Meritocracy, Nepotism and H-1B
06/10/2009
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kdawson at slashdot.org quotes The Narrative Fallacy:
"With about 4,200 people participating in a US National Security Agency-supported international competition on everything from writing algorithms to designing components, 20 of the 70 finalists were from China, 10 from Russia, and 2 from the US. China's showing in the finals was helped by its large number of entrants, 894. India followed at 705, but none of its programmers was a finalist. Russia had 380 participants; the United States, 234; [China Dominates In NSA-Backed Coding Contest, 6/9/2009]

There is a lot more to producing real technological products than the types of things a programming test can measure.

Still, there is a question of why, with these kinds of results around, we see ads like this:

On a project for our direct client we are looking for Sr. Engineer/ Engineer PERL/ SQL/ Java coders . Candidate should have 6+ years experience . Need either US citizens or Indian H1 resources based in NJ/ NY on contract .
I've heard from reliable sources about managers at major formerly US corporations telling folks that they would only receive funding for a project if they agreed to limit their hiring to specific employment agencies from India. One man literally had to threaten to walk of a job to hire a Ph.D. from Harvard. I guess at this point, some of these companies are getting PC and hiring US citizens for window dressing.

The H-1b program has strongly discouraged US workers from entering technological professions because the program offers foreign workers US immigration rights as an unpaid form of corporate welfare. Even when that program does attract talented workers, those workers often have little loyalty to the US or identification with it people, create security problems because they come from countries where background checks can't even be done-and bring with them practices like extreme ethnic nepotism that is in now way meritocratic.

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