[ale] OT: H1B

[Andrew Newton]

This sounds like the basis for a good law suit.  Have you talked to a 
lawyer.  I'm sure once you mention 70 people affected, the lawyer will 
start think "class-action" and this could be potentially disasterous for 
the company that did this to you.

-andy

Bob Evans wrote:
> Good post. I personally lost my job to offshoring. 70 other programmers 
> were in the same boat. Intersting though, in order to make the 
> offshoring work, the company needed to have 15% of their staff here, and 
> those folks were H1B visa holders. Once they began rolling out the 
> offshoring, they found that they needed more people here, to work 
> directly with the clients. So in the end, the local presence was more 
> like 40%. Again, these were H1B visa holders.
> 
> Now, the fact that I trained the replacements says that there were 
> qualified US programmers to do the work - I was one of them. So it was 
> all about money. The H1B holders in that project were paid in the low 
> 30's. (This was posted, by law, in our break room. I'm not making up 
> numbers) The US programmers that were replaced made in a range from 45K 
> up to about 100K.
> 
> Since that first wave of 70 layoffs, another 50 people have been let go.
> 
> I'll be frank about it - I didn't know anything about H1B's before I was 
> personally affected. Since then, I've had the time to study the subject 
> in depth. If the economy was booming, and all the IT staff were working, 
> I'd probably have said, "Sure, bring in the H1B holders to fill in the 
> gaps" But in today's economy, I say no.
> 
> Ironic, but I applied for a job in England, more or less on a lark, back 
> in the late 80's. I got a call at 4:30 in the afternoon, (9:30 or 10:30 
> at night London time) from a very irate recruiter who said, in no 
> uncertain terms, that that job was open to Engish citizens only. If this 
> globalization thing is the wave of the future, how come it's one way 
> only? I live in North Carolina, which used to have a thriving textile 
> industry. A large part of that work went overseas a couple years back. 
> So now I, as a consumer, should benefit from that move, by getting 
> cheaper clothes, right? Heck, for what they pay the people making 
> shirts, I should get 'em for 5 or 6 bucks a piece. Unfortunately, that 
> isn't the case.
> 
> I'll  stop rambling now.


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