Re: Bill Gates and the H-1B Visa, Chapters 1 and 2

Tom Liotta wrote:

Still, the total is something under 8% of all software engineer
employees at Microsoft in the U.S.A. The current number is somewhere
under 1900.

That's two thousand jobs gone. At a relatively low number of $60,000 a year (the average for a Java programmer with 1-4 years experience according to PayScale.com), that's $120 MILLION dollars. I don't consider this irrelevant at all. And this number will leap if Microsoft has its way If Microsoft manages to triple that number, we're at a third of a billion - how is that irrelevant?

If your argument is that it is less of a savings to Microsoft than it is a burden to our economy, then I can conditionally agree, but I just don't want to remove the focus from the fact that the H-1B program hurts American workers profoundly.

The H-1Bs hired by Microsoft are _not_ Visual Basic programmers from a
community college. If you think, for example, in terms of speech
recognition experts, you're closer to the actual situation. Obviously,
simple applications programmers are easy to find; H-1Bs are hardly
meaningful to Microsoft at that level.

I'm not sure where you got that idea. Microsoft is sponsoring even the lowest junior programmers. Please read this page:

http://blogs.msdn.com/jobsblog/archive/2006/09/22/763898.aspx

Microsoft looks to hire people fresh out of college, and as many as their legal team can process, which includes alternate visa strategies as well. Microsoft is all about brining offshore workers here, and that 1900 workers is only the reported H-1B workers, not folks they've managed to back door in through other means.

This isn't a rant, it's the truth. H-1B programs are destroying the American middle class, by taking not only the jobs but the incentive to enter those fields, the fields which helped make us such a world economy. And that's all I'll say on the matter. I just find it a little depressing that I have to repeat this stuff on this list.

Joe