Charging a yearly fee to offset how H1-B is abused for cheap labor instead of high performers makes sense. Making that fee $100,000 with arbitrary waivers for friends of the administration is absurd.
In my view, the real problem with the H1-B program stems from the sponsorship system which ties each employee to a particular company and role. Unable to leave their position without threatening their residency, they are more willing to demand abuse (e.g., long working hours, poor leadership, subpar compensation) than the labor market requires.
An improvement to the program would make it easier for people to change job. Perhaps the government could permit highly skilled individuals to qualify personally for the visa so long as they sustain employment in their field.
Yeah of course people are not happy about such bait and switch behavior.
My impression is that Americans are having a hard time coping with the fact that Europe and Japan aren't bombed out husks anymore, China has developed, and India is slowly getting there too. That's why over the decades, Americans have slowly gone through hating every one of them.
Thus, the socialism hating capitalists seek strong isolationist market controls, as anything that doesn't have them winning must actually be unfair.
That is kind of how it works: when I was on a H1B I did look at switching jobs and had an offer from a company who would sponsor me. They need to file a Labor Condition Application to show that the position qualified for a H1B worker, but you can start working as soon as the LCA is approved if you already have the visa, while the I129 is processed.
I actually don’t think it should be like the poster you replied to suggested where the immigrant employee in question needs to maintain employment.
I would advocate that we structure employment visas like we do marriage visas which would mean we calculate whatever the total cost of the drain on our system would be if the new immigrant wasn’t working, charge the company that much to have them enter, and then the employee is free to quit immediately if they feel it’s in their interests
But that's exactly the idea. I don't know what "solving" a cheap labor problem even means.
H1-B is being used for cheap labor, let's use a reasonable yearly fee to put some pressure on that usage to make it less lucrative.
The H1-B visa is intended for bringing specific technical expertise that does not exist in the US for a set period of time. This is why one of the requirements is that you must have interviewed US persons first. Its the same reason it's a nonimmigration visa.
The rampant abuse of the visa has a remedy - criminal charges against the HR directors of any company who is found to have committed fraud, and capping the number of visas per company (setting up many shell companies is a strong signal that fraud is being committed).
If an H1-B worker can't negotiate on a global level for their expertise - they should not be on that visa.
This is generally not a requirement for an H-1B. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/62o-h1b-recruit...
At the same time, if a US person applies and is similarly qualified, they must be offered the job.
Which is trivially abuseable by offering substantially less for the H-1B position. I'm not sure if there's an easy policy solution for that.
You don't have to look at every single one lying on government forms is fraud start putting at the company who signed off and the person brought over (before they are deported) in jail for a couple of years and people will clean up their act real quick.
- Jailing a foreigner before sending him back to his country for an administrative offense is somehow a big waste of public money.
- A very hard punishment still requires to consistently catch offenders, otherwise it will slowly become hypothetic.
I think that it is very clear what was meant here.
trust me, there would be 99% compliance in very short order
The problem is that the mechanics of the switching process is extremely cumbersome. Some of the relevant documents are held by your current employer and not with you. The new employer effectively needs to apply for a new application minus the lottery system. There are significant weeks to months worth of delays for the new employers to get approvals, so most H1B employees that transfer are actually working provisionally on the basis of their new approval still being pending. They are very limited in terms of traveling etc during this period. There are significant risks to changing your job when you’re approaching the end of your current H1B visa expiry. This was particularly bad for Chinese applicants who unlike most other nations’s applicants who got 3 year approvals, usually only got 1 year approvals.
The real problem in switching jobs aren’t the policies but the extreme uncertainty and bureaucracy involved in doing so.
This may have an effect at the margins where the company is contractually or due to some rare product specific reason required to have the person be within the U.S. But the vast majority of H1Bs are working for major tech companies that have massive campuses all over the world.
As a body shop you can charge a higher rate and get bigger margins on an on-shore body.
I see your point about faangs and direct hires though. I suppose they must believe that something about being in the U.S. makes those people more productive or their output more valuable.
But people loathe common sense, so that wouldn't do. And it's not dramatic and aggressive enough for Trump.