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Debugging Indian Computer Programmers
from the alle-menschen-sind-auslaender-fast-ueberall dept.
Life as an immigrant programmer is full of culture shocks both minor and major (would you know the first time around how to dress when flying from Bombay to Pittsburgh via Los Angeles, in winter?), and much of the book is devoted to outlining some of the shocks that Indian programmers face, even in immigrant-happy America. Buying a car to rely on for daily transport -- on American highways, no less -- is just one of the things many programmers like Sivakumar have to face shortly after arriving; he explains that one of the reasons certain makes of car (chiefly Japanese) are popular among newly arrived H1-B workers is that their expected resale value is high. When your employment is at the mercy of a short-term visa, and the cooperation of a sponsoring company, similar logic informs all kinds of decisions.
The "Did I steal your job?" in the title is the real question raised by this book: Sivakumar rallies evidence that the answer is a resounding No. Despite the vitriol raised by H1-B visa holders (and the H1-B program itself), he argues that the immigrant workers drawing ire from many Americans (who see the immigrants as encroaching unfairly on "their" jobs) not only contribute real money -- billions of dollars -- to the U.S. economy, but are one of the reasons that the U.S. high-tech industry is as successful as it is and has been.
He asks pointedly "[W]hy do some modern Americans (of course, a small percentage) want only those immigrant programmers and IT workers who came during recent times to go back home, yet tend to forget that their parents or grandparents were immigrants too?"Sivakumar's argument has three pillars. First, that high-tech immigrants (including H1-B holders) are one of the key ingredients in the continuing success of many American companies. These aren't foreign workers who simply happen to land jobs in the U.S.; each H1-B visa holder has at least 16 years (often more) of formal education, and an American company sponsoring his or her application. (That education usually comes "free" to U.S. taxpayers, he notes, not at the expense of public school budgets or student loan subsidies.) Sivakumar contrasts both the generous immigrant policies and world-leading software industry of the U.S. with the policies and software industries of Europe, which tend to be more restrictive and less successful, respectively.
The second part of his argument is that H1-B immigrants, though motivated by a desire to improve their own lives, end up contributing disproportionately to the U.S. economy -- something Americans should be happy about, not resentful. Indian programmers in particular end up spending much of their salary on necessary (and less necessary) material goods both for their personal use and as socially obligated gifts to family members, increasing the retail take of U.S. companies from AT&T to the local car dealer.
More significantly, H1-B workers, as legal immigrants to the U.S., have the dubious privilege of paying the same taxes as other Americans (and more than most), with a far smaller chance of reaping their benefits. Most are single, and send no children to the U.S. schools they help underwrite, and most will never collect on the Social Security system or medical-care systems their payroll taxes help prop up.
Third, Sivakumar points out that Indian immigrants are often among the inventive and entrepreneurial class which provides jobs in the first place, citing -- besides a litany of Indian company founders and inventors -- a Berkeley study showing that in the boom years of the 1990s, "ethnic Chinese and Indian immigrants started nearly 25% of the high-tech start-ups in [Silicon] Valley." That's nearly 3000 companies, employing on the order of 100,000 people. The market capitalization of Indian-founded or -run U.S.-based companies is nearly half a trillion dollars. Job creation is an economic complex that requires funding and expertise, and Indian and other immigrants contribute to -- not subtract from -- the creation of jobs for other Americans.
Sivakumar is polite, almost apologetic at times -- and more optimistic than some of the things he's experienced as a hired-gun programmer might lead you to expect. Though he maintains that the book is not an autobiography, many of the experiences in it are things he himself encountered; some of them are funny, others either frightening or simply sad. In particular, he makes note of one place that programmers and other tech workers are likely to run into "racially abusive" hostility -- namely, Internet message boards. As he puts it,
"You meet these people every day of your life, and they probably would smile at you at your workplace or even would greet you. They show their real face in those discussion forums. These online discussion forums are great tools for those who want to hide themselves from the public but would like to spew their venom."
Given the hostility faced online and (less often) in real life, sometimes Sivakumar's politeness goes what struck me as too far; I was surprised to read his conciliatory advice to Indians treated suspiciously on the basis of their skin color or accent in the panic-prone modern America to "please accept it," rather than to bristle. That might be pragmatic and sensible advice, but America will be a better place when it's unnecessary.
This book makes no pretense of being an authoritative work on cultural differences, but Sivakumar does delve into a few of the gaps between American and Indian aesthetics, habits, and mores. Sexually explicit entertainment is far more accessible in the U.S. than in much of the world, and in India in particular; he labels the usually short-lived exploration by some new immigrants of the seedier side of American entertainment "The X-Rated Movie Syndrome." On a different note, vegetarian food isn't easy to find in company cafeterias, which means for many Indian programmers one of many small barriers to acceptance by their coworkers, because they can't simply order off the menu at a company cafeteria.Even trivial aspects of daily life are sometimes imbued with cultural meaning: after being advised by a friend to "walk smart" (that is, confidently, not quietly or humbly) along company corridors, he writes "It sounded true to me, and I was prepared for my next American adventure. 'Alright, I am going to walk straight and smart as of tomorrow!' I tried recently only to have my colleagues comment that I walk like President Bush."
Despite a casual style and sometimes distracting use of jargon ("Dude" is funnier in the title than when it appears several times in the text), the content of Debugging is serious. Sivakumar and other immigrant programmers are not abstractions or hypotheticals: they're designing processors, programming systems of all scales, and bringing the results of high-end education worldwide to places like Palo Alto, New York and Austin. They're also facing an anti-immigrant backlash that ranges from merely spiteful (the usual) to actually violent (thankfully uncommon). Sivakumar's experience in the U.S. isn't wholly negative -- he's quick to point out otherwise -- but includes cavalier treatment from co-workers and landlords, and even harassment from a flag-waving driver gesturing obscenely (and blocking his car) on the streets of New Jersey. That's the sort of experience most light-skinned, native-born Americans are lucky not to face on a daily basis.
Losing friends and neighbors to the terror attacks of 2001 isn't something that happened only to American citizens, and Sivakumar was touched by both; five residents of his New Jersey apartment complex were killed by those attacks, along with the wife of a friend. In this and other aspects of life in America, he justifiably considers himself a part of the U.S. high-tech economy, not a mere visitor, and uses the second person when talking about the American software industry specifically. If you're an American by birth, realize that Sivakumar is an American by choice (even if he has ties and loyalties to both India and Sri Lanka besides), whatever his visa status says.
This is also a funny book, in parts -- in particular, Sivakumar's experiences ordering lunch in an American company cafeteria made me laugh. (Pronouncing "milk" with an emphasis on the "l" rather than the "i" is a matter of spoken convention, after all, not a rule of nature -- but a short "i" will get you a carton of milk faster in an American company cafeteria). The author's graceful levity is welcome, and it helps to defuse the natural anger I felt at some of the odious treatment he describes.
The writing is understandable throughout, but Sivakumar is clearly a programmer writing, rather than a writer who happens to also be a programmer; much of the text is awkwardly phrased, and dotted with avoidable errors in spelling or diction. (One that stuck out: in more than one place, the name of fellow H1-B immigrant Linus Torvalds is rendered "Linus Travolds.") The chronology of Sivakumar's own story is not always clear, either; he mentions offhandedly at one point early on that "[b]y the way, my wife had come from India and joined me by then"; a clearer timeline would help in unifying the anecdotes which make up much of the book.
Sivakumar is also guilty in places of wielding the same kind of broad brush he sees being used to paint Indian programmers; he provides cultural sketches of several other groups that may be meant merely as casual observations rather than any sort of final word, but end up doing the same disservice as any other stereotype. (Of his first trip through customs, he says "That was the first time I ever talked to an African American. I never understood their accent even in the movies." This kind of glib generalization doesn't advance the cause of the book; often "they" are hard to characterize so blithely, no matter which "they" is at issue.)
However, take these complaints with a grain of salt: it would be easy to concentrate on the less-than-smooth delivery -- it just wouldn't be smart. If you let the presentation distract you too much from the content, you'll miss what the book's about, which is that "there is another side to the H1-B factor." While the book has some distracting flaws, they don't subtract from its logical conclusion: immigrant programmers in the U.S. are simply human beings trying to better themselves in what's supposed to be a free society, and adding immensely to U.S. prosperity -- and they're doing so despite hostility on several fronts. If you want to understand the not-so-simple phenomenon of Indian programmers in America, don't overlook that message.
You can purchase Debugging Indian Computer Programmers: Dude, Did I Steal Your Job? directly from Divine Tree. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Immigrants (Score:5, Insightful)
> He asks pointedly "[W]hy do some modern Americans (of course, a small
> percentage) want only those immigrant programmers and IT workers who came
> during recent times to go back home, yet tend to forget that their parents or
> grandparents were immigrants too?"
Because nobody resents new immigrants like old immigrants.
Oh, there are exceptions of course but unfortunately they seem to prove the rule.
(my first first post posted)
Re:Immigrants (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember, not too long after 9/11, reading an interview with a kid (19 years old, something like that) who was arrested as part of a mob that vandalized a mosque. The reporter asked him why he did it, and he replied, "I'm a real American. I hate Arabs and I always have."
What was striking about this was that the kid's last name was "Mc" something. Apparently his family never bothered to tell him the stories about the reception his ancestors got when they first stepped off the boat
Parent
Re:Immigrants (Score:5, Interesting)
"after 9/11, reading an interview with a kid (19 years old, something like that) who was arrested as part of a mob that vandalized a mosque."
Better still, when Timothy McVeigh killed hundreds in the bombing of the federal building in OK, where were the mobs running around threatening white males of Christian background?
"Real" American? Unless your family was hunting buffalo here thousands of years ago, you're just a newbie tourist.
---
Cthulhu holiday songs [cthulhulives.org], for the gift that keeps on loathing.
Parent
Re:Immigrants (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I am an American (Score:4, Insightful)
The only people with the right to take pride in being Americans are immigrants. For the majority of the rest of us Americans, the ones who are citizens by birth, the most we can lay claim to is that we are glad to be (not proud to be) Americans.
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Re:I am an American (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Immigrants (Score:5, Interesting)
There was anger and increased vigilance against those in American "militias." Lots of specials about "who these militia men are, with the media portraying them all as rednecks from the south or midwest who carry a rifle with them at all times, live in the woods, and have a shed with a military arsenal, and who want to overthrow the goverment. Of course the media also tried to extend these stereotypes to all libertarians, since most of these "militia men" had libertarian beliefs.
Want an example of religious backlash? After the Waco incident there were tons of expose on religious cults and the threat they represent. The media trying to scare Americans that somewhere in the backwoods there are dozen of compounds of armed cultists led by psychotic religious zealots. Meanwhile there are many "cults" who just differ with mainstream christian beliefs.
"Real" American? Unless your family was hunting buffalo here thousands of years ago, you're just a newbie tourist.
I believe native americans immigrated too, just thousands of years earlier across the land bridge. There are no "real" americans
Parent
Re:Immigrants (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the only difference between "cult" and "mainstream" is the number of warm bodies in the particular denomination and how much economic and political power they have. Koresh in Waco had followers in the dozens so he was a cult. I'm pretty sure Mormons would be called a cult if you looked at their organization objectively were there not millions of them, if they didn't pretty much own a state and weren't politicly and economicly powerful. Their history and the Book of Mormon is to say the least "interesting". South Park has a pretty good parody of it. Many are still polygamists to this day often with rather young girls, which was a key factor in the persecution of Koresh. I think most Mormons would be polygamists had banning it not been a condition of statehood. If you think about it Joseph Smith set up a pretty nice lifestyle for himself. Mormons have made the jump from cult to mainstream at this point thanks to success.
I'm pretty sure if Jesus were to come back today he would most probably be persecuted as a cultists and if he were to start preaching the same message today he preached 2000 years ago most "mainstream" Christians would probably crucify him one way or another, assuming he didn't start lobbing miracles left and right. Most modern Christians don't seem to really understand or agree with most of the things he actually said and did. The New Testament as nearly as I can tell is just empty text they listen to and maybe even memorize without ever actually taking to heart and without actually practicing the other 6 days of the week.
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Re:Immigrants (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Immigrants (Score:4, Interesting)
So MOD PARENT DOWN :)
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Re:Immigrants (Score:5, Informative)
The prefered process for skilled workers to immigrate to US is to obtain labor certification and H1b visa first, then after 6 months of stay apply for a state and then federal labor certification for an employer sponsored green card. Once that is approved (which means there were at least two market studies done at the point to prove you are not "stealing" jobs someone else could do), only then you can apply on I-485 for permanent residency.
Parent
But the whole thing is easily abused... (Score:5, Informative)
HR runs it past the immigration lawyer and they write up a job description which specifies exactly Bob's years of education, exactly Bob's project experience and probably Bob's shoe color and zodiac sign. They then post that job description at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the leopard". Oh. They also post it on our web site
Some time later, they regrettably couldn't fill the job with anyone local, so they hire Bob. No, this isn't speculation. I've seen it happen a dozen times in the past few years. It's a science now. It's not just Bob from China, either. There are assorted European countries we hit up too and one place in the Middle East.
Again, I like most of the people we hire this way, but it's a mockery of the process...and I strongly suspect a lot of companies do it the same way. Find H1b candidate first, fail to fill position with existing worker second, click the 'import' button.
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Re:Immigrants (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Immigrants (Score:4, Informative)
I symphathize with all unemployed Americans who are actively looking for a job - being unemployed is terrible. However, don't take it out on the immigrants - if you are competing with an H1-B applicant as a U.S. citizen, you have huge advantages. I will just outline the two biggest:
1) It's a big, big hassle for a company to go through the H1-B process. It takes time and money, and dealing with lawyers. On top of that, you are uncertain if it will work. If a company can avoid that, they will.
2) An employee on H1-B is required to receive the "median" salary for his / her profession. I know because i was affected - on my first job 7 years ago, my employer had to increase my salary in order to meet the criteria (to something like $54k which was not too shabby back then).
Whereas, had i been an american, they could - and would - have just paid me less money.
=> if you want to be dumping prices, you can only do it with U.S. citizen employess. Ironic, but true.
Parent
Re:Immigrants (Score:5, Insightful)
The 500-2000 resumes are examined VERY quickly. I've heard stories about the piles being arbitrarily halved with the other half being discarded. Stupid mistakes are often weeded out first (typos, bad appearance, spelling, etc.). Keywords are often sought after by people / computers who are incapable of interpreting... job requirement might be SQL Server 7 and the applicant put SQL Server 2000, or "Active Server Pages" instead of ASP, etc..
A more manageable set of resumes is now available. Managers/Leads poor over them (dividing up the work of course), standards are not set. Desirable resumes are kept over less desirable ones. Note that there is a HUGE problem with liars, those who are honest on their resumes are at a huge disadvantage as they are typically weeded out unless they have 15 years of experience and know every nuance of SQL/ASP/C#/Exchange like the other 80% of the resumes (99% of those are likely exagerating).
Managers will narrow down resumes and end up picking a few for interviews. At this point the game is likely lost, as the managers probably picked a set that consists of liars/exageraters. If someone does know what they're talking about, they have a good chance of being hired.
Now, companies say the pool stinks. They can't ever find qualified people to interview. It's much easier to pick cheap/qualified people from $FOREIGN_COUNTRY than it is to try and find a good one through the hiring process.
The fact that companies are complaining is NOT indicative of a lack of qualified people to fill the slots. It's indicative of a problem in the hiring process. The fact that some get to bypass the process does not mean that they are somehow better qualified (although they may or may not be, that's not the question).
Parent
I could be mistaken, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I could be mistaken, but... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I could be mistaken, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm a web developer specialising in e-commerce (php/mysql/asp/etc, not wysiwyg) in a small (15 person) firm, and
If you want to make more money, do something that
Basic economics, people. Too much supply, very little demand. Go for what's cheapest.
Parent
Re:I could be mistaken, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
you're getting screwed, buddy. I pay my maid more than that!
wow...
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India. (Score:4, Informative)
One detail that many Americans don't really understand, is that there are essentially three careers that are considered to be more desirable than all others: Doctor, Engineer, and Computer Programmer. In some circles, you are not successful if you are not, or don't have a son, in one of these professions. This concept is as foreign to Americans as the idea of arranged marriage (which is still very much alive among Indians, even those living and working in the US!).
There is a good reason India happens to be the place where the computer programming jobs go! In the US, it's looked at as something significantly less important than being one of the three top careers.
Re:India. (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Foreign workers ARE better... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you accept that the inherent genetic traits for making an excellent programmer are distributed equally among all humans, regardless of culture and national origin, then yes the foreign programmers who make it to the USA are generally better than American-born programmers.
There is a bell-curve of programming skills for every country. India has 900 million people, the USA has 250 million. That means of the best 0.1% of the population, there are going to be almost four times as many brilliant Indian programmers than American.
If your corporation wants to hire the best programmers available AND there are few restrictions for hiring the best people from anywhere in the world, then yes there are going to be more Indian and Chinese programmers working in the best American corporate IT positions in the USA. This will remain so as long as the best programmers in the world are ready, willing, and eager to relocate to the USA.
By the way, consider the enormous hassle that it is to learn a completely different language. And be glad that it is the Chinese programmers who must master English to get the IT job in global corporation instead of you having to master Chinese language to get the IT job in the global corporation.
Parent
Got to agree... (Score:3, Insightful)
1.) Work for less (not a promising prospect).
2.) Change your job.
Sure it sucks to do the second, especially if you put a lot of time and energy into it, but if you're smart you can mold your experience to a new occupation.
Take my current job: network administration. Fairly simple task. The more I've read and the more people I've talked to, these kind of jobs are next to be outsourced. IT is going to become a "utility".
So what do I do? I'm currently studying for an MBA. I'm talking to people: "What does it take to become an IT manager? How about a director?" All the "maintenance" jobs in the world can move overseas, but you still need people back at home making the decisions. I'll become one of those.
Re:Got to agree... (Score:5, Insightful)
When the primary workforce moves to Inda, China, South Korea, or somewhere else, middle management will move with it. What do you think, that the plant that put your last car together in Mexico left its middle management in Detroit?
And following similar logic, once you have very little middle-management here, director level posistions will migrate as well. The boards will remain here, of course, but the rest of the company will be in India.
I hope your MBA can get you to a boardroom in the next 5 years. Otherwise you might as well stop with the MBA now and start flipping burgers. After all, jobs are determined by the same market forces as everything else, and there is definitely not a shortage of obesity.
Parent
The same market forces? Not so... (Score:5, Insightful)
My own problem with the H1-B program isn't that it allows foreign competition into the U.S. labor market; the problem is that software engineers have been singled out among other professions. Additionally, the program is not reciprocal. Do the countries that H1-B's come from have similarly generous guest worker programs? Not that I know of. Also, by depressing salaries in the American software industry and making jobs more competitive to get, fewer Americans are going into the software field.
Again, the problem isn't that competition from foreign workers is inherently unfair; the problem is that a particular profession has essentially been targeted for an across the board salary cut through legislation.
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Most of the hostility to the H1B program (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm very happy to see immigration of skilled workers as citizens, but I'm not happy to see the exploitation of guest workers as H1Bs.
NJ driver gesturing and blocking the road (Score:3, Funny)
[joking!]
Debugging? (Score:3, Funny)
How well can I associate with this.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How well can I associate with this.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't worry too much; the regulars get the same sort of abuse (although not necessarily with the racist trappings). There's also a strong anti-bus stigma among the population at large: riding the train is trendy and cosmopolitan; riding the bus is ghetto. This trickles down to the operator's attitude.
Parent
Re:How well can I associate with this.. (Score:5, Funny)
Welcome to A-freaking-merica.
You have described the encounters that life-long American citizens have with other life-long American citizens, encounters that people from small towns have with people from large cities, encounters that women have when surrounded by men, encounters that poorly dressed people have around the rich, and encounters that the rich have when surrounded by the poor.
I'm sorry you had a rough time, but here's yet another custom to learn about America - we're jackasses, we like being jackasses, and we don't care if you figure out that we're jackasses. Our cultural identity is based on cowboys and conquest and cut-throat capitalism - don't be shocked when we're not the most friendly people you meet.
I'm not trying to be harsh. I, for one, value the contributions that H1-B workers bring to America and am thankful that this country is an importer of educated workers. That said, I don't know how someone could form an opinion that we're a bunch of nice people. We can hardly stand ourselves, let alone people who are legitimately outsiders.
Parent
He's right (Score:5, Insightful)
No, he's right, because at that point, he's talking to the Indians. They can either accept it, resent it, or leave, because unfortunately, that's the way it is.
But the reviewer is also right. America will be a better place when racism is gone. Talking to the Americans, I say, "Racism is morally wrong. It is harmful both to recipient and to the racist. Knock that *%^&* off!"
pre judging is such folly (Score:5, Insightful)
Humans are Humans! We are almost all exactly the same! in fact, the "races" of human don't even fit the biological definition [wikipedia.org] of race! It's a social contstruct.
Culture, well, that's different. Cultures are macro and micro - and at times it seems that there are larger cultural gulfs between city blocks then country borders.
Guess my "race", please.
After all, you slashdotters all look the same to me.
Mostly like ASCII.
Immigration will save the economy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Acceptable racism? (Score:5, Interesting)
How can I tell? Well, I never once faced any resentment at all, despite all the vitriol pointed at Indian immigrants.
But then again, I don't have dark skin and most people think I'm American until I speak. You see it all the time in Slashdot - it seems like it's OK to be racist towards Indians for "taking our jobs".
As a Canadian having worked in the US... (Score:5, Insightful)
Having worked mostly in Silicon Valley, I would say that the cultural environment is more conducive to immigrants there than other places. One Chinese fellow I knew, for example, never truly felt welcome when he worked in Texas but did say that the people there were generally nice. If you're from India or China, there are tons of resources and tons of community and social opportunities for you. YMMV in other places but big cities around big tech centers aren't typically a problem.
Probably the biggest problem that I had when I was in the United States is getting your green card. For those not in the know, the green card process requires that you remain with the same employer in the same type of position and move no further than 50 miles away from where your H-1B was approved. Then you wait and wait. You wait for state and federal labor certification, and then you actually apply for your green card after your priority date comes up (a date which is used to gate applications from countries with high immigrant volumes but from which Canadians are exempted). If you're laid off, fired, moved to another job function, or move, you have to start the process all over again. It takes 2-4 years, and in some cases people have their paperwork lost by the INS/BCIS and you are screwed at the end of your term and have to leave. Immediately. No wait periods.
To me, that's the biggest problem with the system. If you want people, have them stay. Facing a constant end game hurts folks economically, socially, mentally and otherwise. Stories of people leaving their leased cars at SFO and SJC and going back because they had no choice were very sad. Even worse, what does one do with the money they earned? In my case, because of the huge run-up in the Canadian dollar, all my money is "trapped" down there. Do I wait for the US dollar to rise back up to regular levels, or do I bring it back and hope it doesn't come back? That money could've also been spent in the United States, but gets spent outside. Not that beneficial for the US economy if you ask me.
Most of these issues would be addressed if people were simply granted conditional green cards at the time of their entry. A certified criminal background check and health check prior to border entry would allow them to stay without having to worry about the employer doing whatever they want to the employee and throwing them out at the end. That's not technically done today, and it would be smart for security and other reasons. The other aspect is to have the system funded by the immigrants themselves, i.e. you come in and you pay for the BCIS to process your application for $5k or $10k, rather than rely on tax money to fund a severely underfunded immigration processing system. If you're that important to be given a special visa to come in, then come in. Stay. Don't throw the person out later on. If these suggestions are ever implemented, you will see a big difference in the way that immigrant employees are treated and in the way they approach their work. Remove the threat and stress of leaving, and you'll have productive members of society, IT/Engineering workers or otherwise.
pick one: H1b or chinese outsourcing (Score:5, Interesting)
You should set a target: the US graduates 200,000 more engineers and scientists in six years than it did this year, or every member of congress is executed. Hanged. Badly. Slowly.
Now don't get me wrong, I had a whale of a time in the US. I was treated very well, well paid (none of this $70K shit), and generally had a productive, exciting time; but most of my productive co-workers were Chinese and Indian guys, smart and genuinely enthused about what we were making and who our product would help. Crappy english, sure, some of them - and some of them, particularly the Indians, better english speakers than native me (or is that I?). All the time I, and all these smart foreigners worked in the US, Slashdot, Congress and other crapass "thinkers" (ahem) slandered us. They said we were dumb, they said we were uneducated, or spoke bad english, they said we'd work for slave labo[u]r rates, they said (frankly) we were inferior. And all the time the US trade gap grew and grew, more and more skilled jobs moved to India and China, more and more the US economy slipped into a whole from which it seems determined never to emerge.
Let's face it. The average H1B worker moved away from his family, from everything he knew to work in the US, to maintain an ecomomy whose own managers seemed determined to outsource it, to be slandered and deprecated by third-rate journalists and racist politicians. Sure, he made more money than he'd make in Bangalore or Shanghai, but the difference is less and less (particularly compared with the cost of living in the Research Triangle or the Silicon Valley) each year. Now that the tech recession has come for everyone he's probably moved back to Shanghai or Bangalore (unwelcome, filthy terrist foreigned slanty-eyed bastard that he is, in the US). Whose economy do you thing he's helping? Into whose business do his smarts flow?
The US economy (and to a marginally lesser extent the EU economy too) holds a gun to its own head. Both have squandered the promise of the new economy. Foreign workers are one less, not one more, bullet in the revolver.
With engineering and science, at it highest levels, moved east - what do the US and Europe actually _make_? Can you really expect to run two of the world's largest economic blocks on missles, movies, and life insurance?
Re:pick one: H1b or chinese outsourcing (Score:4, Insightful)
There would be more Americans taking up jobs in engineering and programming if there were good paying job prospects. Part of the problem is that these fields have become so widespread that employers no longer can know the people they are hiring, and instead are hiring bodies. When your job becomes just a number on a CFO's spreadsheet, then you get no respect. And only those willing to do the work for the least get the job.
So yes, there are fewer and fewer Americans and Europeans going into these fields. College enrollment in these majors for some big schools is down 30% in the last 2 or 3 years. The impact of this is that the unemployment percentage in these fields, which runs about 2 to 3 times that of the population as a whole, is not rising as fast as the rate the jobs continue to vanish.
It's the American employers that no longer want to hire the people that make the technology. If they did, then the unemployment would vanish, and those of us doing the work would be screaming for more H-1B's so we can get a few weekends off. Instead, employers are more interested in hiring sales people. Only sales people climb to the top in most corporations, so that means there is essentially no understanding, and no respect, at the top corporate levels, for the creation of technology. All they know about is how to make sales pitches, close deals, and cook the books to hide the profits. That, and hire the cheapest and the fewest people in all the grunt roles they can.
The people in, and from, India and China and other places are just trying to do better for themselves. You can't blame them for that. The real problem is not them. No, the real problem is the top executives, venture capitalists, intitutional investors, and stock brokers, who are pushing business to the brink of destruction.
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"Linus Travolds" (Score:5, Funny)
But you know, every day in North America someone either mispronounces or misspells Linus Travolta.
Lacking from the review... (Score:5, Insightful)
That being said, there is a larger issue here. At what rate can this country absorb immigrants of various economic and educational levels? I realize that some people like to believe that since we have always been a nation of immigrants, we should not restrict new immigration, as it is unfair to those who want to come now.
That's fine and dandy, but there is a practical limitation on immigration. First of all, if the US can get educated workers while India foots the bill for their education, what incentive is there in US society to create an educated domestic workforce? If this country does not have the educated workforce needed to innovate, how will these industries remain competitive as places like India and China increase the capabilities of their domestic infrastructure?
This nation isn't some social darwinist's or anarcho-capitalist's wet dream of an experiment, it's a nation built on a set of principles regarding the defense of rights and the freedom to exercise those rights. The defense of rights requires wealth, in other words, democracy and freedom are expensive. The best way to insure optimum levels of freedom and the ability of citizens to defend their rights is through good-paying jobs. Much as a recent study showed that the most effective (and largest dollar amount) foreign aid was foreign workers who sent money home, the best way to maintain the principles of this country is to insure that anyone willing to work can find a good-paying job. And I better not see those utterly rediculous unemployment numbers, job growth isn't anywhere near handling the issue of underemployment in the US.
While I wouldn't hold the author in any sense accountable for taking someone else's job (wouldn't you do the same?), I do hold our political leaders accountable for creating a system that puts US citizens in line behind another country's citizens. That is what happens if visa programs are too open or if wage arbitration through outsourcing is allowed to happen. You can claim that it's simply a matter of economics, that we must compete with people who don't pay for the same defense of rights that we do in the US, but that's illogical. I don't hold an idea that we should simply subsidize uncompetitive workforces or business practices, but the rapid changes in our modern economy can easily produce income volatility for the average family that was unheard of 50 years ago. Communities and families don't handle change nearly as easily as multi-national corporations. So what are the choices? Do we create a welfare state that "smoothes out" the rough edges of a global economy? Do we export only the tools to create wealth and severely restrict the import of people?
Take the same set of arguments and apply them to illegal immigration. Wouldn't a more expensive labor force for menial tasks provide a larger incentive to automate those tasks? Wouldn't that automation and innovation also help to create good-paying jobs? Isn't automation the most sustainable growth? The largest danger I see from guest worker programs, visa programs and illegal immigration is the creation of second-class citizens. That is a danger to the principles and long-term stability of this nation.
I might pose this question to the author: What would he do if he still resided in India and saw that the Indian government was putting the interests of US citizens ahead of Indian citizens and the bulk of any benefit from the arrangement was going to the wealthiest of Indians?
After all, won't the offspring of anyone immigrating to this country face these same problems as any native US citizen would?
H1-B going for green card tomorrow (Score:4, Insightful)
As somebody on the H1-B going to get his green card tomorrow morning, I feel like I should throw my $.02 Canadian in.
Others in this thread posted that H1-B != immigrant, and they're right to say so. But the H1-B visa lets you have "dual intent," which is when you're here not as an immigrant but allowed to pursue immigrant status. That's the main reason I switched from the NAFTA TN-1 visa, which doesn't allow this. So while technically your status says you aren't an immigrant, you can still have every intention of immigrating under the H1-B program.
I don't send the money I make out of the country, not unless you count me paying off my old car in Canada, now thankfully done, or making payments on my student loans. Other than that what I make stays in this country: paying others, investing, etc. I think I have to pay all the same fees a "normal" person does: Social Security, Medicare, income tax, and all that good stuff. Even when I bought a retirement present for the old man, it was from an American retailer and shipped back to the old country.
I like to think I contribute something to the country and the people that have been so good to me over the past 5+ years I've been here. I've had more than a couple of offers to go back home, some more lucrative than what I have here, but here I feel like I'm doing some good.
Anyway that's enough out of me. To any and all Americans reading, let me just add...thanks for the opportunity. Nice place you have here. :)
Re:This article is flamebait (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Paying disproportionate share of taxes? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you grew up in the US, then that means that for the first 18-22 years of your life (at least) you weren't helping to pay for the infrastructure you took advantage of, either -- and, since you probably went to public school, you were taking much more advantage of it than they are.
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Re:Paying disproportionate share of taxes? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Paying disproportionate share of taxes? (Score:5, Insightful)
when you consider that the top 5% of Americans pay over 50% of all the taxes
Isn't that because the top 5% of Americans hold 90% of the country's wealth?
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Re:Paying disproportionate share of taxes? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you travel to a different city or state, and use facilities paid for by that city/state, do you feel guilty? They're happy to have you, spending money at local businesses.
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Re:Paying disproportionate share of taxes? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Short-sighted argument. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Short-sighted argument. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is how capitalism works. Either deal with it, or move to a non-capitalist country.
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Re:Jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
Now there are very few companies willing to even interview someone who isn't local.
Sure, if you have the capital to pick up and move to another city with lots of jobs, and live there without a job until you get one, great. Not everyone has that kind of mobility.
p.s. It's a lot easier if you're single!
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