The H-1B Battle: The war within
Owners and managers of all types of companies will say in secret that they prefer employees who are recent immigrants or foreign nationals over natural born American citizens. The following are anecdotes from interviews with some local businessmen and women in South Florida.
The owner of a construction company says that he pays a team of Mexican-American subcontractor who employs recent legal immigrants more than his own American workers because their work is consistently impeccable. When he hires American workers, regardless of how much he pays them, they may show up or they might not on any given day. Their work may be poor or excellent depending on their mood. One outstanding American worker demanded twice the normal salary and worked well for two weeks, then disappeared with over $500 worth of materials, never to be heard from again. Now that housing demand has lowered, he has a painful decision to make. He can either keep the Mexican-American subcontractors and stay in business or keep his own crew of American workers and risk losing his business entirely.
The owner of an optometrist chain confided that he calls the Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) to find new immigrants because they will work better than the average American. One day a store manager who makes a considerably large salary came to him and pointed to a bead of sweat on her face and said, "See this - I have to go home". The air conditioning was not working properly that day and the temperature was slightly warmer than average.
An owner of a large chiropractic clinic said that he has paid his office workers very well including year-end bonuses, and they are happy to work for him. He is a very nice guy and makes an effort to treat people very well. Last year he gave some of them a business credit card to pay for office supplies. Then he discovered that they have been using the credit cards as a personal line of credit.
One worker actually asked him to increase the credit limit because she is going to New York on vacation. He calculated that, on a slow month, some of them were making a larger income than he was making. Now, he too is looking for new immigrant employees. Of course, he canceled the credit cards and now must recover thousands of dollars of debt.
An owner of a chain of boutiques said that on four separate occasions his American employees brought their miniature dogs to work. When asked why they brought their dogs to work, they replied that they had no other place to bring them. He also complained that he was not sure if they would show up to work on any given day. Afterwards, he began hiring new immigrants and had no problems with them.
In engineering, teams of American contract engineers are often pitted against teams of Indian outsource engineers. Periodically they would have meetings with all the engineers and display progress charts on a screen. An engineering manager once pointed to the charts and asked why do the Indian engineers consistently outperform the American engineers doing the same work.
Each one of these employers said that they would prefer to hire Americans, but it is just bad business. They said that American workers are better workers when they are in the mood, but most have a sense of entitlement to things like smoking breaks and conducting personal business on company time.
It is easy to see why American companies prefer H-1B engineers over American engineers. They cost less. They work harder. They do not complain or ask for anything.
It can be argued that American companies have lost their civic responsibility because CEOs will heartlessly lay off workers while retaining their 8-figure salaries and bonuses. It can be argued that if corporations have no loyalty to their employees, why should any worker have enthusiasm for their employer? It can be argued that corporations are not making an effort to recruit engineers in other states or to train engineers in new skills, instead they prefer to pay lobbyists to influence congress to increase the H-1B cap. It can be argued that it is unconstitutional to give American jobs to foreign nationals. It can be argued that American corporations wield too much influence over congress and voters wield too little.
But it can also be argued that American workers have grown a sense of entitlement and are beginning to lose their work ethic.
Travel through China and you will see so many people working very hard. They make very little money but they work with extreme enthusiasm. Obviously when people grow up poor and are given a chance to build a better life, they will work harder, and when people grow up spoiled they will have a sense of entitlement and a poor work ethic.
But what happened to the American middle-class work ethic? Are these isolated experiences or are we witnessing the gradual fall of the American empire? We can blame the media for creating role-models such as Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, or we can blame ourselves and endeavor to work harder.
These are just a few stories that may not accurately reflect most American workers, but may represent a continuing perception of American workers vs. immigrant workers. Americans have historically worked harder and better than the rest of the world. It seems only fair to consider what these business people are saying to me about this issue, in response to my recent blogs about protecting American jobs.
The 2008 H-1B battle will begin soon. Engineers should get politically active in this election cycle. American engineers should use their internet skills to campaign against those who are working against them and campaign in favor of those who are working for them. American voters need to wrestle back control of their own government, but maybe first we all need to pause and look within.
Stay tuned to Computerworld for detailed political coverage of the H-1B and other engineering-related issues.
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