[ale] H1B -- What To Do

[Jeff Hubbs]

On Tue, 2002-07-09 at 15:09, Bao C. Ha wrote:
> 
> I have tried to stay away from this discussion.
> Unfortunately, I don't think it is a good idea
> to blame everything on the H1B Visa holders.

Oh, I *certainly* don't blame *them*.  It's that age-old management
issue of boosting the bottom line at any cost, be it societal or even
(to risk overutilizing the phrase) national security.

When I say "national security" I'm talking about the notion of people
living their lives without constant worry of predation.  I
guaran-damn-tee you that if you could take the very next a**hole SUV
driver you see that does something aggressive and dangerous on the road
is in some sort of situation either at home or at work where he has been
made to feel like he either needs to "get" or "get gotten."  

> 
> This economy has hit everybody hard.  I beleive
> the H1B people are affected as much as many of 
> us.  There may be a few who still have their
> jobs, because of their skills.  Don't assume that
> we can easily find people to fill in those jobs 
> if we kick all of the H1B out of the country.

Having worked in an Indian-owned company in which H1Bs were their stock
in trade (and having been laid off as the last remaining US native in my
department), I have mixed feelings about this.  I knew one guy in
particular - a programmer - who was a damn hard worker and really put a
lot of himself into his work and into communicating with me as his
project manager and with other people.  As it happened, he was sweating
bullets about getting his green card before the company returned him,
and sure enough, they "sent him on leave," which was as good as a layoff
with the added Damoclean sword that they'd send him back if he didn't
get his green card in time.  Now, I don't have a problem at all with
people like him coming over here on a visa to work AS LONG AS US
citizens are not being DENIED jobs or DISPLACED as a result.  However, I
think that companies are going WAY out on a limb when they justify
bringing in an army of H1Bs in lieu of hiring US citizens.  Remember
that, when they bring them over, they can't just pay them dirt (that's
what offshore development is for right?); these guys still have to pay
the inflated apartment rents and (generally) lease some kind of car, and
pay the same kinds of bills we all have to pay, but I'm pretty
comfortable assuming that these companies feel that they can get away
with paying less than what the market would demand.  I am sensitive to
the concept of people being exploited as a function of and as a result
of where they're from.  When things turned sour where I used to work,
they began by returning sets of H1Bs back to India.  These guys were
quite pissed off and I was sympathetic about that, but, to his credit,
the US boss quite firmly stated that his company was NOT a conduit for
Indians to live in America. But, again, the H1Bs had a right to be upset
in that it was not clear to them that everything that COULD have been
done to keep people gainfully utilized was being done.  I spent my last
2+ months there trying to get people placed on GSA contract tasks with
the Federal Government; as I explained in my presentation to management
about the contract, we weren't going to get rich on whatever task orders
we got (the rates weren't high enough for that) but we *would* be able
to keep people on the payroll.   Unfortunately, the people who would
have had to approve things like a separate fax number and about $700 for
Pricelist reproduction (that is, the most basic things you'd have to do
to run and market a Government contract) simply would not take action,
they laid me off, and as far as I know, no task orders were ever
received (and wouldn't be, naturally).

All of this was consistent with a company that was heading toward having
little if any actual US capability on-hand, i.e., sending anything and
everything offshore.  There were other missed opportunities that I won't
go into here that would have meant a permanent US presence with little
or no use for offshore development, including one that may well have
resulted in a few mill in clean profit every year.  


> 
> The Information Technology has changed significantly
> since about a couple of years ago.  The Y2K and the
> Internet bubble had skewed the IT skillset toward 
> business/service orientation, where there was a
> large demand for systems administration/management
> expertises.  They had come and gone.  Companies are
> now struggling to produce something, if they have
> any hopes to survive.  There is a very high demand
> of highly-skilled developers, but not many can be
> found.  I define a developer as having two types of
> skillsets: (1) programming skills, like c/c++/java,
> and (2) expert domain knowledge, like networking 
> (tcp/ip stacks, snmp, sockets, IPC, ...), kernel/
> drivers, database (data model/ERD/normalization, 
> ...), etc ...

Bao, you have hit on something here that I would do well to keep in
mind.  To program is a textbook exercise (roughly stated) but the rubber
only really hits road when the code interfaces meaningfully with
something outside itself and the things you list there in you (2) are
good examples.  If I were running a project that involved writing code
to hit a DBMS, I don't just want a code jockey; I want someone that
groks DBMSses in the general case - and I don't mean someone who JUST
knows Oracle or JUST knows DB2, but rather someone who can basically
study and work with ANY of those and pick among them for the best effect
(i.e., PostGreSQL if it'll do the job, and something else if it won't
:-) )

> 
> There has been a paradigm shift in the demand of IT
> skills.  It requires less people but with a much
> deeper skillset in the expert domain knowledge.  Many
> of our current IT personnel don't have marketable
> skillsets.  Plus there are so many "IT" people being
> produced by "trade" schools for the "new" economy 
> that was busted even before it was started.
> 
> I believe the solution now, is to retrain ourselves
> and to wait for the economy to pick up.  I don't
> think we can reverse the trend due the globalization
> nature of our economy.  And our government has proven
> itself to be quite inept in the management of 
> technologies.

I have to agree; the problem isn't going to go away.  I do wish that the
Government would enforce the law.

> 
> Just two-share worth of Worldcom stocks. :-(
> Bao
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Bob Evans [mailto:bobevans19 at yahoo.com]
> > Sent: Tuesday, July 09, 2002 6:44 AM
> > To: ALE
> > Cc: discuss @charlug.org
> > Subject: [ale] H1B -- What To Do
> > 
> > 
> > You might want to send this to your friends.
> > 
> > The Good News about H-1B? You Can Fight Back
> > 
> > What to Do
> > 
> > 1. Send in your petition to abolish the H1-B visa.
> > http://www.zazona.com/h1bpetition/P/petition.html
> > 
> > 2. Be a pest. Call your congressmen. They don't know
> > how you feel unless you tell them. Use these links to
> > find your representatives' contact information.
> > http://www.house.gov/htbin/wrep_findrep
> > 
> > http://www.senate.gov/
> > 
> > http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/
> > 
> > Call your congressmen and ask to speak to someone to
> > express an opinion. Tell them what happened with your
> > job or your friend's job, or that you got your tech
> > education and can't find a job in the field, and how
> > angry you are that our government enacted laws that
> > favor business and foreign workers over American
> > citizens. Tell them how you feel. Say whatever you
> > want to say, but let them hear from you. The more of
> > these calls you make, the easier they get, and the
> > more the congressmen notice 
> > there's something going on out there.
> > 
> > 3. Email your congressmen. And send them faxes.
> > Consider faxing or mailing your congressmen, the White
> > House, The Secretary of Labor and the Secretary of
> > Commerce weekly with an educational letter. This only
> > has to be a few lines of letter bites. "Letter bites"
> > are short anecdotes or quotes from news articles or
> > from information you find on the H-1B Hall of Fame
> > site. Snail mail works if they read it. I've had at
> > least one snail mail 
> > mistakenly shredded, so I've taken to sending faxes.
> > It does help to contact these 
> > people. I've had them call me back to discuss the
> > issues. If they hear from 
> > enough of you, they will start to worry about losing
> > votes. 
> > 
> > Example of educational info taken from H-1B Hall of
> > Shame website and mailed to 
> > my congressmen and the White House within the context
> > of a letter I wrote 
> > outlining my own situation: 
> > 
> > The United States Department of Labor Office of
> > Inspector General (OIG) admitted in the year 2000 that
> > the fraud and abuse continues. This is after a major
> > report in 1996 outlined numerous instances of fraud.
> > Nothing has improved:
> > 
> > The OIG continues to identify fraud in the labor
> > certification program, particularly in the H-1B
> > temporary work visa program. A year-long joint INS and
> > Department of State initiative found that 45 percent
> > of the 3,247 work experience claims made to the INS
> > were fraudulent. 
> > 
> > 4. Contact Congressmen such as Representative Tom
> > Tancredo of Colorado who wants to sponsor a bill
> > abolishing the H1-B visa. Tell him what happened to
> > your job. Tell him about any other job losses you know
> > about due to H1-B or about your difficulties finding a
> > job. If you want to send 
> > a fax to his
> > office: 202-226-4623. This would be especially
> > valuable because if Rep. Tancredo hears from a number
> > of you, he will have ammunition to present his bill.
> > Thank him for his stance against H1-B
> > 
> > 5. Call, write or email the White House, the US
> > Department of Labor and the US Department of Commerce.
> > Explain what happened to your job.
> > 
> > President George W. Bush
> > 
> > The White House
> > 
> > 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
> > 
> > Washington, DC 20500
> > 
> > Comments: 202-456-1111
> > 
> > Fax: 202-456-2461
> > 
> > Email: president at whitehouse.gov
> > 
> > vice.president at whitehouse.gov
> > 
> > Elaine Chao
> > 
> > Secretary of Labor
> > 
> > U.S. Dept. of Labor
> > 
> > 200 Constitution Ave., NW
> > 
> > Washington, DC 20210
> > 
> > Phone: 202-693-6000
> > 
> > Donald L. Evans
> > 
> > Secretary of Commerce
> > 
> > Email: devans at doc.gov
> > 
> > Phone: 202-482-2000
> > 
> > 6. Get on Dr. Matloff's H1-B list or the H-1B email
> > newsletter. They will send you links to new articles
> > on H1-B, high tech job losses, etc. Read the articles
> > and then respond by email to the papers and magazines
> > that print the articles. Letters to papers and
> > magazines are very effective in getting our story out
> > there.
> > 
> > http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.real.html
> > (Dr. Matloff's site)
> > 
> > 7. Any time you see an article by a congressman from
> > any state where the congressman supports worker's
> > rights, contact them and thank them and tell them your
> > story.
> > 
> > 8. Join the programmers guild.
> > http://www.colosseumbuilders.com/american.htm
> > (Programmers Guild)
> > 
> > 9. If you want to fax a petition to abolish H1-B go to
> > 
> > http://www.numbersusa.org/index has
> > free faxes on matters of interest to all American
> > workers, such as extending unemployment benefits and
> > fighting H-1B. 
> > 
> > 10. Ask your family and friends to join you in
> > supporting our efforts to get Congress to treat us
> > fairly.
> > 
> > 11. If you can, make donations to the organizations
> > that run the
> > sites you use to fight H-1B.
> > 
> > Remember, if you don't protest now, things will get
> > much worse. And you will have only yourself to blame.
> > Information prepared by 
> > Linda Evans (writer and wife of programmer replaced by
> > H-1B's). Contact me at 
> > linda19 at linuxmail.org
> > The above methods are working. I've had letters
> > published in papers all over 
> > the country and an op-ed published locally. I've
> > gotten calls from congressmen's 
> > offices and from reporters. We have to get the word
> > out. I hope you will join 
> > our fight - the job you save may be your own or that
> > of your children.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > =====
> > Bob Evans                            http://carolinux.com
> > bobevans19 at yahoo.com                 Providing economical   
> > 704 882-6214 (w)                     computer solutions   
> > 704 562-7166 (m)                     to the Carolinas...
> > 
> > __________________________________________________
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> > http://sbc.yahoo.com
> > 
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