Long-Prized H-1B Visas Lose Cachet
online.wsj.com
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In the past the U.S felt like the open and powerful place where everything can be achieved, but now it no longer feels that way. So many new countries are now nimble and growing with markets opening up - while the U.S is going exactly the other way. It's restricting and shrinking, markets are getting closed.
Worst of all, with the weak dollar, earning money in the U.S doesn't get you a lot of money to send home anymore.
I'm from New York and frequently travel to China, both of which obviously have "old" spots. For some reason, "old" there for me evokes the feeling of appreciation for history, while the San Francisco "old" makes me sad.
Market Street around civic center is appalling, and it spills over into Powell street and the Embarcadero near market enough that those spots are clearly tarnished, especially in the eyes of visitors. But pretty much every corner of the city suffers from blight - the new Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park or the De Young may sparkle (a little too much for my taste), but the appeal of the park is diminished by the presence of a large homeless population (including stray pit bulls). Maybe these things are more noticeably to newcomers now?
While it may seem a little facile to blame too much on one problem, I don't think you can understate how severe an impact the "hardcore homeless" population has had on SF. Not only does it create blight, it's also a big drain on our finances. SF is in a tough spot here. It's a liberal city that has friendlier homeless policies, but unfortunately, that makes us a magnet.
As for New York... lived there for only 6 months, but Mahnattan is truly a vibrant place. I was at Columbia, and I'd say I was hit up for spare change about as often as I am in SF, though. This was in the mid 90s, maybe it's cleaned up better than SF since then, haven't really been back.
When I left, it was squarely sitting in second-world status, but I was surprised to go back and find a modern, bustling, clean, developed nation. There is infrastructure there, unlike most American cities. I live in Seattle, and everything around here feels like it's falling apart - you walk around and there's the distinct feeling that you're walking through a relic... something from another era, now disused and slowly decaying. I did not get this feeling anywhere in Taipei. Everywhere you go something is being overhauled, more metro lines are being built constantly, there's new construction, new businesses. Technology is being integrated into people's lives in a wonderful way - even my 80 year-old grandmother navigates all the touch screen smart-card kiosks in the MRT system like a pro.
It was a bit of a disappointment to come back to Seattle and pick up a paper transfer riding a dilapidated bus that doesn't even have a voice-recorded stop call-out feature. It's even more depressing to watch all the political infighting in the city about rapid transit buildouts - the Taiwanese tunneled through much more densely populated, existing developed areas years ago, and now they get to enjoy one of the most advanced rapid transit system I've ever seen, while here in Seattle we've been sitting on our ass about this issue for 30 years.
I don't think I have ever grabbed a bus transfer and not felt disappointed either, regardless of how clean it was. Maybe you need to upgrade your lifestyle and buy yourself a nice set of wheels. That's how we roll in America ;)
> "Maybe you need to upgrade your lifestyle and buy yourself a nice set of wheels. That's how we roll in America ;)"
Nah. Grew up in a suburb, drove around all through high school out of necessity. I consider a set of wheels a downgrade in lifestyle. Why would I blow away so much free time behind the wheel of a car, missing the opportunity to connect with the place I'm in by ensconcing myself in a shell of steel, plastic, and glass?
Why would I voluntarily live in a place where the most interesting landmark is a strip mall, and the only people I will ever meet are the ones that I must consciously choose to meet? Whatever did we do to the richness and spontaneity of life to deserve that kind of existence?
Heh, that really bring up another salient point: in Asia urbanism is embraced - the Taiwanese have found ingenious ways to solve many of the problems that are common with city life in the US. America, on the other hand, despite standing amidst the flaming wreckage of its housing market, with inevitably ever-higher gas prices staring them in the face, is still desperately clinging to its suburbs and its utterly unsustainable lifestyle.
While Seattleites are gridlocking their way every morning across the 520 bridge here, the people of Taipei will travel the same distance, car-less, going from doorstep to doorstep in half that time.
And, most importantly, have a way to transport yourself from one place to another without having to deal with young thugs and punks, junkies blasted out of their mind, people selling you stuff, crazy people hassling you, loud people, smelly people, annoying people, and generally being able to avoid the dregs of society.
Public transportation is wonderful, in theory. One of the best cities that has nailed it properly is Portland, Oregon. However, public transportation is still public transportation and as much as I truly detest the act of driving and the wasted expense of a vehicle, I detest having to deal with loud obnoxious high school kids every day, the crazy people who won't stop scratching themselves and urgently talk to you about government conspiracies or aliens when you want to rest, people shooting heroine in the seat across from you, people and their enormous brood of children out for a trip, people who haven't showered in months brushing up against you and violating your nostrils, fights and other miscellaneous violence and . . . far more than I detest a car and an auto insurance payment.
Oh, and of course cities that are only now really being modernized and coming into their own will be more advanced and well thought-out. Let's, see, which will be better . . . A place whose infrastructure and architecture and contents were built up fifty to two hundred years ago using the newest technology of the day? Or, for example, a city in China being built up with the newest technology and benefits of 2011 -- with little to nothing to have to demolish before doing so?
There are still some things quite primitive in the U.S. Internet banking in the is ridiculously limited. The last time I saw a CRT monitor was on an American air line. Overall though, my feeling is that Europe prevailed in the past 10 years, but America evolved.
Did anyone have a reasonable-looking website in 2001? How is that an American phenomenon?
> Now, I can only dream of Europe having things like America's NetFlix, Internet industry, smart phone usage, creative restaurants, hotels, and much more.
The service industry is the only thing left throughout America, so it's no wonder it's the only one where innovation is taking place.
Yes. European websites at the time were reasonably modern.
e.g., a web shop http://replay.web.archive.org/20010614234849/http://www.bol....
American websites were always one big mess, lacking any form of tasteful design or functionality.
http://replay.web.archive.org/20000516060156/http://www.amaz...
Show me what European storefront sites looked like in 2001.
The H-1B was created in 1990. According to Wikipedia, Dham started at NCR in Ohio in 1977, so I doubt he ever had one. Sun was founded in 1982, so Khosla couldn't have had an H-1B either.
Professor Norm Matloff's H-1B Web Page
Overview:
The H-1B work visa is fundamentally about cheap labor.
Though the tech industry lobbyists portray H-1B as a remedy for labor shortages and as a means of hiring "the best and the brightest" from around the world (which I strongly support), the vast majority are ordinary people doing ordinary work. Instead of being about talent, H-1B is about cheap labor.
Employers accrue Type I wage savings by paying H-1Bs less than comparable Americans (U.S. citizens and permanent residents). Employers accrue Type II wage savings by hiring younger, thus cheaper, H-1Bs in lieu of older, thus more expensive (age 35+) Americans. Both types of wage savings are fully LEGAL, due to loopholes in the law and regulations. The problem is NOT one of lack of enforcement. Use of H-1B for cheap labor extends across the industry including the large mainstream firms., facilitated by the nation's top immigration law firms. It does NOT occur primarily in the Indian " body shops," and it DOES occur in the hiring of international students from U.S. university campuses. The underpayment of H-1Bs is well-established fact, not rumor, anecdote or ideology. It has been confirmed by two congressionally-commissioned reports, and a number of academic studies, in both statistical and qualitative analyses.
Even former software industry entrepreneur CEO Vivek Wadhwa, now a defender of foreign worker programs, has confessed,
I know from my experience as a tech CEO that H-1Bs are cheaper than domestic hires. Technically, these workers are supposed to be paid a "prevailing wage," but this mechanism is riddled with loopholes. Wadhwa has also stated
I was one of the first [CEOs] to use H-1B visas to bring workers to the U.S.A. Why did I do that? Because it was cheaper.
There is no tech labor shortage. No study, other than those sponsored by the industry, has
ever shown a shortage. Wages, both for new graduates and established professionals, have
been flat or falling in the engineering and programming fields (adjusted for inflation).
Employers hire only a tiny fraction of those who apply. HR departments routinely exclude CVs
of applicants they deem "too expensive"--those that are over age 35. (So managers never see
these CVs, and mistakenly believe there are no applicants.)
The UK is only slightly better in labor law. A lot of the UK companies have learned a lot from the former colony. If they can't fire you outright they'll just get more creative (ie. We caught you using the office copier to make flyers for your football league, fired for abusing company resources). My wife's company (big UK company) is in a protracted labor dispute with the unions. So what do they do? Find exagerated reasons to get union leaders fired. Of course unions have lawyers, but the company can keep it in court longer than the union can pay its lawyers.
I guess that, no matter how protected you think you in the eyes of the law, being a wage-earner is more of a risk it seems to be.
But then I switched to the private sector and I have since seen that company fire lots of people quickly. To be fair, none of those fired quickly were H1B holders, and the US citizens who were fired were given very generous severance payments (this is a management consultancy that knows former employees are future customers).
My advice is to accept it, and then feel liberated by it. The same contract allowed me to leave my employer without feeling guilty, which is exactly what I did when I wanted to start my own company.
For me, the turning point was when I wanted to have a family. I just found the idea of being forced to leave the country when your employer does not want to sponsor you anymore too awful, especially as I had experienced it as a child when my father had a UK university do the same thing to him. We had 1 month to pack everything and leave the country.
I reassure myself that the company who hired me would not have spend thousands on the hiring process and then turn around and fire me on a whim. Also, firing a worker on a sponsored visa would look pretty bad on their part. It would make it much harder for them to attract talent from overseas in the future.
The protections are rather meaningless, however. How are you going to prove that you were fired because you are too old or because you're a woman or because you aren't the right religion, if your employer says "no, we just fired her because she smelled really bad" or "we fired her for her poor work performance".
Of course (other than protecting against discrimination), I'm not sure what the alternative is. If I'm writing the paychecks, I should be able to determine how many people I need in my company and when I no longer need them -- whether due to finances or simply not liking them. Why should I be forced to keep someone on the payroll for weeks or months beyond when I can afford them or be forced to deal with someone in the office for weeks or months after they have worn out their welcome?
My employer is free to hire or fire me at will and I'm free to find another job. They're private entities with obligation to provide for me or look after my well-being.
I know there are other differences, too. For example, in America, we consider vacation time to be something for professionals who have put in their dues while paid vacation seems to be issued to employees along with their office chair straight out of the gate in a lot of other countries. My mother is in her fifties and still has no paid vacation at her work. If she were to come visit me, she would have to take time off of work (meaning a big hit to the pay check for that month). Same goes for both of my siblings.
On the other hand, a professional with fifteen or twenty years of experience and a college degree can earn ten days of vacation per year, where I work (though not immediately, you only accrue vacation time fast enough to get two weeks a year of vacation once you have worked at this company for at least seven years). On top of that, we have six or seven company holidays (New Years, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas).
Again, I don't really have a problem with that, either. I mean, why should I get paid when I'm not working? If my employer wants to entice me to their company or keep me at their company and in high spirits by offering to pay me to take time away from work, then that's their decision and it's great. But I don't see a particular reason that they should be obligated to compensate me for time I'm not spending on them.
Nonsense - it's traditional practice for the company to give you considerably more than 2 weeks worth of pay. I've never heard of an employer giving less unless they were bankrupt or the employee was stealing.
These are both customs (not rules), so exceptions certainly exist.
I worked a lot of service jobs before getting into more professional fields. No one ever got severance/extra pay.
I'm sure it depends on the sector the employer is in and the size of the employer, though as you said they are all customs, but traditional implies predominant, and while I hope that is the case, it hasn't been my experience.
My preference would be to make it easy to fire, but provide a sufficient safety net, so that people are not fearful of the temporary disruption.
As it is now, firing someone for poor performance at one large American software company I worked for (WA state) takes 6 month. They have to be told they aren't doing well, then their every step is documented, and they are continuously told how to improve, and only after they fail to heed the warnings they get fired. People who steal or harass others get fired immediately, but otherwise it's a long slog to kick someone out. All this song and dance is done to protect against lawsuits. It's a drag on the business, and probably a deterrent to hiring.
Unfortunately when you have these sort of blanket policies that are more necessary in large organizations, the guy in a temporary crisis and the person who got hired somehow but can't spell their name get the same treatment. I think the balance is to give enough time that good people who have slipped can get back on track, but not so much that it be too heavily abused by less capable employees who would probably ultimately be happier somewhere more in fitting with their ability.
If you're a garage-level startup then $10,000 in legal fees to hire an employee might sound like a lot. Otherwise I see it as a cheap bargain if you are truly bringing on talent otherwise lacking domestically, which is the H-1B's nominal charter. As for not meeting the requirements, I'm an example of someone who did not and got an O-1 instead. It's a lot harder but still absolutely doable if the candidate has enough demonstrable accomplishments and acclaim to his or her name.
The time sink of going through the process is probably the bigger issue for a typical fast-moving startup.
I was unaware of the possibility of an O-1 until the H-1B process failed for me, it was brought to my attention only recently..
It's good to know it's an option. Would you be willing to disclose some of the strategies you used to get the O-1? It seems very much geared towards traditional sciences and old media from looking at the criteria.
I say any company that wants an H1-B visa worker at location X must have a way for applicants to turn in a resume at location X and be seen by a hiring manager at location X.
If they are not willing to do that, than they are not serious when they complain they can't find competent local workers.
If you see a position that has some outlandish requirements (10+ years of C#) than you can be sure it's a jon post for a candidate they already had in mind but were legally required to list.
A few people running staffing firms had gotten into legal trouble recently. The staffing industry (a.k.a. "bodyshops", "desi consultancies" etc) overall are facing some serious heat from the USCIS and DOL this year. In my opinion, this is a huge factor contributing to the slow uptake of H-1B visas this year.
Most discussions of H-1B employers surround two broad categories: 1) Big name tech firms in US - Microsoft, Google, Cisco etc 2) Indian outsourcing companies - Infosys, Wipro, TCS, Cognizant etc
But the third important category of users are these staffing companies. They try to stay under the radar clinging on to the coat tails of Indian outsourcing companies by claiming to have big operations in India. But most of these firms have minimal, if any, presence in India. They are easy to identify too - their websites will have stock photographs of busy-looking professionals in business suits hunched over laptops, vacuous white papers on methodologies/delivery models/management frameworks, me-too vision statements etc.
A few of these - Peri Soft, Worldwide, Vision Systems - have recently gotten into trouble with DOL; some of the business owners have even spent time behind the bars lately. This has had a chilling effect on the staffing industry, reducing the mad rush to get an H-1B petition filed on 1st April. The economy still not recovering also adds to the hesitation, but I think the firm enforcement actions of DOL, USCIS etc have been an equal contributor.
edit: Those numbers show the applications accepted, not the number received.