American Women Coders Versus H-1Bs
06/03/2015
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From the NYT:

Last Task After Layoff at Disney: Train Foreign Replacements

By JULIA PRESTON JUNE 3, 2015

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.

Why is this referred to as “outsourcing” when it’s clearly “insourcing?” Or is “insourcing” another one of those words that doesn’t exist for Sapir-Whorf who-whom reasons?
Over the next three months, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost.

“I just couldn’t believe they could fly people in to sit at our desks and take over our jobs exactly,” said one former worker, an American in his 40s who remains unemployed since his last day at Disney on Jan. 30. “It was so humiliating to train somebody else to take over your job. I still can’t grasp it.”

The layoffs at Disney and at other companies, including the Southern California Edison power utility, are raising new questions about how businesses and outsourcing companies are using the temporary visas, known as H-1B, to place immigrants in technology jobs in the United States. These visas are at the center of a fierce debate in Congress over whether they complement American workers or displace them.

According to federal guidelines, the visas are intended for foreigners with advanced science or computer skills to fill discrete positions when American workers with those skills cannot be found. Their use, the guidelines say, should not “adversely affect the wages and working conditions” of Americans. Because of legal loopholes, however, in practice companies do not have to recruit American workers first or guarantee that Americans will not be displaced.

Too often, critics say, the visas are being used to import immigrants to do the work of Americans for less money, with laid-off American workers having to train their replacements.

“The program has created a highly lucrative business model of bringing in cheaper H-1B workers to substitute for Americans,” said Ronil Hira, a professor of public policy at Howard University who studies visa programs and has testified before Congress about H-1B visas.

Unusually for an article about programmers in 2015, there’s no mention of gender questions.

Somebody should calculate how many American women programmers get laid off by these H-1B ploys. Fortune 500 firms tend to employ a higher percentage as programmers of American women than do Silicon Valley firms. Since everybody is worked up over making sure Women Code, why do we have a government program that’s used to fire American women coders?

Also, does bringing in a lot of H-1Bs from cultures with less advanced gender attitudes tend to create a hostile work environment for those American women coders who manage to keep their jobs? That’s what I’ve heard from a family friend.

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