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Comment by JohnTHaller | Hacker News Reader

There have been a couple folks on Facebook reporting that the H1-B folks they trained are staying while they are let go (ala Disney et al).

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This is probably heresy. No one talks about the H-1B worker who got laid off - it is only about the ones who stay. Not sure if everyone in this thread is aware but if an H-1B worker is laid off, he/she gets only 30 days to find a new job. If he is not able to land a new gig within 30 days, they have to leave US for good. So I will not judge here based on a couple of FB comments.

It's pretty common for anyone that's worked in tech for Fortune 500s before: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/26/us/lawsuit-claims-disney-c...

Hearsay. Heresy is something completely different.

There is actually no grace period. They can be legally picked up and put in deportation proceeding the minute they're fired and they start accruing illegal presence immediately.

What percentage of people that can be legally picked up get picked up?

They don't pick you up. You have to leave. However the company has to pay for your expenses.

But the USCIS generally approves petitions to change from one employer to the next if the gap between jobs is short. 30 days is acceptable

Does the new employer have to get a new H1-B from the lottery?

No, the new employer can sponsor the new employee.

No, the H1B goes with the employee. They/you have to apply for a H1B transfer.

But the previous employer has to approve the transfert.

Absolutely not. The previous employer has no role at all and does not even have to know it happened - you could apply for a H1b transfer, get it approved, decide you don't want the new job and continue working for your old employer without them ever knowing you had looked around. Everyone I know has had the transfer completed before giving notice at the old job so that if it somehow is denied (eg new employer does not have a job that qualifies for a H1b), the current employer doesn't have to know you wanted to leave.

This is my #1 worry about our industry - Zuckerberg and his folks will get that FWD.us thing passed and use to to ship cheap Indian engineers over here. Call me an asshole if you want but don't be shocked when it happens to you.

I have no problem with tech companies bringing foreign workers into the US. I have a deep problem with them being here on H1B visas that make them little more than indentured servants.

Yes, this would reduce the median salary for tech.

I didn't get the H1B visa in the lottery, but I got moved to UK and got paid the same salary. Since you mentioned Facebook - they opened the office in London when H1B visa lotteries started, and now the office have several hundreds employees. If you won't accept foreign workers be prepared that more and more tech jobs will just move abroad.

Surely FB can find whatever skills they need domestically. I can't imagine there is a skillset that several hundred people have abroad but that does not exist in the US.

It comes down to pay not skills. FB could afford the people in the US with those skills, they are just looking for employees that are cheaper, and they tend to be Indians and Chinese because they value being on US soil more than anyone else. I heard a phrase recently "India has a population of 1 Billion and 900 Million want to be in the US".

The competition is fierce and I don't blame them.

I believe that's illegal, and doing so en masse is going to spark Congressional hearings.

It is 100% illegal, but Disney got away with it so other big firms are following suit.

I could've sworn they had to walk that back: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-disney-technology-h1b-...

They only "walked it back" enough to squash the bad PR they were getting. Once the headlines went away they went forward with their plan after all:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/26/us/lawsuit-claims-disney-c...

These were two separate instances of layoffs. The grandparent link is not related to yours (except that both stories involve Disney, and both involve layoffs).

Disney initially 'got away with it' because they kept the whole thing at an arms length by outsourcing to Cognizant. "Oh that's what you did, hire H1B? Yeah that wasn't us... We just outsourced to Cognizant so you should ask them about what's going on".

Super shady, but it was a fleeting attempt at plausible deniability on behalf of Disney execs.

Corporations have perfected layoffs done in such a trickle or way as to prevent triggering the WARN act and other legislation. It's sick but just a fact of life. See also how they've perfected dodging taxes in offshore shell companies (and blow off criticism with the line 'we are just following the laws as written').

And I'm supposed to feel bad when raising corporate tax rates are discussed.

Sometimes, I'm quite the fan of China taking its executives out and executing them for breaking the law.

What advantage does that give the company?

Much lower salaries with no long-term liabilities?

Why do you think H1B employees are paid lower salaries? And what long-term liabilities are you referring to?

That's the stereotype. As a former H1B holder myself I can say that I never experienced it.

That said, if your employer sponsors you for a green card while you're on an H1B you are quite trapped in your job, and I wouldn't be surprised if people found their wages not rising as much as they would have otherwise.

Because those people don't understand that the "lower salary" H1B people come from consulting sweatshops like Tata.

IBM pays H1Bs dramatically less than their peer companies, and recruits far more H1Bs.. They're terrible;

http://i.imgur.com/hkKLLR2.png

In my experience H1B employees are paid less because those in hiring positions know they can offer less.

What they did was contract out jobs that had been employee positions, so ultimately it probably did and will save them money going forward.

The H-1B part comes in when the contractor hired H-1B holders to fill those slots.

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