I'm glad our government has introduced the H1B program to help out employers like you who are dealing with a shortage of tech workers (who will work for 2/3 market and will do anything you say because if they get fired they'll be deported).
[1] https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/h1b-visa...
An "admittance" is someone with a H-1B visa appearing a port of entry like an airport to enter the US. If a single H-1B holder goes on (say) 3 international trips in 1 year, that will count as 3 "admittances" in that year.
The reason why the number is so low in 2021 is that the US government had a COVID non-immigrant travel ban. People with H-1B visas couldn't re-enter the US from many countries e.g. most countries in Europe. Many people in H-1B status (like myself) simply didn't take international trips that year.
2020: 427,200 2021: 398,300 2022: 474,300 2023: 386,600
[1] https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/f...
(Although, even these statistics are not as simple as they seem! E.g., when an H-1B status holder changes employer this counts as a new receipt even though the number of H-1B workers hasn't changed. In periods of time when there is lots of churn in the labor market, like in 2022, you would see higher receipt numbers just from the churn. It's complicated!)
"Admittance rates" measure how many H1B people travel internationally and then return to the USA. Unsurprisingly, in 2023, more people traveled internationally than in 2021, when almost all countries closed their borders.
I don't think Trump give a crap about helping American workers, anymore than his buddy Elon does - the anti-immigrant thing was just that.
There are ways to abuse the above, but note they can always quit.
Also, other statistics are just wage in disguise. Work-life balance refers to working less, which means a higher wage. PTO is also just working less, which is a higher wage. WFH means less driving + lower cost of living, which is an effective higher wage.
I offered 4 day work week, no on-call, no overtime, but paid less than their previous employer (because I couldn't afford it).
I am sure lots of people value things besides salary.
Also, they complained that their previous job was super stressful because the sales people kept making promises to customers that were really hard to keep ("of course we'll implement this in two weeks") and so they were constantly scrambling to meet impossible deadlines.
Mostly true, yes. A monthly pizza and beer party won't make up for lack of salary, but extra PTO that I can use can.
Like...if I had the choice of a job that offered $200K/year but only 2 weeks PTO, and another offered only $185K but 5 weeks PTO, I'd take the latter.
Honestly I'd love a company that gave 4 weeks PTO with the option to take up to another 4 weeks unpaid.
Money > everything just isn't how most people see the world.
Otherwise, the job would just be extremely cushy. Work the absolute bare minimum not to give cause for dismissal, and you're untouchable for the duration.
note that I added a 40 hour work week qualifier above.
I am seeing lots of qualified commentors (according to them) say they won't even get a call back...
I have only seen anecdotes while the law explicitly states H1Bs should be paid the prevailing wage or above.
Authorities do enforce H1B provisions proactively.
https://www.uscis.gov/scams-fraud-and-misconduct/report-frau...
https://cis.org/North/Apple-Hit-25-Million-Penalty-Favoring-...
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/11/06/h-1b-visa-fraud-leads...
> absence of consistent heroic efforts
Will that apply to every law in society or just to H1B laws?
Despite absence of consistent heroic efforts, we don't see widespread criminal activities.
>Will that apply to every law in society or just to H1B laws?
The H1B laws are harder to enforce than most laws -- or so it would seem to me -- because the question of whether there are Americans that are able to do a particular job at a particular workplace depends on many fiddly details that only the managers of the particular workplace (the prospective defendant in any enforcement action) would know.
When lawyers working on Capitol Hill are serious about stamping out a behavior, they write laws that are easy to enforce (unambiguous, not relying much on human judgment). Something as vague as, "as long as there are no Americans qualified to do the job," suggests that whoever wrote that just wants to reassure critics of the H1B program without caring much whether H1B workers actually displace American workers.
Most laws are like this. Do you know criminality laws require intent and yet we do fine without mind reading devices.
Most H1Bs are in software and wages in software have been rising along with number of people in software engineering over the long term.
Minimum for a Software Developer in SF: $113,444 https://h1bgrader.com/
H1B devs at FAANG companies are paid far more.
Your question is why is it wrong to depress wages? Yeah, really tough question.
Now consider OPT visa workers which are being paid even less, plus companies get an extra 8-10% discount because they don't have to pay Social Security and Medicare. There is no shortage of skilled workers here. Only corporate greed.
On the other hand, for some shady companies that are set up as contract shops, then I'd not be surprised if the wages are lower than average market rate, but I have never worked at one, so I might be misleading by even mentioning this here.
This is still possible in many European countries, especially less wealthy ones.
I live in Austria and you can fire people for pretty much any reason. You have to give them 6 weeks notice, and there are some extra protections for people who are old or who have disabilities and who have been working for your company for a long time, but even then you can fire them.
You can even fire people for getting sick a lot.
And that's assuming you directly hire them as employees in the first place. Many people work via agencies or as contractors, and they have practically zero protections.
You have to pay people the minimum salary depending on their trade, you have to give them 5 weeks of vacation, pay overtime, pay for health insurance and so on.
Employers can't exploit their employees, but employees still have to do their job.
But there is also a big area of the economy where employers ignore the law and treat employees like shit. For example, service workers are not generally treated well in Austria, and many are afraid of losing their job so they don't complain to the authorities.
Maybe the statement isn't true for EU as a whole, but some member countries have far higher bar than what you describe. For instance in Spain the company must provide justification to the government before firing someone.
In Austria, the employer can terminate a contract immediately if the employee behaves in a manner that would harm the employer.
If the employee does nothing wrong, the contract can still be terminated, but you have to give notice 6 weeks ahead (or longer if the employee has worked at your company for a long time).
People get these things confused and think employees generally can't be fired without a reason, but that's not true. They just can't be fired on the spot without a reason.
If we are trading anecdotes here I personally dont know any h1bs who are making less than 300k total comp. Hows that for obnoxious?