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Comment by tiff_seattle | Hacker News Reader

Why not just adjust the H-1B program so that the highest paid positions get priority? That way companies could still hire abroad for in-demand skills, but it would eliminate bringing people into the country to avoid paying the prevailing wages for IT workers. You could even make exceptions for academic or medical work as needed. It seems like a common sense adjustment to the program, but I don't see many people offering this up as a solution to this problem.

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Exactly this was proposed last year in a bill with a democrat sponsor. But right now H1b is basically the only way to get hired as an immigrant. If you made it wage-prioritized there would be basically no way to get an h1b for entry level jobs, which would really suck for new graduates.

http://alexyar.tumblr.com/post/156649015342/anyway-heres-the...

H-1B shouldn't be used for entry level positions though. It should be used for positions that cannot be filled by the local workforce.

So no jobs for newly graduated students who are not citizens?

If they don't have a skill that employers are willing to pay top dollar for, then no. H-1B is designed for bringing highly skilled workers into the country. It's not a program for job security for new grads.

Experience is usually worth more than skill. It's pretty stupid to turn away smart young people who you have paid to educate in the best universities in the world.

Yes, it is stupid, I wholeheartedly agree it should be fixed, but I disagree that it should be fixed by H-1B visa.

H-1B is not intended for newly graduated students. For them, there is OPT. You are right OPT is restrictive, but that is best solved by changing OPT.

I don't know what you're talking about. As a new graduate, I have a very hefty Data Science offer in the Bay.

(Canadian here btw).

Is it OPT or H1B?

It should be none of them, it should be TN

"The nonimmigrant NAFTA Professional (TN) visa allows citizens of Canada and Mexico, as NAFTA professionals, to work in the United States"[0]

[0] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/employme...

Oh I see. I work on OPT, but am not Mexican or Canadian citizen. I think all STEM majors who studied in an American university have the right to work in US for 3 years in a job very close to what they studied.

This is not true. If you make it wage-prioritized, it will help real employers (VC funded startups as well as big companies), and make life difficult for body-shop employers like the one mentioned in this article. The body-shops are consistently the lowest-paying employers.

If you studied in a US university you don't need H1B visa for 3 years. You can work on OPT with F1 visa. However, OPT is very restricted, you job should be very close to what you studied in university and if you didn't study STEM you get only 1 year. That's how I worked in US as Software Engineer after studying Computer Science.

But H1B is not the answer for entry level jobs. It is for skilled workers.

> But right now H1b is basically the only way to get hired as an immigrant.

No, it's not. (It's technically not even a way to be hired as an immigrant, and there are work-based immigrant visas as well.as other work-eligible non-immigrant visas.)

> If you made it wage-prioritized there would be basically no way to get an h1b for entry level jobs

That's not even theoretically the purpose of the H-1B, and I'm not really convinced we need to import entry level workers.

> which would really suck for new graduates.

I'm not sure “it would reduce the incentive for US colleges to train foreigners rather than Americans for entry-level jobs in high-demand, high-paying professions in America” is an argument against a policy change.

Also, let's not forget about TN for Canadians and Mexicans. Does not allow to immigrate but you can work w/o problems (lost too many friends to it! they moved to SF)

"The nonimmigrant NAFTA Professional (TN) visa allows citizens of Canada and Mexico, as NAFTA professionals, to work in the United States" [0]

[0] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/employme...

That would result in tech workers continuing to be underpaid, just slightly less so, and other professions being complete non-starters for immigrants. Working in tech, it's easy to get myopic about H1-B issues and only see how the program affects our workplaces. But it's important to realize there are professions other than tech that get paid a lot less than even the underpaid tech H1-B visa holders. And adjusting the program to fix problems in tech can easily break it for everyone else.

But I think there is a better way to fix the program and not have the kind of collateral damage that your plan would create. It's a method that's in use in many parts of the world and it works well...ratios. Let companies hire as many DHS-cleared immigrants as they want provided they also employ the requisite number of US citizens in similar roles.

But those low paid professions should be nonstarters for immigrants. Can't hire enough nurses? If the pay floats up to React Native developer salaries, I'm sure you'll be able to.

Not to mention it would drive down wages for American jobs.

This national auction for visas would be an economic disaster, resulting in immigrants being paid much less in areas that have higher a cost-of-living.

Companies could pay immigrants less than the prevailing wage of American citizens, and lay off the citizens. Immigrants would take the jobs too because it has the added value of the visa.

Paying immigrants less than the prevailing wage of American citizens with H-1B visa is illegal.

GP is talking about switching the H1B visa to a wage auction, specifically doing away with prevailing wage. That's what we're talking about.

I would think any such wage auction reform would maintain prevailing wage requirement. I don't see why not.

Then the wage auction doesn't solve any problem that the prevailing wage requirement already solves, it only creates more issues.

It solves a problem of, say, Google and Infosys competing to get the lottery. With auction, Google gets all of them.

Or another solution is to do away with the quota that originally caused the lottery problem to begin with, since it's now required that consultancies like Infosys prove the immigrant is working for the customer.

I 100% support quota elimination, but I thought wage auction might be easier to pass than quota elimination.

Why wouldn’t that happen now already?

> Not to mention it would drive down wages for American jobs.

There are a fixed number of slots in the program. Requiring the highest paid employees take those slots would mean immigrant labor would be costlier.

No, it just means that you have a set supply and the auction settles at a specific wage.

Say you limit the supply so that only immigrants being paid more than $90/k yr gets approved. Now companies start laying off American citizens getting paid more than that in high-cost-of-living areas because they can hire replacement immigrants for $98/k yr.

If you look at the purpose of the H1B program, it's not to play a numbers game with wages - it's to allow skilled labor to come to the U.S. and contribute to the economy.

40% of Fortune 500 companies are founded by immigrant families, and if you keep lowering H1B quotas to make sure Americans survive the wage auction, you're going to stagnate the economy.

You claim it's not a numbers game, but obviously a discussion if immigration quotas and wages is a pure numbers game. Let's not pretend.

We control the supply completely, which means we control the price. We can set any floor, or regional floor we want, and we can keep the existing rules in place if we want as well.

No, I claim that the purpose of the H1b program isn't to play a numbers games with wages.

The purpose is to allow new skilled labor into the U.S. so that the economy can flourish. The prevailing wage already sets the wage floor to prevent stagnation - scrapping it for a wage auction only creates more problems for American citizens working in skilled labor positions.

For the most part, your complaints are fixable by just splitting jobs into categories, and then only taking the highest paid in each category.

But honestly, I don't think that's needed except for a few areas like translators. If a company truly needs someone, they're going to be willing to pay.

That would be great, but companies would figure out ways around it. Company would pay 2X and ask employee to pay X to some random/affiliated company for training etc. They would even do this handoff in India to stay out of radar and tell you what many indians would take the deal.

The solution is "EXTREMELY" strict penalties including prison time for board of companies who indulge in it willingly.

Such kickbacks would be very illegal and are prosecuted very aggressively already I think.

Including the example in this very article which no one has bothered to read.

I doubt that would be even remotely legal. If it were, you would have seen tons of minimum wage jobs paying below minimum wage through these schemes.

It's easy to exploit immigrants though. Cultural differences (less likely to speak out), as well as lack of knowledge and experience of local laws, make the likelihood of legal action very low indeed.

Maybe. We're talking highly educated immigrants though, whike you're probably thinking of immigrants who are not as educated.

> Why not just adjust the H-1B program so that the highest paid positions get priority?

Why not just eliminate the employer-sponsored H-1B and allow individuals who aren't personally barred from entry to pay for temporary residency and work permit on an annual basis, with prices that escalate with higher demand?

Salaries vary not just on individual skill and talent but also on the city of the job. This will make all the H1 jobs go to Bay Area, may be some to NYC, LA & Boston too. But primarily Bay Area.

If someone truly has such rare skills that they need to be imported then they should be getting top dollar anywhere in the country.

Would mean that companies in NY & CA get preference.

How could a company in Ohio compete?

Would have to adjust to living expenses of the location. But, as far a I know, H1B visas aren't tied to a location.

Wont that result in companies having to overpay foreign workers? Essentially making the entire program ineffective.

The point of the program is to fill positions that are difficult or impossible to fill locally. To this end employers are supposed to pay a fair market wage. Underpaying foreign workers is an abuse of the program and what is making it ineffective. If they started being "overpaid" it would be an indication that the program is fulfilling its objective (proof that the employer is desperate for the candidate).

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