The Data Behind H-1B Visas
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Job Description Applied Received Avg Salary
-------------------- ------- -------- ----------
Computer Programmers 55922 52342 (93%) $63,916
[1] http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=Computer+Programmer&l1=San+F...
I've actually reported a company who posted a H1-B notice for a software engineering position that I happened to see while visiting that was clearly 30% below market rate.
== Source?
A (genuine) subsample of "voters" earning under $64k are unlikely to support foreign labour substitution of any kind. In part, this is because the majority of these folks do not reside near silicon valley. Average wages in metro areas, excluding "slums", are significantly higher tha the US average. Stratify Manhatten south of 96th street, for example, vs Metro New york. The support for H1Bs is higher amongst the "manager" class than the working class. The working class gets no benefit from H1Bs. To the working class 64k may be an enourmous salary, but it is not to the manager class. So again, the idea that "workers" have any interest in supporting this is silly. Alternatively, if they had any interest in this area, they would be already working in it, an thus not consider 64k "real money", because their housing costs are likely 10x that, given the areas in which they need to reside. Lastly, the h1bs don't apply to the type of low-skill labour that concerns the immigration/green card dynamics that the urban minorities/poor do suppor. H1Bs are supported primarily by wealth white suburbia and the "landed gentry" of upper management in urban areas.
These are the 30k to 45k jobs that make up the lower half of the "middle class."
That's just unfair. Local workers need to get a first chance at these jobs.
The reality of it is that there is a need for "program assemblers" - people that can read up the APIs/programmer guides and cook up a working app OR maintain such an app. The need for such people is significant and it isn't always in sunny SFO - often times it is at a place where not many would relocate to.
That's why you need H1-Bs at the lower end of the market with lower salaries- it works because no one else who is already in the US with student debts and location preference is willing and for the guys coming from EU/India/China - it is a great start and an opportunity to try and get permanent residence to get up the chain.
The fact is that there are too few programmers in the US and far more jobs. The H1-B allows companies to import a slave workforce bound to the visa.
Your assumption that they are merely program assemblers is insulting to everyone who holds an H1-B. Their education backgrounds are competitive with the US.
If there is any correlation with H1-B holders and large corporations, it is most likely due to the willingness to sponsor H1-B visas.
There is no insult intended in calling lower end jobs what they are - it's just a relative distinguishing mechanism. You can hardly justify arguing that everyone that maintains a run of the mill C#/Java app should get paid a $100K in Youngstown, OH.
Oh and look up real slavery before using the slave word in H1-B context.
Also it isn't slave labor because H1-Bs can leave and get another job of their liking or go back to their home country when they wish. This is simple demand/supply/willingness/market forces in action.
Please tell me you were born in a third-world country and that your parents wages were so low that they could barely afford to feed you and your siblings while you were growing up. And you would not mind going back because you so loved the living conditions before moving to the US that you would love your kids to grow up in a third-world country, with all its disadvantages.
You, dear blinkingled, clearly have no clue what you are saying when you say what you said there.
Snark aside, did you know losing your "new" job while on an H-1B means getting kicked out of the US within 15 days? Not a very comforting thought now, is it?
Lets call it what it is: Bonded Labor.
Not merely an inconvenience either. Capisce?
I can't speak for shiven but I know I hate mornings and traffic too, yea.
*I'm not actually doing this myself, I'm basing this off of friends experiences
Nothing to do with H-1B visas.
MSFT outsourced ops/rote testing stuff to an Indian consulting company, Infosys/Wipro, don't remember which. Those companies in-turn have branches here and they bring in these guys from India. They come-in for periods of 3-4 months and go back once the project is done. Although, considering the fact that all these Indian outsourcing companies are morally, ethically corrupt and run by scumbags, I wouldn't be surprised if they were pulling some fraudulent scam.
I totally agree with you, I don't think Apple/MS et al have significant cost savings when they pull this shit. They can easily find someone here without making a dent in their pockets. And like you point out, they're actually probably paying more to these guys. My guess is there's some MBA in the finance/HR division pulling this shit..the 'consulting experts' from OfficeSpace come to mind.
Being Indian, I know the quality of idiots these outsourcing companies hire. Most of them can't code their way out of a paper bag. And worse, they bring a bad reputation to Indian engineers in general. I got my masters here in the US and there were scores of reasonably component people in my undergrad class I TA'ed who'd be more than happy to fill up QA and data entry jobs at these companies. These Indian outsourcing companies should be banned from bringing people here period.
Students who come from foreign countries for Masters' in US do end up in consultancy firms and finally need H1B, so not cent percent correct.
First, according to the post, 26% of all H1-Bs go to California and New York, which are high cost of living states. 26% is a higher percent relative to either state's population of the USA, so they are getting proportionally more H1-B visas, not less. So no, they aren't going to Detroit.
Second, the story I've always read about H1-Bs is that they're for specialized positions which you cannot find people in the USA to fill. You present a different story, which is perhaps more true: that we want a workforce that we can pay less. This isn't what's being sold to the public though.
"H1-Bs are for specialized positions which you cannot find people in the USA to fill *at a price you're willing to pay."
There are half a dozen other job categorization that could also be computer programmers, such as:
• Software Developers, Applications
• Software Developers, Systems Software
• Web Developers
• Software Quality Assurance Engineers and Testers
• Network and Computer Systems Administrator
• Computer Systems Analysts
• Computer Operators
• Database Administrators
The wages are much higher for other job titles. (eg. $88,589 for "Software Developers, Applications")
Also, note that the figure you quote is for the SF Bay Area, while the H-1B figure is an average for the country. Big difference.
Exactly. People on HN are freaking out because they don't understand the difference between the various DoL classifications.
So when a person has multiple offers of employment, they pick the offer that best meets their needs and goals.
Let's use a made up example, lets say Bob has two offers of employment for $100,000 per year in annual salary. One is from a startup which can't afford to provide healthcare but they can provide equity (stock options), and one is from BigCorp with provides healthcare but no equity (I realize that as a non-US citizen it may be 'weird' to think that you have to pay for your own health care but its a big part of the compensation picture here.) Now if Bob is a young single person in good health, they may feel that the equity offered by the startup is potentially extra income, and the healthcare offered by BigCorp is a "waste" because they don't expect to use it during their employment. So they take the startup job. But if they were perhaps a bit older, or maybe had a family, or spouse who required expensive prescription medication, they might lean to the 'sure thing' of benefiting from the health care coverage as opposed to paying that out of their take home pay and only "maybe" making something on the equity.
So can you see how Bob might consider the "value" of health care or stock options differently depending on their family situation and/or health?
So if you are a trying to immigrate, how do you measure the value of that? Given an offer of $X for a job in the United States, what salary $Y would it take to keep someone home and not immigrating? Adding to the complexity, what if there isn’t even a single job available where you live? (some places such as Spain have reported huge unemployment numbers for everyone) If there is no alternative then the value might be “any” job at “any” price is better than no job.
What Google, Sun, and NetApp all found, and they have a lot of data on this stuff, is that on average someone who was seeking to immigrate would accept a salary that was about 25% lower than what it would take to hire an equally qualified engineer that was already living in the US. I've heard from folks at Oracle that they use 50% but that would be like Oracle. This discrepancy in salary requirement stems from the fact that candidates wanting to immigrate "value" the chance to live and work in the US, people already living and working in the US don’t have that perspective.
So for the cost of processing an H-1B visa, a company in the US can hire an engineer and save money on salaries. Further the reduced salary is paid over years so the savings are multiplicative, whereas the cost of an immigration attorney is often less than the difference of 1 years salary.
I’ll assert here that I don’t think there is anything particularly "evil" about this, the candidate is getting something they want (a visa to live and work in the US) and the company is getting what they want, the most engineer per $ spent. Once engineers are living in the US they often switch jobs as soon as their visa status allows it, and get a big jump in salary. Companies like Google and Facebook want more H1B visas because everyone they hire they get at a discount. And any jobs they have to fill when the visas run out they have to fill at "list price." It is often called a 'tech shortage' but it really isn't anything of the sort. Its an effort to keep the salaries paid down. That makes running the business easier (and more profitable).
GP wasn't saying that visas aren't used for labor arbitrage. He was just saying the data point that you pulled doesn't demonstrate it as directly as you made it seem. I, for one, don't disagree with anything that you wrote. But, it doesn't actually address the content+context of the post you were replying to.
My thesis is that if employers were required to pay immigrant workers 'market wage', they would no longer be seeing a 'shortage' of tech workers. If I were an immigrant worker I'd be quite irritated by this abuse but understand that many consider it the cost of getting a visa.
I've hired a number of software engineers, both citizens and those needing H1-B sponsorship and a visa was never viewed as a significant factor in the offer amount nor was it viewed as an opportunity to get someone on the cheap.
Programmer/analyst | $1,690,000
Nexgen Infosys Inc, New York, NY
Employer's Proposed Wage $ 65,000
Wage Unit Bi-weekly
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/04/03/176134...
I also want to point out that despite the occasional anecdote of H1B visa holders being paid equal to, or even better than, their US citizen counterparts there is exactly zero budget for enforcement of this requirement. Even then, there are classification tricks to work around the occasional cursory check-up.
http://www.cringely.com/2012/10/23/what-americans-dont-know-...
It isn't like holding an H1B is a necessary part of the process for getting a green card, or even necessarily a leg up on the process.
How else does a young graduate outside of US, not part of the diversity green card program get a Green Card without H1-B or L1 Visas? Realistically H1-B/L1 visas are the only option for many people aspiring for green cards.
It is their intent that matters and if their intent were to facilitate such people's immigration there are better ways to do it since the green card process takes nearly the maximum term of an H1B visa. If you don't start the process from basically day one, you are probably not going to get that green card. If you switch employers mid-stream, the green-card process must restart which puts a practical end to it too.
And the alternative to that is to do what? Not bother and not try getting the green card?
It is impossible to tell from the LCA data what companies actually followed through with the rest of the process and fees and were able to sponsor a foreign worker before the visa cap was hit each year. That information would come from US Citizenship and Immigration Service, and as far as I can find they do not release that information.
First myth: H1B get lower salaries. For knowing a decent number of people with H1B, me included, I can say that's not the case. All of the people with H1B I know are paid more than 100k/year (some WAY more than that) at full-time positions with good health care and, for the people who work in startups, decent equity.
True it may be that the first job you get as an H1B might be paid less, I was at 60k when I started, but on my second job almost doubled my salary, and still got a significant increase in my second change.
Second myth: You cannot change jobs with an H1B. This is completely wrong. I have changed job twice in the past 3 years, and it's really easy. You just need to work with your new employer to get a new form which might take 2 to 3 weeks, but the process is pretty straight-forward, and even startups can do this easily without requiring armies of lawyers.
Of course I can't say that this is true for every single H1B employee out there, but from my experience I haven't seen much difference with US citizens/permanent residents, and would even go so far as saying that the most competent people I've had the chance to work with were on H1B visas.
Some people need to stop and learn before saying that "We need H1-B visas because there is a shortage of computer programmers living in the United States who will work for $64,000 a year when the average salary of all programmers is $94,000"...
This is a clear indication that your skill set is in high demand.
> "We need H1-B visas because there is a shortage of computer programmers living in the United States who will work for $64,000 a year when the average salary of all programmers is $94,000"...
Doesn't your previous comment actually confirm this statement?
You took a HIB job paying a wage that did not accurately reflect your skill level and your ability to move up in wage scale so easily is a clear indication of that fact.
One reason so many who apply actually get H1-Bs is that there is a cutoff (at which point they don't accept new applicants). This is (for the last few years) about a week after they're actually released (April). Though you can apply before this time, companies usually want you to start asap and so won't apply unless the time frame for application is right.
The threshold for application is also super high (doc requirements, company proof, $$$), thus increasing the likelihood that an application put forward will most likely be accepted. Most immigration lawyers will counsel against putting forward applications they think won't succeed to avoid the having angry clients. It's pretty clear (80-90% certainty) to most immigration lawyers what will and won't work.
Not sure what this study really tells us aside from the fact that it's so hard just to apply for an H1B that if you do, you'll probably get it.
Going home to visit family and friends became a real risk that we might lose our jobs. We were told "Do not cross at this crossing on these days of the week" because we'd had so many incidents of one guy who would just arbitrarily take away TN visas.
An H1B meant safety.
Most of my friends including myself who are Canadian or Mexican and working in the U.S. got TN visas and never have a problem at the border. Personally I prefer the TN because its been a ridiculously easy visa to acquire in terms of money and time.
Also, there's some invalid data in the database: "Brooklyn, NY" is listed as a city, but it's not (it's a borough of NYC). That also means that the numbers for NYC are wrong, since they apparently don't include Brooklyn. This brings into question how reliable the rest of the data is.
What is the relation between the "Applications Submitted" and "Employees Hired"? Given that this is just 2012 data, the there is a hard limit of 65,000 H1-B visas per year, this doesn't make sense to me. The figure in the article is a little misleading, I presume that the figured is over the past x years?
To find out what visas were actually issued that information would come from US Citizenship and Immigration Service, and as far as I can find they do not release that information.
http://www.travel.state.gov/pdf/FY12AnnualReport-TableXVIB.p...
The rest of the 2012 report PDFs are listed at:
http://www.travel.state.gov/visa/statistics/statistics_5861....
Not quite - the article actually explains the ways that this limit can be exceeded. That said, I find their numbers pretty odd - 150,000 applications leading to 300,000 approvals? For a post that is showing off their charting/presentation capabilities, it's very poorly presented data.
Infosys Applications Submitted: 4837 Employees Hired: 24060
Why is there such a big difference here? What does "employees hired" mean - their total workforce in the US, those on an H1B application EVER or just for 2012?
EDIT: Thanks, along with another explanation below I think I get it now...!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Congressional_yearly_...
Then the heading "Companies with the Most H1-B Visas" is misleading. It's a very poorly written/explained article IMO. Thanks for the clarifications.
Consulting in this context is so muddled up.
True Consulting: McKinsey, Deloitte, PwC, KPMG, EY, etc.,
Off-shoring/Lesser expensive labor: Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant etc.,
Granted Infosys and Wipro may have some true consulting guys, but to put them in the same bucket as McKinsey or EY is a little ridiculous.
I'm Canadian, living in Canada, and considering a move back to the US to work. However, I have a somewhat complicated history with US Immigration and I'd like professional advice to figure out my options.
Have you had a good experience with an immigration lawyer (In either the US or Canada)? If so, please post a link to their site (or email me if you prefer: sukotto.filter@gmail.com )
Alternatively, there are lots of those west coast companies opening offices in Toronto. Get hired there, then get a transfer.
Encourage folks to Google the IEEE articles lately on the 'worker shortage issue' and statistics. Interesting stuff.
Let me point out a few obvious and unsettling problems that stem from Infosys and its ilk directly importing developers into the IT offices of US corporations. First and foremost, if the number of programmers in this country is a real issue (see excellent article linked at bottom) and one that you're serious about solving, then the consequences of underpaid H1-B developers is troublesome. When companies can replace US hires with H1-B consultants, not only do US developers become comparatively expensive, but the number of job openings is also reduced, artificially holding down IT salaries. The market's answer to a shortage in supply is higher prices- yet stagnant IT salaries remain an obstacle to the tech industry attracting more talent ("in computing and IT, wages have generally been stagnant for the past decade, according to the EPI"). Money can absolutely make IT more cool, but unless you land in a promising startup, you're better off pursuing a career in finance or attending business school.
In the context of a country burdened with stagnanet wages and a growing wealth gap, repressed IT salaires are even more distrubing. While IT automation allows corporations to significantly downsize and slash mid-level executives across the board, the IT developers directly responsible for these greater efficiencies can never expect to earn the same $300k salaries of the laid off executives. You might think that as high paying US middle management jobs are lost, equally attractive IT jobs might help stem the drain on US middle class incomes. But there are few signs that even the supposedly systemic shortages of programmers in a country where "software is eating the world" can lift IT salaries across the board, year over year, over a significant period of time. Ask yourself- why hasn't IT wage inflation, inevitable under the normal market conditions of a true shortage, reduced corporate profits by even one tenth of one percent over the past decade?
Just as troubling, US corporations can lean on H1-B consultants as a band-aid that lets them avoid the steps needed to actually address the underlying problems they see in the tech labor market. Despite record profits, how many corporations have revamped their technology department training and recruitment practices, or started offering better benefits and improved career paths to new IT hires? Why don't college-bound kids generally show even the slightest amout of excitement when asked about the promise of working in IT? The answer is simple- those jobs are no more attractive than they were 10 or 20 years ago. Exciting opportunities for advancement or higher pay or even the opportunity for mentorship from leaders in non-IT parts of the business? Good luck with that! Let's face it, beyond the opportunity to indulge your joy of coding on a daily basis, IT jobs still suck. H1-B programs let corporations avoid spending resources needed for real, substantial improvements.
Is there actually a STEM shortage?
http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-i...
While he has a couple of patents, the crucial thing was the business notability for which lawyers recommended getting testimonials from upper management in publicly known companies such as Apple and Dell instead of lesser known industry specific companies.
https://chartio.com/project/11916/dash/h1b-visa-applications...