Are Americans Losing High-Skilled Jobs to Foreigners?

“people who are smart enough no matter who they are, americans, indians, africans, canadians or zombies can get the job if they try the right way…” I’d had agreed with your statement had you added “…eventualy” to it. But the fact is when companies like GE and Microsoft lay off thousands all at once the market can’t absorb them all regardless of how smart or experienced they are, especially if they’re the ony player in a certain business sector in an area. Consider what happened when Boeing laid off over 40,000 aerospace workers, including well-educated and experienced engineers in 1971.

China graduates far more Engineers than the United States does. These Engineers are willing to work for far less wages. Success of American is not the result of smarter people or better education it is from people willing to take risks. Those people who have their “skin in the game” will do their best to succeed while those who expect “big government” to do all of the thinking do only the minimum necessary. President Obama is doing his best to vilify those who innovate and are successful! He has no clue why his “big government” approach promotes mediocrity!

Patrick Thibodeau also has an article detailing H-1b use, basically 18,000 H-1b visas a year are given to OffShore Outsourcing companies. Basically, these companies use visas to remove jobs from U.S. soil. And to have U.S. engineering workforces as much as 90% from here on a Visa.

Please check with Don Tennant on this, he has information about how visas are actually used. He is active on the InfoSys criminal investigation, where U.S. employees have been coerced to perjure themselves on Federal Documents, in order to bring tech-workers at sub-minimum wage and to avoid paying U.S. Federal Income taxes.

Companies use visas without even trying to hire local talent. For 3 years this guy’s resume hit the bit bucket, while companies readily imported workers to take away his job opportunities.

No country on this earth, except the United States, would allow such a program to exist, without having some sort of protection that qualified domestic candidates have to be interviewed and (In-good-faith) considered for the job, before allowing companies to use a Visa. Basically, the Secretary of labor has said that a U.S. citizen may be replaced by an H-1b visa holder, even if the U.S. citizen is qualified and wants the job, and that is why the H-1b visa program must be reformed. This has opened the door to allowing offshore outsourcing companies to use this visa, unquestioned, to hire only from abroad with the purpose of moving jobs overseas.

I don’t understand the connection of the last comment with H-1B visas. But as an immigration attorney I know that most of my clients who hire H-1Bs do try to hire U.S. citizens or green card holders because the cost of hiring an H-1B worker is higher and they expose themselves to a greater amount of scrutiny. Rather than complain about skilled foreign workers allegedly taking away jobs, maybe we should focus on making our graduates more competitive.

Hey, Jeff, Anna – ~18,000 of the visas issued last year were for offshore outsourcing companies.

InfoSys, has a U.S. engineering workforce that is 90% here on a visa. Most companies in the United States, that actively use visas (for example Microsoft) have a visa’d engineering workforce that is well below 50%.

Anna, how can you reconcile what you saying with the fact that some companies have U.S engineering workforces that are 90% here on visa, while most who use visa’s do not? Could it be, that contrary to what you are saying, they are actively discriminating against domestic job applicants?

And Jeff, any one engineer here on a Visa can serve as liason for possibly hundreds of jobs that are shipped offshore. So these visas can have big affect on the numbers of job available in the United States, because they facilitate the removal of whole departments overseas.

H1Bs have been displacing Americans from STEM employment since the program started in the late 1980s.

While the following is known to everybody in the tech industry, H1Bs are the “insourcing” visas used by employers to assist in the offshoring process.

“Americans as a condition of receiving their severance working PROUDLY TOGETHER in training Indian H1Bs to improve corporate profits by exporting jobs”.

That was the motto at Bank of America at Concord, CA in 2002. One can google “Kevin Flanagan”.

Since it seems that no one wants to state the obvious, I will

The RICH (top 1%) want the OTHERS (being the other 99% poor)

We have illegal immigrants in construction and manual labor along with legal immigrants for “highly skilled”, STEM work, etc coming in on a plethora of Visa programs be it H1B, OPT, B1, L1, etc.

America for all practial purposes has declared (economic) war on its own workforce.

The Republicans are NO better as they advocated the H1B program and want even more H1Bs.

If all Americans are reduced to “living like North Koreans”, “going around homeless”, “collecting foodstamps”, etc. then maybe someone will wake up and smell the coffee.

@Lizzie-That’s is exactly what I am telling unemployed American STEM workers to do. Send the resume to the White House. Call it “Occupy White House”, “Occupy White House website for a job”, etc.

I am also telling those in Congresswomen Zoe Lofgren’s Silicon Valley district to do the same thing by sending their STEM resumes to her so she can find YOU a job. After all, if we really have a job shortage (which we don’t) and our elected officials want to bring in even more foreigners then let them show us the jobs.

Too bad we can’t replace the Governmental officials with H1Bs.

Gosh, now if I could just be smart enough to figure what spot to stand in where a U.S. employer would be looking for someone with Bachelor of Science degree in Business / Information Systems, I could finally stop being a janitor making less than $20k a year and start being cool like a H1B visa holder with a better job.

You see, U.S. employers could care less about education or the product of education. All the decision-makers care about is how much value they can squeeze out of subordinates. H1B visa holders are much more compliant than U.S. citizen workers in that regard. The only employers that care about education are the one’s who are forced to. And even then, educated foreigners are more valued as they are vulnerable to the threat of being deported if they don’t comply with unreasonable demands.

.”But as an immigration attorney I know that most of my clients who hire H-1Bs do try to hire U.S. citizens or green card holders because the cost of hiring an H-1B worker is higher and they expose themselves to a greater amount of scrutiny. Rather than complain about skilled foreign workers allegedly taking away jobs, maybe we should focus on making our graduates more competitive”

Our graduates aren’t even boithering to go into STEM fields thanks to lawyers like you helping to flood the country with cheap H1B labor (which depresses rates and salaries).

In 1998 before the flood of millions of these fakers from the 3rd world flooded our economy, the US was the undisputed leader in tech, had no competition, and our economy was booming. 14 years later and we’ve lost 28 million jobs and have created competitors. The fact is these foreign workers are not performing as promised. Americans invented IT and made it boom. Millions of 3rd worlders have taken over the US tech sector and now the economy has collapsed. The myth of the brilliant Asian is just that: a myth. Where is the operating system from India anyone uses. Does everyone here know Apple CLOSED their R&D in India in 2006? 100% of Apple software is made in USA, mostly with Americans.

People who don’t perform usually get fired. Immigrants have not helped the US economy. Time to fire people who don’t perform.

Most of the people we are bringing in come here to get trained and get skills and make $ to send home. Non-resident Indians send $45 BILLION out of our economy every year. Google “PhDs for sale in Punjab” and “Asia’s rampant cheating problem”.

Also Google “Guest Workers Exposed, Chapter 3″ and see what you find.

We’ve been had folks. Under this NASSCOM-promoted guest worker visa program, and PR bought and paid for by NASSCOM, and India, Inc. we’ve been robbed. We created all these industries, but our foreign competitors are here to make sure they get our tech and industry and carry it off. Why do Americans not value what we have?

India, Inc. and China have done a great job at propagandizing the American public. We don’t need foreign workers. We need to give the tech jobs back to the Americans who created them to begin with. That is the only way to get our economy going. Importing millions of wealth siphoners whose only goal is to plunder us is not going to make our economy better. It hasn’t for the past 14 years and it won’t now.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

I agree with most of the comments made here regarding outsourcing companies. But, there is a difference between people who come here on H1b visas from india, china, through companies like infosys, Cognizant, etc , They are paid peanuts on which these companies make millions of dollars.
At the same time, you cant blame the clients who are americans looking for companies,people for less dollars who can wrap up their projects. Why can’t american citizens or whoever feels outsourcing companies are taking away jobs establish such competitive companies,market to these outsourcing companies in America.
I graduated from a american university with masters degree and i am not willing to work at the minimum wage that the outsourcing companies pay. I demand money from client justifying my skill level . At the same time, one can’t sit back in the stone age and wait for the kind of jobs he or she is looking for. They have to adapt to the latest trends in job and software market.
The entire discussion jennifer had with obama should have been about outsourcing not really H1b visas.
I agree H1b is a way of getting few people into country for cheap wages by these outsourcing companies, but think about it, all the projects, money , work being done is 90% done by some developers, engineers sitting somewhere in a different corner of the world.
I guess the point i am trying to make is there should be balance of workers here and offshore which should be provisioned by a law hopefully.

The H-1b is the outsourcing visa. Currently, there are over 1 million H1b/L1 outsourcing visa holders working in the US. Time to end these corrupt government programs.

“. So, for me, it is not wrong for us to attract smart people through the visa program”

This is wrong on so many levels. First off the H1Bs as a group are not necessarily very smart. Many get degrees from South India inferior ‘universities’. They’re not all from IIT. The paid-for Pols (including Obama, Romney and Hillary (D-Punjab)) did the bidding (and are still doing the bidding) of their corporate funders when they brought in hundreds of thousands of H1Bs during the trumped up Y2K emergency. That was the H1B beachhead.

The Indian offshoring companies like Wipro, Tata, Infosys and plenty of smaller bodyshops ply a modern indentured servant trade, billing companies $75 plus an hour and paying $15. They DO NOT SUBMIT American candidates. Why? Unemployed US engineers can’t live on $15 an hour and also do not work 80 hr weeks with no overtime as the H1Bs are often forced to do.

Daniel, I agree and understand the frustration. I understand there is lot of lobbying in every corner of white house. I understand that there are lot of people unemployed who are barely meeting their ends with jobs in a food center, grocery store or something else. But, it is important to protest about the things that are truly effecting the economy which are taxes, outsourcing. I know few people who are americans, entrepreneurs started their own companies and making a good living than most of the other people who are just waiting for jobs. I think america is a place where anything is possible. No wonder why they call it land of opportunities.
Anybody has to give it a shot instead of protesting over things that may or will not change for the next decade.

Venkat,

We have an obligation to those who p[aid the price before us to continue those principles regardless of the price or time.

Fired IT workers fight back against H-1B visa abuse
Hindi-only meetings and mass firings of experienced U.S. workers for cheaper foreign labor just as tech job demands grow. It’s an old story: Skilled IT workers in the United States are fired and replaced with low-paid overseas employees and holders of H-1B visas. That happened recently at Molina Healthcare, a company that has scored $9 billion of Medicare and Medicaid contracts in the last three years.
But the story of Molina is a bit different than the usual outsourcing horror stories we hear all too often. Workers at Molina are fighting back with a lawsuit alleging that the company and its employment contractor have discriminated again them because they are not from India and fired them after creating a hostile work environment by holding meetings in Hindi with no translators present, leaving English speakers bewildered and isolated. Also according to the complaint, they required U.S. workers to take work home on U.S. holidays but did not ask Indian workers to do the same on Indian holidays.

This is exactly how free market works. Companies will hire workers with the highest possible skills who agree to work for the lowest possible salary. They do this to be competitive and profitable. If government interferes through regulations, companies will either go out of business or hire workers in other countries. None of these options will benefit American workers.
It is possible that H1B program is abused in some instances and this can be addressed by immigration law enforcement agencies. In general, however, H1B does not reduce the number of job opportunities for American workers because hiring H1B is more expensive, less predictable and only done when no American with desired qualification applies for the job. At least this is the case in my experience.
Mr. Wedel opportunities are limited because of (i) absence of graduate degree, (ii) narrow specialization, (iii) no record of learning new skills and (iv) unwillingness to relocate. None of these can be mitigated by reducing cap on H1B. In fact, elimination of H1B program most likely will hurt engineers like Mr. Wedel because if companies cannot bring highly skilled foreign engineers to work on product design and process development, companies will have to close more fabs in USA and there will be fewer opportunities for less skilled process sustaining engineers and equipment engineers.

Unemployed American…Hindi only meetings?. That would be odd because more than 60 percent of Indians do not speak Hindi as their mother tongue and understand English much better than Hindi. While there are structural issues with the H1B program such fairy tales makes things only more difficult.

I thought america is the land of free market and capitalism… clearly that’s not working out over there…

AD..you are wrong. Only 25 percent of H1B’s are in the IT sector..the remaining are doctors, traditional engineers,professors etc.
Paul..it is impossible for all US citizens to have jobs. In a great booming economy you will still have 5 percent unemployment.

IAmNumber813: “How could an Indian lobbyist know *anything* about the personal life of Mr. Wedel?”

The answer to your question is simple. All the information on Mr. Wedel is on Linkedin. Also, I am neither Indian nor lobbyist.

IAmNumber813: “Boycott Companies That Boycott American STEM Professionals”

The “companies that boycott American STEM professionals” only exist in your fantasy world.

If you go to any company’s IT section, you will find Indians from top till bottom. its not that they are the only smart creature in world. now a days, INDIAN management in big companies is simply not hiring any non Indian. for showoff, maybe few only but they make sure such person leaves sooner. this is creating so much frustration among qualified non-Indian candidates. THIS IS TOO MUCH.

Vivek Wadhwa’s hypocrisy.

“So if you’re an employer who can hire a worker fresh out of college who is making $60,000 versus an older worker who is making $150,000, and the younger worker has skills that are fresher, who would you hire?”, asks Vivek Wadhwa.

How would Vivek Wadhwa answer this question if he needed life-saving brain surgery:

So if you’re Wadhwa who can hire a doctor fresh out of college who is making $600,000 versus an older doctor who is making $1,500,000, and the younger doctor has skills that are fresher, who would Wadhwa hire?

“The “companies that boycott American STEM professionals” only exist in your fantasy world”, says “DV”.

If you’re an American IT professional, you fully understand the feedback that Jeff previously provided with his comments:

“If you go to any company’s IT section, you will find Indians from top till bottom. its not that they are the only smart creature in world. now a days, INDIAN management in big companies is simply not hiring any non Indian. for showoff, maybe few only but they make sure such person leaves sooner. this is creating so much frustration among qualified non-Indian candidates. THIS IS TOO MUCH.”

This “fantasy world” is very real to every American IT professional in the U.S. There are *many* U.S. corporations that have 90+% (“top till bottom”) foreign Indian H-1B guest workers in their IT departments. Many Indian citizens have a religious caste system which they use as an excuse to exclude Americans from the workplace. For example, google “Molina H-1B lawsuit”.

“DV” does want the American public to know these facts.

———————————————————-
Boycott Companies That Boycott American STEM Professionals

Ok listen I work at AT&T in the research and development center in NJ. I have been in telecom for 13 years and can’t find a job out there besides for a contractor postion. In this complex there is more Indians and Chinese then Americans and over at Comcast, t-mobile,Verizon is the same thing all Indians and Chinese nobody is from the U.S.A they are all visa workers

Don’t blame foreign workers for this mess. They took what was given to me. Cost is a major factor in all this. Corporations will go where they can find cost effective solutions in order to satisy shareholders appetite for profits.
Look at grad school admission… majority of the applicants are international students.
How many Americans are willing to relocate to a different country for work? Very few. Wedel had three offers from out of state employers after that chat and he refused to take it due to his inability to relocate and he blames foreigners and H1 visa program.

Americans are not gypsys or carnival workers that can be expected to move around from place to place in search of a low paying job.

The cynic in me explains the attempt will be made to Wedel because he refuses to move.

Intel offering a job in New York is heavily H1B infested. Intel can simply offer enough money to attract a qualifed American to do the job or simply not do the job. Intel can easily send the work to India that be a better alternative.

This should be a “no brainer”. It is MUCH MORE DESIRABLE to have a job go overseas versus someone overseas coming to do the job in the US. Even better of course would be for an American to get a job in his own country.

No one wants to address the SOCIAL responsibility that comes with a job. In Europe, you accept the SOCIAL responsibility as an employer of providing health insurance or you don’t create that job. Those that don’t have a job get enough social assistance to survive.

If companies can do the majority of the work cheaply in the third world then they should export it as quickly as possible along with not bringing in more people to the US depressing wages and not while happy with the “misery loves company” philosophy then if the published unemployment rate goes to 20% then it is so bad that we start fixing this mess.

Otherwise, we are seeing a continual and now accelerating decline of the middle class.

Who builds the companies? Whose economy is the American economy? If someone wants to export his business, fine. Then tax his product to sell it in the U.S.. Back to basics. The traitors to britannia have been robbing us and selling the farm.

I have worked with H1B visa holders and many of them are neophytes whose only special skill is their willingness to work at the bottom tier of of prevailing wage scale. So called “unix” experts were asking me to help them, something I refused to do (I did offer them a copy of Forrester’s “A Passage to India” for the flight home).

Entry level Windows administrators are not people with special or unique skills. They simply work cheap with the hopes of being sponsored for a green card. The Democrats love that since 2 out of 3 of them will vote Democrat and the Republicans like it because the corporations who donate to their campaigns get cheap scab labor.

What cry-babies – Most of you actually are, I’ll tell you why b’cuz
An Indian slogs for 50-60 hours a week and yet charges only for 40 /hrs a week – 10-20 hours of free work for those multi-billion $ corporations and guess what? They know that already ;-)
A White/Black slogs for 50-60 hours a week and charges all those hours for the same price as an Indian does, you do the math. Less money + more productivity.
In my previous job, I worked for 50-60 hours and got paid only for 40 /hr a week where as every other American got paid for those extra hours .. guess who had his job secured that lasted all recession, you don’t have to be an Einstein to figure that out! In return what I got? EXPERIENCE (More time, more knowledge, more productivity)
Your obviously not part of the performance, decision making meetings so you don’t know what factors come into play…
Someday when you become a boss and you start making decisions on how to spend less money on Software resources and keeping efficient productivity in mind and when you notice that difference you’d be the first one to hire an Indian..