Yahoo: Legal Immigrants to US face GC logJam

[bigbang2001]

Very True. It is about cost first and then comes other factors. Eventually with good processes installed one can extract the desired level of quality from an offshore place.

Shoe making is a good example of how manufacturing landscape changed over past couple of decades. Any job which is repetitive would eventually head offshore. Software and Hardware industry are headed towards that. This is a part of evolutionary pattern of any industry and follows the pattern of maturing industries. Essentially demand/supply/cost equation is has caught up with these industries.

I wish I had a crystal ball to see what industry may flourish in the next few years. After spending prime of life waiting for a piece of paper which would give me a right to choose any employer, I am looking at the fact that my skills are not needed in this country anymore.

I always go back to my example of manufacturing offshoring. Some kid in Indonesia is making NIKE sneakers. Someone in Pakistan is manufacturing a T-shirt. People in USA can't do these things?

Offshoring doesn't have anything to do with not being able to find the skilled labor here in USA. It is mainly due to cost without significantly decreasing quality.

 

[hipka]

I always go back to my example of manufacturing offshoring. Some kid in Indonesia is making NIKE sneakers. Someone in Pakistan is manufacturing a T-shirt. People in USA can't do these things?

Offshoring doesn't have anything to do with not being able to find the skilled labor here in USA. It is mainly due to cost without significantly decreasing quality.

I don't agree equating unskilled labor with high tech workers, simply because the amount of training involved differs in orders of magnitude.
Cost savings is only one issue here. When people from US go back to india, they are taking back valuable job experience, making them easily employable by multinational companies. So retrogression not only contributes to loss of talent in the US, but also to loss of investment/jobs.

 

[tusharvk]

well, I haven't heard strong and good counter-arguments why offshoring is not bad for the US. So let me make an argument as to why offshoring is bad (even though it may have been repeated).

offshoring shifts jobs out of the US. previously it was blue collar mfg jobs and now it the white collar jobs. This reduces the overall employment opportunities available to the US worker. Worker has to be more productive for the same or lower wages for fear of losing job. If the wages are stagnating, the purchasing power stagnates or goes down (due to inflation).
companies are producing what customers can't buy. So the companies have to lower the price tags which in turn can hurt their profit margins=> Leading to further offshoring to reduce the costs of production. This will depress the US standard of living.

Technology enablers (IT, communication) are paving the way for getting the work done where it is cheapest. Right now, the jobs at the lower end of the wage spectrum are vanishing and those at the higher end are increasing. These in turn require high skilled workers. So either the US economy can create skilled workers through its education system or import these workers.

One thing that I have understood from these boards is that people are very patriotic towards their own country/systems. They want to think their own countries are the best.

Severe retrogression started in october 2005. Pre 2000 there was generally retrogression but not for long periods. Therefore, are you saying offshoring started in October 2005 because of retrogression???

Companies will do anything to offshore for something that is less cost. The plug and play model was easier in manufacturing. Therefore, it got offshored. It was a new phenomenon that "white collar jobs" can also be outsourced. Previously, companies didn't think of this option. However, now I get calls from Chase visa from india; my tax provider had outsourced the help desk to India (they brought it back to USA), Quickbooks had also done it to India but I believe they also brought it back. Looks like to me that if there is customer interaction they think quality is being lost and is being brought back to USA.

However, jobs which don't touch customers of US companies will always be outsourced to cheaper places. If you guys want to believe it is due to better quality or lack of workers then you can go on believing this. If you get a chance to sit in a boardroom while this discussion is happening; you will get to see how decision making process on this is and what types of concerns get brought up.

The staffing model of US companies are designed that they have to over hire. The typical company will give three weeks of vacation, a person might take one to two weeks of sick leave and if someone quits it may take 2 to 3 months to replace the person, etc. Therefore, from a human resource function they have to overhire to mitigate this which thus increases the cost. Companies I deal with tell me that this is a headache they pass onto offshore companies.

You would think that if offshoring was due to lack of labor in USA and it was hurting American jobs then USA would just increase h-1b's infinitely to prevent this from happening.

 

[gc_retrogress]

All super powers in the past collapsed from within be it Rome, Babylon or be it USA. Maybe once again greed and laziness would be one of the many things that will hurt this country.

It does not matter what one board room tries to do for their company screw that company and those who sit in that board. In the long run everything would be Walmart standard. Charge less & pay less to the workers. Customers will enjoy the lower price but the workers suffer.

In the end quality will suffer, customers will suffer, workers will suffer. In the meanwhile country tries to maintain super power status, they wage wars, because of lack of funds they would in turn raise taxes on people.

It is a big spiral effect going downward.

 

[techy2468]

i do agree with gc_retrogress...that greed is going to be the driving factor...

tusharvk: companies/investors dont care for what you say.....they only care for more profit..and that too in the short term.....is there anything wrong with this....isnt that what we all want??


USA is a capitalist country.....and so far it has been good....things look bad right now because it appears that corporate greed may ruin the party in the long run.....

but we never know...market has a way of correcting itself.....things may fix themselves.....not to say that USA will not fall one day.......everything that goes up has to come down.......particularly when the politicians fail you....and the lobbyist/business dont care for the country.....they just want more moolah...

right now i feel as though we are again at a major turning point in financial history.........it looks like USA is heading towarda recession....dollar is going to fall (projections are around 20% in next year).....USA's lifestyle may be levelled to that of other developed countries (cost of living to income ratio)......world economy will be in turbulance....(mainly india and china)

 

[gc_retrogress]

Theories aside, practically....this country is detriorating very fast. Past is history. Kids are no longer matching up to the standards of this world in. Societies are no longer safe. No matter how powerful a country it is...their own kids are not safe in their schools.

I would want US to do good personally but the truth of the matter is they are getting secluded very fast. Could not win a war in Iraq. The list can go on and on. Let us see what happens in the next 10 years.

 

[gc_retrogress]

Dude...I am in retro allright but I am personally in the right wing , I am one of the people who would like to see US prosper. It is in my best interest (selfish I can say)

I may not be that old to see what happened then or I was not here since then - Just because they turned it around last time does not mean they can do it again and again.


That is why I said let us see what happens in 10 years. If we are both alive we can take it up again at that time. Till then nobody knows who can be right.

 

[hipka]

One thing that I have understood from these boards is that people are very patriotic towards their own country/systems. They want to think their own countries are the best.

Not related to argument

Severe retrogression started in october 2005. Pre 2000 there was generally retrogression but not for long periods. Therefore, are you saying offshoring started in October 2005 because of retrogression???

I said offshoring increased due to retrogression, it did not begin due to it. Check out my other post.

Companies will do anything to offshore for something that is less cost. The plug and play model was easier in manufacturing. Therefore, it got offshored. It was a new phenomenon that "white collar jobs" can also be outsourced. Previously, companies didn't think of this option. However, now I get calls from Chase visa from india; my tax provider had outsourced the help desk to India (they brought it back to USA), Quickbooks had also done it to India but I believe they also brought it back. Looks like to me that if there is customer interaction they think quality is being lost and is being brought back to USA.

You are mostly correct, however cost is one factor but not the only one.

However, jobs which don't touch customers of US companies will always be outsourced to cheaper places. If you guys want to believe it is due to better quality or lack of workers then you can go on believing this. If you get a chance to sit in a boardroom while this discussion is happening; you will get to see how decision making process on this is and what types of concerns get brought up.

Again cost is only one factor and I have been involved in decisions to offshore. My company gets several requests from clients inquiring about benefits of offshoring and I have seen cost benefit moving down the list.

The staffing model of US companies are designed that they have to over hire. The typical company will give three weeks of vacation, a person might take one to two weeks of sick leave and if someone quits it may take 2 to 3 months to replace the person, etc. Therefore, from a human resource function they have to overhire to mitigate this which thus increases the cost. Companies I deal with tell me that this is a headache they pass onto offshore companies.

You would think that if offshoring was due to lack of labor in USA and it was hurting American jobs then USA would just increase h-1b's infinitely to prevent this from happening.

You are right about over hiring, its a problem with US companies. Offshoring was not due to lack of labor in the US, but the phenomenon has increased due to experienced workers moving back to India. Your points are true to a certain extent but are not against what I am saying.

 

[hipka]

I still don't see the connection between offshoring and retrogression. There is no link; never has been and never will be.

The link is that highly skilled workers leave US due to retrogression --> Makes indian/chinese labor market attractive --> Companies come to India/China. This link has always been there and seems to be getting stronger.

 

[GotPR?]

The link is that highly skilled workers leave US due to retrogression --> Makes indian/chinese labor market attractive --> Companies come to India/China. This link has always been there and seems to be getting stronger.

Retro may trigger people to go back to where offshoring is landing on, however, retro itself won't let company decide to go for offshoring.
There are enough resources in Japan/EU. Why dont they go for offshoring to these countries ? It's because of COST. Period.

 

[dmbronner]

I made the following estimated calculations: (Note that I put 400,000 pending labors because DOL can say that at anytime

I put an estimated approvals of 80% (Remaining 20% can be withdrawn cases or denied).

I calculated that India, China, Phil. and Mexico together account for a 40% of the total cases according to the 2005 EB visas issued per country.

Regarding the 245i cases ROW most of these people already applied to I-485, since EB3 ROW is in Aug/2002. The problem is for India since if we suppose that 20,000 of the 44,800 estimated cases are 245i, at a quota of 2,800 visas (Not counting dependants), the future is

Correct me if I am wrong.


TOTAL ESTIMATED CASES BACKLOG CENTERS: 400,000

TOTAL ESTIMATED APPROVALS 80% 320,000

TOTAL ESTIMATED ROW EB1, EB2, EB3 60% 192,000
TOTAL: ESTIMATED INDIA / CHINA / MEX 40% 128,000

ESTIMATED SHARE PER YEAR
2001 ROW EB1, EB2, EB3 38,400 20%
2002 ROW EB1, EB2, EB3 48,000 25%
2003 ROW EB1, EB2, EB3 57,600 30%
2004 ROW EB1, EB2, EB3 48,000 25%
192,000

Estimated percentage share:
India 35% 44800
Mexico 35% 44800
China 15% 19200
Philipines 15% 19200
TOTAL 128000

 

[indian_gc_ocean]

Retro may trigger people to go back to where offshoring is landing on, however, retro itself won't let company decide to go for offshoring.

no comments...

There are enough resources in Japan/EU. Why dont they go for offshoring to these countries ? It's because of COST. Period.

It is not because of cost alone there is always language barrier. In countries like Ireland, UK where there is no langauge barrier the supply of talented people for outside vendors is limited. Currently, India has the advantage of supplying volume that can easily be trained without much language barrier. I think this is because of the english medium high school system in India that other countries you mentioned do not have.

 

[hipka]

There is much more being offshored then the jobs that you guys think.

HSBC - if you want your expense report completed it goes to India. This is where the back office is.

Call center's, etc.

manufacturing.

Who is moving back?

IT workers/engineers constitute the bulk of people heading back and IT companies also account for the bulk of offshoring.
You may be surprised but many call center operations,BPO companies are started/staffed by people who left the US and went back to India. Granted not all of them were affected by retrogression, but you cannot disagree that some of them were.

Let's get serious here; people who come here have very little experience. They might be skill worker in immigration definition but not skill or highly sought after worker in grand scheme of things.

Person with bachelors or master degree with 2, 4, 6, 8 years of experience making less then $150,000 are not the highly sought after workers. Skill/sought after highly specialized workers in grand scheme of things have much different definition then immigration definition.

You cannot sweep all H1-b's as low skilled programmers. Some very talented and sought after people are also affected. I would say that at least 30% of them are quite talented.

The arguments about people taking what they have learned here and taking it back with them is what "programmers guild" uses. That is; we are losing our job as we train a person on h-1b to do our job and they are getting paid less.

And I agree with the programmers guild.

How to correct the situation; don't let someone come here on h-1b to "steal knowledge" and take it back with them. It is a contradiction; people come here to get knowledge and then will take it back with them. So; if this was a valid argument; do you prevent the person from coming in the first place or do you make it easier for him to stay.

We make it easier for them to stay by giving a GC.

Still; no link in offshoring and retrogression.
Paying less and having people who are more qualified for the job then is needed is the decision to be made by companies when offshoring.

And the presence of highly skilled , american trained workers in India makes offshoring more attractive, that is the link.

 

[hipka]

Retro may trigger people to go back to where offshoring is landing on, however, retro itself won't let company decide to go for offshoring.

Totally agree with that. Retro may not be the sole reason for offshoring but it favors the trend.
Retro makes offshore location more attractive as American trained workers are available for a lower cost.

There are enough resources in Japan/EU. Why dont they go for offshoring to these countries ? It's because of COST. Period.

As someone pointed out language is also a factor. Also I never said that cost was not a factor. Its good deal for companies to find employees with US experience in India. They need to spend a lot less on training and communication problems are minimal.

 

[techy2468]

UN.....you will be surprised to know that there may be never a shortage of skilled worker in india.......hard to beleive but its true.......we churn out atleast half a million engineers every year.......and another million under grads........

of these atleast 70% have enough IQ and motivation to do our jobs.....

my take on the issue of offshoring is that it will continue to grow.....unless there are legislations to discourage it....

even if there is a recession in usa....their offshore resources wont be laid off....since they are the cheapest....

and every year....the process is improving.....hence offshoring will keep increasing...

and no matter how many jobs are created in india.....we still have more people unemployed......thanks to increasing population and also increasing college schooling....hence wages are not going to increase a lot in the entry level jobs.......but of course more people means more managers required.......hence promotion and salary increase will be pretty good.....

but the cost of the human resource in general will not increase much.....because the number of entry level people will grow much faster than the number of managers

but i dont expect my IT developer job to be the same after ten years......maybe i will be the business analyst or the project manager trying to get the data for offshore staff to work on it...

 

[GreenCardVirus]

you will be surprised to know that there may be never a shortage of skilled worker in india.......

I completely disagree.

Most colleges in India are sub-standard and so are the people coming out of it. Not only that, one cant go for higher studies even if one is in 80th percentile, there are simply no seats available. Not only that, half of them got there in reservations with out any merit.

I get to deal with several of my counterpart on my job. Our company's India director gave us statistics. For 1 job advertized, the get some 200 resumes. They interview about 20 and only 2 get selected and only 1 shows up for real job. I was told that the interview was only 40% technical and rest 60% was behavioral.

I think I read Intel chief or Microsoft chief saying India grads are not up the mark.

 

[techy2468]

I completely disagree.

Most colleges in India are sub-standard and so are the people coming out of it. Not only that, one cant go for higher studies even if one is in 80th percentile, there are simply no seats available. Not only that, half of them got there in reservations with out any merit.

I get to deal with several of my counterpart on my job. Our company's India director gave us statistics. For 1 job advertized, the get some 200 resumes. They interview about 20 and only 2 get selected and only 1 shows up for real job. I was told that the interview was only 40% technical and rest 60% was behavioral.

I think I read Intel chief or Microsoft chief saying India grads are not up the mark.

i hope you dont get flamed for this blasphemy


i am not so sure about the sub-standard indian college grads...

can you define higher studies???.....do you means Masters??......if so why do you need a masters degree to do some job of a programmer or a accountant???

i am fully aware of the 200 people showing up for a job interview......its because every one from every aspect of life wants to get a piece of the cake called as IT......and even though their training may be in Legal studies.....he will want to become a programmer.....

i am surprised by the 40% technical...and 60% behavioral......things must have changed in the past 5 years since i left....(it used to be 80% technical...and if you are good....then HR interview was a formality)


it does not matter how things are right now......all you need is:

1. people who have studied maths and science.....and a college degree...

2. willing to work hard and learn...

if that is the case they will be trained.....and they will fill the job....right now they are being choosy and hence they are only selecting 1% of the candidates.....

recently we advertised for some job.....guess what we got so less response that we interviwed all of the.......were they good....no.....we finally chose not to hire anyone...
(reason....we were looking for junior programmer...with low salary offer)

I hope there will come a day in india....when only 5 people will show up for a interview....and they will think how to train those people so that they can be made useful.......right now they just want cream of the crop....

 

[GreenCardVirus]

i hope you dont get flamed for this blasphemy

i am not so sure about the sub-standard indian college grads...

can you define higher studies???.....do you means Masters??......if so why do you need a masters degree to do some job of a programmer or a accountant???

Ha Ha, you dont really need any degree to be a programmer. How many of us really have a degree in computing? I am a civil engineer.

I am no big fan of IIT's but the grads certanly suceed in life even though they dont stick to their field of study. Standard of the college certainly defines what kind of person become, what kind of analytical skills you have and how maturely you handle a situation.

Over the years I realize more than ever the importance of one getting into a good college. Some of the graduates I have seen from bad colleges are really good for nothing (includes some of my relatives).

Lot of new colleges have sprung up in recent years, most of them are horrible. You might say I am exaggerating, but that is what I saw and experienced.

What I want to summarize is that even though there are lot of people who are available to work, qualitatively there is a shortage of people. If we dont do quality work, it is only going to hurt us in the long run.

 

[tusharvk]

In India some degrees have absolutely no meaning. masters in arts, commerce from some universities are cases in point.

For professional degrees, there is inherent difference between the emphasis of courses. In the US, the emphasis seems to be on application, while in India, it seems to be on learning the fundamentals. This affects the quality of such grads. Hence, perhaps, you see a lot more indians going for ms and phd degrees.

I completely disagree.

Most colleges in India are sub-standard and so are the people coming out of it. Not only that, one cant go for higher studies even if one is in 80th percentile, there are simply no seats available. Not only that, half of them got there in reservations with out any merit.

I get to deal with several of my counterpart on my job. Our company's India director gave us statistics. For 1 job advertized, the get some 200 resumes. They interview about 20 and only 2 get selected and only 1 shows up for real job. I was told that the interview was only 40% technical and rest 60% was behavioral.

I think I read Intel chief or Microsoft chief saying India grads are not up the mark.

 

[where_is_my_gc]

Ha Ha, you dont really need any degree to be a programmer. How many of us really have a degree in computing? I am a civil engineer.

I am no big fan of IIT's but the grads certanly suceed in life even though they dont stick to their field of study. Standard of the college certainly defines what kind of person become, what kind of analytical skills you have and how maturely you handle a situation.

Over the years I realize more than ever the importance of one getting into a good college. Some of the graduates I have seen from bad colleges are really good for nothing (includes some of my relatives).

Lot of new colleges have sprung up in recent years, most of them are horrible. You might say I am exaggerating, but that is what I saw and experienced.

Quality of education in India indeed is going bad. They also talk about creating more IITs and IIMs. So that they get more quality professionals. But they fail to see the picture at granular level i.e. What does it take to create a college and more importantly environment like these premier institutes? It's certainly more than allocating funds and reserving some land.

I also agree that application part is missing in indian education (at least undergraduate level). This is something which IIT faculties are already considering. We may see the corresponding changes in other institutes.

The sad part is in most of the places esp. big metros, education and providing degrees have really become business.