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For the new political order taking shape in Washington, however, H-1Bs aren't quite welcome. Amid promises of sweeping changes to immigration policy, President-elect Donald Trump and his choice for attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), have tabbed the program for a major overhaul, and might even scrap it altogether. In the House, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is on the same wavelength.
Trump has described H-1Bs as a "cheap labor program" subject to "widespread, rampant" abuse. Sessions co-sponsored legislation last year with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) to effectively gut the program; Issa, a congressman with Trump's ear, released a statement Wednesday saying he was reintroducing similar legislation called the Protect and Grow American Jobs Act.
Sessions and Issa's legislation primarily targets large outsourcing companies, such as Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services, that receive the vast majority of H-1B visas and use them to deploy workers to American companies seeking to cut costs. In 2015, the top 10 recipients of H-1B visas were outsourcing firms. As recently as 2013, the Justice Department, which Sessions stands to take over, settled with Infosys for $34 million in a visa fraud case.
If they were smart they'd change the program to maximize brain-drain from other countries by making H-1B a fast-track to citizenship instead of the 6+ year wait for a green-card that it now is. Bring in the best of them rather than the cheapest of them and let them compete on equal footing rather than the indentured servitude of the current H-1B program.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday January 11 2017, @07:53PM
It entirely depends on what industry you're in, what your skills/qualifications/education are, and where you live, plus of course where you're willing to relocate to.
If you're a skilled developer living in Silicon Valley, then hell no; you can get a new job in a few days easily.
If you're a high school graduate with no real job skills living in Bumfuck, Alabama, then yes, you're going to have a hard time finding a job.
For these people who lost their jobs 8 years ago and have been unemployed ever since, where do they live and what do they do? Have they tried moving elsewhere for work? One thing I see a lot is people who absolutely refuse to move for work; they whine that the one company that employed people in their shitty little town folded up, but they refuse to go anywhere else because their family lives there and they really just don't want to leave. If you move to the economically prosperous metro areas (there's a bunch of them), there's lots of work available. But if your qualifications are bad, it probably won't pay well, the cost of living is higher, so you're probably going to need to get some roommates and live in a bad section of town.
Personally, I'm constantly bombarded by emails from recruiters who found some ancient version of my resume and still want to submit me for some contract job in various places around the country. No, I don't really want to take a 6-month contract in Erie PA, but if I were really desperate, that option is available to me and I'll probably easily get at a bare minimum of $50/hour for that. Lately I've been seeing a bunch of emails for automotive infotainment software jobs in Michigan. I wish these jobs offered remote work because some of the work sounds really interesting to me, but I really don't want to live in Michigan. But as I said before, if I were to become really desperate, options like this are available.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday January 12 2017, @09:42AM
With real-estate costs blown through the roof by cheap loans, while house negotiation fees are still the same fixed percentage of the selling price, a couple of trades will consume your equity damned fast.
I knew I was geolocking myself in when I bought a house.
If I was ever going to own the thing outright, I knew I had to avoid losing all my equity to the myriad of hands that will come to me, palms up, expecting payment for the services of checking off some tick-box on some form that the banks would require.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday January 12 2017, @05:09PM
Yep, home ownership now has gotten to be a much less attainable thing, unless you're in a position where you're making good money and (very importantly) you're extremely stable. That basically leaves out engineering and software industries. In the places where those jobs are so plentiful that "geolocking" (nice term, I like it) yourself in isn't a problem, the real estate prices are some of the highest on the planet (e.g. Silicon Valley) so they're probably not attainable by engineers anyway.