Federal Judge Calls BS On Homeland Security's 2008 STEM 'Emergency' 142
theodp writes: In 2008, the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security enacted 'emergency' changes to Optional Practical Training (OPT) to extend the amount of time foreign STEM graduates of US colleges could stay in the country and work ("to alleviate the crisis employers are facing due to the current H-1B visa shortage", as Bill Gates explained it in 2007). More than seven years later, U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle has found that the government erred by not seeking public comment when it extended the program, and issued a ruling that could force tens of thousands of foreign workers on OPT STEM extensions to return to their home countries early next year. Huvelle has given the government six months to submit the OPT extension rule for proper notice and comment lest it be revoked. From the ruling (pdf): "By failing to engage in notice-and-comment rulemaking, the record is largely one-sided, with input only from technology companies that stand to benefit from additional F-1 student employees, who are exempted from various wage taxes. Indeed, the 17-month duration of the STEM extension appears to have been adopted directly from the unanimous suggestions by Microsoft and similar industry groups." Microsoft declared a new crisis in 2012, this time designed to link tech's need for H-1B visas to U.S. children's lack of CS savvy.
Re:There is no way this looks good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile, Real IT Pro's know there's a tremendous shortage of real Talent out there, and it has gotten so bad companies can only stumble upon people who know what they are doing. Everyone else just kinda passes as somewhat knowing what they are doing.
I am not surprised at all this tired old lie would show up as an anonymous first post in a thread like this.
Pay more, more will come. Very simple. Why would anybody bother to learn / earn experience for your shit-pay job? Your problem is YOU.
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Pay more, more will come. Very simple. Why would anybody bother to learn / earn experience for your shit-pay job? Your problem is YOU.
No the problem is you, you, you and me. Whilst we all want cheaper "everything" and use online bidding to push prices down we create a cost/price based business. I have a SaaS platform and the pressure to sell seats for under $100 is huge. If that seat wants support then profit margins quickly are eaten away.
We are an Australian firm. Our latest hire is a Dev in the Philippines because the western world is over priced (not their fault because they have too much costs & taxes).
Oh and I have starte
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we rarely even get through the interview and to the point where you make an offer.
Are you out looking for candidates yourself or are you going through HR? The reason I ask is that if you're going through HR, you're almost certainly getting idiot candidates who know how to push all of HR's buttons and tick every requirement from the ridiculous job description (also prepared by HR) on their doctored resume. The really good recruits, who refuse to engage in HR shenanigans or game playing are getting dropped as "not qualified". Finally, really good IT people tend to be introverts and not exa
STEM OPT extension was really bad (Score:5, Insightful)
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Wow. I had no idea we had so many affordable houses for the homeless.
Most of the really affordable houses (These $1,000-5,000 specials) are in sad shape. You might not actually be allowed to live in them, they're so torn back. But they got that way because people (or banks) refused to rent or sell them for what the market would bear, so they sat vacant until the vandals and thieves got there...
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Also noticed some homes auctioned for 3000$ and 5000$ in Detroit had well established rhododendron and azalea bushes 20-25 feet tall, small fruit trees less than 30 feet
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comparing overall unemployment rate (Score:2, Insightful)
Comparing the tech worker unemployment rate with overall unemployment is bogus.
The Construction industry was decimated and so was finance. And sll of the unskilled workers were creamed too.
And then there is the attrition of tech workers. After 35 or so, jobs start getting harder to come by and with the continued offshoring and H1-b hiring, many of us saw the writing on the wall and left. Half of my MBA class were tech workers looking to get out.
When you leave or get forced out of tech, you are no longer cou
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Please, spare me the fairy tale that "if you have the skills, there's work for yoy," when you are unemployed in tech, you are damaged goods -"if he was any good, he'd have a job." (Kids, always have another job queued up.)
Please spare me the fairy tale that "even if you have the skills, its hard to find jobs in tech." I know four highly skilled IT workers in their 30's and 40's that have been fired or laid off in the last couple of years. Every one of them found work within a month. I know two mediocre IT workers in their 30's who were fired or laid off in the last few years, and one found work in a couple months (with a promotion to senior dev) and the other took four months. I do know a handful of tech workers who no longe
Re:comparing overall unemployment rate (Score:5, Interesting)
>> People who are still in their early careers don't realize how vulnerable they become when they get older.
As a 52 year old software developer I get what you are saying. The trick is to be in the right industry. All the young guns are mostly doing only web and web-related stuff because they think its cool. Just avoid that whole thing.
What helps is that those guys seem to be pretty much clueless when it comes to bare metal stuff like embedded systems and device drivers etc because it seems even in CS degrees these days they don't teach anything as low-level as C, let alone assembler or how computers actually work any more. It seems most of those guys are completely out of their comfort zone around any language/environment that doesn't have a garbage collector, isn't in a VM or container, can't be scripted and doesn't come with a massive app framework that includes giant libraries of helper functions to do all the actual heavy lifting.
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I would love to know how old you are. Betting early 30's at best. You sound like naive yet think you have a world of knowledge.
I specifically said I was 35 in my post. Did you read the whole thing? I also stated how my opinions have been based on experiences from past coworkers in both their 30's and 40's. I don't know anyone in their 50's+ who has been laid off, although I have probably only worked with at most a dozen IT workers in that age bracket (not counting upper management types). Considering the IT industry as we know it has only been around about 25 years, it would be odd for there to be too many 50+ year old workers even
Re:STEM OPT extension was really bad (Score:5, Insightful)
But that doesn't accurately depict the situation that existed in *TECH*. Yes, unemployment and underemployment among construction workers was high. But at the time, tech workers had an unemployment rate under 5% (and in 2008 unemployment overall was only 8%). Considering that it takes years to put a tech worker through a college degree and introductory employment, even if construction workers were qualified to switch from construction to tech, it wouldn't have helped the short term problem.
Unemployment figures don't take into account the people who used up all of their unemployment and were never able to find a job. They may still be unemployed, but the numbers aren't tracked. Also, this number doesn't take into account the number of tech workers that took jobs in other fields because they couldn't find jobs in tech. I know many, many people (including myself) who have 25+ years of experience in tech, but are doing something else because there are no jobs.
Underemployment is rampant as well. Tech jobs don't pay enough to live on, but when they demand 60-80 hours a week of your time, and availability on a whim, you also can't go get a second job to make ends meet.
Microsoft is starting to slip, though. They released press releases demanding more H1B workers a little too soon after laying off 6,000 tech workers. Someone is bound to notice.
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"unemployment spiking over 10%."
You mean the government reported heavily adjusted to avoid panic numbers.
Real unemployment was near 25% government reporting of unemployment only counted people that were actively collecting unemployment checks. If you were not being paid, you were not counted as unemployed. Some places Unemployment real numbers were closer to 35% to 40% Detroit for example.
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Economy is so bad, they just changed how GDP is calculated. Q1 went from -2% to positive because of it, couldn't allow for another recession so they changed it.
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That is not true. The government determines the unemployment rate via a household survey, not via the number of people collecting unemployment checks. You may not believe the BLS because it sounds as if you have an axe to grind, but here's their [bls.gov] explanation of how they do it.
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Family reunification vs STEM (Score:5, Insightful)
Prioritizing family reunification visas is worse. I know of two people that have used family reunification visas to bring in their parents. All four of which went onto Social Security and Medicare shortly after arriving. The US would have been much better off if those four slots had been given to STEM workers.
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Do away with all the welfare handouts and this problem disappears. The real problem is too many government programs.
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Absolutely! start with stopping all Corporate and Farming handouts.
Also hospitals freaking welfare breeding grounds. Cut their funding as well.
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The problem isn't too many programs, it is too many mishandled expenses. I'd wager, that is run as well as a company with accountability, all the programs you seem to hate could run twice as well for the same cost.
There is nothing wrong with assisting those with needs. The very idea is fundamental to a government, which should have the very explicit goal of "protecting its citizens." These protections go from international threats (wars, treaties, etc.) to protecting citizens from other citizens and themsel
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nearly al those programs are for the benefit of the companies. Even health care is a way of addressing the cost to business of paying health insurance, now the taxpayer pays straight off and the insurance companies are happy.
H1B has little to do with a skills shortage, its a way to help companies pay their staff much less and also to ignore training of existing staff. Microsoft could have retrained all those tech workers they laid off from Nokia, but they chose to sack them all and then complain about the l
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I'd wager, that is run as well as a company with accountability, all the programs you seem to hate could run twice as well for the same cost.
I'm not sure why this view of corporations persists. Companies minimize expenses in order to maximize profits. The cost of goods or services to the customers of a company has little bearing on the cost to the company of providing/producing those goods or services. The cost of a corporate provided service will be what the market can bear and in the case of a monopoly like the government, that cost will be extremely high. Costs (and corners) are cut for the sole purpose of maximizing profits.
If the government
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Family reunification should be something that an immigrant can accomplish on their own. If they want to reunite their family, they can return to their home country to be with their family.
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Agreed. But profitability or not is irrelevant. Both XOM and Iowa corn growers need to be removed from the taxpayer's teat.
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Trolling unsuccessful. Stick to the subject.
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YAWN.
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Because they can't be bothered.
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I'm not sure why this "they arrived here and immediately got Social Security" MYTH persists. Permanent Residents (green card holders) have work and pay into Social Security for a minimum of 10 years before being eligible for benefits.
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The rules for this were more lax when they came about twenty years ago. I believe the work requirement was five years back them. They did get minimal type jobs helping out in businesses connected to the family (which I am fairly sure was done specifically to qualify for Social Security).. Their children more or less supported them during this period. Currently all four are receiving Social Security and Medicare and will probably do so for another decade. Pretty certain benefits being paid will be 10-20x wha
I'll believe it's an emergency when 2 thingshappen (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Wages increase
2. They bring in people on green cards for 5-10 years for any employer instead of this H1B nonsense where they bring people in with a leash around their figurative nuts and hand the nut leash to one company.
Funny (Score:1)
It's funny how Silicon Valley hipsters love to mock conservatives over illegal immigration ("They took err jerrrbss!") but throw a big fit over H1Bs, which are exactly the same thing. But they're disadvantaged immigrants! Their rights trump yours, Whitey, remember that. Your own politics opened that door.
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I really don't see Silicon Valley hipsters doing that kind of whining. If anything, the Silicon Valley hipsters are more likely to be bleeding hearts. It's the midwestern tea bagger trailer trash that are most likely to whine about illegal immigrants as if they were within 1000 miles of one.
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The tea baggers are all to the north, in San Francisco. But you already knew this. Their trash is in the dumpsters behind the bath houses. The dumpsters with the Biohazard stickers on them.
Trailers? They're called tiny houses now.
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I really don't see Silicon Valley hipsters doing that kind of whining. If anything, the Silicon Valley hipsters are more likely to be bleeding hearts. It's the midwestern tea bagger trailer trash that are most likely to whine about illegal immigrants as if they were within 1000 miles of one.
Are you serious? You think there are no illegal aliens in the midwest? About 2% of the population of my state is illegal aliens, and that is only the ones we know about.
Re:Funny (Score:5, Insightful)
...too early in the morning.
What Silicon Valley hipsters are likely to object to are "indentured servant" visas. This is one problem with the low skill illegals actually. The situation helps create an underclass that can be easily abused.
That's what H1Bs are for, they are a tool to abuse labor.
I've always said that if a guy's talents are worth importing, then it's worth importing that guy as an EQUAL.
None of this stupid indentured servant crap.
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...too early in the morning.
What Silicon Valley hipsters are likely to object to are "indentured servant" visas. This is one problem with the low skill illegals actually. The situation helps create an underclass that can be easily abused.
That's what H1Bs are for, they are a tool to abuse labor.
I've always said that if a guy's talents are worth importing, then it's worth importing that guy as an EQUAL.
None of this stupid indentured servant crap.
Yeah tell yourself that and keep telling yourself that and you might even believe the hair you are trying to split matters. Hope you don't mind winding up living in shipping container in SF
http://www.businessinsider.com... [businessinsider.com]
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I've always said that if a guy's talents are worth importing, then it's worth importing that guy as an EQUAL.
The H1B program is not for hiring equals. It is for hiring people that are BETTER, because even when you offered infinity billion dollars as a salary, you were unable to find an American to do the job. It was never meant to hire people to do a job that any of 100,000 unemployed tech workers could easily do.
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I've always said that if a guy's talents are worth importing, then it's worth importing that guy as an EQUAL.
The H1B program is not for hiring equals. It is for hiring people that are BETTER, because even when you offered infinity billion dollars as a salary, you were unable to find an American to do the job. It was never meant to hire people to do a job that any of 100,000 unemployed tech workers could easily do.
That's how it was sold, but not what it was meant for.
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Silicon Valley hipsters want to make illegal immigrants legal so that they can get paid minimum wage.
Total Horseshit, As Always (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no shortage of tech workers. There is only a shortage of people willing to work at rates management wants. And these are not burger flipper jobs that can only sustain paying employees out of the $5 value menu gross proceeds. These are wildly profitable tech giants with billions in revenue.
Re:Total Horseshit, As Always (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. Something went very wrong after the last crisis was over: Companies continued to decrease STEM staff quality and wages paid, despite revenues being back to good and sometimes excellent. This has two effects, both catastrophic in the long run: 1.) fewer and fewer bright and capable people will go into STEM 2.) when the next crisis hits, companies will be a lot less able to deal with it, as they have systematically dumbed down their employee-pools. The only "positive" effects for the companies I see is even higher bonuses for even less deserving CEOs and the like.
Somehow, they have completely forgotten that STEM is hard, it is what makes the modern world tick, and that good STEM workers are both critical for the long-term success of any tech company and hard to get.
Re:Total Horseshit, As Always (Score:4, Insightful)
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Unfortunately, the same is happening all over Europe. This might be the thing that brings about the end of the dominance of the western world. Well, stupidity and greed deserve their rewards, I guess.
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Just make H1B a fast track to a green card.
There is indeed a crisis (Score:5, Insightful)
There is indeed a crisis - Creative Arts. (Score:1)
Rules just need to be enforced.
At our company, every one of the H1B's make more than their co-workers by 10-20%. All of our H1B developers make $140k+ Some over 200k.
Our H1B Graphic Designers are making $95k.
If we are going to be spending thousands to do the paperwork, plus tens of thousands in training, we need to make sure they stay, all 6 years rather than transfer their H1B to another company.
We went the H1B route, because there is a severe lack of Coders with creative skills. People who have Fine Ar
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You went with H1B because they are cheaper than regular coders. I don't know where you are but 140k is below-average wage for good coders in most places.
Not only are you profiting from the lower wages, you're also enjoying numerous tax breaks for hiring H1B's which brings down the TCO on said coders.
A Forbidden Truth (Score:2)
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Give them green cards instead of H1B
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You'd be wrong. A recent study by PEW (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/08/10/5-facts-about-americas-students/) showed that the U.S. was near the middle when it came to math and science scores. However, one thing these studies always fail to consider is that the U.S. has a large contingent of minorities who consistently do poorly. Factor out those underperformers and the U.S. suddenly becomes very, very competitive on the world scene.
And since we're talking about technology jobs, it is entirely fai
Nice to know (Score:3)
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I'd watch it on pay-per-view.
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Left leaning candidates will happily ruin the nation, because the worse things are, the more justifications for radical policies. Who wants to open the borders wide and let the entire world into America, with voting rights the moment they set foot on our soil? The left. Are you saying that Bernie is going to expel the foreigners and thereby create several million new jobs for Americans? Jeez that's some serious Nazi shit right there.
Why don't you ask people who used to live in hard left regimes how th
Radical policies? (Score:2)
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Left leaning candidates will happily ruin the nation, because the worse things are, the more justifications for radical policies. Who wants to open the borders wide and let the entire world into America, with voting rights the moment they set foot on our soil? The left. Are you saying that Bernie is going to expel the foreigners and thereby create several million new jobs for Americans? Jeez that's some serious Nazi shit right there.
Why don't you ask people who used to live in hard left regimes how they feel about the kind of government you advocate? What do you think they would say?
You speak of AUTHORITARIAN LIBERALS, however Senator Sanders is a LIBERTARIAN LIBERAL.
Authoritarians of ALL stripes are usually pretty terrible, not that libertarian liberals or libertarian conservatives can't do bad work either.
Political compass explains libertarians and authoritarians better. [politicalcompass.org]
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My Solution (Score:2)
Works every time.
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OK some questions:
What is the quality of the software and documentation they delivered like compared to what you would have gotten if it had been done in-house?
What about the ongoing availability and cost of support for their software now it has been delivered?
Is the cost of all the extra time, support, education/training, project management, trips etc that you/your company had to do because they are external/remote also factored into your total cost?
Did you also calculate the cost of doing it in-house? If
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...and dont forget to include your bonus in the actual total cost.
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Maybe, but I'll get to keep my job longer.
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They are being asked to follow procedure, not... (Score:1)
That was NOT the target (Score:4, Insightful)
There's nothing wrong with giving foreigners who just graduated from an American college the chance to stay and work. These are people who competed to get into school and won, had the money to pay for it, and then learned more at the school. These are precisely the folks we want to stay here.
This should be extended to graduates with good grades in all disciplines, not dialed back.
The real problem is H1Bs and the difficulty in getting a green card. It's the indentured servitude nature of the immigration-work-model which allows companies to pay less and force down American wages. We should provide enough protection to foreign workers that they can tell an employer to shove it.
People can apply for work visas if they have something to offer, and they can come and help pay for our college system and prove that they can work VERY hard and learn fast via the school-visa program. We should embrace everybody coming in on that path. H1Bs are simply destructive.
Re: Finally (Score:1)
I am not sure what you mean by that - sarcasm, literally mean it, or xenophobia.
When I see under/un-employed IT/developers/CS people, recent grads in CS not finding work, and then see some big shot in tech (or worse, some peon here on Slashdot) saying how there is a shortage, I just think the system is broken and rigged. There are plenty of qualified Americans who would love to have the work and no one is going to convince me that someone educated in the Third World is going to have a better background and
Re: Test the Truth - raise H1b to 150% of US wage (Score:1)
And make ot be X2 for any hours over 40
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If a masters degree or a PhD from anywhere in the world were a reliable indication of intelligence, you might have a point. It isn't. There's any number of learned idiots.