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1
10/19/09 | Report as spam
Don't fall for it!
These 'reports' and 'studies' are attempts to persuade government to increase the H1B visa limits.
Question: Name the 'foreign born' who've significantly advanced our nation. Ever.
Answer: Many of those who do make the list, like, say, Dr. Bose, came and stayed. Others are (supposedly) leaving now for the very reason they came in the first place. You can call it opportunity, but I call it opportunism. They didn't contribute that much to begin with, and, now that the money's getting tight, they're off looking for the next opportunity.
You can't really fault them, I suppose, but we won't really miss them either.
There's a reason Microsoft, GNU, UNIX, IBM, Ford, GM, Boeing, General Electric, Westinghouse, Chrysler, ... all started here.
Moreover, there's a reason such enterprises didn't start anywhere else.
It's time for some long-overdue respect, and for those who came for what they can take to leave it to those who came for what they can add.
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2
10/19/09 | Report as spam
RE: Brain drain: why many of our best and brightest are going home
For 20 years, the domestic workforce has been completely bypassed in search of "the best and the brightest" (ie. "the cheapest and most visa-constrained") foreign tech workers.
With sever unemployment among IT workers, it is time to end the H-1B/L-1 programs and stop the discrimination against American workers.
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3
10/19/09 | Report as spam
RE: Brain drain: why many of our best and brightest are going home
It has been easy for the world in general to leach off of the American economy, technolgy, and way of life. I would agree, its time for some due respect, and stop providing special priveleges to those who aren't part of, and won't contribute to this country's future.
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4
10/19/09 | Report as spam
RE: Brain drain: why many of our best and brightest are going home
Goodness me, Americans are still showing the arragance and ignorance that they are well known for.
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5
10/19/09 | Report as spam
Propaganda for H1B?
Can all these reports really be just H1B propaganda? I have to admit, I find the idea plausible, even too plausible, given the brazen lying I have seen over the years by supporters of H1B and similar programs.
I hope other readers remember the video leaked a few years ago of a lawyer telling his corporate clients to lie about trying to find skilled employees here in order to get their application for H1B positions approved. They really do lie that shamelessly.
Nor is basic honesty the only problem with the widespread use of overseas tech workers. There is a more fundamental problem, one that should concern even the amoral: the low cost of overseas tech workers has given the industry an excuse to do nothing about the industry-wide management failures detailed so brilliantly in "The Mythical Man Month".
That is, when the short-term cost of using technical workers dropped due to cheap imports, it became all too easy for the bean counters to ignore the long term costs of following irresponsibly bad management techniques. But we all pay the long term costs, whether the managers admit it or not. We pay it in terms of increased project delays, wasted efforts, overpriced, poorly designed software (think Windows Vista)... and even in unemployment of highly qualified tech workers in the US.
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6
10/19/09 | Report as spam
Talk to a recruiter to get the pulse
Talk to a recruiter and ask him/her as to how hard it is to find
talent.
I have been personally involved in recruiting a PHP Developer in
Chicago and found it almost impossible to find even reasonably good
talent among locals/H1Bs - obviously a lot of them have went back.
Yes, you do get resumes - tons of them, when you scan the resume, it
feels like you just want to recruit them the next day - talk to them
and you will find that they have almost zero knowledge of what they say
they have been doing or they would have worked on some Mainframe or
other stuff long back and they can pick it up on job. Huh !
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7
10/19/09 | Report as spam
Brain Drain, what a crock of baloney
I manage teams of Indians, Ukrainians, Costa Ricans, Chinese and Filopinos. Only the FILOPINOS are worth the trouble.
This is just another trick to try and get more H1Bs to take away American jobs. "Best and Brightest'... you are stupid if you think you can pass off that crock!
The best and brightest are AMERICANS. Go blow yoru nose and wipe off the scum from kissing the ahole of your George Soros puppet: oBUMa.
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8
10/19/09 | Report as spam
More crock o' crapola from 'Fraudwa'.
Sorry, but 'Fradwa' has been debunked repeatedly as a think-tank
for hire type: See comments at my blog and at the original story:
http://mindtaker.blogspot.com/2009/10/oh-noes-indians-
chinese-are-leaving.html
-Drunken Economist
http://mindtaker.blogspot.com/
http://twitter.com/drunk_economist
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9
10/20/09 | Report as spam
Wow, surprising rants from the paranoid
It seems like everyone who took the authors to task over this
article clearly already have rock solid opinions on this topic. But
if you have lived in the technology field you know just how
dependent we are on foreign born people who have decided to come to
the US.
When a foreign born person starts up a new company in silicon
valley, they don't restrict employment to foreign workers, they
employ 90% US born workers.
Most major inventions since the 1940's have come directly from or
indirectly from immigrants. So the argument here is if those people
didn't come to the US to innovate then somehow an MBA student
working on Wall Street is going to create technological innovation?
Come one, wake up paranoid people. A Brain drain is bad for the US
and if you would objectively look at this issue you would agree. US
born students are getting business degrees, not engineering degrees.
Foreign born students are the ones getting engineering degrees (and
advanced degrees at that). And it won't be long before developing
countries start to get better at supplying those degrees for their
own citizens and then there will be no need to come to the US at
all.
BTW, the brain drain is a fact. If we come to grips with that then
we understand that in response we need to make sure we move more of
our young population into technical fields (math, science,
engineering). Maybe we can all at least agree on that need.
db
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10
10/20/09 | Report as spam
RE: Brain drain: why many of our best and brightest are going home
The authors should know better than to print this Indian
propaganda. This flawed "research" has zero credibility, peer
review or audit. The study?s premise (superiority of Indian
talent) mirrors Aryan race superiority philosophy. Change Aryan
to Indian, Jews to American workers , what do you get ? Nazi
Germany.
Since when are Americans less qualified or less capable than
tech workers in India? Give me a break.. Talent knows NO
borders and the brightest and the best are everywhere. The real
story America needs to know is how the H-1B and L-1
temporary visa programs have obliterated the American Middle
class. The H-1B program facts show greed, deception, and
political corruption at its best. The story starts with Microsoft
and other greedy corporations, convicted felon and Microsoft
lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the India Inc., and the India Caucus
(Hillary Clinton former chair), and corrupt politicians. The
result of this toxic cocktail, a temporary visa program that
allows US corporations to bypass American workers and hire
exclusively offshore. While Americans loose their jobs, homes,
healthcare, and life savings due to the H-1B program, Indian
body shops bring in big $$, H-1B workers with their pregnant
spouses buy jewelry in shops directly across from the
unemployment office, and greedy corporations whine about
not finding talent.
Why can't American companies find American talent? Because
they don't want to. The disgusting part - today this is legal.
Insist your elected officials pass S887 - or vote them out in
November.
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11
10/20/09 | Report as spam
RE: Brain drain: why many of our best and brightest are going home
And about time too - several prominent people have always maintained that these talents who have been basically educated in their respective countries at their great expense have been poached wholesale from contributing to their own economies and development. It is true that America and the west have been runaway technologically advanced places but no one can deny thet at least in part it is so because of the best of the world's talent on tap. Any country must be on the lookout for such talent - no one blames them for it - but when the flow is one way the west only stores trouble for themselves. It is time the west realised that 'Allowing' the up and coming countries to catch up at least is in their own best interests. I believe that all the world's ills (poverty, arms races, disease, corruption, clean water and power supply) will be alleviated, if not cured if the countries were half a sdeveloped as the west is.
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12
10/20/09 | Report as spam
Now we need to get the other end of the spectrum to leave...
Since we can't seem to protect our borders, we need to convince those from the "nothing to lose" crowd to go back home as well.
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13
10/20/09 | Report as spam
RE: Brain drain: why many of our best and brightest are going home
They are going home because they've destroyed all the jobs. CA's economy is a disaster. Silicon Valley, taken over by the "best and brightest" in 1998 is dying. Failing to produce any new innovation or jobs as promised, they are now going home. They've grifted out all the money, collapsed all the companies, sent the money back to their home countries and lo and behold! A deep recession!
Where is the economic boom these allegedly brilliant workers promised us in 1998 when we raised the visa caps?
Wahdhwa is being paid by India's NASSCOM lobby to promote this junk.
Did I mention that Apple hires mostly American workers and Apple is booming?
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14
10/20/09 | Report as spam
RE: Brain drain: why many of our best and brightest are going home
The H-1B program forces qualified Americans to train their replacements before they are laid off from their jobs. There is no "reverse brain" drain whatsoever; temporary foreign worker programs have been investigated by both Congress and the USCIS and have found at least 20 percent of foreign workers to be outright frauds. In the IT field it is common to hear of American resumes being appropriated by foreign candidates over the Internet and hiring schemes in which candidates are placed at firms who have none of the skills needed for the jobs. These job positions have milked millions of dollars in wages from corporations even when the process of discovering the fraud terminates the H-1B worker. The H-1B visa program has the sole purpose of using loopholes to bring in workers for cheap just so that productive Americans be laid off. Have you looked at the unemployment rate lately? Microsoft's Steve Ballmer once claimed that for every H-1B hired there are 4 or 5 Americans who get jobs. This has been proven false many times over; everyone who studies the H-1B program finds that it has created massive unemployment and thrown out of work hundreds of thousands of accomplished and experienced American tech workers.
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15
10/20/09 | Report as spam
RE: Brain drain: why many of our best and brightest are going home
Vivek Wadhwa, an Entreperneur want-to-be turns himself into a ?brain drain? snake oil salesman
Vivek Wadhwa results in two startup failures and millions of loss for the investors. He knows high tech slave trade more than high tech business. Even with hundreds of high tech slaves from overseas under his disposal, he still fails miserably in his second startup stunt at Relativity Technologies and is fired by the board.
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16
10/20/09 | Reported as spam
RE: Brain drain: why many of our best and brightest are going home
Even a "best and brightest" can get a job.
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17
10/20/09 | Report as spam
Message has been deleted.
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18
10/20/09 | Report as spam
RE: Brain drain: why many of our best and brightest are going home
After decades of being "the best and the brightest", I was suddenly "overqualified" thanks to the H1B's ... even though there was virtually no difference in wages. I found my peers were in the same boat. We were tossed overboard in a flash for people who could barely speak English and didn't have domain expertise... because one implanted Indian manager equals a succession of Indian hires.
My eyes were really opened when it became tougher and tougher to find work, and I had to start recruiting to earn a living. I had managers tell me that one H1B would interview, and another would show up for the job. We had to orally test every one of them, because 70% of them lied outright on their resume about their "experience". (We couldn't have them just take a test, b/c it would be passed off to someone who DID know the material.)
Propaganda -- you bet, these remarks are spot on! It's time they ALL went home! Maybe experienced AMERICAN workers will be able to find decent jobs for a change.
I won't be looking for one of those jobs when they start calling me again (actually, they've already started calling and I'm turning down "opportunities"). A few years ago, disgusted, I said "screw Corporate America" and went back to school for Graphic Design. With Art skills in addition to Coding skills, I'm perfectly happy doing web development for Mom & Pop companies, and the money is the same as I was making in the mid-90's.
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19
10/21/09 | Report as spam
Nothing is for free.... No one is doing any favourism ! ! ! !
It may kindly be noted that, if Indians or other International citizens have come here for work, they have come here with the requirements from the companies. If some one comes here from a different country for pursuing Masters Degree or pHd...they are paying a hell lot of cash to schools and are studying here... and its one of the biggest business for US called "education". Each time a student comes from some other country ... he/she does ask the Univ people regarding job opportunities later , only to get aome beautiful answers from the schools. If this has to be stopped.. .schools have stop this business too .. . Schools cannot mislead students by giving false admirations. .. .And its highlighted.. .. by every comapany..here that .." We are Equal Opportunity Company " .. What does that mean . . some comapanies go on and even give a definition saying that .. :any Sex , Caste...etc. .. . and any national origin ... then they got to first decide on it .. . If this is goin to go on . .it is going to hit the Com anies here in a very bad manner. . So talent has to be given opportunity .. .no mattter where they are originating from . .what ever nationality they belong to. . .
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20
11/13/09 | Report as spam
RE: Brain drain: why many of our best and brightest are going home
The H-1B Visa program for foreign IT workers essentially is institutionalized discrimination against American workers. This is because companies request a certain amount of H-1B workers at the beginning of the year - for that year. The local American IT worker is not even given a serious chance. This is discriminatory, and un-American.
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21
11/30/09 | Report as spam
Have to agree with the general sentiment
I'd like to be egalitarian, but the truth is many of the comments (though possibly vitriolic) are basically true. I find many visa workers (and the companies hiring them) are opportunistic, with no real interest in the long-term good of the company or this country. They do indeed displace qualified American workers. More often than not, they have poorer technical skills, less ability to communicate, and lower standards of integrity. I have also noted the element of parochialism, mentioned by someone else - especially among Indians. There are certainly those who demonstrate a commitment to the same ideals we hold and I embrace them as co-workers and would defend them to the end. However, the going-home of the average foreign worker is more likely to be to the benefit of all than a loss, as the author would imply.
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22
12/01/09 | Report as spam
RE: Brain drain: why many of our best and brightest are going home
We have a pretty badly distorted conception of what constitutes the Best and the Brightest and their national origin is not relevant. The Captains of the Financial Industry recently defended the spending of bail-out money, to wine and dine their Best and Brightest because otherwise they might lose them. It is some mess the Best and Brightest got their Industry into and I cannot help but wonder if the Worst and Dumbest could really have outdone them by much. I am a Canadian not a U.S. Citizen so I should sit down and shut up, foreigner that I am. But one of the things that leapt out at me from the "Brain Drain" comments, squares with my experience. I am 22 years retired but in my last ten years of employment I was appalled by the seriously flawed command of the English language displayed by a number of Canadian born employees including some technical school graduates and university graduates up to and including PHDs. Some the latter could not put together three consecutive sentences of cogent English. They were not technically ignorant but when it came to preparing a coherent, chronological, written report of the quarter's research results, they were incompetent. And the quality of English in many of the comments regarding the "Brain Drain" display a similarly poor grasp of cogent English usage. In my experience the worst offenders were not even first generation Canadians. I tended to feel that a few problems with English were to be expected from them and a few more problems from immigrants but not from third generation Canadians, born, bred and educated here. Far too many native born North Americans border on functionally illiteracy, giving rise to concerns about the future of our democracies. An illiterate citizenry is ripe for exploitation by Fascists and extreme religious zealots. The "Brain Drain" is not even in the same class.
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23
12/02/09 | Report as spam
RE: Brain drain: why many of our best and brightest are going home
To canuck31-
No, you should not shut up. You should repeat it often and louder. For you have hit the nail on the head.
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24
12/23/09 | Report as spam
Sigh. Not this again.
Vivek keeps trotting out this copypasta every quarter. It's been
debunked. Repeatedly. Sorry that you guys were the latest to
make chum from chum. Here, read this:
http://mindtaker.blogspot.com/2009/12/vivek-wadhwa-
poisoning-well-for-profit.html
Seriously. The Peace Corps / foreign student return model has
worked for over 100 years. The only 'urgency' comes from Vivek
Wadhwa, acting in the interests of the upper castes of his fellow
countrymen in India, at the expense of the rest of the country -
- as well as ours. --Drunken Economist
