High priced lawyers explaining to a client how they avoid finding those qualified American applicants.

YouTube - PERM Fake Job Ads defraud Americans to secure green cards fo

This violates the spirit of the law, which was to find workers for jobs that are not possible to be filled by the local populace.

I am shocked to say the least.

(Not sure where to post these things, it's economic to the people affected.. )

Lets talk about the visa itself and why this should or should not surprise anyone.

It is a visa for people with bachelors degrees or better or special experience. It is a dual intent visa, meaning that you have an opportunity to get a green card and eventually become a citizen. More than 50% of these visas are used by technology companies such as Microsoft and Oracle, as well as Indian recruiting firms such as Infosys and Wipro. For this reason it is often referred to as the technical visa. I may have this part a little wrong, but I believe it is good for 3 years plus another 3 years and another 1 year extension if you are applying for a green card. Thats easily 7 years. The number of people allowed in on this visa vary each year. This past year the cap was 65,000 plus 20,000 extra for graduate students. Along with cap exempt category well over 100,000 temporary workers came to the US on this visa. In the past the 65k part has been over 100k itself. In these years, my graduating class saw each-other every three months at the career fairs.

The whole principal on which this visa is sold to Congress and the Senate is that there are not qualified Americans for these Jobs. The technology lobbies have been lying for the past 15 or so years about this shortage. Economic indicators indicate no shortage. (Wages have stagnated, unemployment in the field is higher, massive layoffs of technology workers after or before H1's hired)

What has been happening is these corporations have been profiting, by hiring cheaper foreign labor. They save about 10k a year per employee (not all companies do this but the impact is large enough) and suppress the wages of IT professionals at the same time. There is a clause that the prevailing wage must be paid, but there are easy ways around this such as specifying the job is for a junior programmer when he does senior level work or in a location that pays less. There is no money set aside for enforcement of the program. The DOL pretty much rubber stamps applicants.

The large tech companies also make huge campaign contributions to our Senators and Congress people each year, to keep re-passing this legislation and to raise the cap year after year. Ever wonder why they are always smooching the rear end of tech companies?


Why should you care? If you think the existence of an American middle class is a good thing, you should care. When corporations can replace the middle class, by making jobs unavailable to them, The incentive to be educated in the field is eliminated, more foreign workers are brought over and the work is shipped over seas. I don't know about you, but to me, without a middle class we are lords and serfs.

What is so wrong about trying to get the best and brightest of the world to come to the US? The more there are in the US the more jobs which will be created in their fields for them.

So you are asking what is wrong with discriminating against Americans in favor of cheaper labor?
Whats wrong with making middle class jobs in America unaccessible to the American people ?
Whats wrong with claiming to congress that there are worker shortages when there are clearly not?
Whats wrong with abusing the system to tamper with the labor market, suppress wages and only hire your own nationality?

Create jobs? Unexperienced and Junior programmers create junior programming jobs? since when?
The H1-B isn't about the best and brightest. They are payed on average 10k less than what they should be paid. They have less job mobility and are basically indentured servants. Did you see the video? They are discriminating against Americans in favor of cheaper labor. They don't want to find the best and brightest Americans. Their goal is to NOT FIND THEM AND DISQUALIFY THEM AS CANDIDATES! So they can higher cheaper workers.The best and brightest can get here by becoming citizens. Not indentured servants to the corporations. The claims of labor shortage are a myth and this video blows the door off the fact that they receive too many qualified American applicants if they list the jobs in remotely visible areas.

Realize this is just one immigration attorneys office, but this is like the kids who hit mailboxes with bats and video tape it then caught. Everyone else just isn't as stupid.

It doesn't make jobs inaccessible, if anything an increase in skilled labor makes the labor market in the US more attractive for prospective employers. This is not a zero sum game, just because someone else gets a job doesn't mean another person cannot get a job. And the better educated the populace is, the better the economy will be.

All people residing in this nation benefit from a strong economy.

Even if a person, fresh of the boat, is paid less for an entry level position, that will soon change. The market adjusts rapidly in educated fields and if they're getting paid 10k less they'll soon move to a job where they are receiving a decent wage.

Labor is a natural resource, a strong labor force will attract more companies to the US. So companies are looking to cut through the red-tape as fast as they can because they already have a man to work the jobs. I have no problem with that. The requirement to find an American worker shouldn't have been in the law in the first place.

We should bring as many highly educated people to the US as we possibly can, it will make the economy stronger, and it will ensure that we can maintain a leading role in the world economy. If anything we should be talking about lessening the onerous burdens it takes to get a visa to study and work here so the US can get the best and brightest from around the world.

I am sorry but lower skilled workers (the ones at these consulting firms) are not creating their own and other jobs of the same type. They are being trained and in many cases sent back to offshore the project they were working on to compete with the US. It's a corporate labor discount bought from our representatives.

The workers are available in America now for these jobs, that is why we are upset when they talk about brining even more in to the currently, when the system is clearly being abused. There are 100's of qualified applicants for almost every position. With high caps on the visas, the jobs go to H1's first based on market price, and are practically unavailable to American workers.


Enrollment is down in Computer Science programs! It is because the job prospects are terrible due to the H1-B program. Tons of people were enrolling in the 90's when the jobs paid a fair rate for the intellect required. There are way more workers than there are jobs. There is no point in Americans in going to school for computer science when they wont be able to get a job, unless they have personal connections. Given a choice between a cheaper grad, possibly with some experience and a American grad, the Americans are left out in the cold. Flipping burgers with my degree from the #11 Computer Science school in the world sure was a lot of fun.

We are talking about hiring a foreign worker over an American worker. How will this create more jobs in the same job classification? How exactly does this work? They will be treated poorly for up to 7 years or to when they can get their green card. Not so rapid is it?

Yes, everyone benefits from a strong economy, but the American people benefit more from having a large Middle class. The American dream if you will. These jobs literally do become unavailable when the cap is set to high. What will my future children and grandchildren have to look forward to if there is only the wealthy and the poor with no bridge in-between?

It's starting to make the news. Information week article.
YouTube Video On Avoiding U.S. Job Applicants Angers Programmers -- H-1B -- InformationWeek

If the company simply wanted to train the workers, it'd be easier and cheaper to fly their trainers out, then to bring a large number in. These people will be here for a while, that means when a company is looking at a place to build their next Campus/R&D facility/etc. they will count this as a beneficial reason because the labor force isn't strictly limited.

In order to build a campus you want a few things, you want the town/community to be a place your workers will want to work (which will make it easier to hire them), you want a readily available pool of workers in the area, and you want it to be easy to transfer your employees from one branch to another.

Now if we impose harsh sanctions and clog the employers hiring patterns with red-tape they'll simply have their business in the EU, where they can bring educated workers without difficulty. Further the best and brightest of the rest of the world will also simply move to one of the many other first world nations and work and study there. This hurts our Universities and Colleges, it hurts our Businesses, and it hurts our economy.

What you're seeing here are the economic cycles of the field. In the 90s there was a shortage wages were exorbitantly high, then the dotcom bubble burst and there was a surplus, then then there was a shortage and now there is another surplus.

But if you want to find a culprit for a decrease in the IT field in the last year, you should look at the actual market, rather then at immigrants. People are holding off buying hardware and software because of Vista, all the while people are holding off buying Vista because of various problems. So the numerous markets are suffering because of it.

Whats more compared to the 90s, an IT expert needs to know more and be more diverse in their skills, making it a more difficult field to break into. Which is why prospective workers need not only to have a good degree they need to have a portfolio of prior work.

Something which comes and goes in every field.

It will create jobs, because it is a greater incentive to placing a firm in the US instead of in the EU. Whats more, the worker can give their resume to multiple firms and firms in different nations. If the firm treats any of their employees poorly, they'll lose the employee an the profit they generate.

Further the visa lasts 6 years, and after they demonstrate there is no American who can do their job, then they can get permanent residence and work for whoever they care to.

You're straining too hard for a scapegoat. The economy is switching from being production/manufacturing based to being knowledge based. This is causing some people to surge ahead, that will soon be adjusted for in the coming years just as it always has been.

I agree there are fluctuations in the number of jobs, but the problem is exacerbated by the H1-B visa cap having no relation to the job market. After the dot com burst and 9/11 over a million software developers lost there jobs here. They Raised the cap.

(7 if you count 1 year extensions)
Yes which they are committing fraud in order to do. See the video? They are finding creative ways to disqualify all American Applicants.
Their lowered mobility for those 7 years causes depressed wages. After they get their greencard they start to get screwed by the next boatload of people desperate to come to America.

Even with the H1B program they are building their campuses overseas. They are using the program to accelerate the process and to fill the hard to outsource jobs. They proved there intent when the labor market was flooded by layoffs and got the cap increased substantially.


Wouldn't wages be going up for knowledge worker Americans if Americans were switching to a knowledge based economy? Wouldn't the increased wages encourage American students to go into computer Science as was happening in the 90's. Wouldn't this natural course of the market meat demand?

Once they prove that no other American can do their job, there wages cannot be depressed, because they can get permanent residence and work wherever they'd like to. They do not need to prove that no one else can do their job in order to get an H1-B visa, they only need to prove that the company which hired them wants them to do it.

They are, manufacturing wages have stagnated along with a host of others, while the tertiary educated are earning more and more. This is whats driving the wage disparity.

Further afaik the cap refers to the entire program, not to specific industries.