As far as I understand the $100k fee applies only to consulate issued H1Bs. L1 -> H1B path (via AOS) is possible without fee. (Recent) US university graduates can also use similar path from what I understand.
We will see how much the $100k fee affects things during this H1B lottery round in few weeks.
> Only about 70 employers have paid a $100,000 Trump fee on H-1B workers from outside the US since it was imposed through a September White House proclamation, a government attorney said Thursday.
I think a lot of people have just moved to L1/O1/etc visas to get around it as OP pointed out, although a lot of people are still hiring H1B's. Amazon has applied for over 2000 H1B's so far this year, which puts them on track for ~7000 for the year https://www.uscis.gov/tools/reports-and-studies/h-1b-employe...
We have hit the cap for H1B's every year and we will always do so until we get rid of the program. Cheap labor will always be in demand.
A 100k one-time fee is nothing for big employers. That's 25k/year for 4 years, and if you realize that H1B's can't easily leave their job it's obviously worth it.
Compare hiring an H1B that is stuck at their job, to an American who can leave at any time. You can pay the H1B a lower wage to compensate for the fee you paid to get them into the role. 25k/year for 4 years is worth it for not only the reduced churn that comes with training a new person, but also you don't have to pay any of the incentives that come with getting a new employee into the role like sign-on bonuses, wage bumps, benefits etc.
There's an X account which just posts universities hiring H1B's for ~half of what it would normally cost to hire people. An 80k/yr senior software developer will always be in demand, especially if the team is already predominantly non-american
Universities typically are in the public sector side of the equation... and the public sector doesn't pay any non-administrative role the Big Tech rate.
$80k/y isn't "we're paying H1-B half of what the going rate is" but rather "the state legislature has set this pay scale and we're paying everyone that amount" ... And many times, H-1B visas aren't eligible to work in those roles.
> Universities typically are in the public sector side of the equation... and the public sector doesn't pay any non-administrative role the Big Tech rate.
There's absolutely no reason government couldn't pay competitive rates for software engineers. They do it for doctors and administrators of state-owned medical centers. Not to mention football coaches
Football coaches are revenue generating for universities... software developers at universities not so much. Doctors are licensed professionals that have a decade of schooling... software developers frequently reject licensure and celebrate their lack of a formal education.
But there's no reason they couldn't just pay them more. The way to make them pay more is to force them to hire applicants at market rate, and when that's impossible, they'll go to the state legislature. Allowing for the H1B loophole is the problem universities are too eager to abuse
Exactly. The fact that H1B's get paid less than Americans across the board is all you really need to know about the issue. There IS no reasonable counter argument.
It's supposedly a program for importing the best and brightest talent that doesn't exist in the US but somehow those best and brightest people get paid LESS than their American counterparts? It was never about the best and brightest it was always about bringing in cheap labor that can't leave.
Sadly I don't think we'll ever fix it either, right leaning industrialists support it because they benefit from cheap labor, and the left leaning politicians get to continue importing people who overwhelmingly vote for them. As usual the loser in the equation is the middle class American worker.
How many H1B visa holders become citizens eligible to vote for those "left leaning politicians?"
I don't think having an H1B helps you accelerate your citizenship application in anyway, and for many countries the wait for legal citizenship is decades long.
You didn't answer the question at all. Getting an H1B visa is merely the first step in a very long process towards citizenship. Decades long. For example, if you're from India and you get an H1B, it'll be roughly a decade before you can get a green card. From then you have a mandatory 5 year waiting period before naturalization. And this assumes a normal, functioning immigration process; something we definitely don't have in the US.
This can be sped up if they marry a US citizen, speeding up the process quite a bit, but it will still be several years. Now their children would be citizens, but that's another 18 years before they can vote. Politicians aren't known for playing the long game...
> The fact that H1B's get paid less than Americans across the board is all you really need to know about the issue.
Except this is literally false. Every single study I’ve seen that claims this has no real evidence - just speculation without knowing the details of the jobs or the people being hired, based on their own self-serving false comparisons to make dubious claims that similar jobs are paid differently.
Since you said “across the board”, do you think Google or Amazon pay a software engineer at the starting level differently based on immigration status? No, they don’t. Literally every manager at big tech could tell you this confidently.
I have worked at Apple for a decade, H1B's absolutely do get paid less. We have many H1B's that literally just sit around and push buttons and file bug reports, and barely know how to code. Some of them can't code at all. Ofc some of them are good engineers, but they are not even in the majority.
There is plenty of data to back this up.
>A total of 60% of all H-1B jobs are assigned wage levels that are well below the local median wage.
The EPI report is one of the commonly cited baseless reports. Dig in a level beyond their press claims and you’ll find no real method behind it that justifies their claims, because they have no actual way to compare one worker to another to know they’re equivalent and comparable for the purpose of compensation.
As for your claims about Apple - I am guessing you aren’t a manager and don’t know about how their pay scale works. I’m not doubting your claims about the quality of some workers - although I bet you’ll find plenty of non immigrant people not doing work as well. But I know the claim on pay is wrong, once you adjust for performance ratings and levels.
H1Bs are not cheap labor. They’re almost always pricier than the alternative to the company. This is a myth that is ultimately rooted in racism more than facts. Most of the top H1B filers - big tech companies in particular - pay literally identically for the same job. They have fixed pay structures internally, in part because if you don’t, you could face discrimination lawsuits - but mostly to just not lose the competition for talent.
But the cost to the company isn’t the cost of the pay anyways. It’s also the cost in lost time of the H1B process, the fees you pay as part of the process, the costs of law firms you have to hire, the cost of time delays, the risk of the immigration process not working out. Those work out to a lot more value than 25K/year.
An H1B is also not stuck in their job - you can transfer H1Bs.
I do not see how the facts you present call into question the basic logic that as you increase the availability of a commodity, say labour, you anticipate its price to diminish. All of the immigrant workers could be better-compensated and more productive than all of the American workers, and still their presence could drive the price of labour for native workers in that sector down. E.g., if there is a shortage of repairmen certified to fix some medical equipment, introducing a glut of new repairmen who are even more productive will fail to reduce the compensation of the incumbents only in exceptional circumstances.
People applying for H1B visas are getting partially compensated in the right to legally reside in the US rather than in money. The right to legally reside in the US is something that a lot of foreigners want badly, and are willing to accept otherwise-poor compensation for; and by definition it is not something you can pay an American citizen with.
Why is the company getting to pay their employee with that legal-residence-value and therefore get a discount on compensation?
The cleaner approach is the immigrant has to pay that value in visa expenses, taxes, or something else; while the company should have to pay market rate for the position.
We will see how much the $100k fee affects things during this H1B lottery round in few weeks.