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Mon, Oct 29, 2007 10:07 EDT

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Posted by: Stephanie Overby in News Topic: IT Organization ManagementBlog: Talent Show
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There's one thing that opponents in the H-1B visa debate actually agree on: the U.S. system for granting these and other non-immigrant visas to foreign workers is broken. Yet getting a (non tech-vendor) CIO to say anything substantive on the subject is harder than trying to coax an errant syllable from a mime outside the Louvre.
More on that last bit later. But first, that (sort of) meeting of the minds...
In a recent BusinessWeek column, "The Visa Shortage: Big Problem, Easy Fix," Vivek Wadhwa describes the scene at a Duke University career fair: "Signs with the words 'U.S. citizens and permanents only' greeted students at employers' booths... Foreign-born engineering graduates told me they were disappointed that employers like General Electric (GE), IBM (IBM), and Carmax (KMX) as well as smaller companies would not even interview them. Recruiters told me they were frustrated that they could not fill critical positions." There are significantly more foreign-born students than Americans completing higher degrees in engineering, according to the BusinessWeek column, but many find it difficult to stay on in the U.S. to work. America's high-tech employers are in trouble, writes Wadhwa. There just aren't enough H-1B visas to go around. (Currently, the annual cap on H-1B visas is 85,000, with 20,000 exemptions set aside for foreign students who receive degrees from U.S. schools.) A former tech CEO who is now a Wertheim Fellow at the Harvard Law School and executive in residence at Duke, Wadhwa says the scene at his school is evidence of a "broken system" that's driving the best-educated foreign workers to Europe, India, and China. But there's a simple fix, he says: "... increase the number of visas that are available for international students who
get job offers from U.S. companies. An even better solution is to offer these students permanent-resident visas rather than H-1Bs. In the new global landscape, we need the world's best talent on our side."
Last month, Dr. Norman Matloff, a computer science professor at the University of California, Davis known for his opposition to the increased placement of foreign workers in U.S. IT jobs, weighed in with a 25-page research paper examining the effects of the H-1B visa and employee-sponsored green card systems. (A side note: the report does a good job of clarifying the difference between the two.) His conclusion? You guessed it: the system is "broken." Matloff lays out a plethora of problems from widespread abuse and fraud (which Wadhwa also alluded to in his column) that he says are enabled by loopholes to the "de facto indentured servitude" he says the H-1B visa can enable. Matloff also attempts to debunk what he sees as the talent shortage myth. When there's a talent crunch, Matloff argues, one tends to see a surge in salaries. Yet his data shows that pay for new graduates in computer science and engineering has been dropping since 2001. "The constant cry of the industry lobbyists that the tech industry cannot find qualified workers is clearly false," Matloff writes. He offers his own suggestions for H-1B reform, including moving to a single-level prevailing wage instead of the four-level scale that exists now, defining the prevailing wage based on the qualifications of the worker instead of the job, extending the rules for H-1B dependent companies (e.g. giving hiring priority to U.S. workers and no hiring of H-1Bs within 90 days of a layoff) to any company hiring H-1B workers, and cleaning up the green card certification process.
Now, if put in a
Stephanie, I think one of the reasons that you aren't getting much CIO feedback is because they don't typically hire H1-B's directly. They usually work through service providers who provide them with the talent they need. So this is someone else's problem.
Tech companies on the other hand do hire H1-B's directly (they also use service providers), so they are the most vocal on this issue. That is why you hear Microsoft and Oracle speak so loudly and never hear a CIO.
The bigger issue is that if we need foreign workers with particular skills, we should bring them here permanently -- not as temporary workers. H1-B visas are lose/lose for American workers and those that come to the U.S. on these.
Why are these lose/lose? Because most of those that come to the U.S. want to stay. When H1-B workers file for green cards, the are stuck in the same job for 6-10 years. During most of this period, they really can't change jobs -- otherwise they have to start the process again and get to the back of the queue. Employers aren't worried about them leaving so they don't offer them the same wage increases and perks they offer others. This causes a negative overall effect on wages.
Our research (www.globalizationresearch.com) has shown that at present there are over 1 million skilled immigrants and their families in queue for a yearly allocation of 120,000 green cards. There are probably 200,000 tech workers stuck in immigration limbo in this queue -- and the majority of these are likely to be on H1-B visas.
Again, these aren't matters CIO's worry about. They worry about keeping their users happy and having company infrastructure running efficiently.
I graduated with a degree in CS 2 years ago from a private University. I took Artificial intelligence, Operating systems, Discrete Math, and Parallel Programming to name a few of my more advanced courses. Unfortunately, despite the challenging coursework I took it does not qualify me to work in IT because most companies are short sighted when it comes to hiring new graduates without experience. I am confident that within 6 months of on the job training I could become an excellent IT professional and that the course work I took would surely enable me to match my competition from abroad (not to mention the inherent advantage of communicating with the business in the native tongue).
There is talent-a-plenty here in the U.S. and domestic applicants should be looked at first because it is in the best long term interests of the U.S. economy. Unfortunately for me and many other young people most companies have forgotten about mentorship and training. Simply mentor and train new graduates and you will have all the IT talent you need right here on US soil.
One thing I've noticed about US students compared to non-US, is that they lack the ability to learn independently - they need to be told to do things, whereas European graduates to a certain extent dont. This is probably due to the hand-holding style of university in the US.
AI, OS, discrete and parallel are advanced courses? Wow...they sound like very standard comp sci courses to me.
Iam also afraid that you don't have an inherent advantage in communication, as there is a large English speaking community all around the world - in places like India, pretty much everyone speaks or understands English (usually with a technically better grammar and use of vocabulary), and this trend is slowly growing in China.
This is a great question, where are all the CIO's on the H1-B debate. CIO's like other senior leaders in organizations are afraid to speak out on sensitive topics like this.
Where are all the CIO's ? Well here is one........
First let me ask, if you are looking for comments from CIO's are they
1) US Born CIO's
2) Naturalized CIO's (through immigration)
3) Foreign or Alien CIO's (pre-naturalized) within the US
4) Foreign or Alien CIO's outside the US
As a non-US citizen, yet a CIO I believe we need to understand that the shortage of resources is a bigger issue than just within the borders of the United States of America. Although the US is a large market, but not the largest in the world. Operating within a municipality in Canada, we too face shortages of qualified workers. NOW before you right me off as a Canadian and without an opinion on the H1-B matter, think about the global economy. There are many organizations that move staff and management in and out of the US to foreign destinations to work on a regular basis.
Should the US be as restrictive as they are regarding immigration? Does any country have enough people to RUN the country? If there are labour shortages in any country, won't people naturally come from another country to take advantage of those opportunities, that is what the US was built on in the late 1800's and early 1900's, much like Canada. I guess the challenge is that people want to come to fill the gaps but they are not able to get through the funnel in a timely fashion. How will this impact the US economy?
I would ask, is this problem unique to the IT/Telecommunications/Technology industry ? If not can US workers be retrained into IT positions. If it is beyond the industry and in many industries then this is definitely a much larger problem than a group of CIO’s can address.
Those are my two cents.....
Which H1B debate are we talking about?
If it is the one about adequacy of H1B visas, my view is that there is no way to tell until we know how many are currently misused (not synonymous to abused). H1Bs are to be obtained for a certain period of time (3 years extensible to a few more after that). Therefore it is suited for 'projects' requiring certain skills (forget 'specialized' for the moment). Instead I suspect in many cases hiring managers find such temporary nature a good fit for their usually 'temporary' planning process. By that I mean very few real long term strategies are sure enough for a company to go hire a large number of permanent staff. In other words, H1B I suspect may have become a succor for managers who don't want to commit their organization to a particular long term strategy or skill-set/level mix. This is also probably why fewer organizations are prepared to invest the 6 months of training and mentoring in developing a new recruit (refer Dave's remarks above).
If the debate on the other hand is about whether H1B is good or bad - that train left a long time ago. I don't think we have a choice. Hypothetically speaking, if H1B is banned today I would guess more jobs would go offshore outright than what would lead to developing the local worker.