First, my apologies for the lack of posts -- I've recently changed roles at my company and am in the "transitional process" over the next two months, meaning I'm working two jobs and am buried. Once I settle into my new role I should be able to get more regular posts out -- thanks to all for the inquiries and the patience.
For those that don't know, an H1-B visa allows a skilled non-US citizen to work in the US for up to six years. They are mainly used by technology companies in the US who can't source enough talent among US citizens for high tech jobs. They are vigorously opposed by labour groups in the US who argue that foreigners using these visas are stealing US jobs from US citizens. They've managed to get these visas capped at 65,000 per year. This years crop was bought up in one day.
Stealing jobs from Americans?! I've spent the last several years as a Chief Information Officer in one of the largest private US companies, so pardon my incredulity: we're sealing from who exactly? It takes roughly 4-6 months to find just one talented, mathematically savvy programmer for our quantitative trading team -- and the contrast in talent between US and non-US candidates is stark. Like grand canyon stark. Makes you wonder what all those education dollars are buying us.
I'm not saying that Americans are stupid. But with 5.4% unemployment (the lowest in 25 years) and over 140 million US citizens employed in the tech industry already, there's slim pickin's out there among those on the margin. Why is it a bad thing to utilize highly productive / strategic labor from other countries even if they are selected before those within our own? Why does drawing a line on a map make one person more desirable than another? Trading for labor is no different than trading for any other input to production. Consider the following people who have added a TON of value to the U.S. thanks to the H1-B visa mechanism:
- Sameer Bhatia, founder of Hotmail
- Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google
- Alfred Chuang, founder of BEA Systems
- Vinod Dham, designer of the Pentium chip
- James Gosling, developer of the Java language
- Anders Hejlsber, architect of the C# language
- Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems
- Linus Torvalds, inventor of Linux
Can you imagine the value these people have added to our economy? The jobs they created that would not have otherwise existed? The people being hired on these H1-B visas are smart, productive and are out to make a difference -- and they create opportunities for everyone else because of it. Stealing?!. To borrow from John Stossel, give me a break.
