The H1-B program is such a cluster fuck visited on the American worker that cluster fuck is not a strong enough term. I’m in IT and I have been watching this disaster for years.
I was contracting at large financial firm. I begin noticing a large number of young Indians coming in as contract workers. Contracting is a very common method in IT. Companies like because they can staff up and staff down as needed. I used to like because the companies generally compensated well for the insecurity of a contracting positions, and I did not mind moving around to different jobs. To get back to my position at the financial firm. When I saw all the Indians coming in I knew my days were numbered, and they were. They found a pretense to terminate my contract nine months early. It was my second contract at this firm, and they had actually given me more money to come back for a second contract. Additionally, they had given me an 18 month contract when normal they did not go over a year. They seemed to like my work. My consulting firm later told me that they were bringing in the Indians at $25/hour less than I was receiving. I can promise you I was not getting rich. This was at a time long past the glory days of contracting.
This particular consulting firm ended up going out of business as they could not compete with the cheap off-shore labor either. And this was one of the older and bigger consulting companies. Now days, when a consulting company calls you about a contract if you are talking to an American it is a miracle. If the consulting company is not Indian it is even more of a miracle. You have to give the Indians credit. Many of the Indian companies have used the minority preferences given by our laws to gain an advantage. Essentially this has allowed Indian firms to corner this market in preference to American firms.
Who do I blame? I do not blame individual Indians, but I do blame Congress and our President who are in cahoots with our corporations who only care about profit and cheap, cheap labor. It is something I have ranted about for years. Congress briefly played lip service to all the complaints, but I do believe the problem is even worse than it was before.
To read about one of these horror stories, go to This IT worker had to train an H-1B replacement at Computerworld.com
Just in case you do not know what a H1-B Visa — click the link for the Wikepedia article on same.
