[bsder]

The solution is for H1-B workers to auto-convert to a green card after 12 months. Period. The company has 12 months to complete a security check and has to fund it itself.

Now, if the company really needs a worker brought in on an H1-B, they will be very happy and the H1-B queue will continuously clear itself. However, if all they want is an indentured servant, that will get quashed when the green card arrives.

Everybody wins--except for companies who abuse the H1-B program. Which is almost all of them. Which is why you never hear this solution.

[rtpg]

Exactly. The primary issue with H-1B is that it's attached to the company. As a nation, it's in our interest to pull in people with (supposedly) unique skills, and to incentivize them staying in the country.

If the visa is not attached to the company, then the wage deflation effect will be much more minor. After all, the visa holder could just go to the company next door and get a higher wage if the initial company tries to pay too low a salary.

[geebee]

This would be a huge improvement, though it doesn't address a more fundamental issue: why should tech companies should have the power to bestow temporary residency on workers? This is an unusual aspect to a labor market, especially at this kind of scale.

The justification is that that there is a critical shortage of software developers (at any price? at market rate?) that threatens the US economy, so we should allow corporations to bestow "front of line" privileges on tech workers that other classes of immigrants don't get.

I don't buy it. Why wait a year, why not just award the green card the moment the immigrant shows up. And why require that the immigrant have a job offer from a tech company? In short, why not just let people immigrate, and allow them to enter the job market in response to market signals?

A dental hygenist earns about as much at the median in SF as a software developer. A registered nurse earns quite a bit more. Why not allow immigrants to choose those fields just like US citizens get to? Why force them to study tech fields and work even a year for disney in a tech role to get to come here?

[gohrt]

Not everyone ones: American citizens who compete with immigrants for jobs. Or H1B immigrant's compete for overall quota spots with other immigrants, so those lose.

[bsder]

I compete with H1-Bs every day. I don't have a problem competing with the ones who have green cards since their salary isn't artificially deflated. I do have a problem competing with an H1-B who is 40% of my salary and is stuck that way for 5+ years (even if an H1-B is hired at mostly market rate--the lack of raise in a hot sector drops their relative salary very quickly).

[rbanffy]

This would be an interesting solution, in special if at the end of the year the worker's transition into green card regime were conditioned to passing a test not unlike the one people applying for citizenship do and, if the worker does not pass, that spot cannot be used by the hiring company for a certain period. Requiring companies that "rent" H1B workers to American clients to actually invest and depend on their staff would probably make the business model of abusing work visas less profitable.

I see a lot of H1B workers that would not fit my notion of "skilled" except for vanishingly narrow fields (those you can master after a week of training).

[kansface]

Won't companies just fire the H1-Bs before the year is up and keep the treadmill rolling?

[toyg]

That might be, but continuous personnel replacement would be hard for both the abusing company and its customers. Disney wouldn't be so keen to outsource if they knew all the people they train now will be gone in a few months. It would also dry up the pool of applicants faster at the other end, especially if linked with provisions forbidding reapplying for X years.

[bsder]

Sure, but those companies will get spotted and the H1-B applicants won't work for them. It's easy to hide that you're an H1-B sweatshop and blame the government when you don't have to answer anything for 5+ years. It's not so easy to hide when 12 months is your limit.

People want to be part of the H1-B program so that they can get out of it--either by green card or by going back to their native country with training that makes them more profitable back there.

[Zigurd]

I would add to that that H1-Bs should be auctioned. That way, they are more likely to be used for high-value people coming to high-value R&D positions, not lo-wage seat-warmers for outsourcing shops.

[th0waway]

nope, just means they have 12 months to get the next indentured servant lined up. lose/lose, still.