Mark Zuckerberg Throws Pal Joe Green Under the Tech Immigration Bus 261
theodp (442580) writes "A month after he argued that Executive Action by President Obama on tech immigration was needed lest his billionaire bosses at Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us PAC have to hire 'just sort of OK' U.S. workers, Re/code reports that Joe Green — Zuckerberg's close friend and college roommate — has been pushed out of his role as President of FWD.us for failing to Git-R-Done on an issue critical to the tech community. "Today, we wanted to share an important change with you," begins 'Leadership Change', the announcement from the FWD.us Board that Todd Schulte is the new Green. So what sold FWD.us on Schulte? "His [Schulte's] prior experience as Chief-of-Staff at Priorities USA, the Super PAC supporting President Obama's re-election," assured Zuckerberg in a letter to FWD.us contributors, "will ensure FWD.us continues its momentum for reform." Facebook, reported the Washington Post in 2013, became legally "dependent" on H-1B visas and subject to stricter regulations shortly before Zuckerberg launched FWD.us with Green at the helm."
Stop using Facebook (Score:4, Insightful)
There couldn't be a wrose personality to be in power than Zuckerberg.
Re:Stop using Facebook (Score:4, Insightful)
Only idiots would trust Mark "People trust me. Dumb Fucks" Fuckerberg.
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I dunno. Dick Cheney or Nancy Pelosi might be worse.
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I dunno. Dick Cheney or Nancy Pelosi might be worse.
Dick Cheney brought us the current mess. He set the bar. W was just his sock-puppet.
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I think you'd need to be more specific regarding which mess you're talking about. We have a lot of issues at the moment.
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Guess which Middle Eastern country we're invading for a 3rd time because it's finally blown up into a situation that would be bad to persist...
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Dick Cheney brought us the current mess. He set the bar. W was just his sock-puppet.
Oh yeah, that makes sense. The son of a former President, former CIA Director, grandson of a U.S. Senator, and great-grandson of one of the 19th centuries rail barons was merely a sock puppet serving the interests of the son of a minor bureaucrat with the Department of Agriculture. You know, people should look at the nature of history before they start building conspiracy theories.
Re:Stop using Facebook (Score:5, Informative)
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..., as has the total lack of statements from W.
Other than Carter, and lately Clinton, former presidents never made comments on policies after they left office. They had their time calling the shots, and now it's someone else's turn. W is doing what we should expect from people who are no longer in charge. He's keeping his mouth shut and letting the current team run the show.
Re:Stop using Facebook (Score:4, Insightful)
Dick Cheney brought us the current mess. He set the bar. W was just his sock-puppet.
Oh yeah, that makes sense. The son of a former President, former CIA Director, grandson of a U.S. Senator, and great-grandson of one of the 19th centuries rail barons was merely a sock puppet serving the interests of the son of a minor bureaucrat with the Department of Agriculture. You know, people should look at the nature of history before they start building conspiracy theories.
Every family has their dumbass.
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Dick Cheney brought us the current mess. He set the bar. W was just his sock-puppet.
Oh yeah, that makes sense. The son of a former President, former CIA Director, grandson of a U.S. Senator, and great-grandson of one of the 19th centuries rail barons was merely a sock puppet serving the interests of the son of a minor bureaucrat with the Department of Agriculture. You know, people should look at the nature of history before they start building conspiracy theories.
This son of a bastard nobody [wikipedia.org] changed millions of lives with war.
If you think "stock" makes people great or powerful, then you're no better than all the various monarchies overthrown in the last few hundred years. Nepotism only goes so far.
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Nothing you can do will make him not "in power".
The French aristocracy probably thought the same thing before the French Revolution happened. The guillotine didn't seem to care about the social status/wealth of the person whose head was chopped off.
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I wasn't proposing anything. Merely stating that power is never permanent. History has shown this over and over.
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Too late. Zuckerberg already has his billions. Nothing you can do will make him not "in power"
Tell that to Steve Jobs.
I can't because he died.
Dafuq wrote this snippet? (Score:5, Insightful)
I hereby award you Most Unreadable News Snippet Award. Bravo.
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The language used obscures rather than educates and informs.
Sounds like another big win for Marketing.
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MOD PARENT +INFINITY AWESOME
Most transparent ever? (Score:3, Insightful)
But, how is this possible? I thought Obama banned his team from becoming lobbyists after they left him [nbcnews.com]???
I guess that rule doesn't apply to everyone. Good thing we have the most transparent administration ever and these lobbying efforts won't influence anyone...
Re:Most transparent ever? (Score:5, Informative)
But, how is this possible? I thought Obama banned his team from becoming lobbyists after they left him [nbcnews.com]???
I guess that rule doesn't apply to everyone. Good thing we have the most transparent administration ever and these lobbying efforts won't influence anyone...
Super PACs are run independent from individual campaigns and are not allowed to coordinate with candidates. So he wasn't part of Obama's staff, in theory...
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I'm sure his press secretary would argue that was more of an aspirational statement. And that it was necessitated by Republican inaction.
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And if you honestly believe that, you may just be on Obamacare!
Don't worry, your rates aren't going to go up AND you can keep your doctor too.
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They will gladly tell you that insurance rates have been going up for decades, and having to choose new doctors is something all grownups have to do on a regular basis.
And in addition, if they've paid any attention, they will also tell him that the rates have increased both before and after the passage of the ACA because of government.
I dunno about *your* parents, but mine saw the same doctor for decades, until he retired. Because government made it more attractive for him to retire rather than to keep his practice open.
But hey, let's give government even more of people's hard-earned money and even more control over everything!
"Thank you Sir, may I have another?"
"Idiocrac
This debate is about money. (Score:5, Insightful)
What this boils down to is we've got a company propped up on nothing more than hot air and advertising that has to lowball the market in order to keep their ill-gotten goods. Keep in mind Zuckerbergs billions came from people investing in his company, it didn't come from actual sales of a product. Of course the man is a scam artist.
1: To have Americans work on critical projects and not spill the beans to your competition, you need a NDA and non-compete agreement, both if which you pay American workers a premium for. With H1B's, you don't.
2: When you hire a college grad with a school loan, you're paying their them to be educated irregardless if you like it or not.
3: This is about wage arbitrage; whenever you sell products made in a slave wage state to a free state, you are in effect consuming the margin the labor pool in that free state would otherwise make to, and here's the key guys, put the cash in your pocket, you aren't doing a god damn thing for the world. There aren't more engineers, or better educated engineers, or better products, or better designed products, or better manufacturing and construction methodology. Do that enough and you destabilize the government like in Russia, and that one led to millions of deaths from the Russian Mob selling of arms, including nukes, to foreign countries.
4: What are you doing, Zuckerberg, to motivate Americans to work hard? Because at the end of the day, if you aren't sharing the profits and are just exploiting you, Americans will destroy your business. Mexicans do the same thing nowadays, and the Indians, well, they aren't much better.
Re:This debate is about money. (Score:5, Informative)
Well, Facebook is located in California where non-competes are not legally enforceable, so there's that
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Really? That's the one word you had problems with? All the mangled sentences are perfectly fine, but he uses one non-standard (by your reckoning) word, and his whole rambling post is to be ignored?
Re:This debate is about money. (Score:5, Insightful)
How to fix the H1-B problem:
1. Keep the process of sponsoring H1-Bs roughly the same, but slightly more expensive.
2. Once the recruit has the visa, he can work wherever he wants. The paperwork is the same whether he stays with his sponsor, goes to their biggest competitor, or goes to work at a coffee cart.
3. Ban the other legal shenanigans that would quickly ensue in attempts to lock the visa to the sponsoring company.
If the sponsor wants the worker to stay, they will have to pay them a high enough rate to keep them there.
Re:This debate is about money. (Score:4, Informative)
2. Once the recruit has the visa, he can work wherever he wants. The paperwork is the same whether he stays with his sponsor, goes to their biggest competitor, or goes to work at a coffee cart.
The billionaires and multinational corps would never allow that. H1-B is purposeful wage slavery.
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The lock-in occurs when the H1-B alien wants to apply for a green card.
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1) is what congress has been doing over time: imposing random additional fees, especially on large H-1b employers.
2) has always been true. H-1b workers can change employers very easily, as long as there is no gap between employment. In fact, transfering H-1b is cheaper (and less legal hassle) than applying for a new H-1b. The real obstacle is the jump from H-1b to green card. This could take 2-9 years depending on the count
Fuck Zuckerberg (Score:3, Insightful)
Sort of OK? Fuck you Mark, you degenerate piece of shit!
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LOL OK, I will agree with that. Having worked with plenty of H-1Bs, I can assure you that there posses no special talent compared to other workers. On the whole there are quite a few mediocre software engineers.
Re:Fuck Zuckerberg (Score:5, Insightful)
They posses a special talent: Taking lower pay.
Mark Zuckerberg is a liar. (Score:5, Interesting)
Zuckerberg is also a traitor to the American tech worker.
Hey, Mark, MSFT just laid off 18,000 people; Cisco just laid off a bunch; MSFT just the other day closed its research center right down the street from you - filled with gifted coders and brilliance. Mark, there is a MOUND of studies showing NO shortage of STEM works in the US.
Some facts: The H-1B fiasco has cost Americans **$10TRILLION** dollars, since 1975. For anyone who wants to know the truth, read on.
One of the most respected technology pundits in Silicon Valley has this to say about the H1-B worker problem http://www.cringely.com/2012/1... [cringely.com] Here's an attorney and his consultants teaching corporations how to manipulate foreign-worker immigration law to replace qualified American workers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... [youtube.com]
H1-B abuse if accompanied by other worker-visa abuse L-1 Visa (H1-B's are only the tip of the iceberg). There are more than 20 categories of foreign worker visas. http://economyincrisis.org/con... [economyincrisis.org]
Professor Norman Matloff's extremely well documented studies on this problem. http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/... [ucdavis.edu]
Federal offshoring of healthcare.gov website http://www.economicpopulist.or... [economicpopulist.org]
How H1-B visa abuse is hurting American tech workers http://www.motherjones.com/pol... [motherjones.com]
There is no stem worker crisis in America http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-wo... [ieee.org]
Marc Zuckerberg and wealthy tech scions continue to perpetuate this trend http://programmersguild.org/do... [programmersguild.org]
Yahoo http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs... [yahoo.com]
Also, little known is the tactic of creating many different kinds of sub-visa categories to "fool the system". There are almost TWENTY different kinds of work visas. The whole thing is a sham and a lie, designed to drag down wages and keep from having to re-train Americans. Never thought I would see this day!
Some of the information presented in the following links will shock most Americans, because American corporate leaders don't want us to know the truth, and they are paying off policy makers with contributions to keep the truth from us. Bill Gates, John Chambers, Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt, and many, many others - including the principals of the most prominent immigration law firms, who profit from this outrage, are lying through their teeth. There is NO shortage of STEM workers in the US!!
Last, Zuckerberg has all out lied since day 1 about guaranteeing privacy on Facebook - just outright lied. Facebook has become something that teens shun and will soon go the way of MSFT, run by another deceiver, Bill Gates, on the H1-B issue.
Re:Mark Zuckerberg is a liar. (Score:5, Interesting)
I am an immigrant working in US on H1-B. Every time I see these stories, I know what comments there will be, but I'm getting tired of all the whining and bullshit.
First of all, on the "poor underpayed H1-B" myth. I live and work in Seattle metro area. My base pay is $150k, and then another $40k on top of that in bonuses. This is after being with the company I'm at for slightly over 3 years. And I work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, none of those crazy 60-hour work weeks. I have a fancy house, drive an expensive car, and even after mortage, property tax etc have enough left to support my family by myself, allowing my wife (an American citizen, by the way) to be a stay at home mom - and even then still have some left for my 401k and other savings. To sum it up, as an H1-B I live better than 9 out of 10 Americans do even here in Seattle, much less across the country.
Now you guys say two things. First, that I'm "stealing your job". I'll be blunt: in the current IT job market, if you can't find a job, then either you are living in the wrong place, or (if you're in one of the tech hubs), you plain suck. I know some people hit by Microsoft layoffs: they were immediately snagged by Google and Amazon. It's a seller's market: a good developer today in US can walk out of the door and literally find a job elsewhere tomorrow. If you can't find a job, that's not because some H1-B "stole" it. It's because you're not good enough, and your expectations are too high.
Speaking of expectations. One other thing that's often brought up is that H1-Bs "depress the wage" - as in, if we weren't here, you'd be paid more. Is that so? Well yes, of course it is, artificial scarcity (of labor, in this case) raises prices. But why do you believe you're entitled to even higher wages? You can certainly get the same wage as I do (if you're as good as I am) - and that gives you an extremely comfortable life, compared to vast majority of your fellow countrymen. With some prudent fiscal planning and the right investments, you can retire at 65 with over a million in the bank, and a house that you fully own - a luxury that most cannot even dream of.
Yet you still have an audacity to complain that it's too little? You think you deserve more? But you don't have a determination to actually go and make yourself better to achieve that, no. You want someone else to stop competing with you so that you can just have it.
You are sour whiners and losers, and that's why I can "steal" your job, and will keep on "stealing" it, while you will inhabiting your mom's basement, while posting inane ramblings on Slashdot about how you're being repressed by all those filthy smelly foreigners.
Re:Mark Zuckerberg is a liar. (Score:5, Insightful)
There are some problems you ignored. First is that the industry claims there is a "shortage" to justify high quantities of H1B's. There is no evidence of a general shortage, only spot shortages, which are necessary for those with glut skills to be accepted into new-trend skills.
Second, is that during IT recessions they don't shut off the H1B spigot: visa workers keep coming. IT has been booming and busting since at least the 80's and I see no reason this pattern will change.
And I have seen H1B workers being abused. Your example is only a spot sample.
In general, the industry wants "instant employees" rather than spend time and money on training. This means that if a US techie loses their job in a glut area, they cannot get retraining for the new area because the company will hire an H1B worker that already has experience. The citizen can read books etc., but companies prefer existing paid experience.
Companies just want what they want when they want it and don't want to pay anything inconvenient for these goals.
Regardless of whether there are some H1B abuse myths floating around, the whole premise is based on a lie.
Re:Mark Zuckerberg is a liar. (Score:5, Informative)
Mod parent up, please. In particular, the comment about industry being unwilling to invest in training is spot-on. I'm old enough to remember when it wasn't that way. (Example, how many remember getting training in Ada if you worked in the defense industry? Regardless of what you think of the language, 25-30 years ago that industry was willing to invest in its "human capital." )
dave
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It actually counts on your resume?
Seriously, you cannot get in the god damn door if you don't have paid experience in the exact area they're looking for. No one cares if you read a book. What does that say on your resume? "Familiar with ".
Any idiot can put that on a resume, everyone does, but they can't put it in their paid experience column which is the one which matters.
Re:Mark Zuckerberg is a liar. (Score:5, Informative)
First of all, on the "poor underpayed H1-B" myth. I live and work in Seattle metro area. My base pay is $150k, and then another $40k on top of that in bonuses.
First off, individual salaries of very highly skilled H-1B visa holders does nothing to undermine the "poor underpaid H-1B" myth. Does the fact there is a black president mean there is absolutely no discrimination left in the US?
According to the Center for Immigration Studies [cis.org], H-1B Visa holders in the computer industry make on average $13k less per year than a citizen. In addition to that, 85% of H-1B workers work for less than the median wage for their occupation. Looks like you are not the norm.
Just because you are one of the few H-1B workers that almost all US citizens would agree we want to immigrate here does nothing to disprove the fact that H-1B workers depress wages by flooding the market with underpaid workers.
Every time I see these stories, I know what comments there will be, but I'm getting tired of all the whining and bullshit.
The sad thing is when anyone complains about H-1B workers they are almost immediately accused of xenophobia and/or labeled as whining. I hate our H-1B system, but only because of how unfairly it treats H-1B workers. I am a consultant and I work with many of these immigrants. I am appalled at how horrible the system is that they describe. If we had a properly functioning H-1B program, instead of the indentured servitude it usually consists of, I would bet that H-1B workers would make above median wages.
If they weren't just an exploited group (in the vast majority of cases), companies would only bring over the best and the brightest. And this would be wonderful.
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If we had a properly functioning H-1B program
I really question if we ever needed an H1B program. Because what it's doing is shifting the costs of training (if there is any) onto someone else. Not to mention the thousands of people who Microsoft and Cisco have laid off. Or the countless older workers who are being discriminated against (it seems like everyone's career ends at 40 - as they're laid off in favor of a younger H1B). If companies did not have H1Bs, perhaps all these 'undesirable' workers would have a lot more value in the job market. Or bet
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Re:Mark Zuckerberg is a liar. (Score:4, Informative)
Have you read the link in this comment? It suggests that your experience is atypical.
It is also outdated. However, there have been a lot of reports similar to this one, and only a few individuals like you stating the opposite.
Is it remotely possible that you have an above-average experience?
http://politics.slashdot.org/c... [slashdot.org]
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Not only are you hiding facts, but attempting to offend as many people as possible in your fairy tale. I smell a big fat shill, but perhaps you are just trolling. Either way, claiming that the exception is the rule is asinine.
Most H1B workers are not making the same wage as Americans, but the wage is only a portion of the argument. Not even the right portion mind you.
The primary point is that Visa workers do take jobs from Citizens. That is not a question, that is a statement of fact. Citizens of any c
Re:Mark Zuckerberg is a liar. (Score:4, Informative)
H1B is called a non-immigrant visa because you cannot use *that* visa to immigrate.
However, H1B is also recognized as a dual-intent visa.
That's why you can file for your green card while you're on an H1B, through your employer.
There are many visas that are non-immigrant visas that are dual intent because the visa in itself doesn't grant you the right to become an immigrant, but is used to file for a change of intent.
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That's an awesome observation. Except for the fact that English is the main language of several other countries, one of the big ones being just north of you.
stop dreaming (Score:2, Insightful)
If you mean that there is no shortage of people with STEM credentials, you are absolutely right. But most of those people are the product of a dysfunctional US educational system. They have fancy degrees but not the skills the US need
stop dreaming (Score:2, Insightful)
Let them. That's the real problem. These companies do not want to move overseas, probably couldn't sustain the model they have if they did so, but want to exploit the system by paying overseas wages with the advantages they get from being a US company. Let them go elsewhere, there are plenty who would take their place. Instead, they are taking ad money from companies selling in the US, or selling products to US citizens banking on the expendable income that is common here while hoping to lower their emp
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And eventually, they are just going to leave the US altogether, by moving their headquarters abroad, by "inversions", or eventually by just getting acquired by overseas competitors.
Then we should let them go wherever else they want while withdrawing the blanket of US military protection from those parts of the world. You will see how quickly they rush back to US shores begging for protection from the corrupt barbarians who want bribes, ransoms and cut off their heads when they refuse. These people need to be reminded of who pays to keep them and their children safe which is the ordinary citizens whose taxes pay to maintain the most powerful military on the planet.
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Never mind all that, who's the gorgeous woman on Cringely's page?
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you should have saw it when they started shipping skilled labor overseas, and the collapse of GM, and stateside manufacture. We were all fools to think we are any really diffrent than the other workers. In arrogance we threw them under the bus.
Its time for US to unionize and fight back.
Pay These Geniuses What They're Worth! (Score:5, Insightful)
Its tragic that Mark et al are being forced to put up with just sort of OK US workers.
You know one step that Mark et al could take that would grease the skids on their immigration reforms?
Pay the geniuses they want to import what they're worth. See The Bottom of the Pay Scale: Wages for H-1B Computer Programmers [cis.org].
In fact, Mark et al should either pay back salaries to all of the H-1b workers they've ever employed or Mark et al should be thrown in prison for fraudulent abuse of the H-1B guest worker provision.
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Well, despite all that, I'm curious why they cannot simply open a satellite office in virtual space and employ their foreign workers remotely. What exactly is so unique about working for an internet site that you have to ignore the entire premise of the internet and be somewhere in person?
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Pay the geniuses they want to import what they're worth
One of the best suggestions I've read for fixing the H-1B fiasco is that H-1B workers should have a minimum salary of $100k/yr. The whole idea of H-1B is that you can't find a non-foreign worker that has the skills you need. If somebody is so specialized and/or so good at a particular skill, then they should be worth more than $100k/yr. If not, then the claim of local scarcity is bullshit.
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also need to add no OT abuse and no job lock.
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We get told all the time how critical these individuals are for the company and that the company is unable to find or train an American worker for the job. So I am willing to call the companies' bluff and say I take them at their work. Given how important these individuals are to the company they obviously should be the most highly compensated individuals in the company so their total compensation package should exceed the compensation package that anyone else in the employ of the
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Maybe he could just train some US citizens to be better than just OK.
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silfen confesses "Yes, H-1B workers are at the bottom of the pay scale for the simple reason that H-1B visas are for people just starting out."
Ah I see. So the violation of the H-1B statute is so pervasive now that people are under the impression that it is for people who are just starting out.
My mistake.
Mark et al should simply be thrown in jail for fraud and since this has gotten so far out of hand as to permit responses like silfen's to have the remotest credibility, the jail time should be mandatory w
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An H-1B visa is a temporary work permit; it's for a maximum of six years. If you haven't gotten a green card by then, you have to leave the US. The H-1B visa is the primary way in which skilled immigrants arrive in this country. After they get hired on an H-1B, the employer sponsors them for a green card, and then people become citizens. And I'm not "under t
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That's not always true. Depending on where you are in the green card process, you may be able to continue to stay in the USA beyond the 6-year period while your green card is processed.
Plus, leave the USA for 12 months and you have new 6-year H1 eligibility.
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Neither of those are relevant to my point, which is that H-1B's have low average earnings because they are mostly people at the beginning of their careers; the link that Baldrson pointed to was biased and misleading.
H-1B's are the only realistic way to immigrate to the US based on skill. Kill H-1Bs and you kill skill based im
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That's no mistake; you're a xenophobic idiot.
You lose.
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"People just starting out" and "skilled" tend to be opposites which was the point you are so vehemently disagreeing with.
Fuck Joe Green ... (Score:3)
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He's throwing the entire pool of U.S. workers under the bus!! "...just OK..." ???
Judging from the foreign labor I've worked with for the last 6 or 7 years, compared to similarly qualified US workers, I'd say that description is upside-down. About the only thing the Chinese and Indian imports are better at is bowing and scraping and accepting more work than they can possibly do with nothing a "yes, yes, yes" deferring contriteness. That only makes them look like even worse productively, because so many tasks end up as crap, or late, or simply dropped.
If they mean that foreign workers
What the fuck does the story mean? (Score:4)
To "Git-R-Done" is a really strange expression, never seen it and I don't lknow what the fuck it means. Did Joe Green failed to use git the repository software and be done?
More to the point, I didn't know what the FWD.us website was. Then, throwing people under buses is not nice.
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Larry the Cable Guy: Git-R-Done http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0497633/
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I know all of these references, and it still makes no sense. The summary is the responsibility of theodp - the choice of not posting it was up to Timothy.
Blame each accordingly.
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I think there's a shortage of talented journalists. If only there was a way to solve that...
temporary vs permanent visas (Score:5, Informative)
Summary? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or a collection of fullstops, dashes and capitalised consonants?
Critical to the tech community? (Score:3)
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Simple - be self employed.
I'll wait for the inevitable answers about how hard it is to start a company, and tax implications, and inability to count on income since it depends on the economy.
But, if you watch something like Shark Tank, you see an endless stream of actual small businesses that are somehow creating a market for a product that don't have any reason to exist - other than there is a market for it. Someone had a product, found a
It's al Greek to me (Score:2)
Who is Zuckerwit btw?
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He's the social media billionaire that went zombie and got blown away by Faith when she boarded his mega-yacht.
Bus? (Score:2)
I guess they were immigrating from Canada or Mexico.
Re:Dissolution of the middle class! (Score:5, Informative)
Drive down wages
In the specific case of Facebook, it is not about driving wages down. Facebook pays decent wages, even for Silicon Valley standards. It is about not increasing wages.
What Facebook et al need is a way to ensure that they'll be able to fill their positions without creating too much of a jobseekers market so they won't be forced to lure employees away from the competition. All those sign-on bonuses, recruiter fees and salary increases (usually roughly 10% if you jump ship) will add up quickly.
Truth of the matter is, in the SF Bay Area, it is hard to be unemployed if you're a properly skilled tech worker, citizen, green-card holder or otherwise. That doesn't mean I condone the way that the H1-B program often is being abused today. I've seen abuse, and we'll always see that. But this is only made possible due to the ridiculous limits on permanent resident visas vs the amount of H1-B visas, as I pointed out in this comment [slashdot.org].:
There is disconnect between the amount of H1-B visas (which are not limited per country) and amount of greencards (which are limited per country). We all know which country I'm talking about: the folks from India, however you may feel about their presence, are hitting this the most: For each EB category (EB1, EB2, EB3 in general), there are 265 greencards available per month. That's a little over 9500 per year. On the other side is the number of H1-B (and L-1) visa that get allocated to workers chargeable to India. Just for H1-B, that number comes close to 170,000 just for FY2012 (source [uscis.gov]). Then there are the L1 visa holders, which are uncapped.
So, you end up having ~10k greencards, vs ~200k influx, just for India alone. This means that there is a huge waiting list for people with approved I-140s, but not eligible to file for AOS. What are you going to do with them? Sent them back? Politics chose to let them stay by renewing their H1-B every 1 to 3 years, even after the 6th year.
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I've reviewed several jobs recently and thought about moving to SF. Why didn't I? Because industry doesn't make it worth it. High rent, high hours, etc etc makes for a terrible life. Facebook wouldn't have any issue with hiring and retention if they made it worthwhile to work there.
Nope, you're wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
In the specific case of Facebook, it is not about driving wages down. Facebook pays decent wages, even for Silicon Valley standards. It is about not increasing wages.
If it's not (in any way) about wages, then there would be no problem for Congress to repeal the 1965 Immigration Act in its entirety, cancel all the programs enabled by it, and (via the market) actively/aggressively solicit long-term unemployed US citizens in their place - as regular workers. There are more than enough of them to go around to be not only qualified, but very well qualified. Unfortunately, citizenship in the US makes people expensive, even for hard-working, by-the-book immigrants that want to come to the US.
Truth of the matter is, in the SF Bay Area, it is hard to be unemployed if you're a properly skilled tech worker, citizen, green-card holder or otherwise.
Truth of the matter is that "properly skilled" can be redefined to exclude otherwise-suitable US citizens too easily. In the eyes of an H1-b/L1/etc. supporter, "properly skilled" is equivalent to saying "has proper fear of an employer". If you were to go to the extreme end of business-friendliness (which spawned the H1-b preference), the ultimately qualified worker is a slave. They cost nothing and are the easiest to dispose.
That doesn't mean I condone the way that the H1-B program often is being abused today. I've seen abuse, and we'll always see that.
Then get rid of what enables the abuse - every single guest worker program. After that, strict enforcement of immigration laws already on the books - SB1070 and similar laws show that it works.
But this is only made possible due to the ridiculous limits on permanent resident visas vs the amount of H1-B visas, as I pointed out in this comment
The only proper limit for all guest worker programs is 0. If you want someone enough, they'll take up naturalization where they can't be corralled between sponsor employers. It might make them incur business-unfriendly "costs of freedom" (by being able to choose their employer), but the market also functions to raise prices.
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You should try actually being a "guest worker" in another country sometime. Then maybe you'd see how completely full of crap you are.
Med vänliga hälsningar från Stockholm,
Z.
Re:Dissolution of the middle class! (Score:5, Informative)
Truth of the matter is, in the SF Bay Area, it is hard to be unemployed if you're a properly skilled tech worker, citizen, green-card holder or otherwise.
This is real humorous. One company offered a degreed Electrical Engineer $15 an hour in the SF Bay Area. I kid you not. (read the thread) [reddit.com] This is not an isolated case, and I know of other examples. Why do people bother to get college degrees again??
This is what the H1B program has bought us folks. People with degrees working for slave wages that won't even enable them to pay back their student loans. In my book, that's going backwards. It's time to stop being fooled by the H1B folly.
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This is real humorous. One company offered a degreed Electrical Engineer $15 an hour in the SF Bay Area. I kid you not. (read the thread) [reddit.com] This is not an isolated case, and I know of other examples. Why do people bother to get college degrees again??
Sounds about right for some of those questionable companies. You are missing something though, they now get to state that they couldn't get anyone to fill the position so they need to bring in an H1B worker.
I got a similarly bad offer once for a position very similar to what I currently am doing. It was in a higher cost area yet the pay they were offering was 1/3 what I am currently making. I laughed at the recruiter that made the offer who happened to actually think that was a good amount of money for th
Re:Dissolution of the middle class! (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're even remotely presentable and capable of basic human interaction, you cannot not have a job in the Bay area, even if you're completely freaking clueless.
Actually, I kind of have to agree with you here. Yesterday I had a friend over who worked in the same team as I did for a large vendor of telecommunications equipment. For years (at least 5), there was one guy who was completely and utterly useless, did not perform and could not even complete the most basic tasks by himself. I always thought he had some compromising images of his boss or something similar that prevented him from being fired.
:)
Turns out the guy was hired by a startup recently. I thought that would be unimaginable, but then I realized that I was mistaken. He is very well-spoken, has a nice personality and if you don't have to work with him, he is generally a good guy to have a beer with. It's just that he is useless as a tech worker IMHO. Oh, and if you read this: no offense
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It sounds like he was also recently employed, though, which is the easy case. Employers generally have absolutely no clue how to screen for competence, so go almost entirely on resume. If the person you're mentioning has 5 years of recent experience with "a large vendor of telecommunications equipment" and didn't leave because he was fired, he's got a nice resume, so won't have problems finding tech jobs.
The people who have trouble are those who have a big gap in their employment history. Even the people wh
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First - "Bay Area" means you could be working for any number of really good, or really bad, companies. At least a quarter of them, if named, would immediately bring ridicule. If you then specified website or something else, you would be divided into the stupid or potentially stupid category.
That said, meaning this a different thought based only slightly on that paragraph, many of those are companies where you can't just fire someone. Especially if they present themselves well.
Imagine the court case where
FWD.us Apprentice Program Pays $550-A-Month (Score:4, Informative)
Fall Internship Opportunity: FWD.us Apprentice Program [blogspot.com]
Opportunity:
FWD.us is offering a part-time (15 hr/week) apprenticeship program for Fall 2014.
Compensation:
This is a paid internship. Apprentices will receive a stipend of $550/month
Internship perks include:
* Weekly meetings with FWD.us staff to discuss current political issues
* Face-to-face meetings with influential tech professionals
* Professional development coaching in leadership development, networking skills, pitch practice, policy analysis, and qualitative research methods
* Developing in-depth knowledge about the tech and policy space
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In other words, they'll pay to teach you how to bullshit like they do and then evaluate whether you're the type who willingly drinks the kultural koolaid no matter how syrupy the mix. If you are, welcome aboard! If not, you're blacklisted. They only want hipster 'politically aware' faux 'smart', but not real intellect. The former type thinks they're smarter than they are, but is really just a joiner with pretensions. Real smart means having to pay more than 137/week and deal with an independent intellec
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I don't think you want that. The property of an H1-B worker that is most attractive to industry is the ability to throw them out of the country should they get uppity and start asking for raises.
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I can only assume that you're cracked out of your skull if you think that ridiculous mish-mash of word salad is clear.