Tuesday, April 1, 2008

The Google Policy Blog has voiced concern over the "artificially low cap" in place on H-1B visas.

Since Google is unable to find qualified Americans for the jobs. Then why doesn't Google start voicing a concern over education in the US? Instead of simply looking elsewhere, Google can be part of the overall solution to its own problem of insufficient staff.

As Google has noted in their post the H-1B visa holder contribute to the economy. Why not let Americans contribute to the American economy, instead of relying on foreign nationals to support the American economy.

I would be interested to known what the salary of an American vs a H-1B visa holder is at Google. Given that both employees have the same job/job description and time with the company. There have been some accusations that the pay for one is lower than the other. If Google would like to volunteer this information in order to dispel this notion that Google wants to higher H-1B visa workers because they can be paid less than Americans.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well isnt that fair? They are trying to earn money you know. If someone can be paid less then why not.

Mind you I am just trying to see the other side of the argument. Doesnt mean i support it.

DintVerge said...

I think the salaries at most companies have, generally, been shown to be equivalent. The real issue is not the disparity between an H-1B salary and their natural(ized) counterparts but the effect that increasing H-1B visas each year has on everybody's salary. Even my dog knows that increasing the labor supply drives down salaries and that driving down salaries is a primary concern of large corporations -- even Google.

Google may indeed truly want to choose the best possible candidates but they don't know who all these additional visas will go to. Thus, they can't rightly say that they need the visas to go to the best job candidates.

Anonymous said...

Do you mean to say they are not aware of why they are asking for an increase in H1-B? Well they know who they are hiring, so therefore from their point of view it makes absolute sense to ask for an increase. As for the other companies I think they are looking at the growth of technology and stating that an increase in the H1-B cap would attract better scientists and researchers and therefore aid in the growth of technology.

You are correct it will drive down salaries, but then this is as much a business move as a political one and I dont think looking at it through one side tells the whole story.

DintVerge said...

Ayan, that is not at all the case. Google, along with other large corporations in the technology sector, send VPs to Congress each year telling the same story. "We can't get enough qualified engineers..". They later justify this by claiming "We want to choose the most 'qualified' engineer for the job". Yet they often don't have a specific job in mind when they request thousands more H-1B visas. They have not interviewed people and found some guy in India is their best choice for a particular job. It is more disengenous political rhetoric to say so. They simply want to drive down salaries. The truth is that the type of engineers they typically need command a higher salary -- which lately means little to student loan-strapped engineers anyway.

Try this.. create a spread sheet containing the median software engineer salaries over the past twenty years, adjusted for inflation. Then add the change in H-1B visas for that year. The correlation is quite clear.