I've worked for tech companies and a law firm that was in the top 4 in global immigration. The worker shortage is a myth. It doesn't exist. When a company claims they can't find a US worker they are lying and going through 'recruitment efforts' for Green Card and I-140 applications.
HR uses a list of skills from the H1B they wanted to hire and then tailor a job posting to that exact list of skills in order to disqualify local applicants. By claiming they can't find a US worker they can bring in their wage slave who will be an indentured servant. They will use that person's visa and green card as a carrot to wave in front of their face to make them go along with violating labor laws. "Someday you'll be a US citizen if you just put up with this for a little bit more!" They string this out into a decade long process often. Oracle and Yahoo were the worst offenders. Anyone who is 'pro-immigration' is just an unknowing tool for multi-billion dollar conglomerates. Immigration has been turned into a public subsidy for the richest corporations.
It's pretty disingenuous to claim there isn't a US worker, the companies have no intent to hire an American. Their entire business model is built around outsourcing the work.
Now if you want to talk to me about legalizing farm workers I have no problem with that. I think it's pretty disgusting we have this shadow economy built on third class workers that we all benefit from and know exists. Unfortunately they don't have the tech industry lobbying for them like the H-1B holders do. There's a reason Silicon Valley lobbies for more H-1bs but not Greencards: http://online.wsj.com/articles/michael-s-malone-the-self-inf...
The problem with freedom of labor and open borders is that it's usually just one way. How many Americans are going to work abroad in India? How many Canadians are going to work in China? It's feel-good rhetoric but ultimately it's just an excuse to flood richer nations with workers from poorer nations. I'd be all for this system if there was some kind of tit-for-tat program where India gets as many visas given to them as they give to us proportionally--but it will never happen. If STEM and engineers are so in demand why have their wages stagnated? Why has the average income actually dropped in Silicon Valley? There's a disconnect in what they claim is happening and what is really happening.
This is a great response. The economics of this aren't really that hard to puzzle out. Why did Google, Apple, Intel, Adobe, and others collude to artificially lower worker wages?[1] The answer is simple, they were too damn high and they wanted to use cutting costs as a means to grow profits and deliver shareholder value. As a worker you simply have to realize this is DIRECTLY AGAINST your best interests, regardless of the rhetoric about some future where it's ultimately better for everyone. The H1B schemes debated here as well as the push to expand computer science education online and make it cheaper produce exist to produce a new pool of less skilled and therefore cheaper laborers as part of a pretty simple longterm economic strategy - programmers as the factory workers of the information economy. If you're a business owner this is good, if you're a high-paid software engineer this is bad.
Then you have outsourcing companies like Cognizant regularly scooping up 50% of the H-1b lottery: http://www.computerworld.com/article/2489146/technology-law-...
It's pretty disingenuous to claim there isn't a US worker, the companies have no intent to hire an American. Their entire business model is built around outsourcing the work. Now if you want to talk to me about legalizing farm workers I have no problem with that. I think it's pretty disgusting we have this shadow economy built on third class workers that we all benefit from and know exists. Unfortunately they don't have the tech industry lobbying for them like the H-1B holders do. There's a reason Silicon Valley lobbies for more H-1bs but not Greencards: http://online.wsj.com/articles/michael-s-malone-the-self-inf...
The problem with freedom of labor and open borders is that it's usually just one way. How many Americans are going to work abroad in India? How many Canadians are going to work in China? It's feel-good rhetoric but ultimately it's just an excuse to flood richer nations with workers from poorer nations. I'd be all for this system if there was some kind of tit-for-tat program where India gets as many visas given to them as they give to us proportionally--but it will never happen. If STEM and engineers are so in demand why have their wages stagnated? Why has the average income actually dropped in Silicon Valley? There's a disconnect in what they claim is happening and what is really happening.