What? http://www.theatlantic.com/business...et-for-young-american-born-scientists/273377/ "On Wednesday, I argued that the job market for new science Ph.D.'s has been deteriorating for about a decade. In brief, we keep graduating more doctoral students in subjects like engineering, biology, computer science, and mathematics, and progressively fewer of them seem to be finding work by the time they have a diploma. The overwhelming majority these bright minds probably land good jobs eventually, but the chilly hiring environment seems to undercut the idea the U.S. is suffering from an overall shortage of scientists." "Here's what I do think is fair to conclude, though: While American-born Ph.D.'s seem to have it better than immigrants when it comes to their job prospects, they don't necessarily have it good. If companies were desperate to snap up competent scientists, these graphs would all look vastly different." From your article "The typical H-1B worker merely has ordinary skills, skills that are no better than American workers who are currently unemployed or underemployed," said Hira."
That is correct, most of the H1B Visas are NOT high skilled jobs hence the shortage. We CAN'T fill most of the high tech jobs whether it be with local or foreign talent. There is a very "limited" amount of H1B visas hence why they are trying to pass a bill in congress to INCREASE it hence the "controversy".
The problem with the US today is that our schools/colleges/universities are producing "dumb and dumber" type of students. US students, unfortunately, always end up at the bottom of every international Math, Reading and Science test, on a worldwide scale, while students from Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Macao and Japan are almost always at the top. No wonder more and more US companies are recruiting their talents.... elsewhere.
No, the controversy is the qualified programmer in the original post who lost out on a job to an H1-B, IBM getting fined for showing preference to foreign workers, etc. Money talks, bullshit walks. Look at what corporations do. Not what pr flacks say.
One data point. On the aggregate, the US is NOT producing high skilled workers. You can look at any university in the country and see the breakdown in degrees. So many kids going school just to "get" a degree. So many go to school perhaps intending to study engineering and then fail out and change their major to something general like business administration. The numbers just aren't there. And it's going to get worse. Why? Because our public school systems are getting worse. Drop out rates are increasing and we are actually graduating kids from high school who can't even read and write at the high school level meanwhile in Asia the kids can speak 4 languages. I'm sorry, but it's going to get much worse.
Hiring a worker on H1-B with a Master's degree in Computer Science and a good few years experience means paying them comparable wages and paying for their H1-B processing. The reason employers hire H1-B workers is cause that is where the large talent pool is from, not because it is cheaper. It is possible that there are cheap H1-B workers too, but a good number of H1-B workers are the top computer science talent in this country, with Masters in CS from Stanford, Cornell, MIT and CMU.
Dude, you're confused. The OP didn't say anything about 20k versus 80k. What the OP did was post an article. You want facts? What facts in the article do you not accept, and why?
A quick google search of "stem degree no job" vastly increases the sample size. http://m.nationalreview.com/article/378334/what-stem-shortage-steven-camarota
It's precisely because it's cheaper to hire them that companies hire them, nothing else, please stop saying otherwise. For instance, you think a company like Renault (the famous French auto maker) would delocalise and create an assembly line in Tangiers (Morocco) because they like the nice weather over there? No. It's all about cost and profit, nothing else.
The two events can be independent you know. One can have a STEM degree without qualifying for a particular STEM job.