I've spent the morning considering this, given the recent statements by Bill Gates about H1-B limitations (currently 65,000) and how this is damaging to technology companies.
There are a few differing points of view on this:
Buy USA View- There are US citizen IT workers that are currently out of work. We should make sure we've employed everyone we possibly can before we increase H1-Bs
This view, like most generalizations, is highly flawed. To make this statement you're making an assumption that all of the unemployed workers are "employable". This is not true, as companies require varied skillsets, people skills, and experience levels. I've done some interviewing and resume review, and I can tell you that some 95% of resumes received for a position are trash.
Cheap *** Corporations Want H1-Bs to Save Money- Absolutely not true.
If you research H-1B guidlines, they have to establish a market rate range for the position and must pay the H1-B worker > 5% of the minimum of that range. So if us programmers are averaging 40,000-60,000 in a given market, then the minimum you can pay an H1-B is slightly more than 40,000. Not to mention that while here H1-Bs pay into our social security system, money they never get back out. Increasing the flow of H1-Bs is like free retirement money for Americans.
So what should we do? Well, I personally tend to swing towards a more lightly regulated capitalistic society. This means that I think we should raise caps on H1-Bs if companies are demanding access to foreign workers. I don't buy into the wage decrease arguments at all, since regulations require fair pay and not to mention that as we increase the flow of money to countries like India, their economies will boom, causing inflation, causing rising wages (you can see some of this already if you keep track of offshore developer rates, they're up $5-$7/hr from where they were a few years ago). As this trend continues offshoring demand will decrease. This is a very basic, simple demand curve that any first year economics student can show you. Increased price lowers demand.
What we do need here on American shores is a few things:
- Better education. I'm sorry for anyone who gets offended, but our education system is going straight to hell. When I was in school the majority of students around me didn't know crap, and the coursework wasn't hard enough to make them learn anything. There were probably 5 students out of 100 that I would have personally hired. This is the fault of increasing pressure to push all high school grads into college and competition by colleges trying to grab as many students as they can. By making college a broad appeal we have watered it down so the masses can handle it. This is a huge disservice to those of us who obtained a degree by being passionate about learning, not showing up, doing the minimum, and paying the fee. Foreign colleges tend to be much more competitive, and push out higher quality graduates, hence a demand for foreign workers.
- Find alternative ways to lower costs. Someone explain to me, in this day of blazing fast internet, video conferencing, etc. why the hell we have IT departments located in New York City, LA, and other extremely high cost of living areas? Due to the costs of living, a developer with my skills in New York City is paid about double what I am paid in the midwest to maintain a comparible lifestyle. Just think, if you set up your IT operations somewhere else, you could hire two developers for the price of one... without offshoring. The problem here is that the IT labor is concentrated in the high cost of living areas, but personally I think if companies started moving their operation centers eventually the workers would follow.
- Improve your job advertising and interviewing capabilities. I swear I could probably make a lucrative consulting career doing little else besides helping companies write job ads and interviewing candidates for them. So many companies do such a bad job at this it isn't even funny. Part of the problem is the electronic distribution... "resume bombs" if you will that dump unqualified resumes into the HR inbox. The other part is that many companies put job ads up that ask for unreasonable skillsets. Like those that ask for C#, J2EE, Cobal, and SAP experience and are looking for a mid-level (5 yrs) developer. I would love to meet the person who has been able to get relevant experience with unrelated technologies like that in 5 years.
