Uncle Sam may do something about rampant visa H-1B fraud
theregister.com
theregister.com
I became a permanent resident not that long ago. It's an arduous and complicated path. Navigating US bureaucracy is an extremely complex endeavor, and one requires the help of several, very specialized professionals, to get to their goal.
Knowing all this, I want to ask, why should someone who has worked that hard to settle in the US, has contributed greatly to the economy, behaved properly and never had issues with law and authority, be expelled from the country?
Isn't the US government targeting the companies committing fraud, a better and more just path forward?
I would like to state: I disagree. I don't want to be like Europe and ban things for temporary political points. I don't want to be protectionist and allow us to grow complacent off our former glory.
I want to innovate and have the best competition. Its how we can continue to be the best economy in the world.
Bank failures...
Bunch of CEO's and incestuous Boards coordinating layoffs with one another.
Skyrocketing inflation. An economy planner (the Fed) actively conspiring with the capital class to increase unemployment?
Economy largely reliant on a class of worker that is basically an "indentured servant".
Labor strikes for better working conditions (railroads) cracked down on by the Feds.
TBTF or bust being the end all be all for institutions, with no reciprocity or stakeholder loyalty.
A fundamentally Ponzi-like social safety net in the midst of a demographic collapse. Ballooning national debt with servicibility realistically in question.
Yep... Super nice economy you got going there. Why am I supposed to see this as the greatest economy out there when any positive metric is fundamentally built on scummy behavior? If you cheat to get the top, it ain't worth celebrating. It's just shitty people exploiting people who can't afford to be shitty to one another.
Maybe try taking a step back and looking at things objectively, so you can see that there's more to it than the rosy bits you seem to be hyperfocused on.
Ironically, I chose to immigrate to Europe, because the visa I have in the country I live gives me freedom to change jobs, and I have a clear path to citizenship.
I had offers from US companies, and I declined for not wanting to deal with H1B system. I never regretted this decision.
Make of that what you will.
We should abolish H1B visa and add a merit based system (like other countries) where you need to be highly skilled, educated etc to gain entry to the US to work legally and are free to work for any employer and get Green Card in say 3 years after working successfully, paying taxes and becoming a good citizen overall without being convicted of a crime. They should get a min. salary that is over market for the area and adjusted for inflation every year so that they cannot be low balled just to come to the country. For example, if you find an employer in Bay Area, you should get Bay Area salary and not Idaho.
This would not interfere with American citizens who think they are being replaced with cheaper workers because it will encourage competition and no issue with cheaper salaries. Win Win.
I had to file paperwork for a H-1B application not that long ago, and this is exactly what it looks like, right now.
I don't know if people are under the impression that the H-1B program allows unskilled immigrants to enter the US, where then are practically enslaved by companies paying them poverty wages. That is absolutely not true. H-1B applications tied to employment have to abide to prevailing wage rates, applicants need to provide proof of education and working experience, and they can switch jobs as anyone else would.
Putting the minimum to $120k would increase the shortages that are experienced in other career fields that also fall under the H-1B.
> H-1B recipients also include foreign physicians who practice in places shunned by American doctors for personal and professional reasons.
> About 25 percent of all physicians practicing or training in the United States are foreign, but in some inner cities and most rural areas, that share is significantly higher.
The medical shortage isn't entirely about depressed wages but rather people not wanting to live and work in inner city Chicago or rural North Dakota. Being a GP isn't a job that one can telecommute easily for.
The shortages of people working as teachers and medical field - careers where location maters - are sometimes difficult to staff because people don't want to live in Fargo.
On a tangent. There was an online interview of an Indian fellow that was eventually hired. When this person showed up to work the manager and folks who interviewed him, swore it wasn't the person they interviewed. There is so much fuckery going on that it should be abolished.
Every American kid should be given a chance first and only then should the job be offered through a program like H1B. We have a lot of kids having a difficult time finding work after Uni. Companies are using the program to basically hire temp slaves and it's hurting the entire Industry.
Just saying....
The H-1B visa process already has provisions for all these issues, prevailing wage being one of them, which quite precisely addresses the issue of American workers being given a chance of applying for a position that could potentially be filled by a visa holder.
> Companies are using the program to basically hire temp slaves and it's hurting the entire Industry.
This is untrue in the vast majority of cases.
Again, I'm wondering where all these false premises come from, because they do not match my experience a bit.
They must be false because they don't match your experience...
H-1B visa requirements, processes, and data are publicly available. What you provided is just hearsay at best.
This is very harmful thinking and sounds like what the former president said about the country to the south of the border. Countries don't sit around and send or export people or goods, or they won't even be able to board the aircraft or carrier. Even if they do they get sent back at the port of entry. A US company has to apply for a visa and the US government has to approve it before anyone even thinks of buying a ticket.
Attitudes like yours are the reason that workers who are just trying to make a living get punished along with their families while the companies and fatcats that profit off them go scot free.
https://apnews.com/article/immigration-donald-trump-us-news-...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/09/workplace...
Because that's the deal you agreed to for a temporary H-1B, not permanent residence.
It should be reduced commensurrately for every tech layoff.
Given that we're in the negatives, it's probably time to start cancelling some visas.
The lack of empathy is, frankly, astounding...
It's just such a cynical and emotionally manipulative conceit to demand that your group (I've perused your history and am aware you're an immigrant) be treated with "empathy", which is something you reserve entirely for your own benefit.
If other people thought like you, you wouldn't get any at all.
You are aware you can want the current immigration system to change without causing massive harm to some people, right? They are people, with lives, just like you, not some faceless cog in a machine that you can decide doesn't suit you anymore and be thrown out.
It's not cynical and manipulative to remind yourself that these are lives, not a fucking number, we are talking about.
Good luck with your anger, hopefully you can find healthier and more productive ways to express it.
Perhaps you should remember yourself that the lives destroyed by companies outsourcing American wealth (both directly and indirectly via immigration) had a real cost on real people.
Of course it had a real cost on real people, immigration to the USA causes a continuous brain drain in multiple countries that could use the skilled labour for their own benefits. I don't dispute that at all.
Outsourcing American wealth causing these companies to become wealthier, maybe it's time you direct your anger somewhere else, somewhere which is actually causing this issue, no? Instead of punishing workers who immigrated and generated wealth for your society. I can give you a tip: point it towards corporations :)
Good luck, mate.
But putting that aside, when Americans issue a visa, they are forming a contract with another person that they are obligated to honor. When someone uproots their life to come to the US by following the rules created by Americans, it would be unconscionable to exploit them and then fail to honor the visa.
As an immigrant to the US, I disagree, it's the right of existing Americans to decide how many and what type of new immigrants they accept in their own country. The same way a person born into a rich family -through no merit of their own- has the right to decide who they want to marry and benefit from the riches.
Who should decide, then? This view is both undemocratic and anti self determination.
Additionally, H-1B visas are nonimmigrant visas. Workers are aware of this. They are not permanent. If they treat it like its permanent, that is their own fault. Would it be better if USCIS was streamlined? Absolutely. Thats why fraud needs to be cut down and bureaucratic bloat needs to be reduced.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/09/workplace...
A lot of people on visas come and go, not all are establishing a new life in the US. Issuing less new visas will reduce the total number over time, without having to destroy the lives of the ones already established.
As far as I can tell, importing a moderate amount of skilled labor is good for America and its people. But importing that same labor and underpaying for it is worse for all involved, including for citizens whose wages or opportunistic are depressed as a result.
I would prefer if we had better visas with higher salary requirements, designed to attract the world's best, but without making them jump through hoops. E.g. Someone making $250k = green card instantly. Someone making $80k = denied, try again when you are worth $250k.
[0] I made this up, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were true.
If it's not a high paying job, does the US really need plastic tooling expertise? Unless by "plastic tooling" you mean something that is of national security, then yes. But in that case, they should issue more special visas, not put them in a pool for lottery. Why would you put in a lottery for important roles?
Keeping a profession in a lottery system tells me it can't be too important for the US. If it's not so important, then why not implement an income based system and get the most out of it (get the best paid workers, not some random ones). This is the case for diversity visas, they are 50k lottery based visas. Income does not matter at all there, the US just wants diverse people coming in. Now we're treating doctors, nurses, software devs the same way, with a lottery? You can get a 60k wage slave or a 600k specialized worker in the same batch?
By switching to an income based system, those other professions would have an even harder time.
https://www.myvisajobs.com/Elementary-and-Secondary-Schools-...
https://www.myvisajobs.com/Medical-and-Clinical-Laboratory-T...
...
And you'd have it dominated by doctors (rather than developers)
https://www.myvisajobs.com/Offices-of-Physicians-6211-2022IN...
Nothing wrong with that...it would probably reduce the cost of healthcare in the US.
For nurses you can have special visas, because healthcare is so important. Why would you leave nurses and doctors up to lottery? I would say: get them in now, no lottery required.
It needs an overhaul. The visa fraud that this (and the previous) article is pointing out is indirectly making healthcare more expensive and contributing to a teacher shortage.
Going to an auction would make these shortages in not-high-paying professions even worse.
The entire H-x visa process has some significant issues that were ok when it was designed, but now are showing problems as they scale to much larger volumes than it was set up for.
Things like the H-2A and H-2B (unskilled agricultural and non-agricultural) visas make it difficult for many small businesses to staff up to their needs.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2022/10/26/anoth...
> “Our novel survey of a sample of the firms who participated in the 2021 lottery reveals little benefit, and substantial costs, due to restricting firms’ access to these visas,” write Clemens and Lewis. “Comparing firms that were able to hire more workers on these visas to those that were able to hire fewer—by random chance—we find that gaining access to immigrant hires raises firm revenues . . . and also weakly raises, rather than lowers, their employment of U.S. workers.”
Recognizing that this represents a "not an easy change"... but it's a mess and it does need to get fixed.
Other than noting that there are problems, I'm going to defer to "I'm not sure how to fix them nor am I familiar enough the the intricacies of the immigration and visa process to say if any fix that I could think of would run into some known existing (worse) problems that the current system avoids."
That is true, also whatever you do, it will be an ethically hard choice.
I was just saying that an auction style (or top N salaries) would be superior to what we have today, not that it's a perfect system.
I think the UK and Australian systems are more thought out, with critical categories, where you go in almost automatically, then less critical categories, where you have a system with points (how young you are, how well you speak English, what education you have, do you have a job offer etc.), then you have a general category, where it's much more difficult to get in.
The US is doing well (comparatively) for the last category, it's incredibly easy (comparing to other countries) to get in as an illegal, or as a low skilled immigrant (e.g. just apply to diversity lottery every year). For the people in this category it's easier to get into the US than most other developed countries. But other countries make it significantly easier as you go up the ladder (e.g. it's easy to get into Australia with a Phd and a job offer), while the US keeps the "higher level" immigrants into the same insane treatment: randomness, bureaucracy, whims of government employees, years(or decades) of waiting etc.
The mistake that the US has is that there are only three categories under the "H-x" set of visas.
There's the H-1B (which we're familiar with for all skilled workers requiring a college degree) and the H-2A for agricultural work and H-2B for workers that don't require a college degree and are not agricultural.
The H-1A was originally for nursing and expired in 1995. The H-1C was also created for using from 1999 to 2009.
The thing is... it's 3 big categories that date back to 1990s (The H visa was established in the 1950s and was a "everything" bucket). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1990#Non-im... . In 1990, both the house and the senate were democratic and G H.W. Bush was president. Getting the big comprehensive reforms through takes a unified congress and that being a goal (a lot of political capital is spent on getting that through - to the point where trying to do two big reforms in one presidential term gets difficult)... and immigration reform keeps getting deprioritized compared to other things.
Going to a per field model (22 top level in https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_stru.htm ) would be a marked improvement.
Adding to your list of UK and Australia - Canada. https://www.immigration.ca/fast-track-high-demand-occupation...
And this would also dramatically decrease the incentive for the employers to game the system, as H-1B visas would no longer be a source of cheap skilled labor.
(I personally know visa holders who were dramatically underpaid by tech companies and who did not feel like they could shop around.)
Categorically false, go look at the public H1B salary data for large companies and you will see very competitive salaries. If anything, they're on the higher end, much less "no American would ever tolerate".
If you just revoke visas, those workers in those jobs and the jobs will be nearshored to Canada/Mexico offices, and new jobs will either be offshored and nearshored. This means the money paid to the workers will go out of the US economy, hurting supporting non-tech jobs. Newer members of the team are likely to be recruited in those places rather than the US, hurting tech workers. This has already been happening.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/08/business/dealbook/h1b-vis...
Last I saw, something like 80%+ of H1Bs went to bodyshops like Infosys and TCS, which certainly don't pay well, and definitely do make their employees live somewhere where job swapping isn't easy.
It's still a bit low, but it's not laughably low like the $60K absolute minimum.
You can search the database here: https://flcdatacenter.com/OESWizardStart.aspx
https://apnews.com/article/immigration-donald-trump-us-news-...
With the 2 H1Bs that I have hired, it would still have been worth it and anything less is just a program to artificially reduce costs for companies.
I went down this rabbit hole when the parlors would get mad at me for wanting an actual massage.
[0] https://www.h1bdata.org/jobs/31-901100/massage-therapists
"and in some cases drain their assets and sometimes also take corporate secrets"
Sounds like they're draining more than assets: Is there a sperm donor facility next door too? This type of problem sometimes comes in twos. Just sayin'!
(scene set on a small ethnic cafe in lower SF):
7-year old Paki-American boy strolls in: "Rohaan! Hello, I am your long-lost son. Are you not glad to meet me?
Rohaan (confused): Excuse me, I am eating my paratha! WTF are you!
7-year old boy: Mom can tell you - she's at the door -see her waving, huh?. She says remember seven years ago in downtown San Francisco when you enjoyed a wonderful "happy ending" massage? Well, she saved the ending and with it planted ME and I am half YOU! I am so very happy to finally find my father!(tries to hug)
Rohaan bolts for the back door, paratha in hand (subsequently flies to Islamabad, assumes a new identity and lives a modest remainder-of-life in celibate penitence).
A majority of Americans are off-springs of a living immigrant ancestor (1st, 2nd and 3rd gen immigrants). A conservative extrapolation would put them at 66% of the population[1]. I have no empathy for any one from this majority that completely opposes immigration. It's 'I got mine' style hypocrisy.
The other 33% have various reasons for opposing immigration. But, depending on the type immigration that is made legal, it's possible to address every type of concern.
For example:
1. Poverty/crime/economy related complaints due to low skill immigration ---> enable high skill immigrants. Overwhelmingly low-crime & a huge net positive for the economy.
2. Culture related complaints ---> enable US education based immigration. Let them be explicitly indoctrinated into American-ness.
3. Low-wage / job stealing ---> set an income based lower bound. H1bs already require salaries to match the local median. But, I'd even support more aggressive percentile requirements. Do people not understand the around $20-30k/yr overhead that employing immigrants entails. (applications, lawyers, lottery risks, multiple rounds of secondary interviews for LCA) ? L1-visas are cheap. H1Bs are fairly expensive.
There are many more such angles, but I have yet to hear a cohesive argument for a blanket ban on immigration that isn't a thinly veiled concern about demographic replacement of the descendants of earlier settlers. Now, I am mildly sympathetic to that argument too. In a dog-eat-dog world, their ancestors replaced the local population of the British Isles and then North America. The world is cruel, and only the paranoid survive. Would be a lot easier to then debate around those points, because the statistics on contributions to the economy and lack of social delinquency are in favor of H1Bs when compared to the descendants of the early settlers.
I'll keep it at that. HN does not encourage culture-warring. I'll abide.
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/4621/majority-americans-identif...
H1-B should be a temporary bandaid, not something permanent.
What am I missing?
This is logical, but in reality Y - Z is usually negative. Traditionally people hired graduates and they stuck around and probably did get paid less than they could elsewhere because no one traditionally quit less than 2 years in their first job.
It could be that the last 5 years really were just a crazy boom and people were jumping into pay rises very quickly. People could leave after 12 months work and get a job that used to require 5Y experience because there was such a shortage. Now the job market likely is back to normal so that route likely isn't available any more. In any case I'm kinda done training juniors.
This is one of those things where a sector-wide Hollywood-style (or MLBPA-style) union would make these kinds of negotiations much simpler. It would also help with the obvious employer-side abuses those kinds of contracts would enable. But once we start talking about union power, we're a ways away from just letting the market clear.
If it was that easy, anyone could do my job, yet here we are.
I didn't come here to train people to take over my role. Work for it, like I did.