[colechristensen]

We shouldn't be arguing yes or no, but instead "how much".

Charging a yearly fee to offset how H1-B is abused for cheap labor instead of high performers makes sense. Making that fee $100,000 with arbitrary waivers for friends of the administration is absurd.

[groceryheist]

The huge fee won't solve the cheap labor problem, only shift the equilibrium. The USA Tech job market faces increasing competition from Canada and Eastern and Southern European countries with lower wages but competitive talent better than available from generalist outsourcing. The new policy accelerates this trend as companies will seek to transplant workers from the USA into other countries. This is bad for American workers whose status as the geographic center of the organization declines.

In my view, the real problem with the H1-B program stems from the sponsorship system which ties each employee to a particular company and role. Unable to leave their position without threatening their residency, they are more willing to demand abuse (e.g., long working hours, poor leadership, subpar compensation) than the labor market requires.

An improvement to the program would make it easier for people to change job. Perhaps the government could permit highly skilled individuals to qualify personally for the visa so long as they sustain employment in their field.

[Saline9515]

We told everyone to "learn to code", but now it's "ho sorry guys, you're still too expensive so either we'll hire a team of devs in Eastern Europe, or bring in an Indian dev who'll work for less than you".

Yeah of course people are not happy about such bait and switch behavior.

[dotnet00]

This is the same ridiculous dynamic that keeps American manufacturing in the dump. People whine about wanting local manufacturing, then complain it doesn't pay enough, and then are surprised that the rest of the world doesn't pay their price (and funnily enough, are mostly unwilling to bear the price themselves too).

My impression is that Americans are having a hard time coping with the fact that Europe and Japan aren't bombed out husks anymore, China has developed, and India is slowly getting there too. That's why over the decades, Americans have slowly gone through hating every one of them.

Thus, the socialism hating capitalists seek strong isolationist market controls, as anything that doesn't have them winning must actually be unfair.

[Saline9515]

All of the other countries that you mentioned have strong protectionist policies, except maybe Europe, which is losing ground to China anyway.

[lazyasciiart]

> Perhaps the government could permit highly skilled individuals to qualify personally for the visa so long as they sustain employment in their field.

That is kind of how it works: when I was on a H1B I did look at switching jobs and had an offer from a company who would sponsor me. They need to file a Labor Condition Application to show that the position qualified for a H1B worker, but you can start working as soon as the LCA is approved if you already have the visa, while the I129 is processed.

[lovich]

That is mechanically different. All the leverage is in the hands of the companies seeking out cheap labor in that case.

I actually don’t think it should be like the poster you replied to suggested where the immigrant employee in question needs to maintain employment.

I would advocate that we structure employment visas like we do marriage visas which would mean we calculate whatever the total cost of the drain on our system would be if the new immigrant wasn’t working, charge the company that much to have them enter, and then the employee is free to quit immediately if they feel it’s in their interests

[lazyasciiart]

That’s not how marriage visas work in the US.

[colechristensen]

>The huge fee won't solve the cheap labor problem, only shift the equilibrium.

But that's exactly the idea. I don't know what "solving" a cheap labor problem even means.

H1-B is being used for cheap labor, let's use a reasonable yearly fee to put some pressure on that usage to make it less lucrative.

[amluto]

Or maybe… make H-1B labor not be cheap. Give H-1B visa holders the same ability to change jobs and negotiate wages effectively that citizens and permanent residents have and give some teeth to the rules that sponsors may not underlay them.

[steventhedev]

No.

The H1-B visa is intended for bringing specific technical expertise that does not exist in the US for a set period of time. This is why one of the requirements is that you must have interviewed US persons first. Its the same reason it's a nonimmigration visa.

The rampant abuse of the visa has a remedy - criminal charges against the HR directors of any company who is found to have committed fraud, and capping the number of visas per company (setting up many shell companies is a strong signal that fraud is being committed).

If an H1-B worker can't negotiate on a global level for their expertise - they should not be on that visa.

[khuey]

> This is why one of the requirements is that you must have interviewed US persons first.

This is generally not a requirement for an H-1B. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/62o-h1b-recruit...

[steventhedev]

Reading through that I stand corrected. Thank you for sharing a link.

At the same time, if a US person applies and is similarly qualified, they must be offered the job.

Which is trivially abuseable by offering substantially less for the H-1B position. I'm not sure if there's an easy policy solution for that.

[Saline9515]

There are 85,000 visas emitted every year. Such measure isn't consistently enforceable as you can't really investigate each visa. As a result, it will be considered by the main offenders as a cost of doing business spread out across thousands of applications.

[tick_tock_tick]

> Such measure isn't consistently enforceable as you can't really investigate each visa

You don't have to look at every single one lying on government forms is fraud start putting at the company who signed off and the person brought over (before they are deported) in jail for a couple of years and people will clean up their act real quick.

[Saline9515]

- You need to have a clear way of defining liability, otherwise companies will lawfare. For instance "you could have hired someone else in the US" is impossible to really prove or disprove.

- Jailing a foreigner before sending him back to his country for an administrative offense is somehow a big waste of public money.

- A very hard punishment still requires to consistently catch offenders, otherwise it will slowly become hypothetic.

[amanaplanacanal]

I believe they were suggesting jailing the US hiring manager, not the foreign worker.

[tomp]

if the "cost of doing business" is executives actually going to jail

trust me, there would be 99% compliance in very short order

[Detrytus]

The problem is: if you do that, then you need to create a big government agency that will interview the potential candidates, evaluating their value on the job market, in order to grant them a visa. Right now that job is done by their sponsoring employer, but if you give people ability to change jobs freely then employers lose any incentive to do so.

[groceryheist]

You can still require people to sustain employment in their field. Maybe companies can attest that a particular role classification requires a type of high-end talent. Auditing or otherwise verifying the attestation addresses the current allegations that H1-Bs are given for some jobs not requiring high-end talent.

[hshdhdhj4444]

Having managed people on H1Bs (and therefore been intimately involved with the process) the problems with switching jobs are not the requirements. You’re only allowed to switch to a similar job or a “better” job in a similar line of work.

The problem is that the mechanics of the switching process is extremely cumbersome. Some of the relevant documents are held by your current employer and not with you. The new employer effectively needs to apply for a new application minus the lottery system. There are significant weeks to months worth of delays for the new employers to get approvals, so most H1B employees that transfer are actually working provisionally on the basis of their new approval still being pending. They are very limited in terms of traveling etc during this period. There are significant risks to changing your job when you’re approaching the end of your current H1B visa expiry. This was particularly bad for Chinese applicants who unlike most other nations’s applicants who got 3 year approvals, usually only got 1 year approvals.

The real problem in switching jobs aren’t the policies but the extreme uncertainty and bureaucracy involved in doing so.

[mitthrowaway2]

Employers are still incentivized to sponsor people who they want to hire, because they want to hire that person, they want the job done, and they couldn't find anyone else to do the job. They just have to keep the compensation and working conditions competitive enough to retain their worker.

[tracker1]

$100k/yr fee could definitely cover the cost of people doing said interviews/research into if the company is complying with Da Rules so to speak. Not to mention posting jobs well below market rates.

[hshdhdhj4444]

I don’t understand the logic behind why companies will be willing to pay an Indian $160k to work for them in the U.S. but will not be willing to pay the exact same Indian $50k to work from India.

This may have an effect at the margins where the company is contractually or due to some rare product specific reason required to have the person be within the U.S. But the vast majority of H1Bs are working for major tech companies that have massive campuses all over the world.

[xyzzy123]

There are a few different scenarios but outsourcing firms / consulting (infosys, tcs, wipro etc) take up about 1/2 the tech h1bs.

As a body shop you can charge a higher rate and get bigger margins on an on-shore body.

I see your point about faangs and direct hires though. I suppose they must believe that something about being in the U.S. makes those people more productive or their output more valuable.

[jalapenos]

Clients pay a premium to see the bodies, especially from the comfort of their own offices. I assume it's a fetish thing.

[baq]

time zone premium.

[tracker1]

+this ... it's already the reason there isn't more outsourcing than there already is. Product owners and project managers don't want to work odd hours or have to be embedded in overseas offices to be effective.

[lazyasciiart]

It’s the same logic as RTO.

[jalapenos]

The solution proposed elsewhere of doing it Dutch auction style, award the quota from highest salary bid to lowest, fixes the whole thing very straightforward.

But people loathe common sense, so that wouldn't do. And it's not dramatic and aggressive enough for Trump.