Foreign workers replacing Americans: Michael Reagan.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: While California’s unemployment rate continues to hover at a full percentage point higher than the national average, the state has taken the controversial and somewhat ironic step of hiring Indian nationals to process its unemployment claims.
According to ABC’s Sacramento affiliate, News10, “with the exception of two managers, everyone inside the office is from outside of the U.S. They are employed by Deloitte, a major U.S. IT company hired by the state to create and manage its Unemployment Insurance Modernization project. The mostly Indian nationals are allowed to work here under a visa program called H-1B.”
Right wing pundits are rallying against the move and using it as ammo against President Obama’s immigration reform, and H1-B visas in particular.
Computerworld reports “information technology workers at Southern California Edison (SCE) are being laid off and replaced by workers from India. Some employees are training the H-1B visa holding replacements, and many have already lost their jobs.”
According to Michael Reagan, son of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan: “That’s really pouring salt in the wound. First the company makes you train the foreign workers replacing you then, after you’re fired, more foreign workers process your unemployment claim.”
Reagan also argues that the wage scale for STEM related fields will be lowered if U.S. companies continue to support the influx of foreign nationals working in the United States. He cites Sen. Jeff Sessions, a Republican out of Alabama, who claims 75 percent of U.S. citizens with STEM degrees are working in completely unrelated positions.
Conversely, major tech companies are among the strongest proponents for H1-B expansion. Major industry players regularly endorse and finance lobbying groups such as FWD.us that claim further immigration reform would create millions of jobs, reduce deficit, and keep the United States globally competitive.
4 Comments
H1B visa workers are not really employees, they are consultants. They get a 1099 and the company that pays them avoids FICA and Obamacare. You can hire an Indian IT worker for 1/3 the cost of a US worker, but you get what you pay for. You’ll be paying for re-work, compliance issues, and lost customers. In the short term it looks good, but in the long term, your IT systems will turn to spaghetti code.
I like “you get what you pay for”, I don’t agree with consultants polluting systems with spaghetti code. In most companies I have worked for, there’re always employees to review the code and maintain the coding/designing/ui/ux standards.
The H1B Visa Program is destroying the American middle class.
It’s a simple case of Economics 101: The Law of Supply and Demand.
STEM labor is an economic resource that follows this natural law. If you flood any labor market with a flood of external workers, the wage rate is pressured downward, thus harming or destroying the careers of local workers.
The wage rates of American tech workers have been going down since their peak in 2001.
Why? Because of a massive inflow of H1B Visa tech workers from abroad, mainly from India.
The H1B Visa Program is depressing the wages and destroying the careers of American STEM workers and should be terminated.
Why is that US natives are unable to contest the foreigners in their own terms ? They must first accept the jobs at the salary that is being offered to the foreigners and consolidate their positions. No American Company will employ a foreigner when there is a local prepared to do it the same salary. If the locals first grab the jobs and consolidate the workforce they can gradually marginalize the foreigners. This will eventually stop the foreigners seeking jobs in US . Once the locals have strengthened their workforce they can seek higher salary.