Don't Blame H-1B Workers for Woes

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2009/tc2009029_333899.htm

by peter123 • 17 years ago

28 33 17 years ago

businessweek.com

kyochan2• 17 years ago

I am for the elimination of H-1B visas only if it means an even more lenient immigration policy.

Free trade means the free movement of capital AND labor.

asciilifeform2• 17 years ago

Enjoy having your standard of living averaged with the Third World. The best remedy for Libertarianism is experiencing the consequences personally.

sh1mmer• 17 years ago

Much of the incoming migrant workers are from places like Britain, or India. These people have excellent educations. It seems nuts that the U.S sets hard limits on such people entering the country.

I struggle to see how a country who outsource a significant part of their manufacturing to the far east could have too many knowledge workers.

rglullis• 17 years ago

Canada and Australia have pretty open immigration policies and their standard of living is higher than in the US.

ewanmcteagle• 17 years ago

How is this supported by history? When immigration was freer were living standards not rising in many countries and not rising in others, instead of averaging? It is not true that the only way to increase wealth is to starve others of resources so you can charge higher prices for goods or services. Scarcity is a form of poverty for society.

kyochan2• 17 years ago

My standard of living is doing just fine because I've adapted by improving and expanding my skillset and become one step ahead of outsourced and H-1B workers in my field.

Restricting foreign competition for jobs only foster complacency and increase the likelihood of my job being outsourced.

You could say my Libertarianism is malignant.

senthil_rajasek• 17 years ago

Labor is a unique resource, I would not treat it the same way I would treat capital or any other resource especially since it is tied closely to social structures.

mynameishere• 17 years ago

"Labor" consists of human beings which bring a whole complex of externalities that capital does not. Not one policymaker (Not one) is effected by these externalities. And most of us UMC technocrats aren't either.

tallanvor• 17 years ago

It's understandable (if misguided) that people think that turning away foreign workers will help matters significantly in this country, but it's definitely not the answer. America does need to make sure that any foreign workers being brought into the country are being paid prevailing wages, and are not being used to help cut costs.

Of course, since I'm an American working overseas, I suppose it would be a bit hypocritical of me to support further limits on foreigners working in the States! I would like to see agreements between the U.S., Canada, and the EU to help make it easier for their respective citizens to work in other countries (obviously the EU has already done this within their member states). --That would provide more options to Americans as well as to others.

tptacek• 17 years ago

Alternate explanation, which would refute the thesis of this article: H1-B workers are disproportionately likely to work for companies with aggressive IP processes, like IBM and Microsoft, because those companies are also aggressive about recruiting H1-B workers.

old-gregg• 17 years ago

I believe most of those are patents filed by US graduate/PhD students of foreign origin working for big corporations either via H1b or using their student visas. These are the individuals we want to keep.

The "dark side" of H1b program is various ethnic sweatshops often filled with mediocre talent unable to find work anywhere else. I have known a person in Boston area who, along with 4 roommates, lived in his "owners" (H1b sponsor) basement where they were looking for contracts for themselves, so the sponsor could sell them later for a percentage. This crowd doesn't file patents.

Another, less evil "H1b business" is what many 3rd grade no-name universities do: they bring people from all over the world using student visas, give them loans, put them through 6-8 month Java crash-course, after which students are supposed to find themselves H1b employment. When they do, they have to pay $10-30K to their "school" while completing their "education" online (the requirement that lets these institutions maintain their legal university status).

I suspect that these shady H1b sponsors take up as much as half of all H1b visas issued to programmers year after year. As I said, big companies rarely bring people from overseas, they like to hire the best foreign graduates from good schools instead, where H1b works as a temporary bridge between a student visa and a green card, and that was the original idea behind it, IIRC.

wheels• 17 years ago

Those companies are also less likely to die or do massive layoffs, which is part of The Fear of being on a temporary work visa. Having an international HR department works wonders too.

coolnewtoy• 17 years ago

"Kerr and Lincoln built algorithms that recognize likely foreign names on U.S. patent applications."

This doesn't seem very definitive to me.

ja2ke• 17 years ago

Aside from that one patent filed by Crazy Horse, it came up 100%. Crazy.

huherto• 17 years ago

The U.S. like any country, needs to look for ways of attracting talent. Sadly, migrating to the U.S. is very hard and it can take many years. I know people who have been waiting for more than 10 years. You cannot make any life plans with that type of waiting.

geebee2• 17 years ago

What do you guys think of using patent applications as a measure of innovation? This seems common among researchers, and I can see why - it's easy to measure patents, whereas it's hard to track non-patented types of innovation (such as contributions to open source). But is this a case of looking for your keys under the lamp post because that's where the light is brightest?

smanek• 17 years ago

I don't think that patents are a particularly good proxy for innovation - I've never even tried to get patents for a lot of the most cutting-edge stuff I've worked on (that would, in my lay opinion, be worthy of being granted a patent). And we all know the anecdotes of companies that patent every trivial modification they implement on standard algorithms or data structures.

On the other hand, I do know at least one scientist who checks out all the patents granted to a competing lab to keep tabs on the sort of research they do. He claims that, in our field, patents are a far better indicator of the amount of effort a lab is expending on a topic than papers published or press releases put out. shrugs

GeneralMaximus• 17 years ago

The argument that H1-B workers are bad for America is, IMO, completely irrational. Whoever is in support of this argument is implying that people who are smart enough to get jobs in some of the top corporations[1] in America, or have made it to one of the top American universites, are bad for the country. I'll repeat that for effect: smart people are bad for America. WTF?

Let's look at the situation from my POV, just for laughs.

I'm an Indian. I've been playing with technology since I was 13. I've spent hundereds of hours of my life learning how to program and cooking up small scripts and apps for simple tasks. I've spent sleepless nights trying to get a Linux install working. I've ignored school, college and exams because I wanted to be the first one to solve some programming puzzle online. Why? Because I'm passionate about programming. I want get a job doing smart stuff for a smart employer[2], and I don't expect to get that job in India.

The argument that immigrants are hurting America implies that America should just show the finger to me and give that smart job to someone who doesn't really enjoy doing it[3] just because that guy was born in America and I was born in India.

"" Enjoy having your standard of living averaged with the Third World. ""

Reading that statement just makes me sad.

[1] : I mean a really good job at, say, Google. Nobody leaves India thinking, "I'm going to found a Web 2.0 startup in America.".

[2] : ... or start up a company. Not sure about how friendly India is to startups compared to America. There have certainly been many tech startups sprouting up in India in the past few years, but what they had to do to get where they are is still unclear.

[3] : This is not to imply that Americans are stupid. This is just a hypothetical situation.

dmolnar• 17 years ago

Responding to your footnote [2], it would be interesting to hear what obstacles are in the way of doing a start-up in India. Are they the kind of things that can be worked around once and then the effort amortized over multiple start-up companies? If so, maybe there is an opportunity for something like YC in India that guides early stage people through the hoops required to start their own companies.

braindead_in• 17 years ago

They are YC clones coming up all over here. Some of them invest, some dont. But none of them have anybody's of PG's stature behind them. So dunno whether any of them will ever succeed.

IMHO, incubators are a bit too early for the Indian ecosystem. Is very immature right now. Especially for first time entrepreneurs. Severe lack of talent and mentorship, angels are few and far between, Series A or further rounds, if you make it that far, happen at low valuations and successful exits are very rare. Add to that the very low internet penetration rate here. So focusing on the Indian market is a non starter. If you are targeting the global market, then its best to take advantage of the valley ecosystem. Eventually you'll have to have an office there if you want to succeed.

ryuio• 17 years ago

Not to counter your argument against H1B visa, but parts of your arguments are based on inaccurate prejudiced data.

1. "people who are smart enough to get jobs in some of the top corporations" - Not all H1B's work in top corporations, not all H1B's who work in top corporations do 'smart' work, not all employees of top corporations do smart work.

2. "I want get a job doing smart stuff for a smart employer[2], and I don't expect to get that job in India." - Most 'top' corporations have offices in India - where a lot of smart people do smart stuff. Not all of them do it because they dont have an option of going to the US. A lot of them do it because they are happy staying in India. Please stop twisting facts to rationalize your motivations.

nebula• 17 years ago

I broadly agree with your sentiment that H1-B workers may not be bad for America. But I disagree with your line of argument. Even if I grant your hypothesis on the smartness of H1-B workers, it doesn't necessarily mean a value addition to America, especially if there are equally smart Americans available to do the job.

There might be other value additions though: people with diverse backgrounds generally means people with different ways of looking at a challenge, which is generally a good thing if your team trying to solve hard problems.

geebee2• 17 years ago

I disagree that people who oppose the H1B visa are committed to the claim that "smart people are bad for America." Most of the arguments against the H1B are based on the notion that many of the workers are rank and file, that they are overly concentrated in a few fields, and that they are preferred to Americans due to their indentured status.

I think that your first claim "smart people" is an ambiguous argument. H1Bs do not enter all fields equally, largely because of the visa requirements and uneven licensing and regulation of these fields. My biggest concern is that if the US protects legal jobs, but issues hundred of thousands of visas to foreign nationals in engineering, then we will create circumstances where US citizens are deterred from entering engineering - not because of markets, but because of misguided regulation. A lot of people opposed to the H1B would drop this opposition if they believed that it wasn't specifically targeting engineering and technical professions. As it stands, I think that the US is (perhaps unintentionally) pursuing a policy that greatly discourages its own citizens from pursuing graduate engineering degrees and strongly encourages them to go into law or more protected fields.

Another thing I disagree with is the notion that H1Bs are a highly talented group of people across the board. This isn't a knock on H1B's - I just don't believe that there are 200K talented engineers out there for the taking. I'd say that no more than 20K are really tops, and yeah, we definitely want those folks here. But otherwise, many are rank and file run of the mill technical workers. I do know an American woman who, at age 50, was "downsized" and offered a severance and an additional 6 months of a paycheck in the condition that she assist with "knowledge transfer" to the new team of H1B's. She sat down to show one of the workers the DB schema, and another new H1B worker attended the meeting as well to learn. Wanting to learn is an admirable quality, but he didn't know anything about databases, and in fact, his degree was in soil science. To me, this was a clear case of displacement - and the loss of an opportunity to train a US citizen in a new technology. A big part of how you feel about the H1B depends on whether you think that the US is getting two hundred thousand entrepreneurial geniuses or ordinary people who are motivated and looking for a job. If it's the former, I'd love to see a visa that not only brings them into the country, but allows total freedom and autonomy once they are here (ie., the visa is awarded directly to the individual with no conditions about how and where he/she will work). If it's the latter, I don't have any real problem with that person coming here, but I see no reason why we should have special visa instead of just using the standard immigration system (which brings in well over a million immigrants a year to the US anyway).

I also take a dimmer view of population growth in California than many people do. Traffic, sprawl, housing prices, and the loss of open space has become a serious problem in California. While a small number of highly talented people would add far more than we'd lose, I don't feel the same way about massive numbers of merely above average workers. And is it such a big deal if Indians innovate in India? A lot of Indians live in poverty, and from what I read, there is a lot of entrepreneurial activity going on. I've never agreed with the notion that I should feel threatened by Indian prosperity. Why do we need to cram all the software developers in the world into San Francisco/Silicon Valley area? Nothing wrong with trade.

kailashbadu• 17 years ago

What beats me is why so many Americans are against the H1B while barely anyone bats an eyelid at the Diversity Visas.

I assume it would make more sense for the US to cut down randomly allotted Diversity Visas and lift the bar on H1B . Or perhaps put in place the friendlier High-skilled Immigration policies. Wouldn’t it be more beneficial to bring in an expert than some Tom, Dick, and Harry.

known• 17 years ago

Most of the H1B workers have colluded with sponsoring companies and the clients. And H1B workers are not creating new jobs in America.

imasr• 17 years ago

I don't think this is a matter of numbers, but about what America would like for its future. A trip to Ellis Island may help remind the bases of a nation built upon immigration.

Don't Blame H-1B Workers for Woes

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