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March 21, 2006
I agree with Bill Gates
That's not something you'll hear me say too often about software, but this is basic economics. Not only are we providing incentives for companies to outsource jobs, we're preventing them from hiring people who want to work here and contribute to the American economy.
So great is the demand for such skills in the burgeoning high-tech world that in August 2005 the last of the visas available for fiscal 2006 were issued. That means a 14-month shutdown of the program, until October of this year. "It's kind of ironic," Gates told me, "to have somebody graduate from Stanford Computer Science Department and there's not enough H-1B visas, so they have to go back to India. . . . And I have people who have been hired who are just sitting on the border waiting."The draft bill that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter has been preparing for floor consideration would expand the annual H-1B limit from 65,000 to 115,000. By excluding dependents (who now are counted against the cap) from the total, it might mean the entry of as many as 300,000 people a year -- one-tenth of 1 percent of the U.S. population.
As Gates said, these are highly paid, highly qualified individuals. Salaries for these jobs at Microsoft start at about $100,000 a year. Their counterparts can be hired more cheaply in China or India, he said, but Microsoft does 85 percent of its research and development work in the United States because it wants its computer scientists interacting directly with its program managers and its marketing people on its own campus.
Gates said he has a hard time understanding the logic of those who decry the outsourcing of American jobs yet are reluctant to facilitate bringing the high-skill people who are catalysts for economic growth to this country. "People just shake their heads at what kind of a central planning system would say having 65,000 smart people come in, that's okay, but 70,000 smart people, no."
Posted by Mike at March 21, 2006 08:03 PM
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