
H-1B visa debate: India says it’s a trade and services issue - i0exception
http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/h-1b-visa-debate-india-says-it-s-a-trade-and-services-issue-hints-at-retaliation-against-trump-move/story-GVwsiTf4G7LPp9icYokGGM.html
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MS_Buys_Upvotes
I would post this in it's own thread but I'm sure it will get buried

[https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/66kb3c/95_engi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/66kb3c/95_engineers_in_india_unfit_for_software/)

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harigov
That "research" is done by a company called Aspiring Minds, whose business is
to teach folks software programming skills. You know what their motivations
are. Also, that statement itself is so broad, it's just playing with words.
They ran that test in engineering schools so these are students. How many of
these are freshman or juniors? How many of them fail to write programs because
of lack of time?

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ap46
Everyone knows that people on the H1B(20K) with higher education from USA are
the actual skilled/MS/PhD candidates that companies want, not the bodyshop
which imports one-employee-one-company labor on the 65K remaining H1B quota.

Jaitley(FM) would have us believe that the 65K are the skilled ones, while
they are the ones who just happened to be the bosses pet/bribed ones getting a
chance to go on-site & not because of some specialised skill.

~~~
FreedomToCreate
There are enough professionals with bachelors being hired from top
universities outside the US (ex. University of Waterloo, ETH Zurich,
University of Cambridge, Peking University, etc...) who come to the US on H1B
visas in the 65K batch.

~~~
amatim
Coming from Waterloo, ETHZ, Cambridge, etc for 65k would be unwise at least if
they don't switch soon enough

~~~
ap46
No, its not the salary. Its the number of non-migrant visas quota for a year.
65000 for workers & 20000 for those with higher education from USA.

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harigov
I am not opposed to H1b reforms but I am opposed to the protectionist rhetoric
that inspired those reforms. If you visit any major Indian cities, you would
notice that many of the streets are filled up with many American companies
like Nike, McDonald's, KFC, PizzaHut, etc., So much of modern Indian's income
goes towards buying stuff from other countries. If we are talking about jobs,
what is stopping us from blocking these companies from serving Indian market?
Aren't we losing jobs as well? Why is it that trading goods, especially the
ones that US excels at, is good, but not trading services that require people
to travel to the customer's location?

~~~
biocomputation
* India is sovereign and can do whatever it likes. It can ban American companies at will.

* There are hundreds of thousands of H1-Bs in America right now.

* Most, if not all, of these jobs should go to Americans.

* Non-profits ( virtually all universities and hospitals in the US ) are exempt from annual caps.

* H1-B is frequently used to illegally replace American workers.

* There are so many Indians and Chinese in the H1-B program that legitimately qualified foreign nationals ( ex: PhD degree holders ) from other countries cannot even get into the US.

* Why is H1-B 80% Indian? India surely doesn't have a monopoly on brilliant people.

* If hundreds of thousands of Americans were being imported into India to do jobs for which there were qualified Indian workers, you better believe that Indians would be extremely unhappy about it.

* And here you are, with the expectation that US professionals should welcome low cost replacements with open arms.

* I live and work in Seattle. Nearly every single American citizen I know is opposed to H1-B. Many are too polite/afraid to say anything at work, but most of them would rather the H1-B workers just went home.

~~~
subhobroto
I love this response.

The H1-B program was meant to import labor only in the case that there is
absolutely no American capable of doing the job: in reality, it has become a
means of labor arbitrage.

Make no mistake though, that labor arbitrage is a challenge special to the
U.S.

As I have explained in my answer ([https://www.quora.com/Are-H-1B-visas-
causing-large-scale-une...](https://www.quora.com/Are-H-1B-visas-causing-
large-scale-unemployment-in-the-US/answer/Subhobroto-Sinha-1)) and comments
([https://www.quora.com/Are-H-1B-visas-causing-large-scale-
une...](https://www.quora.com/Are-H-1B-visas-causing-large-scale-unemployment-
in-the-US/comment/1989873)) on Quora, most developed nations make extensive
use of labor arbitrage.

Sure, China and India is the center of labor arbitrage, but there are a lot of
applicants from developed countries too.

I have spoken with Canadians immigrating to the U.S. because they can't afford
to live in Canada; I have spoken with Germans immigrating to the U.S. because
they can't afford to live in Germany; I have spoken with Finns immigrating to
the U.S. because they can't afford to live in Finland and so on. All have the
same story.

The reason being that at their home country, the companies are hiring
immigrants from developing countries at lower labor costs.

That depresses wages for that industry and I am not only talking about tech
jobs. My Quora answer shows how doctors are similarly affected:
[https://www.quora.com/Are-H-1B-visas-causing-large-scale-
une...](https://www.quora.com/Are-H-1B-visas-causing-large-scale-unemployment-
in-the-US/comment/1989873)

The Canadians/Germans/Finns/etc have an expectation for a quality of life they
are now unable to maintain on such depressed wages and hence they immigrate to
the U.S.

Here are some more datapoints: [https://www.quora.com/Are-H-1B-visas-causing-
large-scale-une...](https://www.quora.com/Are-H-1B-visas-causing-large-scale-
unemployment-in-the-US/comment/2013178)

None of them are happy they had to immigrate to the U.S. and the U.S. citizens
they likely displaced are not happy about that either.

I hate the exploitation of the H1-B program: but the H1-B is capitalism, free
markets and the global marketplace at its best.

The free market does not care if it burns the factory and workers its making
money off to the ground.

The free market only looks at one thing:

 _Profit_.

~~~
davidf18
> "I hate the exploitation of the H1-B program: but the H1-B is capitalism..."

Sure, there is capitalism, but there is also breaking the law. The abuse of
the H1-B Visa program is breaking the law since it is only supposed to be used
in cases where there is no American qualified to do the job. The law needs
changing so that violation means jail time.

The EU has a similar problem with working class and hence BrExit as a result.
Cheap labor from Eastern Europe has been displacing the British working class.
Of course, the elites like this because it means they have to pay less money
for labor and the NHS has to pay less for nurses.

The US has free trade agreements where there are no or low tariffs but not
free movement of labor. NAFTA is one such example. The EU as part of their
agreement has low-tariffs and free flow of labor connected and that is why
BrExit happened.

Even though most Americans are against H1-B the politicians seem to be for
expanding the program.

Here is Mark Rubio: [http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-
race/2015/10/30/h...](http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-
race/2015/10/30/h-1b-expert-marco-rubio-fakes-opposition-h-1b-outsourcing/)

Trump won because he was basically the only Republican and along with Sanders
the only other candidate that wanted American workers to get paid fairly.

~~~
slake
> "The abuse of the H1-B Visa program is breaking the law since it is only
> supposed to be used in cases where there is no American qualified to do the
> job"

Isn't this basically an issue of "no american qualified to do the job" "at the
price the market is willing to pay for that job"? It's not unfair to think
that these American companies that save costs by using H1-B or offshored
workers pass on those savings to customers and shareholders (since so many are
public). Their products have an inherent savings because these companies are
saving money using the H1B right?

I'm Indian and don't really care either way about this debate, but it just
seems to me 'fixing' the H1B issue wouldn't really bring jobs back to the US.
These companies are already used to such cheap IT labor and their final
product/service pricing reflects that. You think they'll suddenly hire 50-60%
more expensive US workers for those jobs? IMHO I think this will lead to more
offshoring of jobs and the US will lose more jobs that were atleast situated
in the US geographically and contributing to US taxes.

~~~
davidf18
> "Isn't this basically an issue of "no american qualified to do the job" "at
> the price the market is willing to pay for that job"?"

It's called global labor arbitrage. The intent of the H1-B visa law is not to
drive down STEM wage rates or replace Americans with lower wage immigrants,
but rather to fill jobs for which no American is qualified.

It has been abused.

> "but it just seems to me 'fixing' the H1B issue wouldn't really bring jobs
> back to the US."

H1-B are immigrants working _in America_ so by fixing the H1-B visa issue
fewer H1-B immigrants will be working in the US and more Americans will be
doing the work. I feel that those cases like Disney, Southern California
Edison, Univ California San Francisco and Abbott Laboratories all cases where
H1-B Visa workers were used to replace Americans _in America_ should have the
Visas cancelled the the firms prohibited from using H1-B directly or
indirectly for 10 years.

Many US firms have tried to offshore computer programming and in many cases
found that it does not work. Penny wise, pound foolish.

~~~
slake
> fixing the H1-B visa issue fewer H1-B immigrants will be working in the US
> and more Americans will be doing the work

That's if you assume this work can only be performed in the US. For the
difference in costs I'm guessing the companies will find a way to offshore it.

> Many US firms have tried to offshore computer programming and in many cases
> found that it does not work. Penny wise, pound foolish.

That's anecdotal. Majority of the firms that did outsource work quite well.
IBMs largest staff contingent is in India. It's not just programming,
analytics, tech consulting, pre-sales, some marketing, architectural work,
etc.

