I really enjoy reading biased H1-B articles that pin the unemployment market against the evil corporations that need highly skilled workers. You can read one here, published on Friday. One notable quote jumps out:
Businesses like Google (GOOG), Intel (INTC), Microsoft (MSFT) and Cisco (CSCO), on the other hand, want them to stay, and stay permanently.
Furthermore:
Employee unions and some politicians will say bon-voyage. They’ll argue that for each foreign-born worker hired in the U.S., a local worker loses a job. It’s an argument that plays well in the current recession as millions of jobs evaporate.
This zero-sum black-or-white game is a great way to keep people from seeing what this is really about: voluntary slavery.
Yes, I know people are as afraid of that word as they are of topics touching abortion or religious choice, but when people are down they need someone to blame for it.
It’s not that corporations value H1-B because they are smarter or more qualified – they aren’t. They value them because they are voluntarily tied to the employer/sponsor and have everything to gain by staying with the employer and making them succeed. By comparison, Americans are free to demand raises, benefits, equity and more or they will go elsewhere.
The state of complacency and entitlement are ruining the American enterprise. It’s not India or China. Believe me, they are far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far more abusive of their natives and you can see evidence of it every day in your inbox. For every discussion I have with Vijay about India being a nation of highly skilled, professional individuals that are trained and competent I have at least 100-200 SPAM messages trying to sell me Indian programmer by the pound. I am not saying that to be disrespectful, that is exactly what I am being offered by hundreds of Indian and Chinese outsourcing companies – I can buy them by the hour, by the day, or I can scale them variably depending on the hour and load or upgrade them by competency. Imagine driving a truck full of computers to the Home Depot parking lot with a power generator and having them reload Windows all day long on broken computers. That is the harsh, ugly reality – on a global scale.
Yet, what it all comes down to is motivation. I have plenty of people on my staff that work crazy hours, that pull double shifts, that produce and handle stuff that nobody asked them to do. On the other end, I have a lot of people that start work at 9:01 and end work at 5:31 – their output sucks, their attitude is bad, they complain all the time – because their concern is not the benefit of the company and all it’s employees – they are most upset about THEIR comfort zone because it’s all about them.
By throwing away H1-B folks who we have cultivated to be competitive hard workers we empower the climate of complacency and entitlement and reduce competition. I have no problem with India and China getting skilled workers.
Our problem isn’t that we aren’t smart.
Our problem is that we just don’t give a ****.
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