Tech Worker Shortage Doesn't Really Exist

[ChriswUfGator]

"There's no evidence of any way, shape, or form that there's a shortage in the conventional sense," says Hal Salzman, a professor of planning and public policy at Rutgers University. "They may not be able to find them at the price they want. But I'm not sure that qualifies as a shortage, any more than my not being able to find a half-priced TV."

Wtf does he know? He just teaches this stuff at Rutgers. We all know Fox News has the real answers.

[spuwho]

Per Computerworld:

Southern California Edison tech layoffs 'deeply disturbing'

Information technology workers at Southern California Edison (SCE) are being laid off and replaced by workers from India. Some employees are training their H-1B visa holding replacements, and many have already lost their jobs.

The employees are upset and say they can't understand how H-1B guest workers can be used to replace them.

The IT organization's "transition effort" is expected to result in about 400 layoffs, with "another 100 or so employees leaving voluntarily," SCE said in a statement. The "transition," which began in August, will be completed by the end of March, the company said.

"They are bringing in people with a couple of years' experience to replace us and then we have to train them," said one longtime IT worker. "It's demoralizing and in a way I kind of felt betrayed by the company."

SCE, Southern California's largest utility, has confirmed the layoffs and the hiring of Infosys, based in Bangalore, and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in Mumbai. They are two of the largest users of H-1B visas.

The utility has a large IT department. In 2012, before any layoffs, it had about 1,800 employees, plus an additional 1,500 contract workers.

Computerworld interviewed, separately, four affected SCE IT employees. They agreed to talk on the condition that their names not be used.

The IT employees at SCE are "beyond furious," said a second IT worker.

The H-1B program "was supposed to be for projects and jobs that American workers could not fill," this worker said. "But we're doing our job. It's not like they are bringing in these guys for new positions that nobody can fill.

"Not one of these jobs being filled by India was a job that an Edison employee wasn't already performing," he said.

SCE said the transition to Infosys and Tata "will lead to enhancements that deliver faster and more efficient tools and applications for services that customers rely on. Through outsourcing, SCE's information technology organization will adopt a proven business strategy commonly and successfully used by top U.S. companies that SCE benchmarks against."

The employees say that some of SCE's U.S. workers have been training their replacements, either in person in SCE's IT offices or over Web sessions with workers in India. The IT workers say the Indian tech workers do not have the skill levels of the people they are replacing.

The SCE outsourcing "is one more case, in a long line of them, of injustice where American workers are being replaced by H-1Bs," said Ron Hira, a public policy professor at Howard University, and a researcher on offshore outsourcing. "Adding to the injustice, American workers are being forced to do 'knowledge transfer,' an ugly euphemism for being forced to train their foreign replacements. Americans should be outraged that most of our politicians have sat idly by while outsourcing firms have hijacked the guest worker programs."

"The majority of the H-1B program is now being used to replace Americans and facilitate the offshoring of high wage jobs," Hira said.

SCE said Infosys and Tata were selected through a competitive process that began "with eight potential vendors, some of them United States-based.

"The decision made to contract with Infosys and TCS was made following vendor site visits, some in India, and in-depth reviews of prospective vendors' operations," the utility said.

SCE employees said that since August, when the layoffs began, the composition of the IT workplace began to change. "I see a lot of Indian people walking the halls, and less Americans," said a third IT worker interviewed.

Employee observations of an increasing number of foreign workers in their workplace is backed up by U.S. Labor Department filings. Employers have to file wage data of foreign workers and their workplace location with federal authorities in a form called a Labor Condition Application (LCA). In Irwindale, California, where SCE runs a major part of its IT operations, the two offshore companies had as many as 180 LCAs, and in a random check of these applications, every address matched an SCE location.

Displaced IT workers have long protested and complained about the use of H-1B workers, but they are overshadowed by large tech companies that lead H-1B lobbying efforts in Washington. IT workers are also effectively silenced through severance agreements that include non-disparagement clauses and confidentiality provisions, as well as fears that public complaining may hurt re-employment prospects.

Replacing U.S. workers with H-1B workers violates the spirit if not the letter of the law. Hira pointed out that as a part of the application process to obtain H-1B approval from the Labor Department, an employer is required to attest to the following: "Working Conditions: The employer attests that H-1B, H-1B1 or E-3 foreign workers in the named occupation will not adversely affect the working conditions of workers similarly employed." This statement is in Form 9035CP of the LCA.

Further, Hira noted that the Labor Department states, "The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) requires that the hiring of a foreign worker will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of U.S. workers comparably employed.

"The SCE case is clearly one where the hiring of the H-1B is adversely affecting the wages and working conditions of American workers," Hira said. "There isn't a clearer cut case of adverse impacts - the American worker is losing his job to an H-1B." Hira believes that the U.S. Secretary of Labor has the authority to investigate these cases.

The use of H-1B workers has other implications as well. They are mostly young, under 35 years of age, according to government data, and the SCE workers interviewed said many older workers were being laid off. H-1B workers are also overwhelmingly male. The IEEE has estimated that as many as 85% are males.

Although H-1B workers have to be paid prevailing wages, a data analysis of wages that Hira conducted found that H-1B workers cost employers less. The national median wage for an Infosys worker over a recent three-year period was $60,000 per year and for Tata it was $64,900, he said.  These are figures that are lower than what appear in salary surveys, including Computerworld's annual survey. H-1B workers employed by offshore outsourcing companies are less likely to become permanent residents. Infosys sponsored only 2% of its workers for permanent U.S. residency over a three-year period and Tata, none, he said.

Northeast Utilities in Connecticut last year made a similar decision to SCE's and brought in foreign contractors on visas. More than 200 U.S. IT workers lost their jobs.

Some of the SCE employees say the outsourcing move is linked to a 2012 report that found fault with the IT management culture. The report, by a consulting firm's incident management team, followed a December 2011 shooting, where an employee fatally shot two IT managers and wounded two other workers before taking his own life. The gunman worked in the IT department.

The consultants interviewed IT workers who told them that some managers were "autocratic, authoritarian and draconian in their approach." Full-time employees complained of working excessive hours, including weekends and holidays. The report said that "these difficult and exhausting conditions are reportedly having adverse consequences on employees health, including increased stress and irritability."

Prior to the outsourcing agreements, the SCE employees said there were a series of layoffs, including managers.

SCE said it is helping affected employees with severance, and other benefits, including "job fairs and other possible opportunities with other organizations within SCE."

"SCE does not take this action lightly and it is assisting employees through this difficult period," the utility said.

But the third employee interviewed said it did not appear that the company was interested in keeping any of the IT workers targeted for layoffs, and they weren't being offered the chance to apply for other jobs. "They just want to get rid of us and clean house," said this IT worker, who now worries about keeping her home.

[spuwho]

Per NetworkWorld:

Behind the White House's claim of 545,000 unfilled IT jobs

Earlier this week, the White House announced a plan to use $100 million in H-1B fees to help train people for technology jobs. To make its case for this new program, it said there were 545,000 "unfilled jobs" in information technology.

This claim of more than half-million available IT jobs needs a lot of explanation.

It was based on data from one source that doesn't account for normal churn in the labor market, meaning that these jobs do not represent an explosion in new job demand.



The White House data point doesn't tell you how many of these jobs are for contract or contingent workers.

This unfilled-jobs data also doesn't explain a decline in starting salaries for computer science bachelor degree graduates, reported by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE).

In a footnote, the White House cited two sources for its data, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and labor analytics firm Burning Glass Technologies, which analyzes help-wanted ads.

In creating its data, the White House used BLS data showing 5 million job openings overall in the U.S. But, a BLS spokeswoman said, it doesn't have a separate breakout for IT occupations.

This means that the administration's 545,000 unfilled IT jobs figure is based on the Burning Glass analysis. It arrived at this by counting the number of jobs over a 90-day period leading up to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address on Jan. 20, according to Dan Restuccia, chief analytics officer at Burning Glass.

Estimates on the size of the IT labor force can vary depending on which occupational groups are counted. Burning Glass puts it at about 3.5 million, and uses Occupational Information Network (O*NET), a computer and mathematical occupations category.

The analytics firms pulls job postings from about 50,000 sites, gathers occupations, industries, specific skills, certifications, degrees, salary if available and other data and then runs it through a deduplication process that sets aside about 80% of the job postings and keeps the unique ones, said Restuccia.

The White House number doesn't identify which job postings are the result of churn, or due to people within the workforce who are moving to other jobs or new demand from expanded hiring.

But what each job posting represents for a job seeker is "a chance to go get a job," said Restuccia. He said the point of the White House's use of this data was "to highlight the importance of IT jobs across the market."

Burning Glass's approach draws concerns from Hal Salzman, a professor of planning and public policy at Rutgers University, who studies the science and engineering workforce. "They claim they deduplicate, but they don't publish their methodology; there is no external verification," he said.

Salzman believes the deduplication can be a challenge with job ads. In Salzman's own research, he has run across jobs that are posted in multiple cities that appear as if they are specific to each of those cities. The recruiters are doing this to keep prospects from automatically rejecting the job because of location, he said.

Restuccia believes their data is getting independent verification from its use. He said the White House's Council of Economic Advisors vetted its data before using it, and groups such as the Brookings Institution have used it their data to discover, in a report, that job openings for STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) jobs take longer to fill than do openings in other fields.

Burning Glass has been in business since 1999, and its customers will use its data in many ways, including examining specific hiring trends, recruiting, what skills are hard to fill and competitive intelligence. Salzman says the most recent BLS data shows about 120,000 new hires in computer occupations, representing people being replaced due to retirement, for instance, as well as expansion.

Although the White House doesn't raise the issue of temporary H-1B workers in its training push, the use of the half-million plus job openings in its announcement creates a data point for supporters of raising the H-1B cap. But Salzman argues -- something he did along with other researchers in an Economic Policy Institute paper -- that the U.S. has a sufficient supply of STEM workers, and that the demand for guest workers isn't in large part due to unmet demand but instead meant to replace the existing supply or existing workforce.

Wage trends are also indicator of demand, and last April NACE reported that that the mean starting salary for computer science bachelor's degree graduates in 2014 was $67,300. The organization recently predicted that this year's starting salary will average $61,287, a 9% drop, wrote Norm Matloff, a professor of computer science at the University of California-Davis who has long disputed the idea that there's a technical talent shortage.

NACE has "shown in the past few years that computer science graduate salaries have basically been flat — up 2% one year, down 3% the next," wrote Matloff on his blog. "But the current figures show the biggest one-year change I can ever recall seeing -- and it is downward," he said.

[mbwright]

With the behavior of SCE, which unfortunately is not unique, why would US person want to enter into the IT industry?  Let's get your IT degree, only to not find a job, or have it subcontracted out.  If for the same dollar amount, you can get 20-30 more workers, you might get more done quicker.  The biggest issue I see is quality.  If it takes a foreign individual longer to do stuff, you have lost your savings.  I have yet to see offshore workers do the same quality, and speed of work done here.

[spuwho]

And the beat goes on......

Per Computerworld:

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2915904/it-outsourcing/fury-rises-at-disney-over-use-of-foreign-workers.html

Fury rises at Disney over use of foreign workers

A restructuring and H-1B use affect the Magic Kingdom's IT operations

At the end of October, IT employees at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts were called, one-by-one, into conference rooms to receive notice of their layoffs. Multiple conference rooms had been set aside for this purpose, and in each room an executive read from a script informing the worker that their last day would be Jan. 30, 2015.

Some workers left the rooms crying; others appeared shocked. This went on all day. As each employee received a call to go to a conference room, others in the office looked up sometimes with pained expressions. One IT worker recalls a co-worker mouthing "no" as he walked by on the way to a conference room.

What follows is a story of competing narratives about the restructuring of Disney's global IT operations of its parks and resorts division. But the focus is on the role of H-1B workers. Use of visa workers in a layoff is a public policy issue, particularly for Disney.

Disney CEO Bob Iger is one of eight co-chairs of the Partnership for a New American Economy, a leading group advocating for an increase in the H-1B visa cap. Last Friday, this partnership was a sponsor of an H-1B briefing at the U.S. Capitol for congressional staffers. The briefing was closed to the press.

One of the briefing documents handed out at the congressional forum made this claim: "H-1B workers complement - instead of displace - U.S. Workers." It explains that as employers use foreign workers to fill "more technical and low-level jobs, firms are able to expand" and allow U.S. workers "to assume managerial and leadership positions."

The document was obtained by Norman Matloff, a computer science professor at the University of California at Davis and a longtime critic of the H-1B program. He posted it on his blog.

Disney says its restructuring wasn't about displacing workers, but was intended to shift more IT resources to projects involving innovation. That involves hiring many new people to fill new roles. Prior to the reorganization, 28% of Disney's IT staff were in roles focused on new capabilities; after this reorganization, that figure was 65%, a source at Disney said.

"We have restructured our global technology organization to significantly increase our cast member focus on future innovation and new capabilities, and are continuing to work with leading technical firms to maintain our existing systems as needed," Jacquee Wahler, a Walt Disney World spokesperson, said in a statement.

Disney officials did not want to comment about the situation beyond that statement.

From the perspective of five laid-off Disney IT workers, all of whom agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity, Disney cut well-paid and longtime staff members, some who had been previously singled out for excellence, as it shifted work to contractors. These contractors used foreign labor, mostly from India. The laid-off workers believe the primary motivation behind Disney's action was cost-cutting.

"Some of these folks were literally flown in the day before to take over the exact same job I was doing," said one of the IT workers who lost his job. He trained his replacement and is angry over the fact he had to train someone from India "on site, in our country."

Disney officials promised new job opportunities as a result of the restructuring, and employees marked for termination were encouraged to apply for those positions. But  the workers interviewed said they knew of few co-workers who had landed one of the new jobs.

Employees said the original number of workers laid off back in October was more than several hundred. But the Disney source put that number lower, saying approximately 135 IT workers lost their jobs.

Disney has long used contractors at its IT operations in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., at a building called "Team Disney." Workers on visas were likely in use well before the restructuring. But in the period after the October layoff notifications, IT workers said they observed a marked increase in people they believe were new to the U.S.

It's difficult to determine how many H-1B workers, L-1 visa workers or contractor workers generally, were at this Disney site. Only a couple of workers asked the contractors where they lived or if they were on a visa. It was an awkward conversation and generally avoided. But one observation all of the workers recounted was the widespread use of Hindi.

Several of these workers, in interviews, said they didn't want to appear as xenophobic, but couldn't help but to observe, as one did, that "there were times when I didn't hear English spoken" in the hallways. As the layoff date neared, "I really felt like a foreigner in that building," the worker said.

In the Team Disney office, two of the contractors, HCL and Cognizant, had, in total, about 65 Labor Conditional Applications on file in the past year, according to records by MyVisaJobs.com for just that site. But there were other contractors working at Disney, as well, and it's unknown whether temporary workers on L-1 visas were used.

Disney Parks and Resort CIO Tilak Mandadi, in a leaked memo shared Nov. 10 to the IT staff, described the planned transition, told about the posting of new roles and explained the goal to deliver new capability. Disney's culture is to refer to employees as cast members.

The CIO wrote in part: "To enable a majority of our team to shift focus to new capabilities, we have executed five new managed services agreements to support testing services and application maintenance. Last week, we began working with both our internal subject matter experts and the suppliers to start transition planning for these agreements. We expect knowledge transfer to start later this month and last through January. Those Cast Members who are involved will be contacted in the next several weeks."

One of the laid off workers believed there were other ways for Disney to achieve its goals.

"There is no need to have any type of foreigners, boots on the ground, augmenting any type of perceived technological gap," said one worker. "We don't have one, first off."

Workers can be trained, because "once you are in the system and you are a learner, you are a learner for life in IT. You are going to constantly learn."

Kim Berry, president of the Programmer's Guild, said that "Congress should protect American workers by mandating that positions can only be filled by H-1B workers when no qualified American - at any wage - can be found to fill the position."

The use of H-1B workers to displace U.S. workers is getting more attention in Congress. In response to Southern California Edison's use of foreign labor, 10 U.S. senators recently asked three federal agencies to investigate H-1B use. But one agency, the U.S. Department of Labor, wrote back last week and told the lawmakers  that large H-1B using firms "are not prohibited from displacing U.S. workers" as long as they meet certain conditions, such as paying each H-1B worker at least $60,000 a year.

[spuwho]

Per Computerworld:

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2926837/it-careers/it-workers-win-key-ruling-against-visa-using-firm.html

IT workers win key ruling against visa-using firm

U.S. judge rejects dismissal of Infosys discrimination lawsuit

A discrimination lawsuit alleging that Infosys favored "South Asian" workers over all others will not be dismissed, a federal judge has ruled.

Infosys had asked for a dismissal of the case brought by four IT workers. U.S. District Court Judge Pamela Pepper granted some of what Infosys was seeking -- but she did not rule against the central claim of discrimination on the basis of race, in a decision released this month.

This lawsuit was filed by IT workers identified as "Caucasians of American national origin," who allege that they were discriminated against because "they are not of the South Asian race or Indian, Bangladeshi or Nepalese national origin."

In her 18-page decision, Pepper wrote, in part, "that the plaintiffs' allegations are sufficient to state claims that the defendants intentionally discriminated against them because of the plaintiffs' race, and the complaint is clear that the plaintiffs regard their race as distinct from the 'South Asian race' that the defendants allegedly favor."

The Infosys lawsuit, which was filed in Wisconsin federal court in August 2013, is part of a two-pronged legal attack on the IT offshore industry. The legal team for the IT workers is also involved in a similar case against Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), alleging that this company also favored "South Asians" in hiring and promotion.

Infosys and TCS, both based in India, are two of the top users of H-1B visa workers, and these lawsuits have potential of shedding light on their use of the visa workers. The Infosys lawsuit has already revealed federal data that is otherwise kept confidential.

The plaintiffs are using government U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) workplace demographic data that is rarely made public in the absence of a court order.

This federal EEOC data required Infosys to report the demographic make-up of any location at which it employs at least 50 people, according to the lawsuit. In 2012, there were 59 worksites that met that criteria, and in 21 of those sites Infosys reported that 100% of its employees are Asian. For 53 of the 59 sites, 94.5% of the employees were Asian, the lawsuit stated.

One of the plaintiffs, Layla Bolten, claims she was harassed because she was not Indian, was denied promotions and was excluded from work conversations by Hindi-speaking supervisors. Bolten was working on a nearly $50 million government project won by Infosys for the District of Columbia.

The Infosys and Tata lawsuits are seeking class action status.

The Infosys plaintiffs' attorneys include Michael Brown of DVG Law Partner, and Robert Klinck and Daniel Kotchen of Kotchen & Low. One of the attorneys reached declined to comment for this story.

Infosys was contacted about the court ruling, but the firm typically does not comment on pending litigation.

[finehoe]

Pink Slips at Disney. But First, Training Foreign Replacements.

ORLANDO, Fla. — The employees who kept the data systems humming in the vast Walt Disney fantasy fief did not suspect trouble when they were suddenly summoned to meetings with their boss.

While families rode the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and searched for Nemo on clamobiles in the theme parks, these workers monitored computers in industrial buildings nearby, making sure millions of Walt Disney World ticket sales, store purchases and hotel reservations went through without a hitch. Some were performing so well that they thought they had been called in for bonuses.

Instead, about 250 Disney employees were told in late October that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Over the next three months, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost.

www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff-at-disney-train-foreign-replacements.html

[Dog Walker]

Read that article in NYT this morning and my wife thought I was having a stroke!  Completely unforgivable!!  Absolute misuse of the visa program and the government should immediately revoke the visas of the workers that Disney brought in.  Serve Disney right if all of their point-of-sale and ticket units quit working.

Her sister, a graphics artist, had the same thing happen to her several years ago.  She designed all of the packaging and advertising for a local import firm that brings in cheap goods to local grocery and variety stores.  They had her train her replacement in China then fired her.

[mbwright]

If it was only so simple.  With good communication, all of the work can just be sent off shore, and not buy workers on visas, but workers over seas, working for the very same countries.  It is all about profit. The USA workers lose.

[fsquid]

Pink Slips at Disney. But First, Training Foreign Replacements.

ORLANDO, Fla. — The employees who kept the data systems humming in the vast Walt Disney fantasy fief did not suspect trouble when they were suddenly summoned to meetings with their boss.

While families rode the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and searched for Nemo on clamobiles in the theme parks, these workers monitored computers in industrial buildings nearby, making sure millions of Walt Disney World ticket sales, store purchases and hotel reservations went through without a hitch. Some were performing so well that they thought they had been called in for bonuses.

Instead, about 250 Disney employees were told in late October that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Over the next three months, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost.

www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff-at-disney-train-foreign-replacements.html

just think of it as undocumented latinos but with college degrees.

[spuwho]

In the legal case raised by displaced IT workers, they are finding that diversity is lacking.

Per Computerworld:

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2956584/it-outsourcing/with-h-1b-visa-diversity-doesnt-apply.html

With H-1B visa, diversity doesn't apply

In computer occupations, India dominates H-1B visa use.

Apple says workforce diversity "inspires creativity and innovation," but one of Apple's major contractors, Infosys, is far from diverse.

In 2013, Infosys, an India-based provider of IT services, had 509 workers assigned to Apple sites in Cupertino, Calif. Of that number, 499 -- or 98% -- are listed as Asian, with the remaining 10 identified as either white or black, according to government records.

Apple isn't the only company where a large majority of Infosys workers are Asian. Of 427 people employed by Infosys at insurance giant Aetna's Hartford, Conn., offices, 418 were identified as Asian in a court filing.

In the District of Columbia, where Infosys has developed a government-funded healthcare platform, 63 of 71 Infosys workers are Asian. And there are many other major employers that use Infosys with similarly large percentages of Asian workers, according to recently filed court documents in a Wisconsin federal lawsuit brought by four IT workers alleging discrimination.

This lopsided representation of Asian people among the workforces of IT services providers is not limited to Infosys. And it is a consequence of the H-1B visa program, which the offshore IT services industry uses to procure most of its labor.

Nearly 86% of the H-1B visas issued by the U.S. government for workers in computer occupations are for people from India, according to a Computerworld analysis of government data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

IT services providers "apparently cannot get enough Indian programmers, which has little to do with a shortage of competent natives for these types of jobs, but a lot to do with the industry's business model," said Lindsay Lowell, director of policy studies at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of International Migration.

Offshore companies that provide IT services "prefer young H-1B programmers because the visa offers control over this contracted short-term workforce, it permits them to pay less than they would for experienced natives and they cultivate programmers who can better serve their clients after returning home to India," said Lowell.

Many of these H-1B visa holders will work for an alternate universe of companies that primarily hire IT professionals from India. In many instances, these workers may be used to replace people such as Brian Buchanan, a former senior IT staffer at Southern California Edison (SCE).

Buchanan last month joined a lawsuit filed earlier against Tata Consultancy Services in federal court, accusing the company of discrimination. The claims in the lawsuit, which was filed by the same legal team involved in the Infosys case in Wisconsin, are similar to charges Infosys is now fighting.

Buchanan was laid off earlier this year from SCE and had to train his replacements from Tata, who were from India on a visa, according to the lawsuit. Tata has called the lawsuit "baseless," and it reiterated that argument following the filing of last month's amended complaint. Infosys has previously denied the allegations as well.

Prior to his layoff, Buchanan attended a job fair organized by SCE for its soon-to-be terminated employees.

At the Tata booth, which was staffed with "South Asians," Buchanan spoke with a Tata regional manager, who told him that the company was hiring for jobs at SCE and elsewhere. But the Tata manager "was dismissive" of Buchanan's inquiries, the lawsuit alleges. In contrast, Buchanan "observed that the Tata employees spent considerably more time speaking with South Asian applicants and spoke to them in Hindi about available positions."

The lawsuit against Tata alleges that the firm staffed SCE "with an almost 100% South Asian workforce." It claims that about 95% of Tata's overall U.S. workforce is made up of South Asians.

A number of technology companies, including Apple, have begun disclosing the workforce diversity data they file with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). This information usually stays confidential, unless a company voluntarily discloses it or it is released as part of a court case, which is what happened in the Infosys case.

These court cases have the potential to shed more light on the offshore outsourcing industry. They could also put Infosys and Tata, two of the top users of H-1B visas, in the position of having to defend their business models. This defense has begun.

George Stohner, an attorney representing Infosys in the Wisconsin case, told the judge that "there's nothing that requires a U.S. employer doing business in the United States to manufacture in the United States. You can employ elsewhere."

"Nor is there ... any requirement," said Stohner, "for a foreign company doing business in the United States to employ workers in the United States." Infosys is required only to follow immigration laws, he said, according to a court transcript.

There were around 76,000 H-1B visas issued to people in computer occupations in 2014. That figure includes those applying for new employment, whether or not they fall under the overall H-1B cap (some areas, such as research, are exempt).

After India, which garners the top share of visas for computer jobs by an overwhelming margin, China is in second place -- just over 5% of H-1B visas for computer jobs go to Chinese people. No other nation rises above 1%, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services H-1B data for the 2014 federal fiscal year.

That's considerably different from the breakdown in other fields, such as engineering, where workers from India received fewer than half of the H-1B visas for new employment and China's share was almost four times the size of its share of the visas for computer jobs.

India is able to flourish in the IT services business because it has some advantages over countries like China, which was at one time seen as a potential IT services rival to the U.S.

Indian IT services providers "have proven skill sets in IT services, and English proficiency plays a major role as well," explained David Rutchik, a managing director at Pace Harmon, an outsourcing consulting and advisory firm. Moreover, "security concerns are certainly an issue" for China, and on top of that "China doesn't have mature IT services for export capability either," he added.

But China may have a more developed internal IT market, said Eric Simonson, managing partner for research at the Everest Group, an IT services research and consulting firm. "The domestic IT business in China is stronger than in India, and the Chinese economy is larger and broader than India's economy; together these provide more career opportunities and increase labor rates for technical talent," Simonson said.

Chinese IT workers can work for companies such as Alibaba, an e-commerce site. "In India, these dot-com opportunities did not exist until fairly recently -- Flipkart being a hot recent example," he said. Flipkart is also an e-commerce site.

One way to get an indication of the imbalance in global distribution of H-1B visas for computer occupations is to look at the breakdown of H-1B visas that go to engineers.

Last year, the U.S. issued H-1B visas to 8,103 engineers, including people specializing in disciplines such as electrical, mechanical, civil, chemical and aeronautical engineering. Workers from India received the largest share -- 47% -- of those visas, but that's a far smaller percentage than the nearly 86% of H-1B visas for computer occupations that go to people from India. China had 19.5% of the engineering visas while Canada got 3.4%, Korea 2.4%, Mexico 2.2%, and Taiwan and Iran tied with 2.2% each, according to government data obtained by Computerworld.

"This demonstrates just how dominant the outsourcing companies have become," said Russell Harrison, director of government relations at the IEEE-USA, of the country-by-country breakdown of H-1B visas that go to people in computer occupations.

The IEEE has 60,000 members in India and 40,000 in China, and "if companies were looking around the world to find the best possible candidates for their jobs, you would expect a distribution that was similar to the distribution of engineers on the planet, and that's not what you have," said Harrison.

Apple and Aetna were both contacted but didn't have comments by deadline.

[Gunnar]

For me, H-1B makes sense if it is used to fill short term gaps (there aren't enough people available locally) and  to transfer knowledge from H-1B engineers / programmers to local employees (i.e. you import the knowledge). This would be a long term win for the US economy and companies.

However, it appears to me that this is actually going the other way around - knowledge is transferred from US engineers / programmers to H-1B workers, i.e. it is transferred out of the country. Plus, if as an "expensive" local employee there is no work to be found, chances are that fewer and fewer High School graduates will seek IT or engineering degrees. So long term, companies are strengthening their competitors.

So if you are a company who is looking for IT support, why pay HP if you could go directly to the source by having a contract with Tata or Infosys ?

Sadly, long term is not a focus of many CEOs.

[mbwright]

It's only about cheap labor.  I think that 'Asian' would be more accurately changed to Indian.  I doubt there are many Japanese, Korean, or others working for Indian companies.

[BridgeTroll]

Sounds anti immigration to me... 

[finehoe]

Sounds anti immigration to me... 

H-1B visa holders aren't immigrants.