AZ's own Gabrielle Giffords votes to increase foreign work visas

[David Huerta]

> I take issue with some of these governmental decisions.  If we as a country
> have a short coming, work on it and make it better.  Do not roll over and
> play dead!
>
> So far, off shore consulting has not hurt me however if they ever get their
> act  together they could literally kill me.  I cannot compete with $5.00 to
> $12.00/hr.

Offshore consulting has taken a negative hit in its reputation for low
quality in the past recent years, however, and many companies have
scaled back much of their offshore development investments.

>
> I have this picture in my head of an H-1B taking an $80,000/year job at
> $40,000, living in a efficiency apartment, eating rice and beans, and send
> all their money back to India to support 5 families.  While one less
> American is able to provide the living they have worked towards.  And while
> the government gives the same corporations tax breaks.  Who ends up paying
> for all this?  WE DO!
>

A few things I see missing here are:

1) Every H1-B visa student I know that has stayed in the U.S. has an
$80K salary for an $80K job--a recession and currency inflation might
make this irrelevant though.  Maybe this is a stronger pattern in some
sectors more than others, I don't know.  In all honestly, the people I
see settling on lower salaries/wages the most are my old friends born
in Idaho, who work in various IT fields in Idaho.

2) "We pay for this" seems to dismiss tax and domestic spending
revenues accrued from H1-B labor.  I'm pretty sure H1-Bs pay taxes,
and as such, pay into local, state, and federal education funds that
Arizona students seem to mostly take for granted.  In a way, their tax
revenues partially help Americans get an advantage to compete with
their foreign counterparts.  Americans pay for this too, of course,
but an H1-B Visa student, for example, isn't given an entire K-12
education to start off with.

3) Money spent by any immigrant revenue is still by large part spent
within the U.S., which fuels economies at the most local level, so
even though a possibly lower salary and money being sent home might
otherwise shave off more money in native-born pockets, either way, its
still spent on buying American homes, American cars, American
computers, services, food, entertainment.... software... etc.  It
basically seems to even out in the end.  The alternatives I see would
be:

1) Hiring them "over there" (ie outsourcing).  This would mean no
local services would be purchased.

or

2) Forcing employers to spend more on native-born labor, the little
there is in Arizona, keeping salaries and benefits high.  Keep in mind
that labor is a very high cost, and higher costs imposed on American
companies make them less flexible to compete with foreign companies.
In addition to the high per-capita cost of employment, that sort of
forced imposition also has historically triggered a much more cautious
approach to hiring any personnel.  The government-imposed job security
policies of many European countries are an example of this.

...
david [.dh] huerta
devrylinux.org