IT to enable strategic and competitive practices less H1-B and L-1 workers will fit the model.

Rick said: What I am saying about H-1B visa holders here is that H-1B visa holder are entitled to programs that American/Native/Naturalized workers are not. And let's not forget American and American-based foreign companies get certain writeoffs in taxes that they would not get if they hired American/Native/Naturalized.

Rick, can you please share what these programs are that H1Bs are entitled to but not citizens? Also what write offs are you talking about -- again applying only to H1Bs? I call BS.

As I read thru the comments, I saw one very disturbing trend coming from the "hire citizens" crowd: that corporations and government need to invest in training citizens so they can do a better job!

What baloney! Imagine if I come and interview with you, lacking qualifications and experience, but tell you "Hey, I'm a CITIZEN so goddamnit you better spend money making me qualified... because it would be preposterous to expect me to keep myself sharp and qualified and employable."

Would you hire me please? Sounds like a great place to work. I could never be fired because it would never be my fault that I cannot do my job - it's the employer's fault for failing to train me properly! Ha! What a novel idea.

What the hell happened to the spirit of competition and capitalism? How convenient - let's blame "others" (government, corporation, H1Bs) for my poor fortunes.

Our congressional leaders, both Dem and Rep, are giving away our jobs. They are not willing to understand the situation or its effects in our different industries. H-1Bs have been heavily abused in IT. Here's the evidence from Congressman Paul Hodes, D NH :

Thank you for contacting me about H.R. 5882, a bill on employment-based immigrant visas. I truly appreciate hearing from you, and I am working hard to stand up for New Hampshire's interests in Congress.

Skilled foreign workers perform essential services, pay taxes, and make valuable contributions to our society. As a nation of immigrants, we must have a fair and comprehensive immigration policy.

The Immigration and Nationality Act provides a yearly minimum of 140,000 employment-based (EB) immigrant visas. EB visas require a labor certification from the U.S. Department of Labor, and the filing of a petition with United States Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Department of Homeland Security.

H.R. 5882 would make approximately 210,000 employment-based immigrant visas (H-1B visas) available that went unused between 1992 and 2007 due to bureaucratic delays. It would also work to prevent losses of family and employment-based immigrant visas in the future by allowing unused visas to roll over to the following fiscal year.

H.R. 5882 has been referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary. Although I am not a member of this committee, please know that I will keep your views in mind should this legislation come to the House floor for a vote.

I encourage you to continue to contact me about the issues that are important to you. Please feel free to visit my website at www.hodes.house.gov where you can share your ideas with me, learn about the services I can provide to you, and sign up for my periodic e-mail updates on what I am doing to help New Hampshire.

Sincerely,
Paul Hodes
Member of Congress

Hey there QuitWhining... Good call, but you miss a couple of points. Mainly that this is an artificial condition, created by a well intentioned act of congress which needs modification, not termination.

H1B program was to get "qualified" and "highly skilled" foreigners/aliens to come work for a limited time during times of labor shortage. It was not meant to become a gateway for cheap labor and erode native capabilities.
The system in its current form is abused by IT companies that survive on wage arbitrage at the expense of native workers.

The victims are native workers and ironically H1Bs to a lesser extent. But for an H1B, it's far better to work for 50% to 30% less in the U.S. than get market rate in their native country.

About 80% of the H1Bs I've come across do not meet the original mandate for "high skills." Most have fake resumes. Most are underpaid and live in fear of loosing their jobs.

Why not have stricter enforcement?
Demand certification in stated field of expertise as a condition to visa approval.
Conduct rigorous educational, criminal and background checks.
Enforce equal or market pay for H1Bs and fine accordingly.

When you pit citizens against H1Bs you are comparing apples to oranges. Citizens have higher set-up costs and work their butts off to get a college education. H1Bs live a subsidized life till they catch the airbus to better pay. You better believe it...even by third-world standards...it costs peanuts for education there, then compared to costs of a U.S. education.

While IT companies should be allowed to import highly skilled workers, if an act of congress undermines competences in the U.S. workforce and encourages exploitation, that act of Congress should be examined closely.

When H1B are paid market rate, add the cost of H1B fee and transportation plus the risk of importing a dud.... Bill and Larry will suddenly find training U.S. citizens more cost effective.

We're talking apples and oranges re: "sacrifices."
Yeah, H1Bs sacrifice thousands, but how many are in debt 100K-200K for education costs and degrees? There are cultural differences indeed. American culture encourages "thinking outside the box" and imaginative ingenuity. Other "traditional" cultures discourage this as it breaks with social mores and norms that have lasted for centuries. Does the job require creativity to solve a problem? Or are you just punching out "code" widgets or just assembling COTS products that call less for creativity? There are strengths and weaknesses, and no one answer for sure.

IT workers shot themselves in foot a long time ago by NOT organizing. Of course management is going to commodotize people! Think this is NEW? That's why unions and collective bargaining happened. IT pros were, and are, just "too cool" to organize.

And management has responded the same way it has done so for decades. Roll out the "lazy worker" myth rather than bad management. Workers relying on the "generosity of strangers and fairness from management" are suckers. We all know what the high priest of biz ethics, P.T. Barnum, said about suckers. That's biz ethics in a nutshell.

Used to not have a 40 hour week-- 80+ hours was normal. Used to not have weekends either. Unions changed that. Oh, but IT pros are just too cool for that. Hello 80 hour workweeks; paid for 40! And on top of that you paid 10s of thousands and spent how many years in college for this privilege? And continue to do so for ODOT (own dime; own time) continuing education?

Rule one in biz: it is an adversarial competition driven by greed and maximizing profit. Rule two in biz: see rule one. Oh,and that old divide and conquer stuff works pretty well too. Plantations and sweatshops are what biz thinks of workers and what workers deserve. HISTORY has proven that over and over. Pure and simple. If IT workers cosign that BS, well who is exactly to blame?

QuitWhining, you need to quit whining. You want to make it sound like an American citizen is going to come up to you the hiring manager and say that "Since I'm a citizen you are going to train me from the ground up."

Let me give you and any other hiring managers out there a clue.

In IT we have many evolving technologies. As one guy I knew said, "Every few years we get a new software dump that we are expected to learn and use." So those training conferences are not just another name for a company-paid vacation. They can be very intense. Yet I've seen employees come back from them chomping at the bit to kick donkey in the new technology they have learned.

Continuing education for your current IT workers builds loyalty. After all, when the big project's deadline is approaching and the new changes from the corporate office have to be added, or the server crashes, or the network is down, you're not going to get the call at 3 am or stay until all hours of the night. IT is. Expecting employees to spend their money on classes to benefit your company or dumping the old workers and hiring workers who have been trained elsewhere is treating employees like commodities. If at any time while you were reading this paragraph, you have asked yourself, "how does Loyalty help my company's bottom line?", your company does not deserve to exist.

OK, let me start by saying that I am an Indian, came to this great country on student visa, did my master's and yada yada yada...ended up working here. I have a lot of friends who are NOT Indians and a lot of friends who are Indians. I will tell you my observation; I might get some abuse but I will tell what I have seen.

Some people are saying cost is the biggest issue. It may be partially true. Someone said that you can pay $30K to a programmer. That's not true. There are legal issues. You need to pay a minimum amount and which is not $30K -- it varies from state to state. There are some companies that exploit the current legal process and they might get people who don't have enough qualifications or not fit to be a programmer and paying them less while collecting more from the client. You cannot say that is a cost-cutting proposition for a client. I have seen that and hated it. But, majority are very well skilled and dedicated. May be the wages have come down because of H1Bs, but who really wants to pay $150/hr for a coder? And at the same time you cannot find a decent coder for $40/hr., so the wage must be somewhere in between.

I have a very high respect for my American friends, but at the same time I have seen some Americans who shouldn't have been in IT like some H1Bs shouldn't have been. And I have seen a few Americans who complaint too much, but this is not the norm. You don't see many Indians complaining about working on the weekends, because that's how the first-generation immigrants are. I am sure the first generation Irish or Italian or other Europeans didn't complaint about too much work. That's how it is in life.

Someone made a comment about how all Indians want to be in a managerial position. I am not sure about that. Check out the ratio of Indian programmers and managers; you will find it yourself. Maybe they want to be, may be they don't.

I understand the grievances. I am happily married to an American woman, but I don't have an answer for myself about what is right or wrong. I hear that there are a lot of IT people who don't find jobs; I don't have any friends in that situation though. Sometimes, I think this is truly painful to the American people, then I think when Boeing goes and sells $50B worth of aircrafts to India, how many coders will it take to balance that? I don't know.

I am just wondering why are so many people worried about IT work becoming a commodity when every time one asks them they say "oh, we are a java shop"?

And when in the land of immigrants the complaint about recent immigrants starts, it smells of elitism of worst kind. It is like you jump in a bus, cajole someone to squeeze you in a seat, and then shut the door for the next person who wants to hop into the bus. You would say the bus has a capacity, but as I see it, it is none of your business who gets in and out of it, as long as the bus is running.

I always felt that the biggest export of America is its management style but I am started to feel it is just a fair-weather style. People are optimistic about immigrants when all their shares in their portfolio are enjoying record growths. But the moment their ROI goes negative, they want all of them deported. Is it even possible? Someone tell me how many immigrants went back in the Great Depression?

Everyone has the right to the pie, at least all of them who are doing it legally. To say that one should get what is left after all the fat checks are made to the natives does not understand the basics of immigration. If that starts to happen here, all the people who are working hard to break the glass ceiling will pack there bags and start their struggle in their own land, at least then they will be among known enemies. The biggest seduction about America is that it is seen as this huge land of opportunity, you cut the incentives and they will go wherever is the next land.

So where does it leaves the person who has just been laid off from his 20 years of service? Well, to the next opportunity, of course. I have not seen in my life talent being wasted in U.S. It might be underutilized, but I have never seen a worthy person struggling to find a job (at least not in IT). During the great fall of 2001, when companies were going bust left right and center, worthy natives had 2-3 job offers in their hands. So people who are complaining have stopped growing. Why do Americans want to have global companies and only natives working in them?

Does it mean that they have local greed for the global market. If you can enjoy Chinese food, what is wrong with Chinese people? If you like Buddhism, how about having a few Buddhists in your midst? Somebody talked about slavery -- is it not a kind of slavery if you want the whole world produce their best for U.S.? But the moment they started to enjoy the same luxuries, you start to complain.

And whoever says that talent, communication and skills are a hallmark of only Americans is living in a fool's paradise. Look at all the big corporations labs and you would find immigrants side by side with natives. The number of jobs immigrants have created far outweigh the jobs they occupy. So the net gain is definitely American. There is definitely a need to reform education, because most young kids these days either want to flip burgers or becoming movie or sports stars. The quest for science is diminishing and that is alarming. In a fast changing world, education will be the key. When did Americans start worrying about competition?

One last bit about Indians and Chinese stealing private information. People who are scared about that never complained about all the junk they received everyday in mail. Do they think those credit card companies got that information from their immigrants workers? This intense zeal for privacy is making a lot of people rich by playing on that fear; don't let that ruin your life. Just monitor your credit card bills and don't get ripped off, otherwise the information is all there, securely in every company's office, who keep selling it the next bidder.

'Not Norm' is an idiot.

Too many idiots like him are what is wrong with business in the U.S., not just in IT/tech.

Take a look around. Look at the banking/financial meltdown. Look hard and you will see self-righteous fools pontificating about the 'market' until their short-sighted stupidity starts to catch up, and then they have a trillion excuses.

The 'Not Norm's of the world are THE problem.

P.S.: H1-Bs are total junk. Period. I know, I've had to clean up their mess many times.

Some specific comments on previous posts:

Bob Feldsien> I was recently asked to do a technical evaluation of a job candidate from India who had two master's degrees in computer science. I asked him to describe the process of database normalization and to define third normal form. [...]

In my experience, 3NF is vague to most programmers, American or foreign, once they are out of school more than a year. I think it is deplorable but I don't think people attending U.S. colleges fare better than H1Bs. YMMV.

OTOH, the two CS master's degrees in a candidate would have been a red flag for me. In my experience, a bachelor CS degree is preferable to a master one, because most CS masters are transplants from other disciplines, and they often lack the fundamentals. More importantly, a transplant tends to view programming only as a mean of earning a living, and less as a craft that he wants to develop. Again, YMMV.

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Paul> Back when India was deciding whether it should go Communist or not [...]

When was that exactly?

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Lotoftalk> H1Bs are expensive to hire. There is a 4K upfront cost and no way of know if they will stick around long enough or even join

My advice is that if it cost your company 4K more to process a H1B hire than a domestic one, outsource that department (HR or legal). As other dealings with the government, the process is tedious but once you have done it once, the subsequent ones are easy. The company just has to keep abreast of DoL and CIS rules and keep track of the efforts of filling the position. Other than the $750-$1500 ACWIA fee, the employer can offload all the filing charges to the perspective employee.

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Matts S> I've never heard one complaint, about anything, from an H1B employee. To me, its scary -- they'll take anything quietly without objection.

Concur. As a result, one of the problems is that they are afraid to ask questions when they should, and they rarely admit that they don't understand something.

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Ben Justis> So let's keep giving U.S. jobs to people who neither pay taxes, buy American products, or do anything to help our economy..

C'mon. An H1B living in the U.S. doesn't buy from U.S. stores? They have everything shipped from their country? They don't pay rent that contributes to the municipal tax income? They don't pay federal or state income tax? OTOH, most H1Bs pay into Social Security but few are eligible for SS benefits.

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Tman> There are many many H1B workers from Canada and the UK

Under NFATA, Canadian and Mexican professional requires a TN visa, not a H1B visa. Canadian TN visa's are generally very easy to get.

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Mark> These mexicans rotated stolen SSN's and names so they could get free health care and abuse the American tax system.

Abuse perhaps in the legal sense, but not necessarily in the moral sense. They work, they contribute to SS, and they draw benefits. What is morally wrong about this? In reality, most illegal aliens tend to stay away from government assistant programs (even those applicable to illegal aliens) for the fear of being discovered and deported. The cases of illegal aliens overdrawing benefits are few and far between.

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Some general comments:

1) In comparing the technical skill level of H1B vs American candidates, I think it is only fair to compare people with similiar level of experience. And since most H1Bs are at the entry level, one has to compare them with entry-level Americans, not experienced ones.

2) I don't think there is outright age discrimination, but newly grads (Americans or H1Bs) can usually keyword-match the job requirements better than candidates who have worked for while (but looking for jobs). It is an extremely regrettable situation. As many have pointed out, it is far more important to have skill-learning skills in general than just knowledge of the latest fashionable products. Unfortunately, skill-learning skills are typically not reflected in the resumes, and most managers cannot tell from the interview either. Thus, in the end, the modus operandi becomes "when in doubt, buy cheap".

Let's not forget to compare the cost of higher education between India and the U.S. The people I work with from India claim that they do not pay anything for their schooling. If Americans were offered the same deal, we could start working for less. We could also afford a master's degree.

The race is about finding the best brains for the best price anywhere on the planet to maximize profit. This has always been the basis of competition and capitalism.

Technically speaking, H1B or local talent is only a sidebar conversation in the big picture.

Unfortunately for us here, the loss of high-paid IT jobs is a loss. Education is expensive, cost of living is high, and health care also costs more.

The H1B jobs will only exist here for as long as the employers can bake these skills wherever they have moved their R&D and development operations.

IBM, Microsoft, Dell, HP, Oracle all have massive and still growing offshore operations.

They have overcome the pain and adapted to cultural differences in reestablishing operations abroad.

Did you notice, while the employees here are losing opportunities, the profits of corporations is skyrocketing?

What is an IT professional to do?

- Stay on the cutting edge of technical innovation in your area. Obtain certification, participate in industry standards developments, write critiques, suggest best ways to use new technologies.

- Teach, preach, publish and establish a name brand for yourself.

- Embrace the reality of numbers: employers are required to seek lowest cost/best ouput, U.S. costs will never be at par for standardized/commoditized work, corporations are advantaged to go abroad (tax breaks).

- Take charge: parlay skills and experience into a solid career. Teach abroad, seek foreign assignments, manage offshore teams, save company money, deliver higher value to your manager and employer.

Professional employment offers no care or loyalty and can still be ethical and moral. Others are protecting their own future. You are responsible for your advancement!

It did not used to be this way, but it is so now. We can dwell in lofty ideals or act now and advance.

To the person who said "It doesn't apply to lawyers or doctors."

News flash -- doctors and lawyers come on H-1Bs just like IT workers. Just today, the Senate voted to extend the Conrad 30 J-1 waiver program for MDs that allows them to fill jobs in physician shortage areas around the U.S. And as for lawyers, call a Manhattan recruiter and ask about all the NYC firms using the new E-3 visa for Australians to bring lawyers up from down under.

It is true that those fields have licensing rules which limit competition (and at least in the case of lawyers are largely indefensible). But just because there is bad policy in some fields is not a defense of bad policy here.

"During the great fall of 2001, when companies were going bust left right and center, worthy natives had 2-3 job offers in their hands."

HUH????

Excuse me, but that is a lie. I have 3 degrees in computer science, I'm working on an MBA, belong to all sorts of professional organizations, have certifications...AND I CANNOT FIND A JOB. I had a terrible time in 2001 and 2002. Don't post statements that have no basis of facts.

And don't tell me (or my friends and colleagues) about education or competing with an "H-1B grad with an MS in CS who wants less money [than $60,000 per year]".

Were you born stupid or do you take stupid pills to maintain your low level of intelligence?

How am I -- and other people -- supposed to pay a mortgage, car payments, tuition, oil for heat, electricity, food, car insurance and many other items on a salary of LESS THAN $60,000 per year? It is not possible to pay American prices on an Indian salary.

The H1-B and L-1 visa programs have depressed wages and reduced opportunities for Americans. Computer science programs (and other sciences) have suffered serious enrollment declines at American colleges and universities. Who could blame students for choosing banking or law? Why would you want to enter professions held in such low esteem and one with such poor job prospects?

It's really time for some SERIOUS change. Vote all the bums out of office -- every single last one of them. And demand that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Indian colleges have business programs, too. How about we "H1-B" "Not Norm" and other STUPID business executives!

I will be making sure any of my friends' kids who are thinking of an IT job have a good look at this thread.

I especially want them to see the CEOs/CIOs demanding that they "compete" for jobs that no longer have a career path, nor any job security, and steadily declining wages and benefits, and which will continue to decline until they reach third world levels. And then I will suggest if they insist on IT, they need to start their own companies and compete against these companies managed by those who do not know the difference between a human and a drill press.

I am from India and I am working in the U.S. for the last 10 years and settled here with family.

H1B problems also impact me. Hence I keep thinking about it and spend some time brooding over the future of my children who see U.S. as their country.

One fundamental problem is the U.S. education system. As one of the comments highlights, U.S. students come out of the school system with lot of financial burden. However the Indian, Eastern European or Chinese students get higher education at much lower costs.

The only way to empower the U.S. workforce to compete with the international workforce is to invest in the youth. We as a society need to provide education to our youth at competitive cost. One cannot sell a high-cost product in cheaper market.

All the geographical issues like H1-B workers are going to be non-issues in a very short time for the IT world. Actual work is going to be outsourced to any talented worker across the world as long as that worker can bid the correct price for the work and deliver.

The actual problem is bigger than just H1-B. Empower the American youth. It is about time.

First off H1Bs are *non* immigrant visas -- meant as a *temporary* fix to a labor shortage issue.

So enough about this being the land of immigrants and the land of opportunity. It still is and will always be. It has nothing to do with H1B visas.

Secondly, asking all H1Bs to leave would be disastrous. Perhaps moderation in intake and stricter standards to issuing these visas is important.

As someone pointed out, doctors, lawyers and nurses have to clear license exams to work in the U.S. H1B IT visas should require stringent certification and oversight to ensure H1Bs get *market* pay and don't undercut prevailing wage rates.

In its current form it's a very exploitative setup.

Unlike Rajeev and other pro-H1B crowd like to point out, this isn't about finding the best talent or the best brains. It's simply about exploiting a situation and resorting to wage arbitrage.

The IT industry isn't importing "best brains" -- it's importing cheap labor, mostly sub-standard desperadoes who have no option but to work their butts off at whatever rate their importers are willing to pay.

As far as Corporate America is concerned, why train when you can import cheap? More often than not, it's about putting a warm body in the seat and hoping it pans out, if not finding another cheap warm body. Training costs $$.

This sort of short-sighted thinking got us into the mortgage mess. Pretty soon,we'll wonder why the U.S. lost its IT prowess.

Losing local home-grown competencies in IT will cost the U.S. dear in the long run. Importing cheap labor is a sure-shot way of ensuring that happens.

Another thing I notice is the entitlement mentality the pro-H1B crowd spouts. Not every coder in the world has a God-given right to come to the U.S. and seek residency.
H1B - GC is a shortcut out of a hellish life in a third-world country, and in itself is not a bad thing -- pretty admirable, in fact. But confusing it with entitlement is greviously wrong.

It's about supply and demand. And right now there is waaaay too much supply.

I second you dude.. it's time the U.S. re-focused on education and made education cheap and accessible. It's amazing that the richest country in the world can't provide free college-level education. Countries with ***t for budgets do it anyways.

Here's something to chew on... while I don't agree on everything, Goolsbee's right about education:

https://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/21220/

Goolsbee pauses, then says: "That's why the last eight years' degradation of the budgets for science and its general politicization are so upsetting. The government's commitment to investment in advanced training of our own people has plummeted, so now something like two-thirds of those gaining science and engineering PhDs here aren't U.S. citizens. For many years America led globally in the percentage of 25-year-olds with college degrees. Now the U.S. is 31 in the world--right behind Bulgaria and right above Costa Rica. The problem for countries with skill levels between Bulgaria and Costa Rica is that 20 years from now they'll also have income levels between those countries."

Importing cheap H1B labor is not the solution. Making education cheap and accessible here in the U.S. is the way to go.

About half H1Bs are from India. How come?

Well, replacing American workers with cheap labor depends on a large wage differential and acceptable communications skills. Europe does not have enough wage differential to bother, but India has about a ten-to-one differential. India's wages and cost of living are about a tenth of ours, so wage arbitrage is very profitable.

And India was a British colony, and had many internal languages, so English as a second language is almost universal in the country. So Indian labor was almost ideal as a way to lower American wages (and thereby raise American executive wages).

Prior to Y2K, almost all Indian H1Bs were competent, with excellent language skills, and all-around great people (but they still did not have any skills that were not readily available in the U.S.).

During the Y2K runup, their skills became a bit spotty. Afterwards, from 2001 on, their competence and communications skills progressively declined. It is my opinion that the well has run dry. We already brought over all the quality candidates and those coming now are not interested in IT, but just came because they heard there are great bucks to be made.

On my last contract, I was the only American in a room with 90 guestworkers. Most did not have the skills they claimed on their resumes. Those brought in to be testers did not know how to write a test case. A large percentage were sent back after two weeks. The company persisted, bringing in H1B after H1B and had to remove them. Finally the company brought in Americans (who were not at all difficult to find) and they were able to do the job and stayed.

Interestingly enough, the guestworkers who were good (some very good) were from countries such as Turkey. I attribute this to the well of talent being largely untapped as yet in those countries.

It is also likely that the best candidates from India no longer want to come to America. The ones I knew ten years ago wanted to stay here forever and become citizens. Those here lately have seen the handwriting on the wall and realize our country is about to collapse, and just want to take the money and run. I don't blame them.

I should note that my experience is only with Fortune 500 companies, who are at that point in their company life that they are milking the cash cow of commoditizing what they are. I can see that those here from startups may well be much more caring and stringent in their choices of employees, American or guestworker.

At Cal State University H1B visa IT types are being hired solely because they are cheaper. With regard to skills, they are given specialized training that costs thousands and is not made available to older U.S. citizens in IT. Then management claims the were hired due to qualifications they did not have until AFTER they were provided training..

It's time for American to share the wealth with Third World countries, especially with India. Why keep so much money for yourself; it is no use. Bridging the gap between rich American and poor India will bring happiness to America and India. Everybody wins, doesn't it?

I'm an IT professional (non-coder)who has degrees in business and an advanced degree in IT. (Both my degrees came from very good schools.) I've been unemployed 5 out the last 10 years. I hear all the time about companies wanting IT people who also have business skills. HELLO!! I have both, yet when I apply for such jobs, I hardly even get a "thank you for applying" letter. If I do manage to get an interview (which is incredibly rare), I usually get the "you're overqualified" speech. BTW: there is no such thing as "overqualified." You either meet qualifications, or you lack qualifications. "Overqualified" is corporate-speak for "too expensive/too old." It's very disheartening to hear the double-speak that is corporate America.

Corporate America (specifically CEOs and upper management) want to keep the bottom line low in order to keep profits high. That's all it boils down to: money. They don't care who does the job as long as it's done, and if it can be done cheaply, that's even better. However, you get what you pay for. The more money the top management saves for their shareholders, the more money they get in their "golden parachutes." They think they're saving a buck by keeping payrolls down, but they're often losing money in productivity.

I've dealt with H-1Bs and/or foreign IT professionals (specifically from India). A majority of their work was so substandard that, if they were full-time American employees, they'd be fired. Many times, the few remaining American IT workers must go behind the H-1Bs and "recode" the work to make it even usable. That means 1) the work is being done twice, which makes it non-efficient, and 2) the project becomes out of scope in a hurry due to scheduling difficulties. How is that saving anyone money? It's not! I'm not saying that all H-1Bs from a particular country/region are terrible workers. I'm sure there are some good ones out there. However, a majority are just not the "best and brightest" -- most aren't even mediocre.

Oh, BTW: Outsourcing or hiring foreign temp workers to save money *isn't* a competitive advantage. It's a business death-trap. Hire an American worker. You'll be glad you did!

What is not mentioned in the article is higher education is FREE in many of our competing countries and our housing prices dictate the need for higher salaries. You can get a house in India for $5,000. You cannot even do that in New Mexico, much less high-tech centers like San Francisco. You are lucky to get a studio condo for $400,000.

In 1999 I had a H1-B visa and apart from the fun, I regret it. I expected 2 years of work and I found that I became a "slave" to INS and the company that hired me who gave me no work and sent me home after 3 months. So I got to know Chicago in the snow at first and left end of May. The company got bought up twice and changed their recruiting policy.

So beware of H1-B jobs and maybe try other countries like Ireland or the UK.

"Not Norm" is either a liar or a moron. Likely both. I am an independent contractor and have worked for many companies that use H-1B labor. I can tell you from direct experience that although the H-1Bs are cheaper, they certainly are NOT better. There are a few -- "very few" -- good ones, but overall most are far less skilled than the average American IT worker. And talk about attitudes and racism: I have been treated better in South Central LA than when I was the "only" white person in a group of Indians. Americans are hard workers and have built the modern IT infrastructure only to be replaced by low-cost, lower-skilled workers by greedy corp execs. If you want a software system to be more complicated than necessary and have more bugs and cost more in the "long run," then go ahead and put your H-1Bs on the job.

The U.S. has a bad case of the tail wagging the dog in that Wall Street and its unmitigated greed is dictating how our democracy works and prospers. It should be the other way around. Our democracy should be telling Wall St. how it's going to be. Don't get me wrong...capitalism is the best method for creating wealth, but the wealth created should be used for the betterment of American society. The same greedy Wall Street bankers who are now begging U.S. citizens to bail them out of the subprime mess are the very same bums who refuse to finance our corporations unless they agree to outsource/insource high-paying jobs to a cheaper 3rd world nation. The spin machine used by these globalist entities to justify the destruction of the American middle class would make Fox News jealous. It's time for an immigration "time out." If you are not here legally, go home. If your visa runs out, go home. You are only here because you are willing to undercut the ideals of our democracy. I know because I have seen it happening for the last 30 years as a programmer/analyst consultant. It is time for a change...

Obama/Biden 08!!!

Why make a big thing out of H1B workers? We as American workers know where our strengths lie. Why not make the best of it? Cheap labor does not fly when it comes to quality work. If a corporation lives by only hiring cheap labor, the rationale (or lack of it) is questionable. There's plenty of organizations who hire on merit and judge quality work -- not degrees from very questionable institutions. Besides communications, where we really excel, there's thought leadership that only come from a handful of American workers. Over and above, software code today is merely an afterthought. Architecture and design is what makes an IT project or application a success -- that's where the American IT worker excels.

I understand the criticism and heat behind U.S. IT pros against the immigrant worker. This is but natural, as you are seeing it from viewpoint of a worker. See it from the eyes of an employer who has to give a cost-effective solution to his clients. The clients are not interested in a quality piece of software code. They just want things to work. And they are happy if it works within the allocated budget.

Don't you look for the best deal while shopping!!!

As an retired "IT" worker (spent 20 + years doing R&D and some commercial development), who now teaches CS in a Maryland high school, I see it a little differently than Norm.

It's business that wants (and gets) it both ways. From the IT-business perspective it's a win-win situation. Either American workers agree to work for some putative global minimum wage, thereby allowing U.S. IT companies to wear the robe of patriotism because they're hiring American, or they don't. In that case, IT puts on the cloak of capitalism. In either case the IT business gets fat while everyone else runs into other professions. I have personally seen this phenomenon first hand. American students are interested in computer science and software engineering but they are told that no jobs exist because they've all been outsourced.

The result is the current paradox that the IT industry loves: The "industry" is whining that they can find no qualified Americans so they must hire aliens. At the same time, the "industry" uses this very argument to hire H1B workers at lower costs and then claim that we're in a crises. Sure, the crises is that they (the IT managers) have disenfranchised an entire generation of potential scientists and engineers for their own obscene profits. Capitalism, by its nature, exploits the present at the expense of the future.

An interesting outgrowth of this is a current attitude that I see emerging (perhaps I'm optimistic): students who are in CS and related fields are wise to this game and are finding a social conscience. Now, that would spell the end of business as usual for the IT industry. I, for one, encourage my students to think critically, weigh the ethics as well as the science. Do what you love and what you know is right. I wonder how many of them will wind up doing it in American companies?

Cheers,

T.R.

The biggest problem I have with H1B visas are that it is a form of monopsony.

When a company hires an H1B, they are like a lord over their serf. If the party they hire is really talented, he/she cannot go out and get a higher wage in the market but must serve their lord or lose their sponsorhip.

This gives the employer undue ability to hold down wages by deflating wages across the market.

Why do you think that there is such a shortage of engineering and IT talent coming out of schools in America? Simple answer: Why study for your chem and calc exams on Thursday night while all the pre-business majors are out partying when you will get paid less and then laid-off; and the business major that laid you off will get a bonus before heading off to Wall Street and destroying the U.S. financial system for even bigger bonuses.

The U.S. is failing as a nation because we have stopped rewarding our productive citizens and now worship those that push other people's money (including their parents that was left in an inheritance/trust fund) around for a fee.

I hire most of my new developers via an internship program. These positions are well paying ($20-$25 an hour) with flexible hours. 90% of the applicants are foreign MS students. When these students graduate and obtain visas they join our company full time. Is it possible American students do not need to work anymore during college? Are they too busy partying or gaming or performing some other leisure activity while their parents pay their bills? Back in the eighties I would have killed for a good-paying internship. A lot of us worked for free in exchange for a couple of credits or to boost our resumes.

This is a very good thread and the viewpoints are very insightful!

As an outsourcer since 1992 with operations across North America, Mexico, Philippines and India, I have the following observations:

(a) Outsourcing should be a "context" driven agenda, not merely a "cost" driven agenda. There are parts of the North Americas where work can be done for the same or even better costs;

(b) The H1B applicants that still opt to work in North America aren't generally the ones who are educated at the top schools, for such candidates can now demand a much better standard of living with high compensation packages in the home country. The fact that a lot of product development & R&D work is now conducted in these countries and the specialization is working out better by being in the home country, i.e. growth opportunities are still very good;

(c) With the current market conditions in North America, most of the 'good' applicants, if they want to travel outside the home country, prefer Europe to North America.

(d) My operations have over 85% people in North America and only 15% out of the 'far-shore' countries;

(e) If I have to share my viewpoint on how we in North America can rise to the challenge, here it is: (a) Rather than wasting our efforts and mindset on H1B or not H1B, let us introspect what the world has over years looked at us for -- "leadership," "innovation" and "R&D." A thorough self-analysis will bring up suggestive models of growth at various levels of growth -- from entry-level to global corporate leadership. (b) Let us start looking at 'events' as potential 'opportunities' rather than 'show-stoppers'. And (c) lastly, let us be the old North Americans where the world loved and respected us!

Let us stand up to lead!

The law related to H-1B workers states that they must be paid at least the same wage rates as are paid to U.S. workers who perform the same types of work or the prevailing wages in the wages in the areas of intended employment. The cost argument therefore seems to be moot.

Very good thread on the issues of foreign workers taking American jobs.

As a computer technician and consultant since 1980, I would place myself in the older group of posters who feel themselves qualified to work in IT but under or unemployed by cheaper "commoditized" workers, both foreign and domestic. Chasing further certifications to bolster one's practical experience is a no net-gain endeavor. We are in a profession that shuns both age and experience. As an example -- I have been involved with virtual systems since my college days in the late 1970s. Was a major proponent of virtualization during the 1980s and 1990s when it was a constant battle to keep the technology alive. Have published papers in trade journals about virtualization. Now I find myself too old and not possessing the latest acronynms on my skill sheet to be considered "hireable." This is how the IT profession has directly touched me.

But that is our profession.

My comments here are as an independent business man and an IT professional. Being in business I know of the pressure to produce a profit near term at the expense of the future problems that should arise. This pressure is related to a company's speculative value of its stock price. Wealth is being created on speculation rather than production. This speculation feeds the pressure to think in very narrow terms and to not think of what is best in either the long term or for the greater good of society.

I suggest that our legislative leaders not focus on H1B issues but instead focus on the functioning of the stock market. A publicly traded company's stock value should be closely tied to its liquid net worth. This stock value should be firmly set and modified each year with the company's annual reports. Stockholders should receive short-term income from the dividends only. This will focus the company on paying for performance and long-term growth of company assets.

Shifting our country's financial system to long-term goals and ideals will go a long way toward changing attitudes of both managers and employees to work for the long-term benefit of both rather than the short-term Internet bubble-bursting mentality that was the natural outcome of our present wealth-building financial system of today.

Have you ever considered that H1B could be actually a very economically attractive bargain for local community? Every company should pay import duty to import talent at cheaper price. That revenue should go to our unemployment pool, which helps our unfortunate brethren in time of difficulty. Obviously, a part of the pool could be used to provide more affordable training to local people so they can comptete for the same jobs going forward.

This idea is not radical bceause we already do pay import duty while importing anything significant. Why? Because we want to protect local industry from unfair competetion. Why not to treat IT skills also as a commodity being imported.

I tend to agree with Dev as to the H1B and cheap labor works only for some aspects of the IT industry. and this is not just for U.S. The same is happening in Canada, as replacement workers are springing out everywhere. However, I am a living proof that cheap labor WILL NOT replace the quality of work local talent delivers. And there are a few reasons, a few of which are: the communication skills, knowledge of North American standards, care we put in our work, etc., as workers on visa, or working from a distance, may not be as inclined to care as much for the outcome of the work, as a local would. And again, I don't mean to generalize this across all, as there may be some that do care and are qualified to deliver the quality of work required.

I have been a consultant, doing solution design work for my clients, and my contract was cut short early 2007, due to a CIO's mandate to outsource some positions to the country of his origin, where he probably got kickbacks from the outsourcing firm, as his retirement fund!!! Yes, I am skeptic and sarcastic

Less than 2 months later I was asked to go back with a higher rate, and deservingly so!!! Yes, I am vindictive too...
The key, whether fighting the effects of globalization of our economy or outsourcing offshore, is to STAY RELEVANT. This is something we can't fight, we just have to adapt to as we don't have a choice to change careers and leave the industry. I wish I did, believe me, I would be raising roses now, if I could.

1. Education
The biggest problem lies in your education system and society. I've been working in U.S. for the last 6 yrs on H1B and I can tell you that this society respects only wealth...the society in which I grew up in India respected education.

He who had the smartest brains irrespective of their or their parents' wealth were well respected by the crowd. However in the last 6 yrs, I never saw that kind of respect. People respect being "cool" and as long as work gets done no one here cares about productivity, talent and reward...

2. Fck-n-Forget and Don't be committed.
The society that includes you, your employer, your employees are all demonstrating the same attitude "fck-n-forget and don't be committed" in everything that you do. Until you bring in commitment, you will either enjoy or cry...but one of them will surely happen.

3. Hiring
The education or people that Bill Gates is talking about is the brilliance produced by the IITs -- a.k.a. Indian Institutes of Technology -- which produces marvelous brains out of school using tough competitive processes. So here's your golden rule for hiring: if you see a guy with degree from IIT, snatch him. These are the diamonds India produces. Bill G, Sergey Brin and Larry Ellison all know that IIT guys run the show. The joke is that MIT computer science department is now run by IIT guys.

4. RnD departments
Go and check the labs in all the top companies -- Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun, Cisco. All their labs are filled with smart Indians -- all on H1B. They're producing all your future technologies. Who do you think is the master brain behind Google advertising technology? - Indian guy on H1B.

Yes, there's lot of poor talent out there...but it is your greed and poor assessment/hiring processes that lead you to hire them and then complain about H1Bs.

Considering that "industrial engineers," i.e. process managers, get $60K or more right out of school (what could they possibly know about business after four years of college?), $60K for a trained programmer/analyst seems reasonable.

Oh, I forgot, everyone in the U.S. that doesn't have an Ivy League degree should work for $10/hour to start. Sorry... I can make more money freelancing at guru.com, virtualvocations and sologig and not have to drive in to the office.

American companies better wake up to the New World Order! And it ain't in outsourcing...

More than one person mentioned investment in education but I am not sure how it will help the IT profession or the IT professionals.

If one looks at other fields, one can find plenty of examples of chronically depressed wages despite high demands. Nurses and teachers are just two cases.

The national average salary of RN's in the U.S. is about $45K, and I dare say that the average nurse requires more training and her job is far less fault-tolerant than the average IT worker. Nurse wages have always been low. The are a lot of reasons for this but it suffices to say that foreign/immigrant workers is not an important factor. In fact, foreign-trained nurses only help to alleviate the very real shortage crises. Paradoxically, hospitals keep requiring more training -- what used to be done by LPN's and nurse-aids now requires RN's. Go figure.

Teachers are also in in similar situation with chronic shortage that does not translate into high wages (average ~ $49K), even when there are no foreign/immigrant workers. Teachers are like IT workers in that their quality of work is not immediately apparent to the employers and there is an over-reliance on credentials in hiring. The tenure system seems to work more as an impediment for replacing the obsolete rather than an attraction for flesh blood.

Let's face it. Investment in education most likely would just increase the number of mediocre IT workers, a surplus of which can only help to depress wages as well as distort the employers' perception of the importance of technical skills. With the advent of technology in tools and platforms, it really does not take that much training for a high-school graduate to be a functional (but necessarily outstanding) technical staffer. Anyone can put up a decent looking form or report, and that is what is expected of most new IT positions these days.

I am of the minority opinion that the most important skills of an IT professional -- namely skill-learning skills and the ability to organize information logically -- cannot be taught and do not really improve with experience. What most IT professionals gain over time is familiarity with specific tools and platforms, which enables them to provide solutions to similar problems faster. (In other words, knowledge, but not necessary insight.) Good architects are essentially not trainable unless they have the right aptitude to begin with. Compounding the problem is that most managers cannot recognize such skills, even from a face-to-face interview. Nor do they understand why paying for such skills is a sound long-term investment strategy. Increasing the number of mediocre workers do not change this fundamental problem.

What society needs is not necessarily more IT professionals. I would rather see fewer but better qualified ones instead. Train users to use IT tools so that they can do their business analysis, accounting, or whatever infomation-tracking tasks themselves. Educate them on the principles so that they can manage their own data by themselves. Stop hand-holding technophobes or churning out reports and fancy charts that nobody needs. IT should be concentrating on building and servicing tools.

Every commenter on this blog has a side to choose, but I pose one question to anyone that wishes to challenge: why do you complain about the H1B worker when you do not understand the problem?

Everyone knows the American education system is inferior ranked on a global scale and the results show through your inconstructive ways of argument. Most comments I have read here do not offer a solution to a problem but as just America did with civil relations -- you wish to revoke this problem by making it disappear...or at least you would like to 'cancel all H1B and L1 visas.' I mean, what is that?!?

Global economies is what makes businesses what they are today, and if you wish to be so ignorant to the fact, why don't you turn over your laptop and read the 'made in xxx' label. And then you wanna turn around and complain that you should keep your dollars local? Your ignorance coupled with your arrogance has always been you downfall beautiful America (well, not to anymore, lets face it) and this alone is what will bring this great country down to its knees. We keep talking about, "let's do something, it starts with you"...I have I quit renewing, relieved my immig. lawyer and now armed with everything I need. I can work anywhere in the world and do not have to hear daily qualms about a weak and unworkable immigration system.

Thank you America.

I am of Indian origin!
I have 2 masters degrees (MS and MBA)!
I had no debt out of school!
I am fluent in 3 languages!
I am also a US citizen (now)!
I work hard, communicate effectively, build the right relationships at work and in the industry, network with my colleagues, and golf with a 9 handicap!
I am passionate about what I do, loyal to my company and don't switch just for a pay increase (like a lot of you)!

I have never been under the hatchet for the past 10 years -- in fact I have been promoted 4 times over the past 10 years and lead a multiracial, talented team.

Get the message dudes??? This is America; DO the right thing and you WILL be rewarded.

I've been on a series of projects over the past 2-3 years, where there have been 1 or 2 "American" workers, and the others were Indian, H1B visas. We're all senior, highly educated and experienced, working for a high-priced consulting company.

In the meetings with management, the Indians are always saying, "oh yes, I can do that. Oh yes, no problem."

But when it's time to deliver -- they haven't done a thing.

So far, in every case, it's been the "American" who has ended up doing their own tasks -- PLUS the tasks assigned to the Indian, in order to be able to deliver the project as required, including working nights and weekends as a result, since the schedule did not account for that.

In our company, we are not allowed to say anything about this, because to say anything would be regarded as discrimination. And then when the layoffs come (every quarter), it always seems to be the Americans getting laid off.

I agree with Numen -- management cannot tell the difference between a job well done or not, and so cheaper is always considered to be better.

For me, I'm looking forward to getting laid off and moving on. Another high-tech American worker, selecting out of the industry. They're welcome to hire some other H1B for 20% less and try to get out of them what they've been getting out of me. Good luck.

OK SickOfDoingTheirWork ... stop whining and MAN up. There are bad apples everywhere, but to generalize is pathetic!!

And get a positive attitude -- you are willing yourself into oblivion by virtue of your defeatist attitude.

I am an H1 visa holder and I hate every bit of it because there are too many of them and little resources to have an oversight. I came to study in the USA when I just turned 20 (in 1999), got my B.S in Computer Science, M.S in computer science, have problem speaking English. Didn't start working until I finished my studies. So it is not the business communication of low wages. I think the problem is that:
1 - IT is a new field; getting recruitment right and offering them the right progress plan is a black magic.
2 - H1 workers are ready to move from coast to coast while U.S. citizens may have stronger roots in one part of the country than the other.
3 - IT workforce is treated as mechanics, not engineers, and very disposable. H1 workers are ready for that U.S citizens have a hard time understand that after 4-8 years of college, why they are being treated like this.
4 - Middle management is crappy and worthless usually so they don't want smarter people around but the submissive ones.

So thinking gov't can solve this issue is wrong. If H1 worked won't be hired jobs will go to their countries. We need to attract more U.S. citizens by improving of work structure where a developer doesn't have to work for the same money/title forever. IT people are smart people in general -- don't intellectually humiliate them by making them work under the managers who are there just because they look older and they can suck up right.

Am really getting sick of all you H1B and L1 lovers with MY job telling me how I need to improve my education which I had to pay for:

MBA BBA....CISSP...MCSE... COMPTIA... Project Mgmt+, Network+, Security+...20+ years experience in three different positions...latest being Director of IT...

All paid for by me on my time...So, please quit telling me to get motivated...The facts are no one will even talk to me about a job...been 4+ years now...hundreds of applications...a few interviews....lots of '2nd place' finishes despite lowered salary expectations and crappy to no benefits...

American workers can and will do the job given a fair shake....that ended 15 or more years ago!! Only the greedy CxO 'experts' that have taken us to the soon-to-be depression we will be entering soon have made sure they get more than they ever deserved. Congrats to all of 'em...they have finally killed the goldden goose! And CIO is just their mouthpiece!

Hey y'all I am a Kenyan with 7 years work experience in IT both networking and programming. I also have a Bsc IT. Does anyone know of any company that can sponsor me to get a H1B visa.
I'll appreciate any info.

Jeff in MI does not get the full picture of the money flow. An H1B worker has to be physically present in America in that status, which means that he not only spends his earnings here but also has to pay all the taxes (including Social Security and Medicare) to IRS, knowing fully well that he will never enjoy those benefits. So, in essence, an H1B works to improve the standard of living for the Americans. What he takes back in savings to his home country is insignificant compared to the amount spent here.

The lawmakers are smart enough to safeguard U.S. interest's through this process. So while it may appear that the jobs are going offshore, but in reality the whole process is benefitting the U.S. economy

There must be over 100 postings of people dissatisfied with H1B visas and oursource programs. I would like to ask: how many have called or written their congressmen?

Legislators ignore the engineering community because they never commmunicate their concerns. Squeaky wheel gets the oil. Comments here won't be read by your congressmen.

Do you think that Obama is going to win because the Republicans have such a bad candidate?
Why did John McCain make his final argument against Obama... coal?
That's his closing argument? William Ayers, Rev. Wright, spreading the wealth, Born Alive, meeting dictators without preconditions, etc. all have to take a back seat so that McCain can go to Colorado and New Mexico to talk about coal? Does this more or less explain why he's going to get his clock cleaned Tuesday?

regarding H-1Bs and other visa types:
#1 with the current economic times and a high unemployment rate.
** in regards to the IT field, the H-1Bs should be zero**.
Yes, some of them are good people, but there is a percentage that is hopeless.
Unfortunately, i have worked with both.
***
I have 30 years in IT, at many different levels.
**
For every U.S. person working it has a part in creating or supporting 10 other U.S. workers.
For every H-1B you hire, you are hurting 10 U.S. workers. Note: the above numbers have been proven.
****
Note: every time I have lost a job due to a business going bankrupt, downsizing or outsourcing, it keeps taking longer and longer to find work. In 1998 I had people calling me every day offering me $100.00 per hour to code cobol.
The last cobol job I obtained took me a year to get and pays $25.00 an hour
and I have other companies offer me $15 an hour, which I declined, and told them to find a high school student that needs a job.
Yes, the supply and demand is different.
However, how many positions that I applied for were filled by H-1Bs because they worked for less?

The school I went to had a two-year degree to teach programmers and was set up mainly for specific companies to feed them qualified applicants, but was open to anybody to take.
i.e., the companies aided in creating the curriculum.

As of the end of y2k the college stopped doing this; why, the companies no longer hired programming staff and outsourced everything to the third world.
The college could longer help find the graduates jobs because nobody wanted them -- when they could hire an H1B for the same price with a few years of experience.

Other visa types
In the case of the U.S. and Canada.
Any Canadian university graduate can get a TN i.e. NAFTA visa if they have a university degree...then come to the U.S. and work for who ever they want.

L-1 visas -- I do think there is a place for these.

My company transferred me on an L1.
No, I am not from a third-world country.

The company no longer has the business. So now I am working for someone else.

However I have all my paperwork to stay and work in this country on my own for anybody I want.

last thing: anybody who is in this country on any type of visa -- all they have to do is find a U.S. spouse. Then they can stay and work for anybody they want.
Then three years later they have their U.S. citizenship and can do whatever they want. With this economy money goes a long way. You can interpret that any way you like.