Moira Herbst, Business Week, February 24, 2009
More fuel was added to the controversy surrounding the use of H-1B visas with the release of government data showing that Indian outsourcing firms dominated the list of top recipients of H-1B visas for high-skilled workers in 2008. At No. 5, Microsoft (MSFT) was the top U.S. tech company on the list.
It was the second straight year that the Indian firms led the list of visa petition approvals.
The data, compiled by the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Service (USCIS), are for fiscal year 2008, which ended Sept. 20. The H-1B visa program is currently capped at 65,000 per year, with another 20,000 set aside for advanced-degree graduates of U.S. universities.
Program Under Fire
Critics say the data show that the H-1B visa program is dampening U.S. wages and facilitating outsourcing, a critical problem as the U.S. unemployment rate continues to climb. The H-1B program, which started in 1990, was set up to allow U.S. companies to import the best and brightest in technology, engineering, and other fields when such workers are in short supply domestically. Critics say the program is displacing Americans by bringing in workers from overseas who are paid less.
Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), who have been among the program’s chief critics, say they plan to reintroduce legislation to change the program by the beginning of April. That bill would require all companies getting H-1B visas to try to hire Americans first and place restrictions on companies that attempt to use H-1B visas for outsourcing. {snip}
Four India-based companies topped the list: Infosys Technologies (INFY) was the top recipient on the USCIS list, receiving approval for 4,559 visas—the same number it received in 2007. Next was Wipro (WIT) which received approval for 2,678 H-1B visas in 2008, up from 2,567 in 2007.
Microsoft Is No. 5
{snip}
Microsoft was fifth on the list, winning approval for 1,018 visas, 59 more than it got in 2007. Among other U.S. companies, Google (GOOG) received 248 visas and Lehman Brothers, which failed late last year, received 130 visas.
In fiscal year 2007, six of the top 10 visa recipients were based in India; two others among the top 10, Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTSH) and UST Global, are headquartered in the U.S. but have most of their operations in India.
Visas Used Differently
There are differences between U.S. tech companies and Indian outsourcers in the way they use H-1B visa workers. U.S. companies like Microsoft and Google often try to keep visa workers in the country and help them become American citizens, while the outsourcers typically employ visa workers in the U.S. on a temporary basis. {snip}
Microsoft continues to advocate for more H-1B visas, citing a shortage of highly skilled workers who can fill jobs like software designer. {snip}
While controversy surrounding the program has been building for years, the dire state of the U.S. employment market has heightened the tone of the debate, and lawmakers have followed suit. The $787 billion federal stimulus bill Congress approved earlier this month imposed restrictions on H-1B use by financial-services firms that receive bailout funds.
At the same time, federal agencies are stepping up enforcement efforts. Earlier this month, federal agents said they had arrested 11 people in six states in a crackdown on H-1B visa fraud.
Recession May Temper Demand
USCIS will begin taking H-1B applications for the next fiscal year on April 1 and will distribute the new visas on Oct. 1. Applications have been exceeding the visa cap in the last few years, but demand this year may be lower because of the financial crisis and recession.
Original article
(Posted on February 27, 2009)
Comments
http://www.redherring.com/Home/25882
A DC “think tank” about technology claims the U.S. is slipping in tech innovation. I wanted to hold off with an opinion until I found out more about this think tank, for D.C. think tanks are usually packing ulterior agendas. Turns out I didn’t have to do any research, the article at the end says it all — they want more h-1b visas.
This “think tank” is probably funded by big tech firms that want cheap labor. This “study” probably uses flawed methodologies and distorted statistics, to arrive at a faulty conclusion, all because they’re a front for greed.
Check out this article:
http://www.magic-city-news.com/Guest_Column_89/What_is_the_Macaca_Effect10562.shtml
By Liz Davidson
And the “macaca effect” is pejorative used by people in high tech to refer to East Indians driving down the wages of American and British workers. In many fields (computer programming, engineering, medicine, nursing, accounting, etc.) companies are faking labor shortages to acquire an H1B visa and hire East Indians, with the net effect of driving down the wages of American and British employees. Thus, one hears disgruntled employees talking about the “macaca effect.”
Paul Craig Roberts, assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury in the Reagan administration, has written:
“Offshoring has reduced the availability of good-paying jobs for middle-class Americans. It is not only manufacturing jobs that are being moved abroad, but software-engineering jobs, IT jobs, and a wide range of other professional occupations. Consequently, the ladders of upward mobility are being dismantled. Many of the professional jobs that remain are being filled with foreigners, especially engineers and IT professionals from India, who are brought in on work visas and paid less by U.S. employers, who falsely claim worker shortages.”
High-tech insider Tom Stern says:
“Indians are generally nice people. But when your company starts hiring them. You know the end is near. It’s like the early stages of cancer. Within one year, all of our wages were driven down by 45%. Big business is bringing over Indians for the sole purpose of pushing down American salaries.”
Many complain that this may be the end of Western economies, as they are slowly transformed into Third World economies. Journalist Brian Watson comments:
“It is no coincidence that Jean Raspail, author of the conservative classic Camp of the Saints, selected East Indians to lead the invasion of the West. Indians are best equipped to infiltrate and bring down Western countries - and they can do it with an obsequious smile.”
“A DC “think tank” about technology claims the U.S. is slipping in tech innovation.”
When England was inventing the industrial world, did it need H1B Indians for its innovation? Does Japan which is now leading the world in technology need H1B Indians for innovation. If H1B Indians are much brighter than Whites why is it that in computing competitions they lag behind Northern Europeans and East Asians?
http://icpc.baylor.edu/past/default.htm http://icpc.baylor.edu/past/icpc2005/Finals/Standings.html http://icpc.baylor.edu/icpc/Finals/Standings2006.html http://icpc.baylor.edu/past/icpc2007/Finals/Results-2007/standings-2007.htm
Look how badly the famed Indian Institute of Technology (the top science institutes of India) do in these competitions.http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=MemberProfile&cr=10574855&tab=alg http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=AlgoRank
This is Battyone from France who topped the topcoder marathon map.
http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=MemberProfile&cr=7504863&tab=long http://www.topcoder.com/longcontest/stats/?module=CoderRank
Also check the International Olympiad in Informaticshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Olympiad_in_Informatics
Corporate greed takes only half of blame for offshoring and importation of cheap labor.
The other half of the blame goes to American public education system that has been under control of “Liberals”, neo-socialists, and other Leftists for several decades now.
The quality of “education” (reducation ot indoctrination seems like a more adequate descriptor here) is often so low that many college graduates demonstrate high school level deficiencies.
Which leaves many US companies desperately seeking qualified workers overseas.
It would be naive to expect that politicizing public education would not impact negatively effectiveness of teaching math and science in the US. It does, which makes the Chinese and the Indians look like stellars of education when it comes to such sought after skills as computer programming and engineering.
One of hundreds nails that the Left has driven into American economy’s coffin.
After working at a foreign company with good IT support (though it was based overseas), my job went overseas as well.
I’m now working for an American firm with servers down daily, systems crashing, programs failing…I have to deal with the public with a system slow as molasses and not working half the time. It’s painfully embarrassing and honestly I’d never do business myself with this company after seeing how unprofessionally it’s run.
H-1B visas or no, this company would do well to get some talent that knows how to actually make things run smoothly.
Foreign H-1B workers do not have a record of improving the bottom-line of corporations.
Indeed, some of the most screwed-up IT departments I’ve seen have been dominated by H-1B imports.
The most successful versions of Windows were the versions from the last century, before Microsoft started relying on so many H-1Bs.
H-1B imported workers drive down the wages and working condition of U.S. citizen workers.
The Millions of H-1B workers who have flooded into the country have, and will continue to decimate the hopes, prospects, and wages of U.S. IT, Engineering and nursing workers, and would clear out US citizens from all IT science and medical curricula at American universities since the job prospects are made dismal due to the oversupply of eager foreign student green-card seekers willing to work at lower wages.
The same sentiment of workers is breaking out across Britain. They have had all they stand with salary depression and losing their jobs because of the importation of foreign workers.
Check out this video to see some interviews of the strikers: http://tinyurl.com/dhmvnz
Microsoft is a company that lives on by luck. The luck gained from their MS-DOS deal with IBM, many many years ago. Most of the their products are marginal, at best, but due to their dominant market position, and the unwillingness of people to try anything better, they coast along. I don’t know about the H-1B Indians; from using their products, one would think they hired mostly blacks.
So American jobs went overseas, and foreigners were brought in to take the jobs formerly done by Americans. All of this with the approval of congress.
Thanks for the links, Jasper. If one goes to http://www.topcoder.com/tc and looks at the top 10 individuals (listed on the right hand side of the page), 8 of the top 10 are White guys, 2 of them are Chinese. No Indians.
For decades, Native Born White American tax payers subsidized all aspects of the development of computer technology and the subsidary technologies that made computers possible. All this, before computers and the internet became very profitable.
Bill Gates’s billions really do not belog to him. When you consider the massive tax payer subsidies that went into creating the pc and the internet..and…the fact that Gates has access to an unlimited supply of asian scab labor..it is obvious that a great crime has been committed….BEHIND EVERY GREAT FORTUNE IS A GREAT CRIME.
Gates should have all of his wealth confiscated and sent packing to the Sudan or Chad. This would be his punishement for his years of thievery.
No one should be allowed to acquire billions. It gives these characters enormous powers of life and death over the rest of us. These huge fortunes has given the Bill Gates of the planet the power of a demi-god. The current economic meltdown is a direct consequence of extreme wealth concentration in America. As the late Justice Brandies once wrote:Extreme wealth concentration is incompatible with Democracy. Extreme wealth concentration allows a very small number people to control economic policy. Obviously, the superrich are not looking out for the interests of millionms of Native Born White Americans.
The extreme wealth concentration that has taken place in America since 1973-eight years after the passage of the 1965 Immigration Refrom Act-is at the heart of the current economic meltdown. The number one reason for starvation in the word is the lack of money to buy food. Indian economist Amytra Sen recieved the Nobel Proze for establishing this fact. We may start to see starvation in America withn the next year.
America may be ready for a White Nationalist revolt-sooner than anyone would imagine. Be prepared!!!
“The quality of “education” (reducation ot indoctrination seems like a more adequate descriptor here) is often so low that many college graduates demonstrate high school level deficiencies.”
Absolute garbage. Obviously the level of education has dropped in this country since the 1960’s, but there is no shortage of qualified high level American graduates in IT fields.
“Which leaves many US companies desperately seeking qualified workers overseas.”
Thanks for the laugh.
I have also heard that the quality of work of the Asians is not up to par. Many only used their education to emigrate.
When the dot-com boom collapsed, many of the Indians and Chinese who came to Canada to work in Silicon Valley North got out of their professions, and, content with their new citizenships, sought alternative work as shopkeepers, accountants and landlords.
Microsoft is a company that lives on by luck. The luck gained from their MS-DOS deal with IBM, many many years ago. Most of the their products are marginal, at best, but due to their dominant market position, and the unwillingness of people to try anything better, they coast along. I don’t know about the H-1B Indians; from using their products, one would think they hired mostly blacks.
Amen!
If it hadn’t been for our out dated copy and patent rite laws and the obvious need for compatibility amongst computer OS’s, Microsoft would have disappeared long ago.
Jupiter:
I mostly agree with your basic contention that Bill Gates is more fluff than stuff. He was to the manor born (Preston Gates & Ellis — hooked into the Bush family — look it up), he had a few coding skills but some great business instincts, plus a lot of luck. What’s more, most of his billions are not liquid assets, as you seem to think, but the number of MSFT shares he owns multiplied by the de jure stock price. If he tried to sell all of his shares at once, MSFT’s price would tumble, meaning that most of his billions are an illusion.
But I don’t see how Bill Gates having billions in liquid assets has anything to do with the lack of food in India. The lack of food in India has to do with too much procreation and low IQ.
Question Diversity
Last week there was a front page story in the NYT about White families standing on line waiting for food handouts at the local food pantry. These are White families where the father is working but can no longer earn enough money to pat for food.
This is a trend that was noticed by the mainstream media five years ago. There was a documented casesof Native Born White of two teenage girls whose father could no longer earn enough money to afford enough food. These two sisters reported that all they thought about all day in school was food. In other worlds, they were starving. They couldn’t even get enough food from the foods pantry because the demand on the local food bank was enormous.
Anytra Sen’s research on this issue is impecable. In the context of America, we can state categorically:the globalization of labor markets US economy-through post 1965 LEGAL IMMIGRATION policy and outsourcing-is already causing starvation in White America. I predict that the scale of Native Born White starvation within the borders of America will increase. Throw in the escalating property tax-across the nation-it is inevitable.
But I don’t see how Bill Gates having billions in liquid assets has anything to do with the lack of food in India. The lack of food in India has to do with too much procreation and low IQ.
The percieved shortage of food in India is just that, PERCEIVED! India is an incredibly rich continent and able to produce plenty of food, but the muslims in the north are murdering farmers as is their wont to do. They (muslims) have been doing the same in the Philippines, Thailand, Burma and done already in Indonesia.
How about we outsource congress?
I suggest we do away with Congress altogether before they do away with us.
J:
And I agree. However, I still don’t see how that applies to your argument that starving Indians are Bill Gates’s fault. Now these Americans having hard times might well be Bill Gates’s fault, and people like Bill Gates, squeezing the American working middle class dry with the open borders-free trade pincher movement. And I also agree that it’s going to get worse if the free trade and open borders isn’t jettisoned.
There is hardly anything that white Americans can do that isn’t able to be done either by someone else somewhere else or someone else brought here for peanuts. It will only serve to convert America into a third world country like Brazil and Los Angeles County, with plutocrats on the hill and everyone else living in cardboard boxes down in the valley.
“Thanks for the links, Jasper. If one goes to http://www.topcoder.com/tc and looks at the top 10 individuals (listed on the right hand side of the page), 8 of the top 10 are White guys, 2 of them are Chinese. No Indians. “
Jupiter, while I despise what Gates and people like him have done he actually had quite a bit more than “some” coding skills and actually had a reputation as a genius when it came to writing compilers. He’s very smart, but unfortunately lacks racial awareness and is as brainwashed and greedy as most other CEO’s and too many American whites in general. Microsoft became a powerhouse because its hold on the operating system allowed it enough cash to buy out companies that would produce innovative, successful software products.
I agree with A Reader….get rid of the dang liberals/commies out of our school system, out of our government, our of our churches out of our country period. It is time for us to protest, in vast numbers to rid our nation of these creeps once and for all. Stop ignoring our laws of the land and do what the real AMERICANS WANT. How any of them got into power is beyond belief. Time to vote them all OUT…and NOW before it is too late. Lord have mercy on our nation!
It makes absolutely no sense when the economy is like it is to bring in foreign workers. However, the greed of big business knows no bounds. All big business wants is cheap labor and our conservative politicians want to cater to big business which they are in bed with. All of our liberal politicians want are more mexican votes to keep their power. Policians in both parties along with big business only care about themselves and are perfectly willing to sell the USA and its’ people down the river. Unless the american people stand up, this country will be destroyed.
“Jupiter, while I despise what Gates and people like him have done he actually had quite a bit more than “some” coding skills and actually had a reputation as a genius when it came to writing compilers. He’s very smart, but unfortunately lacks racial awareness and is as brainwashed and greedy as most other CEO’s and too many American whites in general. Microsoft became a powerhouse because its hold on the operating system allowed it enough cash to buy out companies that would produce innovative, successful software products.”
Hello sir I am a Korean guy majoring in technology and management at Ryerson University in Toronto. It is called ITM at Ryerson, and it just means management and technology.
and I agree with the Italicized parts and I would like to simply comment on the underlined part. Keep in mind I am not disputing your words. I am still learning and growing, I am not done with my undergraduate yet, I do not have much experience in the real world yet, therefore you might be more knowledgeable than I am.
I doubt sir William Gates wrote one line of code in their operating system products… that’s not his job. And I also remember reading the Gates generations are known for their brilliant business skills… not computer skills. Unfortunately, that’s what ultimately wins nowadays. Better advertisements always triumphs over better quality nowadays.
The italicized part, I totally agree. In Canada, the best engineering school is recognized as University of Waterloo. Microsoft came over to U Waterloo once and pledged 1 million dollar commitment to the engineering school at U Waterloo
(in return for the engineering school at U Waterloo agreeing to teach its students Microsoft technology over competing technology, and teach its students with Microsoft products instead of competing products.)
and within the next 48 hours, the U Waterloo website got flooded with its students vowing to never ever use Microsoft products for the rest of their lives, and harshly blamed their school for being slave to money and dishonest to its students.
I also remember reading he and his wife made 1 billion dollar donation for minority scholarships.
One of my best TAs told me (he is anti-Microsoft too) he has a great respect for the developers at Microsoft.. but he does hate its decision makers and business people. (and the “decision makers” includes you-know-who)
… what else do I remember reading about Microsoft… when Win2k came out, there were 20,000 bugs and one of the core developers of Win2K quit his job at Microsoft because he was so ashamed to release such a product for the public. When he quit, he wrote a letter to Steve and in the letter he said he is seriously considering working for Apple and would love to switch to Apple products as soon as possible.
The above is simply what I remember reading or someone telling me in the past. (The U Waterloo incident, I actually witnessed it) I am not disputing your words. I still have miles to learn.
If you search around the Internet you will find a few very funny and interesting stories about that company… what young people should learn from Microsoft is their business skills, not technology skills!!
Posted by SKIP at 7:57 PM on February 28
Whatever. Most H-IB’s aren’t Muslims, besides. BTW, it’s funny that you don’t take issue with the contention that Indians have a generally low IQ (around 80).
Once the fact sinks in that blood must be shed in order to turn things around we will be on the right track…
I have worked with many Indian businesses over the years and they all have one thing in common. They actively discriminate in favour of their own. This explains the fact that the Indian companies are the largest H-1B recipients.
Capitalism has to be managed as it trends toward oligarchy. ANd it’s worth managing as it is the single best model for long term sustainable profitability (if properly managed). We have not managed capitalism allowing a few elitists to leverage our government to get leglislation and trade agreements allowing them to bypass the American worker and form a global oligarchy to maximize their short term profits the country be damned. After they got all they could get they then began raiding our children and grandchildren’s futures with these phony stimulus and bailouts that are nothing more than a way to keep making money off a country they are moving toward cardiac arrest.
All you people do is whine. Whats up? Cant compete in the Free Market? Capitalism scary for you white national socialists lefties?
Sorry Anonymous. Gates is indeed very smart, and was good at code, far, far beyond the average programmer. At age 14 he had already converted an Intel processor (the old 8008) into a traffic monitor for the State of Washington among other clients. He also scored 800 on the math portion of the SAT - way before the test was “re-centered” and “re-weighted”, so he’s probably got some math skills. Actually Bill Gates did have a very good reputation for compilers before the days of Microsoft. You are probably thinking of later on when Microsoft had taken off, but the original versions of the operating system created by he and Allen et al had Gates all over it. Gates is a world class jerk, but he is a smart jerk as the “Tech Guy” pointed out.
“All you people do is whine. Whats up? Cant compete in the Free Market? Capitalism scary for you white national socialists lefties?”
If you are calling us “lefties” and you consider yourself on the “right” then that scares me a great deal. You can’t be a true conservative if you are anti-white, and your post kind of hints at that even if you didn’t flat out admit it.
“All you people do is whine. Whats up? Cant compete in the Free Market? Capitalism scary for you white national socialists lefties?”
WHAT FREE MARKET??? a free market is not bailed out, subsidized or controlled by the government which is in favor of “minorities” owning everything.
The truth is Whites didn’t invent computers. The
The Computer was invented by a Jew by the name of
The Atomic Bomb- Robert Oppenheimer and other Jewish
The Neutron Bomb- Sam Cohen (American Jew)
The Hydrogen Bomb- Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam
These are only a small example. Also Jews are not
Please don’t take credit for what my people
Posted by Anonymous at 5:28 PM on March 2 “All you people do is whine. Whats up? Cant compete in the Free Market? Capitalism scary for you white national socialists lefties?”
All of my life I kept hearing about the benefits of a truly free market and the benefits of globalisation. The real push towards this started in the 1980s with the modernisation of the Asian economies. The employers and big business get to enjoy international labor arbitrage and increased profits. I am still looking for the benefits of globalisation for the 90% non-priveleged class aside from cheap, badly made Chinese goods. In return, there has been a wholesale gutting of infrastructure and the elimination of the well-paid blue collar workforce.
Why can’t the common people take advantage of the international market in the same way that corporations do? Have you considered how much you could save if you bought medicines from Mexico or DVDs/CDs from Russia? Why is it a crime when you want to benefit with the same process that corporations use? When big business talks about the free market, they mean the privatization of profits and the socialization of costs. There is no reason for Microsoft to source cheaper foreign labor when there are doubtless thousands of white people who would happily take the job if it were offered to them.
“Courtney,
I am confused. I didn’t even go into those issues. So why are you directing that post at me? I am assuming you are on here to cause problems, so I am not going to give you the glory of watching me write a long drawn out post trying to dispute what you are saying, when your post was pointless to begin with.
And just for the record, white gentiles are in fact responsible for most scientific accomplishments. That can’t be disputed. And the Jews who live among us who DO accomplish certain wonders always look quite white to me for some reason.
“These are only a small example. Also Jews are not
Fine. No one said Jews are.
Ashkenaz are smart, but don’t try to pass this off as superiority of the “Semetic” race. Semites, with the mere exception of the hybrid Ashkenaz, are an eye sore. Where are your Semetic brothers? Hmm? Blowing each other to bits, worrying about nonsensical celestial revelations, and marrying cousins off.
Semites/Arabs are clearly a step down from Europeans.
I have an idea how to fight the H-1Bs; as I have previously posted, Lasalle Bank had posted Infosys, Inc. labor condition applications at their 540 W. Madison Chicago building.
According to the DOL, the LCAs:
http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/FactSheet62/whdfs62M.htm
” Union notice: If there is a collective bargaining representative for the occupation in which the H-1B worker will be employed, the employer must provide a copy of the LCA (or the information therein) to the collective bargaining representative; or
” Worksite notice: If there is no bargaining representative, the employer must either:
” Post a copy of the LCA (or the information therein) at two conspicuous
locations at the place of employment for 10 days; or
” Electronically provide a copy of the LCA (or the information therein) to
all workers at the place of employment for 10 days.
Now, NOBODY knows more about the work that needs to be done than the guy who’s actually doing the work. I propose that you take each LCA, make a copy of each one, and send it to all your Federal elected representatives along with a letter pointing out that the work is presently being done by American citizens, and that American citizens from whatever local Universities in your area are perfectly qualified to do tech work. This should be especially useful when Infosys utilises the generic “Technical Analyst” job description. Point out that American graduates are qualified to do math intensive jobs by virtue of their degrees in CS, Math, Chem, Physics, EE or whatever. If enough people do this for the business that they are working at, there is NO WAY the Infosys can claim that Americans are unqualified. Remember, you are merely trying to call attention to the continual LIE that Americans cannot do tech work. Imagine if huge piles of these LCAs are sent in from companies like Intel or BoA. Right now, all the representatives ever hear about are the PLANTED H-1B stories about how businesses cannot optain “qualified” people. This is your chance to bypass big business’ news media propaganda apparatus.
