Hacker News Reader

Comment by nwhybrid | Hacker News Reader

As a former H1-B worker myself (please put down the pitch-forks :)), I can tell you that regular companies aren't hiring H1-Bs to replace you directly. Instead they contract swarms of us through companies like WiPro and other body shops. This, along with the inability to seek a more fitting job on your own regardless of skill level is the main problem I see. You're essentially shackled to these body shops. You can't go home because of their BS employee agreements that force you to pay thousands if you leave before a certain time, you can't ask for higher salary or healthcare benefits, you don't get to choose where you work so it may be Texas today, WA tomorrow, Alabama next week so forget having a family life, you're wife can't work if you bring her and kids with you so you have to just follow along to their whims regardless. It is pretty much human trafficking once you get here. I can tell most folks here are American, they have no idea how messed up the H1-B system is.

View on HN

Your perspective is the one missing from this debate.

I don't have a problem with immigration -- my grandparents were all immigrants. I have a problem with this three-tier system of greencards, guest visas and systematic import of undocumented workers.

These leech companies are farming exploited quasi-immigrant labor while screwing up the labor market for everyone else.

You should be able to come to this country like my ancestors did -- pass a physical and get a green card. An Indian technology worker shouldn't be separated from his kids, a Chinese restaurant waiter shouldn't be an indentured slave, and Americans of all backgrounds shouldn't have their salaries kneecapped by thousands of workers with no rights.

Speaking totally from a selfish standpoint, these policies against immigrants don't make sense for the American worker either.

H1Bs lower the wage of American tech workers because it fills the workforce with those who can't ask for more.

Cracking down on illegal immigrants just forces them underground away from the ability to demand workers rights. This puts the American worker, who demands minimum wage, safe work places and overtime at a disadvantage.

I don't claim to know what the perfect policy is but as it stands the systems are set up to benefit the employer in every case.

I don't think I've ever heard this point made about H1B in particular.

Giving employers a way to shackle workers to a specific job and salary is bad from virtually every political perspective. It's anti-competitive (what kind of free market association is that?), it's anti-immigrant (obviously), and it's anti-labor because it artificially drops market prices.

>You should be able to come to this country like my ancestors did -- pass a physical and get a green card.

Like show up at the airport and get a green card?

It was never that automatic in the old days. From Ellis Island, for example, over 120,000 were sent back.

"New arrivals were processed quickly. In the Registry Room, Public Health Service doctors looked to see if any of them wheezed, coughed, shuffled or limped. Children were asked their names to make sure they weren't deaf or dumb. Toddlers were taken from their mothers' arms and made to walk. As the line moved forward, doctors had only a few seconds to check each immigrant for sixty symptoms of disease. Of primary concern were cholera, favus (scalp and nail fungus), tuberculosis, insanity, epilepsy, and mental impairments. The disease most feared was trachoma, a highly contagious eye infection that could lead to blindness and death.

Hospital Wards Once registered, immigrants were free to enter the New World and start their new lives. But if they were sick, they spent days, weeks, months even, in a warren of rooms. Some, like the tuberculosis ward, were open to the sea, where a gentle New York harbor breeze cleansed their lungs, improving their chances. Other rooms were solitary, forlorn places where the illness itself decided when to leave or stay. Most patients in the hospital or Contagious Disease Ward recovered, but some were not so lucky. More than 120,000 immigrants were sent back to their countries of origin, and during the island's half-century of operation more than 3,500 immigrants died there."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/goldman/peopleevents/e_ellis.ht...

And that's not even covering even less-friendly actions, like the Chinese Exclusion Act.

>More than 120,000 immigrants were sent back to their countries of origin

That doesn't sound like a lot, given the scale of immigration. Out of how many? This sounds like a good way to flood the labor market.

From the linked page, out of 12 million. A 99% acceptance rate.

And this country is better off for it or am I also oversimplifying?

>>You should be able to come to this country like my ancestors did -- pass a physical and get a green card... Americans of all backgrounds shouldn't have their salaries kneecapped by thousands of workers with no rights.

If anyone could come into the US by simply passing a physical exam, salaries would be impacted much more drastically, this time by the sheer increase in the labor supply.

In the 20th century the total population of employable humans doubled in roughly a decade. That is, when women were allowed to enter the workforce in a real capacity.

We adjusted and the economy grew.

Concerns like yours were the same concerns raised by Americans regarding Asians a little over a century ago, leading to our closed borders. These fears were unfounded.

America is still succeeding based on the momentum of our former liberal open border policy and in another century or so I'm sure we'll regret having tightened immigration as much as we have.

It's crazy that if you're born here by random chance you get incredible perks in life, but if you want to come here and earn those perks you're pretty much screwed unless you've already proven success in your current country.

NAFTA did that anyway.

We just systematically deprived those workers of their rights while they built stuff, worked in meat packing plants, restaurants, etc. Meanwhile the urban poor deal with 50%+ unemployment rates.

Is it a common reaction to raise pitchforks at H1-B's? I mostly feel sorry for workers on visa. They don't have the flexibility I do to change jobs if they're not happy. That would be the absolute worst for me, as someone who is always looking for a better gig.

This is a common misconception. It is a very easy process to change jobs on an H1B. The difficult part is the Green Card process, which gets reset (IANAL) and currently getting a green card takes upto 10 years, if you're from India.

The problem essentially is that many of these workers either don't know that they can switch jobs, don't have the skills relevant to get another job or, in many cases, have a sort of loyalty to their present company for 'giving them an opportunity to come to the US'.

The last sentiment is a lot more common than you would imagine.

The problem is that many of those workers WANT green cards, as getting one while you are an H1 is arguably the most sensible path forward, and chances are that a company that sponsors your green card will make you pay a penalty if you change jobs while the process is going + 1 year. The end result is that You have an H1, but you not only have to restart the green card process (or at least set it back, depending on the moment you are applying), but you might end up paying 10K+ for the privilege... on top of the other company sponsoring the H1 AND the Green Card.

So, in practice, the mobility provisions are only non-onerous in a small percentage of the cases: If you don't want to stay in the US, or you want to, but no Green Card paperwork has been filed.

There's also companies that play games with your green card: A friend of mine changed departments (the company he is on goes through constant reorgs, and the company decided that the job description had been changed enough that they had to file a new labor certification. Guess what? If you have a 10 year wait, and every time your job description changes a bit, you decide your green card must restart, you'll never, ever get it.

And you can't ask for the green card by yourself: The employer does, so you are at the mercy of their lawyers too.

You can apply for a new green card via the new employer (or any potential employer too). Once you get through to the I-140 stage of your second GC again - provided that the new job is one similar to your previous one - you can use your same place-in-line in the GC as before.

The green card application can get stuck in the bureaucratic backlog for any number of reasons - for years. These delays messes up with your peace of mind in ways you can probably imagine. Internet is full of horror stories about these things. This prevents people from changing jobs, or making any long term plans about buying a house etc.

It is a long-standing request from many people stuck in GC backlogs to not have them go through the _unpredictable_ re-application process, when they switch jobs. This was hinted as part of President Obama's Executive Action on immigration reform.

In a memo[1] dated 11/20/2014, Jeh Johnson (Secretary of Dept. of Homeland Security) stated:

  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.
  ...
  To correct this problem, I hereby direct USCIS to take several 
  steps to modernize and improve the immigrant visa process.

But USCIS has not done anything to improve this situation yet. 18 months have passed since Secretary Johnson's original memo, but USCIS has not made any move to grant an EAD to people waiting in long GC backlogs. While everyone rails at politicians, body shops etc, USCIS gets a free pass at continuing their ineptitude.

The latest visa bulletin [2] lists India EB2 priority date as 1st Nov 2004. Let me translate that for people not familiar with the jargon - an immigrant from India who is being granted Green Card now applied on 1st Nov 2004 and s/he already had 5 years industry experience then.

USCIS rarely wastes an opportunity to remind [3] everyone that it receives very little taxpayer money for immigration services and about 95% of it's budget comes from fees. But this self-financing is made possible by leeching off of thousands of legal immigrants for decades. If they could do their assigned jobs properly - providing EAD for immigrants with approved I-140, recapturing unused green card applications from prior years etc - it would have been a huge relief for many immigrants.

[1] Executive Action: Support High-skilled Business and Workers - https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/14_1120...

[2] Visa Bulletin July 2016 - https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/law-and-policy/bul...

[3] USCIS on Twitter - https://twitter.com/USCIS/status/740574919717715968

A large number of well qualified Indian and Chinese immigrants are in the same situation. The Chinese situation is a bit better (China @ 2010 vs India @ 2004). However, none of us are taking a stand on it and making sufficient noise about it. There are thousands of tax paying legal immigrants stuck in limbo. The tax money + fees that are paid are in billions and yet apparently somehow we have no voice.

>>This is a common misconception. It is a very easy process to change jobs on an H1B.

No it isn't. Even though the process is informally called an "H-1B transfer", changing employers while on H1B actually requires filing a brand new H-1B petition with USCIS. The only difference is that this petition is not subject to the annual cap. Everything else - the crazy requirements and loops you and the sponsoring employer have to jump through - is the same.

What this means is that there is a big risk associated with the process. Since it's a new petition, it can be rejected. You are literally at the mercy of the USCIS officer processing your application, and they can deny it for any reason.

Of course, this also assumes that you're able to find an employer who is willing to sponsor your visa. Considering the legal expenses (thousands of dollars per worker), the hassle and the risk, most companies don't. And if your skills are in a niche field, good luck finding any that do.

I've done h1b transfers before, as an employer.

I wouldn't say it's "very easy", but it's not super hard either.

I don't disagree with what you're saying in general, but shouldn't there be some cost incurred by the new company?

Remember, like it or not, the h1b program is technically designed to only come into play when a company can't find suitable local talent to fill a position.

In our case it was a few thousand dollars of legal fees and gov "expedite" fees

If we were doing a lot of them our legal fees could go way down, and we'd get good at doing them.

The cap is a big deal, and the reason most h1bs get rejected.

Like you said, if an h1b worker is already here, the cap doesn't apply -- I think that's a good thing.

It seems to be a common misconception that h1bs are bound to their employer.

I simply don't think that's true.

It's not supposed to be true, but take the company who is making threats to have their employees deported if they complain or leave.

Couldn't they make sure to transfer their h1b before they resigned from their old job?

(And not threaten or complain until the transfer is processed successfully?)

With the IANAL caveat: that helps prevent one type of employee abuse, the "retaliation termination" intended to force an ex-employee out of the country rather than starting their new job. (Which is also the reason why a visa worker who is waiting on the H-1B "transfer" is advised by immigration lawyers not to tell their current employer that they are thinking of leaving, no matter how much they want to.) But, that's just one situation.

What other kind of abuse is there that applies specifically to people on h1b, and not to Americans?

As a for instance, employers will(illegally) demand that the H1B worker reimburse them for the legal and filing fees as a form of retribution for transferring. While certain greencard sponsorship related expenses can be recouped if the H1B is that far down the line, any visa related costs (attorney, filing fed) must be payed for by the sponsor.

https://www.dol.gov/wecanhelp/h1bworkers.htm

Yes, but it can be worse than that. There was a different article about it recently, where the employer threatened to falsely report their visa employees as illegal if they complained. Which means the employees can wind up leaving the country and possibly never returning. For an employee who has worked in that country for years and calls it home, this is akin to being threatened with exile.

> This is a common misconception. It is a very easy process to change jobs on an H1B.

Have you tried changing jobs on a H-1B, with an employer who wants to stop you, and who gets legal advice on how to go about doing that? It SHOULD be an easy process to change jobs.

I wouldn't say 'very easy' but 6 years after you get an H1B you are cap-exempt. So any new employer can apply for an H1B for you right away though it only gives you the years left in the original visa not another 6y.

WiPro, Disney, IBM, and others are the face of the "bring people in on a visa to train your job for offshore" -- WiPro often being the body shop.

In this instance it isn't the category of Visa, per say, but how immigrant visas are being used.

OP makes a good point about being shackled to a company. The bigs (MSFT, others), don't seem to do such, but the body shops certainly do take advantage of the situation.

Really, if you look at visas granted by company, those at the top are often body shops and should be both ineligible and required to pay significantly more.

Most of us/them are not in bad situations. I was H1B and it was great - stressful during the downturns, but better off than not coming here.

Scammers will prey on those with less chance to make it.

Edit: btw, when things got bad at my sponsor company I was able to get another company to sponsor, transfered my H1B and continued the GC process.

Not all H1-B workers come via body shops. FB, Google, MSFT, Amazon all hire their own H1-Bs and pay wages no American could complain depresses anyone. This is how I came. It boggles the mind that body shops are allowed to exploit this system and abuse workers who come and do their best to drive wages down. The one solution is end the indentured servitude aspect of it. If H1Bs are free to move around and work where they please, the abuse would end overnight. Free markets work when the labor force also has, you know, freedom.

That's a horrible idea. The whole point of the visa is to service a specific job that was impossible to fill. It makes perfect sense that an H1-b holder should be forced to stay at only one job and not be allowed to compete on the wider job market.

The solution to the abuse of the visa is to get rid of all the legal and bureaucratic tests and hoops and auction off the slots instead. The firm with the winning bid gets to import a foreigner.

If this is really about filling important roles where it's impossible to hire or train an American, the winning bids should be in the hundreds of thousands. If it's really just a system of wage suppression, well the bids will be low, for all to see.

If you want indentured servitude, that's how you get indentured servitude. It is also, not a system of wage suppression that people think it is (although it certainly is abused in that way). The entire pool of H1Bs represent a tiny pimple of the US workforce.

That's an absurd comparison. The visa holder is not bonded and can return home at any time.

The work visa system is obviously broken. Forcing employers to put a dollar value on these supposedly necessary visas goes pretty far to fixing all the problems.

But it is effectively indentured servitude, because the workers see it as the first step to immigrating. Everyone knows this.

The workers are wrong, then. That is not the purpose of the H1B. Anyone who thinks it should lead to a green card should be barred from getting the visa.

The H1-B is a dual intent status. There are categories that are strictly non-immigrant intent, TN work permits fit this category. Border guards can and do test that you have non-immigrant intent during normal border crossings while under this status ("Where is your home?" "what will you do once your TN is over?").

If it really was intended that H1-Bs not have immigrant intent then there was a legal framework already in place to ensure that. Most likely it is you that is incorrect about the purpose of these H1-Bs.

The "dual-purpose" nature of the H-1B basically means that (1) you are not prohibited to enter on an H-1B with the intent to stay permanently, and, perhaps more significantly (2) you aren't required to leave the US for a period of time after entering on an H-1B before getting an immigrant visa which will let you stay permanently.

But it is still a non-immigrant visa that does not lead to permanent residency or citizenship, but requires you to qualify for, apply for, and secure an immigrant visa if and when you want to become an immigrant rather than a non-immigrant worker.

said by someone who doesn't understand US immigration. H1B is a non immigrant visa, sure, but it can open the door to the immigration process via company sponsorship. I know because I did it, and many others do too. Applying for a greencard from your native country is counterproductive. Basically a 10 year wait for some. Why bother.

> it can open the door to the immigration process via company sponsorship

That's wrong and it's wrong that it worked for you. You should leave.

yeah! The ones who did it legally should leave. You're very solution oriented.

They desperately need to turn this into an auction system so only the best candidates get chosen. It is also tough for those of us who have to work with sub par H1B candidates and clean up their mess.

Yes, but none of those companies save Microsoft are anywhere near the top of the list of companies employing H1-B workers. The top employers for H1-B workers are mostly bodyshops like WiPro.

Nobody is talking about L1B or L1A visas yet. L1B allows these bodyshops to overcome the limits set forth by the H1B visas. While H1Bs are indentured servants and tied to their employers it is still possible for them to switch jobs once they're in the US. However, L1Bs is worse. There are no limits to the number of L1B visas that are issued. They cannot switch jobs. They do not have to be paid fairly according to market wages. They are slaves.

Also - I'm on H1B. But the difference is I graduated from a top school in the US and I am employed not to replace an American worker but I have certain skills that are not easily found in the tech industry. Unfortunately, I'm lumped into the same category as the body shopping H1Bs and so I've not yet received my greencard despite paying taxes for the past 7 years. And FYI I've consistently hit AMT for the past so many years and I own property and investments in this country. So, this kind of BS not only hurts American workers. It hurts the genuine immigrants as well. It also hurts the economy overall because although I wanted to start my own startup I have not been able to due to my visa status and restrictions. I would've generated economic opportunity for several individuals. I have also had to turn down CTO positions because usually tiny startups do not have the ability to sponsor H1Bs and they just don't want to deal with the paperwork. I am also working with a founder right now who wants to bring me on but is in a legal dilemma due to my status.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com