U.S. Senators Advocate H-1B Freeze for 60 Days or Longer
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Remember that it's not just new entrants that need H1B processing: it's immigrants currently in the country that need to transfer their visa type (e.g., former students moving from OPT to H1B). What, are they supposed to leave or risk being denied a visa forevermore?
Not to mention, they've already paused green card processing and shut down most offices that process F1 (student) visas. The US just doesn't want high-skilled immigrants anymore.
I do not believe it unreasonable to take measures to encourage hiring of citizens over importing workers when official unemployment is near 15%, and unofficially, closer to 20%. Your typical tech company is likely to be sophisticated enough to onboard skilled workers outside the US and support them working remotely, in which case, they are not impacted by this policy.
Do you really think that ?
We have worked with team members in different time zones (Europe, India, China), and even with WFH it is a massive headache to work with someone whose schedule runs with a 12 hour offset.
Also, the COVID crisis makes relocation a massive pain in the ass for anyone who is being moved countries as of this time.
> This behavior has been documented in great detail.
Exactly, and still, time and again, the US govt. wants to solve the issue with a blunt tool that kicks everyone, highly skilled or not, out of the country.
It is easy enough to find companies like this. Ban companies that run IT consultancies from hiring H1Bs, unless they pay the market rate. Blanket ban companies who are known abusers (Infosys, TCS).
My faith in Hanlon's razor has dwindled over the last few years. This isn't incompetence. This is malice. The visa laws are always sufficiently less exploitative than the career/monetary gains of working here as an immigrant. (especially pronounced for Indian/Chinese candidates for whom a GC is impossible). I do not find that to be a coincidence.
Yes. I have worked at both at a successful (ie profitable) fully remote startup that employs hundreds of people, and now at an enterprise that is fully remote with thousands of employees across several continents. If you can't manage teams remotely, you can't manage.
Not all companies are structured to be innately remote. My team for instance is really struggling to adjust to remote settings, despite having a flexible WFH setup and working closely with remotely located teams before.
It is little things. Relationships between colleagues get colder. The people I used to see daily were also great friends of mine. Giving constructive feedback and taking criticism is a lot easier when it is by a friend and face to face. Meetings lose the wonderful flow they can have when in person. Brainstorming and white boarding has all but disappeared.
The way I see it, with no offense meant. If your work can be done fully remotely. Maybe it isn't that difficult to begin with. Big decisions need big discussions and big consensus. My best progress has been made when I get a room together with a team mate, with a huge board and we brainstorm for hours on end. 90% of the time coding is the easiest part of the job. That it can be done remotely, doesn't alleviate the bottleneck much.
Or maybe if your team consisted of introverted, brutally objective people from the get go, who like the additional coldness of remote communication, then sure. But, it actively excludes a lot of the workforce.
One has most of the issues you describe, the workflow has gotten cold, meetings are mechanical, communication is poor, the team slack is dry. Problem solving is hard over email, only one person on the team proactively makes phone calls. And of the two offices, this one had the most people that would chime in on conversations from over the cube walls.
On the other project, management has taken the "overcommunicate" route to WFH. Everything feels collaborative, I talk to everyone often enough that nothing that would naturally come up in the office but might not be big enough for an email gets dropped. I have better insight into the electrical and mechanical engineer's tasks than I did while in the office, we identify points of future collaboration calls in meetings, and I've gotten to know people joining the project during WFH well enough over video calls that we now chit-chat over slack.
Perhaps the most striking sign of a culture difference is around 2/3 of people on both projects only turn their webcams on for calls regarding the 2nd project.
It's so strange to me that this viewport is controversial, but "Buy Local" (which I have yet to encounter someone who is against supporting local businesses) is not. This is the labor version of "Buy Local".
Because of frictional unemployment, it's neither possible nor desirable for the unemployment rate to reach 0.
>which means you should be forced to source local talent before you're permitted to source from outside the country.
This is already a requirement; H-1B employers must attest that they can't find an employee domestically and have made a good faith attempt to do so.
>It's so strange to me that this viewport is controversial, but "Buy Local" (which I have yet to encounter someone who is against supporting local businesses) is not. This is the labor version of "Buy Local".
Buy Local is not enforced by the jackboot of the federal government. You're free to hire only non-visa workers for your business.
How effectively is this enforced? The arguments against these visa is that companies know how to game this requirement. They specifically write job descriptions in a way that’ll fail to find someone locally, so they can hire cheaper immigrant labor.
And cheaper isn’t just lower salaries, they’ll also cause fewer waves and be more accommodating. An employee who depends on your employment to stay in the country is more likely to put up with abuse.
Max 60 days of unemployment over your whole career, when many companies need a month to go from offer to starting, makes being fired a fatal affair. H1B applications being cancelled, if someone switches companies means in the first few years, changing companies is even worse.
Oh, you've been working in the US for 20 years ? Hard luck, you still don't have a permanent residency because of some archaic system. No, your wife can't work in the US either. Also, you can't avail any of the benefits you already pay taxes for. You lose your job and your child is a US citizen ? Hard luck, take them back to where you came from. Because, having immigrant parents is a crime enough to banish even your own citizen.
The visa system is built to encourage abuse. Just because the trade off is worth it, doesn't mean it is fair or a favor. It is a system built to be of maximal benefit to America. Which is fine, but let's not pretend it is some sort of gift that is granted to people of other nations. It's the govt. driving a hard bargain because they know they can.
Now, my career does grow 2x as fast and I do make 2x as much by working in the US. I also do not have kids, partners or a life in the US, that it would destroy me to leave the country. I am also fortunate enough to be in a company that doesn't usually fire willy-nilly. So, I continue to stay. But, in 5 or so years, I wouldn't be too sure.
I see this all the time with the job descriptions
Finding someone with knowledge of multiple products would be hard, so they list all of them. When they can't find someone with those skills, they ask for a visa to find someone who can.
In reality, that person doesn't actually know and won't actually be managing all those products.
That method is so common, it's listed on the gov't website:
> The H-1B worker is not performing the duties specified in the H-1B petition, including when the duties are at a higher level than the position description.
https://www.uscis.gov/report-fraud/combating-fraud-and-abuse...
While this is true, what percentage of employers make an actual good faith attempt? I'd be shocked if it was even as high as 50%. In my experience, companies design job postings for a market where only an H-1B applicant could get the position.
At any rate I think your analogy makes more sense for services procured from outside the U.S. If you hire someone who then relocates to the U.S. they become local by definition.
I am. I'd rather just pay a higher income tax and have that fund UBI, and save myself the money by buying cheap instead of local.
Asking consumers to spend more money on feel-good slogans is the same as a regressive tax.
Your neighborhood is decaying? It's not because welfare is broken, healthcare is broken, and law enforcement is useless, it's because you, the working-class consumer made the wrong choice.
Also it's an awful Prisoner's Dilemma. If I'm faithful, it makes a tiny dent in the odds of any given business closing. Why not defect, if my vote won't count for anything in the end?
The competition should be solely on skill and its a disgrace that companies are allowed to hire H1-Bs to save money.
Corporations need to be regulated to hell, it's been proven over and over.
You can argue about where they actually end up, but it's not the bottom 20%. Esp once you figure in immigration related overheads (that's staff, not just fees and travel).
Higher salaries for H1B's would require the right to change jobs easily, unlike now where there's a tremendous risk. And then there's L1's, who have no negotiation power at all.
Clearly, my personal opinion is to prioritize local labor over you as a business optimizing your opinion of "top talent". I will trade some quality over supporting Local, and if that's a decision we make as a country, I would not be opposed and will vote for representatives who support such policy. One person's "nationalism" is another person's labor solidarity.
So, yes. I'm not only okay with it, I embrace it. Every day is a new day to have the opportunity to try to help someone become a better version of their professional self.
So you want the best but not necessarily local? At the same time serving the needs of the locals? Introduce a tariff? Not the couple of thousand dollars worth of processing fee, but a 20% tax on the salary earned : every single dollar, salary, bonus, stock : everything. This gives you a free market. No one stops you from hiring an H1, but if gives local talent 20-25% leg up over an H1 talent. [ Numbers are of course negotiable but I do not see any number below 20-30% being effective. ]
Sounds like pretty heavy-handed regulation. “Buy Local” doesn’t force anyone to do anything. It encourages consumers to choose a specific product, but all products are still available. Not really sure how they are similar.
“Buy Local” is so controversial in fact that the US government has entered into international agreements limiting it, which is why, e.g., country of origin labels are being removed from meat products. Capitalism and globalization go fist-in-gauntlet.
The fact that one side is overrepresented in empty PR while the other side operates quietly between the economic elites and the politically powerful obscures the disagreement if you don't pay too much attention.
Related - Have you personally hired an H1-B employee? The H1-B process is a pain for employers. There's a lot of costs delays, uncertainty, and legal fees to hiring H1-B.
Doesn't seem too hard
Much "better" for the GOP to do this and claim, "Look, we're trying to keep the brown people out!" And it's good for the Democrats too, "Look at those racists! Vote for us instead!" Neither side has much to gain from doing the right thing.
Apparently it is, as it has not been done.
I haven't seen much in this way. As for what I would propose (if the quotas would be kept)
- Go through the applications by higher salaries first
- Limit the number of hires per company by number of current employees (something like 1 H1-B for every 5 employees - as an example)
- Make the visa transferable after a while
Companies will always find a loophole. Smarter people than you and me (like, law smart) will start cranking at it to help them.
Especially in the US where people make a competition of adhering to the letter but not the spirit of the law (explains a lot about how the US sees GDPR)
This one is personal for me. I have a good friend who had been in the US for like a decade, and finally his green card application was going through before the pandemic hit. What’s going to happen to him? Are you going to leave him visa-less during a pandemic, and kick him out of the country on whatever few flights are available? Is his company supposed to magically rebound when they’ve just lost a key worker with tons of experience?
Throughout the campaign cycle this president motivated his supporters by talking about illegal immigration. Yet at every opportunity, they instead reduce legal immigration.
This sucks, and it breaks a lot of Americans hearts. My grandparents were the first natural-born Americans of our family and we were raised to understand what that meant. It's of little consequence right now & on any personal level, but America is not a ubiquitous place and the pendulum swings forever.
A more sober look at the reality suggests this myth was... less than true. Nonetheless, I always thought of it as an important ideal.
But you're right that the pendulum swings.
I think my sensitivity stems from the recent tweet: "WE WILL SHUT DOWN ALL IMMIGRATION" ...
H1B is a non-immigrant visa.
> Remember that it's not just new entrants that need H1B processing: it's immigrants currently in the country that need to transfer their visa type.
Immigrants already admitted to the US can not get and would not benefit from a non-immigrant visa.
Non-immigrants in the US might seek a different non-immigrant visa, but preventing them from getting one is not an immigration cut. It does not reduce the number of immigrant visas issued.
> What, are they supposed to leave or risk being denied a visa forevermore?
Yes, non-immigrants are supposed to leave when their eligibility for their non-immigrants visa status expires. That's what a non-immigrant visa means. (Even dual-intent non-immigrant visas: those just do not prohibit you from entering with the intent of seeking an immigrant visa while in non-immigrants status, but doing so displaced another prospective immigrant, so cutting the number of people in a position to do it has zero effect on immigration.)
> Not to mention, they've already paused green card processing
Well, yes, that's an actual immigration cut. No need for a back door.
No, you can't.
You can apply for an immigrant visa based on any of the qualifications for such a visa without having to leave the country first if you can keep a current H1B or other dual-intent visa, but the H1B itself does not qualify you for an immigrant visa no matter how much time you stay on it.
Dual-intent visas are non-immigrant visas where it is not a violation of the terms of the visa to apply for it with the intent of later seeking an immigrant visa without leaving the country.
If you do wish to immigrate after being admitted on a dual-intent visa, you still have to qualify for, apply for, and wait in the line for (if it is category with a backlog for your country of origin) an immigrant visa.
I think COVID is very relevant. But you are also correct that this action is in line with the present administration's immigration policies outside of COVID.
In the big picture on the global scale, we're looking at a back-peddling on globalization (which includes immigration and free trade). The echos of the Great Depression should be (but aren't) on the minds of policymakers and the public because this same isolationist and protectionist philosophy exacerbated the pain of the depression.
According to [1], the immigration rate under Trump has slightly increased compared to under Obama, and is at 3x what it was during 1960-1975. So the policies you refer to are nothing but ineffectual noise.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_Stat..., table "Persons obtaining legal permanent resident status by fiscal year"
Present estimates put it between 50 - 150 years. Yes, I kid you not. The path to GC for Indians, might as well be closed shut for all intents and purposes.
https://www.am22tech.com/eb2-india-predictions/
https://medium.com/@happy_sushi_roll/the-endless-wait-for-a-...
* It's better than the alternative, and it can be made to work, since once I140 is approved you can renew H1 indefinitely (unless sth goes wrong, like right now, but that's a risk that doesn't look so big initially when all is still well).
* The wait only became this bad around 2008 or so. At the time, nobody knew there wouldn't be a realistic chance to get to gc. A lot of people have been in the system since that time.
* It doesn't always start with wanting to move to the US permanently. You go to a US college, or move for a job in the US (maybe the company you've already been part of offered it, maybe not), thinking it'd temporary. Then you build a life, make friendships, and realize you want to stay.
* Or maybe your parents moved when you are a kid and the US is all you know. But when you turn 18, it's F1/OPT/H1 or go to a foreign country (that you happen to be a citizen of, but have no real relationship with).
Above are all real examples I personally know.
Also, while for non-Indian immigrants it is at least possible to get a gc eventually, this is also by no means certain. Very stressful as well.
The green card process on the other hand just takes however many weeks or months it takes to process the paperwork. But there is a per-country limit per year. So if a vast number of people from your country are tying to immigrate you can end up in a really long line.
Citizenship has the requirement of being a permanent resident for a fixed number of years before you can apply.
At the same time there isn't any practical way of immigrating to the US other than being very rich, very specialized (and Outstanding) or a family member of a US citizen.
What is more fair? A guy from Island waiting 20 years because he is stuck behind 1 billion Indians? Or Indians waiting longer because more of their nationals are applying? Honestly, I don't know, but I know the 7% rule is justified. The idea is to avoid massive inbound diaspora that would be very hard for the country to absorbed culturally.
Also, EB1/2/3 wasn't supposed to do diversity, that's what the diversity lottery is for.
Also, the limit could've been applied to visas instead of greencards. I don't see how keeping people in limbo inside the US for decades/lifetimes is reasonable. If they are here de facto permanently anyway, they should get a path to citizenship. A two-class society is wrong.
Edit:
From Wikipedia: Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens.
That’s funny. I don’t see how project managers are highly skilled labor. I don’t see how QA testers are highly skilled labor.
But I do see how to get people to work harder for less.
It's unfortunate that you've never worked with a good project manager or good QA testers. The high end of these fields are incredibly highly skilled.
Do you think there should be a pathway to immigration for someone not from the US ? (Not just Indians/Chinese)
_______________________________________________________
Because honestly, there really isn't any at all. If all work visas are supposed to not have a pathway to citizenship. Then how is someone supposed to make it in ?
The diversity PR ? Which is almost explicitly an Anti-big country immigration visa, which even then, only has a 0.5% success rate ? (It is kind of hilarious that the visa thinks EU countries add more diversity to the US than those from other nations)
Or the investor PR ? ie. bribe your way into a GC.
Or be religious minister ? Because for some reason priests are a more productive part of society than people with PhDs.
Or should they be refugees. Which is also GC that has fallen out of favor among US politicians.
You say the H1B is a backdoor. But look at the other categories. People in the arts and general administration abuse the Eb1 GC. On the other hand it is almost impossible to get the EB1 GB without a willing employer (usually needs to be in research) and a top tier PhD.
Also, it is not just Indians. How do you think Europeans have historically immigrated to the US. Come over on an employment visa and then get a GC. Just because the ethnicity of the applicants has changed, doesn't mean that the system wasn't always in place. It is referred to as dual-intent for a reason.
I understand if the US wants to suddenly stop being a country that wants immigrants. But, they continue to sell the American dream, their inclusivity and proudly claim the the creations of 1st and 2nd gen immigrants as their own. That, makes them seem really hypocritical.
honestly, there really isn't any pathway to immigration at all
I find it quite compelling that the first order effect of H1-B visas is to give large corporations an easy way of driving down wages by hiring cheaper overseas workers who are willing to take lower wages than the locals in order to earn their citizenship, and that benefits company profit margins at the expense of native workers.
I'm willing to believe that the net effect is actually different and you get some magical efficiency effect that makes everyone richer, but I think that actually needs to be demonstrated rather than assumed.
You're thinking, reasonably, that companies aren't going to go through the trouble of immediately opening a whole office in Bangalore for a few QA testers. You're right. They're either going to (1) offshore to an MSP (2) automate or (3) just not do QA, and (without realizing) just let bad code get written.
Now that IT is working remotely anyway, why the heck NOT call Cap Gemini? Presto - we have QA. Who cares if they're in Penang?
May have gotten a bit too specific with my hypothetical there.
It can be Canada. It can be Mexico or South America.
It can be Eastern Europe.
Yes, it will be more expensive (but maybe not overall), and there will be fewer "yes-men" and less bottom-kissing but more actual work done and maybe better communications since time zones overlap.
Playing devil's advocate here, because I myself went through the H1B -> GC -> citizenship path, but why would the US worker care if he can't get a job/fair pay because of today's immigrant? And this is not immigrants (not technically correct when applied to H1B btw) fault. The problem is how game-able this all process/legislation is.
An example of where the journalistic commitment to being politically neutral harms the ability to properly inform the reader.
A comprehensive bipartisan bill did pass the senate in 2013, however it was never brought to the House floor for a vote. So perhaps your partisan theory needs re-evaluation.
Immigration reform was not a quagmire the Obama administration was going to delve into
The Democrats had the legislation all done and ready to go in the previous Congress, when it was just a tool to bludgeon Bush with rather than accomplish anything (otherwise, they could have brought the exact same bill back in the 111th). But that bill failed because 14 Democrats opposed it at cloture; it never even made it to Bush's desk:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/110th-congress/senate-bill/134...
They could have just brought back the exact same legislation. It could have traversed the process and been passed within weeks... had they ever actually wanted it to become law.
Their leadership isn't stupid. They know that a broad-based amnesty would be a long term economic disaster, and they acknowledged that even before the post-2010 recovery demonstrated that even upbeat economic periods won't provide real employment for the unskilled anymore (the "gig economy").
I don't know what this means. After seeing the amount of political capital and time spent by the Bush administration the prior years, there was no way the Obama administration was going to delve into the same "quagmire."
It seems to me that that bill was bipartisan in it's support and detractors. So I'm not sure what the poison pills were that prevented it from passing. But I remember personally being against it because it seemed to me to establish a caste system in the US.
I think you miss the largest issue with the premise that the Democrats could have forced anything. The Democratic party is not a party of fall in line, there are procedural differences between how both parties operate in congress, and those differences create partisanship on the Republican side specifically.
Perhaps the greatest error by the Democrats and Pelosi was to abandon the "Hastert Rule" and be the ones actually implementing steps to be less partisan.
Meanwhile I'm back in India, and completely lost in my mind on where and how I should proceed with my career.
I'm of the view that a country can choose whatever the hell they want about who to let in. Just stick to some rules with some consistency though. I came to America believing that there was a path that works a certain way, and that I could Hope for a better life in America if I follow it and work hard. Clearly your country hasn't kept your side of a gentleman's agreement there.
I suppose your friend is right, we Indian abd Chinese PhDs are idiots to think America is a fairer country than wherever we come from.
I spent a decade doing things in the US and am stuck knowing more about how the system works in the US than how it does in India. All my twenties have been wasted a bit because of this. And India is not the greatest of places to deal with either, though at this point it's up in the air which ones worse! Perhaps that's the state of the entire world as well.
For what it's worth though, in spite of the inequality, healthcare, partisan politics and things, I will much rather still work in the US - it's a more exciting place to be than anywhere else I have ever been
Your situation is like many others, and obviously not ideal. The system that you were using was/is blatantly rife with abuse, please don't think everyone who hates H1B is stupid/evil. If there's anyone worth lashing out at, it's all of the 'consultancy' services that have given the program a big black eye.
On another topic, the American PhD's quote doesn't make sense without context. Why "mediocre" scientists are the issue for scientific "competition"? The proportion of top people is always low, scientist or not. It's the system's fault that the whole scientific process becomes a "competition" in my opinion.
However, it's been "abused" by large consulting/contracting companies who hire an army of immigrant labor at the low end of market wages. The H1B recipient can't do much about it - they're tied to the employer (and their spouse can't work unless they also get an H1B). Yes, they can move jobs, but it takes legal resources to get the visa moved/re-issued (not sure about the technical details).
It was HIGHLY abused to just get cheap low-level IT staff. ...like the kinds who confuse Java with Javascript.
That's true for anybody in any IT position, though, generally. Truly exceptional people are few and far between. Also in those cases those H1B folks were highly paid. No, the vast majority of times I've worked with H1B talent was because they were willing to work hard and for less.
There are over 1M Indians stuck on gc backlog because of the racist gc caps. Various groups such as cis, fair etc. Want them out and hence these backdoor l Also not even sure what
A GC worker does not obey to the same rules as a H1B worker. A GC worker is not dependent on the company to remain in the country, they do not help companies keep salaries artificially low. A green card holder is essentially a US citizen on the job market (minus DOD clearance and such).
Wouldn't the only result of this be a backlog of paperwork to process?
https://www.npr.org/2020/04/18/837855173/immigrant-doctors-f...
America should be using this crisis to prioritize hiring the world's best medical, engineering, and technical talent.
It's like our last competitive advantage, a way to capture value from America being a desireable place, and we're pissing it away.
- Most foreign student revenue will dry up if you take H1B away.
- H1B is also used for doctors. Do we not want them?
- Given the remote transition underway, they will probably transfer over to Latin America/Canada. This is an issue even for existing tech workers. We are now competing for jobs with everyone that fall in American time zones.
The top 15 paid job titles are all health related and well above $200k in average salary. Their organizations will always manage to get visas no matter what new fancy requirements might come up.
Edit: You can see visas per company here with average salary https://h1bdata.info/topcompanies.php You can make an opinion for yourself but suffice to say that the bulk of the jobs are in cheap outsourcing firms, not in tech companies. (cf. google 15k VS tata consulting 73k)
Abuse by firms such as infosys and “bodyshopping” are of course a problem as well, but Microsoft, google et al love these visas too.
A lot of people who work in very senior positions in this industry came here via an H1B, it’s not just low level positions.
There are 85000 H1s given every year, 65000 if you do not count US graduates. The visa eith extensions can last for 6 years. However, if you have applied for a green card, you can easily go twice as long, extending it bit at a time. Now not everyone who gets an H1 stays, but lets try to catch the high end of this and see what the numbers would be. 85000 a year X 12 years would be close to a million.
Now H1 also comes along with H4 which is a spouse visa and I do not know if they are allowed to work today, but there is/was a provision that spouse could work. Assume 10% spouses work, that's another 100K.
And this is before we start counting L1s which many "shops" use. People can classify them differently but from what I have seen, half of those could as well be H1 and the company used L1 because they did not have annual cap issue or some other benefit.
So that takes me to a count of 1.8 million. Assuming 1/3rd of them do not stay back and return to their country, my ballpark number would be in the range of 1.2 M.
You are right about the H1B1. They should give the visa to the person, not to the company, so that people could credible threaten the company to walk away for a different job somewhere else. That would do away with the slave mentality.
People who are against this IMO, are mostly concerned with not appearing “racist” or xenophobic in any way. Virtue signal.
She knew exactly what she was getting into - and now she's making higher six figures than I do.
The H1-B program is a choice they can walk away from at any time, which makes it fundamentally different from slavery.
To go back deports their American children to a country where they may not even know the language, as one example.
I wouldn’t go as far as to call it slavery either of course, but it undoubtedly has a servitude element - the outcomes of the policy speak to that.
Cut off the abuse, don't shut down everything for everyone.
We are already reeling with concerns about China becoming the largest economy. Now we throw out some of the more skilled producers who also have the capital to drive consumption, thus creating jobs. This will only reduce our GDP and allow other countries to go ahead much faster.
What do we expect will happen here? Bartenders will start being on-call in AWS immediately? Unemployment systems, public utilities will run automatically?
Are we seriously imagining the best of people will come to the US to work in medicine or academia with so much vitriol and uncertainty directed towards them? Does anyone even think twice about how inhuman our laws are to people and families who are not criminals?