The H1-B Blues
Posted by Charles II on July 16, 2009
Moira Herbst, BW:
Not many computer science professors are activists on immigration policy. But Norm Matloff of the University of California, Davis wears both hats. He has been a vocal critic of the H-1B visa program for skilled immigrants since the mid-1990s, and now maintains a Web page and e-mail listserv discussing offshoring and the H-1B visa program, which he calls a “sham.” He says his motivation is to protect and preserve tech job opportunities for the students he teaches. …
The H-1B visa program inspires heated debate, especially online. The program is controversial for a number of reasons. Some critics say the program allows U.S. companies to import cheaper labor, dampening wages and displacing U.S. workers. Others say it facilitates outsourcing, as it allows Indian-born tech workers to train in the U.S. and then return home and perform the work there. Still others point to mounting evidence of fraud in the program and a lack of government oversight.
Matloff stresses that the problem is not fraud or crime but the H-1B visa law itself. He says that the law as currently written allows H-1B visa holders to receive below-market wages. The policy also allows for age discrimination as older U.S. tech workers are displaced by a younger workforce from abroad. …
This is the point. The H1-B system is bad for Americans, bad for foreigners who are sucked into competing for low wages, and even bad for the industries who compete primarily on low wages rather than on high quality and technological prowess.
Now why the h–l is this guy working with Charles Grassley? Aren’t there any Democrats who care about the collapsing middle class?
10 Responses to “The H1-B Blues”
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Phoenix Woman said
The H1-B mess is a real minefield politically. People who question it get slapped with a big fat “you hate nonwhite immigrants!” label. That being said, there are ways to address it that defuse the demagoguery.
Stormcrow said
In order to get past this, you have to educate people about how the H1-B system really works.
I fell for this line myself before I knew.
Stormcrow said
Oh, and Matloff has been on top of this issue since the early 1990s.
I recall reading some of his criticisms while I was still working as a programmer, and rejecting them like a damnfool.
Charles II said
I became aware of the abuses in the visa program in the early 1980s. It was brought home to me how destructive it was about 10 years later. A few years later, I was consulted by a senior Democratic Senate aide and metaphorically gave him both barrels. And the Democrats continue to lag the Republicans in recognizing issues that impact professionals, especially unfair competition, SE and record-keeping. I’d like to spank them all.
Warren Reavis said
So one conclusion that makes me wonder … if companies have focused on lower wages as a basis for measuring job requirements …. then how does “high quality” job skills get a foot in the door ?
Stormcrow said
Interesting that you talk about a “greed virus”.
I’ve been thinking along similar lines, in a more general framework, for some years now. I guess it started when I reflected that certain sorts destructive behaviors, such as substance abuse, and habitual abusive behavior towards others, often runs in families.
In one case, I could actually trace the chain of infection down through four generations. Not just parent to child either. Sometimes, spouse to spouse and in-law to in-law.
And there are other sorts of contagious mental disease whose pathology is more social. Cult religions are one example. Paranoid conspiracy theories are another.
Sometimes, mental pandemics sweep across a social landscape leaving as much ruin in their wakes as a conventional disease like polio or bubonic plague might do. The witch hunts that peaked in the early seventeenth century. Eliminationist variants of racism, like anti-semitism up until fairly recent times. That one’s still endemic today.
The way I’m thinking now, certain behaviors and memes function psychologically almost like viruses do physically. Dormant and impotent until they host in a vulnerable mind. Destructive once they come to dominate the functioning of that mind. Often, contagious to a greater or lesser degree, and by vectors that differ from one viral meme or behavior to another.
We’ve gone from nearly total ignorance about influenza to the ability to track pandemics in motion in less than a hundred years, from 1918 to 2009. In 1918, we didn’t even know the infector was a virus. Today, we sequence their genes.
I wonder, if we’re still around as a species to ponder the issue, what sorts of social epidemiology will emerge over the next few centuries.
Charles II said
Warren, I’m deeply concerned about the decline in good jobs (and have been for many, many years). I think the answer to your question is to look at what happened to the US from Harding to Eisenhower, when we went from a country that could barely field an army in 1941 to a great power whose wealth was based not so much on its natural resources as on its generation of knowledge.
The war forced the United States to treat people as genuine equals. Women and African Americans were brought into the factories for the first time. African Americans were brought into the Armed Forces in large numbers. Returning veterans were brought into the universities, becoming the first generation in which higher education was widespread.
Certainly if Europe and Japan had not been devastated, we would have faced keener competition. But if one knows the members of the Greatest Generation, what differentiated them was that they believed that what they did mattered. They believed that their vote mattered, so they were deeply involved in politics. They believed that their role in their communities mattered, so they volunteered. They put their hearts and the minds and their souls into what they did. That, I think, is why they accomplished the great things that they did.
For a generation, Americans have been beaten down. Their wages have been systematically lowered. Their vote has been made insignificant. They have been forced to compete against immigrants and foreign workers whose wages are a tiny fraction of Americans. The schools have been ravaged by culture wars.
And yet, if one had looked at America under Harding, one could have said very similar things. Absent a powerful middle class resistance, the overclass decided whether culture wars will be permitted– and they will, because they divide and weaken a people. With weak unions, the overclass decides who the American worker will have to compete against. And as the middle class totters, it is the overclass that sets wages.
Stormcrow thinks it is a virus. Certainly destructive behaviors are transmitted through learning. But the real cause of our national weakness is that the people on the top want it that way. They even arrange to make addictions like drugs and gambling freely available for abuse.
Stormcrow said
Not quite true, Charles. I think it fills an equivalent niche.
As for the people at the top – every successful virus has either a vector, or a reservoir population that it “cycles” in, or both.
AFAIK, domestic abuse isn’t even being passively exploited by the ruling elites. Yet it flourishes in certain families.
Charles II said
Sure, Stormcrow… I would say all learned behavior is transmitted. One could call algebra a virus or virus equivalent. It would explain why the children of doctors often become doctors, while the children of cobblers often become cobblers.
ShortWoman» Blog Archive » Shorties Fever said
[…] Citizen Carrie, WHERE ARE YOU?: Carrie was one of the most knowledgable lay people I knew when it came to H1-B visas. Please, settle for Charles II at Mercury Rising. […]