MESSAGE
| DATE | 2005-05-11 |
| FROM | From: "Steve Milo"
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| SUBJECT | Re: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] Opposing Views: The Debate Over The H-1B Visa Program
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>From personal experience I can say that letting too many foreign students saturate the IT sector is detrimental to not only the economy, but also the evolution of the IT sector.
>From first hand experience I can tell you students who do not have a strong grasp of the english langauge are incapable of grasping any concept outside of a text book. Foriegn students are not necessarily smarter or more capable.
The reality is that American students do not want to be around students who can not form a complete thought and verbalize it.
Nobody wants to be in a classroom full of blabbering idiots, chances are a coherent person may become one of those blabbering idiots.
Someone who clearly understands how to speak english intelligently can not have an intelligent debate or conversation with another person who has not made the effort to reach across the divide. This is a cruel fact, but a vital fact which is at the core of what was the true driving force in the American economy. Thrust someone who is incapable, into a sink or swim situation and very often their self-esteem will be damaged sufficiently that they will force themselves to improve upon themselves.
American students are not stupid at all, they are actually very savvy and realize that they have an upper hand. So they take their critical thinking skills where they feel they will be appreciated more.
If one wants to improve on the American economy, give the opportunity (force is more like it) the students to work part-time (35-40 hours a week) in the sector they are studying in. This will open up the eyes of the average undergraduate (21-25 year old) of the real world. They will learn to manage their time better and appreciate their weekends more. I will wager that recreational drug use and the drunk driving fatalities will drop exponentially. In less than a decade the American workforce will be a force to be reckoned with.
The American economy will not suffer if we have 15-20k less 'software programmer/anaylst' who specializes in .net, java, msdn, or an admin who is a ms 2k or nt specialist. We have a fully qualifed and very experienced domestic workforce. In fact I think American society will benefit if we hire more 'older' workers and allow students and younger people to work with one another.
There will either be friction between the age groups or comradery.
But, either one will give the managing employees a chance to utilize their critical thinking skills and talent.
Permitting more foreign H1B visa students is a dangerous track that the federal government is taking. The fed is permitting itself to forced by proprietary software makers to 'wait a generation out' by not hiring fully qualified older domestic IT workers.
What software companies are doing is beneficial only to them, the software industry has nowhere near the overhead as say the automobile industry. If one wants see a sector suffering it is the US auto industry, in there one will find something to truly worry about.
Both the H1B visa and sending the work offshore damages the US economy. The companies that source overseas things like batch files or overnight updates or other system maintance programs can instead source them to states in the southwest.
There is a saturation of complacency in corporate America, from this stems compromise and a twisted sense of responsibility follows closely behind. If corporations were truly afraid of the impact a poor economy can have on their bottom line, they would turn their attention to giving an American worker a job.
Steve M
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