Posted on 04/15/2015 1:40:11 PM PDT by GraceG
Reading all these sotries about people whining how fast food jobs should be paying 15 bucks an hour got me thinking about all the people we hire from other countries when we have all these well educated native born people struggling to find work...
What does H1B really mean?
H1B = Hire 1 Barista
So for every foreign worker we bring in on a H1B, we end up having to "Hire One Barista" down the street at starbucks...
The H1B program is directly tied to the number of colleg students having to take a lower paying job handing out coffee to foreign workers at the starbucks across the road from where the H1B workers are working.
H1B "Hire 1 Barista"
Well, it’s going to continue because the GOP is happily taking bribes from the Chamber of Commerce to make sure that foreigners get those jobs, while the Democrats are worrying about how to give the rest of our jobs to illegals.
As in "Ubamacare only allows me to hire one boy"
Excellent!
I’m stealing that description of H1B :)
H1B’s are just cheap labor for the tech companies. They are supposed to “try” o ire an American first but most only pretend to try. Sure cure for the H1B problem ... levy an annual surcharge for each H1B equal to twice their salary.
If the companies need them so bad they won’t hesitate to pay this surcharge
Looks like the H1B visa program is going to go into overdrive no matter who gets elected. Nobody represents the people anymore. We have no voice.
The crock is that these visa are given out FREE! No tariffs and almost unlimited immigration has destroyed this country.
Agreed. If they was really such a imbalance in supply and demand for these position then the salary would be going through the roof.
You could just make the H1B holders free to change jobs. They wouldn’t work at a place long if they were underpaid.
This may be the case in some industries, though perhaps these industries have a lot of companies who abuse the system.
My office recently hired a new engineer through the H1B visa program. In our case we treated him as an "American" worker for all intents and purposes -- mainly because: (1) he was a recent graduate of a local engineering school right here in the U.S.; and (2) he had done an internship with one of our biggest clients, and came highly recommended.
What I found so interesting -- at least in our case -- is that hiring the H1B visa worker actually costs MORE than hiring an American. For one thing, my company must pick up the legal costs of sponsoring him if/when he applies for a green card. Secondly, labor regulations (I don't know if these are state or Federal regulations) prohibit us from paying him less than the industry average for his professional classification.
And who checks up on that? NOBODY.
In fact, we do get checked on this regularly, though not necessarily by state or Federal labor regulators. For many of our projects our books are subject to periodic review by outside auditors on a regular basis.
So ... why hire an H1B ... and don’t tell me that there aren’t any Americans out there to fill the job. BTW I have had the privilege of training my H1B replacement more than once in the tech industry. I became friendly with one and asked on the sly what they were paying him ... it was 1/3 of what I as getting.
In Dallaa, I routinely ran into programmers and IT professionals selling stuff at Frys and Best Buy because they had been replaced with H1B workers.
After 35 years in the industry, I can say that I have a great many friends in that same industry. Most have had the same experience.
How many hours per week does this guy work? The way companies game the system is as follows: A female Indian programmer told me the Mother Ship put her husband on salary, worked him 70-80 hours a week, but only billed the client for 40.
There are two side to this. American companies want to take Americans to work in foreign countries, too, and we rely on them giving work permits to our citizens. I have worked in New Zealand, Indonesia, Pakistan, Korea, Oman, Qatar, Canada, and Saudi Arabia. Every one of those countries had to grant me a work visa equivalent to our H1B.
Why do companies like to bring their long-time employees to foreign operations? Simple, they know the company’s ropes. As time goes by and local talent is developed, they slowly displace the imported managers.
The point being that work visas are useful, valid instruments of policy that reciprocate the consideration we expect from others.
Of course, like anything else, abuse is possible and must be guarded against. There must be a valid bona fide need for the foreign worker.
H1B visas for foreign workers for a US based company would appear to me to be almost impossible to justify. I would like to know what percentage of these visas are granted to people going to work for US companies before I would condemn the entire program.
Well, the diplomatic considerations I hadn’t thought of, but as for abuse, that certainly is happening.
At my work, we manage rental property, and there are several where IT firms are renting out half the apartments for their workers they bring in from China or South Asia. The firm guarantees the lease, so we don’t need to worry about credit checks, and some of the companies even pay the rent for these guys too, so they must be getting a good deal on wages compared to American workers in order to afford that.
And remember under CommieCare the companies don’t have to provide the health insurance although many companies do setup HMOs with local veterinary clinics.
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