About H1B Visa (and my friends who have one)

At a time when we talk more and more about closing our borders (for whatever reason), I just want to make a couple comments and observations regarding H1B Visas and my friends who have them.

I am not a racist. Almost everyone who knows me has heard me repeat something my mother, who was born in Panama, once said to me: "The best thing about America and the thing that makes it so great is that no one in America is from America". She believed this and it is what she taught her children. So that is the perspective I am writing from.

I have had a long and somewhat successful career in IT and have had the opportunity to work with and for countless individuals from any number of places and I have to say that, from an employer's perspective, I understand why he might want to hire someone with an H1B visa. Here the top three reasons I have come to truly respect and admire my co-workers and friends who have them.

1. They are extremely intelligent. I do not know if it is because only the best and brightest are coming here or if there really is some core (genetic?) difference, but in my experience, I have never had a co-worker who had an H1B visa that I didn't think was smarter than me. I asked a co-worker from India about this once, and he said they were learning math in High School that we reserve for the second year of college in the US. Since I was not educated in India, I can not say whether that is true or not, but I can say my Indian colleagues have always been able to run circles around me with respect to math and algorithms.
2. They are hard workers. Most of my H1B friends seem to consider work/life balance to mean "Find something you like to do, then devote your life to doing it". I can't count the times I have found myself working late to try and finish a project. Everyone else had gone home, but the H1B's were there in the office (or on-line) with me. If you had your choice between hiring someone who goes home on time and someone who works until the project is done, who would you hire?
3. This is a generalization, I know, but they tend to have much better answers (and a better attitude) in an interview. I am not a manager and never want to be one, but I have been tasked with conducting many interviews over the course of my career. Here is a distinct difference that I have noticed between the way a second or third generation American will approach the interview and the way someone with an H1B visa will. The second or third generation American, even if he is just graduated from college, will act as though he is doing you a favor to answer your questions. If you give him a problem to solve, he will typically make a halfhearted attempt, then explain that he could do it if (and then he will explain why it just isn't necessary to know the answer at this time). On the other hand, the person with an H1B will work to solve the problem (rather than explain why it is not necessary). They make fewer assumptions, ask more questions, and generally do a better job. I will never forget one particular interview I gave. It was for an slightly higher than entry level position and I had interviewed several other candidates, all with minimal experience or just out of college. When I asked the candidates whether they had any questions, they all asked about the benefits (vacation time, health benefits, whether or not they could work from home, how soon they could expect their first raise, etc.). However, the final interview was with a candidate who had just come off of an H1B visa (they were now a citizen). That candidate, instead of asking about benefits, asked if there was anything they could learn while waiting for a reply that might make them more useful if they were hired. Guess who I recommended...

As I alluded to earlier, I know these are generalizations and are not absolutely true in every circumstance. However, they do accurately reflect my experience and the trends I have seen working in the IT industry since the late 70's. I think that part of the problem is that in the US, we are awarded for just showing up. We give lip service to competition, but do everything we can to discourage it. And, somehow, we have taught our children that they are privileged just because they exist. They do not have to do anything, contribute anything, work hard at anything because they are "American". And, therefore entitled to long successful lives of their choosing just because they exist. If we do not do something to reverse this trend, I think we deserve what we get in a global economy. 

We have been working hard at becoming a third world country with failing infrastructure and decreased opportunity almost everywhere except in health care and the service industries because we do not want to contribute anything for the greater good or work any harder than is absolutely necessary to bring home a paycheck. You can not work diligently at anything over time with out eventually accomplishing it. So, I say "Thank God for the immigrants and H1B workers who are still coming here and contributing. You are keeping America strong and you have both my respect and my admiration.".