Robert M. Gary ) wrote:
: What industry are you referring to? I work in an industry that contains
: a lot of H-1 employees (software, telecommunications). There is no
: difference in saleries.
:
: -Robert
:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1014/p17s01-coop.html
Endangered species: US programmers | csmonitor.com

"Endangered species: US programmers
By David R. Francis

[snip]

Further, the H-1B program, set up in 1990, is flawed, critics charge.
For example, employers are not required to recruit Americans before
resorting to hiring H-1Bs, says Norman Matloff, a computer science
professor at the University of California, Davis.

And the requirement that employers pay H-1Bs a "prevailing wage" is
useless, he adds, because the law is riddled with loopholes. Nor are
even any remaining regulations enforced.

The average wage for an American programmer runs about $60,000, says
John Bauman, who set up the Organization for the Rights of American
Workers. Employers pay H-1Bs an average $53,000..."



http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercu...8566322.htm?1c
Jobs that stay here -- but not for Americans

"Jobs that stay here -- but not for Americans
By Karl Schoenberger

Mercury News

Not all the local jobs disappear when an Indian firm takes a software
project to Bangalore. As many as 30 percent in a typical offshoring
contract stay onshore, located right on the premises of U.S.
technology companies, offshoring experts say.

Yet these jobs aren't available to the local workforce. They are
reserved, almost exclusively, for guest workers brought from India on
H-1B visas by the outsourcing contractors, according to analysts and
industry sources.

Concerns about the impact of the H-1B program, which raised hackles
when it let in legions of foreign tech workers at the peak of the
Internet boom, are back again. Hurting from high unemployment after
the tech bubble burst and spooked by all the election-year buzz about
offshoring, displaced U.S. workers are claiming double jeopardy.

``These jobs never make it to the help-wanted ads or get posted
online,'' said Kim Berry, president of the Programmers Guild, a
Web-based advocacy group that criticizes offshoring and the H-1B
program.

The two issues are inseparable, said Ronil Hira, assistant professor
of public policy at Rochester Institute of Technology..."


--Jerry Leslie
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