How H-1B Visas Are Screwing Tech Workers
motherjones.com
motherjones.com
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> But in reality, most of today's H-1B workers don't stick around to become the next Albert Einstein or Sergey Brin
I recently wrote a letter to a Congressperson about this, regarding the recent House Judiciary Committee Hearing on Immigration Reform. The same point was brought up there too. Do these people think it's easy to start a company on an H-1B? It's near impossible. I'd know, because I've looked into it with a brilliant lawyer. Let's take a look at the factors.
* H-1B costs around 4-5k, and the result of the application is uncertain. Would you want an uncertain cofounder? Would investors?
* H-1B workers must be paid prevailing wage. For a programmer in Cambridge, MA, the cheapest level-1 codemonkey must be paid around $55k/yr. How many of us started out paying ourselves that much money? Or any money for that matter?
* A document called the Neufeld Memo from 2008 states that the H-1B sponsor and worker need an employer-employee relationship. This means that the company, that you helped start, must have the ability to fire you whenever it wants. You must relinquish your rights to control your employment in that regard. How would you feel about this?
* For similar reasons, owning majority stake in your company is nearly impossible, and owning any stake is generally frowned upon and investigated further by authorities.
* Work visas are per-company and per-job. You want to do some consulting on the side to keep the purse full? Tough luck, unless you also are able to get an H-1B from there. (hint: it's tough.)
If you had all these limitations, how likely is it that you'd be the next Sergey Brin? Is it any wonder that H-1Bs are not creating jobs for Americans? The reason for all this is that the H-1B was created for BigCo.
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> ComputerWorld revealed last week that the top 10 users of H-1B visas last year were all offshore outsourcing firms such as Tata and Infosys. Together these firms hired nearly half of all H-1B workers, and less than 3 percent of them applied to become permanent residents.
Again, the H-1B system surely favors BigCO. The reason for this is because it was created for BigCO, and it was advanced by constant lobbying by BigCO. There is no equivalently large lobby, however, for the bright immigrant entrepreneurs that America wants. Brin himself is probably lobbying for the H-1B, as Google is in the top 10 H-1B employers.
"Less than 3% of them applied to become permanent residents". Honestly! This makes me angry. Do people think they didn't want to become permanent residents? Are we this out of touch? This is because they can't decide to apply to become permanent residents themselves! They need sponsorship for PERM (green card) applications too! But the companies don't want to take this costly and time consuming (6+ years for Indians) route often, when they can just replace them.
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There are more glaring things in the article, but I want to keep my point clear. Do I think H-1Bs are great? NO! God no. But calls to ban it are a bit overzealous. Please, have some compassion.
People seem to forget that H-1Bs are the only way to legal immigration for people who don't have ties to the US, or people like me whose American parents haven't lived in the US for a long time. Ban it, and the likes of me are screwed.
I hope that there comes a better alternative that doesn't serve corporate interests as much, that supports foreign founders who create jobs for Americans. Something that raises the bar for potential applicants and lowers the bar for consultancy-farms. I'm hopeful about the STEM visa. I like the startup visa. I think there are tons of flaws to be fixed in the system.
Please, consider what will happen to us, just as you consider what will happen to you. I understand that America must think of its own first. But consider how immigrants created entire industries, when they were allowed to do so. Heck, most Americans are descendants of immigrants. If you call for the ban of the H-1B, please also call, twice as vigorously, for the creation of something better.
No one has said anything about banning H1B in this thread. You're misdirecting us from the real issue which is that H1B program is about to be EXPANDED. This will accelerate the damage to the job market in places like NY/NJ/CA/TX where most H1Bs are placed. The amount of H1Bs that were previously admitted in a decade will now be admitted in slightly more than 2 years. What do you think that will do to salaries (yours included)?
>> But consider how immigrants created entire industries, when they were allowed to do so. Heck, most Americans are descendants of immigrants.
You are once again misdirecting. If you consider the statistics, a 3% citizenship rate is indicative that the H1B program is not really a immigration program at all -- it is actually a guest worker program.
What's wrong with that? Guest workers who have limited freedoms, are tied to their jobs for legal status, and can be sent back to India on their employer's whim are not really free market participants or citizens -- they are indentured servants or modern day slaves to the corporations that hold their visas. It's then unsurprising that this special class of workers lowers market salaries, or that expanding the number of people in this special class will lower salaries.
>> Do I think H-1Bs are great? NO! God no.
You admit that H1B is a awful visa, but you don't want to rock the boat and do anything about it. You are not actively campaigning to improve conditions, instead you are here misdirecting and essentially supporting the expansion of the H1B program in its current form. I'm sorry, but that's a mistaken attitude and I can't get behind that.
You are indeed right about the banning - in this thread. This issue, however, has been coming up recently (3-4 major articles in the last 45 days or so) and there is a growing "let's get rid of it" sentiment, but without proposals for an alternative. If you take a peek at my conclusion again, you'll see that this is what I'm asking for. An alternative.
>If you consider the statistics, a 3% citizenship rate is indicative that the H1B program is not really a immigration program at all -- it is actually a guest worker program.
Read again please, I agree with this exact point in the second section of my comment. I made the point that it's not the worker's choice, it's BigCo's choice. The system is set up to serve temp-workers to BigCo. I've supported this exact idea in the 5 bullet points I've made above that. What I disagree with was the implication in the original article that guest workers didn't want to naturalize. "less than 3 percent of them applied to become permanent residents" makes it sound that way. They can't apply themselves!
I don't need lecturing about how guest workers have limited freedoms. I know firsthand! I'm not too keen on servitude myself! It's not that I don't think rocking the boat is a good idea, but I'm wary and scared. Do you know how many alternative visa program / immigration reform bills have been proposed so far? And how many have been passed? And how many of those have been bills that support the current long-term temporary worker style?
As my wise lawyer says, "I'll believe it when I see it".
I'm afraid that we're going to kick this system over, in favor of no system. And then no alternative is going to be agreed upon (in the Senate and House), or the alternative is going to be heavily lobbied yet again, to create a similar system, entrenching it even more.
Is this fear not justified?
You agree that changes need to happen. So why not lobby for the changes that you want to see? Why lobby for the status quo or the expansion of the current broken program?
From your comment, why not lobby for these:
1. Employers should NOT have the right to send people back within 30 days if they eliminate a position. Instead, the person should have the right to look for another job as long as the visa period has not expired.
2. Employers should not be involved in the green card application process -- people should apply for a green car on their own, after X years of stay.
Why not have a real change agenda instead of sniping at non-existing arguments (they'll ban H1B!) or adding support to the idea that being exploited by BigCos is the only way things can be?
Overall I see H1-B visas as a means of companies to suppress wages of domestic IT workers. I know entirely way too many good software engineers and developers looking for jobs for there to be a "shortage".
That being said I am very aware that my comment like the rest of the comments is anecdotal. I am hopeful more objective numbers can be found that will allow us to have a more informed conversation on this.
I remember Scott Adams using the word "managerish" to describe decisions like this.
If you take "you could find employees at a higher salary" as a proof that the shortage doesn't exist you'll virtually always have that proof. Under that definition shortages don't exist which feels like some sort of semantic trickery.
If companies are hiring workers who can do the job and are willing to do it for less than domestic workers, why is that wrong?
Here in NYC startup-land we have no trouble finding talent at "market" rates. Granted, market-rate for an engineer with even just a few years of experience and up-to-date tech skills is $150K-200K total comp.
I've noticed that the H-1B discussions tend to be extremely polarized, and it reflects the bimodal distribution of the tech industry. There's the highly-paid glam side (see: Google, Facebook, etc) where comp is high and you meet $200K H-1B engineers around every corner.
And then there's the bodyshop consultancy side of the industry, where cheap H-1Bs are brought in by the planeload and shopped out to clients at insane markups.
The bimodality of H-1Bs is important to remember. Personally, I have trouble meeting devs around here making less than, say, $120K, H-1B or otherwise.
Of course, if you're willing to hire remotely, the H1-B thing gets much less pressing, as you can simply hire people overseas and keep them there, no need for a visa at all.
Where are you located? Certainly in NYC I don't know a single good developer looking for a job.
In this market the only good engineers I see having problems looking for jobs are those who are unwilling to relocate or older guys.
I'm probably too independently minded, but I'm not sure I could be bothered to give a rat's ass about what my family thought of me with respect to my job or how I live my life. If I'm working, keeping a roof over my family's head, enjoying what I do and getting better in my profession... tough cheese if someone in my family doesn't 'consider me human' - that says far more about them than me.
Like every other organization these ones also have politics and that makes things a lot worse for the employees.
From all the people I know around here who're on an H1B, the salaries are quite on par with US nationals. I do admit that I don't know anyone working for the companies named in the article (TCS, Infosys).
The issue that needs more discussion is why not let US-educated non-immigrants have an easier path to Permanent Residency vs. letting them leave the country to start companies back in their homeland.
I would say the pay is same as Americans working along with them.
The reason many companies are off-shoring to India is that there are more people with mix of domain and technical knowledge in India.
I'm a little bit confused in here. Is it the same 65k visa cap for Europe and India? Does that mean that Tata and Infosys have taken half of it and people who they hired weren't even working in US?
I didn't squeeze into the last year's visa quota and decided to stay in UK (hearing - "if you reapply we might get a visa for you in a year" is not very encouraging). From what I heard, getting H1B is becoming quite of a race against time as the places are getting filled out quickly. I think I know why now.
That's why most people never get PR. The main reason is not to short charge the client, but to give chance to other workers in India, cause most companies pay them only $5k to $14k/per year back in India(That's the market rate in India). There is a rat race where people have to fight to fly to US or other western countries so that they can earn 10X more.
That sounds wrong. The period of the H1-B visa stay is three years.
From the H1-Bs we employ, I know they receive comparable (and sometimes higher, since we tend to pay slightly below market and H1-B salaries are somewhat inflexible) salaries to their resident/citizen counterparts.
However, I have had the misfortune of interviewing a number of candidates coming from companies like those mentioned- they are indeed underpaid. However, they're also unemployable, because they are trained in highly specific areas. I interviewed more than one .NET candidate that did not know SQL, for example.
The sad reality is that they are underpaid because they are underqualified. In an ideal world no company would make do with that, but as these employers demonstrate, it's quite possible to get by stringing together a collection of underqualified employees and pay them less.
I think anyone who is actually any good at programming could disagree with that statement.
There are 2 problems with H-1Bs:
1) Body shops in northern NJ bringing mediocre talent here, lying on their resumes to get them placed, and then paying them 1/10 of what they're billed as indentured servants.
2) Not enough visas for qualified people, partially because of 1.
If you're being outcompeted by the incompetent body shop employees, you need to step up your game rather than try to restrict the labor market.
The proper framing is that their visa can be held over their head to extract 14 hour days 6 or 7 days a week and other working conditions and salaries that Americans would not accept or be able to compete with (for good reason).
I am a F-1 Visa Vietnamese student that recently got a pretty good offer in a big corp. I am really tired of being treated like half-resident person. While I do all of my duty (paying taxes), I never receive the benefits of being an resident. First there was a out-of-state tuition for every public university in the US. For over 5 years in school, I've seen many of my friends run out of money because of this "premium" price we pay.
Now, some of us try to work to support our premium tuition, but we are not permitted to work outside of school. As a result, most of us would have to work illegally in some Asian restaurant, usually with under-minimal wage and no tips. I understand they stop us from getting a job to protect American. However, from what I observe, those minimal-wage jobs which could not be taken by international students will be taken by illegal immigrant anyway. So it puts the US government in a lose-lose situation: those jobs won't return to American citizen, and they lose some of the taxes. Maybe they should look at others country, such as UK (allowed to work up to 20h), or Australia(allowed to work in controlled manner)... and rethink.
The only way you can work, is to get a job in your college with minimal wage or to get an OPT. I've had a job on campus in which I design a website for dorm using bottle.py and backbone.js for... $9.5/hour. Before tax. An OPT is a program where you can work outside of your college for one year, but the job has to fit your major. I got my internship with EMC by OPT.
Now, although we do not have the benefits of being residents, we still have to do our duty while we are in here. I have to pay taxes like everyone else. I just finish doing my tax for last year. With one internship and an on-campus job, I fall in the second braket of tax, although I did pay a lot more for my education. We also do not have credit cards as no-one trusts us. I just got my frist creditcard after 6 years being here :).
Now, after 6 years of suffering, it finally pays off for me to have a offer for a big corp and be an h1-b visa. I can asure you that they pay me very competitively. However, it is still pretty damn hard to become a US-citizen from here. The process is lengthy, and sometime depends on luck. Not to mention if I want to bring my wife to the US, my wife will not be able to work at any form, not even on college campus.
What you can say about technology right now in USA, there are two large disjoint islands. There is the silicon valley kinds of "cool"/startup technology and then there is run of the mill "IT" for Bank/Insurance/Big-Non-IT technology. Outsourcers go after the latter kind and in fact can only go after the latter kind. Their premise is to hire really below average "Engineers" in India, and expect them to just learn the tricks of the trade to replace/take over another run-of-the mill IT job.
The point is, if your day job is just about maintaining/coding something mind numbing, with no real value add or just being a cog in the wheel in some Big-Co that has nothing to do with technology, you can expect someone to do your job much cheaper. Probably the quality will dip, but then the Big-Co hardly cares about its software right?
Whereas, if you look at the stuff being done in the "valley like" companies, you won't find those outsourced developers. You will still find smart Indians on H1, but then the non-linearity of their talent is at play. Although, I have seen valley companies outsource their QA (manual testing).
I think it is important that one keeps working hard on moving from the second island to the first, no matter who it is (American or otherwise). There is nothing new about this... we have seen this happen to manufacturing. It has happened to web design - Go to elance and you will find at least 20:1 ratio of some Indian firm to US firm. All of them compete at the low-end of the scale.
It is very hard to secure a comfortable life in that lower-end of the technology pipeline living here in USA.
Wow, pretty bad case to blame immigrants.
As a father I can sympathize with the guy, it should be hard having to choose between a decent job offer and the ability to see your children every day. But mobility is one important factor in the job market, you don't always get to choose where to live while advancing your career (unless maybe if you're a rock star and telecommuting is viable), especially in STEM areas that have most jobs in large metros or startup/high-tech hubs.
While I don't dispute that there are holes in the program and abuse that happens, it has enabled us to find some folks for our team who have put us as a company on a different trajectory.
Disclaimer: data point of one.
There's engineers and then there's engineers. If he could code (or was interested in coding) fluently in modern web environments, I suspect he'd have no problem finding a job at all...
However, there is nothing wrong in the way Mr. Obama replied. Watch the video to get how article kind of distorts that fact.
Anyone who reads through job listings for engineers (all types, as in real engineers) and programmers will also conclude that many job descriptions and salaries are designed so that a) there are practically zero people who will match the 'minimum' requirements, despite the fact that most of the deficiencies candidates are likely to have can be solved by 3 months or less of training, and b) if there were any Americans with the actual qualifications expressed, they would never work for the listed salary.
It's also worth noting, the hidden secret to getting cheap developers in the US is to be based somewhere that doesn't have a huge tech hub.
If you base yourself in moderate size cities you'll find a hidden field of competent applicants who will take salaries close to $50k a year just because there are few jobs in mainstream America that aren't Java or .Net unless they move to a tech hub (people often do not want to live in NYC or SF, at any cost). And 50k in a region they like with a tech they don't hate is better than moving. On average.
I should know. I'm a competent (but not end of the world amazing jock rock star hipster) developer getting paid 50k a year somewhere in America that is distinctly not New York or California. And my company pretty much has me locked in because there are pretty much no other businesses or shops in town that use Javascript or Python or other similar common open source languages instead of .Net or Java (or PHP). (Obviously not an issue of technical ability, but language taste.)
As an H1B holder on his third job in the US, I can tell you that we aren't actually beholden to any employer.
You're right that it's a little more complicated. A family friend is here from India on some kind of visa where she is able to switch employers, but she has to leave if a new one won't sponsor her or something. But she pays (or paid) thousands of dollars to some agency in India to fix her up with a job/jobs.
What really gets me in her case is that she has a child who has lived here for over a decade and can't get in-state tuition without special treatment despite being legal.
The principle is absolutely simple- an H1B visa is freely transferrable to a new employer. There is absolutely nothing (legal) that your old employer can do in retribution once the transfer is complete, and it is possible to go through the transfer process without notifying your current employer.
I know it is not fair for americans to be unemployed because we foreigns are taking your positions; but you guys don't know what it feels to live in a third world country.
You can read all you want about poverty and violence, you can get shocked by the news and movies that touches that kind of topics. But you will hardly ever experience what it feels to live in real poverty. You don't know how it feels when your brothers or children are dying of starvation.
So I kept studying for years, stuck in a country were you can get killed anytime... became a freelance and later I was brought to the US under a H-1B visa. And guess what... it saved my life and my family's.
I've realized America is the kind of country that loves to exploit and get as much as possible from other countries (third world ones generally), and when it comes to give back some of that... well, you find this kind of reactions.
America seems to be very harsh to legal immigrants, but pretty nice to illegal immigrants.
I think it's good for a country to import some competition. After all, h1b has a 60000 cap each year, that's not too many people.
Norm Matloff's H1B web page should be required reading for anyone who wants to discuss this: http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html
He definitely falls on one side of the issue, but he's the leading academic researcher on the subject.