Framers plight

H1B uproar - A Case study

I have been going through recent news items on H1B. There have been two different articles I have been following for a while including comments made on those articles.
Articles were seems a little biased. One of the article was about how H1 holders are stripped off of their salary and paid pittance. The second article talked about how "Indian companies" are mis-using H1B and Satyam and Infosys are getting thousands of H1 approvals.

People living in the host country get a feeling that their jobs are snatched away becuase of H1 program.

I would like to disagree. The reason being, first of all, industry has been publishing forcast on number of people required by industry with certain skills. These forcasts were used to identify how many graduates will be produced each year with those skills. Once industry find out shortage, they request government to fill up the ramaining positions using H1B workers.

Now people were brought in to the country based on forecast. During slump, the visa program was not modified and there are people still using the visal program to enter the country LEGALLY. Also, earlier it was thought that the work can only be done onshore. Over a peoriod of time, it is proved that the same work can be done remotely (offshore) and that too at much cheaper rates. Now, cheaper here is for the industry. In the offsore country, the work is highest paying job due to exchange rates, inflation in country and many other factors. Probably organizations forgot to take this into consideration. "What percentage of work will be sent offshore?".

To fuel the situation, some organizations that never thought of offhsoring, when lookat the the reduction in expense, they too jumped on the bandwagon and they too started offshoring.

As a result, decline in jobs went upwards exponetially. Influx was not controlled, forecasts were not updated. As a result, I see lot of frustration in host country against H1B worker.

Killing the messenger is nog going to help. The issue here is with the industry and short-sighted managers/executives. Now Tiger has tasted human blood. Most managers when face with the situation where company's profits are going down and executive's bonus is at stake, the first step they take is to outsource thier EDP/IS department.

I have seen that happening so many times that now I have become kind of numb to the feelings of getting laid-off (self or collegue). Managers still get the work done from offshore compnay at lower expense and add these savings as income/profit. When that happens, their pockets start inflating. They have no remorse that their decision has affected thousands of families.

Look at some of the immidiate effects when an employee with 15+ years of service with the company is ladi off, emotional distress, lack of interst, depression etc. This in a long run results in breaking up families because no one in family is able to think straight. At the same time, employee will now going to develop a feeling of making money at any cost. They lose the idea of belonging to an organization and I don't blame them for that.

Today if you look at any company's values, INTEGRITY will be the first one on the list. But, what is integrity? Is it what is defined by the compnay?

I have a feeling that every organization has to have corporate social responsibility defined in such a way that they give preference to locals. The society that has given them space and freedom to do business, should be the first one to reap benefits of the business. Unless people in community are benefited, business can not grow.

H1B workers, if required, they should be controlled in such a way that the "required" skills that are not availble locally, nationally are only brought from outside. That way, you make sure that the nation survives.

I have tried to put my thoughts here. I don't want to be contacted on this issue. Thank you.