The Machiavellian Side of the H-1B Program

[DrYB/C]

1. "Immigration attorneys from Cohen & Grigsby explains how they assist employers in running classified ads with the goal of NOT finding any qualified applicants, and the steps they go through to disqualify even the most qualified Americans in order to secure green cards for H-1b workers...."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU

Surely this dastardly behavior necessitated an over-reliance on credit, for some individuals, to meet the costs of living.

How wonderful that various institutional members of the finance community stepped right in to provide the appropriate bubbles to make up for the “skilled-worker shortage!”

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Spoon boy: Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Spoon boy: There is no spoon.
Neo: There is no spoon?
Spoon boy: Then you'll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.”

--as quoted from The Matrix

[Guest]

Re: The Machiavellian Side of the H-1B Program

“Spoon boy: Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth. Neo: What truth? Spoon boy: There is no spoon. Neo: There is no spoon? Spoon boy: Then you'll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.” --as quoted from The Matrix

DrYB/C - please accept this comment regarding the MATRIX as in no way directed at you personally, nor towards your comments - it's just a remark about the cited films -

The Matrix Trilogy were the crappiest trilogy of labored movies I ever watched. Terminally dull, flaccid script, gaudy overlabored visual effects to make up for empty scripting. And the pseudo-oracular quotes were arch, labored, way too many, and trite. Nonetheless they have been elevated to join the pantheon of American pop culture - give it a few more years and they will gain the patina of respectability that comes with being folded into the entire American 'cultural heritage' and be viewed as quite respectable cultural artifacts.

[WDCRob]

Re: The Machiavellian Side of the H-1B Program

The first one was pretty good. The 2nd was so bad I didn't see the 3rd. Sequels as a general rule suck, and this was certainly not an exception.

[Guest]

Re: The Machiavellian Side of the H-1B Program

It doesn't take a PhD in economics to figure out that with the global economy, in a world where the people of some nations are willing to do increasingly more sophisticated work for 1/10th what an American worker makes doing the same thing, that the end result is a lowered standard of living for Americans and a higher standard of living elsewhere.

If they don't import the workers, they'll export the offices. Globalism is national suicide for wage earners in high income nations. Better at least initially for stockholders, but eventually even that fails as their customers will no longer be able to afford their services/goods. Now that it's affecting formerly "immune" workers who thought their language skills kept them above the fray, it will be interesting to see how perceptions change.

Given enough time, there will eventually be no place for the american worker to run and hide. If a guy with an advanced degree in India can be had for $20K a year, the American HS grad is not going to make $50K much longer. When we had a quasi-monopoly on skilled workers, it could be rationalized. But eventually we run out of jobs for ourselves that others can't do cheaper. Only the "friction" of distance and language kept it from accelerating. In the era of the internet, the majority of jobs can be done by foreigners for less.

Then toss in the "hands-on" jobs that are being done by immigrants (doctors, lawyers, engineers, landscapers, etc) and there is only a tiny niche' left.

Expect US wages to plummet in real terms, recession or not. The silver lining in the dollar's demise is that it may cause many manufacturers to move HERE. Ultimately though, returning to self-sufficiency including major gains in manufacturing is the only path I see to keeping people well employed.

I would like to see a cost-benefit analysis of globalism that takes into account things like the huge defense budget required to protect trading partners and sea lanes, the cost of lowered wages and the social programs needed to offset unemployment, and things like that.

[c1ue]

Re: The Machiavellian Side of the H-1B Program

Bruce,

I've carped since I started on iTulip on the paucity of research done to examine exactly how much overall cost savings is reaped by offshoring - from both the corporate and the national/local government standpoint.

My thesis remains that corporations who offshore are simply disintermediating the entire chain of payments from the US worker through the local economy.

Since then I've substituted as a proxy the total of US consumer spending ($10T or so) vs. the US trade deficit ($763.3B) vs. the percentage of non-US products in Wal-Mart (roughly 82%).

Thus since $763.3B of deficit = $8.2T of spending, this means each dollar of offshored pay = $9.8 of equivalent local economic loss.

The delta between the pay of the US vs. offshore is thus basically absorbed by offshoring corporation with a little tossed off to the final product consumer.

Nice trade eh?

[World Traveler]

Re: The Machiavellian Side of the H-1B Program

I feel like I've had a ring-side seat in watching and experiencing the whole H1B and offshoring story line of the last 30 years. I often find myself wondering where the jobs will be, for U.S. citizens/professionals in the future, between the 2 trends of H1B and offshoring.

I started working in Information Technology in 1978, after completing an M.B.A. in MIS. Spent my entire work life since in one large corporation till I retired last year. When I started in 1978, all the IT employees in this corp's U.S. affiliate were U.S.-based and U.S. citizens. The wages were good and we were treated well. Lots of attention paid to career paths and challenging assignments.

Around 1994 or so, we started to see lots of contract programmers who had been recruited in Asia (Philipines and India primarily) by a 3rd party IT contracting firm our corp used and who paid them what seemed to us to be fairly low wages.

In the 2000's, the pace picked up in 2 ways. When I retired in 2007, half the IT employees on my floor were foreign-born, brought over here on H1B visas and employeed on a contract basis or former H1B visa holders now in U.S. long enough to have a green card.

Also, in 2001 this corporation began a series of major offshoring projects for formerly U.S.-based IT, Financial Services and Accounting, Procurement, Benefits and Payroll, and other support functions for the core businesses of U.S. affiliate. For example, accounting support for U.S. business processes is now located in South America, support center for processing U.S. Payables is now in Asia, the benefits center for U.S.-based employees is now in South America, etc., etc..

For several years, there were rolling layoffs of U.S. employees in these "non-core" business functions as the jobs were moved overseas. These are professional jobs - accountants, financial analysts, buyers, highly skilled I.T. personnel, mid-level managers, etc.

Where does it end is the question I find myself asking. Where will the professional jobs in the future be for the upcoming generation.

One thing I can say for sure, there is no shortage of U.S. citizens with appropriate IT skills, it's now much more difficult to get a job in this field, that's why enrollment in Computer Science is down at the universities.

As the video posted above showed, the ads are often written to be so specific it's hard to find one U.S. citizen person with the long laundrey list of all the highly technical, very specific skills in the ad, skills can take considerable time to master.

And that's the point, not to find a U.S. citizen, so an H1B visa holder can be hired. This game has been going on at least 10 years.

When you hear about an "IT shortage", it's spin by employers like Microsoft who want their pick of low-wage employees who are too stressed out by job insecurity to ask for much.

[Guest]

Re: The Machiavellian Side of the H-1B Program

I might add that what most globalism proponents also fail to account for is the fact that these US corporations derive value from the US citizen-taxpayer in ways other than the already-expensive US military providing the muscle to prevent their assets being stolen. The reason a US corporation can even function and invest and grow is that it has our taxpayer/citizen paid system of courts, laws, and police backing it up. Also a political system which respects their property rights by not seizing their assets.

Without these taxpayer funded advantages, they'd probably not even exist. Let them go get incorporated in Zimbabwe and rely on their court system to protect their contracts and their goverment to respect their property rights.

So, for that reason, one could make the argument that US workers ARE in fact "owed" jobs by US companies.

But beside this point is the fact that there is no such thing as a labor shortage if one pays a sufficient wage. At $8/hour you're unlikely to work on a garbage truck. But for $30/hour you'd likely find plenty of good old lazy Americans willing to do it. (I saw a video online about the fact that in Denmark it's a high paying job and they have no problem finding people to do it as a career)

The sad fact is globalism is fine for those with capital, living off investments, but terrible for the wage earner in a relatively high income nation.

I'd like to know what the mean wage is worldwide. Because in a few generations that may well be what our average wage is here. It's just the economy acheiving equilibrium.

[c1ue]

Re: The Machiavellian Side of the H-1B Program

Until Wobbly-esque labor terrorists start sabotaging the trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic fiber optic cables, there is no stopping the offshoring phenomenon for all jobs which don't require a physical person.

The jobs then dependent on the overall economy - i.e. services such as plumbing, etc will be next. Then retailing. etc etc.

The only OTHER way is a return to the past policies of high import barriers, with the fillip of 'minimum employment' in the US. Much in fact as you might see in France.

But I wouldn't hold your breath.

Times just aren't hard enough.