Reply to H1b visas. Anyone else work in technology and see the issues with this program and outsourcing?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]People like you OP do not hire for jobs like I do.  You could not be more run in terms of skills.  I hope and want and wish to fill my jobs with American talent from a culture and language/comms perspective.  However I have Russian, Indian, Chinese and ever more frequently Nigerian talent in engineering and software development to choose.  You think Americans are studying and getting skilled in engineering and you are wrong.  So. Totally. Wrong.  Culturally, Americans do best in finance, sales, business, law. They do not do math and tech.  Go to high schools and you'll see all the kids playing sports are Americans and all those playing an instrument are either American who have a strong tradition culturally in academic all around excellence or they are typically those with a foreign last name.  There's a tradition of studying math, science and STEM that's rooted in tradition v cultural oh I think that might be cool but maybe I'll go where the money is and it's easier attitude among most Americans.  Quite honestly the truth is Americans are rockstar sales people.  They are not rock star geeks :)

[/quote]

Americans created the microchip, integrated circuits, the internet,, and the personal computer.[/quote]

Using foreign talent. It has been our secret sauce. Always. [/quote]

Wrong.  All of those were created by people born in America, who went through the American education system.  [/quote]

https://www.betaboom.com/magazine/article/american-immigrants-built-generation-defining-tech

Take a look at these. Foreign born American inventors have always been critical to American success. As far back as Nikola Tesla.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2023/01/12/highly-inventive-immigrants-also-make-natives-more-innovative/

[/quote]

Hey troll/fake hiring manager. We are not talking about not allowing any foreign born people in the US.  We are discussing offshoring huge swaths of American industry at the expense of our young people who are also being saddled with educational debt, poor health care and everything else this country brings [/quote]

I would love to prevent off shoring. But think about the realities for a minute. You are a multinational company. You, as an executive, have a target to hit on productivity and you are given a budget. Btw, this is directly tied to your share prices which is all your CEO and the Board worries about. You can get decent engineers in the US. But they are scattered around and are expensive. You can go to Bangalore, where your company has a building, and get competent engineers at a 1/4 the cost. These folks aren’t ever going to make it past the senior manager level. You hire in the US to find those kids who you want to become Directors and Senior Directors and VPs in the long run.  So what is the VP to do?

And how does the US by policy prevent multinational companies from hiring labor internationally?  
[/quote]

are you the fake hiring manager above who claims you can't find american talent? Yet you cant tell me what roles you are hiring for and where you would, for example, try to look for AI engineers in the US.

you're clearly operating in bad faith, and are very aware of the fixes that could work
1. simple and significant and fast tax credits for US technical hires.
2. tie federal money to US workforce requirements. 
3. add some friction to offshore work-  lower tax deductions, consider a flat extra tax, consider extra restrictions/regulations for data access, etc.

there are plenty of policy ways to do this, but yet we do not.  and i am not against all visas, but they need to be used discretely and with policy choices that reduce offshoring, and then we will see real improvement. [/quote]

First, you are talking to multiple people.  That person is not me

I don’t claim you can’t find people in the US. I am claiming that off shoring is cheaper and that for lower cost, you can find higher quality talent.

I also claim that there is a scale issue in the US. Of course you can find individuals in the US - but can you find teams of high quality individuals at the scale you can find elsewhere?  BTW, I do think AI is going to upset this balance v soon.

Finally on the policy incentives, you have no idea what you are talking about. Corporations already pay v little tax on the US (thanks to Republican policies).  The leverage is much less than you would think. Second, there is such a thing as the “source principle”. Multinationals pay taxes at the source.  So if I hire a team in India, I have to deal with the Indian tax code and the US does not tax me on it. Countries where companies are HQ’d of course have taxation rights but everybody is us g complex territorial activities to mask this. It isn’t at all easy to discourage off shoring. And anyone who tells you otherwise (Dems for a long time) are lying or don’t understand the complexities. [/quote]

Pp you are overstating things perhaps in an effort to muddy the issues. It is probably true that policy can’t completely eliminate off shoring but they can make a significant dent in it by these sorts of changes I suggested.

I work in this area and see exactly the types of structures that are used, and it is not as opaque as you are claiming. Also you are just wrong that there aren’t American options. There is simply no effort. Co go straight to their contractors and when there is a need for a new specialized skill set - my current example above- they find a new vendor to hire through.

Take away. There are ways to cause more friction for offshoring and to incentivize local hiring. It is doable.

[/quote]

one easy step is to get rid of Optional Practical Training (OPT) visas.    They have NEVER been voted on.   Created by executive branch without any input from Congress.
The troubling fact is that the OPT program was created entirely through regulation with no authorization from Congress whatsoever. It has been going on for so long, that many people assume that Congress authorized OPT when in fact, Congress has explicitly changed the law to prohibit it.

Here is a history of how OPT came about. In reading this history, keep in mind that the regulations described here employ the euphemism "practical training" to refer to work.

[b]In 2007, Microsoft concocted a scheme to use OPT as a means to circumvent the H-1B quotas. Microsoft's plan was to extend the duration of OPT from a year to 29-months, so that the duration would be sufficient to serve as a guestworker program, rather than just an internship-type program. Microsoft proposed this scheme to the Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff at a dinner party at the home of the owner of the Washington Nationals baseball team. (See pp. 229-230 in the book Sold Out.) From there, DHS worked in absolute secrecy with industry lobbyists to craft regulations implementing Microsoft's plan.[/b]

In a classic example of Washington cronyism, the first notice that DHS was even considering such regulations came when they were promulgated as a fait accompli, without notice and comment, on April 8, 2008 (73 Fed. Reg. 18,944). These regulations made three major expansions to OPT. First, they allowed aliens to remain in student visa status while they were unemployed so they could look for work. Second, they allowed aliens working under OPT to remain in student visa status from the time an H-1B petition was filed on their behalf until a final decision was made on the petition or the start date. This adds a maximum of 6 months to the OPT duration. Finally, they authorized a 17-month work period for aliens with degrees in fields DHS designates at Science/Technology/Engineering/Mathematics (STEM). This gave a maximum OPT duration of 35 months.

The OPT program has been the subject of continuous litigation since then where, after nearly a decade, the federal courts have been unable to come to a decision on whether it is lawful. However in 2015, the D.C. District Court held that the 2008 OPT regulations had been promulgated unlawfully without notice and comment. In response to this opinion, DHS promulgated new regulations that did the same as the old regulations except that they expanded the STEM work period from 17 months to 24 months, giving a maximum OPT work period of 42 months (24+12+6).

OPT is an example of the administrative state run amok. Instead of law coming from Congress, we have law coming from bureaucrats working hand-in-hand with lobbyists. OPT also illustrates the slippery-slope problem of regulation. Work on student visas started innocently as an integral part of a course of study to give foreign students an experience not available in their home country, but eventually was transformed into a full-blown guestworker program whose stated purpose is to provide labor to American business.

https://cis.org/Report/History-Optional-Practical-Training-Guestworker-Program[/quote]

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