Congress will consider proposal to raise H-1B minimum wage to $100,000
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
A family of four in San Francisco with an income of 100k a year qualifies for housing assistance. Yes, I know, most families are two income now, but it doesn't speak well to this severe "shortage" that a critical worker with ultra valuable skills in short supply still needs direct welfare from the government to get by.
I'd say 200k for a minimum salary. I know that seems high to people, but remember, by and large we rely on labor markets to set salary levels. If you can't hire the experienced lawyer or financial analyst you want for 100k a year to work in a big, loud open office, we generally say that's the market's answer. Increase the offer and job conditions or accept that people have found higher value work to do.
Giving employers the right to control who is and is not allowed to come into the united states is a really, really big deal. It's a complete end-run around normal labor markets. If we're going to allow this, it needs to be a slam-dunk decision - yes, clearly this is a very essential and very well paid worker. To me, 100k doesn't come close, especially in the expensive areas around silicon valley (where many of the companies claiming a shortage and lobbying for visas are located).
I think there is this mythology that you can bring in amazing foreign workers and pay them (virtually) nothing. If you hire a 50k/year developer there isn't really reason to believe that they are any better if they are from Bangalore or if they are from Peoria.
The current situation is incredibly exploitative of these foreign workers too. They are effectively tied to their original employer to remain in the country.
Honestly, 200k still seems on the low side to me. H1B should be a "we can't find anyone" not "we can't find anyone willing to work cheaply enough" visa.
It's bad enough that we have a job problem. The last thing I want is the few good jobs left where people can actually negotiate great wages be left to companies to circumvent the market using labor laws.
The law already requires the employer pay the prevailing wage. The arbitrage from outsourcing companies (Cognizant, Tata, Infosys) included head-quartering in cheap areas of Georgia and New Jersey, filing DoL paperwork with wages prevailing in that HQ area, and then sending their employees on "business trips" to the actual client place (CA, NY) while not adjusting the wages.
But that is just another way of stating the real problem here: the H1-B program isn't used to hire exceptional talent that cannot be found locally. It is currently used to hire rather typical talent at an exceptional discount.
People keep saying this. Where is that documented?
""" Recruitment efforts: The H1B dependent employer must also attest to making good faith attempts to recruit US workers and offering prevailing wages for this position. When hiring an H1B worker, it is important for employers to recognize the attendant responsibilities that they must shoulder. Although the requirements are not excessively burdensome, the employer is required to maintain some paperwork to demonstrate its compliance with the law. A clear understanding and fulfillment of these requirements will minimize possible civil penalties and ensure that the employer will be permitted to petition for future H1B workers """
http://www.h1base.com/content/h1bvisarequirements """ The requirements to qualify for an H1B visa are:
You must have ONE of the following
1) A Bachelor's degree or Masters Degree (or the foreign equivalent degree from your Country), OR
2) 12 years work experience, OR
3) A mix of further education + work experience
The general H1B visa qualification rule is: - for every 1 year of studies at University / College = 3 points - for every 1 year of work experience = 1 point
12 points in 'total' are required to qualify for the H1B visa program """
People seem to be implying that it requires skills well beyond that.
If you read the legislative history, that is, the testimony and claims of lobbyists, the floor debate, the PR releases, the statements made by congressional representatives, and so forth, I do think it's overwhelmingly clear that this legislation was presented and sold as a program to bring highly skilled, highly paid workers into the US who were supplementing rather than replacing the existing US workforce.
There is also language in the legislation that displacement of American workers is disallowed.
It's pretty clearly meant to be for companies to hire very skilled talent for which there is no American source.
As one owner of the consulting firm explained to me, they'll just use some kind of system, that says "You get paid $100K as a salary but you give back to the company $30K for some kind of service that it provides to you", so in the end they'll end up paying whatever they want.
To stop abuse of H1-B system, they need to limit % of H1-B employees in one firm.
But in general with increasing quality of collaborative tools, that make remote work easier, this problem will keep getting worse. Since companies do not need to hire you when you are abroad, they just need to have contract with your company abroad that will provide them "services" (which is a code word for 100 employees working full time for you in offshore office). Most of the companies already do this and this issue will keep getting worse with increasing quality of collaborative tools and I am not sure what the solution is.
Consider the US intel activities in subverting US citizens rights, no one is surprised if even NSA and CIA database centers are outsourced to India. The CIA already runs alot of data in AWS, Azure etc where those companies are literally dominated by Indians.
A common trick is to move US data offshore to get it cataloged by US spy agencies. For example, Google, SV, Redmond etc backing up client data in multiple offshore locations is fair game for NSA.
They will easily find a way to mark around any 'plan' Trump can conceive of. It is also _highly_ doubtful Trump admin even wants to take them on.
Many companies that hire H1B's are already paying these contracting firms 100k for a contractor employee who earns 60-80k at the end of the day. So will this proposal change things? Probably not.
Possible solutions could be regulate contracting firms and don't allow more than a certain percentage of H1B employees in their workforce pool or H1B employees can't work for a contracting firm. Reduce the number of H1B's granted to a much smaller percentage. Any company that hires a H1B employee must prove every 6 months that their are still no possible Americans that can do the job.
This program is being exploited at the expense of Americans. It was not set up as a charity to help poor people come and work in America. It was set up to bring in talent that was not available. If company truly can't find someone locally and needs to hire someone from India then they need to sponsor/pay for that person to become a permanent/citizen of the USA.
About permanent residency though, the system is set up to make this quite hard (on purpose?). But AFAIK, H1B is still one of the most reliable ways to permanent residency. <Edit: Please see the comments, this next sentence is incorrect and doesn't say what I meant. But I'm leaving it here for continuity's sake.> So I'm not sure about your point, because currently companies cannot sponsor people "to become a permanent/citizen of the USA" easily or at all.
Dual intent is a great idea, and H1-B is really useful for companies who want to tempt highly skilled workers who aren't sure yet if they definitely want to immigrate. Some of my UK collegues stayed in the US, but about half came back after a few years. So that's a good reasons not to force companies to automatically apply for permanent residency, not everybody wants it (probably the majority though - hard to get numbers on this).
But then if you do want permanent residency, the process takes ages. I'm not sure there's a good solution to this. One option would be to increase the cost of the H1-B application, require companies to submit the I-140, and pre-process it. Then if the visa holder decides to apply for permanent residency it's already mostly done. I think requiring companies to guarantee a certain employment time also fixes this though, because that way they're invested and the visa holder has time and safety to figure out if permanent residency is what they want.
H1B mills are gaming the system. What's the corruption rank in the countries where H1B candidates come from. That has a correlation to faked resumes and credentials.
Neither US political party is attempting to disrupt this system, it's just "spend money helping poorer people" or "spend money helping richer people". Red team does this through huge tax incentives for companies and individuals despite the growing national debt. There's no longer an actual conservative, small-government party in the US.
While I'm not advocating or even agreeing with the comment you're replying to, your statement is as overbroad as it can be. In the case of this issue, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see companies (as in companies we've worked in as tech workers) use the H1B system and form an opinion on it. For many of us (and that includes those of us who are hiring managers and/or close to C-level execs) it's readily obvious enough that forming an opinion isn't 'just a feeling' whatever that means. Feelings are invalid now? And 'most' people?
But I'm not seeing a lot of that. What have you seen at some of the companies you've worked at? Can you at least provide one clear case of abuse?
From my end, I work for one of the big tech H1B whales. And the starting salary in the US for a junior position is already above 100k, so that change wouldn't affect my company. I also have never seen the H1B abused. I've interviewed candidates myself, and we pick the strongest we can find purely on skillset, never because a non citizen is willing to work for less.
Is that the complaint? That US companies should hire US workers even if they're not as skilled, as long as they can still get the job done, even though they won't do it as well? Ok, in that case sure, I can see my company abusing H1B then. But I'm not sure we'd want to impose such strict a rule on our companies, seems like it would affect their ability to compete. That's also not the complaint I'm hearing. I'm hearing people are pissed off that we pick equal or worse qualified non citizens simply because they're willing to do it for less.
Isn't this kind of dismissive of other people's views? This seems like you are declaring yourself to be an expert and everyone else ignorant when their views don't align with your own.
People are also informed by their own personal experiences.
I believe that refusal to consider a different vantage point is also really starting to become an issue.
For example, I know nothing about the true nature of how most US companies use the H1B visa. So I read the article, and then read some comments, and I now know nothing more except that Americans are pissed off, because it could be possible that companies are abusing the intent of the H1B visa. But we don't know, and I haven't heard anyone that does, and obviously congress is going to look into it, so why are some Americans pissed off?
Btw, I wouldn't say that if I was told some knowledgeable Americans are pissed off. But I was told some Americans feel like the H1B Visa is being abused, and are pissed off about it. That implies they don't know, it's just a feeling.
I'm curious. Are you aware of any country on the planet that follows your line of reasoning?
I can't see this as a plausible rally cry coming from many Americans, especially those who've traveled our backroads in the past 20 years and seen the decrepit state of small town USA. They want those jobs.
I'd be getting a substantial raise.