More tech workers in the US forced to train their foreign replacements as their employer opts to bring in cheaper IT workers with H1B visas, as the abuse of this program continues.
Come on US Senate! Confirm Jeff Sessions and call a halt to the madness!
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D – Calif.), whose San Jose district includes much of Silicon Valley, has criticized the University of California over its decision to exploit a loophole in the H-1B visa that sends U.S. information technology jobs overseas.
The University of California San Francisco (UCSF) medical center next month will begin replacing some existing IT workers with H-1B B visa workers, becoming the first public university to ship U.S. tech jobs offshore, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The 97 IT workers, whose contracts with UCSF will be severed Feb. 28, have been ordered in the meantime to train their replacements, who are employees of the India-based IT outsourcing firm HCL Technologies.
Lofgren, whose San Jose district includes much of Silicon Valley, said the move by UC undercuts its duty of preparing students who are working to join the tech industry, reported The Washington Free Beacon.
“UC is training software engineers at the same time they’re outsourcing their own software engineers,” Lofgren told the Times. “What message are they sending their own students?
“Texas Governor Greg Abbott made good on his promise to cut $1.5 million in grant money to Travis County after the county sheriff said she would limit her department’s cooperation with federal immigration officers, county officials said on Wednesday.
Travis County includes the Texas capital Austin, which is a so-called “sanctuary city”.
Abbott spokeswoman Ciara Matthews said the money that would be withheld from Travis County is a series of one-time criminal justice grants totaling $1.8 million. About $300,000 of that has already been spent, but she said the governor would not try to claw back that money.”
Re Deborah’s 7:06:
I just finished reading IWars. One of the threats we have is software written overseas by people in China, etc. who put a back door into the code. That gives them access that we are not aware of. It also gives them control of our infrastructure, the power grid being the most important.
It appears the tech industry isn’t happy that it’s low cost, foreign labor pool is in jeopardy. If they can’t exploit the visa system, and screw American workers, it cuts into their profits.
Chas, I agree. It is also problematic because on one hand we are telling people to train in high tech jobs, then replacing them with outsourced cheap labor when they do. It will be hard to convince people to put their time and money on the line when they know their jobs are a prime target for outsourcing. But it is a matter of national security to grow our own high tech labor force as well as stabilizing our own manufacturing base. It’s common sense.
Debra, I know 15-20 IT professionals. They are all native born Americans. They all make very good money and work long hours because there is a shortage of people who can do what they do. Some have their own businesses. Some work for companies. I have never heard of any of them losing a job to an immigrant. Using Debra’s terms, apparently all of Texas is a “bubble”.
By the way, only the least skilled IT people would want to work for a state university on a long term basis. Pay increases would be limited and opportunities for advancement would be few. Of course a Democrat legislator would have zero understanding about how the real world actually works. If you are good, you form your own company and service many clients or you become the “IT” person in a business that is not primarily in the IT industry.
“A Michigan business owner named Mike Hager, who was born in Iraq, told a local Fox News affiliate that his mother had been turned away from entering the country because of President Trump’s executive order on immigration. His mother had been receiving medial treatment in Michigan but traveled back to Iraq and later died. Hager said he he blamed her death directly on Trump’s ban. The only problem with the story is that, according to a local Imam, it is not true. Here’s a bit of the initial story as it appeared yesterday:
Hager said he was returning home with his family that included his sick mom. They were returning home to the United States where his mother has lived since 1995. As they were waiting in line at the airport in Iraq on Friday, he was told that he could pass through because he was a U.S. citizen. But his family members – including his mom – weren’t allowed, despite holding green cards.
“They destroyed us. I went with my family, I came back by myself. They destroyed our family,” Hager said….
He blamed her death on President Trump.
“I really believe this in my heart: if they would have let us in, my mom – she would have made it and she would have been sitting right here next to me,” Hager said. “She’s gone because of him.”
But a new story published today by the same affiliate says it’s now clear Hager was lying. Hager’s mother did travel to Iraq but, according to a local Imam, she died several days before the temporary travel ban was announced:”
Chas @ 7:16 Sunday, we took my mother-in-law out to celebrate her 77th birthday. She still works and is very sharp but is not a computer person. My wife (a non-smoker) was explaining to us about how our IT guy showed her the “back door” as he was installing our new server. I told her that when I saw him using the back door, he was going out to smoke. Ever since then, my mother-in-law has been teasing my wife about her going out the back door to smoke behind the office.
“The H-1B incorporated specialty occupations — including such IT roles as programming, systems analysis, and network and systems support — with a minimum requirement of a bachelor’s degree. The H-1B visa also allowed workers to pursue permanent residency.
Over the years, supporters of the visa have included Microsoft’s Bill Gates and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2009 told Congress that the annual visa cap of 85,000 is “too small to meet the need” and that protecting U.S. IT workers from global competition creates a “privileged elite.”
Groups like the Economic Policy Institute have begged to differ. In a report released just last month by EPI researcher Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, he argues that the H-1B along with the L-1 visa, which is used by multinational firms to transfer employees for temporary work, allow employers to bypass U.S. workers “when recruiting for open positions and even [to] replace outright existing American workers” with visa-holding foreigners. The H-1B’s wage requirements are too low, according to the report, and because visas are held by employers, not workers, the H-1B promotes a relationship “akin to indentured servitude.”
That dovetails with the view of many domestic IT professionals, who have never subscribed to the idea that there was — or is — a skills mismatch in the industry. Among them is Kristine Serrano, laid off from IBM this year, who calls the skills gap a “myth” told by businesses and parroted by elected officials.
“The work didn’t disappear. It’s still being done; it is just being done by a group over in India now,” said Serrano, who earned a master’s degree in information science from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1993 and was initially hired by IBM as a Unix system administrator.
“A few years ago, the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer informed hundreds of tech workers at its Connecticut R&D facilities that they’d soon be laid off. Before getting their final paychecks, however, they’d need to train their replacements: guest workers from India who’d come to the United States on H-1B visas. “It’s a very, very stressful work environment,” one soon-to-be-axed worker told Connecticut’s The Day newspaper. “I haven’t been able to sleep in weeks.”
Established in 1990, the federal H-1B visa program allows employers to import up to 65,000 foreign workers each year to fill jobs that require “highly specialized knowledge.” The Senate’s bipartisan Immigration Innovation Act of 2013, or “I-Squared Act,” would increase that cap to as many as 300,000 foreign workers. “The smartest, hardest-working, most talented people on this planet, we should want them to come here,” Sen. Marco Rubio, (R-Fla.) said upon introducing the bill last month. “I, for one, have no fear that this country is going to be overrun by Ph.D.s.”
To be sure, America’s tech economy has long depended on foreign-born workers. “Immigrants have founded 40 percent of companies in the tech sector that were financed by venture capital and went on to become public in the U.S., among them Yahoo, eBay, Intel, and Google,” writes Laszlo Bock, Google’s senior VP of “people operations,” which, along with other tech giants such as HP and Microsoft, strongly supports a big increase in H-1B visas. “In 2012, these companies employed roughly 560,000 workers and generated $63 billion in sales.”
But in reality, most of today’s H-1B workers don’t stick around to become the next Albert Einstein or Sergey Brin. ComputerWorld revealed last week that the top 10 users of H-1B visas last year were all offshore outsourcing firms such as Tata and Infosys. Together these firms hired nearly half of all H-1B workers, and less than 3 percent of them applied to become permanent residents. “The H-1B worker learns the job and then rotates back to the home country and takes the work with him,” explains Ron Hira, an immigration expert who teaches at the Rochester Institute of Technology. None other than India’s former commerce secretary once dubbed the H-1B the “outsourcing visa.”
Of course, the big tech companies claim H-1B workers are their last resort, and that they can’t find qualified Americans to fill jobs. Pressing to raise the visa cap last year, Microsoft pointed to 6,000 job openings at the company.
Yet if tech workers are in such short supply, why are so many of them unemployed or underpaid? According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), tech employment rates still haven’t rebounded to pre-recession levels. And from 2001 to 2011, the mean hourly wage for computer programmers didn’t even increase enough to beat inflation.”
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Some of the 250 former Disney IT workers who were forced to train their H1B replacements are suing for discrimination—because they were discriminated against for being American.
This is not the first time I’ve heard that particular complaint. Years ago, an (Indian) employee of my husband told of how he was let go by a large insurance company. He was an Indian citizen doing contract work for the company, and they wanted to hire him permanently. He had been in the US for a while and was on the verge of getting his US citizenship. He went in to sign papers to finalize his employment, and excitedly told them he had just received his US citizenship, thinking they would be very pleased to know how committed he was to them and to his life here in the US. They immediately became very cold, and told him his services would no longer be needed.
AJ, I heard those stories on FoxNews, but they don’t seem to fit what I see in real life. I think Bill Gates understands the real world. The big IT firms need immigrants to do a lot of mind-numbing work. Good American IT folks want to do the things I described in the second paragraph @7:43.
We now basically have two types of people: Those who want to use the system that Reagan created to be successful and those who want to listen to Sharpton or Sanders or Trump and blame others for their situation. Trump and Sanders will lift just as many people out of poverty as did Sharpton.
1. The things I see every day in an actual work environment where people take risks and form companies and hire contractors and work long hours and solve real problems and pay lots of real taxes; or
2. The things shown on FoxNews that gave us Trump or the other networks that gave us Obama and Clinton.
There is an irony of off-shoring I.T. development. Back in the day, most developers were what we called Programmer-Analysts – they worked with the business folks to determine and document (hopefully) the requirements, coded, tested, and then worked with the business folks again to perform user-acceptance testing. They provided a one-stop solution.
When the coding effort was outsourced, the offshore developers required in-depth, detailed technical requirements from which to work. That ushered in the age of the Business Analyst, who performed all of the above tasks except the actually coding. The supposed savings of outsourcing was eaten up by the additional time the BA needed to write the detailed technical requirements and then TRY to work with foreign developers who could just barely speak English, and then the back-and-forth while testing because most of the time the first deliverable was not correct (or the second, or the third . . .). It was a false economy but I.T. managers have been looking for that panacea to make system development cheaper and quicker forever and this looked like “it.”
I know this from experience – I’ve been in I.T. since 1967. I am now a Business Analyst.
Whether it’s ‘mind-numbing’ or not is irrelevant. The H1B program is very corrupt, and is used to undermine Americans–particularly IT workers. It probably doesn’t fit with what you’ve seen because of the bubble you’re living in. ;–)
The H1B program is full of corruption. But lest you think that it’s the H1B employee who is at fault, let’s look at it from another angle. Some years ago, we had friends who were here from India on the H1B program. They worked for an outsourcing company (don’t remember which) that supplied IT for General Electric. They went to our church, which is where we met. Another friend from church was a middle-level manager at that particular GE plant.
One day GE manager, came to us and disclosed what was happening: GE contracted with the outsourcing company who brought in hundreds of H1B IT workers. Their deal with the workers was that they would pay a sub-standard salary, but if the worker stayed on for a full 3 years, they would get a substantial bonus check. Unbeknown to the worker, the outsourcing firm, would wait until a couple of months before the 3-year term was up, then recall almost all of the IT staff and bring in a new crop of IT who were unaware of the scam. So the worker never got the bonus for their “mind-numbing’ IT work.
The GE manager decided to tell our friends. They were committed to being in the US and had children born here. So we helped them get other jobs before the 3 year mark.
Debra, You just confirmed my point. The H1B program is designed to bring in immigrants to perform mind numbing work that no one wants to do on a long term basis. GE conned your friends out of their promised bonus check (sort of like Trump University), but there are good IT jobs elsewhere.
That is completely false Ricky. Many people would love to perform those jobs which are outsourced, but AMERICANS NEED NOT APPLY. You are determined not to understand, or for reasons of your own pretend not to, so I will leave you to your bubble.
I have been corrected by folks around here. Texas ain’t no bubble. In Texas people work hard, start businesses, hire people and pay lots of taxes. The bubbles are those places where people sit around waiting for their government checks watching Oprah or FoxNews depending on whether they are Sharptonites or Trumpkins.
Repeating my comment from last night, which I see was challenged kind of strangely, there’s really no comparison between protests and resistance from the Right under Obama and the hysteria and vitriol from the Left now. When numerous politicians, including the President, talk about passing more restrictive gun laws, there’s nothing bonkers about folks then picking up a couple extra boxes of 9mm rounds at Walmart when they go shopping for milk and eggs. Or am I unaware of daily marches under Obama, where men wearing male organ hats gathered en masse at sporting goods stores and the National Mall shouting obscenities and calling for violence against the President, being cheered by celebrities in every forum available?
I have a couple of relatives in IT and asked one about this particular issue recently. I was assured it is a problem. The person who told me that, is not a right wing person and he does not watch Fox News.
Our IT guy was literally here until 4:00a.m. last Friday night/Saturday morning working out bugs in the server. I thought about replacing him with Indians, but they were busy running the motel, the Grandy’s and the convenience store. To be fair, if it weren’t for those smoking breaks, I think he could have finished by 3:30a.m.
“. The H1B program is designed to bring in immigrants to perform mind numbing work that no one wants to do on a long term basis. ”
That’s the same excuse you used for landscapers, kitchen help, maids, and others. And once again, it’s wrong.
The lady mentioned in the story below did her “mind numbing” job for 15 years, and she lost it to a lower cost foreigner. One she had to train before being laid off.
I do my part by deepening my Suth- ahn accent and explainin’ how I live in the South and I jahst cahn’t unner-stan’ them and will they preety please transfer me back to someone in the US I cahn tawk to?
It usually works and then the US tech understands what I need and we have a lovely chat about where they live and where I live and what the weather is like and all sorts of things and in no time at all my problem is fixed and everyone is happy.
So on one side we have a Democrat from California named Zoe, the New York Times, Trump and assorted Trumpkins. On the other side, it’s me and Bill Gates. I’m really beginning to enjoy being a globalist.
By the way, my answer to the question @12:01 would be “about 10”. All are of Mexican heritage. I know that about half of those are US citizens. I’m not sure about the other half. All of the 10 have stories about the handful of Gringo co-workers that work with them for a short time and then move on.
SolarP @ 10:31 Quick! Head for Hollywood! You have the greatest idea for a movie plot in history! I guess the costumes alone will require an “R” rating.
Anyone keeping up on the UC Berkley riot story? If you go to Huffington Post and read the comments it will scare you a little. Not only are many commenters approving of the riot, many are calling for more extreme violence. One called for Milo and his ilk to the “gallows” And they are getting hundreds and sometimes thousands of likes.
“Steven Barker, 36 years old, says companies often dangle the possibility of full-time employment but seldom follow through. He has worked contract assignments at Amazon.com Inc., where it was common during orientation sessions for someone to ask if the job could become permanent.
He says the answer usually was: “We’ll see. Anything’s possible!”
At Amazon, Mr. Barker applied to become a full-time employee on X-Ray, which lets customers access actor biographies and other information while watching movies and television shows. He was an X-Ray contractor since it was in the development stage, he says, but wasn’t offered a job interview and eventually received a generic rejection letter from the company. Amazon declines to comment.
Companies sometimes try outsourcing and then change their minds. About 70% of Target Corp. ’s information-technology jobs were outsourced when Mike McNamara became chief information officer at the retailer in 2015. About 70% of those jobs now are done by employees.
Few companies, workplace consultants or economists expect the outsourcing trend to reverse. Moving noncore jobs out of a company allows it to devote more time and energy to the things it does best. When an outside firm is in charge of labor, it assumes the day-to-day grind of scheduling, hiring and firing. Workers are quickly replaced if needed, and the company worries only about the final product.
“Steven Berkenfeld, an investment banker who has spent his career evaluating corporate strategies, says companies of all shapes and sizes are increasingly thinking like this: “Can I automate it? If not, can I outsource it? If not, can I give it to an independent contractor or freelancer?”
Hiring an employee is a last resort, Mr. Berkenfeld adds, and “very few jobs make it through that obstacle course.”
“Microsoft Corp. is asking U.S. officials to grant exceptions for law-abiding, visa-holding workers and students from President Donald Trump’s immigration order, channeling the outrage expressed by many in the technology industry with a proposed solution.
Such individuals are low-risk — having already undergone a rigorous vetting process — and face immediate hardship as a result of last week’s order, Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith said in a letter Thursday to the secretaries of State and Homeland Security. Smith said he believes the two officials are empowered to take the necessary steps to allow certain people entry into the country. The exemptions sought would cover workers with visas sponsored by U.S.-based companies and students with ones obtained via a U.S.-based school.
“We believe such an exception under the existing framework of the Executive Order would help address compelling personal needs without compromising the Executive Order’s security-related objectives,” Smith wrote in the letter and a related blog post.”
” President Donald Trump threatened Thursday to withdraw federal funds from UC Berkeley after violent campus protests forced the cancellation of a speech by Milo Yiannopoulos, a firebrand editor of right-wing news site Breitbart.
The disturbances were a fiery reminder of the university’s history as a cradle of the 1960s anti-war movement — and a sign of the sharp tensions pitting America’s mostly left-wing student body against a far-right minority.
Hundreds of students and other protesters chanting “shut him down” smashed windows at the University of California campus, set wooden pallets ablaze and threw fireworks and rocks as police in full riot gear responded with tear gas.
The university was placed on lockdown as the sold-out appearance by Yiannopoulos, a conservative provocateur and self-proclaimed internet troll who styles himself on Facebook as “Dangerous Faggot,” was canceled Wednesday evening.
“If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view – NO FEDERAL FUNDS?” Trump wrote on Twitter Thursday.”
About half of research at Berkeley is funded by the federal government, according to the university website. Berkeley however has been struggling in the past years with budget shortfalls and spending deficits.”
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“UC Berkeley, one of the top public universities in the United States, is the home of the 1960s “Free Speech Movement” that helped launch the era’s student protests against the Vietnam War.”
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Kbells, off with their heads, eh? We live in bizarre times, the country appears to be melting down. Kind of like watching a massive train wreck. You want to turn away, but you just can’t. 😦
Of course if Trump will not let its workers come to the US, I guess Microsoft might have to have that work done in a foreign country. The old law of the unintended consequence. It trips up the economically illiterate every time.
No one and on company intends to get caught when they abuse a law like the h1b. Those “unintended consequences “can be a real bite when they catch up to you.
Microsoft, Amazon, Disney, GE and others who are or have been profiteering on fraudulent use of H1B should probably be penalized for the damage they’ve caused to Americans.
I don’t like Microsoft, Disney and GE. I think they support liberal causes. However which of the following would Trumpkins prefer:
1. The companies bring in workers under the H1B program and have them pay income tax and payroll tax into our failing SS system and probably stay here and become very productive taxpayers pulling the wagon; or
2. The companies just farm out the work to an overseas company.
On the I.T. question, we hear similar stories about bank employees here training their replacements from overseas. Even our former Conservative government, which was all for free market capitalism, acknowledged there was a problem with companies abusing the migrant worker laws: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/temporary-foreign-worker-overhaul-imposes-limits-hikes-inspections-1.2682209 . However, there is also widespread concern for the workers brought in (it isn’t just the banks doing it), as they are often exploited: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/migrant-workers-get-little-protection-from-workplace-abuse-1.3132292. One thing that companies like Amazon would probably argue, is that they can offer cheaper services due to lower employee wages. I wonder how many in the West would rather have the cheaper products in exchange for underpaid migrant workers?
AJ, it actually makes a lot of sense to allow those who are already employed and hold visas to come into the country, it seems to me–unless I’m missing something?
Roscuro is correct. Not only are the country’s native workers hurt, but in many cases the guest workers are exploited as well. The only benefit is the company’s bottom line.
I’m not saying do away with all, because obviously there will be legitimate need. But the exploitation needs to be curtailed.
I confess I didn’t know what to expect from a President Trump at the National Prayer Breakfast. But actually, it wasn’t bad. It was honest. But it was, of course, Trump. :–)
….The people in this room come from many, many backgrounds. You represent so many religions and so many views. But we are all united by our faith in our Creator and our firm knowledge that we are all equal in His eyes. We are not just flesh and bone and blood. We are human beings, with souls. Our Republic was formed on the basis that freedom is not a gift from government, but that freedom is a gift from God. (Applause.)
It was the great Thomas Jefferson who said, “The God who gave us life, gave us liberty.” Jefferson asked, “Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?”
Among those freedoms is the right to worship according to our own beliefs. That is why I will get rid of, and totally destroy, the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution. I will do that — remember. (Applause.)
Freedom of religion is a sacred right, but it is also a right under threat all around us, and the world is under serious, serious threat in so many different ways. And I’ve never seen it so much and so openly as since I took the position of President. The world is in trouble, but we’re going to straighten it out. Okay? That’s what I do. I fix things. We’re going to straighten it out. (Applause.) Believe me. When you hear about the tough phone calls I’m having, don’t worry about it. Just don’t worry about it. (Laughter.) They’re tough. We have to be tough. It’s time we’re going to be a little tough, folks. We’re taken advantage of by every nation in the world, virtually. It’s not going to happen anymore. It’s not going to happen anymore.
We have seen unimaginable violence carried out in the name of religion. Acts of wanton slaughter against religious minorities. Horrors on a scale that defy description. Terrorism is a fundamental threat to religious freedom. It must be stopped, and it will be stopped. It may not be pretty for a little while. It will be stopped. (Applause.)
We have seen — and, by the way, General, as you know, James “Mad Dog” — I shouldn’t say it in this room — Mattis. Now, there’s a reason they call him “Mad Dog Mattis” — he never lost a battle. Always wins them and always wins them fast. He’s our new Secretary of Defense who will be working with Rex. He’s right now in South Korea, going to Japan, going to some other spots. And I’ll tell you what, I’ve gotten to know him really well. He’s the real deal. We have somebody who’s the real deal working for us, and that’s what we need. So, you watch. You just watch. (Applause.) Things will be different.
We have seen peace-loving Muslims brutalized, victimized, murdered and oppressed by ISIS killers. We have seen threats of extermination against the Jewish people. We have seen a campaign of ISIS and genocide against Christians, where they cut off heads. Not since the Middle Ages have we seen that. We haven’t seen that, the cutting off of heads. Now they cut off their heads, they drown people in steel cages. Haven’t seen this — I haven’t seen this. Nobody has seen this for many, many years.
All nations have a moral obligation to speak out against such violence. All nations have a duty to work together to confront it and to confront it viciously, if we have to. So I want to express clearly today to the American people that my administration will do everything in its power to defend and protect religious liberty in our land. America must forever remain a tolerant society where all faiths are respected, and where all of our citizens can feel safe and secure. We have to feel safe and secure….
lol. If they didn’t want to run the risk of fake piety, they should not hold it in DC and invite politicians. I think Trump is honest—I’m not pronouncing him pious or impious. That’s for someone else to opine.
Yeah, but we’ve all had to learn how to be handy with the ol’ pooper scooper. After 30 years or so of cleaning up after so many globalist mischaracterizations and outright lies, the American worker is rather tickled to see politicians have to clean up the poop they spread around for a change.
By the way, it seems the Aussie PM is denying he and Trump had a bad meeting. So is Trump. I guess it’s in the eye of the beholder…or the pooper scooper. :–)
Wandering Views 
More tech workers in the US forced to train their foreign replacements as their employer opts to bring in cheaper IT workers with H1B visas, as the abuse of this program continues.
Come on US Senate! Confirm Jeff Sessions and call a halt to the madness!
https://www.americanbazaaronline.com/2017/01/09/rep-zoe-lofgren-criticizes-uc-san-francisco-outsourcing-jobs-h-1b-visa-workers/
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If you won’t follow the law, you pay the consequences. And so will the taxpayers because someone will have to make up the difference.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/texas-cuts-funding-travis-county-over-sanctuary-city-031307269.html
“Texas Governor Greg Abbott made good on his promise to cut $1.5 million in grant money to Travis County after the county sheriff said she would limit her department’s cooperation with federal immigration officers, county officials said on Wednesday.
Travis County includes the Texas capital Austin, which is a so-called “sanctuary city”.
Abbott spokeswoman Ciara Matthews said the money that would be withheld from Travis County is a series of one-time criminal justice grants totaling $1.8 million. About $300,000 of that has already been spent, but she said the governor would not try to claw back that money.”
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Re Deborah’s 7:06:
I just finished reading IWars. One of the threats we have is software written overseas by people in China, etc. who put a back door into the code. That gives them access that we are not aware of. It also gives them control of our infrastructure, the power grid being the most important.
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Debra,
It appears the tech industry isn’t happy that it’s low cost, foreign labor pool is in jeopardy. If they can’t exploit the visa system, and screw American workers, it cuts into their profits.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/major-tech-companies-coming-together-172355278.html
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Chas, I agree. It is also problematic because on one hand we are telling people to train in high tech jobs, then replacing them with outsourced cheap labor when they do. It will be hard to convince people to put their time and money on the line when they know their jobs are a prime target for outsourcing. But it is a matter of national security to grow our own high tech labor force as well as stabilizing our own manufacturing base. It’s common sense.
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In how many of your states, are good IT guys having trouble finding jobs? In Texas, ours are working 60-70 hours a week.
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Debra, I know 15-20 IT professionals. They are all native born Americans. They all make very good money and work long hours because there is a shortage of people who can do what they do. Some have their own businesses. Some work for companies. I have never heard of any of them losing a job to an immigrant. Using Debra’s terms, apparently all of Texas is a “bubble”.
By the way, only the least skilled IT people would want to work for a state university on a long term basis. Pay increases would be limited and opportunities for advancement would be few. Of course a Democrat legislator would have zero understanding about how the real world actually works. If you are good, you form your own company and service many clients or you become the “IT” person in a business that is not primarily in the IT industry.
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That poor Iraq veterans’ grandmother who died because of Trump’s travel ban? She was already dead when the order was signed.
It looks like the media fell for more “fake news”.
http://hotair.com/archives/2017/02/01/man-who-claimed-his-mother-died-in-iraq-because-of-trumps-immigration-ban-was-lying/
“A Michigan business owner named Mike Hager, who was born in Iraq, told a local Fox News affiliate that his mother had been turned away from entering the country because of President Trump’s executive order on immigration. His mother had been receiving medial treatment in Michigan but traveled back to Iraq and later died. Hager said he he blamed her death directly on Trump’s ban. The only problem with the story is that, according to a local Imam, it is not true. Here’s a bit of the initial story as it appeared yesterday:
Hager said he was returning home with his family that included his sick mom. They were returning home to the United States where his mother has lived since 1995. As they were waiting in line at the airport in Iraq on Friday, he was told that he could pass through because he was a U.S. citizen. But his family members – including his mom – weren’t allowed, despite holding green cards.
“They destroyed us. I went with my family, I came back by myself. They destroyed our family,” Hager said….
He blamed her death on President Trump.
“I really believe this in my heart: if they would have let us in, my mom – she would have made it and she would have been sitting right here next to me,” Hager said. “She’s gone because of him.”
But a new story published today by the same affiliate says it’s now clear Hager was lying. Hager’s mother did travel to Iraq but, according to a local Imam, she died several days before the temporary travel ban was announced:”
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Chas @ 7:16 Sunday, we took my mother-in-law out to celebrate her 77th birthday. She still works and is very sharp but is not a computer person. My wife (a non-smoker) was explaining to us about how our IT guy showed her the “back door” as he was installing our new server. I told her that when I saw him using the back door, he was going out to smoke. Ever since then, my mother-in-law has been teasing my wife about her going out the back door to smoke behind the office.
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Ricky,
” I have never heard of any of them losing a job to an immigrant.”
Then you haven’t been paying attention to what’s happening outside your bubble.
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2514356/it-transformation/h-1b-at-20–how-the–tech-worker-visa–is-remaking-it-in-america.html
“The H-1B incorporated specialty occupations — including such IT roles as programming, systems analysis, and network and systems support — with a minimum requirement of a bachelor’s degree. The H-1B visa also allowed workers to pursue permanent residency.
Over the years, supporters of the visa have included Microsoft’s Bill Gates and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2009 told Congress that the annual visa cap of 85,000 is “too small to meet the need” and that protecting U.S. IT workers from global competition creates a “privileged elite.”
Groups like the Economic Policy Institute have begged to differ. In a report released just last month by EPI researcher Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, he argues that the H-1B along with the L-1 visa, which is used by multinational firms to transfer employees for temporary work, allow employers to bypass U.S. workers “when recruiting for open positions and even [to] replace outright existing American workers” with visa-holding foreigners. The H-1B’s wage requirements are too low, according to the report, and because visas are held by employers, not workers, the H-1B promotes a relationship “akin to indentured servitude.”
That dovetails with the view of many domestic IT professionals, who have never subscribed to the idea that there was — or is — a skills mismatch in the industry. Among them is Kristine Serrano, laid off from IBM this year, who calls the skills gap a “myth” told by businesses and parroted by elected officials.
“The work didn’t disappear. It’s still being done; it is just being done by a group over in India now,” said Serrano, who earned a master’s degree in information science from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1993 and was initially hired by IBM as a Unix system administrator.
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http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/silicon-valley-h1b-visas-hurt-tech-workers
“A few years ago, the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer informed hundreds of tech workers at its Connecticut R&D facilities that they’d soon be laid off. Before getting their final paychecks, however, they’d need to train their replacements: guest workers from India who’d come to the United States on H-1B visas. “It’s a very, very stressful work environment,” one soon-to-be-axed worker told Connecticut’s The Day newspaper. “I haven’t been able to sleep in weeks.”
Established in 1990, the federal H-1B visa program allows employers to import up to 65,000 foreign workers each year to fill jobs that require “highly specialized knowledge.” The Senate’s bipartisan Immigration Innovation Act of 2013, or “I-Squared Act,” would increase that cap to as many as 300,000 foreign workers. “The smartest, hardest-working, most talented people on this planet, we should want them to come here,” Sen. Marco Rubio, (R-Fla.) said upon introducing the bill last month. “I, for one, have no fear that this country is going to be overrun by Ph.D.s.”
To be sure, America’s tech economy has long depended on foreign-born workers. “Immigrants have founded 40 percent of companies in the tech sector that were financed by venture capital and went on to become public in the U.S., among them Yahoo, eBay, Intel, and Google,” writes Laszlo Bock, Google’s senior VP of “people operations,” which, along with other tech giants such as HP and Microsoft, strongly supports a big increase in H-1B visas. “In 2012, these companies employed roughly 560,000 workers and generated $63 billion in sales.”
But in reality, most of today’s H-1B workers don’t stick around to become the next Albert Einstein or Sergey Brin. ComputerWorld revealed last week that the top 10 users of H-1B visas last year were all offshore outsourcing firms such as Tata and Infosys. Together these firms hired nearly half of all H-1B workers, and less than 3 percent of them applied to become permanent residents. “The H-1B worker learns the job and then rotates back to the home country and takes the work with him,” explains Ron Hira, an immigration expert who teaches at the Rochester Institute of Technology. None other than India’s former commerce secretary once dubbed the H-1B the “outsourcing visa.”
Of course, the big tech companies claim H-1B workers are their last resort, and that they can’t find qualified Americans to fill jobs. Pressing to raise the visa cap last year, Microsoft pointed to 6,000 job openings at the company.
Yet if tech workers are in such short supply, why are so many of them unemployed or underpaid? According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), tech employment rates still haven’t rebounded to pre-recession levels. And from 2001 to 2011, the mean hourly wage for computer programmers didn’t even increase enough to beat inflation.”
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It’s happening everywhere.
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My wife can dish out as well as receive:
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Some of the 250 former Disney IT workers who were forced to train their H1B replacements are suing for discrimination—because they were discriminated against for being American.
This is not the first time I’ve heard that particular complaint. Years ago, an (Indian) employee of my husband told of how he was let go by a large insurance company. He was an Indian citizen doing contract work for the company, and they wanted to hire him permanently. He had been in the US for a while and was on the verge of getting his US citizenship. He went in to sign papers to finalize his employment, and excitedly told them he had just received his US citizenship, thinking they would be very pleased to know how committed he was to them and to his life here in the US. They immediately became very cold, and told him his services would no longer be needed.
“30 former IT Disney employees replaced by H-1B visa workers sue on race, national-origin discrimination ”
https://www.americanbazaaronline.com/2016/12/19/30-former-disney-employees-replaced-h-1b-visa-workers-sue-race-national-origin-discrimination/
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AJ, I heard those stories on FoxNews, but they don’t seem to fit what I see in real life. I think Bill Gates understands the real world. The big IT firms need immigrants to do a lot of mind-numbing work. Good American IT folks want to do the things I described in the second paragraph @7:43.
We now basically have two types of people: Those who want to use the system that Reagan created to be successful and those who want to listen to Sharpton or Sanders or Trump and blame others for their situation. Trump and Sanders will lift just as many people out of poverty as did Sharpton.
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So what am I to believe?
1. The things I see every day in an actual work environment where people take risks and form companies and hire contractors and work long hours and solve real problems and pay lots of real taxes; or
2. The things shown on FoxNews that gave us Trump or the other networks that gave us Obama and Clinton.
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There is an irony of off-shoring I.T. development. Back in the day, most developers were what we called Programmer-Analysts – they worked with the business folks to determine and document (hopefully) the requirements, coded, tested, and then worked with the business folks again to perform user-acceptance testing. They provided a one-stop solution.
When the coding effort was outsourced, the offshore developers required in-depth, detailed technical requirements from which to work. That ushered in the age of the Business Analyst, who performed all of the above tasks except the actually coding. The supposed savings of outsourcing was eaten up by the additional time the BA needed to write the detailed technical requirements and then TRY to work with foreign developers who could just barely speak English, and then the back-and-forth while testing because most of the time the first deliverable was not correct (or the second, or the third . . .). It was a false economy but I.T. managers have been looking for that panacea to make system development cheaper and quicker forever and this looked like “it.”
I know this from experience – I’ve been in I.T. since 1967. I am now a Business Analyst.
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Whether it’s ‘mind-numbing’ or not is irrelevant. The H1B program is very corrupt, and is used to undermine Americans–particularly IT workers. It probably doesn’t fit with what you’ve seen because of the bubble you’re living in. ;–)
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The H1B program is full of corruption. But lest you think that it’s the H1B employee who is at fault, let’s look at it from another angle. Some years ago, we had friends who were here from India on the H1B program. They worked for an outsourcing company (don’t remember which) that supplied IT for General Electric. They went to our church, which is where we met. Another friend from church was a middle-level manager at that particular GE plant.
One day GE manager, came to us and disclosed what was happening: GE contracted with the outsourcing company who brought in hundreds of H1B IT workers. Their deal with the workers was that they would pay a sub-standard salary, but if the worker stayed on for a full 3 years, they would get a substantial bonus check. Unbeknown to the worker, the outsourcing firm, would wait until a couple of months before the 3-year term was up, then recall almost all of the IT staff and bring in a new crop of IT who were unaware of the scam. So the worker never got the bonus for their “mind-numbing’ IT work.
The GE manager decided to tell our friends. They were committed to being in the US and had children born here. So we helped them get other jobs before the 3 year mark.
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Debra, You just confirmed my point. The H1B program is designed to bring in immigrants to perform mind numbing work that no one wants to do on a long term basis. GE conned your friends out of their promised bonus check (sort of like Trump University), but there are good IT jobs elsewhere.
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That is completely false Ricky. Many people would love to perform those jobs which are outsourced, but AMERICANS NEED NOT APPLY. You are determined not to understand, or for reasons of your own pretend not to, so I will leave you to your bubble.
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I have been corrected by folks around here. Texas ain’t no bubble. In Texas people work hard, start businesses, hire people and pay lots of taxes. The bubbles are those places where people sit around waiting for their government checks watching Oprah or FoxNews depending on whether they are Sharptonites or Trumpkins.
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Ah, Texas is perfect and fault-free, I see. 🙂 Who knew? Sounds like a bubble.
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Repeating my comment from last night, which I see was challenged kind of strangely, there’s really no comparison between protests and resistance from the Right under Obama and the hysteria and vitriol from the Left now. When numerous politicians, including the President, talk about passing more restrictive gun laws, there’s nothing bonkers about folks then picking up a couple extra boxes of 9mm rounds at Walmart when they go shopping for milk and eggs. Or am I unaware of daily marches under Obama, where men wearing male organ hats gathered en masse at sporting goods stores and the National Mall shouting obscenities and calling for violence against the President, being cheered by celebrities in every forum available?
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I have a couple of relatives in IT and asked one about this particular issue recently. I was assured it is a problem. The person who told me that, is not a right wing person and he does not watch Fox News.
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Our IT guy was literally here until 4:00a.m. last Friday night/Saturday morning working out bugs in the server. I thought about replacing him with Indians, but they were busy running the motel, the Grandy’s and the convenience store. To be fair, if it weren’t for those smoking breaks, I think he could have finished by 3:30a.m.
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Ricky,
“. The H1B program is designed to bring in immigrants to perform mind numbing work that no one wants to do on a long term basis. ”
That’s the same excuse you used for landscapers, kitchen help, maids, and others. And once again, it’s wrong.
The lady mentioned in the story below did her “mind numbing” job for 15 years, and she lost it to a lower cost foreigner. One she had to train before being laid off.
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I do my part by deepening my Suth- ahn accent and explainin’ how I live in the South and I jahst cahn’t unner-stan’ them and will they preety please transfer me back to someone in the US I cahn tawk to?
It usually works and then the US tech understands what I need and we have a lovely chat about where they live and where I live and what the weather is like and all sorts of things and in no time at all my problem is fixed and everyone is happy.
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So I thought we all agreed that the New York Times was communist.
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So on one side we have a Democrat from California named Zoe, the New York Times, Trump and assorted Trumpkins. On the other side, it’s me and Bill Gates. I’m really beginning to enjoy being a globalist.
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So, AJ@ 11:04, How many of your friends are looking to spend their entire careers as gardeners, maids or kitchen help?
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Ricky,
NYT (a former newspaper) Communist? No, it just has Alzheimer’s.
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By the way, my answer to the question @12:01 would be “about 10”. All are of Mexican heritage. I know that about half of those are US citizens. I’m not sure about the other half. All of the 10 have stories about the handful of Gringo co-workers that work with them for a short time and then move on.
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SolarP @ 10:31 Quick! Head for Hollywood! You have the greatest idea for a movie plot in history! I guess the costumes alone will require an “R” rating.
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Anyone keeping up on the UC Berkley riot story? If you go to Huffington Post and read the comments it will scare you a little. Not only are many commenters approving of the riot, many are calling for more extreme violence. One called for Milo and his ilk to the “gallows” And they are getting hundreds and sometimes thousands of likes.
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Yes, KBells. Hasn’t been a good look for the left these last few weeks.
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Read it and weep.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-end-of-employees-1486050443
“Steven Barker, 36 years old, says companies often dangle the possibility of full-time employment but seldom follow through. He has worked contract assignments at Amazon.com Inc., where it was common during orientation sessions for someone to ask if the job could become permanent.
He says the answer usually was: “We’ll see. Anything’s possible!”
At Amazon, Mr. Barker applied to become a full-time employee on X-Ray, which lets customers access actor biographies and other information while watching movies and television shows. He was an X-Ray contractor since it was in the development stage, he says, but wasn’t offered a job interview and eventually received a generic rejection letter from the company. Amazon declines to comment.
Companies sometimes try outsourcing and then change their minds. About 70% of Target Corp. ’s information-technology jobs were outsourced when Mike McNamara became chief information officer at the retailer in 2015. About 70% of those jobs now are done by employees.
Few companies, workplace consultants or economists expect the outsourcing trend to reverse. Moving noncore jobs out of a company allows it to devote more time and energy to the things it does best. When an outside firm is in charge of labor, it assumes the day-to-day grind of scheduling, hiring and firing. Workers are quickly replaced if needed, and the company worries only about the final product.
“Steven Berkenfeld, an investment banker who has spent his career evaluating corporate strategies, says companies of all shapes and sizes are increasingly thinking like this: “Can I automate it? If not, can I outsource it? If not, can I give it to an independent contractor or freelancer?”
Hiring an employee is a last resort, Mr. Berkenfeld adds, and “very few jobs make it through that obstacle course.”
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Not surprising that Microsoft is seeking an exemption to the EO, since they’re one of the biggest abusers of the visa system.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-02/microsoft-seeks-trump-order-exemption-for-workers-with-visas
“Microsoft Corp. is asking U.S. officials to grant exceptions for law-abiding, visa-holding workers and students from President Donald Trump’s immigration order, channeling the outrage expressed by many in the technology industry with a proposed solution.
Such individuals are low-risk — having already undergone a rigorous vetting process — and face immediate hardship as a result of last week’s order, Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith said in a letter Thursday to the secretaries of State and Homeland Security. Smith said he believes the two officials are empowered to take the necessary steps to allow certain people entry into the country. The exemptions sought would cover workers with visas sponsored by U.S.-based companies and students with ones obtained via a U.S.-based school.
“We believe such an exception under the existing framework of the Executive Order would help address compelling personal needs without compromising the Executive Order’s security-related objectives,” Smith wrote in the letter and a related blog post.”
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KBel is referring to this. The videos tell the story, and it ain’t pretty.
https://news.grabien.com/story-masked-protesters-starting-fires-tearing-down-fences-outside-1
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But Trump knows how to deal with petulant children. You take their toys away.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/speech-breitbart-editor-nixed-protest-berkeley-033717924.html
” President Donald Trump threatened Thursday to withdraw federal funds from UC Berkeley after violent campus protests forced the cancellation of a speech by Milo Yiannopoulos, a firebrand editor of right-wing news site Breitbart.
The disturbances were a fiery reminder of the university’s history as a cradle of the 1960s anti-war movement — and a sign of the sharp tensions pitting America’s mostly left-wing student body against a far-right minority.
Hundreds of students and other protesters chanting “shut him down” smashed windows at the University of California campus, set wooden pallets ablaze and threw fireworks and rocks as police in full riot gear responded with tear gas.
The university was placed on lockdown as the sold-out appearance by Yiannopoulos, a conservative provocateur and self-proclaimed internet troll who styles himself on Facebook as “Dangerous Faggot,” was canceled Wednesday evening.
“If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view – NO FEDERAL FUNDS?” Trump wrote on Twitter Thursday.”
About half of research at Berkeley is funded by the federal government, according to the university website. Berkeley however has been struggling in the past years with budget shortfalls and spending deficits.”
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“UC Berkeley, one of the top public universities in the United States, is the home of the 1960s “Free Speech Movement” that helped launch the era’s student protests against the Vietnam War.”
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Ironic, no?
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Kbells, off with their heads, eh? We live in bizarre times, the country appears to be melting down. Kind of like watching a massive train wreck. You want to turn away, but you just can’t. 😦
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Of course if Trump will not let its workers come to the US, I guess Microsoft might have to have that work done in a foreign country. The old law of the unintended consequence. It trips up the economically illiterate every time.
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No one and on company intends to get caught when they abuse a law like the h1b. Those “unintended consequences “can be a real bite when they catch up to you.
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Microsoft, Amazon, Disney, GE and others who are or have been profiteering on fraudulent use of H1B should probably be penalized for the damage they’ve caused to Americans.
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I don’t like Microsoft, Disney and GE. I think they support liberal causes. However which of the following would Trumpkins prefer:
1. The companies bring in workers under the H1B program and have them pay income tax and payroll tax into our failing SS system and probably stay here and become very productive taxpayers pulling the wagon; or
2. The companies just farm out the work to an overseas company.
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On the I.T. question, we hear similar stories about bank employees here training their replacements from overseas. Even our former Conservative government, which was all for free market capitalism, acknowledged there was a problem with companies abusing the migrant worker laws: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/temporary-foreign-worker-overhaul-imposes-limits-hikes-inspections-1.2682209 . However, there is also widespread concern for the workers brought in (it isn’t just the banks doing it), as they are often exploited: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/migrant-workers-get-little-protection-from-workplace-abuse-1.3132292. One thing that companies like Amazon would probably argue, is that they can offer cheaper services due to lower employee wages. I wonder how many in the West would rather have the cheaper products in exchange for underpaid migrant workers?
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Very interesting perspective from the country & culture that supplies many of the I.T workers: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/donald-trump-not-planning-any-executive-order-on-h-1b-visas-shalabh-kumar/articleshow/56931970.cms.
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Here’s an article I can agree with, from the Washington Post. Of course, this is a Navy guy . . . “chill out,”.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/02/02/trump-outrage/?tid=sm_tw&utm_term=.aa039aa93381
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AJ, it actually makes a lot of sense to allow those who are already employed and hold visas to come into the country, it seems to me–unless I’m missing something?
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So the large orange one literally turned The National Prayer Breakfast into a joke and a celebrity spat.
https://www.google.com/amp/amp.usatoday.com/story/97394680/?client=safari
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Roscuro is correct. Not only are the country’s native workers hurt, but in many cases the guest workers are exploited as well. The only benefit is the company’s bottom line.
I’m not saying do away with all, because obviously there will be legitimate need. But the exploitation needs to be curtailed.
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I confess I didn’t know what to expect from a President Trump at the National Prayer Breakfast. But actually, it wasn’t bad. It was honest. But it was, of course, Trump. :–)
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/02/02/remarks-president-trump-national-prayer-breakfast
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Another opinion:
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lol. If they didn’t want to run the risk of fake piety, they should not hold it in DC and invite politicians. I think Trump is honest—I’m not pronouncing him pious or impious. That’s for someone else to opine.
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That is, I thought his statements honest and straightforward….
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One of the important jobs of a Republican Senator turns out to be following Trump around with a pooper scooper:
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Yeah, but we’ve all had to learn how to be handy with the ol’ pooper scooper. After 30 years or so of cleaning up after so many globalist mischaracterizations and outright lies, the American worker is rather tickled to see politicians have to clean up the poop they spread around for a change.
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By the way, it seems the Aussie PM is denying he and Trump had a bad meeting. So is Trump. I guess it’s in the eye of the beholder…or the pooper scooper. :–)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/feb/1/malcolm-turnbull-denies-trump-canceled-refugee-dea/
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Dissent must be silenced. The mob demands it.
http://nypost.com/2017/02/02/protesters-storm-nyu-over-conservative-speakers-seminar/
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HRW, I continue to regard this whole thing as a ridiculous farce, but Frum and McMullin, like you, see something more ominous.
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http://www.nationalreview.com/article/444544/berkeley-riots-milo-yiannopoulos-california-mayor-free-speech
Excellent piece by David French on the Berkeley rioting
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