Why are we importing so many STEM graduates from India via H-1B?
Right. This should end immediately. No foreigner should be brought here to replace a fully competent American.
good question
“Why are we importing so many STEM graduates from India via H-1B?”
In hopes of finding another Gary Kildall ??
Short answer, companies pay them less.
Because Apple/Facebook/Alphabet make $40,000 more a year hiring a software engineer from the Indian Institute of technology rather then Stanford or Caltech and they can't run off and start their own company after two years using the expertize they have aquired.
Why are we importing so many STEM graduates from India via H-1B?
Of course this liberal writer will not bring that reality/issue up.
Because they're cheaper than American STEM grads.
That is the tip of the iceberg. Biomedical science is extremely heavy with non-Americans, including a ton from China. Further, these groups tend to stick together and support each other in peer review for grants, etc., and it has become a mafia of sorts. My solution? A limit for the percentage of non-Americans receiving federal grant funding at any institution at any given time needs to be imposed. These are dollars from American taxpayers, and should not be given with impunity to non-citizens.
Biomedical science, and the development of drugs, devices, new therapies, etc. has been an area in which the US has led the world. It should have been nurtured as a big exportable positive in the US portfolio. Instead, we've brought in tons of non-citizens - forcing a glut on the market, we've tried over and over again politically to ruin our medical system, and we subsidize the medical systems of other nations - as citizens of those nations pay less for American discoveries, drugs, devices, etc. than do American citizens.
This is a major area that needs to be addressed.
Because of HR policies.
Because they're being brought here at 1/3 to 1/2 the cost of an American worker. Problem is, the India workers are highly specialized vs. American workers that have multiple specialties / highly skilled generalists.
So that initial "savings" the beancounters think they're getting vis a vis displacing American workers for H-1B's disappears pretty quickly when they have to bring in three, four, five of them to make up for the skills of one American worker.
I'm NOT making these numbers up. I've been through this drill twice now, am on my third with my current employer. It's an ugly thing to watch.
That is the key question.
Honestly, it distorts the cultural norms in the STEM workplace. You might be a plain-old-American, but you still might find you need to wear your Bangalore hat on the job.
Not just importing STEM graduates. We are giving student visas to Indians and Chinese to come here and study STEM, at which point they would get an H1B at graduation, or do research work at universities as low-paid help. All of which cripples our native STEM pool.