Many H-1B workers get temporary jobs, study finds | Hacker News Reader

Many H-1B workers get temporary jobs, study finds

computerworld.com

11 pointshelwr17 comments

This is a very misleading interpretation of the data. All it shows is that large companies like their best employees working at HQ. For Indian companies, that means they go back to India (5% immigration rate). For American companies, it means they stay in America (50%+).

Also, the idea that the H-1B program is supposed to be about attracting the "best and brightest" is new to me. The whole point of the H-1B is that America doesn't want any immigrants -- the government agrees, metaphorically, to hold its nose for 6 years while we dirty foreigners get the work done, but we're not invited to stay. That's why the H-1B expires.

If the government really wanted the best and brightest from overseas to come and stay, they would have a points-based system and give us green cards, not temporary visas.

It's not a misleading interpretation of the data, it is a misleading interpretation of the purpose of the visa, and not necessarily by the authors alone. They are merely saying that a majority of the people who work on an H-1B visa, do not stay in the U.S. beyond their terms. The H-1B is officially a "Temporary Employment Visa", so, as you say, this was the intent.

Where the intent is muddled is in letting H-1B applicants apply for permanent residency permits, but choking the supply of these permits so it takes a decade to get one.

I agree with you that there should be a point based system for green cards.

The study was called misleading by a spokesman for Compete America, a coalition of vendors, universities and other sponsors of H-1B visa holders.

As someone very familiar with the visa, I can tell you the article is not misleading. Comparisons to bonded labor always come to my mind when I think about the visa. While these may be a bit far fetched since any kind of visa is opt-in, the fact that the employer can kick an employee out of the country by firing them means that they exert extraordinary control over the employee.

What is worse, and what the article doesn't cover, is that by applying for a permanent residency permit (green card) for an employee, the employer all but guarantees that the employee has to stay with them for 4-7 years. That is how long it takes to go through the initial stages of getting a permanent residency and abandoning the process in the middle means you have to restart it. They also exert even more control over the employee during this period because not only can they kick him/her out of the country by firing them, they can cause the time, effort and expense he/she incurred on the green card thus far to be wasted.

That is true. The UK's highly skilled VISA system is much better - if you have a certain education + X years experience you get a visa and you can work and change jobs. With the US system, you can't even change jobs (if you quit, you have to find a new job in a short time, otherwise you get kicked out).

By the time the employee comes to work for the company, the company has already committed quite a bit of resources into the employee. It doesn't seem all that unfair that the employee now has a somewhat greater obligation to the company, particularly since the employee chose this route.

Similarly, my sister's employer invested several grand in training her in Crossfit. She is now obligated to teach Crossfit for a year at a fixed wage, or else repay (12 - # of months worked)/12 x 100% of her training costs. Is that also "bonded labor"?

Being committed for 1 year is very different from being committed for 4 to 10 years(as another commenter below pointed out).

The "significant resources" amount to around $4000 for an H1B if the company files the expedited visa and $2500 (IIRC) for the default route. This is significantly less than the monthly salary of a programmer in most places.

For a green card, the expenses are roughly double but often shared by the company and the employee.

So the scale here is very different. What's more, your sister is not going to be thrown out of the country if she leaves Crossfit before the year ends. I think it makes sense to have a pay-back agreement for legal expenses in the case of an H1B but not to have legal immigration status dependent on that specific job.

Skilled employment based immigration should be based on the immigrant's level of skills, not tied to a specific job.

First, I think you are greatly underestimating the cost of an H1B. It's more than just the application fee. For example, the company must create a job description so narrow that only the desired candidate can fit it. They must then advertise and otherwise attempt to recruit an American for that position, and a lawyer must make sure they tried hard enough. Once lawyers get involved, things get expensive.

As for getting thrown out of the country, it's my understanding that someone on an H1B is in the country for the sole purpose of relieving a shortage of skilled labor. Once the job is gone, they have no reason to remain in the US. They can also leave their job at any time. In contrast, bonded labor can not leave their job until their debts are paid off.

In short, I think you want the H1B system to be something that it isn't. The sole goal is to relieve a shortage of skilled labor. There is no reason we should make it easier for people to leverage an H1B into citizenship.

Now, I certainly think we should increase our immigration quota for skilled immigrants, subject to much greater scrutiny than we already have [1]. But that's completely separate from the matter of visas to provide temporary labor.

[1] I think we do a terrible job of making sure immigrants are a good cultural fit for the US and assimilating them once they get here.

Actually I have been on both sides of the table on an H-1B visa, so I am quite certain that I am not underestimating the cost of the H1B visa. The government fees are $2320 for a non-expedited application and $3320 for an expedited application. Lawyers usually charge $1000. Although this, obviously, will vary by firm and seniority of the lawyer in question.

The narrow job description and advertisements are applicable only to the green card where the total cost would probably reach over $8000, but again it is often shared by the employee and the employer. The job description is a few hours of work by an immigration paralegal or lawyer and newspaper ads should not increase the cost by much more.

I don't want the H1B system to be something it is not, the government has already muddled the intent of the system by allowing H1Bs to apply for greencards. In fact it is probably the only practical way of getting a green card as a skilled immigrant, but government chokes the supply of those at will, making it unpredictable. If the sole goal of the H1B is to relieve temporary shortage of labor, H1Bs should not be allowed to apply for green cards.

In the end, I think we have arrived at the same conclusions: that we should increase our immigration quota for skilled immigrants and establish a system independent of the H1B visa for it. I don't know how you intend to test for cultural fit, but I am open to listening to ideas there.

I was dreading putting the bonded labor comparison there, which is why I added the caveat. But a bonded laborer cannot leave their job until their debts are paid off, and an H1B with a greencard application pending cannot leave their job until they get a greencard (or risk losing whatever life/assets the have built up here). I see similarities there, although, obviously the two are not identical.

It is easy to say that immigrants should not expect to build a life and live here permanently, just because they can apply for a green card. However, the current approach to immigration causes uncertainty which hurts both the country (because very skilled immigrants, given a choice, will not accept the uncertainty) and immigrants themselves (for obvious reasons).

I don't know how you intend to test for cultural fit, but I am open to listening to ideas there.

My general feeling is that immigrants should be tolerant, hard working and individualist. The second generation should be integrated into mainstream America, rather than clustered into a ghetto.

These are, IMO, the shared values of the US. A skill/work based system should weed out the lazy. There are basically 2 behaviors I'd like to prevent:

1.) Racism. If someone has a problem with their daughter marrying a black guy, they should stay home. We have enough racists, we don't need to import more.

I'd measure this by intermarriage and cohabitation rates. I.e., if X Americans and X immigrants don't marry people of non-X descent very often, that suggests X's are racist. I'd give people from country X a big penalty on the point system.

2.) Strong family/social obligations. Basically, forcing people (particularly one's children) via social pressure to conform to your own preferences. No clue how to measure this.

My general feeling is that immigrants should be tolerant, hard working and individualist. The second generation should be integrated into mainstream America, rather than clustered into a ghetto.

I am with you 100% here. The good news, if you want to ask an immigrant, is that the U.S. is partly immunized against ghettos. Ghettos are caused by (and often require) two vicious circle type factors: a) An insular culture amongst the immigrants and b) An exclusive (exclusionary?) culture amongst citizens.

The great thing about the U.S. is that from the first day you land here, most people will treat you as an American. In my experience, this is one of the most powerful things America has working for itself. If someone feels like a part of America, the chances that they will harbor ill will for it are negligible and chances that they will want to insulate themselves from it are also low.

I think it is hard to design a racism test, so with the caveat that I don't have a better solution, I have the following problem with your racism test:

There is a high correlation between race and some religions. For example, IMO, the proportion of Muslims who are white is very low, while the proportion of Muslims who are brown is very high. So, in measuring the bias of say people from Pakistan against marrying whites, you might actually be measuring the bias of Muslims against marrying non-Muslims.

Actually, I don't think that is bad. My (potential) children will (and should) be free to marry whoever they choose Muslims, Christians, Zoroastrians, whoever. (Hopefully they wont marry a Scientologist!) Legally, though, discriminating against a religious group for not marrying outside seems like it may fall afoul of some religious freedom rights. Having said that, IANAL.

Regarding (2), it seems that you are using strong family / social obligations as a proxy for testing how much more 'liberal' or open minded compared to the 1st generation, the 2nd generation will be. I think this is such a warped and complex thing though, that it is really impossible to test.

Coming from a background with strong family and social obligations, and luckily from a family with negligible social pressure, I can also tell you it has many positives.

I also think it would be interesting to see how middle and southern United States measure on (2) vs most of the world. I suspect you won't see as much of a difference here as you expect.

Good discussion!

I'm not sure we are immunized against ghettos. Ghettoization has led to violence/ethnic cleansing out on the west coast (Mexicans ethnically cleansing Blacks). In my neck of the woods, there is an Arab ghetto in South Paterson and an Indian ghetto in Edison.

Regarding 2, it's not so much about liberalness/open mindedness as it is about the fact that in the US, you choose your own destiny. Regarding the south, as far as I know they don't tend to try to prevent their daughters from getting educated/working in order to keep them under thumb (for example). I suspect (1) is more an issue for them than (2).

But then again (assuming you aren't from the US), do you really want racist American southerners coming to your country?

Are these ghettos as in "People of the same culture, living together like they did in their native land" or also as in "People of other cultures fear for their safety and are made to feel unwelcome here"? I am concerned about people sticking only to their kind (insularity), but not so concerned about people preferring to stick with the familiar, which is human nature. It's a spectrum, but they are on different ends of it.

I am personally familiar with folks from Edison, and at least in my experience, they are not insular although it could be selection bias. Standard reasons for a newly minted NYU or Columbia grad (or a fresh H1B) from India to live in Edison is easy access to Indian food, cheap rent and staying near friends. It is not staying away from "corrupt Americans". Indeed, most of them would prefer to live in Manhattan if they could afford it, and when they can many do.

I live in Atlanta, where people are very family oriented but I can count on one hand the number of times I have faced racism in the 7 years I have lived here. I suspect the number would be similar or more in any other country. I'd be ok with these people coming to my country.

It takes more than 10 years to get GC. It depends on which category( EB1,EB2 or EB3) you fall into. Many big companies file only EB3 and it takes more than 10 years.

Indeed, and this is part of the reason why I haven't moved to the US, even though I have a H-1B visa.

H-1B are almost a lottery. The day they start accepting the requests (usually April 1st) they go over quota and they proceed by random selections (in October). Of course the processing fee is not refundable (over $1000).

With the money I spent in visas and attorneys in the past 5 years, you could hire a full time coder oversea for at least one year...

Actually, in 2009 they didn't run out of quota for a long time. (Too bad I was only interested around April 10, 2008! By the time 2009 came around, it was a bit harder to find a job...)

The conditions of TARP for the banks meant that they could not hire H-1Bs. Since banks -- not tech -- were the biggest hirers of overseas workers, they still hadn't hit the cap in November 2009.

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