Comment by falsestprophet | Hacker News Reader

Comment by falsestprophet | Hacker News Reader

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"When Congress designed temporary work visa programs, the idea was to bring in foreigners with specialized, hard-to-find skills who would help American companies grow, creating jobs to expand the economy."

This is a common misconception. The H1B visa laws are generally used to hire very low wage workers. (I doubt the authors of the legislation are surprised by this result.)

Companies are required to pay a prevailing wage, but this wage can be one of four levels. And of course most H1B applications are for the lowest levels.

Here are levels for software developers in Chicago [1]:

  Software Developers, Applications
  Chicago-Naperville-Joliet, IL Metropolitan Division

  Level 1 Wage:$24.45 hour - $50,856 year
  Level 2 Wage:$33.14 hour - $68,931 year
  Level 3 Wage:$41.84 hour - $87,027 year
  Level 4 Wage:$50.53 hour - $105,102 year

For context the 25th percentile wage in Chicago is $68,670 and average is $88,630.

Of course, more ambitious companies may file applications under job titles with even lower wage levels like "system analysts".

You should also know that if a H1B worker is fired, he and his family are out of status that day and must leave the country unless a visitor visa is granted (which is not guaranteed).

How would you like working here if you could be fired and your whole family could be sent packing at will?

If you were an employer, do you think you could you hack this system to your advantage? I'm pretty sure I could.

[1] http://www.flcdatacenter.com/

As an H1B, I whole-heartedly agree with you. The H1B gives American employers disproportionate power over their foreign employees.

The ideal solution which has been proposed by several people, but will probably never see the light of day in legislation due to entrenched lobbying interests is very simple – separate the visa from the employer. If an employer sponsors an H1B once, that person should be automatically be free to work for any company he/she pleases for six years. This will make H1Bs more of a realistic "high skill level" visa and less of a captive labor pool for the industry.

I completely agree. My ideal H1-B reform would be as follows:

1) The visa holder has no obligation to the company whatsoever as soon as the visa is approved. If the only thing keeping an employee at the company is the threat of deportation then maybe the company shouldn't be employing people at all.

2) The company can not extract any fees whatsoever from the employee, not even for training or relocation. The employee is not obligated to pay anything to the employer under any circumstances, even if he immediately leaves the job.

3) The Visa program is a reverse auction on salary, down to, say, 150% of the median wage for the NAICS code. The auction ends when the cap or the salary limit is reached.

4) The company must hold the first year of salary in escrow and forfeit any unpaid salary to the government if the employee leaves early. This is to prevent hiring an employee and then firing and rehiring immediately after the visa is approved at a lower salary.

Of course you're right that no real reform will happen, because as far as the Zuckerberg/fwd.us crowd is concerned, the only problem with the current system is that the cap is too low.

President Obama's executive action proposals[1] for improving the state of legal immigration was torpedoed last week by the latest USCIS Visa Bulletin[2]. This affects many engineers in Silicon Valley. The silence from fwd.us on the topic has been particularly telling.

(edited to include links)

[1] http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/14_1120_...

[2] http://www.natlawreview.com/article/regrettable-and-sudden-d...

We actually have this visa and employers don't want to have anything to do with it.

EB2 visas for permanent residence are currently available [1] for employees with Ph.D., master's degree, or at least five years of progressive post-baccalaureate experience.

[1] Excluding people born in India, Mainland China, Mexico and the Philippines because applicants from those countries have exceeded the per country maximum

Yes, but that greencard processes like the EB2 take a very long time. It is difficult for an employer to sign up an employee, with the hope that they begin work 12 months later. This processing period can easily balloon out due to random audits.

Granted, the H1B process is slow too.

The H1B process is slow, but pretty much deterministic within a period of few months (every year). On the other hands, the EB1/2/3 and various O visa is very indeterministic (you won't know what happen, for how long), especially when those varies depends on the country of origin.

Another thing to think about is how this affect families with one or more parents on H1B visas.

I worked over seas in the East. It was pretty much the same. Company sponsored you, if you were let go, you had a week to leave town (or seek another sponsor). It's not that atypical. Also, I met quite a few foreigners who worked the same (not an expat working in an overseas office but working for a local company). They also seemed to hire lots of Thais and Philippine people for hard labor (who were also subject to deportation once the work dried up)

And the police had powers to deport --double the fun (meaning you had to have papers)

That said, I don't think progressives who propose easing immigration from poor countries would allow competition for "high-skilled" jobs like doctors, engineers, lawyers because it would suffer pressure from professional pushback.

Thats the whole problem - the conditions of the visa should be followed. As a H1B myself, I cannot really complain at all. My salary on-par or at least above market average (I am a C level exec, not an engineer) and my company has never-ever shown any interest in exerting their power over me via the visa. In fact they are worried about the visa running out and are trying to sponsor a green-card for me. So I guess it depends, and I would say the scenario I am in is more in line with the intent of the law vs the cheap labor brought in from India and China.

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