Hard numbers have been released by the US government agency that screens visas for high-skilled foreign workers, and they are not pretty.
Data made available by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for the first time show that the widely made complaint about the visa program is true: a small number of IT outsourcing companies get a disproportionately high number of H-1B visas and pay below-average wages to their workers.
The H-1B program was put in the spotlight in April, when US President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order called "Buy American, Hire American" as part of his push to tighten immigration rules. Three months later, the USCIS formally disclosed the number of H1-B visas issued over the last two years by employer. Previously, the data were only available as estimates for companies petitioning for information, or by request under the Freedom of Information Act.
[...] The new data also give a more accurate picture of salaries of H-1B workers by employer. The top IT outsourcing companies on average paid much lower salaries to their workers.
Source:
https://qz.com/1041506/new-data-on-h-1b-visas-show-how-it-outsourcers-are-short-changing-workers/
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 03 2017, @06:20PM (15 children)
Trump is accidentally right on an issue. Who knew?
(Score: 3, Informative) by LoRdTAW on Thursday August 03 2017, @06:37PM (3 children)
Everyone with half a brain has known this for the past 10+ years.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Thexalon on Thursday August 03 2017, @06:46PM
Which still makes it a bit surprising that anyone in Washington DC has figured it out!
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Friday August 04 2017, @12:34AM (1 child)
"Everyone with half a brain has known this for the past 10+ years."
You might have said "past 30+ years".
Sometimes I forget that techies consider themselves to be an elite. They don't understand that they are just as replaceable as the steel workers were in the 80's, construction workers in the 00's, and various factory workers throughout the past several decades.
There used to be jobs for marginally employable people right here in Little River county. Piecework that paid very poorly, true, but it was work, and it put food on the table. Those jobs were among the first to be lost when all the textile factories moved to Africa, Asia, and elsewhere. Why pay a woman in the US thirty dollars a day, when you can pay a Malaysian woman to do the same work for thirty dollar a month, or maybe even per year?
We're all in this together. The shittiest job in the nation is part of the economy. Those women doing that piecework in the sweatshop in Ashdown Arkansas were buying American made goods in 1990. Today, they have no jobs, so they aren't buying much of anything that food stamps don't cover.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday August 04 2017, @11:17AM
Profound change is upon us. Seems likely that in a few decades, maybe a century, AI and robots will be better than the best of us at everything. It will be the robot apocalypse, the technological singularity. In the past, we've been able to move on to work that machines could not do as well as a person, or at all. Today, one of the manifestations of this is the big push to persuade everyone who can to get a college education. Manual labor has been in a long decline, while college leads to the jobs that still exist and pay well because brainless robots can't do them. But in the near future, there may well be no jobs at all for people.
In the 19th century, John Henry won a pointless battle in a hopeless war. He ought to have changed jobs. This 20th century outsourcing fight is just another battle in this larger war, in which ultimately there won't be other jobs to change to. True, this outsourcing is about replacing people with cheaper people, not robots. That's only because robots can't do that work. Yet. But when they can, the people are gone.
We're going to have to make some big decisions. Obviously we can't let a few elites monopolize production of critical goods, or we'll end up deprived while surrounded by the means to provide plenty for all. We must also figure out where we go next. Lives of idleness, 100% of our time for leisure? Can we do that without becoming bored or dissatisfied that life has no purpose? Maybe we'd degenerate into worse idiocy than we have now, without any challenge in life to keep us sharp. Or do we slide into high stakes competition, even war, fighting our peers to take more than a fair share?
(Score: 5, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Thursday August 03 2017, @07:26PM (8 children)
Trump is accidentally right on an issue. Who knew?
When you take both sides of an issue, one of them will end up being correct.
'I'm changing': Donald Trump casually announces policy flip-flop at debate [businessinsider.com]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday August 03 2017, @09:20PM (2 children)
Trump is like the weather: If you're not happy about him, wait a while... He'll get there.
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 03 2017, @09:30PM (1 child)
Don't know. Maybe there was a reason they called him racist. He has been pretty clear on it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 04 2017, @08:49AM
He also has close Jewish relatives, a Slavic wife and a 5yr/old granddaughter learning the language and singing native nursery rhymes from her Chinese nanny.
Compared to other people his age, he's a liberal hippy socialist.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday August 04 2017, @12:44AM (4 children)
"When you take both sides of an issue, one of them will end up being correct."
I disagree. Take any issue, and there are AT LEAST two sides to it. Usually, there are a lot more than two sides, or two views. Immigration is a good example. Why would there only be two sides? It isn't black and white, right or wrong, left or right. There are many reasons to encourage immigration, and at least as many reasons to control immigration. Various ethnic, racial, and religious groups want to control for their own purposes, political groups want to control for theirs.
Take any two views on immigration, and there is no reason to suppose that one or the other is "correct".
My opinion is, immigration should be controlled to protect American citizens - you know, taxpayers, people who are already here, and contribute to our way of life. Immigration is good, in that it can improve our lives. But, immigration is bad, in that corporations use it to exploit both the immigrants, as well as American citizens.
Two sides? You need to look around some more.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 04 2017, @02:37AM (3 children)
Ah, yes, and we can easily observe Trump demonstrating that there are more than two viewpoints as he moves freely from supporting one to the other, often three or four different ones in the same day.
(Score: 2, Redundant) by Runaway1956 on Friday August 04 2017, @01:47PM (2 children)
Question: How many times was Hillary able to "pivot" in one day?
Answer: As many as it took!
Trump, Hillary, 'what difference at this point does it make?'
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday August 04 2017, @05:00PM (1 child)
Trump, Hillary, 'what difference at this point does it make?'
One of them is in charge of the Executive Branch and the other isn't. That's a bit of a difference.
Question: How many time can you pivot a discussion about the current administration onto Hillary?
Answer: Every single one!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday August 04 2017, @11:36PM
Nope, the discussion isn't focused on Hillary - I was merely responding to AC's veiled suggestion that the alternative might have been better.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 03 2017, @08:14PM (1 child)
It's such a shame that Hillary didn't win. Wasserman Schultz could be a Secretary of Something and she would have brought along her awesome IT staff.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 03 2017, @09:56PM
So few words to sum up exactly why this county's in the shape it's in. If we truly want to MAGA, we need to stop excusing kang's incompetence because it's ever so slightly less worse than Kodos's.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Thursday August 03 2017, @11:07PM (1 child)
From what I see in the links of TFA, the hires by the likes of Google, Apple etc. are pretty good for IT workers.
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 04 2017, @01:29AM
They are also a fraction of the IT world in America. They are the 'big boys' in money and influence. They are hardly the epicenter of the tech world. It is things like Disney just jacking everyone in IT to replace them with H1B because they are cheap asses. THAT is more common.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday August 04 2017, @02:26AM
So now that the H-1B data is public and what is up is obvious. What is Trump or government going to do about it?
And mean do by the actual people with power. Not what should or people wish is done.
These data are obviously incompatible with "Buy American, Hire American".