How to Fix Tech’s H-1B Problem
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Too many companies, as evidenced in the linked article, claim there is an engineering "shortage" but who really mean that there is a shortage of engineers willing to be underpaid and badly treated.
There is nothing complicated about the process itself. You just happen to be from India/China.
Ah, sorry about that mate. The process is fucked up.
Apparently it's much more straightforward (and less prone to chance) as compared to H1B.
I recently got married and filed for AOS.
Additionally, these "slots" seems to have been placed only in the last stage of green card, there are no country specific limits for H1B applications, Green Card Application(LCA), nor the I-140 Immigration petition for Alien Worker.
With more flexibility afforded to H1-B holders to find a real market-rate job, many of the perceived problems of the program would go away in my opinion.
Natural-born US citizen in the tech industy here.
As you know, our employment-based immigration system is
afflicted with extremely long waits for immigrant visas, or
"green cards," due to relatively low green card numerical limits
established by Congress 24 years ago in 1990.
...
The resulting backlogs for green cards prevent U.S. employers
from attracting and retaining highly skilled workers critical to
their businesses. U.S. businesses have historically relied on
temporary visas- such as H-1B, L-1B, or 0-1 visas-to retain
individuals with needed skills as they work their way through
these backlogs. But as the backlogs for green cards grow longer,
it is increasingly the case that temporary visas fail to fill
the gap.
...
To correct this problem, I hereby direct USCIS to take several
steps to modernize and improve the immigrant visa process.
Proposing a draft rule and new guidance to enhance options for
high skilled workers to change jobs and accept promotions while
they wait for their green cards to become available.
Outside of establishing a one-time 60-day grace period for employees with an approved I-140 to find new employment, this rule falls much short of what was originally promised in Nov 2014. Here are the main provisions:
* Clarify and improve longstanding agency policies and procedures implementing sections of the American Competitiveness in the Twenty-First Century Act (AC21) and the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act (ACWIA) related to certain foreign workers, which will enhance USCIS’ consistency in adjudication.
* Better enable U.S. employers to employ and retain certain foreign workers who are beneficiaries of approved employment based immigrant visa petitions (I-140 petitions) while also providing stability and job flexibility to these workers. The proposed rule will increase the ability of such workers to further their careers by accepting promotions, making position changes with current employers, changing employers, and pursuing other employment opportunities.
* Improve job portability for certain beneficiaries of approved I-140 petitions by limiting the grounds for automatic revocation of petition approval.
* Clarify when individuals may keep their priority date to use when applying for adjustment of status to lawful permanent residence, including when USCIS has revoked the approval of their approved I 140 petitions because the employer withdrew the petition or because the employer’s business shut down.
* Allow certain high-skilled individuals in the United States in E-3, H-1B, H-1B1, L-1, or O-1 nonimmigrant status to apply for one year of unrestricted employment authorization if they: 1) Are the beneficiaries of an approved I-140 petition, 2) Remain unable to adjust status due to visa unavailability, and 3) Can demonstrate that compelling circumstances exist which justify issuing an employment authorization document. Such employment authorization may only be renewed in limited circumstances.
* Clarify various policies and procedures related to the adjudication of H-1B petitions, including, among other things, extensions of status, determining cap exemptions and counting workers under the H-1B visa cap, H-1B portability, licensure requirements, and protections for whistleblowers.
* Establish a one-time grace period during an authorized validity period of up to 60 days for certain high-skilled nonimmigrant workers whenever their employment ends so that they may more readily pursue new employment and an extension of their nonimmigrant status.
I encourage everyone here to read and comment on this in the next few weeks. You can do it online by going to www.regulations.gov and searching for the eDocket number USCIS-2015-0008 [4].
[1] Executive Action: Support High-skilled Business and Workers - http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/14_1120_...
[2] One Year Later: DHS Working To Fix Our Broken Immigration System - http://www.dhs.gov/publication/one-year-later-dhs-working-fi...
[3] USCIS Seeks Comments on Proposed Rule Affecting Certain Employment-Based Immigrant and Nonimmigrant Visa Programs - https://www.uscis.gov/news/uscis-seeks-comments-proposed-rul...
[4] http://www.regulations.gov/#!docketDetail;D=USCIS-2015-0008
I still think a good first step is to require a salary for H-1B workers at 10x single person poverty guidelines for the local area[1]. Another measure of base salary would probably work, but something that requires a salary that discourages the body shops[2]. According to the legislation and goals of the program, the people we accept have the talent to be worth this salary[3].
1) https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2016-01-25/html/2016-01450....
2) http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2016-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx - the top 10 has a lot of consulting / body shop firms
3) http://www.dol.gov/whd/immigration/h1b.htm "The intent of the H-1B provisions is to help employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce by authorizing the temporary employment of qualified individuals who are not otherwise authorized to work in the United States."
Also, after a verification that the Visa recipient is working at the given salary for at least two years, then the they can apply for green card irrelevant to who their current employer is (as long as they are employed and earning at least similar salaries to what they did when they got the visa).
Switching jobs (as long as it is the similar profession/pay), should not reset the Green Card process. This will remove the current defacto "Indentured servitude" state that most H-1B visa holders find themselves in.
There are many ways to improve the current system (without changing the quotas), to benefit the country itself, and not large corporations, but right now there is no direct personal incentive for lawmakers to do that.
And it makes sense for the federal government too. Higher salary = higher taxes.
I would rather have a explicit floor to make sure that simply increasing the numbers allowed doesn't put us back in the same situation or tempt companies into collusion.
what abt TCS working around this with paying high salary for the first year and then lowering the wage following year.
No, the case was tcs hiring someone for top dollar only to get a h1b. You moved the goalpost, sigh!.
If it's a lottery system, why not charge 25k per entry or something? It's affordable even by a smaller company is they really want the person. It's affordable by the big tech companies who are being honest about their H-1B visa requests. It puts some hurt on Tata and the like by making them pay through the nose for trying to game the lottery.
Or you could restrict the number issued per company, at least until others have their share. Say every company gets 1500 max, then you bump that up to 2000 for those interested. keep going like that until you exhaust the quota.
You must file an amended H-1B petition if your H-1B
employee changed or is going to change his or her place of
employment to a worksite location outside of the
metropolitan statistical area (MSA) or an “area of intended
employment” (as defined at 20 CFR 655.715) covered by the
existing approved H-1B petition
One other thing is necessary: to attribute visas every month instead of once a year.
Here is my paper on the issue: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_yEsHOtzN3yZ3JoYXlTdDh0R0k...
Would they still have an avenue into the country, without precluding their use to only those with the money to pay exorbitant salaries? (I don't actually know the visa system well enough; I'm curious if they could use a different visa type or something of that respect)
Otherwise I'd worry about the unintended side effects of such an approach, notably because as mentioned above, the problem seems to be more one of the semantic requirements of visa-ship being abused than just salary requirements at the root of the problem. (the latter is certainly happening, but doesn't seem like the core, better worded.)
It does seem a bit odd to mix cultural folks in with STEM for expressing a need in the USA. I would rather see them separated.
If the ostensible goal of the program is to bring in people for low-supply positions (but short of individual O-1 visas) then isn't salary a reasonable not-too-game-able way to measure that?
The rules are not being applied, but for me it's quite simple. If you want to bring a foreign worker in, you need to advertise it on a government website for a month. These details will include salary, role, skills, the sponsoring company as well as the one they will be ultimately working for.
I spent the last 5 months unemployed, but i'm normally a devops/sysadmin. I know my job went to India. I don't mind if they're better, but most of the time they're not. I didn't claim unemployment benefits as I didn't want the shame and the hassle, including having to spend 20 hours a week looking for work on the governments website. If this website included the details of the jobs that allegedly couldn't be filled by a UK guy i'd be far better equipped to get a job I am good at where a company is trying to cheap it out.
Note - I am not trying to get at Indian employees here - the RF guys at my last place were superb and better than anybody in the UK as we don't train enough of them here - but I am very annoyed where a company can twist the system to avoid paying UK wages for a UK job.
Management is also surreptitiously raising its own pay (by increasing coordination costs).
Reminds me of something David Graeber said:
Given a choice between a course of action that would make capitalism seem the only possible economic system, and one that would transform capitalism into a viable, long-term economic system, neoliberalism chooses the former every time.
Your employer should make that decision and they seem to think otherwise.
Not everyone wants to shop at whole foods.
And when you repeatedly get feedback from several/many people in your organization, asking why this or that isn't done yet or continues to be wrong.
If Management really believes that "this is the right decision for us", with full -- or at least competent -- knowledge of what is going on and how it is working out, then they also are deliberately planning to irritate and inconvenience at lot of their other employees and extant work flows.
I've seen it. Repeatedly.
And, like the grand parent, I've worked with some outsourced/overseas people who were good. In my experience, over a number of years, they tended to be the exception rather than the rule.
This speaks to corporate outsourcing, from a U.S. perspective, rather than in general. Plenty of people elsewhere are very good at what they do. A lot of U.S. corporate outsourcing, in my experience, has drawn from a different and significantly less capable labor pool.
Meanwhile, the people structuring and running these transitions tended to collect their short-term consulting fees and bonuses and move on.
It's a bunch of rich corporate board members trying to game the system and further enrich themselves through abuse of foreign indentured servants.
Also, I'm not arguing that H-1B should be restricted to only the most capable members of a nation's society. I am super into allowing the least capable members of India to work in the US - for instance programmers who would only command $20K per year in the US job market because they are not very capable.
1. There are lots of people who would be better off (using any reasonable definition of better off that you chose) working as an H-1B worker in the US despite all the potential for abuse (real and exaggerated) that the status entails. They'd be better off because the pay would be higher. They might be better off because they like american culture better than that of their home country. They might be better off because their is greater scope for career advancement. They might be better off because they might learn more from their peers in the US. Etc.
2. H-1B workers do have the option of quitting their jobs and going back to their home countries if they decide that the abuse is too much. I understand that this is complicated by the fact that they might have taken out loans, or developed attachments to America. However, I don't think that, on net, this justifies banning them from the US labor market.
Perhaps the strongest claim I'm willing to make is that the vast majority of workers ( >90%? ) currently in H-1B status in the US don't wish that the H-1B option wasn't available to them. And that the vast majority of wannabe H-1B workers would still choose to come to work in the US even after they are made aware of all the abuses.
I'm aware that I'm only comparing H-1B as is to no H-1B at all and that numerous other hypothetical arrangements exist that would be better than both.
In apartheid South Africa, it was illegal for blacks to work in the white parts of South Africa without getting a permit (sort of like the H-1B visa or the green card in the case of the US). Most people consider this to be wrong primarily based on the intuition that such severe discrimination on the basis of race is unethical.
1. Why is it not okay to discriminate on the basis of race but okay to discriminate on the basis of country of birth? Why is it not okay to require that only highly skilled, highly paid black South Africans be allowed to participate in the labor markets of white South Africa but okay to disallow less competent Indians willing to work for a lower wage access to the US/UK labor markets?
2. The South Africa analogy is particularly compelling because black South Africans were not considered citizens of white South Africa.
This analogy is not original to me. I stole it from Lant Pritchett. This is what he says in 'Let their people come':
"The analogy between apartheid and restrictions on labor mobility is almost exact. People are not allowed to live and work where they please. Rather, some are only allowed to live in places where earning opportunities are scarce. [...] The restrictions about who can work where are based on conditions of birth, not on any notion of individual effort or merit. The current international system of restrictions on labor mobility enforces gaps in living standards across people that are large or larger than any in apartheid South Africa. It is even true that labor restrictions in nearly every case explicitly work to disadvantage people of “color” against those of European descent."
There is no other reason for the continuing existence of H1B. It's simply a naive and rather stupid cost-cutting measure.
The analogy to SA is absolutely inappropriate, because SA was run on the basis that black South Africans were fundamentally morally, ethically, culturally, and socially inferior to white South Africans, solely on the basis of skin colour (as a proxy for heritage.)
With H1B, no one cares about anything except cost of labour.
Which is a problem, for reasons that may not be obvious. Consider the possibility that moving (say) Indian talent to the US will stall growth in India and move it to the US.
It may be a good deal for individual Indians, but it's not necessarily such a great deal for the Indian economy.
In fact you get a kind of reverse Ricardian effect, where free movement of labour can depress all the economies involved. The source economy loses talented people, and spending on wages contracts in the destination economy, which drives down consumer demand. (Profits increase in the short term - hurrah! - but if you drive down consumer demand enough, your economy falls off a cliff.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ricardo#Comparative_adva...
Morally free movement of populations should be a human right. But you have to get rid of nation states and most notions of economic competition to make it work, and I'm not expecting those changes any time soon.
I find the ease with which you are willing to draft me in a war that I did not chose to be disheartening. That somehow it is the duty of the talented people of the source economy to to grow it. How about you move to India the grow its economy? (Maybe you are actually a third-worlder who gave up the opportunity to move to the first-world to make your home country better. In that case I deeply admire your sacrifice. But if in fact you are a first-worlder who grew up with all the advantages that the first-world has to offer and still don't see the hypocrisy in asking a third-worlder to stay home because he/she happened to be born in the wrong country, you should engage in some self-reflection.
Your citation of the Comparative Advantage section of David Ricardo's wikipedia page does not give me too much confidence on your understanding of the economic theory of free trade (especially as it pertains to labor) and the shortcomings of that theory. You must be aware that Ricardo says exactly the opposite of your point of view since you label your point of view as the 'reverse Ricardian effect.'
At the very least, provide a reference to the 'reverse Ricardian effect' that perhaps quantitatively models how reduced spending on wages causes an economy to fall off a cliff?
Also, I'm not sure I understand your theory of what counts as unethical discrimination. Why is it wrong for an employer to prefer less competent but cheaper employees? And is this only a problem if the cheaper employees are non-local?
What I do know, as the founder of a European expat organization with 7k members in the USA, is that H1Bs for highly skilled Europeans have nearly come to a standstill. This is evidenced by the change in demographics of my target audience. Average ages have gone up significantly. Most newcomers now arrive on L1 (inter-company executive transferee) visas, are older, married, and have a family.
The way to fix this is by going back to the old situation and put the body-shops out of business...
Nothing changed. The only thing that changed were companies pushing the limit as far as they could to what you see today. Regulators sat on their proverbial asses and watched it happen without lifting a finger, so companies lost the fear of the law.
Not only is this a source of wage depression and age discrimination, it results in the kind of horrible-but-expensive IT that runs banking, health care, government, etc. and makes it much harder than necessary to apply technology to reforming those sectors.
It strikes me as ridiculous that it could be illegal for someone to work simply because they were not born near where their employer is based.
I think you would probably not, because you know it would be a war zone within weeks, with the poorest and most desperate people from all around the world swarming to your small part of the world, bringing with them huge social issues.
People who have the wherewithal to move across the globe are not "the poorest and most desperate people from all around the world", they are the ones with the means to pay thousands of dollars to mafias because we have no better system to bring them in.
Why is "mass migration beats down the working class" not bad enough to warrant restricting it?
As for stability, you need to consider the benefits of having the best people from around the world in the jobs where their comparative advantage is greatest.
And yet it happens all the time under NAFTA with contractors and "service" companies.
(Basically, pensions. They were offered to make municipal employment more attractive, which made the cities nicer places to live. They were not totally funded at the time the services were provided, even though the benefits of offering the pensions were largely consumed at that time.)
What confuses me is why people like you are personally are more concerned with cutting teacher pensions than cutting war budgets when it's fairly plain which one we actually want more (assuming you don't want to live in a country full of dumb people that is...).
I'm in favor of fully funding them at the time of employment.
I guess I would agree that fully funded pensions might not be as large as promised pensions, but it's not like promised pensions have a perfect record of getting delivered.
There's no real reason why pensions have to be used to pump up stock market prices. Social Security can simply be expanded, cutting out the million dollar bonuses and ferraris from the process.
I agree that a national benefit program is not as fraught as a local one.
As for whether someone can vote, that's a different story. You still have your basic rights such as the right to a fair trial. But the freedom to work shouldn't be restricted.
H1-B is subsidy for the already rich. These billionaires can afford to train Americans.
Civil rights leader Professor Norm Matloff has a good summary of the issues : http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html
Indeed, it is what a country is for.
My small 55 person company is survivng thanks to H1Bs. We struggled to find a dba and a critical dev for years, and found a couple of good H1B candidates.
Saying that this program only benefits billionaires is a bit absurd.
To me it seems fairly absurd to assume that there's enough american workers in every field to fill every post, even with really "generous" salaries. Even if you only take the "worthwhile" projects into account.
Obviously that does not apply for fields where you can essentially train a mid-level university graduate up to par within a couple months.
0. http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/30731-why-did-mexican-pol...
It is bad for US as well. Immigrants are generally more risk taking than citizens & H1B does not allow them to take risks when they are young because they will be waiting in the line for PR (Green Card). By the time they get green card it will be decade or more and their risk appetite would have reduced due to having family/children.
In general, I don't believe most of the high salaries in tech may not be sustainable. Lots of tech jobs will move to India & China (or any low cost country in future which has a good pool of educated people), that is just capital chasing good enough talent which is cheap. Moving up the value chain is the only option.
No thats horrible. There are tons of "universities" in USA which will give you a masters degree for a given amount of money. I can only imagine how much worse the education scam will get with stuff like greenCards attached to degrees.
Besides there's no sensible path to permanent residence or citizenship.
Personally I'd like to spend some time in the States and see the country, work for a year or two and see how it goes. But I have no intention in getting into H-1B mess.
Look at who benefits from the system. On the surface, outsourcing companies who can hire cheaper IT labor. Who are their customers which gain from lower IT service costs? Large corporations with influential ties to the powers that be.
Settled in Iowa where I've worked at half a dozen Silicon Valley startups remotely since then. With reasonable cost of living, a decent stable group of friends, and a culture of helpfulness and inclusion.
1) File H-1B applications for every new hire in the country of origin.
2) Send the lucky winners over to the US for on-the-job training with clients.
3) Once they actually have the necessary skills to do the jobs, bring them back home and pay them the prevailing wage there, while still charging the clients the same amount.
4) Profit!
Under this model (is this even accurate? I've seen several summaries along these lines, but have no direct experience), the bulk of the wage lowering doesn't even occur under an H-1B, so wouldn't they be able to realign things to absorb a higher US salary? Would a "value-based" system be an actual deterrent, or just friction?
I've posted before, but having worked with India, Korea, Japan, and China... There is only one culture that pushes to outsource things when it doesn't make sense... And usually the one doing the pushing is getting a cut or kick back... It's neither Korea, China, or Japan.
I think the solution is to cut off all Indian body shops and visas in bulk and require strict individual vetting. There are great individuals stuck in the morass, but Tata etc are trying to bring in people less qualified than an automotive technician who could get 3-4 months of training...
H1b and outsourcing is all about the bottom quarterly dollar.
apparently, free market is going to determine who is most valuable.
Which do you choose?
e.g. if a US citizen working at Facebook makes 180k, and the foreign worker makes 150k, that H-1B should cost 30k. Then if there really is a tech shortage then costs are the same, but if there isn't it incentivizes businesses to hire locals.
I'm sure the argument would be that then they'll just pay their US citizens less, but I'd think the competition for the native highly skilled talent would keep rates up.
There are already prevailing wage restrictions, you can't pay h1b less than native employee .
* last at least a year
* pay at least 150% of median market rate
* have been open and unfulfilled with at least 10 who are interviewed AND report on their desired compensation for the role
* Eliminated non-hourly work* ('Salaried' would be a contract to buy between X and Y hours of work per year, with limits of hours per day/week etc.)
This is why this requires a more thoughtful approach..
So only SF and NYC can employ immigration while Denver and Atlanta cannot.
If an immigrant doesn't want to stay in SF, they only have to work there long enough to get a green card, then they're free to move.
All immigrants, regardless of their value, should be treated equal.