Oh but I forget, we can all work in the financial services industry, design software...>>
No, they've got software design covered too. The H1-B program brings 200,000 foreign workers a year into the U.S., with software work being by far the leading occupation. The high-tech industry, with the fervent backing of the entire American establishment, conjured up a phony programmer shortage, and has doubled the number of workers admitted twice in the last two years.
The workers are here in an "indentured servant" status, completely dependent on their employers for a chance at the coveted green card, typically working long hours for low pay.
Now that the high-tech industry is laying off tens of thousands, there are many articles about the plight of the foreign H1-B workers (and I sympathize with their problems), but not a peep in the press about the desperate situation of American programmers and engineers scrambling to find a job in this climate, or a suggestion that cutting back on this program might make sense.
Even before the high-tech crash increasing numbers of H1-Bs were being denied green cards and forced back to their native countries. It has become clear that the high-tech industry wants them to return to India, e.g. (half of H1-Bs are from India), where they can be hired for about 10% of what they make here, with vital experience in American business.
Dun & Bradstreet, leading a new trend, fired their American programmers, who had to train their replacements in order to get severance pay. The replacements were H1-Bs from India, who acted as liaisons with the main programming force back in India.
Oh and the high-tech industry, with a supportive press, presents this as a program to "save American jobs," it's called "The American Competitiveness Act."
For further rant, here is a "love letter" I sent to Congress, in the form of a paid ad in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call
numbersusa.com
Doc
(software engineer, retired)
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for more criticism of H1-B:
heather.cs.ucdavis.edu
(Prof. Norman Matloff, our guru)
colosseumbuilders.com
(The Programmers' Guild - John Miano, pres.) |
