Easily fixed, in theory, by letting people holding H1-B visas switch employers easily. Then they'd make market rate, and there wouldn't be incentive for companies to sponsor them to cut costs and have captive workers.
In practice, it's impossible because Congress isn't going to do anything.
But you can. The H1-B program is designed for all that. The sponsor has to prove they're paying market-ish rate (in practice it's at the low end of market, but close enough). And the employee can quit and go to any company willing to file a little bit of paperwork.
But that's IF you're the kind of worker the H1-B was designed to allow into the USA – someone highly skilled and in demand, with the cultural competence to navigate US society. The hordes of TATA people, I don't know.
The real issue with the H-1B (in my opinion) is that you need to jump to a new employer very quickly if you quit. You can't quit a bad situation and then spend a couple of months trying to get a better one.
That, and the fact that the garden-variety employee cannot easily file for their green card. It's the employer who has to file for them, and with a switch of employment the green card process needs to start again. The green card queue for Indians and Chinese is long. The confluence of these issues encourages abuse.
I came to the US for my MBA (from a good school), graduated in the top 2% of my class with a 3.94 GPA. I got a job with a Fortune 150 company. My starting salary was 94K, and now I make more than 150K. All this happened in the last 4 years.
I am not "cheap labor" and I don't work in IT. I am highly skilled (I'm a lawyer with an MBA - it's not all that common). I have an approved green card application.
But - I'm from India, and there's a LONG line of people ahead of me waiting for green cards. It will take 5-7 years to get a green card. In the meanwhile, I have received job offers where I would get paid more - nearly 200K in one instance. But I'm unwilling to take those offers because it would mean restarting the green card process. There are ways to keep your spot in line, but they aren't foolproof, and for me, it's easier to stay with this company and hold onto my spot rather than take a higher paying job.
So yes, even for people highly skilled and in demand, it's not easy to switch jobs. There are many factors that you have to look at, and it's stressful knowing that if you lose your job, you have days to find a new job - or else give up your life in the US and leave. I have been here for years, I have a house, cars, friends.. you can't easily just leave everything behind.
The US needs to work on this issue. I agree that people shouldn't be losing their jobs to cheaper labor, but at the same time, what about highly skilled immigrants who want to contribute to the US economy and build a life here? The sword of Damocles hangs over our heads - lose your job and you have 10 days to find a new one, or get out. Doesn't matter if you've been here 10 years and have done everything you possibly could to be a good citizen.
In theory, yes. You can switch jobs, but you have to reapply for a new PERM with the details of the new job, and your previous priority date.
However, if USCIS decides to deny the new PERM, or ask for additional evidence, or who knows what else - you could lose your spot AND lose your ability to work and have to leave immediately. There are many things that could go wrong - the lawyers could screw up, Congress might change the rules, your new company might decide to withdraw the I-140.
It's a risk, and the question is your willingness to take that risk. If I get offered a job where I'm getting paid more that $220K, I might take that risk. Below that, it's simply not worth it for me. And I'm not alone in this.
The elected federal government officials need campaign contributions to stay in office, and most campaign financing comes from the businesses. Until we curtail this, you will not see any meaningful reform to the H-1B visa.
Actually, I doubt restricting campaign spending by businesses will help the OP in his case.
The OP was talking about how restrictive and capricious the skilled immigration laws were on him. A person elected by nativist populist voters will likely try to take away the OP's freedom (and ability to stay here), and make his life worse.
One organization working for the OP's benefit, and the benefit of all skilled immigrants, as well the as the many undocumented is Fwd.us: http://www.fwd.us/ They're funded by Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, etc. Just as a note, many of these people have signed the Giving Pledge, so they're not the evil billionaires people like to make them out to be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge
Other pro-immigration organizations, like the Chamber of Commerce, are also funded by big businesses. The Koch brothers are pro-immigrant, and have said they support legalizing the 11-12 million undocumented here. There is a lot of broad support in the business sector for making our laws more immigrant-friendly.
It would have made our immigration system a couple of order of magnitudes better, and made life for skilled immigrant especially better.
It didn't pass, not because of business opposition to it, but because of right-wing tea-partyer grassroots nativist sentiment, and congressmen who were beholden to them.
Just as a note, the "evil billionaire" reputation comes from how the billions were earned, not how they are spent later on. Future good cannot "greenwash" present evil, but given the fait accompli, we also shouldn't let past misdeeds taint present good.
I don't want to start a big off-topic thread about philanthropy, just point out some nuance that was missed by your note.
Yes, I have checked. I don't think I do. O visas require clear proof of exceptional ability - and in my field, I'd have to show multiple international publications, awards won, a SJD, etc.
O visas are easy to get if you're an author, celebrity, renowned professor, and so on.
I'm not in that category. I have publications in international journals and corporate awards - but an O visa would be a stretch.
It's easier for me to leave the US for a year, and come back and reapply under the EB1 classification, and this is something that I am seriously considering. It depends on what new rules the USCIS makes this year - and also on the outcome of the upcoming Presidential election.
> The sword of Damocles hangs over our heads - lose your job and you have 10 days to find a new one, or get out
No, you don't even have 10 days -- it's zero days. You are immediately out-of-status (or in more common parlance, an "illegal immigrant") as soon as your H-1B employer terminates you.
I'll quote them here: "If the employment ends, this condition is no longer satisfied and the individual is no longer in a lawful nonimmigrant status and may be subject to removal proceedings." and "There is no automatic 10-day or other grace period for terminated employees holding H-1B status".
The employer is required, by law, to notify USCIS as soon as your employment ends. So USCIS does know immediately, that you are out-of-status.
Indeed. There are ways to get USCIS to grant you a few days, but again, nothing is certain. Living as a legal immigrant isn't as stressful as being an illegal one - but it's not too far off.
My job is fairly secure, but who knows, right? I have a range of worst-case-scenario strategies, including how to quickly sell everything I have and move to Canada (which is far more welcoming of highly skilled people - I qualify).
I wish I didn't have to think of all this though. I shouldn't have to. I do everything according to the letter of the law, work hard, pay my taxes. None of that matters. Lose my job - and bye-bye life in the US.
I know people who don't make as much as I do and aren't getting job offers. They are even worse off and often complain of feeling like slaves to their employers. My company doesn't treat me any different to a US citizen - but smaller companies routinely abuse their H1 workers, because they know they have them over a barrel.
> Living as a legal immigrant isn't as stressful as being an illegal one - but it's not too far off.
True, whether USCIS chooses to act on a sudden unexpected layoff you might have, and begin "removal proceedings" against you -- or in other words, send ICE agents to your home, arrest you, throw you in a detention center ("jail") for an indefinite amount of time, until you are put on a plane back to India (forcibly), is up in the air.
The likelihood is that, as someone who came to this country on a skilled visa, you are probably not on the top of their priority list. There is also, prosecutorial discretion. If you get laid of suddenly, and if you find another willing sponsor super-fast (in let's say, 10 days), they can basically ask USCIS for forgiveness for the fact that you were out-of-status. They'd have to write a letter explaining that the circumstances were outside your control. However, prosecutorial discretion, is completely at the discretion of the officer reviewing your case.
However, another thing to be much more wary about is, if you were let's say driving in Alabama, where police officers can stop you[1] on suspicion that you are illegal (for which the sole, if not primary criteria is race/appearance), they can and do contacted the federal government to check if you are in the country legally, and you could be dragged and chucked into an ICE detention facility by the local police.
Alabama law requires local police to do this. But I've heard of stories of police in upstate New York doing this unilaterally (not because state law directs them to). NY driver licenses show the expiration date of your visa. This person had overstayed their F-1 student visa, and the upstate NY officer after seeing the visa expiration date on the driver license, dragged him over to ICE and handed him over. What's interesting is that NY doesn't have any state law[2] that requires the police to do this. With Indian people being frequently confused for Hispanic people, you are at high risk in any rural part of this country, or really any part of the U.S. with low immigrant populations.
[1] Alabama has a statute that allows them to do that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_SB_1070 It was much harsher, as originally you would have been made guilty of criminal felony (under state law) for not having legal status, but the Supreme Court overturned most of it, except for the ability of local police to randomly stop you because of "reasonable suspicion" that you lack legal status: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_v._United_States
[2] But the local laws of New York City expressly prohibits this. The local laws of the "sanctuary cities" in the U.S. all expressly prohibit the police from inquiring about your immigrant status. Even if they can know from just looking at your driver license that you are illegal, the sanctuary cities prohibit the police from taking any action based on this. More on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctuary_city
One more thing: the President has the power to make a rule saying that all H-1B visa holders receive X days of guaranteed prosecutorial discretion, if they are laid off / terminated.
We could petition the President and ask him to create such a rule, but we'd need a lot of people, and a lot of support. If you are interested in working on this, feel free to get in touch with me at the email address listed on my GitHub profile (which is linked to on my HN profile).
I agree it's not easy. I also was an H-1B, and in the exact same situation.
I have heard contradictory things from various lawyers about whether I could continue a green card process if I changed employment. Even if there is a correct interpretation of the law, you can't rely on them applying it to you because as a non-US citizen you're at the mercy of the bureaucracy. Big companies can get what they want, not individuals.
I wasn't happy with where I was working, and though they were willing to sponsor me for a green card, all the advice I got was that I would have to wait ten years or more. I didn't want to wait a decade to be more entrepreneurial, so I left instead. Also I was just sick of all the hoops I had to keep jumping through, scary experiences at the border, trivial screw-ups from lawyers meaning unexpected stays out of the country.... but most of all, how it made me a much more compliant person in my day-to-day work. I survived some difficult situations (and did jump employers once) but it was never easy.
Other people in my situation, who are tired of being some company's indentured servant, sometimes do different visas. The O-1 is surprisingly popular, even though it's written like you have to be Stephen Hawking to qualify. But I guess I didn't have the werewithal to do that.
In the original article, the congressperson commented about how the visa program doesn't attract entrepreneurial people. That was crazy. Lots of us are entrepreneurial! The H-1B visa is designed to stop us from doing that.
Increasing the supply of labor puts downward pressure on labor costs in general, most specifically at the tier of labor where the labor pool is expanded. The article states that most of the labor imported is at the entry/journeyman level. Driving down the wages of less senior tech workers allows companies to target more dollars to elite talent and executives, so I don't see how inequality is reduced in this instance. Arguably importing more O-1 workers might have the effect you describe.
A solution to this wholesale import of cheap labor is to rank all the H-1B applications in order of salary, and take the top N. Presto: problem of low-wage imports solved; companies will now be able to find local talent, since they'll have to pay more, and tech workers will make more money. Win, win, win for all.
Huh? Because you can live a king's life for $100k family income in Kentucky, while you can barely afford rent in Bay Area with the same salary. Also, manufacturing, logistics, have other reasons for being located where they are.
I'm not saying the logistics center should relocate. I'm saying that it's not especially deserving of government help in the form of a skilled-labor visa if it's not going to pay as much as someone else. After all, cost-of-living differences aren't accounted-for in the tax return the employee files.
That's a strange attitude. Immigration is not some weird form of corporate welfare, where corporations have some right to get employee-immigrants at prices they can afford.
Honestly, I'd like it if the Kentucky logistics company were forced to pay SF wages. It might help drive up wages for skilled workers in Kentucky.
How is it corporate welfare? The objective is a legal framework to allow companies to hire skilled international workers: pharma scientists as much as Ruby-on-rails wizards. It is also corporate welfare if you are indirectly loading the die in high-paying SF/NY jobs.
Agree. And ban outsourcing companies from India from getting H1-Bs. They actually have a special category for them but they bring so many people in that they spill over into H1-B. The people they bring in are from the bottom-of-the barrel colleges in India (I am from there).
You'd think that all H1-B visa will end up in SF and NYC, the two cities with highest wages. The rent is too damn high already in SF and NYC! It's interfering with the job market. A saner job market would have people refuse to move to NYC because they cannot afford a roof over their head.
I have done that. It wasn't NYC or SF, but I once turned down a job primarily because there was a mismatch between salary and cost of living (among other reasons).
The skills shortage issue, in my experience is the inability to find someone with the specific skills and talents for a given job. It is real, as anyone who's tried to hire in certain areas can testify. It is not a strict commodity market where terms like shortage are easy to define. The purpose of the H1B visa is to make it easy for US companies to look for talent wherever in the world it is available without having to open up offices there. It fails to do this in an equitable manner. One can arrive at this conclusion without invoking STEM shortage and implying that foreign workers are somehow deficient.
Frankly the only place where H1B seems to be "misused" is in the outsourcing industry. And that too it is "misused" if you look it from a protectionist perspective.
I've never seen any high skilled jobs going to H1Bs just because it is cheaper. In fact I've seen the opposite: small and mid-size companies hesitating to hire H1Bs because of the uncertainties involved.
Also, PhD glut in bio has nothing to do with H1B! The author misleadingly brings it up because it has the "woah" factor to buttress his argument.
Also can somehow explain to me how it is not protectionism to forge Disney to do something in house while it can be done cheaper by engaging a foreign company like Infosys?
>look for talent wherever in the world it is available without having to open up offices there
It's not. Most large companies already have offices over there and could hire those people tomorrow if they wanted to. They bring people into the US with their families to have power over them. A manager without power over skilled people is useless in accomplishing business goals that require those skills. They also are always trying to accomplish personal goals like getting their friends promoted, getting more power generally at the cost of technical people. These types of goals tend to make technical people walk away despite any salary level, hence the need for H1B. Except for body shops, H1B is about power not money or available workforce.
Frankly your vision is limited to the outsourcing industry. Would it surprise you to learn that many many big companies (GE, Msft, GOOG, FB, pharmas, etc.) that form a large percentage of the US economy also hire people with specific skills (say, 3D computer vision or expertise in pharma processes) who by being educated in the US universities are some of the best in the world? No manager in these companies is thinking about the leverage you're talking about when the person's skill can be a do or die for entire product lines.
I'm speaking from first hand conversations with H1B's who go on about how their company is holding this or that over their head such as green card sponsorship. You are completely ignored my point that those employers can hire those people in their countries as those employers that you named have offices in every major city around the world. They have big offices with thousands of employees. Your statement about companies wanting to hire specialized skills is pointless. Everybody agrees with that. Your statement about managers not wanting leverage is just not true. What else do you think it means to want to hire to someone other than to have leverage over a person. I made the point that employers want undue leverage when money is not enough and that is why they use H1B.
The parent's description matches exactly what I know from people on H1Bs in the fashion industry, whose labor market conditions have some parallels with tech. I don't think it's limited to outsourcing companies. Long hours, death march deadlines, and generally higher-than-average salaries result in high turnover in fashion as they do in tech. Employers turn to H1Bs to lock-in a workforce, as, excepting large companies, few will expend the extra time and money (legal services and filing fees) to transfer a visa when they can simply hire away an employee from a competitor. The lack of labor mobility with the H1B is a boon to industries that would rather not reform the working conditions or improve the salaries that causes top talent to move around.
I'll start.
1. Deep learning, Neural networks, anything to do with AI.
2. Machine Vision,
3. Genomic Science (CRSPR etc.
4. Robotics/Mechatronics...
and that's just a start.
In the current structure these are the kinds of jobs that are getting harder to fill with H1B shortages. I personally know several experts who couldn't get O1 (and some who did) and had to leave the country after losing out in the lottery.
> The mismatch is especially stark in the biomedical field. There, according to a 2014 paper by experts from UC San Francisco, Harvard and Princeton, "the training pipeline produces more scientists than relevant positions in academia, government, and the private sector are capable of absorbing."
Genomic Science is not the same as "the biomedical field." I'm not familiar with the job market in that particular field, but nothing you learn from reading the article gainsays the idea that it's hard to hire people to do genomic stuff.
If only a PhD credential was all that you needed to get a job! Seriously, that is one of the reasons the "shortage" argument breaks down. You want the best graduates and 1) they aren't necessarily always US citizens, 2) not all people with degrees are desirable for every open position
If you demand someone with a phd from a top 10 (stanford/cmu, berkeley, michigan, toronto, ny, columbia, UW, etc) then yes, I agree -- but there's probably fewer than 200 of those minted per year. If you realize a cmu ML phd holder isn't going to your startup for $125k + lottery tickets and is instead going to a public company for $200k + $100k in RSUs and are realistic about what you can hire, there are plenty of us with track records of delivering products and making our employers money.
That's from my perspective both as hiring manager and an employee. I've been willing to hire both non-phds and outside of the aforementioned schools and really not had much trouble.
Not sure where you are based, I am an MIT alum and founder of a company in Machine Vision + Deep learning. I have posted job postings for Deep learning engineer on Angelist, every forum I could think of, including attending AI meetups here in Boston, and...and guess how many responses I got? zero, zippo, zilch....
p.s. BTW we are more open to Masters/Bachelor's (less researchy) than Phds.
Maybe you could hire promising people and let them learn those skills, especially if you want people who are "less researchy."
I'm not aware of a huge pool of "Machine Vision + Deep learning" people who are trapped in India because of Wipro using up all the H1Bs on J2EE programmers.
I am not hiring from India, my intent to hire was international students. I am with the proponents of H1b reform to prevent companies like Wipro & TCS using them for outsourcing/offshoring. But to say "there is no skills shortage" is at best laughable.
You once again missed my point, the students i am looking to hire are well versed in AI tech, know a lot about the field, and can hit the ground running (vs some entitled prick who thinks he deserves the job). Broad-brushing I know, but only as a counterpoint to your own.
Agree with you. There is definitely no shortage....of entitled, arrogant, lazy, whiny, whingey armchair generals like you.
Instead of sharing your infinite wisdom of who I should hire, how I should train them, and what have you...why not start your own company? Hire all this talent pool you claim exists, and show us how it can be done. Be the change you want. But that would involve moving your fat a$$ and might be too much exertion for your royal laziness
Unless you have started up a business, and done something worthwhile, you can go shove your advice up your you-know-what.
> Agree with you. There is definitely no shortage....of entitled, arrogant, lazy, whiny, whingey armchair generals like you.
> Instead of sharing your infinite wisdom of who I should hire, how I should train them, and what have you...why not start your own company? Hire all this talent pool you claim exists, and show us how it can be done. Be the change you want. But that would involve moving your fat a$$ and might be too much exertion for your royal laziness
> Unless you have started up a business, and done something worthwhile, you can go shove your advice up your you-know-what.
Hmm. I wonder if your attitude has any connection to your hiring problem. I certainly wouldn't want to work for someone who acts as immaturely as you are acting now.
BTW, I do hire people and I do train them/give them time and guidance to pick up the skills I need them to have, especially if they're less experienced students. I think it's unreasonable to expect that the perfect candidate will just fall out of a university fully formed and into my lap, so I deal with it and do something about it. Apparently you do not, and instead jump to conclusions and hurl put-downs.
Not everything can be acquired by training. You are assuming an unrealistic utopia where every skill can be learned. Unfortunately most CS and EE students cannot be trained in AI/ML. Only the subset with strong and deep backgrounds in linear algebra, etc. can be. If everyone can be trained for everything, what is the point of specialization?
> Not everything can be acquired by training. You are assuming an unrealistic utopia where every skill can be learned.
That's true, but only to a degree. There is a kernel of inherent talent/ability behind many skills, but pretty much everything else besides that can be learned.
So, assuming you're correct, you identify the "CS and EE" students that can be trained in AI/ML and you train them, rather than complaining about a "skills shortage" (usually meaning something like the US is not providing fully trained bodies at cheap prices with the cutting-edge, special-snowflake skillset the complainer desires).
"Training" could mean paying for/subsidizing an advanced degree, which good employers have been known to do.
> If everyone can be trained for everything, what is the point of specialization?
I'm not saying something like everyone can learn any job with a 4-week training course. The point of specialization is that no one has the time to learn every skill, so people focus.
There are lots of Indian grad students in CS and EE departments across the US. Modulo OPT, they're at the mercy of H1B lotteries. I know of PhDs from EU universities who, without the luxury of OPT, haven't been able to convert successful interviews and skill-matches into actual employment because of H1B's arbitrariness. Many of my friends have had to resort to O1 with varying success after excellent PhD dissertations because the failed to make the cut in H1B. Some had to return to India simply because they failed at both H1B and at meeting the onerous requirements of O1.
I suspect this is a problem: it's hard to articulate the level of skill and competency of what we're trying to hire for. How does one describe a good engineer vs. a subpar one, when the only requirement listed is "knows Java, can code fizzbuzz bug free in 1 function less than 10 lines and in less than 5 minutes?" Something to that effect...
There is always a "mismatch" between wants and ability to pay.
Tech business is not special. Purchasing labor services is subject to the same supply and demand problems as any other product. It's simply market fundamentals that affect all economic behavior.
If you want a new Lexus, but can only afford a used Corolla, that does not mean there's a "Lexus shortage" ... nor is there a "car shortage". If only a Lexus will do, then the market just doesn't happen.
Another factor is location. My company acquired a startup in a tier two city in US, and have the toughest time in getting people there whenever they want to fill up a position. At the same time, there isn't much of that problem in other offices.
Seems like a simple problem to solve - raise the wage offered in the tier two city. If the benefits of moving to a less desirable location for work outweigh the drawbacks, people will do it. Your company probably just doesn't want to pay people enough to move there.
> The skills shortage issue, in my experience is the inability to find someone with the specific skills and talents for a given job. It is real, as anyone who's tried to hire in certain areas can testify.
You know, you could always just hire someone with potential and put him through a training program to teach him the "specific skills" needed, or just let him learn them on-the-job.
But of course, employers are no longer willing to invest in their employees* , so we have a "skills shortage."
* They used to. It's my understanding that the first few generations of business applications programmers were taught programming from scratch by their employers.
This is my biggest gripe with the modern technology industry. We've gone from "you have the background and skills to do the work - here's how we do what we do" to "You don't check these thirty boxes specific to our company?! No job for you!" It's getting rather absurd, especially when you're job hunting and the recruiters give you the "you have an impressive background and could do this work, BUT you don't have <exact ten things> ergo we'll pass." Very few people take the route of finding talent then training them up. Companies willing to take the time to train their people and focus on finding raw talent they can mold will make a killing. Not only will the people be trained exactly how you want them, but I'd argue they'd be cheaper and you could tie compensation increases to hitting defined mile marks in the training program or demonstrating competencies.
From the flip side, I see the company concern - kind of. If I bring in raw talent and train it, I've sunk $X into the talent and if they leave shortly thereafter, I'm out $X with no benefit. The counterpoint to that argument, I think are signing bonuses and defined time contracts. In exchange for us training you to do this job and completing the program, you get a signing bonus of $X at the start, $Y at the end, and sign a 2 year agreement to work here. If you leave beforehand you agree to payback the $X+Y signing bonus (unless laid off by the company).
There are ways to address the "skills shortage". The problem is, no one wants to take the time and the cost to do it.
I have the (unfortunate, given reality) mindset of believing borders are an outmoded fiction, so protectionist arguments never seem very convincing to me. No one has yet made a believable case for Americans being more deserving of employment than any given nationality, and I believe the global federation of skills that happens as a result of various immigration programs is the greater good for the species.
Re: "global federation of skills is greater good for the species."
Yes, but IMHO, a smooth transition over time would probably work best. Not an abrupt disruptive change where whole departments of guys lose their job over night.
We may not be more deserving of jobs, but totally ridding ourselves of borders would have us inundated with people that hope to achieve the "American dream". Most will not succeed given current conditions and we'd just have more poor people. :/
At the high end, for skilled workers, there's a lot of people arguing what you argue, even the skilled workers who would face increased competition for jobs. And I admit, I find the argument compelling myself.
The interesting bit is that there are few who make this argument at the low end. The idea of open borders for unskilled folks is way less popular.
The net effect of this, it seems to me, is that while there's lots of support for me facing more competition, there's no support for more competition in the labor I buy.
Now, one could say that is reasonable, just because I make a lot more money than I need to live, which can't be said for less skilled workers, but it's an interesting dynamic.
The potential gains, especially from freer immigration, are astounding.
"The gains from eliminating migration barriers dwarf---by an order of a magnitude or two---the gains from eliminating other types of barriers. For the elimination of trade policy barriers and capital flow barriers, the estimated gains amount to less than a few percent of world GDP. For labor mobility barriers, the estimated gains are often in the range of 50–150 percent of world GDP." [1]
A typical example:
"Take a male construction worker in the capital of Ghana. There isn’t much you could do to greatly raise his economic productivity in Ghana; access to better tools or training might make him modestly more productive. But if you let the exact same person emigrate to work at a construction site in any big U.S. city, his economic productivity would rise roughly 700% to 1,000%." [2]
I really like this idea in theory. But in practice, even the given example is kind of broken. Would a random Ghana man be able to survive in the US? How much training and teaching would it take for them to actually be successful? Our culture and daily life are really not that similar. Undoubtedly there would still be a lot of economic gain for him, but the sheer logistics of it don't seem possible to overcome.
They are actually more similar than you would imagine. The national language is English and there is a decent size community in the bigger American cities that make it easier for a Ghanaian immigrant to assimilate.
People concentrate on legislative solutions, but the H-1B program is well-defined by the current law. It seems to me that this is on the executive branch - why isn't the Department of Labor cracking down on obvious abuse?
Why do any of our captured regulatory agencies fail to regulate? Many times it's because senior staff will get their pension within the next five years, and they want to make sure they have a nice private position to transfer into when that happens. If a large firm fails really egregiously in meeting standards, it will get a series of phone calls and private meetings as the prospective junior exec demonstrates how "helpful" she can be. If OTOH some small manufacturer with forty employees (executive positions available: 0) has the safety info signs installed too far from the equipment, the regulatory hammer is sure to hit it hard.
It's sad that the focus is on just ripping down the program. Right now the thing is a huge bureaucracy which costs tons of lawyer time as well as employee time. Raise the minimum H1B wage to $110k, index it to CPI, and the problem will basically go away overnight.
I'd also advocate that we allow companies to convert their existing H1Bs to green-card holders after 3 years, in exchange for getting a new H1B. This would effectively raise the cap while increasing mobility among immigrants working under the program.
In my opinion, the real fix is to make the H-1B 'lottery' into an auction. Instead of accepting 65,000 H-1Bs at random--accept the 65,000 H-1Bs with the highest wages. That way we are getting the immigrants with the highest valued skills and stopping companies like Cognizant and Infosys that game the immigration system by applying for the cheapest H-1Bs possible. Look at the biggest H-1B recipients: http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2015-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx It's all low quality outsourcing shops like Cognizant and Infosys.
If you've ever applied for an H-1B then you know how easy it is to abuse the prevailing wages. The process to evaluate the skills of the applicant is simply filling out a form online for their experience level, job title, and location. Give it a test here: http://www.flcdatacenter.com/OesWizardStart.aspx
It's very easy to game their job title and location to lower the salary.
Here is the law firm Cohen & Grigsby advising other employers in running classified ads with the goal of NOT finding any qualified applicants, and the steps they go through to disqualify even the most qualified Americans in order to secure green cards for H-1B workers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU This seems like clear fraud. The issue I have with H-1Bs is when companies lie/cheat/commit fraud to outsource jobs that Americans do want and are qualified/willing to do, all for the sake of driving down wages.
Maybe you should have paid them as much as what they would make at Google then. Having to compete on salary,benefits, and working environment is the true meaning of an open and free market, not a rigged market as the current H-1B system is.
Google in a hypothetical case would then offer a lower salary to cover the visa cost, and/or deem it too much trouble to bring the H-1B on board. This leaves the H-1B worker operating in a suboptimal market. The issue of visa fees does not confront the H-1B employee, only the employer which sponsored them in the first place. Besides it should cost slighly more to bring in an H-1B than current parket rates. Maybe then more natives would be hired.
Is should be slightly more expensive to bring in immigrants
because one of the governments missions voters expect is to ensure that there is a job market where there are good well-paying jobs, not a market where it is flooded with immigrants that have driven down wages. Having American citizens and green card holders idled or having to work in a lower paying job is not a true free market because only the employers are benefiting.
Once the domestic pool of potential employers has dried up, then employers will bring in the slightly more expensive foreign labor.
The idealised government's role has always been acting in the interest of its citizens.
More importantly though: how is not letting Indians into the US harming them? Are Indians incapable of creating a US-like environment in their own country? If so, that's an argument to keep them out. If not, why wouldn't they do just that instead of moving half-way around the world?
Why don't we pass laws saying it's illegal to move out of Flint, MI. Would such a law harm the people living there who might like to move?
Black Americans in Flint seem incapable of creating a NYC-like environment in their own city. Is that an argument to prevent them from moving to NY?
And none of this explains why American consumers should pay extra. Apparently Indian humans count for less than 3/5, but don't American consumers count as full humans? Why should labor sellers be privileged over consumers?
First, it's dishonest to compare a law stopping foreigners from moving in and a hypothetical one making Flint residents prisoners in their county.
Second, New Yorkers routinely enact regulations to stop unapproved immigrants from moving in through housing cooperatives for example. And Americans all around the country do with gated communities.
I lost track of what you're arguing. Are you arguing against freedom of association? For some sort of forced integration where everyone should be allowed to move wherever they please regardless of the opinion of people already living there?
Why is it dishonest? Why is it wrong to make people prisoners in their county, but not prisoners in their country?
I lost track of what you're arguing. Are you arguing against freedom of association? For some sort of forced integration where everyone should be allowed to move wherever they please regardless of the opinion of people already living there?
I'm arguing that it's wrong for person A to use violence to prevent person B from hiring person C, even if that undercuts the wages of person A. I believe this to be true even if person C was born into an unfavorable group.
None of the arguments you've made explain treating Indians different from Flintians.
Maybe you are arguing that some arbitrary lines on the map (e.g. countRy boundaries) deserve moral weight, but not others (e.g. county boundaries)? Is that your claim?
It's not really an argument to keep them out. We should let them in when real demand is there. Right now, its a race to the bottom in this country due to job market manipulation by business.
Also I'm all for letting Indian entrepreneurs into the country because they will create jobs.
The issue is that companies won't take on the risk and hassle of sponsoring a visa. Employees will arbitrage this by taking any job they can get until they can get sponsored, then leave.
It's not necessarily about pay, it's about wanting to work for a big name like Google.
I think the best solution, as others have suggested, is that the new employer has to buy out the visa costs. This is the deal I made when my employer paid to relocate me to the Bay Area -- if I left in the first two years, I would have had to repay my moving costs.
Sizeable number of visa interviews sponsored by startups are rejected at the consulate. They find it very difficult to differentiate an authentic startup from a phony body shop.
And of course the objections to your idea highlight the point that hb1s have generally not been about finding people with unique skills but rather about getting cheap labor on a tight leash.
It's not counter-intuitive, it's textbook market economics. Your compensation package is your compensation package. You don't get to tell the government they should issue a visa so you can pay someone in missionary zeal.
What I've seen based on friends' startups that brought him in people via H1B at seed stage is that I f you already have someone in mind, the time and cost of H1B is much smaller than the time and cost to find a similarly qualified applicant in the states when you are a young company that many of said candidates will find to be an unattractive option to them.
An auction is impractical. It will shaft smaller companies. Even in larger companies, the hiring decisions are based on group/division budgets. Who decides how high to go on the bidding in a big company? In a small company, where will you raise the capital for such auctions? How will it impact wages?
I think the opposite is true. Smaller companies will be forced to only hire high quality rockstars from international sources. Owners will no longer think they can save 20k/year in entry level labor (at the hidden costs of 200k/year in productivity, employee morale, etc..).
I like the idea of the auction because it is essentially where the company says "We are importing the best talent and we are willing to pay extra for it" and it also says "Local candidates are so inadequate that it would cost more to train one." in a way that's simply useless to lie about.
The current system encourages my boss to buy extra lottery tickets at the lowest price so he can be surprised later when productivity, morale of local employees, and quality ratio to labor cost is at rock bottom.
Now about being unfair to startups... If the auction somehow doesn't account for offering ownership/equity (which seems like an obscure rare situation anyways), that's clearly a better problem to have than a market flooded with cheap labor that still needs regular training, in addition to language training and cultural training.
> stopping companies like Cognizant and Infosys that game the immigration system by applying for the cheapest H-1Bs possible
Cognizant and Infosys will stop the gaming the minute you detach the H-1B from the company - something along the lines of "If an employee spends N months at a company on H-1B, not get into trouble with the law, pay taxes and be a productive member of the community, then that person can work at any similar job without being tied to the employer".
Facebook, Google or Microsoft are not doing H-1Bs so they can trap those employees into working at low wages - Cognizant and Infosys are. Removing the power these firms have over the employee is the only true way to reform H-1B.
President Obama's executive action plans did state intent along those lines [1], but those seem to be torpedoed by vested interests. There is currently a draft rule from USCIS titled "Retention of EB-1, EB-2 and EB-3 Immigrant Workers and Program Improvements Affecting High-Skilled Nonimmigrant Workers" [2] open for comments until Feb 29, 2016.
If you are interested in acting towards a solution to this problem you identify, please consider reading and commenting on it this weekend. You can do it online by going to www.regulations.gov and searching for the eDocket number USCIS-2015-0008 [3].
> Cognizant and Infosys will stop the gaming the minute you detach the H-1B from the company.
While I agree that people on an H-1B visa shouldn't be tied to one particular employer, I don't think this will solve the problem at all. The lottery model will always unfairly advantage these outsourcing companies precisely because all they care about is billable hours, and the people working there are interchangeable. That's why they can afford to be relatively indiscriminate by throwing thousands of visa applications at the wall and hiring whoever sticks. Product companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft who have to actually care which individuals they hire are always going to be at a disadvantage in a lottery - their hiring bar reduces the pool of visa applicants and gives them fewer tickets. That doesn't mean that there aren't great engineers at these companies, but as a whole the system perversely incentivizes quantity over quality.
> because all they care about is billable hours, and the people working there are interchangeable. That's why they can afford to be relatively indiscriminate by throwing thousands of visa applications at the wall and hiring whoever sticks.
These companies apply for visas on behalf of the competent employees they have in their offshore offices. Once the employee gets an H-1B visa if the regulations are such that s/he is free to switch employers without harming their immigrant status, they will bargain for better wages. This breaks the business model of applying for lots of visas paying large fees on each of them and getting a few approved.
Right now the visa fees (> 7K for just the initial application! [1]) are considered an investment by these firms, because they know that the few that sticks can be trapped into a long employment period and underpaid for years to recoup many multiples of the initial investment.
Breaking this business model is what will prevent these firms from applying in large numbers (which is a DoS attack on USCIS, forcing the approval process into a lottery). Hence my original comment.
An auction based on highest wages will be the worst thing that can be done to H-1B. You may have only technology/CS viewpoint here with this proposal. There are lot of other industries that use H-1B. At one time, I was one of such H-1B holder.
Do you really want to import foreigners for high paying jobs? Do you really want to starve low margin industries that are unable to pay high wages but need specialized locally unavailable skills? The skill shortage doesn't necessarily equates with high wages, for example shortage of skills needed for short term. One example, a COBOL programmer needed for a cobol to xyz conversion project.
Using any one criteria as qualification is recipe for disaster and gaming the system. An appropriate process should look at multiple items both from hiring org perspective and the fit of a foreigner for hiring org as well as industry and the country. A point based system that evaluates suitability of employer and non-immigrant candidate might be better approach, a system somewhat like what Canada uses for permanent residency.
In the end, either you import foreigners or you export jobs. If there is an arbitrage opportunity, it will be exploited by someone somewhere.
H1B or no H1B with the advances in computing (cloud, automation, ML AI etc) are now getting mature enough that we will simply not need so many workers in IT sector. Even folks in outsourcing destinations like India are staring at layoffs and downward income revisions.
I didn't get an H1B visa in the lottery. I didn't magically vanish and made place for an American engineer. My employer moved me to UK and I got paid very similar salary.
I know about many USA tech companies increasing size of their European offices, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Palantir. It is bad situation for everyone. USA general public: Role of USA as the tech capital of the world is diminished, as there is more intellectual capital elsewhere. My taxes go to UK rather than to USA.
Tech companies: They need to open offshore offices.
Foreign tech workers: There is less choice of companies in Europe (especially startups). Some people may want to live in USA for various reasons.
The only potential beneficiaries are American tech workers. I believe that the benefit is only in the short term. If tech companies could get all engineers they want into USA, they wouldn't need to open offshore offices. As soon as offshore office is opened, the company have access to more engineers than they could import to USA, as not all people are open to relocating to USA, regardless of Visa situation. Therefore, "value" of an American engineer drops more.
>> ... including Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Palantir ...
Palantir is opening up a EU based branch? Where? I think people who work there should be put on lists and never be allowed to work in a normal company again. If by now a person still thinks it's ok to work for Palantir they really should be closely watched.
So a good fraction of Stanford CS grads should never be allowed to work in a normal company again?
They're in their early 20's and got swept up by the recruiting machine. It's like brandishing all Goldman Sachs analysts who joined the firm pre-2008 as having evil intent rather than just having been ill informed.
Oh I'd go much further. They should be judged like a Nazi German in WWII. If you are complicit in supplying technology to the surveillance state and have the knowledge that cowardly drone-operators are killing innocent[1] people around the world (while calling their children targets "fun sized terrorists"). Then they should not say "oh but I needed the job". Millions of Germans were also only doing their jobs during the holocaust. The difference is those who happily concur and support these sick systems and those that rise up and distance themselves from it or fight it.
It is that black and white unfortunately. But only because current US legislation with their war on everything made it so. It is up to Americans to change it and as a non American I'd judge anyone who doesn't rise up and distance themselves. You should be on the streets protesting and not behind laptops and cowardly half-arsed remarks hiding yourself. Downvote me all you want I really don't care.
First, their EU based branches have been opened for years, the last one being Paris.
Second, you should defined what is a normal company. They are pretty much the same as any big tech company, and they are definitively hiring the same profiles as Google, Facebook or Criteo, in a very similar process.
Last, what makes working for Palantir worst than, let's say, working in adtech, fintech, or anything resembling a buzzfeed-like mobile social network?
Palantir have pretty sizeable engineering office in London. I never worked for Palantir, so I don't know the details, but I have a few friends that do. My bet would be something between 50-300 "core" software engineers and about twice as many forward deployed engineers. Engineering office have been opened for about 2-3 years.
Presumably your employer needed your specific skills and genuinely couldn't find an American with them. This is exactly the purpose H1-B visas are supposed to serve, and as you've demonstrated the lottery makes them useless for that - the odds of the person you desperately need getting through are too small. The reason H1-Bs work for the outsourcing firms in the article is because they're just using H1-Bs to get cheap, low-skilled replacements for US workers. They can simply take on so many applicants that after the lottery, enough are left to fill their recruiting targets, because they're not looking for any special skills.
> These workers aren't uniquely skilled, engineering grand masters, but are rank-and-file IT often with bachelor's degrees and supplementary on-the-job training. But their salaries often come to $100,000 or more, leaving them vulnerable to lower-cost imported workers.
Okay, but if they aren't skilled and no shortage exists then why aren't companies able to find cheaper US based graduates?
> Employers are legally required to pay visa holders the "local prevailing wage" for their jobs, but enforcement is porous. "It is extraordinarily easy to pay an H-1B worker much less than an American worker," Hira observed; the trick lies in how the job is defined
So fix this.
> Evidence is ample that the very claim of a STEM shortage in the U.S. is phony. Salzman noted that "overall, our colleges and universities graduate twice the number of STEM graduates as find a job each year." The mismatch is especially stark in the biomedical field. There, according to a 2014 paper by experts from UC San Francisco, Harvard and Princeton, "the training pipeline produces more scientists than relevant positions in academia, government, and the private sector are capable of absorbing."
Wow. That's compelling evidence since everyone known STEM degrees are entirely interchangeable.
How many H1-Bs are given out to biomedical graduates?
Taking the circumstance that a half of STEM university graduates fail to find a job as evidence that there is no "STEM shortage" seems to be based on a misunderstanding about what it means to be qualified for a STEM job, or perhaps the quality of a university education. In CS, at least, which seems to be their go-to example field, my experience is that it is pretty much impossible to fail to graduate due to incompetence - I have seen the system bend over backwards to ensure that people who barely got 40% in a course with plenty of freebies in its marking scheme get passing grades, and the reason given was actually "they want to graduate this year". Considering also the number of people who flock into the relevant programs hoping for a slice of the startup cake every year, it does not seem at all surprising that half of the US graduates are simply objectively unqualified for any job in the field they graduate in.
Can someone please remind me again why USians should have a god given right to jobs in the US? Or put another way ... should an accident of birth(place) be the most import decider on whether someone should get a job or not?
I realise that this is probably going to get stupidly downvoted, but I am a die hard libertarian.
Why is it, in 2016, still OK to pick on the foreigners? Replace the word "foreigner" with Black/Woman/Jew/Gay/White/Whatever, and it would be totally unacceptable.
Way I see things, in a hundred years or so, picking on foreigners will be seen in the same light as picking on some minority group today.
I just worry that I won't get to live to see that day.
You're being ridiculous. It's not picking on them at all. They are trying to protect US citizens from losing their jobs (or getting wages cut) due to a sudden availability of cheap labor. A government is rightfully concerned with making sure its own citizens are gainfully employed. Citizens vote, foreigners don't. Every person within those borders who does not have a job puts a drain on the rest of the country. Someone without a job outside of those borders does not. So bringing someone across those borders while an unemployed person is within them is a net economic negative.
Look at the biggest H-1B recipients: http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2015-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx It's all low quality outsourcing shops like Infosys and Cognizant.
>why USians should have a god given right to jobs in the US?
These laws/protections are intended to prevent a race to the bottom. If the public subsidizes the operation of a company through security, education, and infrastructure, the community that makes that investment is entitled to ensure that the fruits of that investment go to other members of the community.
>>They are trying to protect US citizens from losing their jobs (or getting wages cut) due to a sudden availability of cheap labor.
Mmmm. I hear you. Sort of. Your argument though, is not very different from the "women are taking jobs that rightfully belong to men" spiel that was all the rage after WWII.
I suspect that my argument is fundamentally based on wishful thinking. That said, you can't have your cake and eat it. The 'race to the bottom' you alude to is already happening with offshoring though.
But my central argument remains ... foreigners (based on borders determined by middle aged white men a couple of centuries ago), remain the last 'minority' group that you can still discriminate against, vocally, in polite society.
The fact that you think it's discrimination shows you completely misunderstand the issue and are coming at it from an emotionally biased perspective. You aren't entitled to anything. The government is rightfully concerned with protecting its own citizens and making sure they are gainfully employed. Citizens vote, foreigners don't. Every person within those borders who does not have a job puts a drain on the rest of the country. Someone without a job outside of those borders does not.
Also, the last I checked Americans aren't allowed to work nearly as freely in most of the countries where we accept immigrants from. We are already an exceptionally generous country and our visa program is already abused and rife with fraud. To expect even more from the US is just hypocritical and self-entitled thinking.
"Should an accident of birth(place) be the most import decider?"
There is a school of though that it shouldn't. Many countries confer citizenship jus sanguinis (by descent). Is that system easier for you to understand?
Citizenship conferred jus soli (by place of birth) arose at a time when people were less mobile and less likely to acquire citizenship by "accident of birthplace" and when there were few practical benefits to citizenship in any case. It seems entirely outdated.
Modern nations belong to their citizens who are free to vote for representatives that write laws to benefit citizens and their children.
I doubt you'll have any luck convincing the people of the United States to give away their kingdom or taking it by force.
That's like saying "Why is OK to not let random homeless people in your house to live and raid your fridge?"
If you have the capacity to house them, feed them, train them, then that's great. Do that. But me? I need my children to be able to sleep at night. I need to feed my children. I need my children not raped. I need my children to have room and freedom to study. Will I be looked down upon as a lesser person for this through tumblr-tinted glasses in 50 years? I doubt it.
Why do I think my children have a god(s) given right to my house? I don't. Instead, I am merely thankful.
I have a much better idea. Instead of bringing the homeless world into my house, let's make a better world for the homeless?
H1Bs are a form of corporate welfare that has to stop. Let me TL;DR this for you.
Q. "B-b-but there's a shortage of skilled workers!"
A. Good, let supply-demand make you pay what you should be paying for it. Let our colleges give meaningful education to people they're putting in debt for jobs they can actually get later on.
Our economy is bleeding to death while corporations rack in record profits because of outsourcing.
Few simple rules that would help a lot.
* Want an H1B? Pay them in the top 10th percentile of similar domestic professionals' wages.
* Want an H1B? Great, but once you sponsor it, they're free to work for anyone in the U.S.
* Want an H1B? Great, but you'll be limited to no more than 5% of your total employees.
* That 5% limit includes overseas offices and "international" owned ventures.
If a company is domestic, they should stay domestic. If it's international, they have no need for H1Bs.
I'm writing this as a disgruntled software engineer turned into a business owner.
People getting away with crap like this is infuriating.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 206 ms ] threadIn practice, it's impossible because Congress isn't going to do anything.
But that's IF you're the kind of worker the H1-B was designed to allow into the USA – someone highly skilled and in demand, with the cultural competence to navigate US society. The hordes of TATA people, I don't know.
The real issue with the H-1B (in my opinion) is that you need to jump to a new employer very quickly if you quit. You can't quit a bad situation and then spend a couple of months trying to get a better one.
I came to the US for my MBA (from a good school), graduated in the top 2% of my class with a 3.94 GPA. I got a job with a Fortune 150 company. My starting salary was 94K, and now I make more than 150K. All this happened in the last 4 years.
I am not "cheap labor" and I don't work in IT. I am highly skilled (I'm a lawyer with an MBA - it's not all that common). I have an approved green card application.
But - I'm from India, and there's a LONG line of people ahead of me waiting for green cards. It will take 5-7 years to get a green card. In the meanwhile, I have received job offers where I would get paid more - nearly 200K in one instance. But I'm unwilling to take those offers because it would mean restarting the green card process. There are ways to keep your spot in line, but they aren't foolproof, and for me, it's easier to stay with this company and hold onto my spot rather than take a higher paying job.
So yes, even for people highly skilled and in demand, it's not easy to switch jobs. There are many factors that you have to look at, and it's stressful knowing that if you lose your job, you have days to find a new job - or else give up your life in the US and leave. I have been here for years, I have a house, cars, friends.. you can't easily just leave everything behind.
The US needs to work on this issue. I agree that people shouldn't be losing their jobs to cheaper labor, but at the same time, what about highly skilled immigrants who want to contribute to the US economy and build a life here? The sword of Damocles hangs over our heads - lose your job and you have 10 days to find a new one, or get out. Doesn't matter if you've been here 10 years and have done everything you possibly could to be a good citizen.
I've known people at my company with approved applications, that left to work elsewhere.
However, if USCIS decides to deny the new PERM, or ask for additional evidence, or who knows what else - you could lose your spot AND lose your ability to work and have to leave immediately. There are many things that could go wrong - the lawyers could screw up, Congress might change the rules, your new company might decide to withdraw the I-140.
It's a risk, and the question is your willingness to take that risk. If I get offered a job where I'm getting paid more that $220K, I might take that risk. Below that, it's simply not worth it for me. And I'm not alone in this.
The OP was talking about how restrictive and capricious the skilled immigration laws were on him. A person elected by nativist populist voters will likely try to take away the OP's freedom (and ability to stay here), and make his life worse.
One organization working for the OP's benefit, and the benefit of all skilled immigrants, as well the as the many undocumented is Fwd.us: http://www.fwd.us/ They're funded by Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, etc. Just as a note, many of these people have signed the Giving Pledge, so they're not the evil billionaires people like to make them out to be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge
Other pro-immigration organizations, like the Chamber of Commerce, are also funded by big businesses. The Koch brothers are pro-immigrant, and have said they support legalizing the 11-12 million undocumented here. There is a lot of broad support in the business sector for making our laws more immigrant-friendly.
The OP's life would have been a lot better had the 2013 "Gang of 8" Senate immigration bill (S.744, 133th Congress) passed: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s744
It would have made our immigration system a couple of order of magnitudes better, and made life for skilled immigrant especially better.
It didn't pass, not because of business opposition to it, but because of right-wing tea-partyer grassroots nativist sentiment, and congressmen who were beholden to them.
I don't want to start a big off-topic thread about philanthropy, just point out some nuance that was missed by your note.
O visas are easy to get if you're an author, celebrity, renowned professor, and so on.
I'm not in that category. I have publications in international journals and corporate awards - but an O visa would be a stretch.
It's easier for me to leave the US for a year, and come back and reapply under the EB1 classification, and this is something that I am seriously considering. It depends on what new rules the USCIS makes this year - and also on the outcome of the upcoming Presidential election.
No, you don't even have 10 days -- it's zero days. You are immediately out-of-status (or in more common parlance, an "illegal immigrant") as soon as your H-1B employer terminates you.
USCIS has an official FAQ / Q&A on this: https://www.uscis.gov/tools/ombudsman-liaison/practical-immi...
I'll quote them here: "If the employment ends, this condition is no longer satisfied and the individual is no longer in a lawful nonimmigrant status and may be subject to removal proceedings." and "There is no automatic 10-day or other grace period for terminated employees holding H-1B status".
The employer is required, by law, to notify USCIS as soon as your employment ends. So USCIS does know immediately, that you are out-of-status.
My job is fairly secure, but who knows, right? I have a range of worst-case-scenario strategies, including how to quickly sell everything I have and move to Canada (which is far more welcoming of highly skilled people - I qualify).
I wish I didn't have to think of all this though. I shouldn't have to. I do everything according to the letter of the law, work hard, pay my taxes. None of that matters. Lose my job - and bye-bye life in the US.
I know people who don't make as much as I do and aren't getting job offers. They are even worse off and often complain of feeling like slaves to their employers. My company doesn't treat me any different to a US citizen - but smaller companies routinely abuse their H1 workers, because they know they have them over a barrel.
True, whether USCIS chooses to act on a sudden unexpected layoff you might have, and begin "removal proceedings" against you -- or in other words, send ICE agents to your home, arrest you, throw you in a detention center ("jail") for an indefinite amount of time, until you are put on a plane back to India (forcibly), is up in the air.
The likelihood is that, as someone who came to this country on a skilled visa, you are probably not on the top of their priority list. There is also, prosecutorial discretion. If you get laid of suddenly, and if you find another willing sponsor super-fast (in let's say, 10 days), they can basically ask USCIS for forgiveness for the fact that you were out-of-status. They'd have to write a letter explaining that the circumstances were outside your control. However, prosecutorial discretion, is completely at the discretion of the officer reviewing your case.
However, another thing to be much more wary about is, if you were let's say driving in Alabama, where police officers can stop you[1] on suspicion that you are illegal (for which the sole, if not primary criteria is race/appearance), they can and do contacted the federal government to check if you are in the country legally, and you could be dragged and chucked into an ICE detention facility by the local police.
Alabama law requires local police to do this. But I've heard of stories of police in upstate New York doing this unilaterally (not because state law directs them to). NY driver licenses show the expiration date of your visa. This person had overstayed their F-1 student visa, and the upstate NY officer after seeing the visa expiration date on the driver license, dragged him over to ICE and handed him over. What's interesting is that NY doesn't have any state law[2] that requires the police to do this. With Indian people being frequently confused for Hispanic people, you are at high risk in any rural part of this country, or really any part of the U.S. with low immigrant populations.
[1] Alabama has a statute that allows them to do that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_SB_1070 It was much harsher, as originally you would have been made guilty of criminal felony (under state law) for not having legal status, but the Supreme Court overturned most of it, except for the ability of local police to randomly stop you because of "reasonable suspicion" that you lack legal status: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_v._United_States
[2] But the local laws of New York City expressly prohibits this. The local laws of the "sanctuary cities" in the U.S. all expressly prohibit the police from inquiring about your immigrant status. Even if they can know from just looking at your driver license that you are illegal, the sanctuary cities prohibit the police from taking any action based on this. More on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctuary_city
We could petition the President and ask him to create such a rule, but we'd need a lot of people, and a lot of support. If you are interested in working on this, feel free to get in touch with me at the email address listed on my GitHub profile (which is linked to on my HN profile).
I have heard contradictory things from various lawyers about whether I could continue a green card process if I changed employment. Even if there is a correct interpretation of the law, you can't rely on them applying it to you because as a non-US citizen you're at the mercy of the bureaucracy. Big companies can get what they want, not individuals.
I wasn't happy with where I was working, and though they were willing to sponsor me for a green card, all the advice I got was that I would have to wait ten years or more. I didn't want to wait a decade to be more entrepreneurial, so I left instead. Also I was just sick of all the hoops I had to keep jumping through, scary experiences at the border, trivial screw-ups from lawyers meaning unexpected stays out of the country.... but most of all, how it made me a much more compliant person in my day-to-day work. I survived some difficult situations (and did jump employers once) but it was never easy.
Other people in my situation, who are tired of being some company's indentured servant, sometimes do different visas. The O-1 is surprisingly popular, even though it's written like you have to be Stephen Hawking to qualify. But I guess I didn't have the werewithal to do that.
In the original article, the congressperson commented about how the visa program doesn't attract entrepreneurial people. That was crazy. Lots of us are entrepreneurial! The H-1B visa is designed to stop us from doing that.
Just give them a green card after 12 months, background and security check expensed to the company that wanted them (50K minimum charge).
The pipeline would simply shut down for cheap workers. Technical specialists wouldn't even blip.
Honestly, I'd like it if the Kentucky logistics company were forced to pay SF wages. It might help drive up wages for skilled workers in Kentucky.
[1] https://www.federalpay.org/gs/locality
You don't have to; the market will take care of it. They severely underpay their workers, so they'll never be able to compete.
People move to SF and NYC because those places are good when you need to find your NEXT job because you got laid off.
Frankly the only place where H1B seems to be "misused" is in the outsourcing industry. And that too it is "misused" if you look it from a protectionist perspective.
I've never seen any high skilled jobs going to H1Bs just because it is cheaper. In fact I've seen the opposite: small and mid-size companies hesitating to hire H1Bs because of the uncertainties involved.
Also, PhD glut in bio has nothing to do with H1B! The author misleadingly brings it up because it has the "woah" factor to buttress his argument.
Also can somehow explain to me how it is not protectionism to forge Disney to do something in house while it can be done cheaper by engaging a foreign company like Infosys?
Are you familiar with the Walt Disney Company.
It's not. Most large companies already have offices over there and could hire those people tomorrow if they wanted to. They bring people into the US with their families to have power over them. A manager without power over skilled people is useless in accomplishing business goals that require those skills. They also are always trying to accomplish personal goals like getting their friends promoted, getting more power generally at the cost of technical people. These types of goals tend to make technical people walk away despite any salary level, hence the need for H1B. Except for body shops, H1B is about power not money or available workforce.
Did you read the article?
> The mismatch is especially stark in the biomedical field. There, according to a 2014 paper by experts from UC San Francisco, Harvard and Princeton, "the training pipeline produces more scientists than relevant positions in academia, government, and the private sector are capable of absorbing."
If you demand someone with a phd from a top 10 (stanford/cmu, berkeley, michigan, toronto, ny, columbia, UW, etc) then yes, I agree -- but there's probably fewer than 200 of those minted per year. If you realize a cmu ML phd holder isn't going to your startup for $125k + lottery tickets and is instead going to a public company for $200k + $100k in RSUs and are realistic about what you can hire, there are plenty of us with track records of delivering products and making our employers money.
That's from my perspective both as hiring manager and an employee. I've been willing to hire both non-phds and outside of the aforementioned schools and really not had much trouble.
p.s. BTW we are more open to Masters/Bachelor's (less researchy) than Phds.
I'm not aware of a huge pool of "Machine Vision + Deep learning" people who are trapped in India because of Wipro using up all the H1Bs on J2EE programmers.
> But to say "there is no skills shortage" is at best laughable.
What is stopping you from filling that shortage by training people to have the skills you need? You're trying to hire students forchristsake.
No, I didn't. I just think your hiring expectations are unreasonable and not at all indicative of any kind of real "skills shortage."
Instead of sharing your infinite wisdom of who I should hire, how I should train them, and what have you...why not start your own company? Hire all this talent pool you claim exists, and show us how it can be done. Be the change you want. But that would involve moving your fat a$$ and might be too much exertion for your royal laziness
Unless you have started up a business, and done something worthwhile, you can go shove your advice up your you-know-what.
> Agree with you. There is definitely no shortage....of entitled, arrogant, lazy, whiny, whingey armchair generals like you.
> Instead of sharing your infinite wisdom of who I should hire, how I should train them, and what have you...why not start your own company? Hire all this talent pool you claim exists, and show us how it can be done. Be the change you want. But that would involve moving your fat a$$ and might be too much exertion for your royal laziness
> Unless you have started up a business, and done something worthwhile, you can go shove your advice up your you-know-what.
Hmm. I wonder if your attitude has any connection to your hiring problem. I certainly wouldn't want to work for someone who acts as immaturely as you are acting now.
BTW, I do hire people and I do train them/give them time and guidance to pick up the skills I need them to have, especially if they're less experienced students. I think it's unreasonable to expect that the perfect candidate will just fall out of a university fully formed and into my lap, so I deal with it and do something about it. Apparently you do not, and instead jump to conclusions and hurl put-downs.
That's true, but only to a degree. There is a kernel of inherent talent/ability behind many skills, but pretty much everything else besides that can be learned.
So, assuming you're correct, you identify the "CS and EE" students that can be trained in AI/ML and you train them, rather than complaining about a "skills shortage" (usually meaning something like the US is not providing fully trained bodies at cheap prices with the cutting-edge, special-snowflake skillset the complainer desires).
"Training" could mean paying for/subsidizing an advanced degree, which good employers have been known to do.
> If everyone can be trained for everything, what is the point of specialization?
I'm not saying something like everyone can learn any job with a 4-week training course. The point of specialization is that no one has the time to learn every skill, so people focus.
What's the snark about here?
There are lots of Indian grad students in CS and EE departments across the US. Modulo OPT, they're at the mercy of H1B lotteries. I know of PhDs from EU universities who, without the luxury of OPT, haven't been able to convert successful interviews and skill-matches into actual employment because of H1B's arbitrariness. Many of my friends have had to resort to O1 with varying success after excellent PhD dissertations because the failed to make the cut in H1B. Some had to return to India simply because they failed at both H1B and at meeting the onerous requirements of O1.
If you want a new Lexus, but can only afford a used Corolla, that does not mean there's a "Lexus shortage" ... nor is there a "car shortage". If only a Lexus will do, then the market just doesn't happen.
You know, you could always just hire someone with potential and put him through a training program to teach him the "specific skills" needed, or just let him learn them on-the-job.
But of course, employers are no longer willing to invest in their employees* , so we have a "skills shortage."
* They used to. It's my understanding that the first few generations of business applications programmers were taught programming from scratch by their employers.
From the flip side, I see the company concern - kind of. If I bring in raw talent and train it, I've sunk $X into the talent and if they leave shortly thereafter, I'm out $X with no benefit. The counterpoint to that argument, I think are signing bonuses and defined time contracts. In exchange for us training you to do this job and completing the program, you get a signing bonus of $X at the start, $Y at the end, and sign a 2 year agreement to work here. If you leave beforehand you agree to payback the $X+Y signing bonus (unless laid off by the company).
There are ways to address the "skills shortage". The problem is, no one wants to take the time and the cost to do it.
This will mostly damage employers abusing the system -- I doubt this hog processor really vitally needs all of these "Manager Trainees" earning 30k.
http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=MANAGER+TRAINEE&city=&...
The whole prevailing wage and government allocation business is just too ripe for abuse. If they're genius visas you can afford large salaries.
"outsourcing firms that use them to import workers"
And throughout it interchanges offshoring and outsourcing, all the way through its conclusion:
"Overwhelmingly, the H-1B program is working to speed up the offshoring," Hira said, "rather than keeping [jobs] here in the U.S."
What h1b does is keep the jobs in the U.S. staffed by work permit holders, it is the opposite of offshoring.
The biggest H1B companies specialize in outsourcing and offshoring.
Do you "deserve" whatever wealth you have when it could be liquidated and save one live for every $3,500 [1]?
It's easy to be generous with other people's resources. Being as virtuous as you imagine you are is expensive.
[1] https://www.againstmalaria.com/
The interesting bit is that there are few who make this argument at the low end. The idea of open borders for unskilled folks is way less popular.
The net effect of this, it seems to me, is that while there's lots of support for me facing more competition, there's no support for more competition in the labor I buy.
Now, one could say that is reasonable, just because I make a lot more money than I need to live, which can't be said for less skilled workers, but it's an interesting dynamic.
"The gains from eliminating migration barriers dwarf---by an order of a magnitude or two---the gains from eliminating other types of barriers. For the elimination of trade policy barriers and capital flow barriers, the estimated gains amount to less than a few percent of world GDP. For labor mobility barriers, the estimated gains are often in the range of 50–150 percent of world GDP." [1]
A typical example:
"Take a male construction worker in the capital of Ghana. There isn’t much you could do to greatly raise his economic productivity in Ghana; access to better tools or training might make him modestly more productive. But if you let the exact same person emigrate to work at a construction site in any big U.S. city, his economic productivity would rise roughly 700% to 1,000%." [2]
[1] Clemens, Michael A. 2011. "Economics and Emigration: Trillion-Dollar Bills on the Sidewalk?" Journal of Economic Perspectives, 25(3): 83-106. https://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jep.25.3.83
[2] http://www.cgdev.org/blog/trillion-dollar-bills-sidewalk-why...
Does anyone know if anything ever came of this investigation? http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/12/us/politics/outsourcing-co...
I'd also advocate that we allow companies to convert their existing H1Bs to green-card holders after 3 years, in exchange for getting a new H1B. This would effectively raise the cap while increasing mobility among immigrants working under the program.
If you've ever applied for an H-1B then you know how easy it is to abuse the prevailing wages. The process to evaluate the skills of the applicant is simply filling out a form online for their experience level, job title, and location. Give it a test here: http://www.flcdatacenter.com/OesWizardStart.aspx It's very easy to game their job title and location to lower the salary.
Here is the law firm Cohen & Grigsby advising other employers in running classified ads with the goal of NOT finding any qualified applicants, and the steps they go through to disqualify even the most qualified Americans in order to secure green cards for H-1B workers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU This seems like clear fraud. The issue I have with H-1Bs is when companies lie/cheat/commit fraud to outsource jobs that Americans do want and are qualified/willing to do, all for the sake of driving down wages.
they can jump ship to a big company like google after your small startup went through the hassle of lawyers/visa fees/ govt fees ect.
The right solution is that if google or whoever hires an H1B 1 year into a 3 year visa, they need to pay for 2/3 of the cost of the visa.
Why would you want to use trade barriers to increase inequality?
Once the domestic pool of potential employers has dried up, then employers will bring in the slightly more expensive foreign labor.
Again, why is creating more inequality, harming the poor, and harming consumers via rent seeking a good thing?
More importantly though: how is not letting Indians into the US harming them? Are Indians incapable of creating a US-like environment in their own country? If so, that's an argument to keep them out. If not, why wouldn't they do just that instead of moving half-way around the world?
Black Americans in Flint seem incapable of creating a NYC-like environment in their own city. Is that an argument to prevent them from moving to NY?
And none of this explains why American consumers should pay extra. Apparently Indian humans count for less than 3/5, but don't American consumers count as full humans? Why should labor sellers be privileged over consumers?
Second, New Yorkers routinely enact regulations to stop unapproved immigrants from moving in through housing cooperatives for example. And Americans all around the country do with gated communities.
I lost track of what you're arguing. Are you arguing against freedom of association? For some sort of forced integration where everyone should be allowed to move wherever they please regardless of the opinion of people already living there?
I lost track of what you're arguing. Are you arguing against freedom of association? For some sort of forced integration where everyone should be allowed to move wherever they please regardless of the opinion of people already living there?
I'm arguing that it's wrong for person A to use violence to prevent person B from hiring person C, even if that undercuts the wages of person A. I believe this to be true even if person C was born into an unfavorable group.
None of the arguments you've made explain treating Indians different from Flintians.
Maybe you are arguing that some arbitrary lines on the map (e.g. countRy boundaries) deserve moral weight, but not others (e.g. county boundaries)? Is that your claim?
It's not really an argument to keep them out. We should let them in when real demand is there. Right now, its a race to the bottom in this country due to job market manipulation by business.
Also I'm all for letting Indian entrepreneurs into the country because they will create jobs.
It's not necessarily about pay, it's about wanting to work for a big name like Google.
I think the best solution, as others have suggested, is that the new employer has to buy out the visa costs. This is the deal I made when my employer paid to relocate me to the Bay Area -- if I left in the first two years, I would have had to repay my moving costs.
And of course the objections to your idea highlight the point that hb1s have generally not been about finding people with unique skills but rather about getting cheap labor on a tight leash.
Wouldn't that punish small startups by favoring big co's like google/ms?
My opinion is, no, most are not doing this.
It is such a high burden on an early strat-up to hire a H1-B and only post Series A, H1-B makes some sense.
In the grand scheme of things, I like the market oriented auction, that will at least eliminate the rent-seekers who are clogging the pipeline.
The current system encourages my boss to buy extra lottery tickets at the lowest price so he can be surprised later when productivity, morale of local employees, and quality ratio to labor cost is at rock bottom.
Now about being unfair to startups... If the auction somehow doesn't account for offering ownership/equity (which seems like an obscure rare situation anyways), that's clearly a better problem to have than a market flooded with cheap labor that still needs regular training, in addition to language training and cultural training.
Cognizant and Infosys will stop the gaming the minute you detach the H-1B from the company - something along the lines of "If an employee spends N months at a company on H-1B, not get into trouble with the law, pay taxes and be a productive member of the community, then that person can work at any similar job without being tied to the employer".
Facebook, Google or Microsoft are not doing H-1Bs so they can trap those employees into working at low wages - Cognizant and Infosys are. Removing the power these firms have over the employee is the only true way to reform H-1B.
President Obama's executive action plans did state intent along those lines [1], but those seem to be torpedoed by vested interests. There is currently a draft rule from USCIS titled "Retention of EB-1, EB-2 and EB-3 Immigrant Workers and Program Improvements Affecting High-Skilled Nonimmigrant Workers" [2] open for comments until Feb 29, 2016.
If you are interested in acting towards a solution to this problem you identify, please consider reading and commenting on it this weekend. You can do it online by going to www.regulations.gov and searching for the eDocket number USCIS-2015-0008 [3].
[1]: https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/14_1120...
[2] USCIS Seeks Comments on Proposed Rule Affecting Certain Employment-Based Immigrant and Nonimmigrant Visa Programs - https://www.uscis.gov/news/uscis-seeks-comments-proposed-rul...
[3] http://www.regulations.gov/#!docketDetail;D=USCIS-2015-0008
While I agree that people on an H-1B visa shouldn't be tied to one particular employer, I don't think this will solve the problem at all. The lottery model will always unfairly advantage these outsourcing companies precisely because all they care about is billable hours, and the people working there are interchangeable. That's why they can afford to be relatively indiscriminate by throwing thousands of visa applications at the wall and hiring whoever sticks. Product companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft who have to actually care which individuals they hire are always going to be at a disadvantage in a lottery - their hiring bar reduces the pool of visa applicants and gives them fewer tickets. That doesn't mean that there aren't great engineers at these companies, but as a whole the system perversely incentivizes quantity over quality.
These companies apply for visas on behalf of the competent employees they have in their offshore offices. Once the employee gets an H-1B visa if the regulations are such that s/he is free to switch employers without harming their immigrant status, they will bargain for better wages. This breaks the business model of applying for lots of visas paying large fees on each of them and getting a few approved.
Right now the visa fees (> 7K for just the initial application! [1]) are considered an investment by these firms, because they know that the few that sticks can be trapped into a long employment period and underpaid for years to recoup many multiples of the initial investment.
Breaking this business model is what will prevent these firms from applying in large numbers (which is a DoS attack on USCIS, forcing the approval process into a lottery). Hence my original comment.
[1]: https://www.uscis.gov/forms/h-and-l-filing-fees-form-i-129-p...
Do you really want to import foreigners for high paying jobs? Do you really want to starve low margin industries that are unable to pay high wages but need specialized locally unavailable skills? The skill shortage doesn't necessarily equates with high wages, for example shortage of skills needed for short term. One example, a COBOL programmer needed for a cobol to xyz conversion project.
Using any one criteria as qualification is recipe for disaster and gaming the system. An appropriate process should look at multiple items both from hiring org perspective and the fit of a foreigner for hiring org as well as industry and the country. A point based system that evaluates suitability of employer and non-immigrant candidate might be better approach, a system somewhat like what Canada uses for permanent residency.
In the end, either you import foreigners or you export jobs. If there is an arbitrage opportunity, it will be exploited by someone somewhere.
last one here from 11 days ago : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11105798
And who continues to vote incumbents into office? It's as if we have no one to blame but ourselves.
I know about many USA tech companies increasing size of their European offices, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Palantir. It is bad situation for everyone. USA general public: Role of USA as the tech capital of the world is diminished, as there is more intellectual capital elsewhere. My taxes go to UK rather than to USA. Tech companies: They need to open offshore offices. Foreign tech workers: There is less choice of companies in Europe (especially startups). Some people may want to live in USA for various reasons.
The only potential beneficiaries are American tech workers. I believe that the benefit is only in the short term. If tech companies could get all engineers they want into USA, they wouldn't need to open offshore offices. As soon as offshore office is opened, the company have access to more engineers than they could import to USA, as not all people are open to relocating to USA, regardless of Visa situation. Therefore, "value" of an American engineer drops more.
Edit:typo.
Palantir is opening up a EU based branch? Where? I think people who work there should be put on lists and never be allowed to work in a normal company again. If by now a person still thinks it's ok to work for Palantir they really should be closely watched.
They're in their early 20's and got swept up by the recruiting machine. It's like brandishing all Goldman Sachs analysts who joined the firm pre-2008 as having evil intent rather than just having been ill informed.
It is that black and white unfortunately. But only because current US legislation with their war on everything made it so. It is up to Americans to change it and as a non American I'd judge anyone who doesn't rise up and distance themselves. You should be on the streets protesting and not behind laptops and cowardly half-arsed remarks hiding yourself. Downvote me all you want I really don't care.
[1] https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/
edit forgot to add the link
>Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
Second, you should defined what is a normal company. They are pretty much the same as any big tech company, and they are definitively hiring the same profiles as Google, Facebook or Criteo, in a very similar process.
Last, what makes working for Palantir worst than, let's say, working in adtech, fintech, or anything resembling a buzzfeed-like mobile social network?
Palantir is helping California police develop controversial license plate database: http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/29/4478748/california-license...
Congressman continues drumbeat on controversial intel system: http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/24/congressman-continu...
CIA-funded upstart: THE TRUTH about Prism and NSA's web snooping: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/10/palantir_denies_powe...
Helping Build The Surveillance State Is Good Business: Palantir Gets $196 Million More In Funding: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130927/17175624683/helpi...
Okay, but if they aren't skilled and no shortage exists then why aren't companies able to find cheaper US based graduates?
> Employers are legally required to pay visa holders the "local prevailing wage" for their jobs, but enforcement is porous. "It is extraordinarily easy to pay an H-1B worker much less than an American worker," Hira observed; the trick lies in how the job is defined
So fix this.
> Evidence is ample that the very claim of a STEM shortage in the U.S. is phony. Salzman noted that "overall, our colleges and universities graduate twice the number of STEM graduates as find a job each year." The mismatch is especially stark in the biomedical field. There, according to a 2014 paper by experts from UC San Francisco, Harvard and Princeton, "the training pipeline produces more scientists than relevant positions in academia, government, and the private sector are capable of absorbing."
Wow. That's compelling evidence since everyone known STEM degrees are entirely interchangeable.
How many H1-Bs are given out to biomedical graduates?
I realise that this is probably going to get stupidly downvoted, but I am a die hard libertarian.
Why is it, in 2016, still OK to pick on the foreigners? Replace the word "foreigner" with Black/Woman/Jew/Gay/White/Whatever, and it would be totally unacceptable.
Way I see things, in a hundred years or so, picking on foreigners will be seen in the same light as picking on some minority group today.
I just worry that I won't get to live to see that day.
You're being ridiculous. It's not picking on them at all. They are trying to protect US citizens from losing their jobs (or getting wages cut) due to a sudden availability of cheap labor. A government is rightfully concerned with making sure its own citizens are gainfully employed. Citizens vote, foreigners don't. Every person within those borders who does not have a job puts a drain on the rest of the country. Someone without a job outside of those borders does not. So bringing someone across those borders while an unemployed person is within them is a net economic negative. Look at the biggest H-1B recipients: http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2015-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx It's all low quality outsourcing shops like Infosys and Cognizant.
>why USians should have a god given right to jobs in the US?
These laws/protections are intended to prevent a race to the bottom. If the public subsidizes the operation of a company through security, education, and infrastructure, the community that makes that investment is entitled to ensure that the fruits of that investment go to other members of the community.
Mmmm. I hear you. Sort of. Your argument though, is not very different from the "women are taking jobs that rightfully belong to men" spiel that was all the rage after WWII.
I suspect that my argument is fundamentally based on wishful thinking. That said, you can't have your cake and eat it. The 'race to the bottom' you alude to is already happening with offshoring though.
But my central argument remains ... foreigners (based on borders determined by middle aged white men a couple of centuries ago), remain the last 'minority' group that you can still discriminate against, vocally, in polite society.
The fact that you think it's discrimination shows you completely misunderstand the issue and are coming at it from an emotionally biased perspective. You aren't entitled to anything. The government is rightfully concerned with protecting its own citizens and making sure they are gainfully employed. Citizens vote, foreigners don't. Every person within those borders who does not have a job puts a drain on the rest of the country. Someone without a job outside of those borders does not.
Also, the last I checked Americans aren't allowed to work nearly as freely in most of the countries where we accept immigrants from. We are already an exceptionally generous country and our visa program is already abused and rife with fraud. To expect even more from the US is just hypocritical and self-entitled thinking.
There is a school of though that it shouldn't. Many countries confer citizenship jus sanguinis (by descent). Is that system easier for you to understand?
Citizenship conferred jus soli (by place of birth) arose at a time when people were less mobile and less likely to acquire citizenship by "accident of birthplace" and when there were few practical benefits to citizenship in any case. It seems entirely outdated.
Modern nations belong to their citizens who are free to vote for representatives that write laws to benefit citizens and their children.
I doubt you'll have any luck convincing the people of the United States to give away their kingdom or taking it by force.
If you have the capacity to house them, feed them, train them, then that's great. Do that. But me? I need my children to be able to sleep at night. I need to feed my children. I need my children not raped. I need my children to have room and freedom to study. Will I be looked down upon as a lesser person for this through tumblr-tinted glasses in 50 years? I doubt it.
Why do I think my children have a god(s) given right to my house? I don't. Instead, I am merely thankful.
I have a much better idea. Instead of bringing the homeless world into my house, let's make a better world for the homeless?
Q. "B-b-but there's a shortage of skilled workers!"
A. Good, let supply-demand make you pay what you should be paying for it. Let our colleges give meaningful education to people they're putting in debt for jobs they can actually get later on.
Our economy is bleeding to death while corporations rack in record profits because of outsourcing.
Few simple rules that would help a lot.
* Want an H1B? Pay them in the top 10th percentile of similar domestic professionals' wages. * Want an H1B? Great, but once you sponsor it, they're free to work for anyone in the U.S. * Want an H1B? Great, but you'll be limited to no more than 5% of your total employees. * That 5% limit includes overseas offices and "international" owned ventures.
If a company is domestic, they should stay domestic. If it's international, they have no need for H1Bs.
I'm writing this as a disgruntled software engineer turned into a business owner.
People getting away with crap like this is infuriating.