The trend in the US currently is that when companies hire they want everything under the sun. I very much doubt that if they haven�t already outsourced for cost reasons they will go abroad because they cant find skilled workers. The market is still recovering slowly, but still not to the initial levels(not sure it ever will be).
As for H1B individuals the situation is very bad. First I must state I have nothing against Indians (being from the subcontinent my self), and I know many brilliant ones. There are two ways one can transfer H1Bs. One you have several years of experience in some specialized area.
Second you go to a Desi contracting company and you sign your life away. Most of these contracting companies will falsify almost anything to get the H1B, and then get the H1Bs contracts. In the end the worker loses because they become an indentured servant to the contracting company. My friend who is looking for a job, when contracting companies contact him they send him a "refactored" resume of his. He finds he has twice as more skills that he never heard of
. Unfortunately this situation seems to be the norm and is causing quite an adverse impact. I have been reading many angry threads in some other forums where ppl rant that H1Bs dont know anything they are doing. The h1B demand is caused mostly by these companies. To add to that only 15k of the quota has gone to students graduating from the US.
I think that INS needs to deal very very harshly with H1B abusers, in order to provide foreign workers with fair opportunities, and stop the kind of abuse that is going on before increasing the quota. Even more the foreign workers in this country need to band together to fight such abuse to prevent long term damage to the image of foreign workers(specially from the Indian subcontinent) in this country.
I think as the job market grows we will see a definite increase in H1Bs but not right now. We might see the bill suggesting that students graduating from US universities with MS , or PHDs be except pass but that is still up in the air. I think that would be a good move since many well educated foreigners seem to have no alternative than leave the country because they cant stretch their OPT enough.
I am very thankful to be in the Hardware industry right now, although I would like to switch over, I am going to postpone it because the recruiters have given me a very very bitter tast. I feel for the fellow forign software engineers who are looking for jobs these days.
[ November 14, 2004: Message edited by: Inuka Vincit ]
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