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To be, or not H1-B, that is the question.
It is USA centric, but one that anyone anywhere on the planet who goes online runs into quite regularly.
My parents were expatriate workers, and I spent much of my life working abroad, so now, living here in the south west of the UK, the boot is on the other foot. The EU has freedom of movement and freedom of employment, and if I go into town now I see cars with number plates from Poland, Lithuania, and just about everywhere else.
Two days ago I took some old fencing wood and other junk down to the recycling centre, the workers in hi-vis vests were calling to each other in Polish, my missus was a cleaner at a local motel, and a dozen or more of the cleaning staff of 15 are now Polish, the girl works as receptionist at the only 4 star hotel in town, and now has a Polish colleague.
These people have as much legal right to be here as anyone, that is enshrined in EU law, and it needs to be said that since coloureds down here are very rare anyway, less than a tenth of a percent of the population, there is plenty of the old fashioned sort of prejudice where blacks are associated with problems in our big cities, so the Poles et al being white are less commented on than if we re-instated a 1950's policy of immigration from the West Indies.
However you don't have to go very far to find someone who will talk to you about the negative affect this influx of Poles is having on the local job market and wages. "Kay won't employ locals anymore, she only wants Polish workers" was one comment I heard two days ago, and it is largely borne out in fact.
There is an element of Polish workers being attractive because they don't know shit about the minimum wage, working conditions, workers rights, health and safety, the taxation system, and there is an element of Polish workers coming from a poorer economy so their lower bar of entry to what they consider an acceptable job and wage is a lot lower than ours, but at the end of the day it is the employer who chooses whom to employ, and nobody is addressing that dirty little fact.
Consider it as an analogy to dating, there is the dating where you go out and look for someone to fall in love with, marry, raise kids and spend the rest of your life with, and there is the dating where all you are interested in is the sex, and none of that nonsense about spending time and money on meals, flowers, cinemas and chocolate when you could be getting down to the beast with two backs.
The "job for life" or career path is the former, and the actual job market today is the latter. Employers are sluts into easy sex, that is the bottom line. Employers are most definitely not into looking for decades long relationships with employees, relationships like that involve give and take, compromise, negotiation, effort, money, whereas the easy sex only requires consenting adults, and there is no shortage of them.
There are two factors that promote the job for life trait in an employer, one is a limited gene pool to pick from, and the other is an environment in which it is easy to sustain a relationship, so that would be limited scope labour pool and economic boom times with no cloud on the horizon.
Fact is neither one of these factors in present today in the UK, thanks to the EU labour is available for any job you care to create, pretty much on your terms, and fact is no company is assured of next years turnover, so employers behave like sluts.
The USA is a bit different, the labour market is more limited, mainly due to geographic factors, USA is big and spread out, and there are oceans on two sides, 4 guys in a crappy old car can't drive in to where the work is in 48 hours with the sandwiches they made before they left, you have border controls with Canada and Mexico and you have work visas and other methods, such as the H1-B, to severely limit influx.
So, back to the net and the regular interminable net debates about H1-B visas and American tech employment problems.
Why do programmes such as H1-B exist, for no reason other than to slightly relax the tight restrictions that geography and border controls and immigration and visa regulations impose upon the labour pool market... there is a scarcity there that competing companies in other parts of the world do not face, and that means an economic disadvantage.
The other side of the coin is the business economy, I don't imagine any business in the USA feels and more secure about next years turnover figures than any business in the EU, so managers are looking to making a profit next year, not ten and twenty year plans.
On the net you see people complaining, H1-B is unfair competition, it is used by companies to drive US workers wages down and to export work overseas, and this must be stopped. Well, you're right, it is used to drive US workers wages down and to export work overseas, simply because your wages are too high for the work you do, and your border controls limit the labour pool artificially, so if company X wishes to stay competitive and trading next year, it has to do *something* to bring it more into line with its competitors overseas.
Now, here is what I have observed in my lifetime.
If a country is poor economically, it will import skilled labour, such as my dad, to run tin mining or oil drilling or coal mining, and if a country is wealthy economically, it will import skilled labour, like me, to work for rich people who preferred to employ a northern European who spoke their own language. Alongside both there is always importation of semi-skilled and unskilled labour, Malaysia had the Chinese coolies wielding hoes, Zambia had the Tonga tribe wielding picks and shovels, UAE had the Baluchistani wielding shovels, but you knew the glory days were gone when you saw a "white man" driving a JCB digger in Abu Dhabi.
These H1-B jobs aren't skilled, they are semi skilled, sorry if that pisses you off but it is a fact, a CS degree is a lot easier to get than a commercial multi-engine jet license or a neurosurgeons ticket or suchlike. Computer Science died a death when people who had no innate talent and no fascination for the subject got into it for no other reason than the promise of big bucks. The same is true of Engineering. "Engineer" used to mean something, nowadays it is an appendix added to "Photocopier" or "Tumble dryer".
Most of my contemporaries age wise were playing with computers before Microsoft were much more than a bit player, so MCSE means Must Consult Someone Else, and you hear comments like "why should I waste my time getting a worthless qualification that only came out after I'd already been in the industry over a decade?"
The fact they are still in the trade is down to two things, vast experience and decades of learning how to avoid mistakes that are non obvious to those who have less experience or are more specialized, but the days when headhunters used to ring them out of the blue and offer lucrative jobs at better wages and better conditions than their current gig are long past.
The H1-B visa programme is a symptom of what is wrong with the USA, it is a band aid on a bullet wound.
Here in the UK anyone from anywhere in the EU can come and work, no permits required, our island with a native population of around 60 million citizens exists in a labour market of some 450 million citizens, none of whom are more than 48 hours away by road, none of whom need any kind of permits, many of whom come from areas where the cost of living is 25% or less of the UK average. They can commute on a weekly basis or stay for six months or move here, as their whim takes them.
If anyone here in the UK thinks closing borders, opting out of the EU and implementing an H1-B style visa programme is going to bring back the glory days when you could tell the boss to shove it on a Thursday and start and new, better paid job the next Monday is dreaming.
Employers will either shut up shop and move to the European mainland, or go bust. Those jobs that cannot be exported due to the nature of the services, such as domestic plumbers, will find themselves looking for work in an economy where lots of factories closed, jobs went overseas, and most people are too busy struggling to pay off the mortgage to thing about a new bathroom suite and new kitchen. Hard times.
Fifty years ago the UK, and the USA, could have pulled up the drawbridges and gone self sufficient, some things we would have had to do without, bananas, oranges, but everything else we could and did make on these shores. Great, Ferguson and Baird televisions running 425 line UHF stuffed to the gills with Mullard Valves, transistorised stuff was out (hell, the UK basically invented the transistor and gave it to the USA in WW2 to keep it out of the Germans hands) but there wasn't the market for it. The british bike industry could and did make ass kicking 4 cylinder motorcycles that were as good as anything coming out of the Honda factory back then, but there wasn't the market for it, pulling up those drawbridges stops trade in BOTH directions see.
Honda took off when it met the same conditions Triumph had 40 years earlier, when less than 10% of production was for the domestic market. Same goes for Nipponese Victory Company, known to you as JVC, same for Sony, same for Fiat, same for Nokia, same for anything else you can shake a stick at. How about Microsoft for a modern example.
When the rest of the world is playing the global marketplace game then domestic markets and pulling up drawbridges makes you North Korea.
The USA arguably took over the role of world economic and industrial powerhouse from the UK, you may lead us in fashions such as valley girl speak, plastic surgery for the masses and divorce lawyers, but in some things we lead you, if you have the wit to see which way the wind is blowing.
The days of studying engineering in Scotland or mining in Cornwall being sufficient to guarantee you a *good* job anywhere in the world are long gone, and they ain't coming back. I can't speak for Scotland but if you are in Cornwall now unless you want to work six months of the year for the so called tourist trade as a commis chef you don't have many options, certainly none that will land you a good job anywhere on the planet. Doesn't matter how innately talented and brilliant you are, the world renowned centres of excellence such as Dalcoath College (hard rock mining school) are long gone too.
Look at the A380 airbus, a major clusterfuck over two years late, not because this bit was made here and that bit made there, not because of different languages, not even because of different software, but because nobody bothered to make a jig to test fit German built fuselage sections with French built fuselage sections, AT THE FACTORY IN GERMANY, so for two years they shipped bits that needed extensive reworking of the wiring, and the blame was put on incompatible visualization software, not third rate engineering practices. Boeing are celebrating the Airbus cock up, they shouldn't, wait till the Asians start building fuselage the same way they built cars and motorcycles and portable radios.... they have a head start because they have to make far less units per annum to vastly exceed domestic consumption and get into that boom time scenario where most of your production is exported.
The "R" Word.
Recession, not to be confused with a financial recession on the Stock Market, because I can sit in the New York stock exchange and make money trading futures in OLED production in the Far East, but *real* recession, where your labour just isn't in as much demand as it used to be. That is what the USA is experiencing right now, and the UK too. It is a no brainer, spiralling consumer debt just doesn't happen when people are raking in the dough.
I did not adopt a fairly radical "cut my suit according to my cloth" downsizing of my own personal lifestyle, and economy drive on steroids, because I am an eco freak or because I really don't want 55" 1080i screens in every room, an L88 vette in the driveway and a cigarette boat in the river, I did it because they money just ain't there to be had any more, unless I want to go down the suicidal personal debt route, and I just don't see the status quo changing in time to pay off that accrued debt, so it was downsize my lifestyle now, while I still had a choice.
Get out of Dodge? where am I going to go? Where can I go in the EU and compete with workers who are used to getting less than 25% of my wage? Where can I go outside the EU? Australia? Great place to emigrate to in 1970, going there now is like buying MS stock, probably a good bet, but missed the boom years.
Not my fault? Not fair? Not what I want to hear?
Doesn't matter, the world doesn't owe me a living.
USAians, don't look at the H1-B visa programme and complain about companies exploiting american workers, look at the H1-B visa programme and see it for what it is, a warning sign, there is an economic storm coming and lifeboat places are likely to be in short supply, don't wait until everyone else has wet feet before deciding to make your move.