Weird — I was JUST talking about this at a Saturday morning brunch (at Todd Connors :D) w/ two of the most interesting people I know.
Bill Would Double Cap on H-1B Visas – CIO.com – Business Technology Leadership:
By Grant Gross
March 14, 2008A bill introduced in the U.S. Congress would double the number of immigrant worker visas available each year under the H-1B program, earning the legislation praise from Microsoft.
The Innovation Employment Act, introduced by Representative Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, late Thursday, would increase the cap in H-1B visas from 65,000 a year to 130,000 a year. In addition, there would be no cap on H-1B applications for foreign graduate students attending U.S. colleges and studying science, technology and related fields. Currently, there’s a 20,000-a-year cap on visas for graduate students in all fields.
I was getting schooled by the two self-proclaimed History Geeks about how ironic the American celebration of Saint Patrick’s Day is, considering how poorly we treat our immigrants. They made interesting points about how irritable Americans are over having so many immigrant workers, but I made the point that the real problem isn’t immigrants as much as it is illegal immigrants.
As a side note, as I enjoyed my Reuben Omelette, they taught me that America once banned the name sauerkraut, in favor of Liberty Cabbage during World War I. We suck.
My main beef w/ illegal immigrants is that they’re not contributing. If you’re gonna come aboard, then buy into the system completely. Do the right thing and become a citizen, pay your taxes and contribute to society — don’t just take money out of our economy and send it home, please.
This brings me to the current topic of H-1B visas (which came up Saturday, too). Without much research on the topic, my initial reaction is that it’s probably good for our economy overall, even though it increases competition in my job market in the short term. Allowing more technology-focused competition into the country without actually making them citizens makes me cringe at first blush, but as I mentioned in this older post about outsourcing, at least they spend some of their money locally, and we still get to tax them.
4 Comments
Holly
Two of the most interesting people you know, eh? I’ll be sure to pass the compliment along :) Glad you found the conversation interesting :)
Dork
Yep — nothing compliments a great meal more than engrossing conversation. Like talking about phallic phones.
Tony
2 things:
1. My only real problem with illegal immigrants is that they break the law as their first act in the country (by definition). I believe that there probably needs to be a change in policy somewhere to handle the situation, but it still kind of rubs me the wrong way. I guess it seems a bit rude, but I realize that rudeness is hardly a consideration if you are starving.
2. H1Bs are a crock. We don’t train enough engineers here because there isn’t enough emphasis put on education. H1Bs are a way to get cheaper labor that can’t job hunt while also ignoring the ailing education system. Also, the quality of Software Engineers I have come across from overseas is pretty spotty. Some folks are great, most suck. That may just be the result of the higher number of students graduating overseas. I would guess that I would find the same situation with Americans, but to be honest I almost never work with other American-born developers.
Dork
Sadly, I think we both suffer from the same problem: we actually expect people to not suck. I’ve found that many of the H-1B people I’ve run into are VERY tightly focused on one particular technology, which is fantastic for hiring them to do a specific job, but as the economy tanks, we need more and more people w/ some all-around talent, too. When layoffs come and we’re left w/ a bunch of too-specific workers, things go south really quickly as they try to stretch to cover the shortages and start breaking things they don’t know much about.
It’s not their fault they don’t know enough general skills, but it still sucks to walk into a shop that’s being run by guys who confide in me that “I was never trained on how to run this — they just told me to do my best.”