They have to keep up appearances.
As for CS graduates--because so many understand that it's a profession where you're liable to be forced out in time if you get a job at all. I wouldn't recommend anyone get a CS degree until the H1-B mess is fixed.
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The phony STEM shortage and the scandal of engineering visas (H1-B)
- Thread starter TSwizzle
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They have to keep up appearances.
As for CS graduates--because so many understand that it's a profession where you're liable to be forced out in time if you get a job at all. I wouldn't recommend anyone get a CS degree until the H1-B mess is fixed.
But it does demonstrate that for many tech related roles, it's a job-seekers market, especially the passive job seeker with experience.
If we extrapolate to wider STEM, though, things like a biology undergrad, and sometimes even grad, aren't a good metric for employability. What's a good metric for employability is having marketable skills. A STEM related degree does not guarantee one has marketable skills.
ronburgundy
Contributor
US Computer science degrees are double what they were in 2007. They are approaching similar numbers as at the height of the internet bubble around the year 2000, before the bursting of that bubble led to a drop in CS majors for several years.
In Engineering generally, there has been a 26% increase in BS degrees and 35% increase in Doctorates over the last decade.
The growth from 2009 to 2013 in the number of science and engineer degrees awarded was about 20%, which was almost double the growth in degrees of other majors.
Congress is well aware of this massive and continuing growth in US students with such degrees and yet are aggressively pushing to triple the number of S & E jobs that can be outsourced to non-citizens with work Visas.
In Engineering generally, there has been a 26% increase in BS degrees and 35% increase in Doctorates over the last decade.
The growth from 2009 to 2013 in the number of science and engineer degrees awarded was about 20%, which was almost double the growth in degrees of other majors.
Congress is well aware of this massive and continuing growth in US students with such degrees and yet are aggressively pushing to triple the number of S & E jobs that can be outsourced to non-citizens with work Visas.
ronburgundy
Contributor
No, immigrants are not inherently good, but actual immigrants seeking be a permanent part of the US are far better than temporary workers without citizenship, which is what all the people H-1B Visas are.
Is that the best you can do in response to being shown that your claim about computer science majors is wrong?
What's bad about immigrants?
And I might be able to come up with a better response to my claim about computer science majors if I could remember having made a claim about computer science majors.
ronburgundy
Contributor
Sorry, that was Colorado Atheist who claimed that CS majors are the same now as 20 years ago.
I didn't say anything was bad about immigrants. I merely rejected your premise that they are inherently (and thus always in every instance and context) good. And since this thread has nothing to do with immigrants (H-1B visas are explicitly for non-immigrant workers), it isn't relevant.
What makes H-1B workers so bad that would not also apply to immigrants?
ronburgundy
Contributor
H1-B workers bring many of the same or worse problems that illegal immigrants do, thus they are generally worse for the community than legal immigrants, especially those seeking permanent citizenship.
By definition, they are not full members of the communities in which they live and work. They have no long term stake in what happens those communities, and will return to their homeland soon with most of their earnings. This is moreso than even illegal immigrants, who although must hide in some ways, often plan to be permant parts of their communities so long as they are not deported. Also, like illegal immigrants, H1-B workers do not have free movement in the labor market. They are under the thumb of their employer who can have them kicked out. This opens the door for abuse and under-market pay, which harms all workers.
In addition, immigrants tend to start in entry level jobs where minimum wage laws protect citizen workers from being undersold for the same jobs, without the employer breaking the law. H-1B workers are in jobs well above minimum wage, so their desperation can be legally used to drive down their salaries below what the actual market among citizens with those skills would allow.
I expect (but have not looked for statistics to prove or disprove it) that immigrants aren't quite so diligent about sending remittances home, for one thing.
1) H1-Bs in practice get paid a lot less than Americans. It's not a level playing field.
2) The real problem with H1-Bs is the quantity. That many total immigrants, not a problem. That many concentrated in one profession, a big problem for that profession.
coloradoatheist
Veteran Member
How is some people willing to do a job for less not a playing field? That happens in every job out there? Your wife is foreign, should she not have been allowed in the country?
I think most immigrants get paid less than citizens. If making less money makes immigrants undesirable there would be sweeping implications to our policies.
I thought this was a very pro-immigrant forum.
I wonder what happened to change that.
TSwizzle
I am unburdened by what has been.
Since an H-1B is a temporary work visa, it's not for immigration per se. Some companies are using the H-1B as a tool to offshore their work. The H-1B candidate is brought in, trained on the job and then farmed out to an offshore service. It's not even a good deal for the H-1B candidate, they kinda get screwed because they think they are getting a longer term gig, possible green card but a lot of the time they have to leave the USA. Their employment rights are sketchy, they can't just move jobs. Back in the mid/late 90's when the bubble started to deflate, the term B2B, Business to Business got changed to Back to Bombay. A lot of poor sods were told to pack their bags and leave.
barbos
Contributor
To be fair, absolute majority of global IT companies just happened to be in US, the rest of the world just can't compete. So it seems natural that programmers end up in US, they simply have no prospects in their home countries. In other words, yes american programmers seems to get screwed, but they have more opportunity to begin with.
the fact that H1-B is so restrictive makes it usable for abuse. People on it can't leave because they will lose green-card prospects and will get deported back to India, so naturally employer can pay less. On the other hand, why should programmers be paid $300k?
the fact that H1-B is so restrictive makes it usable for abuse. People on it can't leave because they will lose green-card prospects and will get deported back to India, so naturally employer can pay less. On the other hand, why should programmers be paid $300k?
Because I'm a programmer and I want more money.
barbos
Contributor
No soup for you!!
Well, that saved me the money I was going to spend on soup, so that's a start.
More like because I don't want to be forced out of my profession at middle age. H1-Bs make that a very common fate.
barbos
Contributor
What is so special about that?
I think programmers are dying profession anyway. At some point AI will be quite capable to do routine programming (that's what most programmers do)