H1B workers are not indentured servants
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That statement is true, but meaningless. Never in the history of the H1B visa program has there been any budget allocated to enforcing those regulations. I am not omniscient, but I am only aware of two cases of prevailing-wage enforcement actions over the last 15+ years and they both involved someone making a huge stink because they found out that the job they were denied went to an H1B for a much lower salary.
The common misconception of being under an obligation to work for X number of years for an employer comes from the fact that H1 workers from a handful of countries (India, China, Mexico etc.)
It may be a handful of countries, but what matters is how many visa holders come from those countries. About half of all H1B holders come from India alone.
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-01-16/news...
>About half of all H1B holders come from India alone.
Yes, that is true and I'm not denying that. My point is to clarify misconceptions about the H1 Visa program itself being legal slave labor and focusing on highlighting the subtleties that give it this perception.
As someone who works in immigration, the LCA is almost never posted. And if the prevailing wage is too high, they will just apply under a different SOC category and job title. There are no real ways for USCIS to enforce these rules.
That's not particularly helpful - the only people who see it have an economic incentive to not rock the boat.
The thing to remember about H1B visas is that there are tons of exceptions to the "slave labor" situation. No one sensible believes that every single H1B visa holder is a pawn to keep US wages below fair-market pricing. The problem is that a large number, probably a majority, of them are. Anecdotal contradictions don't disprove the thesis.
You're assuming that the employee themselves don't have a reason to rock the boat if their filing paperwork lists a salary higher than their effective salary? As an H1 whose paperwork lists a salary higher than my effective salary, there's nothing that stops me from realizing that I'm underpaid and switching employers when convenient.
Do I really need to point out that in the context of enforcement actions, that means nothing?
http://www.cringely.com/2012/10/23/what-americans-dont-know-...
Many of the Indian body shops seem to give the H1B program a bad name, but tech companies like Microsoft and Google really do use H1's correctly and as intended, in my opinion; e.g. no discrimination in salaries and maximum leverage of domestic talent where possible.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/04/03/176134...
I'm actually stationed in China, so our body shopping tends to be local, where ironically, I (an American) am the one on the working visa.
http://www.epi.org/blog/top-10-h1b-guestworker-offshore-outs...
Some of these companies actually have the H-1 employee look for their own assignments in addition to doing the work. So they are essentially independent consultants, taking maybe 50% of their bill rate home over several years. The good news is that when they do jump to a new employer with a green card in hand, they often get massive raises. The bad news is they never make up for those lower wages paid to them over several years.
Most of those I refer to are from India and China as the author states, which in tech does account for a significant amount of people.
I would certainly classify the companies that clearly prey on these H-1 hires as being mostly responsible for the prevailing 'indentured servant' tag. It's shameful.
In my opinion if you can do as well or better than I, why are you not better recompensed? We are your brothers and sisters all over the world, and we all deserve an equitable share relative to our contributions to the bottom line.
I believe I did give reasons in the post. Let me know if I wasn't clear enough on a specific point.
But you're right, people on F-1 can stay on something called OPT for 2 yrs after graduating whilst working. But my employer decided against that because not only is it a pain in the ass to work with that, there's no guarantee that you'll have enough H-1s left 2 yrs down the road.
Here's how these body shops work:
1. Find a guy/gal who is a reasonable match for the job and place him/her in it. No problem with that.
2. The employee may not have prior experience in the field he claims he has in his resume. The body shops know this. They sometimes fix your resume for you.
3. If the body shops are not confident in you, they might arrange for a proxy to interview in your place for a "charge". Most of the times in consulting, a phone interview usually suffices.
4. Some (good)body shops split the wage 80(for the employee)/20(for the employer). In case they did proxy someone in for you, they might divide it more evenly in their favor.
5. The body shops may have someone in the said company where he is placing their candidate and they may receive kickbacks(few dollars/head/hour).
6. Usually the body shops are scum of the earth; if you think car dealers are the worst, think again. They will lie,beg,steal to make more money off of you in anyways they can.
7. And finally to come to your point, why H-1s are underpaid; In my experience they are not underpaid at all. They usually make twice of what I make(and I am a programmer in SV). It is just that they lie that it seems low. Many a time the body shop pays the employee about 50% in income as per-diem. All in all, it is not uncommon that they make 200k a year. However, remember that body shops are the worst of the worst people and they may steal your money and not pay for months on end sometimes. Depends on how desperate you are.
Not true. The EB-2 category (Masters Degree/5+ years of experience) has no waiting period as long as you're not from a handful of countries. The category is "current", which is to say that the time taken to get a GC in this category is going to be pretty much the time taken to file/process paperwork + a 180 day mandated period. This is what totals up to 1-1.5 years.
> Are small tech firms interested in foreign workers as much as their bigger brothers are
I can't speak for all companies, but in the Bay area, I've had offers from more than one 20-100 person startups with the assurance of H1/GC filings.
Which handful, because of the way the system works, are (pretty much by definition) the ones where most qualified and sponsored applicants come from, since the waiting lists are simply the result of the degree to which fully qualified (including sponsored) applicants in the category from the country exceed the by-country limits for the category.
The system doesn't explicitly discriminate against "talented" countries, it just stacks the odds against highly populated countries since there is a per-country cap on the number of GCs issued.
It stacks the odds against countries with a large number of qualified applicants in any category (since the caps are per category.) Population plays a role, but only because it influences representation in the category (which is a big factor for India and China), but so does interest level (which is a big factor for Mexico and the Phillipines, which are particularly impacted for family-based immigration as well as employment-based immigration categories.)
That's really cool to hear, wouldn't have expected.
To quantify, on DeveloperAuction we've found that Engineers on H1B's get an average of 32% fewer job opportunities than citizens/green card holders.
Yes, and this still results in 1-2 years of indentured servitude. As the author defines at the very beginning of the blog post:
> "inden′tured serv′ant: A person who is bound to work for another for a specified period of time."
There is a substantial period of time - longer for some, shorter for others, where your employer has your entire life in a stranglehold and can throw you under the bus at a moment's notice. I'm not sure how that doesn't qualify as indentured servitude?
Imagine holding someone's family hostage in exchange for them doing something - while they are technically free to do whatever the hell they want, the reality of it is that they are, for all practical intents and purposes, bound to your will.
This is, at the end of the day, somewhat of a gray area. How much influence do you need over someone's life before you become a coercive force? IMO the ability to completely unravel your life - to force you to suddenly move (within days!), to eject you from your resident country, etc, clearly falls under this umbrella.
H-1Bs change jobs all the time. I've done it myself. But once the green card is in the works, the indentured servitude begins. So perhaps more accurately, H-1Bs aren't indentured servants, but a very large subset of them (i.e., anyone after a GC) are.
I also know of low wage consultants being hired by companies and they never fill in the top spots or even the mid level ones. The best jobs are always competitive regardless of how many cheap consultants are in the market. And every low-wage consultant wants to make more money given the chance and ability. If anyone is complaining that a low end job is being taken by a low wage consultant, I'd say aim higher.
For starters, the preliminary paperwork, even if your employer starts the process immediately--and many don't--can take well over a year. In my case I was waiting 15 months before I gave up and relocated to Australia.
As for the time taken, my personal experience has been that PERM takes about 6 months. After that I-140 + I-485 can be concurrently filed if your Priority date is current. They can take another 6 months to get approved. After that there is a mandatory 180 day period before you can switch jobs. Total average case time should be around 1.5 years. This assumes that your application is not audited and your immigration lawyers are not backlogged. YMMV.
This is false. There's a lot of misinformation on the internet about this. Speak to an immigration attorney and you will discover there's no mandatory period whatsoever.
See also: Rights and Responsibilities of a Green Card Holder (Permanent Resident)
http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b...
", the approval of a Form I-140 employment-based (EB) immigrant petition shall remain valid when an alien changes jobs or employers, if: • A Form I-485, Application to Adjust Status, on the basis of the EB immigrant petition has been filed and remained un-adjudicated for 180 days or more; and • The new job is in the same or similar occupational classification as the job for which the petition was filed. "
[1]Policy and Procedural Memoranda on the American Competitiveness in the Twenty-First Century Act of 2000 (AC21)
http://www.uscis.gov/USCIS/Laws/Memoranda/Static_Files_Memor...
And my wife is Aussie so getting Australian residency was straightforward.
"4. H1 workers who’re not citizens of these handful of
sucks-to-be-born-here countries can get Green Cards within
1-2 years and enjoy unfettered job mobility."
If you fit in the second employment related priority categorie (EB-2) and aren't from China or India your visa process has no backlog. EB-2 status is granted to people with Masters degrees or Bachelors + 5 years experience.
[1] http://travel.state.gov/visa/bulletin/bulletin_6028.html
I'm arguing that those exaggerated expressions seem to be in use so much lately that its misleading people into believing false information about the H1 program and its evils. I would really hope that none of what I clarified needed to be clarified and was common knowledge already. But despite HN being a fairly knowledgable crowd, the extent of the discussion here suggests otherwise.