Untold Stories: The American Workers Replaced by the H-1B Visa Program

Center for Immigration Studies ^ | 04 May 2019 | Matthew Sussis

[zeestephen]

Eleven Americans explain how Big Tech’s cheap foreign labor cost them their livelihoods.

[LeoWindhorse]

I encounter these H1-B visa recipients and their families every day

[LadyShires]

“The truth is that it’s just cheap labor for corporations who line the pockets of Congress.”

Who’d have thought it possible....

[Innovative]

The American workers need to learn useful skills to compete.

[bgill]

That’s another thing Trump should end.

[zeestephen]

The linked article does not mention the specific details of the OPT “work visa.”

(1) OPT is a thinly camouflaged expansion of the H-1B program.

(2) OPT is actually a part of the standard student visa for foreign students. It allows foreign STEM graduates from USA colleges to stay and work in the USA for 36 months after graduation.

(3) OPT is subsidized by USA taxpayers. OPT workers, and their employers, do not pay Social Security or Medicare taxes, even though OPT workers are competing directly against home grown American STEM graduates for the same jobs.

(4) When Trump came into office, the number of OPT workers was below 250,000. Trump has increased OPT workers to more than 300,000.

[spintreebob]

The American workers need to learn useful skills to compete.

Amen. Don’t blame H1b for our failed public K-PHD uneducation system.

[a fool in paradise]

Are you saying that the low wage H1B workers have more and better skills?

[minnesota_bound]

My past job went to India in 2003. For me I got lucky and got a much better paying job. The ISP company I use to work for went from 5 million customers to 900,000 (probably much smaller) then got bought out a few years ago.

[yoe]

Makes sense to me!

[a fool in paradise]

Excuse me but there is a generation of experienced degreed professionals unable to get work in the tech industry and have had to accept getting paid what entry level got in 1994. This is in 2019 with 20+ years of industry experience and engineering degrees.

shove your poli sci feminist school degree talk up your bum. you don’t know what has happened to white collar Americans.

[\/\/ayne]

Often the H1-B college and work history is a fraud.

[wally_bert]

I’ve run into plenty of supposedly educated 4 year degree in the IT field that know very little about day to day operations.

[wally_bert]

I’ve run into plenty of supposedly educated 4 year degree in the IT field that know very little about day to day operations.

[a fool in paradise]

Companies get bought out for contracts these days. They don’t try to compete on products, they just buy out the competition and take their clients.

[Yossarian]

The American workers need to learn useful skills to compete.

We DID - we WENT TO EXPENSIVE COLLEGES FOR LONG DIFFICULT PROGRAMS.

Of course, those same colleges ALSO brought in foreign sudents by the boatload, as they have to pay extra tuition.

And then the tech companies get them for pennies on the dollar and abusive hours, because they're dependent on these companies to sponsor their Green Card application.

So not only are American engineers faced with difficulty getting jobs, once they GET the job their faced with diminished wages and horrible hours, as they must work the same hours as the H1Bs.

I've "been there done that" for 20+ years in the Silicon Valley.

[zeestephen]

Re: The American workers need to learn useful skills to compete.

Two problems with that excuse.

(1) More than half of home grown American STEM graduates are not working in a job that requires a STEM degree.

(2) The Center for Immigration Studies has published results from multiple standardized tests that show that home grown American STEM graduates have higher math and engineering scores than foreign STEM graduates.

[spintreebob]

Indians are willing to come to Atlanta. Large IT firm is having trouble finding competent people. They have the degree. They have years in the field.

But they can’t data model. They can’t normalize data. They are unqualified to play the Sesame Street game: Two of these things are alike; one is not.

[Aevery_Freeman]

<>"The American workers need to learn useful skills to compete."<>

Or work dirt cheap like the Indian coders did.

[imardmd1]

You've got this partly right, but you miss the rest. These foreign students who will stay under less rewarding circumstances displace not only citizens in technical jobs, ESPECIALLY those requiring advanced degrees, BUT THEY ALSO PERSUADE CAPABLE YOUNG ADULT CITIZENS THAT THEIR FUTURE IS NOT IN THE TECHNICAL AREAS, even in teaching these specialties in high schools, colleges, or universities.

The foreigners displace young citizens even out of jobs working on university research grants in order to partly or wholly earn their way under cost-conscious faculty, and in the very areas of research and application for which they should be seeking corporate employment.

And as a very productive researcher and innovator, I've had my hat handed to me by both well-known global corporations and universities. The hard times come for lab-oriented degreed workers when the product lines they invented and made ready for the market are given over to new people whose salaries and benefits are much cheaper to maintain, when the economy turns down, and heads start to tumble.