I mean, if an individual is such a valuable contributor to the economy, why would you want to bring them in as indentured laborers, let them accumulate even more value, and then send them away to create startups and value in their home country?
Just bring em in, say welcome, stay as long as you can, settle down if possible, have children here.
Better to bring in talent permanently rather than temporarily.
Of course, I'm not American so I might be missing something mething here...
Reforming H1B requires congressional intervention, and as such it's extremely difficult because of partisan bickering.
Also, a number of pressure groups on the Dems (eg. The EPI, AFL-CIO, and sometimes the SEIU) and the Republican (eg. NumbersUSA, ProjectUSA) sides are opposed to immigration.
The earliest (generally speaking) an H1B holder could likely become a voter is often 10 years in the best cases, and decades in the worst. GC quota queue for countries like India is measured in decades, and you need a GC for something like 5 years before you can apply for citizenship and finally get a vote.
Exactly this - I worked on the Hill during the time period when immigration was the hot buzzword and this was a persistent undercurrent in all the convos going on back then. The RoI was questionable for a number of Congressional members, so we ended up in this weird equilibrium.
Not really, the earliest you can become a citizen is (1) get your H-1B and arrive in the US (2) get a green card, roughly 1.5-2 years if you're going employment route (3) wait 5 years for citizenship - 3 if you marry someone.
The fastest by the employment route is 6.5 years-ish, the fastest by marriage is probably 4.
Generally H-1B's can begin the green card process the moment they set foot in the US and it takes about 1.5-2 years (which is about 1y6m too long). The issue is not with the H-1B per se (quotas aside). The issue is that the green card process is too onerous and is subdivided by country of origin so some have to wait much longer than others.
Timeline:
1. Prepare PERM: 6 months.
2. File for DOL certification and get an approved ETA-9089: 120 days.
3. File for I-140 and I-485 concurrently assuming a current priority date with premium processing: 14 days for an approved I-140 and 6-12 months for an approved I-485 assuming no request for evidence. During this time you'll need to go in for biometrics appointment.
Go down to Employment Based and look at the priority dates (the priority date for employment based petitions is generally when you file for PERM with the Department of Labor, but there's some complexity here - although that should give you a good idea).
1st Preference (EB1) - extraordinary abilities, etc - is current for everyone except India and China, who are backed up to February 2022 filings.
2nd Preference (EB2) - masters degree or bachelors + 5 years work experience + a job that requires 5 years work experience - is backed up to January 2011 filings for India.
3rd Preference (EB3) - bachelors degree - is backed up to June 2012 filings for India, November 2018 filings for China but is current for anyone else who wants one.
[1] https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-processes-and-pr...
I wasn't giving an average, I was giving current processing times for the various steps assuming a current priority date and I called out the specific criticism you levied.
As someone going through the process right now, PERM is taking on average 12 months and the PWD has taken 6 months.
A request for evidence on PERM will extend that to 18 months on average and I-1485 is closer to 12 months but can be 18-24 months even if you are not from India/China.
Abolishing the country cap for Green Cards is something that should be done in tandem with either increasing the number of Employment Based Greencards or recapturing those that have been abandoned. Otherwise you just make the backlog everyone country's problem.
There are some steps they could take to make things easier like automatically sending EAP and AP when a I-140 is approved. It's ridiculous that these documents take so long to be issued.
Really though the United States should move to a points based system for Employment Immigration. If you look at EB3 it's a low bar compared to Canada/Australia. A points based system that is fast tracked like Canada's would be preferred to convoluted mess we have today.
Unfortunately, it has since been perverted into a mechanism for skilled (but nonspecialized) workers to be indentured, often with substandard wages.
> The intent of the H-1B provisions is to help employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce by authorizing the temporary employment of qualified individuals who are not otherwise authorized to work in the United States. [0]
You are mostly correct that the actual Immigration Act has almost no legal teeth to enforce this. The only explicit provision in the law is that H-1B dependent companies (≥15% of the workforce is H-1B) must "take good faith steps to recruit U.S. workers for the job for which the H-1Bs are sought." [1] In practice, this almost never applies, but it is nonetheless token lip service towards the ostensible intent of the H-1B program as strictly a specialized visa program, which is the pretense under which it was passed in 1990.
No they don’t. You’re probably thinking about the requirements for employment based green cards, which do require a labor market test. The H1B does not.
Companies list the H1B eligible position and salary internally and externally specifically for compliance
For H1B there’s simply no labor market test.
I'm all for immigration, but not sure it's humane to tie it to a profession - if someone is allowed to become a citizen because of their profession, are they not allowed to give it up and do something else in the future?
Some quick googling indicates there are around 65K H1Bs issued every year, and around 4.4 million software developers. So even assuming that most of those H1Bs go to software developers (they certainly don't all go there) it's still hard to imagine this having a serious detrimental effect on salaries, although I agree it's probably an incentive for the few companies that actually get H1B workers.
BTW, to answer your second question, yes if you become a US citizen you can generally abandon the career that led to your getting whatever visa you had before. In fact you can do that long before you become a citizen. You can do it once you have a green card, which in most of these cases is a minimum of 5 years before they become a citizen.
For most H1Bs it's going to be something like 3-6 years on the H1B during which time you're basically "indentured", followed by 5-6 years on a greencard, during which time you can do whatever you like for a living as long as you don't do anything that suggests your H1B sponsor was lying, followed citizenship.
Well both of those numbers are wrong.
you can be on h1b for infinite amount of time. most h1b apply for adjustment of status for residency which lets them renew it indefinitely.
https://isss.temple.edu/faculty-staff-and-researchers/intern....
maybe you missed this part?
You can once uscis approves you i140, you can file h1b under cap exception. You can continue doing this as long as your 140 is pending with uscis, there is no upper limit.