[CLUE-Talk] Proposed HR 2688 -- Wondering about opinions on H-1B visas

[Jed S. Baer]

On Wed, 23 Jul 2003 07:48:09 -0600
"Rita Gibson" <rgibson57 at earthlink.net> wrote:

> Hello everyone:
> 
> I don't want to spark some controversial political debate here, but
> assuming a lot of you on this list are IT workers, I am curious as to
> your opinions on the proposal to end the H-1B visa program.

...

> I had personally encountered these type of workers several years ago at
> my first "big" IT job. I worried at the time about people I had gone to
> school with who were excited about working in IT and wondering at the
> time why we were not training US workers (college students or
> adults-looking-for-another-career for that matter) for these jobs,
> instead why people from other countries were better trained and educated
> than Americans. I still don't have the answer to that question. (The
> tech bubble burst as I was in the midst of retraining for a chance at
> one of those unfilled tech jobs.)
> 
> Anyone out there with a perspective from the employer's, American
> worker's, or visa-holder's POV? I am mulling writing to my various
> representatives on this topic.

This issue has been thrashed mercilessly on a couple other mailing lists
I'm on -- most recently RMIUG-jobtalk. The RMIUG-jobtalk list doesn't have
a public archive, AFAICT, so I can't link to that discussion.

I think it's hard to say how many IT workers have lost their jobs
primarily because of H1B workers. I've been unemployed for a long time,
and I feel no animosity. I've worked with H1B people, and have yet to find
one who wasn't a great asset. One of them, for example, is the author of
one of the best books I've ever encountered on administering an Oracle
database -- I learned some great stuff from him. (He now has permanent
resident status, and has his own company.)

The H1Bs I know about didn't work for less than U.S. citizens.

Whether employers are abusing the program, I don't know. If you want to
read the primary material on the "anti" side of the debate, do a google
search for a guy named Matloff.

While I think that debate is an essential component of our representative
system of goverment (we're a republic, not a democracy), much of the H1B
conversation goes beyond that, into raving.

There is also a more important issue than H1B, if one wants to talk about
displacement of U.S. jobs -- that of overseas outsourcing. H1B workers
live and spend money here. Overseas workers don't.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=68&ncid=68&e=1&u=/nyt/20030722/ts_nyt/ibmexploresshiftofwhitecollarjobsoverseas

An IBM spokesman mentioned the expection that about 3 million US IT jobs
will be outsourced overseas by 2015.

Truthfully, I don't know quite what to think about it, but I do sometimes
wonder whether I should "throw in the towel" and get out of the IT
business. People in many industries have had to go through transitions
over the course of time. Think of the industrial revolution, or the export
of textile jobs from the U.S. to overseas. The IT sector isn't immune.

jed
-- 
... it is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday
facilitate a police state. -- Bruce Schneier