This is what is going to happen if you shutdown H1B completely. Companies will open huge offices in India/China and IT jobs will go there permanently. Looks back into history and see what happened to manufacturing industry. What will that that mean for US economy in the short run? 1. Less taxes - an average guy on H1B pays at least 2 times more tax than an average American (please don't mix illegals with H1B). 2. Housing market, retail sale etc will drop further. People working on those jobs will be spending in their country. List goes on... So please stop complaining about H1B and do something constructive. Cheers,
Let "foreign" companies hire them and "prosper". H1-Bs are not about the best talent, they are about the best bang for your buck. The better your margins look, the more money you get as a bonus. The computer industry is as short sighted as the finance industry, governed by self-serving managers, it's just that the finance industry fell first. And no, people don't want unlimited pensions. You're kidding if you think this is a fair game, it's far from it. The family living in Ohio doesn't have much choice, they can barely move to New Jersey, that alone would be very hard. But then to move to China that is a growing market? That's simply impossible. But a company can extremely easily stop selling in Ohio and start selling in China. They pit the world's workers against each other but only sell to the richest markets. Buy from the poor, sell to the rich. It's not a fair playing ground at all. America became the #1 superpower through protectionism, look it up. It's crazy to think the 300 million americans will prosper by letting foreigners take all their jobs.
If you took a look into the finances of these operations, you would find out that it is mostly a scam, just like the H-1B visas were a scam on many levels. At the end of the day, when you call your credit card company, you get much worse service yet still pay the same fees. When you outsource legal, financial or tech work, you get longer turnarounds, more mistakes & harder communication. So is this being done because you get the same or better quality work for less or because you getting lower quality for less money? It's pretty obvious what the answer is, unless you are one of the people whose compensation depends on the offshoring operations. Yes, let's not forget how certain executives & middle managers get bonuses by making sure offshoring stays in place and how they can show paper profits, hence increasing their bonus. Just like H-1B visas were brought in to replace senior tech guys so that the company could avoid honoring pensions for them by getting rid of them just before their contract came up. Company savings, a piece of which went to the executives bottom line. The actual quality of the work by H-1B & performance is not of any consideration. Let the customers deal with it. You can also look at IBM, who earns a nice profit by basically going to companies and offshoring their operations. That is essentially their only profit center. You really think they are doing a fair analysis or pushing it through no matter what?
Look I'm not telling you what I THINK OR WHAT MY OPINION IS. I'm telling you this is the result from my business.
The whole (there are not enough engineers so let's use H-1B) is a scam. The phenomenon is very similar to people saying illegals take jobs americans don't want. It is not that people don't want to become engineers, they frequently don't find it rewarding GIVEN THE SALARY they will receive. The average starting salary for a BS graduate(non civil) engineer is roughly $53,000. Civil engineers are the joke of the engineering profession and get roughly $48,000 (a BS in accounting, while infintely easier to get, gets you $45,000) If BS in engineering got you $150,000 starting salary you will see "the best and the brightest" channeling their efforts there instead of dreaming of paper pushing (MBA), or ambulance chasing. Every year, law schools are flooded with applications not because that many people are in love with american legal system or because they adore the socratic method, but because lawyering is one of the few careers that promise 6 figure potential (7 if you make partner at an excellent law firm). Now the dirty secret here is that elite starting jobs are reserved for graduates of top 10/top 14 law schools and only for those who get good grades in those law schools. The rest may not have a job at all or get one for $70,000/year and have $100,000+ in student loans Engineering is not worth it from the effort/salary point of view. That is tragic but that is the truth. American corporation have no desire to pay a wage proportionate to the difficulty of the major and you have what you have. Squeeze everything from the worker and give it to CEOs. This way of life leads to oblivion.
This post is closer to the truth than most our nation would want to admit. That 53k starting salary is for east/west coast engineer. In the south.mid-west that figure is closer 45k or less. The only way to make 100k is to whore yourself out every couple of years to find the highest bidder and play them against each other. That assumes that you have done something notable have an ability to grow business, are willing to put in 50 - 60 hours a week as the norm, get an education beyond a BS, and actively promote yourself through professional societies and industry functions. Even if you hit a home run on all of that you are topped out around 110 - 120 and are looking at the backside of 50. Maybe if you get to the executive level of a company you hit 180 - 200 but by then your job is your wife/husband, kids, friends, and family. Basically as an engineer you do the work but get half the pay with an order of magnitude lower upside potential as compared to the business types. And the business folks got to party in school while the engineers study. Come to think of it the business folks party after work while the engineers work at home. If someone had told me that I would have to work this hard and never have a chance of making any real money I probably would have thought harder about going the engineering route.
people don't get into engineering for the same reason i didn't get into medicine: it's just not interesting to me, income be damned. i told friends that, as a software engineer with only a bachelor's degree, they can start at $75k and within 5 years go above 100k, but that didn't persuade ANY of them to go into the field. they prefer to stay in some field that makes 40-50k. they just aren't interested in it. so to say that higher pay would entice more people, is short-sighted, garbage reasoning. everyone knows that dentists and physicans make the highest income, yet why aren't there 50 million people trying to get into those fields???
Dude you are so ignorant it is not even funny. Doctors need 4 years medical school (uber expensive) then several years residency(where you work like a dog with little sleep and are almost always on call and receive like 30-40K salary) and then you get something you simply adore called MALPRACTICE INSURANCE. Doctors face insane stress and a ton in student loans. They get to become "real" doctors around age 30 (give or take a few) Now compare this to law school. 3 years, no science, no anatomy, no residency and you are a professional at 25-26. Do you honestly believe that all the people applying to US law schools want to be there because of total devotion to US legal system? In engineering, it is hard to do much if anything with just a bachelor degree. Number of people with the intellectual capacity to be an engineer or a doctor is limited so everyone can't be an engineer or a doctor. I was referring to people who went into "other" careers because of pay/effort ratio or did not get into medical field because of stress/student loans etc. What are you smoking? BS Software engineers starting at 75k?
But quantity does not equal QUALITY. I'd hire one very sharp attorney for $500/hr vs. 5 attorneys at $50/hr.
You do know that 65% of IBM revenues came from outside USA? http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/23930.wss