Ten years back remittance was 31% of the GDP [1] - a massive number. It might have declined, but the tiny state accounts for 20% of India's inward remittance while holding a mere 3% of the nation's population. Wikipedia says that 3 million people are working abroad (mostly in the middle East), which is like 10 percent of the population (what percentage of the youth will that be?). Also, a very significant number of Malayalees work in neighbouring states - again due to Kerala having no industries.
I don't have numbers for the last ten years, but if remittance has gone down, it is also neck deep in debt. I am in Kerala quite frequently, and can confirm that there are no industries there - except for tourism, and some IT which is relatively miniscule compared to neighbouring states.
Remittanced only contribute to 15% of GDSP. 65% is from tertiary sectors of IT, Healthcare and Tourism. Kerala gets substantial investments from private companies instead as opposed to large corporations in Gujarat for example. Investments in Kerala rarely grab news headlines as it’s mostly private investments.
Crime statistics are because Kerala Police isn’t as corrupt and registers more crimes compared to rest of India. It’s a good thing as most crimes goes unreported in India as police are corrupted in rest of India.
Literacy mostly means Reading skills. Goes a long way in a poor country with an abysmal record for primary education. Kerala also has a Higher % of school graduation compared to rest of India.
It’s really simple test. Dig into unemployment numbers for skill shortages. If your industry only has an acceptable level of unemployment filings, then it qualifies as an industry eligible for H1B. Within the industry, each company would interview you on SV style data structures and algorithms. If you don’t make the interview, you are not qualified. The foreigner who could pass such a qualifying test would then get the job and visa is an accessory here.
There are two issues here. American companies need workers with multiple skillsets. Your one app startup that thrives on user unwittingly selecting location on might need a highly qualified European graduate with experience at CERN. But the average utility company needs help maintaining their database and make sure they are billing users correctly. They would need a QA tester from India. There's a real shortage of those jobs too in America. You could argue against work visas and wait for 400K Wall Street exceutives switching to testing jobs. You could imagine a market where software engineers are paid Google salaries at utilities. But overall poor people would suffer at the expense of few highly paid developers.
Most high skilled jobs in the world like your neurosurgeon or the engineers at your local nuclear power station assume your skillset based on educational qualifications. Only IT conducts a tech interview on a whiteboard and hires people without proper education.
Agree. H1B goes to some sketchy companies and for jobs that replace Americans. The lottery is the culprit here. Companies that face skills shortage don't get enough H1Bs.
Many H1Bs like myself were educated at taxpayer expense in their native countries. US essentially gets them for free to help fuel silicon valley and other tech hubs.
Skills shortage is real. If you are in a position to hire people, you would understand. You can't train people to perform at a silicon valley interview level no matter how much money you pour into training courses. Proper education from a university is needed to clear the high bar for most people. Free college education like in government run colleges in India would solve some of the skills shortage.
Talent shortage is real, but it's not because people can pass the SV interviews. Blind is full of stories of people who go on to work at a FAANG after a few months of LC. Proper education has nothing to do with it - the way hiring is done by them has been cracked years ago (there are even books about it). It's because most companies don't like to train and they want to pay pennies to new engineers.
I am an immigrant myself, but I don't think the US gets anything for free when it gets an educated H1B. It's a trade off, you get more opportunities than any other country can give you. It's up to you to be able to identify them.
H1B fraud is pervasive at this point and it needs a major reform. I have friends who work in immigration and it's obvious that some schools in India (JNTU for instance) are diploma mills that teaches nothing and ends up with people who should never have a degree to begin with. They exist just to ship people to the US through networking. Then there is the fraud where people from different countries come do their masters at Maharishi International University (or similar) and, once again,study nothing and get a degree. Finally the cherry on top is a lot of the people who were in H1Bs become rich by creating staffing companies bringing more H1Bs and paying them pennies. The government only does a bit of enforcement really. One of the few good things Trump did was to enforce the rules more.
Most H1Bs need a lot of training to be productive. I have worked with many. The H1B program - when it comes to STEM - was created to bring very educated people (think top universities with good grades, IIT and similar). Unfortunately, the many who should not have gotten one in the first place, create the problems for the ones who should truly qualify to get an H1B.
There’s no skills shortage. Just an unwillingness to take a risk on someone outside the normal profile.
I’ve done interviews where we passed on a candidate who’d be educated and onboarded within 1.5 years. Except nobody wanted to take that risk as we’d rather hire the person who can start today.
If there was no h1b program, we’d of hired that American and trained them.
