[retortio]

H1-B was intended for highly skilled workers that the US had a real shortage of. But now it's just being abused to bring in captive workers that are willing to accept lower wages and worse working conditions than otherwise while crowding out US workers.

What if, instead of bowing to corporate greed which cares not a bit for our country or our people, we actually invested in our own population and trained them to do the jobs H1-B workers currently do.

Scaling back H1-B in this way is the common sense approach. And it benefits other countries too by reducing brain drain.

It's a win-win.

[on_and_off]

I came to the USA on an H1B visa 2 years ago.

On a high salary and with the promise of being sponsored for a green card.

I got my green card just before covid impacted the USA and still have a pretty high salary (in the same range of my US born colleagues).

I already had a great job in my home country, I was not going to come to the USA to be paid a pittance.

Yeah, there is abuse of the green card system but it is in place because there aren't enough skilled workers in the USA.

[vbtemp]

Couple important points:

1. SV/FAANGs, like elite colleges, only hire some very small percentage of people who apply. Many people who are perfectly well qualified and have successful careers otherwise get denied employment.

2. The market cap of these FAANGs is in the trillions. Between talent and capital, there's literally no problem they can't solve (they can solve problems about cyber bullying, trolling, etc but their business relies on it.. so it's not really a "problem" per se).

3. There are SO MANY underprivileged and/or poor kids in SV, LA, Pittsburgh, all the places where tech companies reside. Saying there aren't enough skilled workers in the US is kind of dishonestly true, as they have tons of applications from many qualified people.. many of whom with some training and support may very well become highly qualified....

4. ...They could literally invest some of those trillions to build a pipeline from these areas, develop talent locally - or at least domestically.

So much of tech is about solving problems with the resources you have. Opening up broadly to a global labor supply removes the constraint on that resource, and therefore don't need to innovate or find clever ways to make it work. Now, they are companies that have only one duty - deliver profit to shareholders - and that's fine and how companies should be run. But public policy needs to exist to serve the interest of the people, and for the most part - not entirely - H1B has been to serve the interest of executives in Big Tech.

Also, finally, Trump is absolutely awful, horrid, all that. A broken clock is right twice a day though, and this is one of the few possibly accidental things he's done that isn't a complete self-shot to the head.

[on_and_off]

1 - I am the first one to complain about our broken hiring practices, but just because you get a first interview does not mean you are qualified for the job.

2/3/4 -> FAANG have a ton of money but no incentive at all to spend it on philanthropy. I wish it was not the case, but their only job is to make their investors happy.

3 - is it dishonest ? For sure there are some kids in SV, LA,etc that could work in tech if they got the education but the thing is, they didn't. Also, local talent is never going to compare to the global one.

I would love to see laws pushing FAANG and co to invest in philanthropic causes. Heck, I would not even mind if this was based on taxation. But cutting H1B is not going to solve any of these problems.

[vbtemp]

This is not a correct reading of what I wrote. Investing in local (or at least domestic) employment pipelines at all is not philanthropy. Seeing it as philanthropy is patronizing.

Let's just have a thought experiment (maybe we'll see what happens if the ban continues) - what will Big Tech do if H1B is not a thing anymore?

Second thought experiment - who benefits most from H1B? First of all, the H1B holders themselves. Second, the tech industry itself. Further out from that benefits are less clear and more mixed. We are a nation of immigrants seeking opportunity, immigration is important to this country. Immigrants brings a lot of economic and cultural benefits, and we must always fight bigotry and discrimination towards our immigrants. But there is also much more complexity surrounding immigration policies, and they have their cost, too.

[on_and_off]

How is it not philanthropy when there are already skilled workers they could hire right now ?

[on_and_off]

If you feel that philanthropy has a negative connotation, in this context another word for it would be social justice (which it totally is).

[pnako]

There is an issue with 'diversity in tech' and, among other things, under-representation of African-Americans in STEM.

So why are the big tech corporations that are constantly virtue signalling about Black Lives Matter and social justice not simply training American engineers (not specifically black, but people coming from poor socioeconomic backgrounds, which would definitely include many African-Americans). Why do they bring Indian or Chinese engineers?

America does not lack people, it has good universities. It could certainly train a local workforce. Providing good jobs to those communities would do wonders to reduce criminality, drug abuse and various issues.

[on_and_off]

>America does not lack people, it has good universities

I am not american so not 100% certain, but from what I can see, the public education system in the USA is not that great and universities are way too costly compared with the rest of the world.

I 100% agree that there is a huge diversity in tech problem.

Not all of that problem is about hiring POCs either, a female friend of mine had to flee a job because none of her colleagues would accept to have a woman as their manager (that's in 2020 in the SV..)

>So why are the big tech corporations that are constantly virtue signalling about Black Lives Matter

You are answering yourself, virtue signaling is cheap. I can talk for my own company. They were happy enough to talk about the importance of BLM, but less interested in taking concrete steps.

I fully believe that companies should encourage their engineers to participate in mentorship programs. I highly doubt that it would magically solve systemic racism but it would be a relatively cheap way to find and hire junior engineers and good PR.

[pmoriarty]

"What if, instead of bowing to corporate greed which cares not a bit for our country or our people, we actually invested in our own population and trained them to do the jobs H1-B workers currently do."

Who's this "our people" you're talking about?

As a US citizen, I consider every person in the world as part of my people, and I don't begrudge any individual coming and working or training in the US.

The more people, from whichever country, have access to good education and good jobs, the better.

Good education and jobs should not be reserved for people who happen to live or be born in a particular place, be descended from particular people, nor just those who managed to get certain bureaucratic paperwork.

[hcurtiss]

All else being equal, I think most people prioritize their own country and countrymen over others', and would not sacrifice their own countrymen to benefit others'. You may not share this view, but I think most people do. Most people consider themselves a part of a national team, and they feel some loyalty to their teammates.

[conanbatt]

That doesn't explain having imports of any kind.

[KingTen]

Free trade reduces costs for people. I’d agree that things have gotten more complicated than that though in the transition to a service based economy.

[conanbatt]

What's the difference between working on the hardware of a computer or the software that it makes sense to have one outside of the US and another one inside?

[tallon]

You can take the high approach and give up your job for someone else, then. Are you going to welcome strangers into your family and your home as well? Resources are limited, that is a fact. If you've never experienced that, consider yourself very lucky and privileged, and work to deserve that good fortune and privilege.

[gorbachev15]

But we're not talking about your decision or his, we're talking about the decision made by the government whose literal job description is to make rules for this country alone!

[vsskanth]

Reposting my response from a different thread:

Every time you file an H1B Visa, you pay something called a ACWIA Fee (“American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of 1998”). For employers who have between 1-25 full-time workers, the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act fee is $750. For employers with 26 or more full-time employees, the fee is $1,500. [1] This fee was established to fund training and education programs administered by the Department of Labor.

As of 2018, there were 420K active H1B visas in the USA. These people need to renew their visas every 3 years (most are Indians and they can never become PR in their lifetime). So that means 300-630 million USD is being added to this fund on a recurring basis over a 3 year period.

I wonder where all that money went.

[1] https://www.immi-usa.com/h1b-visa-processing-fees-2016/

[runawaybottle]

Free college I guess.

Oh wait...

That’s a very interesting thing, I had no idea. So a sensible thing to do would be to increase that fee substantially and have it go straight to subsidizing degree programs that aren’t creating enough home grown talent.

In other words, the company should expect to pay close to market rate per H1B plus the fee.

We remove the incentives to abuse the program for cost reduction, and straight up use the fees to fund college.

That brings me to some weird job posts that I keep seeing for some large bank. The role was for ‘Specialist’ developer, and I wonder if it really is some specialist role that they can’t fill in a major city (seemed like typical web developer stuff).

Shrugs, say it ain’t so, would hate to know that’s how it’s being gamed.

[OzzyB]

That's a good idea, but alas I fear such a proposal would be deemed too... umm nationalistic or something... better to have local talent pay through the nose for their qualifications so that they can then compete on the global market with folks that don't have such debt.

[fredfoobar]

It's easy to paint the "other" as the enemy and rail against them for your troubles. In reality, the problem is much closer at home.

[triceratops]

> such a proposal would be deemed too... umm nationalistic or something

I think you meant "socialist".

[OzzyB]

To be honest with you, I have no fucking idea anymore.

[fredfoobar]

> In other words, the company should expect to pay close to market rate per H1B plus the fee.

what's different now? they're legally required to do both as of now.

Are you telling me that the H1-B that is hired doesn't do any work and free-loading off the American economy without paying any taxes (like Social Security, which they don't get to access).

Could you share what that job posting was? I'd love to look at it, if you suspect a violation, you should report it.

[runawaybottle]

I’m not implying anything about the actual workers.

I’m mostly being suspicious of corporations that have over 50% of their staff as h1bs or off shore. I feel that’s probably set up that way for one of the common reasons in business ($$$$).

Just trying to learn how the math works out. I have no doubt Google is hiring the very best worldwide, but I have sincere suspicions that your average enterprise found a way to keep tech costs down by using these loopholes.

Also to your last point, this is something no one can prove. How am I going to prove that a company can hire that talent locally? They’ll just say they met with candidates and they weren’t up to snuff. You can’t prove anything in that situation, all you can really do is look at the numbers from a bird’s eye view and see that hey, over half your staff is world class rare talent apparently.

[fredfoobar]

> Also to your last point, this is something no one can prove. How am I going to prove that a company can hire that talent locally? They’ll just say they met with candidates and they weren’t up to snuff. You can’t prove anything in that situation, all you can really do is look at the numbers from a bird’s eye view and see that hey, over half your staff is world class rare talent apparently.

So, you're telling me that they're gonna pay the same amount they'd pay for a local employee PLUS the H1-B overhead, just to hire a foreign worker?

Put yourself in the shoes of the employer, what are you to gain from this? (hint: it sure isn't monetary)

To me, what you mention seems like veiled xenophobia, I hope I'm wrong.

Posting this again from another thread: > Employers must attest to the Department of Labor that they will pay wages to the H-1B nonimmigrant workers that are at least equal to the actual wage paid by the employer to other workers with similar experience and qualifications for the job in question, or the prevailing wage for the occupation in the area of intended employment – whichever is greater.

source: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b

[runawaybottle]

> So, you're telling me that they're gonna pay the same amount they'd pay for a local employee PLUS the H1-B overhead, just to hire a foreign worker?

For the most part, sure, it should be cost prohibitive. I think companies should go out and find the best talent, they should try to do it locally, and if they can’t, paying the little overhead is nothing when you realize you just filled the role with world class talent.

It seems odd to have cost be a factor when you are basically saying you had to search the world to fill the role.

I personally don’t believe most companies need to scour the world to fill most roles. For those that do, they won’t scoff at the price. This will at least eliminate the arbitrage that is rampant in the global economy.

[pstrateman]

That's 1-2 USD per person in the US.

The couch cushions maybe?

[fredfoobar]

Those employees pay taxes. They pay into the Social Security which they can't access.

edit: literally, do the math, 420K+ active H1-Bs, they should be at least making upwards of 70K per year, tax revenues should be upwards of a few billion dollars every year.

[samfisher83]

You can look at the data, SV companies aren't paying H1B people low wages. Unless you think 200-300k is low wages.

[saradhi]

Your presumption is either (if you not a h1 candidate) far away from the fact or don't want to accept the truth.

You are looking at the top 100 companies and their full-time employees but not at the 1000s of vendor-employer ponzi scheme/scams that happen every day in the form of contractors who apply with fake resumes, take proxy interviews and outsource the assigned work to someone in India. Doesn't stop there, the dependents of those do a unlicensed food selling, baby sitting, work in local stores, what not. The hard to digest fact is the student who comes on F1 visa, succumbs to the pressure of 90 days period to get into a job to maintain the visa status joins a consultancy company, which starts the game. These consultancies market the candidate with high experience fake resume, arranges proxy candidate to take interviews, even Falsify the requirement of GC/citizenship candidate requirement - all these to charge the client a 100$/hr and pay a mere 40$/hr to the candidate through their sister companies acting as layers. A honest try from USCIS to do a quick scan in containing these will drop at least 50% of H1B lottery applications, void 30% of the consulting company licenses and also help the right talent to get an opportunity. If you are a gov/USCIS rep, drop me an email I'll be more than happy to provide more details, and possible ways of catching the wrong ones.

[tinyhouse]

Salary is not even the issue. The main issue is the employment restrictions. Instead of making H1-B a visa that lets an individual full freedom (like green card), it's tied to an employer and moving jobs is not that easy, and many employers also sponsor for green card, which is another process that can take years and make it harder to move. During this time the employee has little leverage asking for promo or raises. (promo and raises usually appear after the green card..)

Once you let employees freedom, the market will take care of the salary. I also understand that employers invest in the visa application and relocation of people, so it should be fair to them as well. This can solved by having a period (1-year is pretty reasonable) that prohibits new visa holders from moving companies.

[OzzyB]

Funny how ppl don't like to mention this and just focus on H1Bs getting paid "market rates".

It's almost like the SV's previous gentleman agreement of non-poaching got replaced with "hey, let's use H1Bs, sure we might have to pay near market rates, but at least we can tie them down for at least 3/5 years without any option of leaving".

[triceratops]

H-1B holders can change jobs even without a green card. It's more of a hassle (takes 4-6 weeks) and has been made worse by this administration's repeated suspension of premium processing of applications. But visa holders aren't "tied" to their employers or "indentured servants".

[tinyhouse]

I said it's not that easy, not that it's impossible. Also, H1-B transfer cost some money and involves lawyers, so some companies, like many startups, don't want to deal with that. The bottom line is that H1-B employees are at a disadvantage.

[triceratops]

Agreed.

[hourislate]

SV isn't the only place you find H1B's. Everyone from Toyota, AA, Sabre, etc in the DFW area has hired what seems like 1000's. There is hardly anyone but H1B's at Toyota in Plano from what I understand. I have heard some companies are laying of permanent staff and keeping H1B's because they're less expensive.

Personal experience in my part of the world seems to suggest that it is cost. Permanent employees are expensive and H1B's are so terrified of losing employment they are willing to work around the clock and for less.

I would like to see the whole program gone. I don't believe it is being used as it was intended.

[ojbyrne]

As pointed out in other threads, H1B data is public. There's precisely 1 H1B in Plano, TX: https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=&city=PLANO.TX&year=A...

[hourislate]

I know of at least a few just from my office that are not on that site. Could it be that they are hidden through a contracting company and not hired directly?

[ntsplnkv2]

Honestly it's not the SV companies. It's the body shop consulting firms.

[fredfoobar]

Exactly, shut them down, American interests will be protected. Most of the folks getting on the H1-B have a masters degree in an American university, if they are in SV, it's usually a top-tier one. I've personally made some of the best hires on-campus.

[tracer4201]

I’d love to see comprehensive data on this. I worked at a fortune 10 oil and gas company in Houston. We had onshore contractors across a range, but I know a few of them made less than $18 an hour. The rest that we paid went to two different contracting companies.

[noobermin]

Is this true? The argument I've seen is that H1B's are liked by SV because they can be paid less.

[lukeschlather]

All H1B salaries are public: https://h1bdata.info/

It's possible (maybe even likely) that title deflation is happening, but based on my experience the salaries are definitely in line with the pay ranges for each job title (I worked at Amazon for 3 and a half years, so I have some first and second hand information on pay.)

If nothing else it's a great resource to see the unfiltered payscale at SV companies.

[tinyhouse]

It's pretty useless since it only contains base salary.

[ojbyrne]

I think it's somewhat useful. Salary matters, especially in economic conditions where other forms of compensation can decline precipitously.

[eatbitseveryday]

Not quite... for most companies, your income is almost entirely your salary. The world is not FAANG :)

[noobermin]

Thanks for the data. I see comments across threads on HN that say that H1-B hires are common. What is the incentive to hire them then? Are professionals in the US really that ill-equipped? I guess there is a bit of cognitive dissonance with FAANG complaining about no qualified workers but then FAANG only hired people who went to Stanford or Harvard and such.

[umanwizard]

I worked at two FAANG companies and my degree is from the University of Arizona. I only met a few people there whose degrees were from elite schools. Where do you get the impression that they only hire people from Stanford and Harvard?

[on_and_off]

I can maybe help here.

Many SV companies are in constant need of more skilled engineers.

Since the H1B visa can be transferred, when I arrived in the USA, nothing would have prevented me from going door to door and find a better paying job. Especially in the SV where there are tons of companies hiring.

So companies have a good incentive to give you a fair salary.

This is not true for all visas. In particular there is one visa (sorry can't remember its name off the top of my head) that is an "international transfer visa" : you work for one year for the company in a foreign country and then you can move to the USA while continuing to work for that company. It is pretty easy to get that visa but it is also very hard to transfer it to another company afaik.

Hiring is also a bit broken in our industry. The thing is, it is often pretty hard to distinguish what makes a good or a bad engineer. This being said, there are just not enough skilled engineers in the USA.

It would absolutely be possible to hire more local engineers and train them on the job but that would cost a lot of time for uncertain results. Companies prefer to hire engineers that can already be pretty productive from day 1.

[paulgb]

> Are professionals in the US really that ill-equipped?

Americans are plenty smart, but they are only 4% of the world population. American companies compete on an international stage and not having access to the other 96% of talent would be a competitive disadvantage.

[goostavos]

I think it's more that they're fairly indentured. Their visa is tied to a specific _kind_ of work, they're legally prevented from making money in any other way other than their current job, and while they can change jobs, my understanding is it is generally viewed as risky (for instance, if the new place doesn't work out, you've got a few short months to find employment or your visa is no good and you have to uproot your life)

It'd be really interesting to see data on how often H1B's change jobs compared to the rest of the population.

[jaaron]

My anecdotal experience as a hiring manager in tech firms for over a decade: it’s not about money, it’s about quickly finding qualified employees. Unemployment has been (until recently) low. There wasn’t some large supply of unemployed, qualified engineers sitting around. Nearly everyone I hired already had a job. Expanding the search globally just gave me a better chance of finding someone.

[goostavos]

>Expanding the search globally just gave me a better chance of finding someone

At the price point you wanted. A pool of eager H1Bs reduces the need for companies on the same block to be competitive on wages.

[roskilli]

There are plenty of >200k H1B workers in SV, and I do believe these engineers and specialists will wonder how they can do their work elsewhere if they can't reasonably plan a few years into the future:

https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=netflix&year=2020

https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=apple&year=2020

https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=linkedin&year=2020

https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=uber&year=2020

[umanwizard]

That argument is wrong. H1Bs are liked by Silicon Valley because they want to be able to hire the best people from anywhere, and not restrict their talent pool to 5% of the world population.

All reputable Silicon Valley companies pay people exactly the same whether they are on a visa, have a green card, or are a US citizen.

[samfisher83]

https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Facebook+Inc&job=&city=&ye...

This doesn't include stock so maybe double that number for TC.

[pstrateman]

On the other hand.

https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=STRATEGIC+STAFFING+IT+INC&...

[rantwasp]

technically it’s illegal to pay H1B workers less than what you pay your workers.

[damnyou]

I know people on H1s who make 500k to a million dollars per year at FAANG.

[retortio]

One thing to remember is that in many cases H1-B workers are brought over by sponsoring companies which take a huge cut (I know cases of 40% or more) out of their salaries for the service of securing them the Visa. So those salaries might appear to be a certain number but the workers themselves may actually receive significantly less while some rent seeking company stashes the differences.

I know for a fact that in my industry (not in SV) H1-B wages are lower, going off both public data and conversations I've had with H1-B coworkers, many who I consider my friends.

As a side note, I don't blame H1-B workers at all for coming here. They're generally great developers and great people.

[noobermin]

If some of your best friends are H1-B workers wouldn't the right answer be changing the regulations such that companies must pay market rate (as in for the US labor market, not internationally) for H1-B employees here?

[roskilli]

In the companies I've worked at, H1-B workers get compensated in software engineering roles just as well as their peers, I've also seen outliers where it's significantly higher (depending on when they joined, how much in demand they were with competing offers, etc).

[noobermin]

I getting seemingly contradictory comments here but one could weave a coherent story out of all of them:

1) H1B's get salaries that are comparable to US engineer salaries.

2) A middleman takes a big bite out of that, the engineer thus takes home less.

3) H1B's are essentially like most immigrants, indentured servants who have no freedom to leave their employers, thus have little leverage asking for promotions or even autonomy as an employee.

4) Companies probably are most aware of 3) but it seems like at least for FAANG the biggest factor is they don't want to invest in training people and rather want people who already are skilled and such. It's probably true if you draw your net very tightly yes anyone can find that there aren't enough qualified workers out there who won't demand I guess near half a mill salaries.

[fredfoobar]

I think it's an astro-turf campaign, it feels like it. Because no one thinking logically is gonna push an agenda that hard without actually thinking through it.

[retortio]

Not astroturfing. Technically underpaying is illegal but there are ways around paying an H1-B worker what a US citizen might receive. Title reduction, etc. Even if the total paid is the same, consulting companies that help sponsor workers get a huge cut of the salary so ultimately we have workers being paid less.

[fredfoobar]

> Technically underpaying is illegal but there are ways around paying an H1-B worker what a US citizen might receive. Title reduction, etc. Even if the total paid is the same, consulting companies that help sponsor workers get a huge cut of the salary so ultimately we have workers being paid less.

Shut them down. Enforce the law.

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b

FYI for the rest: the user-ids in green means that they created their account recently.

[fredfoobar]

I'm sorry to break it to you, if your company isn't paying prevailing wages, they're doing something illegal. They need to be shut-down, not the whole fucking program.

[tracer4201]

There’s nothing illegal going on here. I posted earlier that I was at an oil and gas company in Houston, a Fortune 10 company at the time. We had IT contractors from Larsen and Toubro. As an example, one guy who reported to me was paid < $20 an hour after L&TI and another contracting company in the middle took their cut. He wasn’t thrilled with that situation but his other option was to quit and go back to India. The worst part was I couldn’t hire him directly because of his contract. He wasn’t allowed to quit and directly work for us. Kind of live slavery.

[fredfoobar]

> Employers must attest to the Department of Labor that they will pay wages to the H-1B nonimmigrant workers that are at least equal to the actual wage paid by the employer to other workers with similar experience and qualifications for the job in question, or the prevailing wage for the occupation in the area of intended employment – whichever is greater.

source: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b

According to you, L&T were taking a cut out of the wages. Honestly, you should blow the whistle. L&T or whatever that middleman company is, they need to shutdown their H1-B program.

[BeetleB]

Paying H1-B less than prevailing wage is illegal/fraudulent. However, there are many legal tricks to get around it.

[fredfoobar]

if you know them, make them public, push them to be illegal. Also, I'm curious to know what those "tricks" are.

[vsskanth]

The final wage that shows up in the W2 still needs to be above the prevailing wage for that position. You cannot get an H1B approved without it.

It is simply illegal otherwise.

[ojbyrne]

The contracting company is acting illegally. I've seen a couple of similar stories in California - when they get caught, the officers go to jail.

[triceratops]

> The worst part was I couldn’t hire him directly because of his contract. He wasn’t allowed to quit and directly work for us.

How so? Presumably he signed his contract in India - how would his company enforce it?

[tracer4201]

My company has a clause that we can’t hire people from this company for 9 months. If he waits around 9 months he’ll have to leave the country wayyyy before that.

[beervirus]

Why would that be illegal?

[fredfoobar]

See my other response in this thread.

[SomeoneFromCA]

Lots of companies such as Mahindra, Wipro etc bring their people on B1, J1, L1 and employ them illegally. They receive INDIAN wages, while working in US, and the poor folks work just for bagging power back in India. For them, having worked in US increases potential wage in their home country.

[samfisher83]

300k would put you close to the 99% in California. So it is not relatively low.

[weyland108]

I came to USA for education in 2008-09. Payed for my own education thanks to my parents and their sacrifice of lifetime savings. Did not take any govt funds for education. I graduated with a masters degree with Perfect 4.0 gpa . I worked my way up from financial crisis to working SV today. I have family, kids going to public school and also own a home. I don’t remember anytime taking a pay cut to stay in the country. It’s been more than 10years that I was legally here and always followed the law and I am still 5 years out at minimum from getting a green card. I rely on h1b renewals to keep going.... so it’s not exactly easy for me to pickup and go back to my home country where I haven’t stayed for 10+ years now to “fix” this problem.

There huge nuance which is missed when talking about H1bs ... there are body shops which do cut wages and should be stopped. However the immigration system in USA needs significant reform as well. It’s hard already to build a life for your family with a normal 3 year lease ( h1b duration) for this kind of misinformed political rhetoric to have unintended consequences.

[downvoteme1]

Unless your priority date is earlier than 2012, you are a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 30 years away from your green card. The backlog between 2009 and 2012 is around 40k people or 80k green cars so around 15 to 30 years

[buttersbrian]

Yes, chop shops out there abuse the system, and have become substantial factor in some industries.

Much of the H1B candidates out there are graduates of american universities that are trying to take the next step to be in America. We should be embracing these people where possible, not villanizing them. Make it so the chop shops can be weeded out, not the good people that are forced to work under them due to a broken system.

Also, many jobs require base salaries that are VERY in line with the market, if not higher, as a financial check to the Employer to make sure they want said (H1B) candidate. We had trouble finding a JR DevOps person, basically forced to go H1B, and a JR in the midwest was going to cost us 95K with little experience. That was widly out of line for a JR devops candidate

[jeremiahhs]

Yes. I've seen first hand abuse of the visas to import cheap labor in academia to avoid paying citizen-level wages.

[belltaco]

Unemployment in tech is down from Jan to May this year.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2020/06/11/unemp...

[drocer88]

Unemployment is up from 3% to 11% YOY in information sector: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t14.htm

These number are said to underestimate the true unemployment numbers.

U.S. should focus on American unemployment numbers.

[ckaygusu]

You can easily achieve this by raising wage requirements, instead of essentially having nothing changed and making the whole US a big open air prison for foreign skilled workers.

[zozbot234]

Make it easier for H1B's to transfer to another, better-paying job without losing their privilege of staying and working in the country. Then it's a real win-win, for both guest workers and citizens. The only actors who would lose are those seeking to abuse the system in the first place.

[masklinn]

> You can easily achieve this by raising wage requirements, instead of essentially having nothing changed and making the whole US a big open air for foreign skilled workers.

Also stronger labor laws instead of gutting them, actually enforcing them instead of shanking the agencies responsible for them, and actually hitting guilty corporations where it hurts instead of handing out "cost of doing business" jokes.

And prosecuting guilty management as well. Middle manager 8374 might be less eager to ask for bullshit job requirements designed to only fit a specific H1B if their n+1 to 6 have just gotten years in the slammer for labor fraud.

[idrios]

Raising wage requirements just means companies will pay whatever the new minimum is for H-1B workers. Once employed, those workers are still locked into their job without freedom to jump to anther with better working conditions or a better salary (which makes them more appealing hires for companies than US workers).

If you want to see a more fair and competitive workforce, give H1-B visa holders more freedom to switch jobs without risk of losing their visa.

[xtreme]

> It's a win-win.

Except for the individuals. US educated students who want to remain in the US, work, and raise a family are now basically being told to go back. Or people who prefer the US for non-monetary reasons (crazy thought, I know).

But what I find interesting is that programs like the diversity visa (DV) lottery with even more relaxed requirements or even illegal immigration don't get scrutinized as much as H1-B. I wonder if it's because H1-B workers primarily compete for well-paying white collar jobs while most DV winners and illegal immigrants go for blue-collar jobs.

[oneplane]

Instead of fighting the symptom you can also fight the cause. If you make the abuse not legal, and detect and enforce that, you solve the problem either way. You'll still need to educate the native citizens of course, otherwise nothing really changes. But you'll need to do both.

I don't know what local laws would apply, but I imagine that the same laws that have to do with equal pay can be made generic so that it applies to everyone for a position. In the end you should be paid for your value, not for your gender, color of your skin or the place you were born.

[rconti]

What's the mechanism you suggest for funding education and training in our country? It doesn't seem to be popular.

[asdjlkadsjklads]

> What if, instead of bowing to corporate greed which cares not a bit for our country or our people, we actually invested in our own population and trained them to do the jobs H1-B workers currently do.

Wishful thinking under the current administration.

[conanbatt]

As solid reasoning as using tariffs to promote American industry.

[SV_BubbleTime]

I was very surprised to learn 70% of Apple engineers are H1B hires - but i don’t know if this is the case currently.

Agree that domestic training should be invested.

Edit: sorry, clarified Apple not SV as a whole - and it was a Vice Or Vox article, so I should probably know better.

[carapace]

70%? Do you have a citation for that? (I'm not pro/con just want to nail down the number.)

[conanbatt]

I recommend the opposite: educating is very expensive in the US. When a foreigner comes to the US, the US gets the value of that education for free.

Who doesn't like free things?

[zo1]

It's not like the country is paying for said education. And if they were, it's not like the money is "lost" in any way, as it goes back into local businesses which "stimulates" the economy and creates local jobs. I personally wouldn't use this argument.

[conanbatt]

If by a country we mean states, college is at least partially publicly funded in the US and outside generally. If by a country we mean expenditures by the citizenry, definitely true that college is an investment of time and money by the students.

A doctor leaves college maybe with 500k dollars in debt in the US, doctors in most other countries graduate with little or no debt at all: you could import thousands if not 100's of thousands of doctors willing to work a fraction of the current doctor's rate, thus making it cheaper for patients.

> And if they were, it's not like the money is "lost" in any way, as it goes back into local businesses which "stimulates" the economy and creates local jobs

Which money? I fear this is the broken window fallacy Bastiat liked to talk about.

[ivalm]

Foreign students typically pay the "state" part of the support as well. For PhD students, well, all grad students are cheap high skill labor, so the uni is always the big beneficiary.

[bbatha]

Source?