H-1B visa lottery is shutting out top talent
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
> First, the lottery — by design — doesn’t reward top talent. This deficiency, coupled with loose oversight, has made it vulnerable to gaming and doomed to mediocre results. A recent Bloomberg News investigation found that IT staffing firms routinely flood the pool with entries, often for more visas than they need, crowding out companies that play by the rules. These practices — which US officials have called fraudulent — prioritize a sector that tends to pay relatively low wages for routine IT work. (New rules to curb abuse don’t go far enough.) As a result, many of the world’s smartest engineers are shut out from the most lucrative, in-demand jobs, and shortages at the top end persist.
> Second, visa holders with middling skills are more likely to be substitutes for, rather than complements to, American workers. Replenishing the job market with extraordinary talent that can’t be filled domestically increases productivity, innovation and growth; saturating it with lower-paid workers will tend to drive down wages. Official data show that 85% of H-1B petitions are awarded to employers paying well below the median wage, as determined by occupation and location.
Google, IBM, Infosys and others who file thousands of them can easily play the numbers.
I quit the ACM because I couldn't accept their policy of 100% advocacy of H1Bs and joined the IEEE Computer Society because it refused to take a position. (An anti policy could be easily misunderstood)
I am not against immigration, in fact I've seen H1Bs put people in a terrible position -- I knew a brilliant data scientist who was being dicked around and I wanted to tell them "your skills are in demand and you can get a better job" but it wasn't true. This person would tell me about his struggles with immigration and realized my story that my ancestors left a failing agricultural economy in Quebec and the horrors of WWI in what was then Austria-Hungary and made a new home here would be cruel to recount to him.
I think it is valid to allow startups hire H1Bs.
Mind you today it is extremely hard and a lot of early atage atartups dont even bother to hire h1b due to uncertainty if the lottery
As for Musk (as much as I admire Falcon 9 and Starship) I think he's self-centered and unprincipled and that, observing the success of Donald Trump, he thinks that these traits can win him admiration. He's for immigration when it's good for him, otherwise he's indifferent or against it if he thinks its good politics.
It would also cut off non-tech businesses like restaurants employing specialized chefs. Perhaps do this in bands by industry (this info should already be collected as part of the Dept of Labor certification).
US companies are far more concerned about wage suppression than talent, so the system will not change unless tremendous pressure comes from without.
Googles AI search "As of January 2025, the median H-1B salary in the United States was $141,000 per year, or $11,750 per month. The average salary was $167,533 per year, or $13,961 per month."
https://h1bgrader.com/h1b-sponsors/visa-usa-inc-op0lw9gmkl/s...
This is excluding government costs of sponsoring the visa for the employee AND their family.
I am not supporting US companies by any means - they are as greedy as one can get.
This logic cuts both ways.
Many US companies are concerned about wage suppression, but many are also concerned about talent. And when it comes to software devs, there are definitely H1Bs who outmatch their citizen peers.
Thats why SWE salaries overall increased and H1Bs are making the same salaries as citizens, because of higher competition leading to higher productivity.
Importing foreign workers (and culling bottom 10% via forcing curve/pip) forces average labor productivity to increase
I've transferred H1B before, lawyers know what they are doing, if someone already has one it's less risk
Fields like Architecture, Agriculture, Forestry, Medicine, etc still need a lot of skilled workers that may not be available domestically. So I'm increasingly skeptical whenever someone claims that the solution to H1B is auctioning or a significant increase in wages as other fields outside of tech may not have the resource to bid for talents. US already has a diversity based immigration system called DV, maybe a diversity based system w.r.t. jobs is warranted?
The "top talent" was the ruse to justify the program.
If it "accidentally" stopped serving that top talent purpose it was obvious years ago. Then , whoops! I guess we'll just have to keep letting in non-top talent...?!
It was a camels nose attack on IT sector workers salaries and the vitriol of anti-racism was used to defend it, along with other similar efforts to destroy American wages.
Oddly, in the 1970s, the Democrats would have spoken out against it, back when they cared about American jobs. Not any more.
“In 2021, the proportion of foreign-born workers in STEM occupations (26%) was greater than the proportion of U.S.-born workers (24%), with more naturalized citizens in S&E-related occupations (11%) than noncitizens (5%) or U.S.-born citizens (9%).”
Does the US still need even more foreign visa workers given these statistics? What percentage is appropriate? How is this sustainable?
They are saying that among all the foreign-born workers in the US, 26% of those workers are working in STEM. Among all the US-born workers, 24% are working in STEM.
There are around 29 million foreign-born workers in the US, and around 131 million US-born workers (if Google has given me correct numbers). In percentages 18.1% of workers in the US are foreign-born and 81.9% are US-born.
With 26% of the foreign-born workers in STEM and 24% of the US-born workers in STEM that would be about 7.5 million foreign-born STEM workers in the US and 31 million US-born STEM workers in the US.
Among STEM workers in the US then it would 19.5% are foreign-born and 80.5% are US-born.
https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/foreign-...
“In 2019, there were 647,000 immigrant software developers, making up 39.2 percent of all software developers (Table 4). In fact, software developers made up 47.3 percent of all foreign-born workers in the computer and math category in 2019.”
If we are going to reform things we might as well scrap the visa altogether and roll whatever changes are needed into the employment based resident visas, including if necessary adjusting the numbers.
Of course that won’t happen because Congress doesn’t pass major overhauls of anything anymore. But if we are going to dream, might as well dream big.
Contrast a new marriage. The government issues a conditional permanent residency and then two years later an application can be filed to remove the condition. It’s a similar story with the investor’s visa.
The H1B doesn’t lead to anything. It’s designed as if the alien is just going to leave after 3 or 6 years. Any kind of accommodations between it and the EB process are afterthoughts.
There would probably need to be some tweaks (e.g. an employer looses sponsorship privileges if they can't keep the people they sponsor), but I think that's the right path.
H1B is just about specialized (skilled) professions like engineer or nurse or designer or manager.
Lottery is because of oversubscription for h1b.
Oversubscription if because of poor oversight (that leads to rampant fraud), and low number of visas that have not kept up with demand. I think it was 85000 new visas per year for several decades.
Removing fraud, improving oversight, and increasing limit will fix h1B, but there is a bigger question: Why should Americans compete with the whole world for domestic jobs?
For some reason it is considered normal to protect American Capital by imposing tariffs on foreign goods, and at the same time there are no protections for American Labor.
Anyone can come in and just apply for jobs, get work visa and steal a job from an American citizen.
If American Labor is subjected to unchecked global competition from global talent pool, then so should be American Capital. No tariffs in Chinese EVs: let American consumers buy Chinese EVs for $10,000 instead of paying Elon Musk $45,000
For h1b they just need to prove they are paying “prevailing wage” which is sort of proxy for market wage with asterisk
This sounds close. I think it was lowered on or near Trump's first term. It was higher during Obama, I'm recalling 185K maybe. Also, this misleading to the public because it's 85,000 new visas that can be extended 6 years I believe, so that's ~510,000 at any given time.
Considering there are around 1.5 - 3 million domestic software developers, that probably pushes down our salaries by about a third. Domestic software developers could be making around 50% more if it weren't for these policies. Imagine how much better off we'd be.
Politicians will sell their mothers for a campaign donation and they've been selling us out for decades. We need to stop buying into their distracting wedge issues and concentrate on what matters: our livelihoods.
If it's not about top talent, why not hire locally?
(I'm not implying local talent is sub-par)
This can be framed as natives having higher standards of living, or natives being lazy, depending on who you ask.
No domestic workers in those fields will work for the bottom tier of $38K. That is not a skilled professional's salary. The point is to get gullible foreigners to work for peanuts with the promise of maybe winning a green card. Maybe.
The basic misunderstanding of how value and jobs are created is mind boggling to me. We should fix the H1B program because it will make us all richer and better off, including the American engineers.
The import of goods is fundamentally different than the importing of talent. Importing goods boosts the competing countries economy. Importing talent strips competing countries of their best resources. Tech talent can create basically unlimited value due to the zero marginal cost nature of software replication.
There's a classic story that used to be told about Cambridge and Silicon Valley - both were good candidates for the tech boom but Silicon Valley won because Massachusetts allowed extremely harsh non-competes that prevented employees from freely switching jobs. The H1B visa vs. O1 visa argument is basically the exact same scenario - forcing workers to stay in specific positions hurts innovation and competitiveness. Once you're accepted into the US you should be free to participate in the labor market like everyone else.
The job market is not a zero sum game.
Tech adoption is now faster than ever, so there's numerous examples of Silicon Valley companies going from 0 to one of the most valuable companies in the world 5-15 years.
Stop thinking about the short term. You're going to be around for the long term, so you're only screwing over yourself.
The main mistake being made here is assuming that employment is a fixed sum game. Bringing highly skilled individuals from around the world to the US promotes US growth. A study has even shown that higher H-1B denial rate results in a decrease of US positions by multinational companies. [0]
> If American Labor is subjected to unchecked global competition from global talent pool, then so should be American Capital.
I'm not sure how that follows. Protective tariffs as a response to state subsidies don't really have an equivalent for labor.
[0] https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/sites/default/fil...
Just do a mental exercise: do you want your children to compete with the whole world For their first job out of college?
Look at Canada and whats happening there. Goant influx of foreigners and severe crisis in job market and housing.
Do you want to subject your kids to global competition for jobs and housing?
Is America a nation or just an economic zone for anyone to come in, work, pay taxes and consume goods ?
Next up, getting advice from Microsoft Software Developer Foundation about best Desktop OS to run.
[0]: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/aevyu53k3e9nnt8d4ki8m/BGlenno...
Because its the global market. Why should other countries allow Coke to sell in their markets and depress local soda companies? A person is just an LLC selling their goods/services. Immigration is no different to customs.
All countries are hypocrites, and everything sucks.
If Tesla/GM are so good in this beautiful global market, they dont need no tariffs on Chinese EVs.
Zero tariffs in all imports since it is beautiful global market and competition is good and all tariffs are paid by American consumers
American Labor should never support policies that will harm labor and benefit capitalist class (at least without some negotiation).
US citizens should not support policies that will harm working class and benefit employer/capitalist class
When you grow up in an export-driven country, one thing you learn early is that high wages are bad for the economy. And when the economy is bad, it's the ordinary people who suffer the most.
You generally want to keep the labor share of GDP constant, which means that wages should grow about as fast as GDP per capita. If the wages grow faster than that in a field, it's probably bad for the economy. Especially if the field was already highly paid. Unusually high wages typically indicate low productivity (when measured in outputs per dollar). And when productivity is low, businesses that rely on the outputs of that field become less competitive. For example, if making software is more expensive in the US than in other developed countries, American businesses cannot afford to use it as much as their foreign competitors.
you can overlay in your mind chart of FAANG stock total return or VC total returns to compare returns to Capital vs wages
the article: https://aneconomicsense.org/2015/02/13/why-wages-have-stagna...
There is a reason why USA has at-will employment (to screw over labor) and import tariffs (to protect capital)
Because they can buy the politicians to protect their own interest. Simple as that, no mystery, case closed.
Labor needs to start voting in better politicians.
who and where they are? these so called "better" politicians?
I think we cannot vote our way out of this and only next level solutions like revolution or protest or "Luigi solution" will make labor's voice heard.
Remember, labor/working class vastly outnumber capitalist class (and have more weapons thanks to 2nd amendment) and capitalists were, are, and will always be scared to death when American labor gains class conscience and starts demanding what they are owed by the capitalist class
Your point is moot anyway since countries, including the USA, have protectionist policies.
And? Yes, we know it doesn't benefit US citizens. How many citizens filter for products made by American workers when making purchasing decisions? People want cheap shit, except when it comes to their own jobs.
Or does that mean American heartland and South don't want to pay competitive wages?
People with the visa from quota countries shouldn’t be stuck working for a sponsoring company forever.
Foreigners with US degrees should be given preferential treatment over these consulting companies gaming the system.
Is Bloomberg confusing it with O-1 Visas?
https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...
You should do this with your house too. Imagine all the intermixing of cultures you'll benefit from.
Societies are complex, and humans are still very tribal. Any large influx of new population changes everything significantly, for good and for worse. And there will be resistance to change. Intermixing of cultures takes multiple generations, if at all and even then you will see silos.
We just need to look at how things are even now, even with the supposedly local population - caucasians, hispanics, african-americans and native americans. And they've all been together for centuries.