Every time I encounter the way our immigration policies treat various co-workers of mine, I'm ashamed and scandalized.
They are the last people to be a "drain on our economy" and they're effectively chained to their jobs, which seems so archaic.
They are the last people to be a "drain on our economy" and they're effectively chained to their jobs, which seems so archaic.
Not just archaic, but wrong. And even if we say "but they're choosing to be here, so it still must be better than what they came from" - which isn't entirely false, but ignores some things - it still means that the rest of us are competing with these extra-abusable workers which some companies might not mind paying a premium for on paper.
First of all, it requires you to reside in the US, permanently (hence the official name). You don't move home for longer periods (e.g. years), as getting back in the US is not automatic. I understand that the US sees entering in the US as privilege, but these people usually help the US economy, and not burden it, so there is that.
Second, it really limits your options. Suppose you decide to go outside of the US in just a few years after the green card, giving it up, and suddenly, for the rest of your life, whenever you enter in the US, you need to tell you life's story to the immigration officer and why you have applied for immigration status and what happened with it.
And if you have connections, properties or investments in Europe, you will be always in limbo whether the European bank will decline business with you based on your US tax status.
Going for a green card is a no-brainer for everyone who is going for US citizenship. Everyone else, take a better look on it, before you go for it.
So what's the alternative? I'm asking out of honest curiosity, because H-1B seems to have at least two serious drawbacks: 1) if you want to switch jobs, you have to go through the lottery again (as far as I understand), and 2) your dependents are on H-4 visa, which means that they aren't allowed to get a job (except as a volunteer).
I do think the US needs a skilled immigration system (perhaps a points based system like Australia), and perhaps we should increase the allotment (the US currently takes in about 1.2 million immigrants a year through a fairly byzantine system that makes it difficult for someone with no close US citizen relatives to immigrate here).
That's where my agreement with the lobbying efforts of large silicon valley companies ends, though. I'm not in favor of granting the HR departments of large silicon valley corporations control over the immigration system under the guise of immigration "reform". And while I do favor general skilled immigration, I don't think it should be specifically based on the notion of a tech or stem worker shortage, as I don't think the evidence supports this claim.
On aggregate, H1B workers are being paid less than non-H1B workers. It doesn't take long to see this in action: http://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/performancedata.cfm#s... -- click around and ask yourself if those average wages look right. My state's average wage was what you'd pay a person coming straight out of college.
I'd definitely wager that if you compared all Microsoft H1B software engineers to all non-H1B MS SE's, you'd see a drop in wages. But I don't have a reliable indication of non-H1B salaries at MS, so I can't say for sure.
Why would you think this?
That information is publicly available; e.g. http://www.myvisajobs.com/Visa-Sponsor/Microsoft/356252_Sala...
I'm not sure what the "average salaries" for non-immigrants are, but you can get an idea here:
http://www.salarylist.com/company/Microsoft-Salary.htm
It doesn't look that different.
Because that's been the pattern for most businesses. I doubt Microsoft is any different - why do you think it would be?
> It doesn't look that different.
The two pages you present compare "all MS salaries, globally" to "all MS H1B salaries, globally" - that's a meaningless comparison. A software engineer H1B is going to make more than a non-H1B tester.
Note again, I'm not trying to indict MS for anything here: I'm simply betting that MS is enjoying lower worker costs by employing H1B workers, just like many IT companies do.
I hope that's not the case, both for the H1B worker AND non-H1B workers.
But when I say H1B workers are "cheap labor" I'm claiming this on aggregate. If we take a charitable view that an H1B worker is paid $5K less than a non-H1B worker per year - and that's very charitable based on the numbers I've heard thrown around - a company like Tata or Accenture is looking at tens of millions of dollars in savings.
Note also my characterization was not on the quality of the work produced by H1B workers: I've seen some good and some bad, just like everyone else really. But having artificially cheap labor is inherently bad, both for the laborers that can't negotiate something better & workers in the rest of the industry whose wages are deflated to match.
Indeed, cheap labor is really only good for one group: the one that's constantly pushing to increase the H1B cap.
That's not pure savings as there are plenty of paperwork costs etc, but you still end out ahead after ~1 year of work. O and just submit a lot of names to the lotto.
I agree generalizing it as cheap labor is not fair, but I do feel sorry for my friends just starting their careers with a serious lack of job mobility.
Any restriction on the movement of free labor puts us all down. Their employers are less likely to treat them well because they know how dependent they are on the job just for the visa.