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H1-B activism or hope things get better?

 
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All,
I want to encourage all the US citizens to write to their congressmen concerning the H1-B fiasco. Some sample letters can be found at the following:
http://www.hireamericancitizens.org/sampleletters.html
I personally find the current situation troubling. We have tens of thousands of skilled American citizens who are unemployed while there are ten of thousands of H1-B workers working here. In the end, we can do two things - activism or hope things get better. If you choose the latter, with the ways things look now, they will get a lot worse before they get any better.

Rich
-------------------------------------------------
Hire American Citizens
http://www.hireamericancitizens.org/

CEO SUBMITTED *FRAUDULENT TESTIMONY* TO THE SENATE IMMIGRATION SUBCOMMITTEE
http://www.vdare.com/pb/matloff_h1b.htm
Sun H1-B Class Action Lawsuit
http://www.sunclassaction.com

Corporate H-1B Hall of Shame - Top 100
http://www.zazona.com/ShameH1B/TopByTotal.htm
Funny Work Visa Cartoons
http://www.zazona.com/ShameH1B/WorkVisaHumor.htm
[ August 25, 2002: Message edited by: Richard Brokways ]
 
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That Hall of Shame is bunk. Where's Southwestern Bell?
 
Richard Brokways
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Originally posted by Rufus Bugleweed:
That Hall of Shame is bunk. Where's Southwestern Bell?


Rufus,
Unfortunately, the information for that was from 10/11/97 to 3/31/98. According to the page's author, "This table was produced by INS in response to a special request from Congress, and exists only on paper. I scanned the data into a spreadsheet and optical character reader. Unfortunately the INS doesn't have a complete list of companies and no data for other time spans. They ran a frequency distribution and then printed just names of firms with the largest numbers of H-1Bs. It's not likely that they'll be repeating the process any time soon. The same office is responsible for trying to generate any immigration data Congressmen, Senators, and the White House request as well as routine statistical publications and data for other agencies. The raw data comes from a branch of the INS that routinely "forgets to code" important variables, etc. They don't even have information on the occupations of admitted H-1Bs, nationally!
It's a sorry situation, but not one likely to be solved any time soon. As with all government work the data processing contract went to the low bidder."
I would like to see the numbers for 2001.
Rich
 
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Originally posted by Richard Brokways:
All,
I want to encourage all the US citizens to write to their congressmen concerning the H1-B fiasco. Some sample letters can be found at the following:
http://www.hireamericancitizens.org/sampleletters.html
I personally find the current situation troubling. We have tens of thousands of skilled American citizens who are unemployed while there are ten of thousands of H1-B workers working here. In the end, we can do two things - activism or hope things get better. If you choose the latter, with the ways things look now, they will get a lot worse before they get any better.

Rich
-------------------------------------------------
Hire American Citizens
http://www.hireamericancitizens.org/

CEO SUBMITTED *FRAUDULENT TESTIMONY* TO THE SENATE IMMIGRATION SUBCOMMITTEE
http://www.vdare.com/pb/matloff_h1b.htm
Sun H1-B Class Action Lawsuit
http://www.sunclassaction.com

Corporate H-1B Hall of Shame - Top 100
http://www.zazona.com/ShameH1B/TopByTotal.htm
Funny Work Visa Cartoons
http://www.zazona.com/ShameH1B/WorkVisaHumor.htm
[ August 20, 2002: Message edited by: Richard Brokways ]
[ August 20, 2002: Message edited by: Richard Brokways ]


Thanks for the great link -- I immediately sent a letter to my congressman and forwarded the link to everyone in my address book.
 
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The success of Apache.org has proven that there is no need for an engineering team to be physically located near one another. Contributors to the Apache projects can be located here in the United States or in India. It makes no difference. Without disconnecting the rest of the world from the Internet, I don't see any way to limit whom a company hires to do work for the company. For example, if you prevent company A from importing engineers from India, then company A will just outsource the work to India and then interact with the overseas organization via the Internet. If we use immigration policy to drive engineering work overseas, then that will be where engineering work is done in the future. In the long term, I don't think that it's a good policy.
 
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Originally posted by Dan Chisholm:
The success of Apache.org has proven that there is no need for an engineering team to be physically located near one another. Contributors to the Apache projects can be located here in the United States or in India. It makes no difference. Without disconnecting the rest of the world from the Internet, I don't see any way to limit whom a company hires to do work for the company. For example, if you prevent company A from importing engineers from India, then company A will just outsource the work to India and then interact with the overseas organization via the Internet. If we use immigration policy to drive engineering work overseas, then that will be where engineering work is done in the future. In the long term, I don't think that it's a good policy.


In short...just be better.
 
John Fontana
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Originally posted by Dan Chisholm:
The success of Apache.org has proven that there is no need for an engineering team to be physically located near one another. Contributors to the Apache projects can be located here in the United States or in India. It makes no difference. Without disconnecting the rest of the world from the Internet, I don't see any way to limit whom a company hires to do work for the company. For example, if you prevent company A from importing engineers from India, then company A will just outsource the work to India and then interact with the overseas organization via the Internet. If we use immigration policy to drive engineering work overseas, then that will be where engineering work is done in the future. In the long term, I don't think that it's a good policy.


IMHO, this is skirting around the issue. The goal is to improve the odds of employment for techies in the U.S..
Companies want to do everything except what will remedy the situation. Instead of training and hiring unemployed Americans, they will import workers, or outsource. If both are the problem, then both problems should be remedied.
There are some industries that will re-train workers displaced from exported labor. This isn't happening for techies, I guess because they are supposedly already well-educated.
Ridding the problem of H1-B Visas will also lessen the number of bogus job ads asking for absurd qualifications. It will then be easier to assess the number of opportunities that are actually out there. Right now, I'd say that 5 out of 10 job postings I see are for jobs that nobody will be hired for.
 
Richard Brokways
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Originally posted by Dan Chisholm:
The success of Apache.org has proven that there is no need for an engineering team to be physically located near one another. Contributors to the Apache projects can be located here in the United States or in India. It makes no difference. Without disconnecting the rest of the world from the Internet, I don't see any way to limit whom a company hires to do work for the company. For example, if you prevent company A from importing engineers from India, then company A will just outsource the work to India and then interact with the overseas organization via the Internet. If we use immigration policy to drive engineering work overseas, then that will be where engineering work is done in the future. In the long term, I don't think that it's a good policy.


Dan,
The issue here is the law which states corporations can ONLY bring in workers from other countries when they have "exhausted" their domestic options. As in the link to "CEO SUBMITTED *FRAUDULENT TESTIMONY* TO THE SENATE IMMIGRATION SUBCOMMITTEE" - they clearly broke the law. They are simply looking for cheap labor. This abuse needs to be prosecuted. I have seen this too many times.
As for the "engineering work" going overseas, it is not an issue. If they send it overseas, that is their prerogative. However, many companies are too paranoid to let their full time employees telecommute. For these companies, applying the current H1-B laws would force them to dump the H1-Bs and hire American citizens.
I find it repulsive "American" companies are cutting every possible corner to make a few more dollars. However, abusing the H1-B program is not just distasteful. It is illegal. That is the difference. Outsourcing is a business decision. Violating the H1-B laws is a criminal act. In the end, if American citizens loose their jobs, I do not think it matters if their Indian replacements are working in New York or India. They are still out of work.
Rich
[ August 20, 2002: Message edited by: Richard Brokways ]
 
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Originally posted by Matt Kidd:

In short...just be better.


Can you also be cheaper and younger?
U.S. is a capitalism country. If American companies can move their software development to another country to save a few bucks, they will not think twice to do it. Just like those manufacturing companies. But software development is a highly customerized process. Each product each feature has its unique characteristic and needs to be individually taken care. Then there are integration problems after that.. Most of the companies do not have those engineering and management sophistication to handle that. To move the software development to oversea in large scale, the whole software industry needs to improve its engineering and management capability in a great deal, which might not be a bad thing in the end because it improves the productivity of the U.S.
The current usage of H-1B by American companies is exactly like Enron or WorldCom used fake balance sheets to gain short-term result. In the end, only very few people (the owners and recruiters of those body shops) profit from this practice. American engineers will lost their job pretty much even before their first kid go to college. Those old H-1Bs will be replaced by the new H-1Bs, and they will just go back to their home country to use their U.S. nurtured experience to compete with American companies. With the poor job prospect, there will be even fewer American students go into Science or Engineering programs.
It is always easier for an athlete to take steroids to pump up muscle instead of working out. But it hurts the sports and the athlete in the long run. It will be also easier for American to use those younger and cheaper H-1Bs to satisfied short-term needs, but in the long run, it will hurt American competition.
 
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For those of you familiar with Ward Cunningham's Portland Repository Wiki Web... Here is an interesting thread along the lines of this topic...
http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?InternationalOutsourcing
Interesting reading...
Jon Ellison
 
Richard Brokways
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Originally posted by Jon Ellison:
For those of you familiar with Ward Cunningham's Portland Repository Wiki Web... Here is an interesting thread along the lines of this topic...
http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?InternationalOutsourcing
Interesting reading...
Jon Ellison


Jon,
I found these comments interesting:
"Well, if India innovates faster than the industrialized world, than they deserve the money. If you can get more bang for your software buck by sending the work to a cheaper country, then why not?
But my experience has been otherwise. I think that software quality owes as much to communication as technical savvy, and it's profoundly disruptive to communication to have the client in a timezone eight hours away. When I worked in Barcelona for the Spanish office of a USian dotcom, and I had a question about the spec, I had two options:
Send off an email, and wait until tomorrow (at best) to get a response.
Guess.
We ended up doing a mix of both. The first one slowed us down considerably, the second one resulted in software that the (internal) clients didn't want.
I also found that the interoffice trust had entirely eroded. This company had offices in a few cities: NewYorkCity, Barcelona, Bogota, Miami ... from what I could tell, people did not think of themselves as belonging to one large organization with one common goal. A good simile can be cribbed from a description of TimeWarner? that I once read in WiredMagazine?: My company was more like the HolyRomanEmpire, with each fiefdom squabbling over internal advantage.
It's easier to talk shit about your coworkers when they're 1000 miles away. -- francis"
This agrees with the point I made earlier about H1s vs. outsourcing. If outsourcing is the "legal" option, many companies will be forced to hire more US citizens because of paranoia or control issues.
Rich
[ August 21, 2002: Message edited by: Richard Brokways ]
 
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[Yawn] This topic has been discussed a lot of times at MD. Either it died naturally or was eventually closed by the moderators. [/Yawn]
 
Rufus BugleWeed
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It's a sorry situation, but not one likely to be solved any time soon. As with all government work the data processing contract went to the low bidder.


I don't doubt your sincerity. I applaud your efforts. IMHO, your list doesn't even come close to revealing the truth.
Are you acting as an agent for an organization?
Are you or your organization knowledgable about the Freedom of Information Act? Has the Department of Labor been issued a request?
 
Rufus BugleWeed
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Todd are you trolling?
If you can believe the number of posts this gentleman is a green horn.
 
John Fontana
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Originally posted by Todd Sanders:
[Yawn] This topic has been discussed a lot of times at MD. Either it died naturally or was eventually closed by the moderators. [/Yawn]


Every single thread ends up one of those two ways.
If the thread bores you, why not find one that interests you, or otherwise share your insights from the previous threads you read on the subject?
 
Richard Brokways
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Originally posted by Todd Sanders:
[Yawn] This topic has been discussed a lot of times at MD. Either it died naturally or was eventually closed by the moderators. [/Yawn]


Todd,
I find your response very odd. You have no interest in the topic. Yet, you see the topic, go to it and post a meaningless message. What was your purpose?
In the end, if you are a US citizen and choose to sit on your rear and do nothing, you or someone you know will feel the damage done by this. If it continues, the "extra" IT workers will filter into various other fields to seek employment. When this happens, this obviously makes it worse for people in those "other" fields seeking employment. It will be a ripple across the entire job market.
Rich
 
Rufus BugleWeed
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For a greenhorn Brockway, you pick up the way of the Java Ranch in a big hurry.
Are you wasting our time?
 
Richard Brokways
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Originally posted by Rufus Bugleweed:
For a greenhorn Brockway, you pick up the way of the Java Ranch in a big hurry.
Are you wasting our time?


Rufus,
I just want to increase awareness of the H1 issue. Too many people want to sweep it under the rug or ignore it exists.
Rich
[ August 21, 2002: Message edited by: Richard Brokways ]
 
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Rufus, Why so suspicious? I think Richard speaks for many of us by saying that this is indeed a huge problem that needs attention. I think until you have witnessed first hand how companies put US workers out on the street while taking advantage of the H1B program, you miss the point.
Todd, [yawn] Thanks for your valuable input. Your post wasted everyone's time. [/yawn]
Chad
[ August 21, 2002: Message edited by: Chad McGowan ]
 
Rufus BugleWeed
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Registering a new identity to beat a dead horse is repugnant.
There's a blatant advertising forum.
If anybody's got some new point to make, I'm all ears.
 
Chad McGowan
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Sorry Rufus, I don't read this forum often enough to know when a topic has become a 'dead horse'.
IMO, the horse is still very much alive and eating all of our food
And I still feel like I'm missing your point; what is being blatantly advertised?
 
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Originally posted by Rufus Bugleweed:
Registering a new identity to beat a dead horse is repugnant.
There's a blatant advertising forum.
If anybody's got some new point to make, I'm all ears.


There is no advertising going on here.
Where is your proof that this is a new identity? Why is there a problem with a first time poster (long time lurker?) deciding this is a topic he feels like posting on? Maybe he's an anti-H1B activist who goes from site to site trying to raise awareness. Who cares? Maybe he had to register a new identity because his other identity is his real name and his employer might react negatively to such views? Maybe he just felt inclined to post on this topic for the first time.
His point was abundantly clear. Worker apathy over the H1B program will come back to bite us all; take action or accept the consequences.
Why so suspicious, Rufus? Are you acting as an agent for some organization? Is there some reason raising awareness of the H1B program, and calling others to action threatens you?
 
Rufus BugleWeed
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It's like Todd said.

This topic has been discussed a lot of times at MD.


Now I was bashing Todd and Brockway is a fake. You can tell Brockway is a fake because of his style in quoting, the bold, the indentation, the orginally posted by ... These are clear indicators of experience.
Why does Brokway go after Todd rather than answer my constructive questions?
Why is Brockway posting statistics that are so inaccurate as to weaken his cause?
Don't get me wrong, I already called for people to write their elected officials. I tried to foster a discussion on union organization.
We've seen these URLs.
And you Jason, called me on the M$ wars as being a dead issue in another thread.
 
Jason Menard
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Originally posted by Rufus Bugleweed:
And you Jason, called me on the M$ wars as being a dead issue in another thread.


I don't recall this. Certainly not the thread that is going on currently in MD.
Anyway... I am all for the union idea. But then again I was brought up in the NorthEast where just about everyone has been in a union at one time or another.
 
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There is some new development. Please take a look at http://www.h1bprotest.com and the discussions at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/htwprotest/join
 
Chad McGowan
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Originally posted by Rufus Bugleweed:

Why does Brokway go after Todd rather than answer my constructive questions?


What constructive questions?
Are you acting as an agent?
Does the government know about this??


We've seen these URLs.


Actually, I haven't seen all of them. Besides I think that even though some people have had enough of this topic, there are others haven't. I think the more workers in the IT industry complain about this the better. All we need is a Dateline or 60 Minutes story to start changing things.
 
Rufus BugleWeed
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This was constructive -

Are you or your organization knowledgable about the Freedom of Information Act? Has the Department of Labor been issued a request?


No, I'm not an agent.
No, the government does not know about me. I've exhausted my unemployment benefits and they don't keep track of people like me.
Jason I looked for it. But some of my better points got erased out of "Oh, Jason"
You remember what you said about anonymous posters don't you?
 
John Fontana
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Rufus/Todd - There were some interesting posts here before you guys turned it into a schoolyard farce.
This is the first time I've participated in a discussion on this topic. I frequently see threads here that cover topics that I have already discussed to my satisfaction, so I just leave them for the folks who are currently voicing their thoughts.
Sorry, Rufus and/or Todd, if every thread must be an innovation and continuation of your interests, all I can say is, thank heavens neither of you are moderators or sherriffs.
Why not leave the interested to move this thread along, and go make sure nobody asks anyone to recommend a Java IDE again. I don't see why an IDE recommended a year ago would be any different now. :roll:
 
Chad McGowan
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John, I agree with you 100%.
Although Rufus may not have intended to do so, he gives the impression that since he has already participated in a discussion on this topic, no one else needs to think about it.
Well, obviously the problem still exists, so there must not have been any breakthru ideas from prior threads.
The H1B program directly effects my future, so I am very interested in any opinions/thoughts on how to convince Congress to give it some attention.
 
Rufus BugleWeed
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I went to the same grade school as Rodney Dangerfield.
I wonder just how long before the sun rises over the Indian Subcontinent?
 
Chad McGowan
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Originally posted by Rufus Bugleweed:

No, smoking bugleweed is not psycotropic.


Maybe it is psychotropic
 
Richard Brokways
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Originally posted by Rufus Bugleweed:
It's like Todd said.

Now I was bashing Todd and Brockway is a fake. You can tell Brockway is a fake because of his style in quoting, the bold, the indentation, the orginally posted by ... These are clear indicators of experience.
Why does Brokway go after Todd rather than answer my constructive questions?
Why is Brockway posting statistics that are so inaccurate as to weaken his cause?


Rufus,
Please quote exactly which numbers "weaken" my argument. If you are referring to the Corporate H-1B Hall of Shame - Top 100, that was merely a list of which companies benefited from the H1 program. I clearly stated it was a very dated list. If you have an updated list, please post the URL. I do not see how this "weakens" my cause. The point was simple. Many "big name" companies benefit from the H1 program.
Rich
[ August 21, 2002: Message edited by: Richard Brokways ]
 
John Fontana
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Originally posted by JiaPei Jen:
There is some new development. Please take a look at http://www.h1bprotest.com and the discussions at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/htwprotest/join


This is an excellent resource...thanks for bringing us back to the topic.
 
Rufus BugleWeed
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I used to work at a company that had more H1-Bs than it would take to make the list. IMHO your list so under counts the number of H1-Bs out there that it seems less of a problem than you present.
 
John Fontana
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Originally posted by Rufus Bugleweed:
I used to work at a company that had more H1-Bs than it would take to make the list. IMHO your list so under counts the number of H1-Bs out there that it seems less of a problem than you present.


Rufus, you've done a lot of research into this and seem to share our concern about it...Where do you think the best place is to start?
 
Rufus BugleWeed
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I think somebody needs to file a request under the freedom of information act with the DOL. They know where and how many H1-Bs are in the US.
But we have to be organized. United we stand...
That's why I wanted to know about what organization was behind this.
I think presidential candidate Dick Gephart ( D-MO )looks like an attractive person to petition.
[ August 21, 2002: Message edited by: Rufus Bugleweed ]
 
John Fontana
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One possible angle to pursue:
An employer that wants to hire H1-B's must show that they cannot fill the position with U.S. candidates.
We know that many recruiters do this by publishing ads with skills that are impossible to fill (e.g. requiring 10 years Java experience, insisting that you know twenty platforms but stayed with the same company for eight years, etc.).
Since most of us on this board search the job listings daily, I say we compile a list of suspicious recruiters and report them to INS, DOL, DOS.
 
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Hey all, I've got a quick question on this issue
If all of this H1-B stuff is adversely affecting engineers, shouldn't it just result in a lowering of the average salary, as opposed to a lot of unemployeed engineers.
If Company X would rather pay $35k to an Indian programmer, as opposed to $50k to an American programmer, wouldn't the American programmer still have an advantage if he were willing to take the $35k.
The reason I bring this up is that during my work and when I was looking for a job, I constantly heard 2 complants from employers and recruiters when looking for labor.
1) So many applicants were not skilled enough for the position. We're not talking about having run Java on every platform known, but rather not having solid Object-Oriented Analysis and Design Skill, not being knowledgeable about the programming language, or simply not having enough (or any) development experience.
2) Applicants who were not fluent in english. I used to always wonder what "must have excellent communication skills" meant in those advertisements. I assumed all these companies wanted master orators who could inspire people with Kennedy like speeches to write the greatest code in history. Finally, a hiring manager put it best when he said "We're looking for people who speak f*%king English".
Also, the majority of ads that I see online (and on company web sites) specifically state "Must be U.S. citizn or permanent resident, no Sponsorship"
To be perfectly honest, I'm not quite sure where I fall on this issue. Would it be better for me financially if they're were no H1-B Visa programmers in the U.S. (and no ability to outsource work, maybe. But two things prevent me from getting up in arms about this issue
1) This is the reality of what we as Americans are living in. No point (for me, anyway) in crying about it.
2) My ego is just way to big to believe that these folks are a threat to me. I don't ever want to work for an employer that will look and my skills and credentials and somebody they can import and pick the other person solely because he is cheaper. Any company that has that little regard for the quality of its employees has little regard for the quality of its software, and is not a place I want to work.
Now If this guy they can import is just more qualified than me, well hey, I hope he likes the job.
looking back on it, I'm sure there were times when I was in competion for a job with an H1-B, me with my social science bachleors and a shiney SCJP2 certificate, and them with there bachleors (and possibly masters) in CS and a few years experience under their belt. In those cases, THEY DESERVED THE JOB OVER ME. What can I say. No point crying about it. Thats why I'm going back to school.
Jon
 
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Originally posted by JiaPei Jen:
There is some new development. Please take a look at http://www.h1bprotest.com and the discussions at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/htwprotest/join


Are 90% of new jobs really going to foreign nationals? This must include green card holders, surely?
 
Richard Brokways
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Originally posted by Rufus Bugleweed:
I used to work at a company that had more H1-Bs than it would take to make the list. IMHO your list so under counts the number of H1-Bs out there that it seems less of a problem than you present.


Rufus,
The list is not mine. It is a list I found while browsing.
Rich
 
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